30561
An irresistible platter of warped
jazz-rock - the delicious combination of
flute, Hammond organs and Fender
Rhodes electric piano tastes great to
this palate. Forget fusion smoothies of
the Weather Report or Spyro Gyra
schools, this stuff has real guts and
rough edges; it's played with such
urgency and heaviness that suggests
the Krauts could never get as silky as
Herbie Hancock, try as they may. Lalo
Schifrin would kill for a flute sound as
sandpapery as Hansi Fischer's. File it
next to Lady Pig for another example
of greasy German jazz-rock; the latter
had more horn charts and, erm,
unreconstructed 1970s macho lyrics,
but were no less wayward than
Embryo. This is a different path to the
lightness, whinlliy and charm of eg The
Soft Machine, and once they get into a
groove they work it down into the
concrete - like The Mothers of
Invention on 'King Kong', although
they're neither as technically proficient
nor as crazy!
'Spain Yes Franco Finished' kicks off
with a triumphant mellotron flourish,
side by side with a sax and heavy
drums in full processional mode (a real
•
The So-d Projeeior 2Bd issue 1997
prog-jazz mixture), before the band
sweep into a funky flute-electric piano
duel in a minor key, suggesting an apt
Flamenco flavour akin to Miles Davis'
'Spanish Key'. An overtly political
lyric chants 'Revolution is the only
way' and - after a mid-section of solos
where the track almost disintegrates -
the positively barnstorming final riff
suggests their revolution was a success.
'Change', which ends the LP, is more
traditionally kosmische with its
prelude of mellotron clouds and
volume-pedalled piano clusters, and
quickly warms up into a
Red-Spot-of-Jupiter riff that Edgar
Froese would adore, set to a
syncopated beat. The record ends on a
high spot, while the violin is going
ballistic right in the middle of a
mega-stomping whirlwind workout.
These tracks sandwich 'Try to Be' on
side two, the LP's only quiet reflective
moment - bongoes and keyboard
working against a drippy
Moon-And-Earth children lyric, which
suddenly sparkles at the very ending
with a two-second electronic zoom
glissando as you 'Fly up into space'.
Side one features such delights as a
high-register organ solo played by
Tabarin Man on 'Tuasendfussler',
verging on that Rolf Harris stylophone
sound so many studio engineers strive
for, against scads of syrupy wah-wah
rhythm guitar. 'Time' is effectively
Dave Brubeck's 'Take 5' figure taken
at a harder and faster lick, and
showcases Edgar Hoffman's violin in
the mix. On 'Revenge', Hoffman
contributes some precious seconds of
soprano sax freak-out work, before the
track me)ts down in a confusing welter
of percussion and jaw harp. Moments
of wonderful disorientation like this
are to be cherished in music, I feel; the
sleeve art for this record promises the
same sort. of weirdness, which Embryo
can't always match, but they make a
great effort. It's a photograph of a
semi-naked hippy in silhouette,
greeting the sunrise over a plains
landscape in primary yellow, grasping
in one hand a violin and in the other a
Punchinello doll. Or is it a giant
cockroach? This fine item was
recorded in Koln, no date of issue
given; the copy I own is a vinyl
reissue/bootleg item, the only format
that delivers that total gatefold sleeve
art. experience my retinas long for (the
interior photo of the band confirms all
your dreams about what mad
Krautrockers should look like!) It has
been spotted on CD reissue, as has
Embryo's second LP.
Can, The Peel Session,
Strange Fruit SFR CD
135
Maybe you too dragged your Clark's
W ayfinders before purchasing these
1973-75 radio sessions. The fear for me
was that The Can's high reputation
(Mount Olympus high in my ratings)
might somehow be corroded by the
late appearance of a bunch of hasty
Maida Vale tape-rolls . The unique
identity of the finest original discs -
Future Days seaspray radiance or
Tago Magds be-spooked jamming -
evidently benefit from Holger
Czukay's magicianly edits and a
production style whereby the four
musicians are honed into a
coagulating single-cell.
Sure enough, the BBC's utilitarian
methods lay the band bare, the playing
crisply separated into clean channels.
But if this is Can under an unflinching
microscope the looking offers some
wondrous information. Jaki Liebezeit's
super-alert drumwork is no surprise
30
but Michael Karoli is here spotlit as a
guitarist who never idles into
blues-scale cliche. In fact his quavery
fuse-wire sustain steers clear of
'soloing' altogether. Then there's Irmin
Schmidt, hunched over a tangled bank
of patchboards and plastic keys. His
gloomsome synth-murk on 'Return to
BB City' hits the frontal lobes like a
fleet of ironclad bombers looming
between the spires of Cologne
Cathedral.
Some 'of the pieces just fail to reach the
alchemical boiling-point swooning Can
fans cherish. ('Tony Wanna Go') and
the later Krautpop-phase cuts are
played frustratingly straight. But I'm
glad I didn't miss 'Up the Bakerloo
Line with Anne'. It's as bony and
funksorne as anything off Ege
Bamyasi. Damo perf?rms vocal struts
like an amnesiac Mick Jagger who has
gleefully forgotten how to speak any
identifiable earth-language. No
handicap, because the singer
plugged directly into the mysteries of
unfettered rhythmic caterwauling. You
can't fail to be dazzled. (John Bagnall)
Between, Dharana,
Germany WERGO SM
1011 (1977)
A spiritual work, rich with devotional
resonances, chants, Indian religion - it
practically exudes compassion and
inner harmony. Warm tone colours
and textures and the best of Po pol
Vuh or Terry Riley. Robert Eliscu is
the oboist here, having played with the
Munich Philharmonic Orchestra he
was also a fixture on many of Po pol
Vuh's greatest records. The
Peter Michael Hamel carne from
Munich which is the other
krautrockish connection here. The
band also features two Afro-Americans
from NYC (one was in the original cast
of Ham) on the congas, and an
Argentinean guitarist. This LP gives
us the side-long 'Dharana' piece,
privileging the combo over the
orchestra, the latter mixed down to
produce a lovely disembodied, tone
wash sound. Prepare for a moment of
celestial ecstasy when you reach the
end of this track - water sounds effects,
an electric drone, a basso voice
moaning and some gentle orchestral
harmonics drifting in the breeze.
Recently reissued on CD.
The Sound P r o ~ t o r 2nd issue 1997
The Horrid
Mvsteries
Three"records from the Pyramid Label
Some rare examples of fascinating electronic music
reclaimed from a very obscure time and place. Their release
at this time chimes in with the current high level of interest
in German 1970s Kosmische music. It isn't immediately
obvious how to connect these oddities to a defined sense of a
'Krautrock continuum', which is good as this confounds lazy
journalists who think they've got this scene all figured out.
Some Doubting Dans have even suggested in print that
these records must be 1990s hoaxes, which is absurd. Others
have placed too much emphasis on their obscureness,
playing up the angle of'not even the heavy-duty Krautrock
collectors have heard of this label' , which is an indication of
how the specialists want to appropriate everything for
themselves. However, such specialisation and selfishness is
overturned by democrat ising releases like this which put the
music back in the public domain, where everyone with a CD
player who's so inclined can share in these delights.
The facts are simple, the records were made in Cologne by
Tony Robinson using Dieter Dirks' studio. Some say the
1972-73 date is wrong and a couple of years later would be
more accurate. (I heard a rumour that the actual names of
the bands were added on later, implying the records could
have been made by studio session players -but don't quote
me on that one! ) The music is excellent. The context in
which these records were made suggests there was little
concern for commercial potential, or even for audience
appeal- it was just artists making the music they wanted to
make. If this be the case I'm delighted if there is now a
slightly larger audience for this material- or at least a more
attentive one! Perhaps at last the world is ready for these
sounds. To 1996 ears they sound excellent and not even
especially challenging, although heaven knows what a 1972
listener would have made of them. Below, John Bagnall
reviews Unknown Deutschland, EP the Psi-Fi threesome.
Unknown Deutschland: The
Krautrock Archive Volume One, Virgin
CD OVD 468
Now the dust has settled on last year's pop-press paranoia (ie
'Is this compilation a fake?') let's just cock a snook and
gauge the varying merits of these lost probers of kosmische
slop. Most primary age mopes know your current NME
staffer only considers a disc 'real' if accompanied by a
ribbon-wrapped crate of bilberry Hooch from Suede
anyhow, so why get anxious?
Culled from Tony Robinson's mid-70s art-gallery
distributed Pyramid label, these six groups are a
sandalwood-scented reminder of just how hippyesque much
Krautrock was. The motorik pulse of Neu! and Kraftwerk
31
The Sowwd Projeetor 2wd issue 1997
or the abrasive anti-logic of Faust account for only a ripple
in a glistening lake of mystic doodling, some great, some
not. And this comp truly is like a time-travelling wander
through some Rhineland art-commune, so thick is the whiff
of loon pants drying on decaying radiators. Some corners
you won't wish to hang out in twice (The Astral Army's
cod-metal 'Interstellar Shortwave') but I guarantee you'll
soon be feeling right at horne. Take Galactic Explorers'
unforced globular lobe-tickling which uncoils at a snail's
pace. Their analogue simplicity is as enriching as two full
days of sleep. Temple sternly lead you into a glow-worm
infested Bavarian forest. Here a Kohl-smeared emigre from
Notting Hill recites her psych-poetry from a pulsating
puffball. And there's more wonderment: over thirteen
minutes Ferrote silk-spin long strips of metallic webbing
which hang vibrating in the feedback soaked air.
The Psi-Fi label have released three facsimiles on CD of
these nearly forgotten neuron-shatterer's LPs (with vintage
sleeve art even Daevid Allen would balk at). While I
appreciate discerning types will prefer to bask in
completeness, the tidbits gathered on Unknown
Deutschland offer the alternate thrill of fmding a box of
bright baubles in the back of a dim and musty cupboard.
Here's hoping there's more to discover. (John Bagnall)
Cozmic Corridors, Psi-Fi PSCD0001
The recitative by Pauline Fund here passes over the head of
this non-German speaking listener, but a certain iambic
pentameter can be perceived suggesting some hippy poetry
reading. At one level this record is just a celebration of the
enjoyable sounds of Hammond organ and Mini-Moog,
manipulated here with grace and charm by Alex Meyer,
which in itself is surely more than enough justification for
constant replaying. At another level, some fme keyboard
playing which strikes me as both true to the limitations of
the electronic instruments (all very simple textures and
patterns) and simultaneously imbued with real human
qualities; one track seems to match exactly all the biological
and physical properties of the act of breathing. To hear it is
like inhaling a sudden blast of cool mountain air.
Galactic Explorers, Epitaph for
Venus, PSCD0002
A candidate for being dubbed 'Ambient' before Ambient
existed. All the signs -song titles and sleeve art especially -
can seem so unpromising, as if you're about to get
something as lightweight and fluffy as Camel's 'Lunar Sea',
but on the contrary this is a work of crystal clear simplicity,
'pure' electronic sounds, and beautiful minimalism.
Although not structured minirnalism in the way that Terry
Riley might wish, rather the players work to their inner
vibrations and let these forces guide them where they will.
Johannes Lutz, Holst Seisert and Reihard Karwatsky are the
trio of unassuming synthesists sailing this boatload of bliss.
Golem, Orion Awakes, PSCD0003
A powerful blast of more conventional cosmic rock,
although less beguiling than the two above, it works at loud
volume. This features Willi Berghoff on guitar and Manfred
Hof on the Hammond and Mellotron, backed up by a
wah-wah bass from Mungo that beats John Wetton six ways
from Sunday. Only the drummer lets them down- 'Stellar
Launch' is prevented from soaring into space by his leaden,
unimaginative bass drum. Skip to 'Jupiter and Beyond' for a
truly unashamed science-fiction spacerocket romp, built
from a sharp organ figure doubled by by the guitar line and
enahnced by the sparing use of the phaser. Here, and on the
title track, the band summon up that sense of monumental
scale, as of some lumbering dinosaur, as only
unreconstructed hippies can. 'Godhead Dance' is as dismal
an attempt at funkiness as you could imagine, with the
possible exception of Keith Emerson's Hammond riffs.
Sound-wise at least, with the wah-wah rhythm guitar,
bongoes and mega-heavy bass as its anchor, this track
almost predicts the rise of George Clinton and P-Funk- but
Golem lack the soul, fmally.
32
I
I
The Sound Projeetor 2nd issue 1997
tin, a steel pipe held high
above the head ... all these
were mercilessly pounded,
while his aspect reminded
me of nothing so much as
the terrifying serial killer in
Michael Mann's movie
Manhunter- during a silent
(apparently) segment,
where he stood behind his
battery of percussion and
just glared at you. Other
musical highlights included
a rip-roaring 'Schempal
Buddah' (in response to
audience demand), the use
of a concrete mixer's engine
as percussion track, a
shimmering pearl of an
acoustic guitar
performance, and a
bilingual ranting in French
and German which
generated that sense of
panic and hysterical
bewilderment that only
Faust can deliver. The
evening was not a complete
loss then, but I wish it had
felt less throwaway; they
seem a lot more sure of
themselves than at the
Marquee gig, where
Jean-Herve had exhibited a
------'::._ ___ j_ ____ "-___ .._ ____ -l, ______ .-l ______ _ : : ; ~ child-like gratitude at being
asked to play again, but
there may be a downside to this new confidence. The 1996
model of Faust makes more knowing nods and winks at the
audience ('You didn't recognise that song? It's a new one!')
and also seems more equipped to make money out of us
than before, not that I begrudge these mad geniuses a single
penny.
THE GODS OF CHAOS RULED FOR TWO NIGHTS.
Wild and mysterious music plus action painting, a concrete
mixer, a threshing machine, an engineer in arc-welding gear
throwing out fountains of orange sparks. Faust are clearly
able to play some of the most exciting avant-garde rock ever
to enter tbe atmosphere, with an almost embarrassing
facility, so why do they fmd it necessary to give themselves
so many handicaps? No sooner was the musical performance
beginning to warm up than everyone downed tools, and left
the stage to perform sideshow antics; ]ean-Herve Peron
stripped himself bare tQ attack a wall full of white master
bags with his paint roller (these items were later used to
sleeve the 12" record of their John Peel sessions, signed and
numbered and sold at the gig for £20 a throw); and later he
leaped into the audience to unveil the threshing machine
which blew leaves and white muslim sheets all over the
crowd, while that Faustian demon stood astride this
machinery laughing like a madman. These events shouldn't
dominate one's perception of the concert, yet these are the
things everyone will remember. I felt they could have given
the music more of a chance, as some of the performance
struck me as excellent as anything they've committed to
record. Supplemented by a very competent organ player
and a guitarist who was occasionally permitted to let rip
with some first-rate wah-wah induced solos, ]ean-Herve and
Werner Diermaier left you in no doubt that they are the
exhibitionist stars of Faust. The drummer this time cut a
particularly impressive figure, three large toms upended
before him like hideous steel canisters, a battered sheet of
Faust@
The Garage,
London 2
December
1996
33
The Sound Projeeior 2nd iss ue 1997
Conrad
Schniuler
'I Hate
Titles·
Interview by
Norbert Schilling
This piece comprises selected
excerpts from a recent
interview, hand-picked and
translated hy Norbert
Schilling. Norbert states that
Conrad studied sculpture as a
pupil of the great conceptual
artist Joseph Beuys during the
1960s; also that he never
actually studied under
Stockhausen, as has been
stated elsewhere. Norbert
sent me a copy of Eruption
(Marginal Talent MT-367),
which is a reissue of the last
live concert (1971 in
Gottingen) of.Kluster. This
record was originally issued as
Schwarz, credited to
Schnitzler, Roedelius,
Moebius and Freudigmann;
pressed in an edition of 200
copies and commissioned by
the Block gallery as a sound
installation. Eruption should
he required listening for
anyone seriously interested in
the development of electronic
nwsic as an art form, and in
my view a copy should he
issued with every purchase of
a synthesizer as a benchmark
of quality and as a stern
warning to any juvenile
dabblers in this area.
