Ende Shneafliet – "Animals From Outer Space" (Trumpett – trum 0003) 1981

The titles of A lot of the greatest shite-fi movies end with the epithet "From Outer Space"; "Teenagers from...." "Plan Nine From...", "It Came From..." etc, so one must welcome a DIY minimal synth tape from Holland onto the pantheon of low budget genius and be suitably deferential.

You know what you're gonna get with this C-60 on the near faultless Trumpett label; cheap drum machines, uncrowded analogue synth monophonia, and plenty whispering Dutch robo-geezers keeping the noise down so as not to annoy their parents watching Dutch TV downstairs in the windmill. Sounding not unlike a bunch of circuit bent speak and spell machines.

I was gonna say '...and then they got a job'....but, it seems they are still at it today!?
Tracklist:

A1 Animals From Outer Space
A2 Alien
A3 Midnight Train
A4 The Day Detlef Macha Won
A5 Macho Japanese
A6 Ant People
A7 Hangman
A8 Elephant's Cakewalk
A9 Zitronen Riolplastik
B1 Crüsoe's Roots
B2 Panzerfaust 60 M
B3 Mein Gänschen
B4 Der Blöde Hund
B5 Twistin On The Tombstones
B6 Vampirella
B7 Aeroplane
B8 My Mother Sells Tuperware
B9 Charybass
B10 Elephant's Cakewalk
B11 Tupperware

DOWNLOAD some dutchmen from outer space HERE!

Doxa Sinistra – "Via Del Latte" (Trumpett – Trum 0007) 1982

They are raised on chocolate Sprinkles and peanut butter, eat inexplicably bland cheese stored in the form of balls, cycle everywhere wearing clogs, are either tall or very tall, have an obsession with the price of everything,are often seen putting fingers in dykes whilst off their tits on weed,and live on barges or in windmills.......but we love them......I of course am talking in stereotypical terms about "The Dutch".

I've also noticed that they have an innate ability,like their close Belgian friends, to make near perfect minimal synth tapes for people in the UK to listen to. The UK sends all their Synth acts to America,where the Americans all have the impression that British men are all translucent skinned emaciated manchildren dressed in black PVC....or, in other words, are all in Depeche Mode...(er RIP the chap from DM who died yesterday by the way!).....rather similarly, the Brits think that all Dutch listen to Industrial Electronica and cruise sex supermarkets for entertainment. Any liberal European,or should I say 'Continental' country,especially in the EU,are looked upon by the British as a bunch of randy pervs shagging each other 24/7,which is why Brits only have sex on their summer vacations in these very same places often derided as Horny Hell Holes by the repressed UK psyche.....why do you think I moved to France?

Definitely not for the music!....okay....the Houses were Cheap,what other reason could there possibly be?

Well, this tape,if you are familiar with Doxa Sinistra's other tapes,is their best,and their first;....one can say that about so many others,but in this case it adds further credence to this undeniable factoid.

I like me 1970's synthesizers I do.I like to hear knobs twiddled buttons touched,sliders retracted,jacks inserted,Oscillators Oscillating;even other person's knobs twiddled, and yes, i even like to twiddle me own knob from time to time.

So now we've got 60 minutes of classically Dutch Industrial Electronica,all we need for the complete  experience is some chocolate sprinkles,and some off the shelf bondage gear from a Dutch Supermarket, and we're twiddling.

On a more topical note...there's a track called 'Soviet Invasion'...not only have the Russians missed out on the entirety of 20th century culture,they appear to want to miss out on the 21st century too...so be it. The bloke from Depeche Mode is dead, yet Putin still lives...there is no justice.

Hoofdstuk I:

A1 Intro Sinistra 5:09
A2 Khayanart 2:30
A3 Coolidge Effect 2:12
A4 Epsilon Albion 32` 2:31
A5 Via Del Latte I 0:50
A6 Ruhrgebiedt 2:32
A7 Soviet Invasion 2:09
A8 Kuomintang`s Space Blues 2:02
A9 Via Del Latte II 1:00
A10 Triangular Intermodule Computer Display Screen 2:22
A11 Via Del Latte III 2:08

Hoofdstuk II:

B1 Urkey Sticks (Visserslatijn) 2:25
B2 Alien 3:00
B3 L-Dopa 2:23
B4 Via Del Latte IV 0:35
B5 Web Of Tiggywaugh 2:35
B6 Entomorbide 3:05
B7 Maurizio`s Minestrone 4:00
B8 Modern Age 2:56
B9 Via Del Latte V 0:58
B10 Outro Sinistra (Live) 3:35

DOWNLOAD from the milky way the dutch way HERE!

