We have a short break in our stay in South Wales, and briefly return back across the Severn Bridge to Bristol via Penzance, as some kind person has provided us with the missing Unreleased Chorcazade album from the famed mass group extinction year of 1988. The strangely titled "Death Is Eeklo".
Here,they sound like a intriguing mix between early Felt and a Josef K 45 played at 33rpm, although the Slint parallel remains.
Production values are up on the "Made To Be Devoured" album.As are the number of unfathomable words like 'Eeklo' and the unpronounceable group moniker,which is apparently pronounced thus: Cork-ah-zayde!?
Tracklisting:
01) Night Ferry
02) Laughing Gasman
03) Amorous Gasman
04) Wheel
05) Treacletime
06) Checkered Soul
07) Smiling Wessex Ghost
08) Neat Around Nought
DOWNLOAD is eeklo HERE!
19 comments:
Each release so different from the previous - intriguing indeed! Cheers Jonny and whomever it was sent the files :)
Eeklo is a place in Belgium. Which doesn't make it any less strange, of course.
Cheers to this chronically amazing blog!
Well, as disappearing on a tour of Belgium is part of their mythology, i think that nugget of information throws a good amount of light on the situation.
Thanks Belgian Bloke.
I searched for Made to be devoured and death is eeklo for about 3 hrs on the web about a week ago, with no luck. Mutant sounds was the closest. I don't drop in for a few days and you pull this shit! Fucking genius! May all your dreams come true JZ. Respect bro'.
"Checkered Soul" is amazing!
Love this site, Jonny.
I think you may be correct Scabedy.
Eeklo is indeed in Belgium. The pic on the back was taken the morning after our last ever gig. The pics on the front from 1984/5. There isn't plenty more where that came from.
Chris (guitar)
Hi Jonny, longtime lurker here. You’ve exposed me to a lot of great music over the last few years on this site.
I’m writing this comment because I have no idea where else to put it. There’s obviously not a lot of writing on Chorchazade online (and 80% of that is here), so I really can’t find the info I’m looking for.
Considering that “Death is Eeklo” showed up on very few sites before it got here, and really only exists in that form, I think it might not be in the correct order. Otherwise, why does the chorus about “the crazy wheel” happen in “Amorous Gasman” rather than “Wheel”? I also noticed that at the end of every track, for a split second the beginning of the next track plays, but it was never the beginning of the next track (with the exception of “Laughing Gasman” into “Amorous Gasman”). So I made a point of figuring out which tracks went into the next, and reordered them based on that. I’m not really sure if this is correct, since this seems to be from a tape source (“Wheel” shouldn’t have the beginning of “Treacletime” if it were sourced from the LP). And maybe the songs on the tape were out of order, so someone in the band sequenced them correctly in order for file-sharing purposes. I don’t know; but that still wouldn’t explain why the song called “Amorous Gasman”——rather than the song called “Wheel”——would have that “crazy wheel” lyric repeated over and over again.
So here’s what I came up with. The songs as they’re called in the download file are in brackets:
Night Ferry [Checkered Soul] — 4:42
Laughing Gasman [Wheel] — 3:40
Amorous Gasman [Laughing Gasman] — 4:25
Wheel [Amorous Gasman] — 4:09
Treacletime [Neat Around Nought] — 2:51
Checkered Soul [Smiling Wessex Ghost] — 5:50
Smiling Wessex Ghost [Night Ferry] — 5:35
Neat Around Nought [Treacletime] — 2:41
Also, with this order, Side 1 and Side 2 would be approximately the same length, whereas the order in the download has Side 1 almost two minutes longer than 2.
Whatever order is correct, thank you Jonny for exposing me to this strange band, and being pretty much being the only place online that hosts their two albums and EP. (Both compilations, “The Halle-Bopp Mysteries” and “A Pocket Guide to Chorchazade,” are seemingly impossible to find.)
R J.
Hi RJ,
thanks a bundle for your work. We need more people like you.
We could do with Chris46(see above) confirming all this if he can remember whats what....however I suspect your running order is spot on.
many thanks
Hi, Chris46 from CHORCHAZADE here.Sorry I missed this last year. I now have time to explore. We were hampered by the name - but once it was suggested there was really no alternative. Our official vinyl releases had the "cork...uh...zade" pronunciation on them somewhere, on the insert to Made to be Devoured - I've just checked one of the 100 copies I have around the house. There are plenty on e-bay - check out Jamesboyrecords. The track listing for the "Death is Eeklo" CD is: Night Ferry, Laughing Gasman, Amorous Gasman, Wheel, Treacletime, Checkered Soul, Smiling Wessex Ghost, Neat Around Nought.
Anything else anybody wishes to know??