I AM A PERFORMER,
ACTION-ARTIST, AN
INTER-MEDIA ARTIST,
not a multi-media artist. I work 'in between' the arts. The
characterization of me as a 'musician' -I take this as an
abusive word. I see myself as a composer -or some kind of
an architect of cut ups I collages.
I'm not interested in having publicity or a public feedback; I
just do my work and I can't think about the possibility that
someone will be interested, in some ten years or so, in what
I do today. Personally I live here and now, as good as it is
possible; the reflection about the fact, that I live now, means
that this moment has already passed.
All the cassettes and CDs that I've privately released, I've let
them run under the 'Contemporary Music' category. I do
something, I go one way and I'm not prepared to go that
way ten times in succession. So on principle, I do something
I haven't done before, that gives me satisfaction.
On principle, I sell nothing. I allow only a kind of
understanding that some [money] can be recovered from it.
I always retain for myself the job of editing the material. In
the past, I have sold CDs by myself, but I don't do this any
more. I've even produced my material on records and sold
them, but I've learned that an artist cannot really do
everything. For me it's no longer desperately important to
34
The Sound Projedor 2nd issue 1997
sell anything now. I have enough to eat, a bed where I can
sleep, and that's really enough for me at the moment. Why
should I want more? Why should 1 have success or gigantic
amounts of money? Where did this idea originate -that you
are what you earn? That you have to run after money? After
all Pop Music is popular music -music for the people- but
when [a pop musician] can earn so much money, one
becomes corrupt very quickly. I did not want this. It is not
worth striving for.
I've worked for nearly thirty years now, and most people are
only interested in my old stuff. I feel this is a degradation of
my present state of being - a negation of my work, the work
that I do now. It would be better if people became
acquainted with my new compositions.
I don't want nostalgia. Life's very short and it comes to an
end pretty damn quick. So don't live in the past, don' t live
in the future - live now!
The records I made in the past came 'out of the cooking pot'
straight onto the tape. In the widest sense of the word, this
was 'Techno'- just the rhythm machines and a minimal
melody. Then you give the recorded tracks ridiculous titles,
for example 'Die Rebelen haben sich in den Bergen
versteckt' (The rebels have hidden in the mountains)- and
that's it.
Kraut rock
Kraut is cabbage - it gives you a bellyful of wind!
Rock is Rock- it has something to do with guitar, bass and
drums. Can, for example, they have something ... but I don't
know what that thing is. Irmin Schmidt learned to conduct
classical music;· he was also a pupil ofKarlheinz
Stockhausen. I've never understood why he did this
ridiculous rock music. Sure, Can recorded some things on
their records that are rather abstract.
Irmin Schmidt overlaps a little with what I started to do,
that I still do -I connect sounds, I compose. 'Don't think
about the fact that you're not a musician, or that you're not
perfect, qpn't think about anything - just do it!" he said to
me at the time- that was about 1967. That encouraged me,
because that's the way I've always worked.
I never liked hippie music! Boring, commonplace stuffl I
preferred different things- Pierre Schaeffer, Pierre Henry,
Stockhausen, John Cage.
Kluster
My first group, before Kluster, was called Gerausche
[=Noises]. Iflots of people make noises, it becomes an
orchestra. If you do it alone - for example the sound of a
stone on linoleum - that's a solo track. If you play these
sounds and record them onto different tracks, it becomes a
composition.
Kluster - that's me! Make horrible noises with instruments
and microphones and echo-machines. Just do it and produce
as much noise as you want. If you organize this noise it's not
just pure chaos ... and it can grow into music.
If you enter a factory floor, close your eyes and listen to the
sounds around you, especially where they work with big
parts of iron or steel. I studied engine building and when I
went to sea I worked in the engine-room- I've always been
involved with the control of sounds. If there's a sound you
don't like, you turn it off or you turn it on at another place.
Now you have made your first step in the principle of
composition.
In the spectrum of the 'white noise' that we made with
Kluster, all sounds are included Everything is included.
And I've always held in-depth discussions on the subject of
white noise with myself.
Titles .. .! hate titles. I hate programmed music! There are
titles that others invented for my music, but these titles
have nothing to with me. An example - the title 'Electric
Garden' isn't my idea. There was this delicious record called
An Electric Storm by the English group White Noise. One
of the best ever LPs made with electronic pop music - very
stylish- but done excellently. There I found the words
'Electric Garden' that I simply borrowed from there as a title
for my track.
There's a plan to reanimate Kluster - with a K, not Cluster,
but as Kluster 2(X)(). In truth Kluster has never died. I've
never said this group wouldn't be there for all tin1e- because
I am the group, I am Kluster. I played gigs for years and
years alone, using the name Kluster, and because there are
such high waves [of interest] now- some kind of
Krautrock-mania- I said for fun 'Well let's go and do some
Kluster'.
Tangerine Dream
I don't have anything to do with this [band]. That's
Soft-Music, [played] till you have to puke- that's not my
kind of material. It's just Pop Music and no art- MOR for
everyone. In the fmal analysis they work with the same
feelings as pop singers. Let them have their feelings, but
then they shouldn't pretend that it's art. I don't like that.
Soft Music appeals to the lowest instincts of the human
being.
At all events popularity isn't what I have ever looked for. I
did what I had to do, and you could compare that to Joseph
Beuys, who unloaded a lump of grease into the corner of the
Art Gallery. [Everyone said] ' ... And this is art?'
It's difficult
for the art
when it
insists on
this fact,
that even
ugliness has
its charm.
Fora list of
available
recordings,
contact
PLATE
LUNCH,
POBox
1503, 53585 Bad Honnef, Germany.
See elsewhere for reviews of Kluster's fll'St 2 records.
35
The Sotuld Projeetor 2ad i-e 1997
Musiaue
concrete
and
Electro-
Acoustic
Their Trinity Acts, A Mineral Fire
Musique Concrete is 20th century alchemy! Truly the music
of the environment, it is the ingenious and simple
organisation and transmogrification of recorded sounds into
endlessly fascinating which is the same as
any conv6ntional recording technique except Musique
Concrete doesn't use musical instruments as the source.
Instead, it utilises sounds from nature. Revelation came to
me in the shape of a compilation on vinyl, Muslque
Concrete, Vox Candide ST GBY 639
(1969). Many of the big names of the Paris-based
Electroacoustic 1950-60s school- La Groupe de Recherches
Musicales- turned in a contribution, which after only one
hearing plugged me into another universe. This old record
is simply so organic it virtually smells of newly-turned earth.
Such a perception comes with hindsight - nowadays our
modem ears are so used to note-perfect, bright, clean,
defmed, sharp digital sound, that anything as 100%
analogue as this music - which is almost entirely to do with
the splicing of magnetic tape, played on reel-to-reel tape
decks · will announce its difference. Why you can
practically make out every grain of oxide leaping off the
quarter-inch film and dancing joyously in a microstructural
fabric. Even in the harsher moments of crash-collision
editing, it creaks with a gentle and certain ageless quality.
Say goodbye to the Grandfather Clock, to your old life of
minute-by-minute tramline existence dictated by Father
Time. Your perception of the duration of time goes haywire
with Musique Concrete. These composers aren't in any
hurry to put their point across, the project will unspool
before you for as long as needs be. You learn that
beginnings and ends really have no place here. A
fourth-dimensional world is being opened up for you to
explore, one in which you could somehow spend an infmite
time. The grooves on the vinyl are just an entry point -your
whole cadaver is drawn in, ears first. They got me body and
soul, and a bit of me is still wandering and exploring these
fascinatingly alien zones.
'Terre de feu' by Francois-Bernard Mache is a ceremony by
the seashore involving pots of fresh water and seashells
hung on strings under a bright blue sky. A gong struck
underwater. Recordings of fire and water were the source -
'sound materials have a life that obeys the same laws [as
these elements]', according to Milche . But all traces of the
original source have been obfuscated. This very processing
is what Steve Reich didn't dig about Musique Concrete, and
preferred to call a spade a spade - if he composed with tape
materials, the sources would not be disguised. It's a
commonplace to state that today's world of digital sampling
owes much to Reich. I suppose Musique Concrete has a
certain old-fashioned quaintness in striving to transmogrify
its sources to this extent, yet to me this is the very point of it
all. If Milche here is dealing with the natural laws of physics,
these laws are harnessed to transfer to sound, and they show
through in the final composition no matter what he does to
the tapes; leaving the listener with a fascinating template
which one can then stamp into the raw material of own's
own creative thots. Moreover if the laws of physics can be
thus disrupted and distorted to such extreme lengths, then
what price our belief in a universe governed by stable laws?
All this makes some demands on the listener. The chief
advantage to surrendering to their demands is that you are
freed from many constraints usually associated with playing
records. The most familiar trap which you escape is the
narrative one - and I know I've bored you with this one
before. If a 'classic' pop song tells a story- and they all do
really - this music by contrast invites you to create your own
stories. In fact it may even go beyond that, inviting you to
stretch your imagination and creative powers.
Michel Philipot's contribution is 'Etude III', where for a few
seconds he almost anticipates the sound of Keiji Haino's
guitar with his high-speed wasp tornado noises. This one's a
very bitty composition of jarring sounds - some recognisable
as piano chords played backwards (familiar now after David
36
Bowie, for example) -it verges on the humourous, but
proves the composer's point about working with textures.
Echoey and spacey sounds rub up against close-miked
cut-off sounds, edited into exciting collisions or even
occurring in the same overdubbed passage. This rapid
succession of sensations means the listener never sleeps,
although Philipot's extreme abstraction refuses me that
brooding elaboration which allows me to get lost in
Mache's world.
One is also struck by those mineral sample photographs
on the cover - a most apt image. This music is decidedly
elemental, maybe even primordial. The Vox Candide
compilation is, I think, only one of many vinyl
compilations that were issued in the 1950s and 1960s; it's
hard to fmd originals of them these days, as the few copies
pressed have become desirable for some reason. However,
an impressive CD reissue programme is underway, and
you can satisfy your thirst for ElectroAcoustic imports by
asking for
catalogues at
These
Records or
ReR.
Although
you can find
some vintage
compilations
, those on
INAGRM
are more
recent
recordings
by t h ~ old
masters.
Bernard Parmegiani"s La Creation Du
Monde, Paris INA GRM C1 002 (1996)
would seem to agree with my feelings about the elemental
components. This music is composed of iron and earth,
minerals and fire! This recording never fails to cheer me up
-it's like taking a holiday in another dimension. I like it
there - there's lots of air, light and space, and I can wander
off into a new unexplored comer every time. My
peregrinations always take me to the joyous segment where
a cosmic bathtub is draining, emptying all the primordial
soup of existence into space; this segues into a pastoral
scene, birds twittering suggesting the fmal touches of the
Creator fmishing off his new world.
Francois Bayle"s Erospheres, INA C
3002 (1990) contains two suites: the first
'Tremblement de Terre tres doux' starting with a totally
non-musical source, metal boules rolling around in a metal
tub, close-miked and treated with phasing and ring
modulation. This piece is electrifyingly intense -you can
almost taste the air singing with metallic particles, like a
mouthful ofloose change! The second suite 'Toupie dans le
ciel' makes some concessions to rhythm and melody (it
might use keyboards) and each segment repeats a soothing
figure, exploring its inner space thoroughly.
As for Luc Ferrari"s Presque Rien, INA C
2008 (1995), this is virtually a series of simple
environmental recordings with apparently little or no
intervention from the impish Luc himself. It's one of the
most beautiful records I've ever heard. Particularly affecting
are the sounds of the tractor engine in the countryside, and
the natural rhythms and drones of the 'insects mysterieux'
apparently recorded at night - there are also fragments of a
murmured conversation between a French couple going on.
It segues into a terrifying thunderclap sound, which after its
first explosion is fed through some electronic filter, each
time becoming something quite new and unheard. Nature
into Music, via the medium of electronics. So you might well
ask why is this different from one of those
Relaxation-Therapy New Age environmental recordings of
the Amazon rain forest? Perhaps it isn't, but surely there is
artistic invention going on in the selection of the recordings
and their juxtaposition. The intervention may appear
minimal (Almost Nothing, indeed), yet Ferrari manages to
invest each episode with atmosphere, tension, and depth;
and to some extent, editorialises his materials to suggest
meanings. You don't get that from a Relaxation CD, which
is just raw material, marketed solely for a consumerist
purpose and extrapolates no meaning from the sounds at all.
38
---------------
Additional Adepts and Acolytes
Michael Prime is a living UK musician who could be
said to have inherited some of the methods and processes of
Electroacoustic, and remains true to its principles with no
danger of becoming a tape-alone Iuddite. I mentioned
Aquifers last issue which contains a deal of environmental
recordings, as does his newie Cellular Radar,
Mycophile SPOR 01 (1996), even allowing
such
pre-programme
d events as a girl
reading a poem.
City Street
noises, and
atmospheric
Weather
sounds, are also
deployed. 'Finis
Terra', with a
deft touch of the
volume faders,
puts the sound
of human
breathing on an
equal footing
with that of the
wind blowing -
an aural
disruption of
scale is created. Titles 'Climb down the ladder of carbon'
and 'Nocturnal resort' add further to my hinted themes of
elements and safe havens, although the latter resort is a very
spooky place.
Michael Prime is also a member of the 7 -piece
Morphogenesis, a combo of UK players roughly in
the area of electro-acoustic, except that everything they do is
performed and recorded in real time, with no overdubs.
That's an important distinction; if editing and tape
manipulation end up producing a species of cultivated
garden, then the Morphogenesis technique is to generate
each separate sound world, from a variety of semi..::ontrolled
sources, and let everything grow like a wild forest. If this
style of husbandry appeals then glom their CDs as soon as
you can. Morphogenesis have a library of tapes, and
periodically issue highlights from the collection. Two CDs
worth bending an ear to are Solar/sat/on,
Germany Streamline 1006 (1994); and
Charivari Music, Paradigm PD02
(1996) issued by Clive Graham, the second issue on his
Paradigm label. Of the two I think Solarisation is slightly
better - it has more tension than Charivari, more abrasive
surfaces. (I'll never forget playing it to my four year-old
niece -'it sounds like Ice Giants marching!") Morphogenesis
never fail in their unique capability, every time slowly
building up a world that envelops the listener with
individual, elemental characteristics. Michael Prime is
usually occupied adding the water component, be it
condensation or ice crystals. Another player adds radio
dialogue samples in stuttering bursts, the rudimentary
speech of this world's strange populace. Elsewhere, building
blocks are assembled and strange temples are constructed,
towers built of wood swaying in the breeze. At least four of
the key players are also visual-arts inclined, judging by the
four photographs of equally abstract ambiguous beauty
adorning Solarisation.
Then of course there's this monstrous gloomy Czech record
Raab, Recommended RR 23, that has fmally
worn down my resistance and now inhabits a niche
somewhere in my being. Jaroslav Krcek recorded
it in Prague in
1970-1971. It
uses the
techniques of
Electro Acoustic
in the service of
a dramatic
production - a
bit like a more
articulated
version of a
Radio 3 play
with help from
the Radiophonic
Workshop.