British Electric Foundation – "Music For Stowaways" (Virgin – TCV 2888) 1981

Retro-Futurism always requires an amount of outdated tech that was destined for the garbage can,and there was a lot of this in 1981.In this case a cassette only release of instrumental versions of future hits destined to be thrown into the garbage can,alongside the cassette, the 8-track Tape,DAT,Mini-Disc,and lately, the compact disc and any hope of getting subversive elements of the underground yoof culture regularly in the charts. I smell the stale whiff of a Bob Last influence going on here,and I 'm not wrong either;the Scottish Bernie Rhodes gets an executive producer and design credit on this luxurious cassette packaging featuring the other two in the original Human League. It's Heaven 17 before Heaven 17,minus the vocals,an old trick that Last tried with The Fire Engines to try and get the mug punter to buy the same songs twice. A trick adopted by those smashing chaps in the music industry by making your music reproduction system fashionably obsolete. Then endlessly reissuing the entire pre-1990 back catalog on Compact Disc,followed by the 'deluxe' editions, then the 'super-deluxe' version...and so on!

Thankfully,after many thousands of quid later, we have now realized that Vinyl was the superior product after all.40 minutes of anything is now recognised as 'enough',and the cassette was much more than just kitch,it was convenient!So now we are buying back all those records that we sold to buy the CD's! Not to mention the now hilarious fact that New Order once released a Mini-Disc only version of one of their insipid tunes!? ....although I can't laugh, I once shelled out £300 quid on a Portable Phillips Digital Compact Cassette(DCC) recorder, which was virtually obsolete before I got it home.....a bit like the British Electric Foundation actually.

Ian Craig Marsh,the 'hip' one, and Martyn Ware,the one who looked like he worked in a paper merchants office, thought they were the talent in the mark one version of the Human League;when actually none of them had any talent.....which is no bad thing I suppose considering the nature of most of the groups featured on these hallowed pages.....but they did have a promising idea to make pure electronic music that could conceivably get one into the British hit Parade. Trouble was, they had no idea how to make a tune...the exception of course being..."Being Boiled".If they had kept it like that there would have been no need to inflict "Don't You Want Me Baby" on an innocent planet.

Yeah, the Human League split up into the Human League mark 2, and the British Electric Foundation,or B.E.F. who obviously still hadn't any clue how to write a tune,so got laden with the task of making a bunch of pointless instrumentals, which evolved into making more cassettes with guest singers such as Billy MacKenzie and ...whoops....Gary Glitter,in their "Music Of Quality And Distinction"(no Irony involved) series;sadly also responsible for resurrecting the career of one Tina Turner,a crime only topped by their own Heaven 17 project which evolved out of all this noodling ,and a desperate need to out-do 1981's chart darlings,Phil Oakey's Human League.

Being an owner of the largely disappointing pre-split Human League oeuvre, i was hopeful that B.E.F. would flourish without their Front man and his distracting lop-sided barnet (Barnet Fair = 'Hair' in cockney-ese); but,although they must have had a hefty advance from Virgin,and spent it on every synth a young man could possibly buy in 1981,its a tad uninspired;but awash with the kind of analogue gloop and tang that could allow even Gary Glitter to make a come back.....well, maybe not? Although I do feel it's my responsibility to warn my loved and admired readership that this tape also includes some judicious and malicious use of a slap-bass! 

One non-fictional weapon that has yet to be threatened upon the west by Vladimer Putin....once known as the Mark King of the KGB's in house white boy Funk outfit, "The Bass-Slappin' Slap heads". There was once a rumour that the USSR had a division of Stanley Clarke clones armed and ready with fretless basses to invade the Baltic states....thank Christ for our children that impending economic collapse and a certain Nuclear accident put paid to that despicable horror.

There is,however, intelligence that the Chechnyan Jaco Pastorious Fan club have mobilised and are approaching Donetsk as I type.Humanitarian corridors have been set up.

*****This ISN'T Fake News!*****

Tracklist:

Uptown:

A1 The Optimum Chant4:10
A2 Uptown Apocalypse 3:12
A3 Wipe The Board Clean 3:46
A4 Groove Thang 4:06

Downtown:

B1 Music To Kill Your Parents By 1:26
B2 The Old At Rest 5:37
B3 Rise Of The East 2:50
B4 Decline Of The West 7:05

DOWNLOAD to stow away HERE!

Drinking Electricity – "Overload + Singles" (Pop:Aural / Survival) 1980/1982

Inmates of Bob Last's Pop:Aural imprint,whose professed aim was to get a leftfield act into the pop charts by stealth.

Having been robbed of The Human League by Virgin,an independent label who had subverted the Pop Charts many times before already....a fact that went unnoticed in the Last household it seems.It didn't stop him from ruining The Fire Engines,among others, in his quest for Pop mogul-ism in the guise of the hip priest of 80's pop.

Nonetheless, Bob Last was responsible for some the greatest hip-pop failures of the early part of the decade.

