Mark Shreeve – "No Holes Barred" (Church Road Records - MCCR6) 1986

 

From the less precious end of the recent deaths in music trophy cabinet, comes one of the more 'successful' prime movers in the UK Electronic Underground of the early eighties; as epitomised by such labels as Colin Potters Integrated Circuit Records.

Mark Shreeve left world stage around the end of August this year,but again no one told me!? He features quite extensively in these pages,mainly for his DIY cred rather than his late period plinky plonky electronic Space rock and Jean MIchel Jarre-isms.

This self-released cassette shows us Marks jauntier side,with some largely inadvisable Prog Rock humour risk of recording Farts and Belches;as Roger Waters and Ron Geesin had an annoying penchant for.

Yes, Mark had just bought an Emulator Mark 1 in 1986, and there were certainly No Holes Barred for the prog novelty title track, where Mr Shreeve's Digestive Tract gets an unwelcome credit. Yeah, we all did it as soon as we got our old skool samplers out of their box? The Burp was utilised intermediately,with that generous 0.8 seconds of sampling time at the lowest Bit-Rate ......oh how we laughed....but at least we didn't sample the Dog,as Simon Cowell did early in his career disguised as "Wonder Dog",and his 1982 hit "Ruff Mix"...geddit? 

Although Cowell had access to £20,000 quids worth of Fairlight Aampling System to totally waste.....unlike Paul Hardcastles N.N.N.N.N.Nineteen,not?

Sad to say that Shreeve's "No Holes Barred" never cracked the top ten,unlike the previously mentioned atrocities did.

Personally I had to make do with my Commodore 64,equipped with a jolly expensive Sampling module attached at the back for my first sampling experience,which was, you guessed it, sampling a Burp!

Who needed a Fairlight in 1984 when you had this?...notice how none of the kids on the cover are sampling Farts or Burps.....obviously Posh Kids.

 

This was repeated several years later with a purchase of an Ensonique Mirage.You can't beat the old ones can you?

Well, there was one more Hole for Mark to use, unbarred to everyone, and that was his Grave.In which he now rests his plinky plonky fingers,and has given us all some much deserved peace.

I do however notice, that quite a few of these tracks do seem to harbor an unhealthy obsession with,...gulp... Death, 'the proud brother' as Criswell of 'Plan Nine from Outer Space' fame used to call it....a lot.

Shreeves' early work is rather good actually,if you like Tangerine Dream that is.

Tracklist:

A1 M.A.D. 4:33
A2 Crash Head (Early Mix) 4:05
A3 High Frontier 4:52
A4 Edge Of Darkness (Early Mix) 5:35
A5 Bandit 3:38
B1 Widowmaker 3:51
B2 One Last Cold Kiss 3:52
B3 Angel Of Death (Live) 11:08
B4 No Holes Barred 1:47

DOWNLOAD through the hole of this HERE!

Mark Shreeve ‎– "Firemusic" (Agitasjon ‎– AGI 004) 1981

One of my favourite Jazz albums is Archie Shepp's "Fire Music".....ain't I sofisticated (sic)???......which positively bristles with channeled energy(fire) among the abused sax noises, but it does have its smooth bubbly moments,Like the whole of this cassette.

Mark 'Big in Norway' Shreeve's version of "Firemusic" seems to be a much more pleasant evening in front of a log burner than the controlled Napalm of Shepp's wailing horn. Its a soundtrack to witnessing something burning rather than using the energy of the fire in the creative process.Then extinguishing it with gallons of analogue foam.

This limited edition cassette for a Norwegian fanzine label is,for me, Mark's best album. It could easily fit into Tangerine Dreams' back catalogue from the classic period of 73-76.Plenty of gorgeous, warm analogue synth sounds, and hypnotic spacious melodies that could make burning to death a pleasurable experience.  

Tracklist:

A1 Blitz 8:47
A2 Firestorm 9:05
A3 Fireball 8:45
B1 Black Candles 3:45
B2 Firepower 16:37
B3 Heatwave 7:40

DOWNLOAD some warm analogue fire HERE!

Mark Shreeve ‎– "Thoughts Of War" (Uniton Records ‎– Uniton 001) 1981

Mark even had vinyl out in 1981, courtesy of a Norwegian label, as you do.

Here, our Mark ruminates on the sticky subject of 'War'.Pretty nasty stuff is 'War'......lots of killing, mass executions, maimed children, Genocide, its no fun at all......or so I was led to believe.

Listening to Mr Shreeves' 'Thoughts' on the subject one would be inclined to think that these unwelcome violent episodes were quite relaxing, floaty escapades.As if mass destruction was an open gateway to paradise. 

This is a concept of 'war' more akin to that imagined by those stone-age morons in the Islamic State.Of course to get round the fact that it is written in their holy book that they should not kill,they call themselves 'Martyrs'rather than muderers.A fast track to the side of God,and rewarded with, and I quote, "A Sensual Paradise". This consists of being wed to 72(?!) 'perpetual Virgins' called the 'Houri'......women, of course, don't get 72 musculus blokes in paradise, only one,"...and they will be satisfied with him"!!!!???....Have you ever heard such a pile of misogynistic neanderthal bullshit in your life before......well, yes if you're a devout Muslim.......I could go on, but might risk some kind of Fatwa from some suicide-bearded nutjob modern caveman in Birmingham.

I digress.

As pictured on the rear of the Shreeve sleeve, one will notice that Mark could have easily been pictured in 1971 rather than 1981, but his beard is absolutely NOT that of a radical Muslim; so his vision of War is probably not that perverted skidmark of anti-intellectualism that is radical Islam......don't worry the American Taliban are just as fucking bad to balance it up.