However this
' doesn't just add
background
sound effects so
much as
integrate the
tape
manipulation into the performance, and the listening
experience; so dialogue and exposition itself is regarded as
fair game for such treatment. It seems to be a depressing
story (the text is by Zdenek Barborka) and probably doesn't
lend itself to immediate comprehension by Western
European ears -starting from a biblical text, Joshua 6 and
the Fall of Jericho, there may be a grim political message
behind it all- but I'd recommend it in spite of these
obstacles.
39
'l'he Sound P r o ~ t o r 2nd issue 1.997
This Heat
Made Available, John Peel Sessions,
These 1 0 CD (1996)
This Heat cast a long shadow and still have the faithful and
the followers clamouring for release of rare materials. They
recorded two John Peel sessions in 1977 (incidentally, the
first session was also broadcast by Alan Freeman!) and as
this CD shows their music has a timeless quality that makes
it as important as any music being performed today. The
opening cut 'Horizontal Hold' is a performance of
devastating power, one of their best compositions and belted
out here with urgent relish. 'The Fall of Saigon', comprised
mainly I think of tape loops - most notably the resonant
woodblocks making a rhythm track - the principal
performed sections are the vocal and guitar solo. I've always
loved the disturbing story of this song which dispassionately
depicts cabin fever, madness and cannibalism through its
elegant word-play and economic written qualities . Eating
furniture and then eating people! Whether there's any
connection with the actual political
events of Saigon, I know not; but I
enjoy the psychological suggestion
of the behaviour of human beings
in extremis. Performed with a This
Heat stylistic signature, a basso
profundo voice singing the same
line as the lead vocal. An unholy
Caliban-esque twin of the
storyteller leaning over his
shoulder.
'Rimp Ramp Romp' must rate as
the 'undiscovered classic', a treat
for hungry This Heat fans like
myself. An eccentric brute of a
piece that justifies this CD's
existence at a stroke. A shining
example of the unique chemistry
they had 'When they were full-on .
Perhaps it's a throwaway
improvisation, perhaps
semi-arranged, perhaps edited;
whichever way it's a flash of
inspired music. Dynamic is This
Heat's middle name- this piece
physically shoves you from one
place to another, perhaps two
different rooms in the same dusty
Svankmajer house; where one
room tucks you up in bed with a
wild ape, the other has bright
sunlight calmly pouring through
the windows. I've often felt their
quieter, abstract work was
investigating the comers of an
unfamiliar room; listen to the three
other non-vocal pieces here.
'Sitting' has piano and synth
burblings joined by an uncertain
clarinet, while 'Basement Boy'
features a melodeon line (rarely
heard outside of reggae music), both instruments
hesitatingly feeling their way around an alien enviro11ment.
'Makeshift' (which later became 'Makeshift Swahili') has the
harsh Dalek voice barking its ferocious message which is
perhaps the only feature to have dated somewhat. But listen
to what the instruments are doing here, everything's
working overtime, standing out, driving the piece forward,
supporting the others. This Heat evolved a semi-utopian
working method, where no musician shows off or is allowed
to fall asleep for a second, as if part of an idealistic
quasi-Marxist commune. This may tie in with the extremely
radical political content of their message (evident on the
second LP Deceit).
Having been on the bootleg circuit for some time, these cuts
are at last officially available; it seems the band members
themselves remain largely unmotivated to release further
items (and I agree that artistically it can be tedious and
distasteful to have one's past achievements dredged up over
and over- surely the work you're doing now is what counts).
However, in Japan there have been rumours of four or five
live CD boots ...
40
The Sound Projedor 2nd issue 1997
The Horror
and
Mundanitv
oiWEBE
ECHO
By Cindy War Arrow
a
Someone once remarked to me that they considered
'Industrial' music to be evil. Not through any religious
motivation, but rather from the tendency of artists tarnished
with that brush to concentrate on the morbid. I disagreed
then as I do now with such a subjective judgement. A
soundtrack of relentlessly oppressive noise kept me sane
during my teenage years spent in small-town, redneck,
chicken-shagging England. 'Industrial'? Who comes up with
these spurious categorisations?
For the sake of clarification, 'Industrial' as a generalisation is
commonly applied to that part of the experimental 'scene'
(man) which sprung fully-formed from the wake of
Throbbing Gristle at the end of the 1970s. Cabaret Voltaire
and 23 Skidoo are amongst those who achieved wide
recognition, but there were loads of the buggers, holed up in
broom cupboards across the country, churning out cassettes
or records of occasionally dreary but often innovative and
exciting music. Dave Henderson, writing for Sounds music
paper, attempted to cover this phenomenon in his 'Wild
Planet' columns, which ultimately served to show that
whatever this was, it wasn't a scene. There was no coherent
'Industrial' sound. All that unified the individuals
concerned was their diversity, and only a fool could've
attempted to shoehorn them into any teen fad of the
day. One common factor however seemed to be a
certain sense of nihilism, also present I'd argue in any
half-decent punque roque ditty of the time, which
separated this wave from its immediate musical - if not
conceptual- forefathers: Faust, Can, Neu!, and those
other crazy hairy dudes. And by the way, is it just me
or are Stereolab, much as I love them, really just the
Showaddywaddy of the 90s? 'Yes', I hear you cry in
unison,'but who de fuck are We Be Echo?' I'll get to
the point.
Kevin Thorne (KT) and Raymond Georgeson (RG)
are names known to any industrial trains potter worth
his (or her, but probably his) salt, conversant with
catalogue numbers and playing times of obscure
import singles by 'Swedish Nature' (for pedantic
example). KT and RG are mentioned on the cover of
Throbbing Gristle's Heathen Earth album (which is
like, a classic, dude) as members of the specially
invited audience present at. the recording. Duly
inspired, the duo paired up to record and perform as
Third Door From The Left (TDFTL), staying
together for a little over a year, after which Kevin ~ n t solo
as We Be Echo. The differences between these two
groups are negligible, so I'll discuss them simply as
components of a single body of work. The combined
influences of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and to an
extent Joy Division are apparent to greater or lesser degrees
throughout Kevin Thorne's criminally obscure musical
career, which apparently was used as a negative criticism in
fanzines of the day. What such reviewers overlook is that a
lot else was going on in there as well.
The sleeve notes penned by Iham (of Nanavesh mag, fact
fans) for the special edition Cesa Evicassette mention
Kevin's frustration at his own limitations, and this is
understandable given the modest recording set-up at his
disposal. Youngsters today (who, by the way, don't know
they're born) may moan about the poor bass response of
their 8-tracks or their sampler's inability to store more than
half an hour of sound. Fucking pouffs! We Be Echo
recorded most of their output on a Sharp Music Centre! As
part of his diminutive sonic arsenal, Kevin held a few cheap
synths and cranky old drum machines of the kind which
certain people will now pay thousands of pounds for, having
spent ten years taking the piss out of you for hanging onto
'that antique'. Add a few bog-standard effects pedals and a
rickety guitar and one might, with good reason, suspect this
to be a recipe for prolonged and uninteresting listening. Not
at all. In spite of such an impoverished range of tools and by
the intervention of a remarkable instinct for inventiveness,
We Be Echo produced a small but daunting catalogue of
work of consistently high quality. Tracks such as 'Under
Attack' and 'Witches Burn' still scare the living shit out of
me ten years on, in a way that Ministry (to name one of
many groups of contemporary comedians dubbed
'Industrial' by clueless whippersnappers) never could.
Kevin's work fell into three distinct phases, the first of
which is represented by the two cassettes issued by Third
Door From The Left. The music here is largely driven by
drum machine, with guitar, bass, synthesizer and tapes of
found noise or speech contributing to a quite overwhelming
41
:t'he Sound Projeeior 2nd issue 1997
sound, undiminished in its disturbing impact by its
extremely poor quality (sounding like it was mastered on
one of those cassettes available in packs of 20 for a quid at
car boot sales). The mumbled monotone delivered by
Raymond Georgeson in lieu of actual vocals should have
elevated TDFTL to legendary status. There was nothing
half-assed about this group. Even the lyrics (in particular
'Tear Out My Heart' and 'It's Not Us') work as poetry in
their own right, unlike that tedious toss churned out by yer
average rock star. John Lennon is but one of many names
that spring to mind here. Songs, fme. Poetry, my fucking
ringpiece! Oh, while I'm on the subject ... can we all please
stop banging on about The Beatles now? It's getting boring.
TDFTL succeeded in producing truly dark Gothic music,
with great innovation and none of the laughable pantomime
which one justifiably associates with that term.
Phase Two: working solo as We Be
Echo, Kevin began to reach a
larger audience, relatively
speaking (I'm unaware of any
appearance he may have made in
the top ten). His cassettes sold
probably a few hundred, rather
than in tens; he made it onto vinyl;
received fleeting recognition in
national music papers; and was
played on college radio stations as
far afield as America and New
Zealand. His distinctive graphic
design work graced a number of
record sleeves, notably one by
Chris and Cosey; at one point he
was chalked in to play bass with
them, though sadly this never came
about. We Be Echo, as represented
on the bed-wettingly fine Cesa Evi
cassette, were a musical refmement
of the organised chaos ofTDFTL.
The rhythm programming shows
an increased complexity, lending
tension to the bass and keyboard
componeJ!tS. In place of vocals there are deftly-manipulated
speech recordings, providing a thematically provocative
narrative to the tracks. Speech and sounds are juxtaposed,
edited and repeated, in or out of context, to great effect.
Many others have tried similar things (often with access to
superior equipment) but few succeed so well as We Be
Echo. Perhaps being forced to work that little bit harder,
given the austerity of Kevin's 'studio', produced something
far greater than the sum of its parts. Much of Kevin's work
from this period, owing largely to a refrned use of speech
tapes, has a documentary nature; as though the music itself
is providing evidence of some event, without comment, or
even human intervention. Tracks such as 'Survivalist', 'Sex
Slaves', and 'I'm a Gambler' (not, I must stress, to be
confused with Madonna's hit single) are good examples of
this. The music races on, heavy with implied emotional
undercurrents, whilst the vocal track meanders casually
onwards, curiously blending the horror and mundanity of
the narrative into an ultimately dispassionate dialogue.
The frnal phase of Kevin's musical output began in 1984,
when his wife Bobbie came in as vocalist. Happily the Linda
MacCartney effect is not too much in evidence here (though
I do have problems with the theory that Linda had a
detrimental effect upon Paul's songwriting, which was quite
frankly shite at the best of times, with or without the
influence of her indoors). With the emphasis now on
Bobbie's vocals, the music was stripped down to little more
than basic rhythm and sequencer patterns, with a few
atmospheric effects thrown in for good measure. Personally
I fmd this period the least interesting of Kevin's career. The
music, even taking into account its increased minimalism,
somehow seems less finished, less carefully considered than
before. Bobbie's voice is not always up to the requirements
of the tracks. Having said that, this line up thankfully
avoided pursuing the obvious course of becoming a
verse-chorus orientated pop synth type thang and some of
the work, 'Housewife's Choice' or the especially beautiful
'Witches Burn' for example, still stand up as masterpieces to
this day.
Despite a slow but steady increase
of interest in We Be Echo, Kevin
threw in the musical towel in late
1986. Was he disillusioned with his
own limitations, the lack of support
for the musically esoteric, or maybe
even surfeited with marital bliss,
who k n ~ w s ? I was personally
saddened, having become irritated
by the vast wealth of piss-poor
derivative crap flooding the
experimental cassette scene. We Be
Echo were one of the few name
bands who could be relied on to
provide consistently worthwhile
listening. Before concluding I wish
to stress that I anticipate criticism
for this article along the usual lines,
ie some tosser banging on about a
band no-one's ever heard of and
probably didn't even exist, in a vain
attempt to demonstrate superiority
through obscurity. Please don't
bother. I'm long past the stage of
apologising for my listening
proclivities, whether esoteric (Morris Dolby and the Bouncy
Lobster Band, anyone?) or otherwise (Iron Maiden -cos they
ROCK, dude!) and by the fiery staff of Huitzilopochtli I
declare We Be Echo were an important band. It grieves me
that a combo of such high calibre floundered and petered
out without so much as a whimper, considering the
unconditional praise squirted towards any old wanker with a
sampler and a Tortoise T -shirt by Melody Maker- toilet
paper with delusions of grandeur that has on more than one
occasion proclaimed itself to be our chief proponent of the
avant-garde ... er ... run that one by me again?
I'm not going to proclaim We Be Echo as- the saviours of the
human race, but if you have an inquiring mind and a
discriminating ear they are worthy of your attention. In
particular the quality and sophistication of this music,
recorded as I have said on a Sharp Music centre with very
little equipment, is a fine illustration of what effort and
invention can produce. The number of bands today with a
vast NASA-style studio set up is alarming, and in spite of all
this wonderful technology there's so little new music one
could truly call inspired. To be frank most of it's a load of
poop, produced by people not worthy of stirring Kevin
Thorne's tea.
42
The Sound Projeetor 2ud i ssue 1997
But I love every track on this LP which,
apart from a brief tap section, doesn't bear
much resemblance to that of any West End
show I've been to. Sure, it has the energy
and exaggerated emotion but instead of
pompous, sub-classical orchestral numbers
we get compact, upbeat and catchy pop
songs. Lyrically it does have certain
elements in common with, say, Jesus Christ
Superstar- for example the articulate,
wordy, and mostly first-person narrative, as
well as characters who break into song at
the drop of a hat - but Sudden Sway can do
much better than the mind-bendingly crass
lyrics of Rice and Lloyd Webber. And of
course we're also spared the dumb
overblown visuals.
I'd agree with anyone who says that
lyrically, '76 Kids Forever isn't very funny,
but I claim that parody is only one part of
what they were up to. Taking a swing at
musicals is hardly difficult (or a gesture of
much consequence) and I think I'd fmd a
wholly ironic or superior attitude pretty
unpleasant for that reason. In this case I
reckon the 'concept' behind the LP is more
Let's took ~ p
and smale.
•
•
than anything a convenient, if slightly
strange, peg on which Sudden Sway hang
their peculiar observations on life. Its
subject matter concerns a loose bunch of
friends in their early twenties who are in
the process of seeing their dreams being
superseded by a routine of jobs and
111 Sudden
,swav
Sir Savoir,
HerValoir
By Harley Richardson
Filed away in the 'Great LPs I've bought for one quid'
section of my record collection is '76 Kids Forever by
Sudden Sway. On its release in the late 1980s, this record
totally failed to take the nation by stonn, spending six
months in the bargain bins of every second-hand record
shop in Britain and then vanishing to a vinyl landfill site
somewhere. No wonder. Ostensibly an 'Original Soundtrack'
to an imaginary West End musical, '76 Kids sounded to
many like an unfunny joke concept LP, and it's not hard to
imagine any interest from the in die scene (it came out on
Rough Trade) being killed off by the record's slick white
soul-boy musicianship and bad tampon-advert aesthetics of
the sleeve art.
weekend drinking and clubbing. But no
Bill Forsyth fUm, this: instead of a single-minded attempt to
realistically portray an aspect of British culture, we get a
string of stray and tangential thoughts running through the
minds of the characters, mixed up with references from the
far corners of the central theme and pulled into coherent
and entertaining character studies such as 'Solo Store
Detective Man' and 'I've got a Tinnitron Amusement
Centre'. In this respect Sudden Sway are quite avant-garde.
Their approach to narrative points your brain in many
directions and leaves you to make of it what you will.
