Their personnel use such monikers as Rene Libido, Legs Akimbo and Kit Bageldish and over the years Ralph Dangerfish has evolved into Motic Necrojam, Peter Heater and finally Martin Longley:

"As well as changing our own names frequently we fell prey to altering the band name regularly prior to our recording existence. We first sprouted in some kind of form in 1980, or even earlier if you count school room adventures. We have been known as the Cream Dervishes, Extroverts in a Vacuum, The Viable Sloths, Pantaloni Brothers and Shitstormer, amongst others."

Noseflutes songs are three minute forays into the wordy and sometimes caustically witty world of lyricist Martin, and the nagging - but not instantly so - tunes that accompany them. Tunes that employ violins, jaw harps, saxophones and mandolins alongside the more familiar guitar, bass, keyboards and drums. Their music is weird in a natural - not contrived - sense and is so chock full of different sounds and experiments and words that each listen brings something fresh. They're "not performing out and about right now (but) might do a spell on the old floorboards when the next disc emerges" so until then it's probably going to mean a spell in the secondhand shops if you want to hear them. Their works include Several Young Men Ignite Hardboard Stump (LP), and Girth, The Ravers and Heartache Is Irresistable: all 12" EPs, all well worth ear-time. Probably the easiest to obtain is last year's brilliant (second) LP: Zib Zob and his Kib Kob. 

"Few people appreciated the delights of our last platter. This is partly due to bad distribution and partly due to not having gathered a particularly strong audience over the years. We don't intend to be deliberately obscure, but that happens anyway, perhaps because of the way our records sound. Zib Zob and his Kib Kob only had a couple of tracks played on John Peel's show, as far as we heard. Our greatest failing is that we don't hail from the U.S. of A. Most UK bands appear to be listless meringue peddlars at present. There's a new Noseflutes LP due out in January '91, on the Rictus label once more. It's called Mellow Throated and includes a track of that name. Also there's versions of Much Decorated and Ossified which were on the last Peel session and a reggae-type treatment of Give Me The Keys from our first EP, and lots of other good tunes, too."

The Ravers and Heartache records are to my knowledge the only ones that include lyric sheets:

"We've tried to include the words to the songs on all our records. When they've not been there is when there's a financial or practical stumbling block. Sometimes it destroys the flow of the tunes to read the words, but they're there if anyone wants to. A little booklet for them might be a good idea in about ten years' time."