These 'Thoughts' on War ironically, or maybe purposefully turn out to be great stuff for Meditations for Peace.Like those Buddhist chaps do.....now wait.....isn't it those Buddhist chaps who are currently performing Genocide on the Rohingya (muslims) people in Myanmar? And wasn't it Buddhists who invented Suicide Bombing in WW2?.....the kamikaze.

So no-one is innocent is the conclusion to this digression.

But Mark Shreeve is innocent of taking the obvious route in this beautifully warm analogue, Berlin School of Electronics style, portrayal of War......this record is really 'Thoughts On Peace', and who could possibly disagree with that?.......yeah yeah I know, there's a huge list, topped by our chums from the three main monotheistic religions.

Good album by the way, even if a conceptually vague one.

Tracklist:

Thoughts Of War - Part One (15:15)
A1.1 Escalation
A1.2 Cold Emotion
A2 Nightmare Of Reality 14:25
B1 Dream Sequence 11:01
Thoughts Of War - Part Two (18:41)
B2.1 Funeral In Desolation
B2.2 Remembrance
B2.3 "...Ashes To Dust..."

DOWNLOAD some relaxing war sounds HERE!

Mark Shreeve ‎– "Phantom" (Mirage) 1980

Seems 1980 was a prolific year for Mark Shreeve, a year we've already established was the high point of this modern renaissance for art and music that some of us were privileged to have lived through.
It's all finished now of course, with the stragglers having to reinvent the wheel again and again, like landscape painters have had to do for the last 500 years or so; that's the future we have to look towards......the same things but done again,masquerading  as something new.
I suppose this rehashing trend started in the seventies, with stuff like 'the Mod Revival' and the resurrection of 'Ska'.
The UK electronic underground of the early eighties was basically a revival of the German Kosmiche music of the early Seventies, repackaged as DIY Electronica, and set in small town provincial England......well no-one else was doing it were they.Very unfashionable in 1980, so if you wanted to hear music like this then you jolly well had to go and 'Do It Yourself', as the Post Punk manifesto would have stated if it had ever existed.
So, here we get a tape of Electronic Space Symphonies recorded in a bedroom in such an exotic location as the dying English seaside resort of Great Yarmouth rather than West Berlin. 
It wasn't always like this for Mark however. He did get to work with a member of Tangerine Dream later on, his obvious inspiration. And, less impressive, infact downright criminal, he wrote several hit tunes for page three bimbo Samantha Fox in the mid-eighties!.....I assume those tunes weren't exploratory electronic odysseys like those on 'Phantom'.....would have been fun though to have Sam vocalising to something like this instead of whatever crud she inflicted upon our innocent discotheques?  

DOWNLOAD this phantom to your machine HERE!

Mark Shreeve ‎– "Ursa Major" (Mirage) 1980

The constellation Ursa Major, aka The Great Bear, containing, as the tail section of the Bear, a familiar pattern of stars commonly known in the USA as 'The Big Dipper', in France as 'Le Casserole' and in the UK, as 'The Plough'.
Thankfully this Cassette only has one title, but its contents are a bubbling 'casserole' of electronic star stuff that ploughs through your sub-consciousness until your thirst has been quenched without double dipping in the well of the Berlin school of synth twiddling.
That's about all I can think of to say without referring directly to the music too much, like modern music reviewers seem to do a lot????.Think, Tangerine Dream as Ursa Major, and Mark Shreeve as Ursa Minor......the poor chap only had one synthesiser, as opposed to about ten thousand under the auspices of TD,yet there's almost no difference in the finished product except for the budget;theirs was massive and Mark's was zero.......they did have better haircuts though.

DOWNLOAD the great bear(d) HERE!

Mark Shreeve ‎– "Embryo" (Mirage) 1980

They came with Beards,with bunches of unkempt long hair tied back in unsightly pony-tails, and carried keyboards as their weapons.......no i'm not talking about the Viking Invasion of Northern England!? The Vikings had weaponry at least equal in lethal effect as a Korg Monopoly or Moog Prodigy, but these later invaders were better known as The UK Electronic Underground. An unsubscribed terrorist organisation from the late seventies and early eighties.
Just as those naughty Punk Rockers, with their spitting and their habits, thought we were free forever from a Klaus Schulz hypnotic sequencer driven electronic symphony, or a Tangerine Dream Live album.There appeared, bubbling below the surface, in the very 'Punky',and certainly not Funky, world of DIY Cassette culture, grew a rebellious,or more accurately,Oblivious,infiltration of unrepentant progressive music fans with a spare few quid to spend on the latest polyphonic synthesisers.
One of these bearded invaders was none other than Mark Shreeve,who spread fear throughout the post-punk legions with his hypnotic keyboard sequences,effected electronic dream-scapes,and meandering melodies.Wielding his Prophet 5 like a sword in the hands of a disenchanted east-London born benefit cheat in Islamic State, with a captured Saudi-Arabian Fighter Pilot kneeling in an orange boiler-suit before him.
I exaggerate of course......no-one had the slightest clue this stuff existed in 1980.They were all too busy moonstomping in that bloody awful Two-Tone cult, where everyone dressed like they were in the Specials and had 'Fun' forced down their throats like geese at christmas......Skin'ead Fois Gras anyone?....no thanks!
That stuff makes Mark Shreeve, music and image, look like real rebellion against any kind of Status Quo,new or old (not the band of course!...ps, R.I.P. Rick Parfitt 😭).....(and as of 31/08/2022 R.I.P. Mark Shreeve too!?

Tracklist:
A1 The Keeper
A2 Alive!
B1 Embryo
B2 Iceflakes

DOWNLOAD some embryonic shreeve HERE!