This is complemented by the background info which rounds
out the package. There's a run-through of the (pretty
mundane) plot which describes where the different songs
fit, and a lyric sheet to tell us which character is singing at
any point, identifying backing singers in appropriate places
such as 'lunchtime business drinkers' or 'admin department'.
There's also short pieces about the fictitious 'actors', weirdly
treating them as if they were characters in the musical. All
in all '76 Kids Forever makes a great excuse to skip your
next trip to the West End.
Having been bitten by the Sudden Sway bug I was curious
to fmd out how a band on a label like Rough Trade had
developed so differently to the rest of 80s indiedom. A delve
into the Sound Projector archives turned up several45s and
LPs which gave me some pointers. In 1980, the nucleus of
Mike McGuire (vox and keyboards) and Pete ]ostin (bass)
were part of just another low-fi new wave combo. The single
'Jane's First Party .. ./Don' t Go' was sparse, heavy on bass
43
The So-d Proi-ior 2nd ii!iil!llle 1997
and drums, with vocals and lyrics full of alienation. By the
sound of it, the guitarist was new to the instrument, finding
his way round this problem by abusing his guitar to achieve
eerie effects. These same ingredients and methods have
produced some great music -Sonic Youth's 'Burning Spear'
for example. Sudden Sway doing the same thing sounded
uncomfortable, the result kind of like The Cure on a
particularly bad day : morose and aesthetically misled.
Shift forward to their 1983 Peel Session ,where they had
taken on a more conventional but artistically successful
quality. For a start, the band (now with one Simon Childs
on guitar) had learned to play. Their records from now on
would belie all my preconceptions of what makes good
music: Sudden Sway were slick, funky and professional,
with slap bass in one hand and sequencer in the other,
playing songs that reeked of composition over long
deliberation in the studio rather than being born out of any
musical rapport between band members.
But somehow they had something that set them apart from
both their nearest mainstream relatives, best forgotten
mid-80s bands like Hips way and Hue & Cry and of middle
of the road 'indie' groups such as Aztec Camera and Prefab
Sprout. Now they'd got into their stride Sudden Sway had
more musical sass than their peers, and even serious
over-production couldn't hide the sheer vivacity of their
tunes.
Their Peel Session featured a breezy mixture of song and
spoken word comedy; their targets were perhaps slightly
obvious, but it showed off a lightly cynical sense of humour
which would be nicely sharpened in time for the next two
singles, released in 1986: the infectious and punchy Sing
Song, and Autumn Cutback Job Lot Offer. The latter
contained a set of neat 30-second jingles, selling bogus items
like the 'Desktop Germ Receiver' and 'Latest Autobation
Rug', making a handy musical companion to the
Innovations Catalogue.
By this stage Sudden Sway were putting a lot of effort
into their packaging, making light-hearted digs at
consume5ism, and (no doubt infuriating their record
company) releasing eight separate versions of Sing Song.
They took to covering the sleeves with nonsensical logos
and hilarious cut-up pseudo-marketing quotes - the kind
of thing that U2 congratulate themselves for doing so
earnestly, but much more fun! Through all this Sudden
Sway attempted to stay anonymous, presenting
themselves as a corporate entity rather than a band,
although they were partly thwarted in this by Strange
Fruit (who routinely document band line-ups on the
covers of their Peel Sessions EPs).
After '76 Kids Forever I know of only one Sudden Sway
release- Ko-Opera, another concept LP. This added some
techno lines to the formula, but it now sounds sluggish
and depressing. Perhaps the band needed a change of
direction to avoid diminishing returns. One other LP was
recorded but to this day remains unreleased.
I've no idea whether Sudden Sway ever toured - they were
certainly tight enough to be practised live musicians.
They were however prone to staging strange public
events, which included a gig played over a telephone
chatline, and a mystery treasure hunt starting from
Rough Trade shop in Covent Garden. I remember hearing
that they spent a week inside a perspex cage in Canary
Wharf, where any passers-by could request songs by
pressing buttons on the outside of the cage. (This was also
seen on a BBC2 Saturday nights art programme at the time-
Ed). But this masochistic-sounding undertaking endears
them to me all the more. You may have to search hard to
find any of the records below. Let's look up and smile ...
Thanks to Rhodi Marsden of the
Penguin Rough Guide to Rock, whose
Sudden Sway entry on the Internet
filled some gaps in my knowledge.
Incomplete Sudden Sway
Discography
1980 Jane's Third Party .. ./ Don't Go 7"
Chant CHANT 1A
1981?
1984
1986
To You With Regard EP
Traffic Tax Scheme
The Peel Sessions 12"
Strange Fruit SFPS 005
1986 Sing Song /Creative Marketing in 8 Dime11sions 7"
Blanco Y Negro NEG 18V1-8
1986 Spacemate 2 x LP
Blanco Y Negro?
[1986]
1988
Autumn Cutback Joh Lot Offer 7"
Rough Trade RT 183
'76 Kids Forever LP
1987
1989
Rough Trade ROUGH 133
The Banny Anny 7"
Rough Trade RTT213
Ko-Opera LP
Rough Trade ROUGH 142
£ +
-
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"Impressive"
"Remarkable"
"Special"
"Fresh"
RUBBERNECK
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RESONANCE
GHOST LILY CASCADE
by MARTIN ARCHER
A document of composition, chance,
electronics and improvising I playing.
ELECTRICAL SHROUD
by TRANSIENT v RESIDENT
Abrasive real time synthesis. Debut CD.
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me ul1venLur3u:1 ldDtl • ll:e 1JOi:emurnus IQtwl •
:r'
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44
The SonJid Proje4!ior 2Jid issue 1997
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aino
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Suitably admonished by Chris Cutler I have been reassessing my view of Haino somewliRt. I have a S u s ~ n
Sontag note in front of me which seems apt : 'The Romantics thought of great art as a species of heroism, a
breaking through or going beyond. Following them, adepts of the modem demanded of masterpieces that they
be, in each case, an extreme case - terminal or prophetic, or both. 'By these lights Haino could be the last olthe
Romantics- I had been using say, Jackson Pollock as a visual guide, but perhaps John Martyn would be better.
In any case, here's just three examples of CDs you might not want to blow your paycheck on unless you're a
Haino completist .
46
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Your Ears
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'l'he Sound Projeetor 2nd issue 1997
Bad-Nice
An
Various Artists, Tokyo Invasion
Volume 1, Cosmic Kurushi Monsters,
Virgin TOKYO 1 (1996)
Resonance Volume 4, Number 2
Special Japanese issue. (Edited by
Clive Bell) ISSN 1352-722X. &Opp.
As a cultural event and artefact this CD collection Cosmic
K urushi Monsters takes some beating, a pioneer
compilation bringing a taster of the Japanese underground
rock scene into the UK's high street chain stores. Available
on budget-ish CD on major label Virgin, compiled by Tony
Herrington, with deep background from such folks as
Trevor Manwaring and Edwin Pouncey. The package
eschews photographs of the artistes (and background
information, unfortunately) in favour of a stunning state of
the art Sav X line illustration sleeve with computer
colouring.
Some of the early faithful are rubbing their chins
thoughtfully and wondering if the UK audience are ready
for these exotic Japanese delights to be so 'popularised'.
Granted, the loudmouth at the Musica Transonic gig didn't
get it, drunkenly misapprehending them as pure
ego-meisters with loud guitars. John Bagnall tells me the
NME reviewer was a bit bewildered by this comp, but
conceded that here was rock music that had somehow
bypassed the conventional blues-based route of
development that so much rock music has followed. One
way of seeing it is perhaps taking a cue from one of these
Godz.illa-like monsters on the cover- Jap NoiseCore artistes
are insatiable inhuman creatures eating everything in their
!>
path. Consider the massive influx of popular music culture
over the last 30 years, via records and discs, from the West
into the East. The Japanese set up stations and sites for this
material to thrive, on a gargantuan consumerist scale
unknown to us Westerners; I believe they have entire record
shops dedicated to the output of single bands! They listened
and assimilated at a frightening rate, understood with
quicksilver brains what makes this stuff work, and more
importantly how to improve on the basic model. Like an evil
computer they set to work rewiring rock into a cyborg
simulacrum that surpassed the original. John Lennon
asserted that three-chord rock'n'roll is like a perfectly
designed chair that cannot be improved upon. The Japanese
Underground is proving otherwise, right before our very
eyes. If it's true that every permutation of rock has been
exhausted then what are we listening to here? Perhaps a new
strain of virus, a mutated gene? Then what fabulous
monsters may resultm This promises to be a fascinating
phenomenon, one which is a particular 20th century thing,
the near-instantaneous communication of ideas via
electronic technologies, to generate a new faster, leaner,
fitter form of global folk music.
This really shouldn't surprise us if we look at a parallel - for
example the work of Tadanoori Y okoo, a Japanese poster
artist who since 1965 has been enthused by Pop Art and
American graphic designers. Images of uncanny power have
poured from his studios, delighting in the violation of visual
taboos . In ](X) Posters ofTadanori Yokoo, New York
Images Graphiques Inc 1978 (ISBN 0-89545-022-4), the
editor writes 'If Japan has been voracious in its adoption of
Western motifs, styles and goods, it has also been very savvy
in first spotting the works of leading American
posterists ... Tomi Ungerer, Paul Davis and Milton Glaser.'
Glaser himself, in the preface to this book, could almost be
describing Boredoms music when he says 'In these
collage-like works, Tadanori walks a risky line between the
banal and the esoteric .. . masterful in his use of bad taste,
compelling us to pay attention to his message by its sheer
irritation value.' And on a personal note, I feel Yokoo's
books have titles that read like Keiji Haino CDS: An Escape
to Incompletion, 1970; Groping in the Dark, 1973; A Dove
flying from the Ark, 1977; My Zen Apprenticeship, 1978 ...
If you read the special Japanese issue of Resonance, you
may feel as I did that there is simply too much for the
Western mind to cope with. To begin with, in the UK we've
only been getting hints of the fecundity of the scene since
the early 1990s, yet it's being going on for a long time before
that. Secondly, you realise that Boredoms and Fushitsusha
are 'big names' on the scene, just one part of the massive
explosions of endeavour in the East. The very futility of
understanding it defeats me, as does the apparently tenuous
nature of the music's existence in some cases (microscopic
editions) . This issue is a fine job edited by Clive Bell, who
gives a useful perspective -if Japanese culture has a
traditional 'aesthetic ... of empty space and tranquility, why
not produce the densest, noisiest music anyone has ever
heard?'. After 1870, he reckons, the country began to
abandon its traditions and tried to 'swallow Western culture
whole' .... Ed Baxter interviews Otomo Y oshihide about his
'shocking' music, who reveals that shock is simply a
personal response of anger to society and things that cannot
be changed; more established, older musicians hate his
work! In his own article, Otomo gives a touching account of
his adolescence haunting the 'jazz kissas', cafes in 1970s
Tokyo whose proprietors played free jazz records non-stop-
or any other music to their taste ... Thurston Moore's story of
his packing case full of obscure noisy cassettes makes the
head spin. He bundled up some of them - including tapes by
Violent Onsen Geisha and Volume Dealers - to assist in
remixing a Y oko Ono track off her Rising LP, filling up
dozens of free channels to transform an otherwise quiet and
minimal recording ... Stefan ]aworyzn makes a valiant
attempt at compiling a complete Boredoms discography, a
task he reckons is doomed from the start; only regretting
now that he neglected to include catalogue numbers. 'We're
not really into the chaos but we like the word chaos', they
tell him. Boredoms in art-mode provide this issue's coup de
grace, a centre-spread pen and ink drawing detailing the
band's family tree I history in words and pictures .. .if Pete
Frame had been a Manga artist, this would be the result..
Not for a minute would I consider myself an expert, but
even so I felt relieved when I bought Cosmic Kto find (a)
that I'd heard of at least half of the performers and (b) I
owned some of the original CDs from which these tracks
were glommed. To these ears CKMis a topnotch selection
box of choice names and performances, representing some
47
The Sound P..ojeetor 2nd issue 1997
of the very cream of this music. From the PSF roster there's
High-Rise, Musia Transonic, Keiji Haino, Boredoms and
Ground Zero; from Skin Graft, the fairly useless Space
Streakings and Melt Banana. The God Mountain artists
include Hiahito's 'Metaric Machine', one of the quieter
weirder tracks - a queasy yet steely synth behind a
whispered prose poem. Optical*8 deliver the required
mayhem in 'Halle Halle', solid chunks of nasty sneering
full-on cheap brilliance, world-class music. Kato Hideki -
who is also the main man of Bass Army- turns in a
fantastic studio assemblage spotlights a disconcerting horn
blowing over a wobbly guitar arpeggio with added loops of
foreign material - it redefines the meaning of tension! Also
of note is K K Null and Ichiro Agata's 'Love Isn't Blind',
surely chosen because the guitar riff approximates the voice
of Godzilla himselfl
It has to be said Magical Power Mako remains a revelation
and 'Blue Dot' is the track that does it for me every time. It's
virtually a coda to the double CD set, and positioned
directly after the all-out hysteria of contributions from
High-Rise and Altered States. Mako is a mystical guru
riding inside his blue mist, whipping up an ethereal
maelstrom of excessive reverb, tape effects and guitar
manipulation that defies belief. There's a gradual drifting
apart of the track's constituent components, aided by
split-second mixing technique, shifting elements from
simpatico to antipatico in seconds. His effects devices just
sit up and beg; where Keiji uses a battery of pedals and
amps to unleash his full-force magic, Mako deploys his
machinery with surgical precison.The piece starts off as a
whirling improvisation coming to pieces, then fmishes as
loops and echoed phrases dissolving into atomic
substructures, then reconfigures into something else again.
Unbelievable -a musical rendering of Continental Drift.
Mako is a veteran underground genius on an equal footing
with Haino, and has been producing records since 1973 at
least. I'd buy more of his solo records if they weren't so
darned expensive.
Melt-Banana, Scratch or Stitch, Skin
Graft GR34 CD (1996)
These have one track on Cosmic K as above, which is
probably quite adequate for anybody; I fmd an entire CD of
this stuff is good fun for the first 10 minutes, then pretty
annoying thereafter. It's that singer's voice, fmally - the
range of noises she squeezes out is just too limited, a
straightjacket for your ears. She spits out dumb
monosyllabic phrases in English, squealing away at top
speed and mostly on one note. This is done over an equally
hyperspeeded backing band, like a toy version of Napalm
Death. Either that or of the Truman's Water school of
unintelligibly fast musical gibberish. Steve Albini produced,
but this is apparently the best he could get out of them - an
unvaryingly shrill exercise that caterwauls like a hyperactive
kid 0 Ded on chocolate and cola. Fine if you like your pop
music to be dumb and meaningless
Che·Shizu,
Nazareth, Japan
PSFD-35 (1993)
Astonishing, a record that
remains palpably alien to
Western ears throughout all
of its hour-long duration, and
grows stranger with each
replay. Never more so than
on the frighteningly intense
last track 'Requiem', an
extended improvisation that
develops into the most
exquisite controlled musical
gibberish; an electronic
sound so attenuated it can
barely squeeze itself along
the wires and out of the tiny
amplifier. This is joined by
keening and wailing sounds
(sax? violin?) as despairing as the cries of the mourners
carrying the funeral bier. The opening cuts are no less
solemn and austere, huge bass drum and squeaky
unbalanced violin sawings that suggest unknown liturgies.
However, there's an approachable side too - Che-Shizu also
try their hand at a garage-band beat combo impersonation;
at least one track could almost be an undiscovered Perc Ubu
live tape. In fact throughout there's an undeniable ghost of
the Velvets here - with John Cale on viola and N ico on vox.
