Metamorphosis – "Great Babel Gives Birth" (Flowmotion – FM 003) 1983

It might seem a great leap sideways to go from Jandek to a forgotten Industrial group native of the east Midlands of the UK;but musically i think they would have made a very fetching couple if wedded in the church of unpopular music. The representative's ear wax rattling moan would have been the missing icing on this particular cake;so what we're left with is some backing tracks left to posterity like the room of a missing teenager left as a shrine to better days by their destroyed parents.

These experimental industrial funksters came from Nottingham if my memory serves me correctly.Normally I would be slagging them off about football,but recently Nottingham (pronounced Notts Forest to wind 'em up) Forest,a very shit footy team from Nottingham,had the audacity to knock the great Leicester City out of the cup 4:1.Leading to much humble pie being consumed by their more successful Modern Era rivals from twenty-odd miles down the A46.

Musically, Nottingham developed in a dumping ground for every genre of Metal you could name in 60 very dull seconds, and home to Earache Records.

So apart from Medium Medium, a gang of four-a-likey, they manged to produse a peripheral Industrial act in the same mould as the very inconsistent and unduly praised 23 Skidoo.

Nowadays Industrial means endless varieties of that 'Harsh Noise' stuff,but back in the post Throbbing Gristle world subtlety was the way,and more emphasis on the creepy rather than the crawly.

There's low budget Gamelan ,which certainly seem to be saucepans,some filled with water being struck here, and my personal favourite alt-synth device, the Short Wave radio.Of which there's not enough of in these darkening days.

With the impending fall of the new Iron Curtain, i'm hoping for more weird spy transmissions and persistent blocking dissonance to be sent skywards(.....check out the Conet Project numbers station post HERE!  )

They could have been 24 Skidoo if they had had a funky drummer,or maybe even 25 Skidoo if they had a Jandekian Singer.

Tracklisting:

A1 Untitled
A2 Untitled
A3 Untitled
A4 Untitled
A5 Untitled
A6 Untitled
B1 Untitled
B2 Untitled
B3 Untitled

DOWNLOAD from just down the road HERE!

Metamorphosis - "Live at the Ad-Lib Club, Nottingham 26/01/1982"

Well we've had This Heat live at Whispers in Nottingham 1982, now we got Metamorphosis at the Ad-Lib Club, Nottingham from the same year! They got all the top line acts there! I think they even had two top flight Football teams as well in 1982!? These days will never return, but Metamorphosis has, in the form of the complete tape of the concert appearance at the Ad-Lib, from which was culled three tracks for the “Conception 1982” tape.

Called Tiab Guls on the night(?),making its debut on the web, and ripped in top quality 320kps for y'all. Its more 23 Skidoo-isms, 400 Blows jobs, and that Certain Ratio of wavering funky drummer beats to cheesy industrial clichés that give this group a certain infectious charm that’s irresistible.

Track Listing:

01 Five Visions

02 Great Babel

03 Inch by Inch

04 Psychotropic

05 Intense

06 We Better Pray

07 Prophet's Hour

08 Out of the Box

DOWNLOAD an adlibbing metamorphosis HERE!

Metamorphosis - "Conception 1982" (Flowmotion FM 004) 1982

Being a native of the East Midlands in the UK, namely Leicester, I was guilty of missing some pretty essential gigs at the turn of the eighties; like Joy Division, The Pop Group,The Fuck Off Records tour, The Good Missionaries, Pere Ubu,The Disco Zombies, to name but a few. Not listed among these was Nottingham's own Metamorphosis, of whom I was unaware ever played a gig at all?Where they appeared in my place of birth I don't have a clue;but the evidence is here. An all encompassing tour of the East Midlands, taking in Nottingham and Derby too, such heights,only missing out Peterborough!

One was only previously aware of a single recorded outing on the "Elephant Table" compilation; but no, there's more!? A live compilation of the “high points” of this tour is preserved for a finite eternity on this Flowmotion C-45, “Conception 1982”.

They played a passable version of that funky Industrial stuff, with funky drumming and echo laden trumpets, patented by such higher profile luminaries as 23 Skidoo, 400 Blows and Bourbonese Quark. It has a limited danceable effect,but one can imagine several of the sparse audience in attendance dancing to it. The drummer is no Alex Turnbull and fails to play within his limitations,frequently struggling with the funky snare fills that 23 Skidoo could do with ease.

I've never really dug this direction of the funkier strains of Industrial music,or Industrial Disco. Living in an Industrial Environment is not funky or about dancing; unless its about recreating the pounding rhythms of factory machines, and dancing is reflecting the repetitive movements of the workers on the production line in this prison without walls ? I prefer the title “Dark Funk”, aligning it more with Miles Davis's early seventies period rather than William S. Burroughs. Even if the clichéd mantra of “Pay it all Back” is chanted at some moment during the performance, it still sounds too A Certain Ratio at times for me(Flesh trade is Sextet or what?).

But, i'd still sooner see Metamorphosis than Showaddywaddy(famous Leicester pop atrocity) any day,.....terrible drumming though!

Track Listing:

A1_Searching For A Secret (Leicester 18.6.82)

A2_Improvisation (Leicester 18.6.82)

A3_Canal Music (Leicester 18.6.82)

A4_We Better Pray (Nottingham 26.01.82)

B1_Fertile Ground (Derby 3.6.82)

B2_391 (Derby 3.6.82)

B3_Flesh Trade (Leicester 18.6.82)

B4_Intense (Nottingham 26.01.82)

B5_Cactus Land (Nottingham 26.01.82)

DOWNLOAD a virtualtour of the holyland of the east midlands HERE!