Friday 7 November 2014

Unune - "S.K.U.M. (1976/1986)" (private release)



Unune is a household name in the Industrial world? Is it not? No? This is a shit answer, because this music/non-music is some of the best real estate in this much abused brown field site. It relies on power, not by beaming unlistenable noise in your direction for too long, but by hanging the noise in space, allowing it to breathe. Doesn’t try to shock for the sake of SHOCK value, inhabiting the much neglected no-mans land of hopelessness and mental illness,ness. A kind of early SPK without the please notice me angle.A slow tumbling noise, like a relentless mudslide of reality, a sodden slagheap crumbling towards a school,a sound-scrape of a disenfranchised population trapped in a derelict sink estate. Its that good?
S.K.U.M is a collection of the first ten years of Stephen Surreal's long career of sonic abuse,from 1976 to 1986. And he's still doing it today! (check out “Despondence”, on Year Zero Records).

I'll let Mr Surreal give you the backdrop to the SKUM story in his own poetic words:

"'S.K.U.M' came about around 1979,I indicate that,as although only 15,I found it enjoyable standing on a stage making strange noises & screaming at people (nobody else had even dared do anything akin in the far reaches of the Scottish West Highlands,to the extent - at the age 16,visiting,then living in Oban,the overbearing mainly catholic & still prominent God squad would 'show the sign of the cross' then take a detour to avoid me in the street) - highly amusing.
Built my first 'synthesizer' aged 12,using an early electronics kit & things scavenged from the local dump,slowly starting making things like distortion boxes from old valve amps,microphones from inverted speakers & possibly the only thing I still have 'pride' for - getting hold of 4 recordable 8 track cartridge players,inserting a single loop into each cartridge,recording sound and using all the track buttons as a rather difficult keyboard.
Phew ...
So - around '78 I had started using 2 old stereo cassette recorders in the Cabs fashion to 'create' albeit badly sounding multi layered tracks - there were no 'official' releases - just given to friends etc,until moving back down to England in '87 - although that's when the reversion to my 'agony for pleasure' thing,that I'd tagged my little releases with previously, became the name,due to finding the albeit brief 'skum genre' had similar attributes to what I was doing. END!"


DOWNLOAD this classic scum HERE!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems like a reasonable chap,he must've never gone to jail or had people try & murder him - obviously there's no MI5 file or anything like that?

Jonny Zchivago said...

Well there was two murder attempts, that left him with a head with a lot of titanium replacement parts. As for MI5, they've probably got some info on everyone if they bothered looking in the vast reserves of GCHQ. So watch out.

stephen Surreal said...

Poor sod's got to go back to hospital to have one of the titanium chunks replaced as well - it's broken through the skin severely in the mouth & is causing blood poisoning every few months - what fun! at last the UNUNE profile pic will be an x ray of something that looks like it's from a 'Startrek Borg cube' - at least the surgeon do the pre op consultation admitted it was rather silly asking if there were any anaesthetic dangers ... gracious monsieur Zhivago - I won't be anon this time ;)

Tingis said...

thanks for the work you're doing in this blog. Tingis
lapellemuta.blogspot.it

Jonny Zchivago said...

thanks Tingis.....some Italian Industrial coming next.

stephen surreal said...

Hi Jonny ....
I is still living,strugglin awfly sumwhat wit memory loss blip gaps,darn it brain damage, epilepsy 'n a nother jump inty sum bad drugs 'n shit...nah well me sez GOOD drugs. ie y'naw 'the crack was good in cracklewood' !! seemin to yet again bin outed frum society aggen !! a well y'naw innit !!
dun this as a kinda new venture,kinda like "beefheasrt kills the pistols in rome" kinda thing.
well erm erm erm ....innit!
see watcher think though mate !!
https://antisymbolrecords.bandcamp.com/album/magickunting-in-nottingham

Jonny Zchivago said...

Ay Up Stephen,long time no talky.
Interesting collection of maladies you have developed there.
Will check aht the new sounds.
ps..whatever happened to Patrik Fitzgeralds farewell album?

stephen surreal said...

Ay up Jonny! aye : long time no talky .....wots on telly? hmm... death,death,disease,virus,COVID,death,death,more death , celebrating past crusades featuring shit loads ov death,COVID,death , few deadly details about some DEATH,more death and oh yeah COVID.,aaaaassssaaaahhhgggggurgledivocaaaaahhhhh.
Last i heard from Patrik (a fair wee whiley ago noo) he was very poorly and hospitalised,this was around the time he'd planned to come up to my studio home and record what would have been his gracious departure from at least my hopeful workings at a farewell album,weren't long after that things went tits up fer me being bashed on the head by a copper...first person i ever put in jail!...(the copper not patrik)
haven't managed to put any of my foots forward enough to no any more about my 'irrelevent battles' hero,or anything else really!!!