These are all live recordings, mostly from 1987-1988,
although the earliest was 1983. Retaining the lo-fi sound
throughout was. presumably a concious decision- there is an
aesthetic charm to rough edged recording and this CD
exploits it successfully (in a way that the short-lived Riot
Grrl phenomenon did not). Marc Baines immediately
responded to the palpable atmosphere and tension captured
here. If High-Rise have taken (for example) Black Sabbath
as a starting point, perhaps Che-Shizu's project involves the
careful recreation of the vinyl bootleg sound. One is
reminded of The Residents' rendering of ]ames Brown Live
at the Ap'bllo, where they copied the original source with
such excessively ironic perfection that the shrieks of the
audience were carefuUy orchestrated, as if part of a musical
score. A similarly effective homage is the photo here of
Masami Shinoda playing his sax dressed in a raincoat, in a
near-perfect emulation of a Charlie Parker stance!
Lies and a
Ding-a-Ling Five,
Japan PSFD-39
(1994)
Bewitching, beguiling, a
spiritual minimalist jewel in
the crown of PSF. If
nothing else, investigate to
assure yourself that the
Japan scene is not
exclusively male-centred
energy noisy rock
derivatives: the leader here
is Sakata Sachiyo, a female
vocalist with a-wiry vox,
backed by two sensitive
male performers Sakamoto
Hiromichi and Ishizuka
Toshiaki, and it's one of the quieter records in the PSF
catalogue to have reached us. Stunning musical effects are
achieved by spare instrumentation: 'A Moon Cat' is simply
echoed cello plucks, scrapey percussion and whistling.
'Manteau of a Shadow' whispers 'Bible, Bible, Bible Black'
over a poignant synth. There's even a musical saw on 'After
the Night Dream'. Everything's recorded with astonishing
clarity so that each note slices into you like a frosty day in
the mountains . The meaning of the songs however refuses
that clarity- albeit lyrics sung in English, with Japanese
titles sometimes translated - they remain allusive,
mysterious, distant lights shrouded in fog. No introspection
to be found here though - Cinorama are not woolly
navel-gazing anchorites retreating from the world, rather I
find a steely assurance in the deli very that is disconcerting, a
stern corrective to one's excess and materialism. Not that
the record lacks humour; for example, 'The Night and the
Owl' is a nursery rhyme of a song which delivers the
enchanting invitation, 'Everyone Everyone, join our magic
lantern, Ho Ho Ho'. A beautiful package, an image of the
musicians photographed so as to appear as if they're made of
freshly cast plaster of paris like a George Segal sculpture, or
as delicate as porcelain. Even the cliche of the three wise
monkeys they can get away with. And some delightful
miniature watercolours reproed in the booklet. They
deserve to sell as many copies as Hugo Largo.
49
j
Once a coconut, now a monkey.
The Sound Projeeior 2ntl issue 1997
50
Ground Zero, Revolutionary
Pekinese Opera Ver 1.28,
ReR GZ1 (1996)
An unbelievable roller coaster ride for the lugs. So much
sprawling chaos is brilliantly orchestrated, constantly
veering between organisation (taut, focused control of
sources) and chaos (the joyous splurging of spontaneity,
accidents and noise and letting the turntables and
samplers do what they want). Although each moment
offers you a compressed network of startling collisions,
edits and impenetrable layers of sound information, there
remains a unity to the whole - it runs through a
programme, starting from the samples of the actual opera
(gongs and cymbals) to a nightmare movie apocalypse of
noises and alarming shrieks, into 'Paraiso 1' - the most
lyrical loops of slowed down female wailing with very
romantic chords (this is the excerpt on Kurushi
Monsters), into sheer abstract playfulness of the sounds of
a stylus being put on records and swiftly removed again,
interrupted by white noise and mysterious silences - is it
ended or not? and then into the coda, a cheesy organ
playing 'When you Wish Upon A Star' with toy bugles
and birdsong.
Otomo Y oshihide is the dangerous genius mainrnan
behind this project, along with the talents of assorted
maniacs of guitar and electronics. Historical layers include
an original1960s recording of the opera and its later
manipulation and additions by Alfred 23 Harth and
Heiner Goebbels. Also a meticulous name-check of all the
musicians and records that have been sampled for this
item. It was originally on the Trigram label in Japan and
sold out in 1995. Its appellation as Version 1.28 refers to
this earlier edition, but also suggests that this item is like
an updated computer programme.
I love a record that actually makes me feel like I'm
dreaming, and this one does it. Partly achieved by the
dense anti-linear anarchic effects, and the snippets of
narrative given by tv and movie clips (or whatever source),
but the most lovely disorienting feeling arises from
hearing a record that you can't fathom out -it's impossible
to work out how it was done, you can't believe it was
possible. We need more records like this in the world,
surely if everyone listened to Pekinese Opera then holes in
the fabric of reality may soon start to appear.
Marble Sheep, Shinjuku Loft,
Northampton, Cold Spring Records
CSR 8 CD (1995)
Early-ish sketches (1988) from the Marble Sheep when
they were comprised of members of Zeni Geva,
Incapacitants and Hijokaidan, and though not an essential
record it's not unpleasant. Some rather overfamiliar guitar
riffs and overloaded Marshall amp sound, but all is played
with that conviction that shows they (along with other
JapCore bands perhaps) were feeling their way towards
doing something amazing and different with this
psychedelic rock style. So though it starts in the Velvets I
MC5 mode, they occasionally push themselves into fiery
solos and ring the changes on those basic hypno-riffs to
add dynamics and texture. Licensed from Captain Trip
records.
The SoDDd Projeeior 2ad is-e 1997
51
Musica
Transonic
+
TohoSara
+
Mainliner
25th September 1996 @
The Powerhaus London
An astounding event, and horrendously ill-attended;
two gigs in London, one in Glasgow, and probably
less than one hundred people in the audience at any
one time. Note that personnel-wise we are dealing
with the same trio for all 3 bands, in each case led by
Asahito N anjo; stylistically each is quite different.
As Toho Sara the trio were joined by Mineko on
Korg synth and played different instruments,
including a formidable acoustic bowed device
resembling a lute grown wild and strange; they set
down to a mesmerising, fragile and unearthly
droning improvisation of some 25-30 minutes, and
sheer beauty is what they delivered. The Mainliner
incarnation is somewhat more recent and produced
relatively conventional power punk metal madness.
Musica Transonic however remains the killer
combination. A conventional power trip line-up for
sure, but you have never witnessed such precision,
such telepathic compatibility, combined with such
extreme speed and volume. Their studio records are
impressive, but the live experience beggars belief.
Cutting to the chase is what it's all about- Makoto
Kawabata's blistering guitar solos, that shoot
immediately to the heart like a direct injection of a
resuscitating drug. If a conventional psych solo
needs a runway before take-off, then the Musica
Transonic method must be a Harrier Jump Jet! The
Powerhaus gig was marred by minor hiccoughs -
repeated amplifier failure, dealt with in true stoic
fashion by our inscrutable team; and a loud drunken
bigmouth who took the view that such volume and
mastery amounted to mere empty self-gratification.
His ignorant yawps were more then merely
annoyingly disruptive; they pointed out a massive
gap of understanding and cultural difference, and
made me ashamed to be English. No matter- this
was one unforgettable experience brothers, powerful
enough to drive even Harley R. running to the
streets in agony!
The so-d Projee.or 2•d issue 1997
The Doom
That Came
ToSarnath
Reissues of obscure UK Prog Rock
In this brief overview we can only hope to scratch the
surface of this rather specialised field. Quite simply, I've
FALLACY:
r , .
..
bought so little of it. I went looking for certain elements:
free-form improvisations, a pretentious 'cosmic'
consciousness, extended and overblown solo histrionics in
the performances. What I've found has been enjoyable
enough, but it never quite delivers the goods,.in the way
that obscure Krautrock can for example, which is why I'm
investigating that area with more attention. Here however a
random run through a few of the aesthetic delights offered
by these doomy 1970s English bands who rise up out of the
murk like a Lovecraftian beast. Knowing next to zero about
which of these might be listenable and which might prove to
be total dogs, I've bought blind -and as a consequence, I've
also had to listen deaf- and it shows. Decisions were partly
informed by a vague and nebulous conception lurking at the
back of the brain - a prejudged notion of what decent prog
rock could be. More on this wispy conceit below.
52
The SoUJHI Projeeior 2nd issue 1997
Starting in the 100% gloomoid
zones, Dark and Andromeda
are true masters of portentous
moanings. Andromeda,
Return to Sanity,
Background HBG
122/5 (1992) is a reissue
of 1969 recordings. The sleeve
notes connect the personnel
with pop-psyche band The
Attack, who once sneered at the
vacuity of the fashion world in
'Created By Clive'; and The
Five Day Week Straw People,
whose sole LP is a nasty satire
of'The Straights' in
then-contemporary society.
With Andromeda John Du
Cann directed his spleen
against the hypocrisies of the
drug culture. This record is
quite simply the sound of the hippy dream already
beginning to turn sour - the lyrics are filled with
disillusionment and bitterness, sentiments backed up by the
doomy music. The title track alone is a horrible anthem of
doom, marching its listener towards a
terrible fate, martial snare drums
punching home the power riffs; although
it soon segues into some nice chanting
monk voices over a deep river riff,
perhaps anticipating Width of a Circle
two years later. You could read 'return to
sanity' as a stark warning to the hippies,
ie stop taking LSD now and rejoin the
real world! - and 'Garden of Happiness' is
no less acerbic about the empty promises
of the Woodstock era. Du Cann's critical
stance and austerity may be a key to the
development of prog out of psychedelia -
that is, Prog Rock represented a
movement fuelled by a cynical 'Won't
Get Fool;,d Again' scepticism- although
few recorded items I've yet found are as
specific in this way.
Dark feature quite good guitar
work from Steve Giles and Martin
Weaver, who when they fmally
reach their solo platforms can
often shine brilliantly;
concentrate on their playing and
don't judge them on their
sometimes rather indifferent
and clunky songs. They crank
up the distortion, but never
layer on quite enough of it;
although 'ZeroTime' features
one of their more successful
riffs and disruptive wah-wah
stabs. The lyrical content
usually defaults to vague
images of a lonely cheated man
(never a woman!) facing the
vicissitudes of a cruel and
elemental world; not much
further on from King Lear, in
fact. Two reissues which
appeared in the 1990s are
Dark, Kissing Spell
KSCD 9204 (1992) a
comp of 1971-72 recordings,
and Artefacts from
the Black Museum,
Acme AC8009LP. There is some duplication
between these, although the latter features much more
fitting sleeve art, and extra track 'All Through the Night'.
Lifting us up from this swamp of
despair are the flashes of hope in
The Wicked Lady, The
Axeman Cometh,
Kissing Spell KSCD
9307 (1993): it's the Martin
Weaver show again! An interminable
racket burblingly sold to us as '60.24
minutes of wah-wah hell' and stressing
that it was recorded in a basement, to
further plunge us into mental solitary
confmement. The brutal simplicity is
good, at times as primal as Pebbles
garage bands, but there's a lot of
sludge to wade through before you hit
a seam of glittering axe-work. The
title track has added choppy 'cello'
guitar overdubs; 'Wicked Lady' is
fourth-rate Hendrix copyism which
soon deteriorates into mediocrity.
Again, the lyrical themes are
nowheresville - adolescent whining
about suffering at the hands of'evil' women soon becomes
What better way to end this
sojourn in bleak November
nights than curling up with
Second Hand,
Reality, Essex 1 006
(ND)- recorded in 1968: Second
Hand gleefully inform us at peak
volume ' The World Will End
Yesterday'. With Kenny Elliot's
keyboards battling Bob Gibbons
guitars, backwards tapes,
intoning chants, way too much
53
The so-d Projeetor 2nd is!Hie 1997
studio echo and its general air of overproduction, this item
rates as proto-prog by dint of its ponderours pretensions and
sheer excess. This cut was also issued on Rubble 8 (KIRI
051) by Bam-Caruso in 1991.
And then there's Astral Navigations,
Background HBG 122/1 CD (1992),
recorded in 1970. Dave Wood and Mike Levon were the
talented unknown producers who called themselves (or this
project) Holyground; this LP was privately pressed and has
become highly sought-after as the legend of its existence
grew out of proportion. It's a good record in anyone's book.
Two bands are showcased (presumably sharing a side each
of the original vinyl): Lightyears Away and Thundermother.
Lightyears Away spotlighted Brian Calvert's songs for four
tracks, each with spot-on arrangements of outstanding
crispitude, mostly acoustic guitar-led with nice and
recorder backdrops; his
'Fourth Coming' has
topographic and natural
history imagery layered with
some rather vapid
philosophising, about
Mankind's journey through
life. 'The Astral Navigator'
edges into cosmic territory
and has the brief Apollo 13
sample at the end; it's
charming, but so British - a
Boy's Own Space Annual
vision of space travel. Then
in a quite different mode,
Chris Carrodus-Coombs
delivers a trilogy of songs,
which although a tad
overlong in performance are
lyrically very dense - packed
with complex ideas.
Particularly 'North Country · . .;,;:: •
Cinderella (Tomorrow)', a lyrical love-song spiked with
determinedly gritty and urban imagery, refusing
conventional pleasantries of romance. These tracks are
studio masterpieces, enhanced by fine distort
guitar licks from a young Bill Nelson (later of course leader
of Be-Bop Deluxe), treated pianos and harmony choirs, the
overall effect coming close to a home-made movie
soundtrack lushness. lOcc could have learned a lot! The
second band Thundermother are more straightforward,
unreconstructed gtr-drms-bass boogiemeisters but none the
worse for this. Their 'Boogie Music' matches Zappa's 'Willie
the Pimp' for high-testosterone energy and usually gets me
cavorting around the room. Perhaps this lack of inhibition -
even a certain naivete - is what the prog collector seeks out
as an antidote to the more established, popular names and
their attendant familiarity - to say nothing of their
stereotyped methods of playing.
I admit to a soft spot for Arzachel's sole eponymous
LP, chiefly for the Hammond organ on 'Queen Street Gang'
-also called 'Soul Thing', but it evinces no soul whatsoever!
This lazy 12-bar strut lumbe.rs along blissfully ignorant of
the concept of syncopation; somewhere around the 200th
bar the organ player starts pushing his effects manuals and
diapasons, which varies the boredom somewhat. 'Azathoth'
would threaten to become 'Jerusalem' (which ELP also once
memorably murdered in Grand Guignol style) were it not
for the discordant instrumental break which hoves into
earshot like a slowed-down ambulance siren. Most of side
two is devoted to the excessive yawn-a-thon
'Metempsychosis', where the guitar and organ are so
attenuated by the spacey production they're practically in
the next room. You too can be impressed by the singular
lack of development in this flabby track - progressive rock
that doesn't actually progress. Arzachel were Egg plus Steve
Hillage, so that's Dave Stewart on the organ. The magic
marker sleeve art confirms all your worst nightmares about
drug-addled hippies -it's the worst album cover in history! I
have a very bad pirate copy on Satori SAT 1005, which I
suspect has been mastered at the wrong speed, although an
Edsel CD pressing has been sighted.
