Label Description: Without Wisdom features 8 new songs based on those anxious moments of anticipation in the dreaded dental waiting room.

In the 1970s when I visited the dentist, the music they played in the waiting room was slow melancholy jazz, jazz featuring the vibraphone. I alluded to this on my recording ‘Bad Vibes Waiting Room’, which appeared on the 2007 album Black Hole.

Teeth. Teeth are not really fit for purpose are they? All my neuroses and fears manifest in my mouth. You have to work at keeping your teeth, it’s an eternal battle. Natural teeth are disjointed, irregular shapes and never brilliant white. They are not neat and shiny and all in a row like a Hollywood grin, unless you are lucky of course. There is no beauty in them, they are ugly, they fail, they rot, they don’t grow back and at some point they will cause unmitigated misery for practically everyone.

I have always had weird teeth. My incisors are Draculaesque. I was ridiculed at school for having them. In later life I have been asked several times where I have had them ‘done’, people assuming I have willingly had them cosmetically altered. I always reply that it’s a congenital deformity. What makes them even more pronounced is the fact that the neighbouring two teeth are, bizarrely, still milk teeth.

I’ve had some terrible experiences at the dentist. I have been in waiting rooms with people running out screaming. Once, the dentist came into the waiting room covered in blood, moaning about patients only coming to him when they were in pain. I have had unnecessary extractions and unnecessary fillings.

I was very much a victim of the ‘heavy metal’ generation. For those who don’t know, in the 1970s, the NHS in the UK encouraged dentists to ‘restore’ teeth, which led to many children receiving extensive and often pointless dental work. The ‘drill and fill’ abuse of the 70s meant that dentists were driven by financial gain rather than the patients’ wellbeing. This resulted in the ‘heavy metal’ generation, creating victims of the predictable and ugly consequences of when money and healthcare coalesce.

A couple of years ago I had a wisdom tooth extracted. It no longer had any socket left to keep it fixed in place and needed to be removed. I asked the dentist if I could keep it.

You can own it… if you like. I am literally selling my own body parts.

Send an email to andrew@andrewliles.com with a price you would like to pay for it.

The highest bidder will win the tooth, which comes in a presentation box with a signed Polaroid.

Images can be found here – www.andrewliles.com/discography/without-wisdom/

Final offers are due by midnight GMT 14th February.

P&P will be added to your bid.

Teeth. Teeth are not really fit for purpose are they?

JANUARY 2025: DESCEND AND DISINTEGRATE