Keep well, Chris
Oh yes - Eeklo is where we played our last gig and the cd was meant to be called Death IN Eeklo. Track listing is correct in the last comment. Made to be Devoured is readily available on vinyl (I have 100) but the rest of the stuff needs to be downloaded from very old links. Halle Bopp was post Chorchazade being just Noel and Julian in places, calling themselves Invisible.
chris46: How wonderful to have someone from the band post here! If I can first just say that Chorchazade were so ahead of their time it boggles the mind. The music you all created is something very special to me, and anyone I've ever played it to has said some variation of "Who is this? This is amazing!" Both albums, Made to be Devoured and Death Is Eeklo, are dying to get the full reissue treatment. That said, is there a master copy anywhere of the Death is Eeklo recording? Something that could get a proper remaster so we have something of better fidelity than the mp3s currently floating about on the web? If so, I'm about ready to put up the money to reissue this myself!
Anyway, I hope you are safe and doing well.
Love from the States,
-A fan
I'm in there with you Anonymous.Its a sure fire break even proposstion. we need those master tapes.
Hi, Jonny. A few years delayed on this. Thank you for the kind words. I was fairly certain about the order because of those lead-ins, but I found a copy of A Pocket Guide to Chorchazade on slsk, and the D.I.E. tracks on there confirm what I thought. (I’m still kind of learning how to use that site, so apologies to whoever uploaded that back in 2008 if I messed with their bandwidth or whatever.)
So no one asked for this, but I’ll just put it out there anyway…
Over the past few years, I’ve been experimenting with cleaning up audio recordings, usually for when I’m putting together a playlist with songs from different sources——especially if they’re sourced from bootlegs, the difference in volume levels and mastering can be jarring.
So in cases like this, especially if it’s playlists by a single artist and featuring songs from the same era, I try and get the sound to replicate the primary source.
(All this is to say, I think other people who check this site, and are interested in bootlegs, probably have the same interest and hobby.)
So on and off, I’ve experimented with the three Chorchazade records, in an attempt to try and bring out their fullest possible sound. It’s kind of a challenge, because all of them have different dominant production styles (and they were all produced by the same Colin Larn guy??). I’m also sure that all three of them were ripped by three different people. Crackle & Corkette is ripped at a loud volume, there’s this constant mist of noise which threatens to envelop the quieter parts, and a lot of LOUD crackling (& Corketting?) on Side 1.
Made to be Devoured on the other hand was probably ripped at too low of a volume. This otherwise wouldn’t be too much of a problem, but the rip somehow gives the impression on some songs that I’m listening to it off a telephone.
Death is Eeklo (while never officially released, I consider it the band’s masterpiece) is difficult for different reasons. The rip is pretty good (despite the botched order), but the dynamic peaks and valleys tend to be too intense for a 20+ year-old, dumped-on-roadside, warehouse-squatting vinyl to handle without surface noise interfering.
As for Chris, I don’t know if anyone from the band still has the master-tapes available. I know from my end, I’d be willing to buy them physically or digitally if they become available in a mass-market platform. (I’d even be willing to buy a version of “A Pocket Guide” flatly digitized straight from cassette. I think the versions floating around online might actually be missing some songs.) In the meantime, if you’re willing, I could send you my remastering attempts in a Google Drive: if you and your former bandmates like the results, you’re more than welcome to use them if you want to sell them digitally. There’s Bandcamp and other options out there. An actual from-the-tapes remaster would be ideal, but this could possibly work as a temporary substitute.
Hi, Chris here, sorry for the delay. I'm pretty sure that the other members of Chorchazade would have no objections to any modernising etc being attempted. I think Keith may have master tapes, but can't be sure. Noel should have them really since he was the composer of the works. I would like to hear the re-mastering attempts - do you need my e-mail address to send them?
Chris
Hi, Chris here, please feel free to go ahead with any re-mastering etc. I would be more than happy to receive any files, just let me know what is needed from me.
Chris
To but Made to be Devoured go here: https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/1264701252
Hi Chris,
sorry about my own delay.
If you're still checking this thread, I would appreciate your email. I'm leaving this comment from my gmail account, which hopefully you'll be able to contact, if it's easier for you to contact me there.
I'll put together a drive file. And if you like the results, feel free to send them to Keith and Noel as well. I'll send you the current draft files of what I have for Crackle & Corkette, Made to be Devoured, Death is Eeklo, plus "Jinxy" and "Relissa" (I only started on those two last night, but it reminded me of this thread). I think there's additional work I could do on MTBD (it currently sounds a bit too treble-heavy), but I think Crackle & Corkette and Death Is Eeklo sound very good right now.
R. J.
I have discovered a new Chorchazade fan! I’ll try sharing the remixes with him!
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