So with some relief we turn to Octopus, Restless
Nlght!1 Essex
1013 LP, ND (1970
recording) and Steel
Mill, Green Eyed
God, Essex 1 012
LP (1975 recording): both
more in the song-writing
pop-psych vein and not too
far away from the Rubbles
series that enriches my life
so much. One of many
fifth-division bands who
learned their lessons
perhaps from Walrus-period
Beatles, Octopus make a
highly agreeable noise, a
crisply played set of
well-constructed songs and
a prime example of
journeyman period work;
we veer from visions of grim Tower-Block Britain ('Council
Plans') to gypsy fantasies ('Queen and the Pauper'). Steel
Mill are even less exceptional, and sadly don't really deliver
the promise of their wonderful bargain-basement surrealism
sleeve.
In the Folkier vein, we offer up but one example: Spiral
Sky, ACME AC8002LP, a very pleasant
overlooked fragment of proggy folk. How many
sub-Fairport Convention bands were around in the 1970s?
The band manage a decent chiming and droning musical
backdrop throughout the LP, which is marred only by the
voice of lead singer Kata Kolbert . She's just slightly off-key
on most performances, and lacks the breath control
necessary for precise phrasing - a defect most noticeable on
her walk through 'Bold William Taylor'. But she does
maintain unemotional poise throughout the violent and sexy
story on that traditional snatch of English Folk. Among
their own compositions, 'Slime Pits' is a weird anti-cult rant
- 'Holy Words, a Holy waste of time' - with subliminal
distort voices of the bogus priests mumbling at the end.
'The Dear Cat's Whiskers' is a real winner too, sung
charmingly accapella with an intimacy the rest of the set
lacks, and should win a prize for its lyrics, which are mostly
corny Tin-Pan Alley style but thrown out of whack by the
occasionally arresting phrase.
54
The Sound Projeetor 2 nd i slille 1997
The Doom
that came
II
Venezuela
Lat in-American Prog
I wanted to make a plea for this fascinating sub-genre, if
such it be. In no small measure we have to thank the great
Hugo Chavez-Smith for reissues on his Essex 'Serie Delujo'
label, and his Background label. You'd never stand a chance
of seeing or hearing original issues of these gems, which
now command excessive collector's prices. I just fmd
something touchingly sincere about all these bands - their
music is simple, direct and naive, some would even find it
childish. As examples of an idiom they're probably
relatively unimportant - derivative of a scene that is not
their own, mimicking sounds and gestures of UK bands
(which in their turn were mimicking USA musicians), in no
way influencing others, or developing this mode of music.
Yet as examples of the pure joy of music-making these
records have few equals. If we grasped at a visual parallel,
you could seize upon the currently well-known and very
popular Mexican Day of the Dead art. This is an example of
a genre that gets stuck somewhere (and becomes very
stereotyped, but remains powerful) - introduce Catholic
liturgical art to a peasant culture, and they'll mix it up with
their own preoccupations about ghosts and death. Sugar
skulls and papier-mllche skeletons of enormous potency and
vibrant colourful design result.
If this sounds like some I'm edging towards a patronising
Third World field study, please pass on to the next page.
But don't pass up hearing a record as unhinged and
perplexing as Kris Kringle's Todos Los
Derechos Reservados (1968). True to its
seasonal name this offers a real Christmas gift in gaily
coloured wrapping paper, and accordingly presents us with
a child's eye view of psych-pop. In fact, the band
themselves seem childishly overjoyed to be making a record
at all, and treat the studio like the world's biggest
sweetshop. They make bizarre use of sound effects, for
example we start off with a young man humming a tune to
himself before he slips off the embankment and is crushed
to death by a passing steam train. On one track
harpsichords and trumpets dance a gavotte like children at
the school fancy dress party in Victorian costume. As the
record is sung in the native tongue, I'm excused the
impossible task of interpreting these lyrics - whose content
may not be as exotic as I choose to imagine, especially in the
case of the varispeeded voice on 'Historia de un Loto .. .'
55
The Souud Pl'ojedo., 2ud is8De 1997
delivering some mock-solemn chant over a conventional
12-bar backing - sounding like a forgotten cousin to Speedy
Gonzales. Angle Records booted this as Angle 45 in 1993,
and pressed 300 copies working from the only known
existing original copy. The Genocido en Vietnam cover was
aptly described as Francis Bacon meets OXFAM!
bongos; and they low-grade social criticism in 'I'm a
Nigger'- 'Everybody hates my race!' The closest of the
Argentine rockers to Pink Floyd perhaps, although
'Everybody on Monday' is sheer poppy delight and 'Speed
Fever' is an unaffected motorcycle paean- 'the wind blows
your hair, the sun makes your glasses shine' ... Traffic
Sound, Background HBG 122/13 (1993)
Aguaturbia were a nifty beat combo from Chile with is closest to the spirit of 1967 of this batch, the nearest
added bonuses of psychedelic guitar solos and, best of all, model perhaps is The Notorious Byrds Brothers- although
the wild voice of an unknown female singer. This shrill their producer is no Gary Usher! This is most noticeable on
wailing of hers stops you in your tracks and dislocates your 'Chicana Way' which overdubs Jean Pierre Magnet into a
hearing bones inside your skull- she's a real Throatwobbler one-man horn section while the lead guitarist approximates
Mangrove! Their name means 'Choppy Waters' in English, a pedal steel sound. Traffic Sound achieve some pleasing
and hearing this de-centred vocal is certainly only one stage melodies and bright
be 'Jailhouse Rock', sung in : - -- ··-·-·- · ...._ - :: : :· ::::-::-: : very apt on the opening
English in such ways as to druggy cut, 'Tibet's
make you wonder if she has Suzettes', which proposes
any idea of the lyrical that we all start gobbling
content? No matter, they hash balls like pancakes.
get down with the song and Lyrically, the strikingly
take it at breakneck pace. clumsy grammar of this
They made Volume 2in ritornello is the closest
1970 and a bootleg surfaced they come to a Bob Dylan
in 1991 on Mexcal (LP 1) humouresque ... Ladies
with Mexican art on the BRAZIL
cover; it's the Essex version
(1002 LP) you need as it
faithfully reproduces the
Crucifixion co':'er. This is a
stunning bit of photography
collage, the flattened
perspective of the girl on
the cross bringing to mind
Dali's famous visionary
painting of St John of the
Cross. My guess is that no
irony or commentary is
intended..J::.y this invocation
of the crucifixion, which
there emphatically would be
if this was a UK Prog band.
Also of interest:
Kissing Spellby
Los Pajaros,
Essex 1 001, contains
the touching song 'Jim and
the Blind Man' opening with
some lush major seventh chords strummed over the sound
of the ocean, leading into a charming story where Jim is
taught to play the flute - 'Oh that will be grand!' he chortles,
as a recorder plays sweetly over seagull cries. A real
moment of tenderness ... maudlin perhaps, but so what? It
beats McCartney any day .... Laghonia"s
Etcetera, Essex 1 004, rarely disappoints - at
last a druggy reference in 'Mary Ann', endorsing her unique
properties for inducing mental oblivion, they warble 'Oh
you take my mind away!' over a heavy bass and slow pulse,
before freaking out with a 'wild' guitar solo over clunky
WC, Essex 1 009
Pc- polalion GNP Per Capita P968) 2!
Average Annual Grcwl h Ra!es (1961-68)
CD is also squarely in the
Beatles-Stones-Dylan
camp, but layered with
more US West Coast
psychedelia influences - as
Edwin Pouncey points out
in his humourous
fictionalised account of the
band meeting up in the
Amazonian rain forests.
Indeed, every other cut
here could be by any
faceless British R'n'B band
with harmonica I
tambourine driven riffs.
But the LP is redeemed by
its amusing use of sound
E!RAZ1L
ARGENTINA
CCLCMSIA
PERU
VENEZUELA
• effects segueing each song
''·"" '"" ' , . ., - starting with a toilet
! flushing, the sequence
1\8.209
23.617
•2.772
1 . 511:1)
:?50
3 1(;
"
leads through a boxing
match, an orchestra tuning
up, a jet taking off {edited
next to 'Put that in your pipe and smoke it', yet another
Byrds link: 'Eight Miles High' I 'Lear Jet song'), a car
crashing, glass breaking, a fairground pipe organ. A
gurgling brook fades into 'To walk on water', a winsome
peace-n-love ditty replete with spanish guitars, recorders,
and the most inept use of a xylophone ever put to recording
tape; melodically it's a vi.Ttual simulacrum of'As we go
along' from The Monkees' Head, so I would suggest you try
using Ladies WC as a possible alternative soundtrack to this
film - a little programming is all it takes!
-------..___
56
False
Nostalgia-
don't trust
it
I have contrived this completely artificial journey through
what I perceive as some of the varying modes of prog-rock -
moving myself 'Out of the Dark and Into the Light', as per
The Wicked Lady's suggestion. We can make no apologies
for the sketchiness of this trajectory, which neglects
countless key names from the history of obscure prog. Note
that some of the items above were not on major labels -
originally private pressings, or produced out of the group's
own pocket, underscoring that whatever success they
enjoyed was largely provincial and local. At best what I can
glom from this sampling is a kind of nostalgia - which I
freely admit to - a nostalgia for a time I never had. There
were brief exposures to flashes of then-unfamiliar records
during my sojourn at boarding school in 1973 - etched in
my memory are little fragments of this time, like the LP
cover to Budgie (an atrocious Welsh HM band); the riff
to 'Pick up the Pieces' by Hudson Ford; and most
emphatically 'Spirit in the Sky' by Norman
Greenbaum. Even today you can practically hear the
long hair and beards in these snippets.
But Prog for me really starts in 1975, when I first started
buying records in a big way, and with no thought at all
yielded to pressure of fellow sixth-formers at my school
in Everton -going for the obvious big-sellers and major
players. Such a list comprises Genesis, Pink Floyd,
Yes, Supertramp, Rick Wakeman, King
Crimson ... and in the hard rock mode, Black Sabbath
and Led Zeppelin. In such a context, even bands like
Camel or Barclay James Harvest seem slightly
recherche! The camp of pseudo-intellectual pompery
fell by the wayside for me, although I now return to the
Sabs and Zep with a renewed appetite.
The point is that in 1971-1972, surely the years when
heavy-duty prog throve, I was still mired in the delights
of Radio One and the charts, contented with a diet of
teenybopper (Donny Osmond) or Glam (Gary Glitter,
The Sweet). Only in thinking back do I madly imagine I
was (somehow) listening to the ghosts of prog and
krautrock which might be swinuning around somewhere
in the atmosphere. Which is conceivable in a way if you
believe that sounds never really 'die', they just keep
echoing around, the universe. From the droning
extended passage in The Aztecs' 'Most People I Know
think that I'm Crazy' -which was in the charts in 1972-
it may have been possible to conjecture that somewhere
out there, whole LP sides (not just (fJ seconds
instrumental break on a 45 rpm single) were devoted to
making noises like this. This is what I mean by a false
nostalgia. We're slipping into some metaphysical nonsense
here -a low-grade form of time travel perhaps.
A simpler view is that I just like to dig up weird records
which were around when I was alive, but by no stretch of
the imagination could I ever have bought them (or even
seen them, in most cases). The truth is hardly anyone
bought this stuff at the time. Much of your fourth-division
UK prog was issued on budget-priced labels, probably
poorly distributed, and destined to end up in the bargain
bins at WH Smiths in no time, or else recalled to be melted
down in the vast bubbling cauldrons of reprocessed vinyl -
Purgatory for LPs!. If you have any music publications
from the 1970s, a glance through the adverts will reveal
what music was prominent at the time. I have ZigZag37
from 1973 in front of me, with full-page ads for such
blandies as-Stealers Wheel, Kiki Dee, Gallagher and Lyle,
Donovan. All of these examples above sadly demonstrate
the kind of confidence and faith a record company had in
their roster of prog bands.
Of course, the listeners can be equally revisionist. John
Bagnall has suggested how significant the punk 'movement'
in this country was, and how after 1976 a new orthodoxy
quickly took hold, and we couldn't wait to throw out any
music associated with Dinosaurs and Boring Old Farts. For
many years, to listen to anything remotely proggy was
admitting to the love that dare not speak its name. This
reissue phenomenon - and the apparent growth in the
collectors' market for 1970s records generally - shows that
_!!!_ere is still a presence, still an interest. Perhaps the hippies
57
The Sonnd P r o j e e t o ~ 2nd issne 1997
and druggies never go away - or spawn new generations of
their ilk. Mark Robinson has noted this depressing
'inescapable miasma' phenomenon, possibly unique to UK
culture.
Another way to account for the appeal of an obscure prog
item is principally its obscurity - the simple fact of its
unavailability and uncommercial nature somehow associates
it with other obscure, unavailable and uncommercial musics
- eg free improvised music, and by a twist of thinking this
can justify the quality of the music. A dangerously elitist
thought-crime, mayhap! There's something of an illicit thrill
in dissing the (popular) Pink Floyd on the one hand, but
smugly asserting that (relative unknowns) Dark were a fme
band - a kind of 'safe' way of enjoying a generally despised
genre.
The conclusion I draw from all this is an issue of
redemption - it's a feeling of 'rescuing' some poor unknown
record from the limbo of poor sales performance, and by
giving it more airings than it could possibly have enjoyed
first time around, one is taking part in a sort of grand
altruistic project -like adopting war orphans or something.
The big guys have had their due, now let's hear from the
nameless forgotten souls! The reissuing of these obscurities
is a healthy riposte to the major record companies - who I
feel have a vested interest in maintaining a pecking order in
the minds of record-buyers - 'A Lists' and established
hierarchies of so-called 'Great Rock bands'. The more past
music there is available, then it can only improve our
perception of what's good and what's bad, and help us to
rethink the accepted lines of development and influence in
rock music. It expands history. This is why I believe that if
I choose to privilege even something relatively ordinary like
Octopus in favour of what the rock establishment pushes
my way, it can be something more than just acting like
some foppish elitist who dabbles in obscurity.
Wbo is reissuing these
records, and why?
Tread with caution here and let's try and
separate out the different strands of activity
here. The first two categories are official ,
record-company based records; the second two
are in the bootleg-ish area.
An official reissue by the originators
Brought out by the record company who
owned the original recording. Thus for
example the recent 'deluxe' edition of the first
Black Sabbath album· in proper gatefold
mode and pressed on heavy vinyl. A record
like this has probably remained in print with
its parent company ever since its first issue. At
least in a case like this they should have access
to master tapes and original printing plates,
unless they've been carelessly discarded.
An official reissue, but done by another
company
For example, the Decal reissue (LIK 12) of On
tile Shore by Trees, a 1970 album originally on
CBS 64168. The principle is that Decal paid
for the rights to do this, so presumably
58
mechanical royalties continue to be paid. The
reissue features original sleeve art or a good
facsimile of same. They probably used master
tapes.
'RE' = An unofficial reissue by fans
The aim is to produce a replica LP, a
reproduction of a prog rock item so rare that
you'll probably never see an original copy in
your life. The vinyl is remastered working
from the best available copy. Modern
technology allows the possibility of removing
crackles and clicks, by sampling either side of
such a glitch. The sleeve art is rephotographed
and replicated exactly as in the original issue
(eg Spring's triple gatefold photograph by
Keef, easily a match for his fine work on Black
Sabbath). And Essex's Octopus should win a
prize for that gatefold cover alone, a true
masterpiece of 1970s kitsch painting. The
original catalogue number is used. The label is
the same. Nobody tries to pass it off as an
original copy at a ridiculous price (unless
they're stupid), it's just a public spirited
gesture by members of the collector-fan fringe,
to share neglected music. An aural fanzine!
However, it is my guess that neither record
label nor artistes make any money out of this.
On the other hand, it's equally likely that the
people doing theRE also lose out financially.
