Various Artists - "C'est Shit! (46 Muffled and Fuzzy Ferric Oxide Symphonies)" - (Die or DIY? Mixtape # 3) 2012

-->DIE OR DIY? Brings you an accurate replication of the classic DIY sound of antiquity; namely, the sound of a young repressed male trying to sing badly while gagged in a neighbouring room.Backed up by a random Television set packed in a wet cardboard box stuffed with cotton wool. All this fronted by a budget electric keyboard played by an autistic child.

To the modern youth this music is virtually the equivalent of being Deaf. The muffled narrow bandwidth frequency range, mostly a fuzzy midrange punctuated with hissy stabs of trebly stuff, and made by people who obviously can’t sing, play any instruments or write songs. To give ‘da yoot’ some grudging credit, they are right, but they have no understanding of how liberating this behaviour was for the cassette generation of 78-83, for so long crushed under the iron boots of popular prog, economic feudalism, and techno elitism. How could the kids hope to own a cheap guitar, or even the cheapest of Rick Wakeman’s mountain of synthesisers, when there were no jobs,and they were told that one must learn to play Bach’s Toccatta in fuge perfectly before even dreaming of making a record! This shit changed of course with the Sex Pistols hysteria thing,and the availability of cheap cassette decks. Buy two cassette recorders,and you could multitrack by recording from one to the other whilest playing over the top. The resulting sound is a unique fifth generation kind of white noise drenched no-fi weirdness, that can never be accurately recreated with todays shit, “everything is possible”, technology. Freedom from choice can lead the artist unwillingly in an interesting direction, lead by something other than the dull mind of a youth. This is the sound of a generation that had no choices, no prospects and no future other than one that could be made by themselves. Do it yourself, ‘cus no other fucker is gonna do it for ya!

It all went tits up around 1984, when low priced multitrack cassette portastudios appeared, and technology became freely available for everyone. Home recordings started to be easy, and professional sounding, in glorious ‘dobly’; and nuffin’ sounds good in ‘dobly’ does it? It was easy to sound like Joy Division,and so everyone did.

Side A is mostly devoid of any standard instrumentation, guitars being replaced by cheap synths, organ drum machines,and tape collages. Miserable noise made by miserable boys in miserable bedrooms, for a growing alternative audience tired of pompous pop ponces. Heavy going, and probably some of the weirdest sounding music ever made.

Side B pays tribute to the listless, feckless legions of pop groups, who couldn’t disguise their apathy on record; along with the more clued up musicians who saw this as an opportunity to get their more thoughtful works out to an eager audience. So expect more structured work,more tunes, and more amateur but marginally competent musicianship and songcraft.

Its Muffled, its fuzzy, its on Ferric Oxide Tape, and its fantastic.

SIDE A:

1 - "Lemonade'n'Beer" - Gus Coma
2 - "Saturday Night at Biot" - Cabaret Voltaire
3 - "Underneath the Wardrobe" - Instant Automatons
4 - "In The Room" - Third Door from the Left
5 - "The Worm Has Turned" - The Wet Taxis
6 - "The Bridewell" - Philip Johnson
7 - "False erotic Love" - Richard H. Kirk
8 - "Car Situations" - Storm Bugs
9 - "Movement" - Sonderkommando
10-"Hiding Behind Me" - Laurence Shorthouse
11-"Near Enough/The Bells the Bells" - Holiday Fun
12-"Computer Violence" - Robert Lawrence and Mark Phillips
13-"Voices" - M.A. Peacock
14-"Nine Years Old" - Doof
15-"1441" - Karls Empty Body
16-"Murder by Furniture" - Colin Potter
17-"Sentimental" - Those Little Aliens
18-"Punish You" - We Be Echo
19-"Forget the Vocals, Relax!" - Dave Jones
20-"Songs of Dead philosophers" - JP Satre Band
21-"N4's" - N4's
22-"Untitled" - Sydney Quads
23-"DIY" - The Door and the Window

DOWNLOAD SIDE A HERE  or HERE

SIDE B:

1 - "Prats 2" - The Prats
2 - "Political Song" - The Midnight Circus
3 - "Beach Coma" - The Collective Horizontal
4 - "Dig Dig Dig" - Dig Dig Dig
5 - "Cityscape" - Androids of Mu
6 - "I Will Be Your Electric Chair" - Controls
7 - "Electrical Dream" - The Missing Persons
8 - "Tablecloth" - From Chorley
9 - "Space Oddity" - Danny and the Dressmakers
10-"Snappy Fingers" - Milk From Cheltenham
11-"The Bathroom Song" - Renaldo and the Loaf
12-"Hoochie Pooch" - Naafi Sandwich
13-"Stinking Smooth" - The Oxford Dictionaries
14-"Another Shade in the Sky" - Rire To Laugh
15-"Babysitters" - The Stupid babies
16-"Long Life" - Sub Active
17-"Tiptoes" - Twelve Cubic Feet
18-"Geographical Problem" - The Varicose Veins
19-"Kung Foo Killers" - Six Minute War
20-"Drink is a Drug" - Modern Living
21-"Judgement Day" - Vision On
22-"Baby Snakes" -  Digital Dinosaurs
23-"Robot Dance" - Sea of Wires

DOWNLOAD SIDE B HERE or HERE!