There may be a strain of RE manufacturers
who do try and palm off their product as an
original, but I have not encountered any; in
any case, rephotographed sleeve art announces
itself immediately to anyone with a pair of
eyes. One of my favourites in this vein is a
vinyl RE of Tone Float by The Organisation
(SF 811); the sleeve reproduced had a portion
of the art torn off, which the fan-owner had
attempted to restore with his Derwent coloured
pencils. Further, the paste-up artist (who knew
little about process blacks) cut out and
repasted the title and the RCA Victor logo.
Re-Treads
Similar to a RE, except these are quite often on
CD format instead of vinyl. They might
feature new sleeve art and new catalogue
numbers. ACME items on vinyl always come
issued in a plain master bag; the sleeve art and
notes are printed on A3 glossy paper,
spray-mounted and wrapped around the
master bag, thus sealing it. Sometimes
Retreads are more like compilations, in that
they add bonus tracks not part of the original
release. Some of them ( eg Andromeda) appears
to have been done in collaboration with a
member of the original band, which reassures
one that payments are going where they're due.
It is only through the medium of the reissue
that I've stood any chance of hearing this
turgid nonsense. CDs (and limited edition
vinyl) have rescued these hidden treasures
from the dustbin of fashion. The only other
option would be to spend enormous sums at
collector's fairs. This price tag aspect is not one
I have cared to dwell on at this time, yet it
seems to be a useful frame of reference for
some. Some dealers can tell us nothing about a
rare record other than it commands a hefty dig
into one's wallet.
,_.
The Sotutd Projeetor 2D.d issue 1997
lilliDI UP
Popular
ist&Ai
Pro a
Who"s afraid of Prog Rock?
One sunny Saturday afternoon about 18 months ago, I was
skimming through a newspaper's TV preview page. My eyes
alighted gn some promotional slop about 'Dancing in the
Streets', a then forthcoming comprehensive rock survey.
The series producer was boasting of how broad in sweep and
catch-all his magnum opus would be - the lucky viewer was
promised miles of dazzling footage from the last 40 rockin'
years. We'd be taking in the birth of the unruly rock beastie,
with its blues 'n' gospel parentage through to Elvis, the Fab
Four, Soul, Folk Rock, Psych, Woodstock, Glam, Punk,
Disco, er, Live Aid, Hip-Hop, right up to today's Ambient
and Techno. Alright, I mused, why should I pass up the
chance to let my eyeballs soak in moments like Iggy Pop
falling flat on his sweaty face circa 1970, or to gawp again at
the orchestrated circus of anorexia that was a 1965 Motown
roadshow. I suppose we all have our iconic favourites.
Then came the supposed clincher . The produced concluded
(perhaps with a knowing smirk) 'We certainly won't be
featuring any Prog Rock'. Well of course not. Perish the
thought. For about twenty-something years it's been a
universally agreed axiom that 70s Progressive Rock is only
there to be despised. The genre that apparently led rock into
a histrionic cul-de-sac is only ever mentioned when we recall
1977 was the year we were saved from such sins. Otherwise
Willlllllllllllll
Prog can be safely written out of rock history and any
embarrassment will thereby be niftily evaded.
You get no prizes for guessing I found 'Dancing in the
Streets' predictably selective. But you' re not about to suffer
a table-thumping fan's-eye defence of Prog Rock's excesses
or worse still a claim that it's still alive via those
dire-sounding contemporary outfits you see listed in the
back pages of Q and Mojo (Regenesis, Solstice and Spock's
Beard to name but three).
My gripe, hopefully along with much of this mag's small
readership, is that prevailing critical orthodoxy has become
increasingly hard to swallow. Like some Soviet-era youth
dissatisfied with the biased history of his Stalinist
schoolbooks I find the post-punk consensus not just wearing
thin but altogether worn out. In my experience rock hardly
ever follows homogenous or tidy lines of development; in
fact, some of its triumphs lie in detours of brazen stupidity.
It's OK to invoke benchmarks of quality or key moments of
'revolution', be they The Beatles, Sex Pistols or The Velvet
Underground, but count me out when these models become
diluted nth-generation ghosts, be they Britpop, Three
Colours Red or some whining sophomore discovering Lou
Reed for the first time.
Maybe I'm talking after the tide has turned. A stroll through
today's CD Hypermarket seems to reveal the triumph of
post-modern pluralism. In true democratic fashion once
dubious items, now reissued, nestle right next to those
thought ' hot' and 'cutting edge' . Increased choice makes
record company fat-cats even fatter but it also breaks down
the power of the taste-makers. The rehabilitation of former
musical no-nos like Easy Listening and German Cosmische
Rock is perhaps just the start of a great shattering of taboos.
Journalist Paul Stump has weighed in with a brave
booklength defence of bad ol' Prog itself: The Music's All
59
The Soand Projeetor 2nd iS8De 1997
That Matters (Quartet 1997). The salivating collector's
market in obscure UK 70s Prog has been evident for some
time and is covered by Ed elsewhere in this issue. But surely
the experience of buying and hearing rare Prog by the likes
of Andromeda, Elias Hulk or Arcadium is inevitably
coloured by the hipness-quotient of digging out and
possessing arcane nuggets of vinyl archaeology? These
artefacts often only differ from their more famous
counterparts by virtue of original poor sales and promotion.
Can we stick our necks out and also fmd some (illicit)
pleasure in 70s Prog items which sold by the truckload? Just
maybe. Abandon all hope ye who enter here ...
Moogs on Ice l-
In the early to ..--: .
mid-70s every record
buying white kid
who wasn't strung
out on Glamor
Northern Soul would
be sure to have a
gatefold Prog item
by ELP, Genesis,
Greenslade, Camel or
Yes stuffed into his
army surplus
knapsack. Hurriedly,
these grease-haired
teens would scurry
into their Roger
Dean postered
bedrooms, lift up
their teak veneer
hi-fi's smoked plastic
lids and slip on a
glistening black vinyl
LP with its 1-o-n-g
complicated tracks,
little knowing they'd later be regarded as a generation of
misguided lepers. Let' s give the devil his due and remind
ourselves, according to the consensus, of the main popular
crimes otthese Prog years.
Virtuosity . following the bolstering respect rock received
as an artform via the explorations of The Beatles and
psychedelia, the 70s Prog artists took heart and ran with
the baton about 100 miles further . Aping the technical
prowess of classical or jazz musicians, the Progster sought to
impress with tricky, technically difficult displays of
expertise. A background at the Royal College of Music, like
the be-caped Rick Wakeman, was judged more cool than
being some self-taught three chord bozo. Individual group
members became stars in their own right, like a celebrated
soloist of Paganini status. Witness the equal billing for
ELP's Carl Palmer, centre-stage with a drum kit so
gargantuan you'd think it'd require arm-extensions to play.
A peek at the inner sleeve photos of Fragile by Yes displays
guitarist Steve Howe posing in a circle of about twenty
string instruments and from his confident glare you just
know he can play them all. While more experimental Prog
outfits took inspiration from the 20th century avant garde
(see Henry Cow) the mainstream giant's symphonic leanings
resulted in many overblown workings of middlebrow
classics.
Pretension . again following 60s lyrical and conceptual
developments Prog aimed to 'progress' beyond the three
minute pop song. With literary aspirations abounding, the
7-inch single was far too shrimplike a vehicle to contain the
epic imagination of the Progster. Jon Anderson, a
vegetarian waif from Chorley, had already wowed
fourth-formers with clumsy cod-mysticallyrics for Yes like
'Siberian Kahtru', and 'Total Mass Retain' and ventured on
to compose Tales from Topographic Oceans, whose theme
was the four parts of the Shastric scripture. With immodest
Prog logic Yes spread the project interminably over four LP
sides. Darker lyrical appetites might have found some
masochistic pleasure
in Van de Graaf
Generator's
concepts, such as
the impenetrable
pessimism of 'A
plague of
Lighthouse
Keepers' . And if
musical companions
to the early 70s fad
for Sword'n'Sorcery
were required then
surely Bo Hansen's
Lord of the Rings
(three volumes
condensed onto one
LP!), Steve
Hackett's Voyage of
the Acolyte and
Dave Greenslade's
Pentateuch of the
Cosmology fitted
the bill?
A concept wasn't a
concept realised if it
couldn't be staged with Wagnerian grandeur. Peter
Gabriel's array of characters I creatures required both
costumes and masks and culminated in The Lamb Lies
Down on Broadway show. Here Gabriel appeared in a
boil-encrusted seven foot latex outfit which prefigured Mr
Blob by by a good fifteen years. But perhaps Rick
Wakeman's inflated spectaculars go one step further into
bloated kitsch and represent the late-Pro super-ego in
excelsis. Journey to the Centre of the Earth demanded not
only a choir and scenery but an ice rink arena and chocolate
voiced David Hemmings as narrator.
Quality Control. How can anyone defend such
monstrousness? By invoking a tendency in art to the epic,
the grand gesture? Possibly, but to deny that such excess
reached a point where it virtually begged to be cauterized by
the punk antidote means you'd be better off living in a
velvet lined ivory tower on a diet of Carl Orff and Richard
Wagner. Having a healthy acceptance, however, that Prog
lost its way doesn't mean that it should be condemned
forever to the rubbish tip of history. An uncritical
acceptance of our current musical climate assumes that
anything that's gone out of date is discredited simply on that
account. We must remember our own time is also a 'period'
and subject to illusions and ingrained assumptions. As time
changes we notice the peculiar listening phenomenon, where _
60
The so-d Projeeto:r 2ad isl!me 1997
a once much loved record loses all its appeal - and a certain
musical approach you were previously lukewarm about
suddenly 'clicks', and offers up unpredicted pleasures. In
my own experience I have to mention those hoary Manes,
Joy Division. As a black-clad youth I found their two
albums the perfect apogee of profound and delicious
Godlessness. Now they sound like the clumsy ploddings of a
gang of post-punk bricklayers with a couple of unread
Albert Camus paperbacks in their pockets. Inexplicable
shifts happen and shadowy spectres from the past
re-emerge. During the early 70s the primitive twangings of
Surf music would have sounded embarrassingly naive and
corny, but in the 80s, the trash aesthetic established, it
sounded relevant and exciting. The current revival of the
Moog and predilection for eventless space-rock would have
been deemed irrelevant and indulgent in the punk period.
With just a little suspension of disbelief and a remembering
of its original context, I've found aspects of Prog Rock once
more highly listenable. Sifting out the over-ripe clamour of
ELP and Yes, the early years of the styles (and its popular
practitioners) contain their own peculiar pleasures.
The Marshes of Mellotronia
Rutherford M. and Banks Major waited in the groundsman's
shed on the far boundary of Charterhouse School's cricket
field. Out of bounds, even for sixth-formers - these chaps
knew their activities wouldn't be appreciated by Mr
Sowerby, the music beak. With low volume, in fact with his
blazer muffling the practice amplifier, Banks struck some
sombre chords on a new Mellotron, a gift from his Aunt
Victoria, the tune sounding not unlike an anthem which
might have been heard in chapel, yet strangely mechanised-.
Rutherford joined in with his electric bass- a staccato motif
he'd heard from Gustav Holst's 'Planets Suite'. Suddenly the
door swung ajar. Rutherford dropped his bass on one of his
brogues. 'My hat, I thought it was Sowerby!' exclaimed
Banks Major nervously, while Rutherford M. hopped on one
foot, his hand holding the other in pain. The intruder was
Gabriel P., hair well below school-rules collar length and
wearing a hint of black eyeliner. He clutched a dog-eared
exercise book decorated with fountain-pen sketches of Lewis
Carroll's Alice. 'I say you fellows' he chirped, 'I've just
written a new song. I've called it "Stagnation".'
Trespass by Genesis (Charisma G369
905) dates from 1970 and is their first 'proper' album
following some tentative recordings made with fellow
Carthusian Jonathan King. I picked it up for £1.25 at a
Saturday market two years ago, though most owners would
have bought it as Genesis became massive in about 1973. It
isn't a masterpiece, containing as it does the dull stodgy epic
'The Knife'. But the remainder shares the alluring, gentle
qualities of those early-Prog entrees on obscure labels like
Neon and Nepantha which collectors merrily shell out £500
for : melodic, post-psych motifs stretched out to generous
lengths, swathed in rich, churchlike Hammond organ and,
of course, Mellotron. Trespass benefits from not featuring
any synthesizer - the less bombastic and natural-sounding
early Prog has much more appeal to these ears. Also in its
favour is the omission of printed lyrics on the watercolour
gatefold. Peter Gabriel's penchant for comedic character
portrayal and awful wordplay can't yet be detected. The
listener can form his own interpretations and is not led by
the hand as on later, better selling, Genesis LPs.
The mysterious, vapourous and suggestive mood which
makes Trespass a muted success is evidenced on only three
tracks: 'Stagnation', 'Dusk' and 'Visions of Angels'. All over
seven minutes, they evoke a stifling feel of being lost in an
untended overgrowth of weeds, deadly nightshade and
poisonous ponds of fetid water. The unclear 'bad'
production strangely enhances the atmosphere. Piercing the
murk of ornate acoustic guitar and flute meandering come
sharp darts of musical sunlight to dazzle. These are
created by surging anthemic keyboard riffs. In a clearing
in the middle of the forest angels are dancing and they've
been clothed by Burne-Jones.
Suffocating Pre-Raphaelite evocations, silver-flutes and
musicians sitting down to play are a far cry from Chuck
Berry. Does this kind of thing belong in rock? It's too late
to protest now, lodged in history and no longer a threat,
Trespass is a last gorgeous gasp of moonlit English
Romanticism, Once you've got over the moral hurdle of
even considering listening to Genesis you may even agree.
Slowly Turns the Grinding Wheel
While Genesis never made an entirely satisfying record
(and of course they made some stinkers, especially when
P. Collins became General Manager) who can claim to
have created the perfect early Prog LP? The obvious
contender has to be King Crimson's In the
Court of the Crimson King (Island ILPS
9111 ). Robert Fripp, the band's stern-lipped overlord,
would deny the Prog tag, claiming the term 'evolutionary'
for his still continuing unit. Certainly King Crimson have
evolved through various incarnations and Fripp's talent
for recruiting stringently creative players like improv
genius Keith Tippett or anarchic percussionist Jamie Muir
has earned a grudging respect denied to less forward
thinking Prog dinosaurs. Yet this 1969 debut virtually
lays down the ground rules of Prog: expanded pieces with
symphonic mellotron, experimental tricky riffs on treated
guitar, reeds, flute and percussion section, linked by florid
lyrics. Oh yes, the lyrics, the great stumbling block in
early King Crimson. Baroque wordsmith Pete Sinfield
contributes lines such as 'I chase the wind of a prism ship,
to taste the sweet and sour'. Remember that suspension of
disbelief!
Better to focus on the playing between Greg Lake's
straight faced vocals and you're on an exciting ride
through :f.ripp's patented dischords and seamless sustain.
No guitarist in Prog has so easily identifiable a style. His
solos on the infamous '21st Century Schizoid Man' make
for a Fripp sonic sampler, careering through hurtling
clean runs into totally evil hot dagger in the cornea attack.
The soft, aleatory interplay of Michael Giles' percussion
and Ian McDonald's electric vibes during the twelve
minute 'Moonchild' (perhaps skipped by many an original
listener for being too weird) is truly astonishing to this
day. I can hear echoes of all this in contemporary Japanese
avant-noise units like Ruins and Optical*8. Perhaps their
cultural distance has freed them from our own inhibitions
concerning Prog?
Trespass may have been a relatively new pleasure but we
had In the Court of the Crimson King in my childhood
home from when it first hit the LP charts. As a pre-teenager
I was fascinated by it, particularly its lavish EG Day printed
gatefold sleeve. If the record is a Prog blueprint then the
lurid wraparound painting of a silently shrieking crimson
and blue face is equally archetypal. Like a magic talisman it
would draw me to look at it when my family were elsewhere.
Why did it look so different from other albums with their
workaday cover shots of grinning singers? Unhampered by
typography or border it seemed to extend into infmity.
During the 80s it was relegated to a cupboard, perhaps by
my Mother who was always spooked by 'that horrible face'
or perhaps by myself, thinking I now had more enlightened
tastes. On a recent trip home I liberated this lonely and
unloved artefact and am now happy to include it with the
rest of my collection. I'm sure my actions were prompted by
something more than mere nostalgia.
62
wansinthe
Hands of Babies
The Brood @ Purcell Room (QEH), South Bank London, 6th November 1996
A mouth-watering programme tempted me into this - music by La Monte Young, John Cage, Phill Niblock, Rhys
Chatham? Sonic Boom, Scanner, Susan Stenger, Panasonic among the performers? Show me the queue! As it turned out,
the concert was disappointing- it dished up an indigestible mess of poorly-chosen fragments of American 20th century
music, and the performances and presentation were decidedly lacklustre. I felt we were being sold a bill of goods -
avant-garde music as played by rock musicians. Of course there is an exciting rock/ avant-garde interface: ready examples
include Stockhausen and Holger Czukay, Luciano Berio and Phil Lesh, and the Sonic Youth-Glenn Branca connection.
This concert managed to make this interface seem boring, and a tad pretentious too. The press releases for The Brood told
us how Susan Stenger has a 'foot in both camps', which is hard to swallow- does merely following in Sonic Youth's wake
qualify you for such an epithet? I suspect this is a one-way traffic thing: rock musicians can borrow and popularise ideas
from the avant-garde, but can they bring anything back the other way? These people may dig La Monte Young's work, but
are they really equipped to interpret his material? To these ears, the night's contributions of Panasonic and Scanner-
ostensibly playing someone else's compositions - appeared no different to what they normally do on their own records.
The choice of music looked good on paper, but the programming of events was
hardly felicitous. The second half, for example, gave us the concert's highlight
- 25+ minutes of a pretty good, loud and long Phill Niblock drone. But any
beneficial effects on the listener were swiftly negated by the hamfisted Rhys
Chatham noise-blast immediately following. This sub-Branca mishmash
quickly deteriorated into sludge until only the snare drum stood out from the
murky avalanche of guitar histrionics -the drumbeat simply reinforced how
tedious this composition was. Of course, the wretched acoustics of this venue
don't help -a huge black drape was muffling 50% of sounds, while
simultaneously bouncing back all the top end range towards the audience.
Admittedly the promoter had obviously made some attempt to put like with
like in the programme. Part one gave us the 'difficult' stuff; a Panasonic
performance of Alvin Lucier which began to work when the electronic noises
got so loud as to threaten to blow the speakers; a dismal Christian Wolff
performance, verging on the plinky-plonk that gives avant-garde composition a
bad name; and a sprawling shambles of three John Cage items performed
simultaneously. This last one featured Shelley Hirsh going bananas with some hysterical vocalese gibberish- if only it'd
been louder- and Scanner performing 'Fontana Mix' according to his own lights, which meant using random samples from
records of John Cage readings. This melange promised in some places to catch fire, but obstinately refused to do so - the
players stgod on the brink of tipping it over into a delicious chaos of event-overload, but regained composure in the nick of
time. Part two brought together three composers associated with minimal drones and harmonic tunings: Young, Niblock
and Chatham; and also perhaps attempted to appeal to the rock component of the audience - all three pieces featuring
electric guitars (sometimes played with theE-Bow), and players associated with the rock field. Yet they also brought rock's
bad attitude- the performers seemed non-committal, detached from their work. No pieces or players were introduced, only
perfunctory attempts to acknowledge applause, even the dress was dismayingly art-student informal. I personally regretted
this complete lack of a sense of occasion (and it's quite common nowadays). You never sensed they even enjoyed doing this
- rather, they rushed to get off stage and usher on the next act. Panasonic, the very first to appear, were virtually smuggled
on stage in near-darkness, then remained crouched virtually out of sight behind electronic equipment. No doubt this adds
to their mystique, but it came across as smug and ironic. Do they get away with it simply because it's avant-garde music? (as
if to say to an audience, if you like this noisy subversive stuff then you surely can't be bothered about anything so bourgeois
as good presentation.) Give me AMM any day of the week- even if their performances haven't always taken off, they've
never failed to involve and engage the spectator in a near-religious ceremonial, with their focused approach to playing and
their respectful silences and pauses.
This event, co-ordinated by Susan Stenger, was affiliated to the 'American Independents' season at the South Bank, a
programme which has also included some orchestral music by John Adams, George Crumb and Frank Zappa (among many
others). The Brood was I suppose their concession to the fringe I avant-garde geniuses, but I can't help feeling they were
poorly represented by this token gesture. John Cage and La Monte Young in particular suffered here from excessively 'free'
interpretations of their works. At least with the Niblock piece, the composer himself was present, and playing a sampler,
which for many reasons made it the most successful of the pieces. The very presence of a good American Monster is what's
needed (as anyone who saw the dismal attempts to play Zappa will tell you): in the final analysis these composers tended to
bring so much of their own personalities to their work that not everything can be written down or notated in such a way as
to guarantee a successful interpretation by other musicians. I think The Brood event demonstrated this in spades.
63
The Souad Projeeto:i' 2ad issue 1997
van Dvke Parks
Song Cycle Warner Brothers WS 1727 (1968)
also on Edsel ED CD 207 (1988 reissue)
DELIRIOUS, HALLUCINOGENIC VISIONS OF AMERICA'S PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE- both real and
imaginary, seen from a detirminedly ecentric and off-beat viewpoint. Acid-tinged Andrew Wyeth paintings. But before you
jump to any conclusions, let's first state that Parks refused the druggie culture, as he did all libertarian components of the
hippie movement, as gleaned from a statement concerning when he first met Brian Wilson on Terry Melcher's lawn: 'Those
were the days of considerable drug abuse, not among us, but surrounding us.' It's possible to read the record as a warped
National Geographic trip at high speed across the States: the very opening, a snatch of 'Black Jack Davey' with banjoes,
invites us to set off on this vagabond journey like the Gypsy itinerant of this traditional folk song. Strange snapshots and
home movie footage have been fetched back from this voyage. We glimpse the Kansas midwest in 'All Golden' (although
Alabama appears to be the setting). Laurel Canyon Boulevard is an address in California· the West Coast flavour permeates
throughout, with the biblical journey 'I Came West unto Hollywood' confirmed near the end of side 2 by the impersonation
of the Andrews Sisters. 'Widow's Walk' could be somewhere on the East Coast, perhaps a Maine fishing village. 'The Attic'
is surely a vision of a Dutch Pennsylvania home with hand-made Shaker furniture · 'I was there upon a four-poster' ... The
vision is kaleidoscopic, switching us from one location to another, crossing time frames with lightning speed. Only the ring
composition of the ordering of track titles makes the slightest concession to linear sense. Both lyrical and musical fragments
are deployed, laid out in a mosaic technique which concocts broken images, and alludes to meaning rather than dictates it.
The lyrics of 'All Golden' can give us -like Walt Whitman- a rich vision of a sun-drenched corn field, and for one second ·
with a pun about a 'frigidaire' ·cuts in a vision of Betty Furness with a Westinghouse refrigerator in a 1950s suburb. Parks'
allusiveness in his lyrics seems to defeat some people. Mike Love of The Beach Boys still asks himself to this day what was
meant by 'The Crow Flies, uncover the Cornfield'.
The rich melange of musical quotes and samples is Parks' greatest achievement here however. Charles I ves is the closest
ancestor for this, both in his reworkings of traditional American folk music, and his fondness for having two or more
different melodies played on top of each other. With Parks, while there are some specific quotations (which I believe
include Beethoven and Scott Joplin), it is more the idiom and regional flavours he's trying to capture- hence Country and
Western slide guitar on 'Palm Desert', Appalachian hammered dulcimer and jazz swing drum kit on 'All Golden'. But these
spot-checks don't convey the totality. Parks seems bent on swallowing American musical history whole, in the same way
Melville's Moby Dick opens with a huge catalogue of classical quotation. Black music and culture are given a highly
idiosyncratic twist on 'By The People', a lyric filled with many punning twists and turns, extravagant connections and heavy
irony. The squeaky clean Andrews Sisters are juxtaposed with a menacing drawl in a patronising argot- 'By chance are you
gwine git out de way o' de darkies'. What are to make of this? My guess this is as close as Parks will allow himself to social
commentary, perhaps on the civil rights movement. As 'Vine Street' on this record is a Randy Newman composition (and
Parks has other connections with his friend and fellow songwriter), we could compare notes between this song and
Newman's version of'Underneath the Harlem Moon', a song apparently celebrating 'the joys of racism' as Greil Marcus has
pointed out. (This also looks forward to 1984's lump, which we may discuss in detail in another column; it featured
phonetic\\lly speh out southern dialect for the lyrics, and Parks on the back cover dressed as a Southern Gentleman in a
white suit.)
Song Cycle is incredibly dense, packs an overload of information into a record less than 40 minutes long, and can verge on
the indecipherable unless you play it in its entirety, and pay close attention. Even today it sounds difficult. the weird
recording, the constant changes, the sound effects ·all stitched together like a patchwork quilt. It can shift from widescreen
Technicolor visions as intense as those in Days of Heaven, to intimate piano I vox miniatures such as 'PotPourri' or 'Public
Domain' ·whose firework sound effects connect you to the Rockets Red Glare and the Fourth of July, but also suggests each
composition is like a catherine wheel, sparkling for an instant before it vanishes. The printed credits give you some clues as
to how this overblown sound was committed to tape - not only the enormous session orchestra, but 'Stereo and Monaural
compositions by Bruce Botnick' and 'Sound Effects by Jack Glaser and El Supremo'. One antecedent for a record of this
processed lushness is surely the exotica- stereo separation easy-listening records so beloved of the 'cheesy-listening' set
(probably old hat by the time this goes out) ·Esquivel, Mantovani, Les Baxter. Although I understand that even some
classical music in the 1950s was recorded with enhanced echo, perhaps to give it that 'concert hall' effect. Totally wayward
and over the top, this record is a true oddity as extreme as Charles Laughton's movie Night of the Hunter. Even if he had
only made this record, Van Dyke Parks should be assured a place in world history. The connections between this and the
project which immediately preceded it, Brian Wilson's Smile, are fairly self-evident. I take one of Song Cycles subtexts as
'The motor car has changed America'; for further information, simply watch The Magnificent Ambersons, or look at R
Crumb's cartoon 'A Short History of America'. There's a car-horn sound notated and played by French horns on 'Palm
Desert', suggesting a 1920s Ford emerging out of the dust as the spirit of the age strikes out West. There's a vision of
modern commuter hell with the sad procession of cars glimpsed in 'Laurel Canyon Boulevard'. We need only compare this
with the Bicycle Rider of Smile· 'See what you done to the home of the American Indian'.
64
•.·
CindvWar
Arrow's
Skipload 01
Tapes
Driven away from my beloved Radio 4 by yet another intenninable
edition of Kaleidoscope laden, as per hloody usual, with items on
Shakespeare and Opera {again!} I turned to my skip in whicb are
stored a rar1dom selectiorJ of cassettes tbat bave to date proven too
forbidding to listen to, given my low boredom tbresbold ...
Siegmar Fricke, Wash and Go,
Cassette C45, Anachronismus AT01
(1992)
The cover of this partic'ular item caught my eye ... a pleasing
collage reproduced irrvivid florescence by courtesy of a laser
copier. To be frank I haven't got the faintest idea who
Siegmar Fricke might be or how this
copy of his magnum opus should come
to be in my possession, but perhaps
that's no bad thing. Thus I may be able
to 'Listen Without Prejudice' as the
great sage George Michael put it.
Wash and Go contains eight tracks of
what might be described as dance music,
in as much as it's possible to ascribe that
term to Chris and Cosey's output.
Indeed young Siegmar's tape reminds
me somewhat of the aforementioned
duo: the sequencers, the inventive
rhythm patterns and the general feel are
akin to their later offerings, though
happily not nearly so piss poor. The
standout compositions here are 'Why
don't you move' and the title track, both
of which chug along quite cheerily with
an imaginative and refreshing quotient of surprises. I doubt
that in its present state much here would work as dance
music, given certain passages of repetitive tedium. I would
however argue that the strength of any worthwhile dance
record which can truly claim to be having it large style, if
you will, is that repetition, done properly, is an advantage
and not a flaw. I managed to listen to this, in the comfort of
my own front room, all the way through. Which counts for a
lot considering I rarely manage more that the first 45
seconds of most cassettes.
I wouldn't recommend Siegmar Fricke to everyone and in
truth I may not actually listen to Wash and Go ever again,
but in its favour this is well recorded and has some nice
touches to it. If you've considered investigating Chris and
Cosey's back catalogue, think again; although their first
three albums are fine, that was a long time ago. Turn your
attention rather to this chap, who does it far better with less
equipment and actually sounds like he bothers to stay awake
during recording.
Anachronismus, c/o Axel Ellinger,
BittenfelderStrS, 7140, Ludwigshurg,
Germany.
The Crucible of Tearrer, Racing Room
Tapes 1996
Guilt rears its unwelcome head. This is another cassette I
seem to have acquired through means I can no longer
remember. I have at some point corresponded with the
individual behind Racing Room Tapes and may actually
have met him, fmding him to be an entertaining and
interesting individual, but ... what we have here is uhm .. . art.
Two voices and a channel of white noise vie for the listener's
attention. One monologue is almost unintelligible, the other
not so. As my attention gradually focused (about ten
minutes into side one) I became vaguely aware of some
meaningful discourse unfolding for my edification. It would
seem to concern subliminal influences, possibly those of the
less comprehensible monologue. The clearer voice seemed
to be implying that subconsciously its muddier counterpart
was having some obscure effect upon me. 'Surely not', I
scoffed and uncannily the tape replied, 'You may scoff at
this, but remember you are being affected. If you do not
believe so ... then try turning this cassette off and not
listening to the rest of it. You will fmd it impossible.'
Au contraire. I found it easy.
37Egmont
Road, New
Malden, Surrey
KT34AT
H.A.V.E., H.A. V.E. II,
Harlequin Tapes
Tapes like this remind me why I
became interested in the medium in the
first place. The component parts make
for a recipe which could in less able
hands have made for something slightly
less appetising than doggy business pie,
however, the mighty Dave, mastermind
of both this cassette and the related
Harlequin comic has served up a feast
which may leave the discerning ear salivating to more.
Leaving culinary comparisons behind before they become
ridiculous, what we have here is sixty minutes of completely
disparate elements blended into a masterful and cohesive
whole. Jazz. Heavy Metal. Sampling. Found sounds. Tape
loops. Mathematically confusing progressive rock
structures. Most music I've heard combining such
ingredients often smacks of square-arsed contrivance, a
soulless exercise by persons whose right to draw breath I
might question. H.A.V.E. II however, to use a cliche, rocks
like a beast. It flows effortlessly through a myriad of genres,
reassessing and reinventing them as it goes. It shoots, it
scores. It makes all other cassette albums sound like the
folly of silly sausages. Highly recommended.
66