Drinking Electricity, from somewhere in downtown Surrey,had the perfect set-up;guy and gurl with tech who weren't too harsh on the eye. A lot of the tunes sound like you've heard them before elsewhere,there's hints of "Assault On Precinct 13" and the main riff of "Being Boiled" appears(I guess that Bob felt it was his property?) ,but transferred to a funky bass guitar.

In all, its a fine collection of wonderfully analogue minimal electronics coupled with spiteful robo-bitch vocals treading on the heavily mined no-mans land of too "kool for skool" territory.....(for a fine dissertation on the pitfalls of being too kool for skool click HERE;)

There's also an irreverent cover of Brit Rock'n'Roll classic, Johnny Kidd's "Shaking All Over", which gives me an opportunity to direct you to a funny story concerning said tune which one had recounted earlier in the vast archives of this blog HERE!

But don't let all this nostalgia divert you from the fact that this Drinking Electricity collection is rather flipping GOOD, Flamin' Nora it is...there's even a Flamin' Groovies cover too?)...Don't wanna sound too enthusiastic,but these kids sound slightly more like a Belgian twosome than UK Synth duo;not that there's anything wrong with that,just two different beasts. the UK version got lots of hits and got rich,but the Belgian equivalent got ignored and poor....mainly because when they sang they sounded like a motor neuron disease sufferer's speech synthesizer;which was briefly novel once upon a time if it was only for a couple of tracks......which Drinking Electricity did conversant as they obviously were in the do's and don't of pop music.....there you go....too kool for skool again!

Tracklist:

1 Breakout 3:25
2 Discord Dance 3:27
3 Good Times 3:34
4 Colour Coding 3:33
5 Fall 3:53
6 Breakout II 1:56
7 Countdown 4:09
8 News Peak 3:46
9 Twilight Zone 3:11
10 Superstition 3:35
11 The Promise 4:11
12 Subliminal 7" 4:08
13 Random Particles 3:23
14 Shaking All Over 3:07
15 China 2:53
16 Cruising Missiles 3:50
17 Shaking Dub 4:15
18 Good Times 12" 4:38
19 Breakout 12" 5:05
20 Subliminal Radical Re-mix 6:12
21 Shake Some Action (Demo Version) 3:30

DOWNLOAD something shockingly good HERE!

The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor – "The Best Of The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor" (Self-Released) 2014 / 1980-1982

Owner of ,probably, thee very worst band name ever conceived , The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor ( TNGWAM ) made some rather uninspired Synth-pop to rival fellow Sheffield pop-synthers Human League's exceedingly crap "Hysteria" album, or anything by the truly terrible Heaven 17.

As they didn't have a bloke with a silly lop-sided haircut,or a pair of utterly talentless Townie dancers, TNGWAM never got whisked into the studio and have all their hits written by Martin Rushent.The result being, no-one remembers them no more outside of Southern Yorkshire....but,by 'eck, maybe a shrewd name change would have helped them commercially? If you want a hit never have a band-name that doesn't bore the punters three words in.A fine example of how not to do it,to be taught in a lecture at one of those ridiculous Pop academies that are replacing really useless stuff like Engineering Degrees at universities all across the western world.

The name, I am Told, comes from a series of children's books written by nasty Nazi sympathizer Enid Blyton.The 'monitor' part being a reference to the poor sods who had to go and collect the Milk and distribute it to the other kids in the class...until Margaret Thatcher stopped this Free Milk for kids nonsense;so not only did Thatcher liberate the miners from the pits,she also liberated the minors from the humiliation of being the Milk Monitor.

I was once press ganged into being the Coffee Monitor for, and by, the staff in the Staff room...don't worry none of the fuckers touched me up or anything;despite the head master being a weirdo god squad nutjob.Luckily i went to a grammar school after my hard time in the primary school system, to attend a strictly secular institution full of us supposedly intelligent kids...so no stupid fuckers to pander to with the patently absurd tales contained within any Holy books.The wheat was sieved from the chaff,and we had science lessons.Who says I'm not Elitist?

Enid Blyton's Tory Propaganda,and civil service training manual for any hooray hennrietta's gulping down the Pimms for throwing Lockdown parties during any future pandemic at number 10 Downing street..... very good for starting fires i've heard

Sheffield, of course, is one of the major gene-pools of Synth pop,post-punk and Industrial culture,so naturally TNGWAM were gonna struggle,and inevitably sank without trace,not even an oil slick left on the vast ocean of popular music;and no-one is gonna be bothered to send a submersible either...for a reason.....which I wager you can guess.

  

Tracklist:

1 All The Naked Heroes 2:30
2 Diary 5:02
3 Front 2:37
4 Is All I Need 2:29
5 Marcella Ball 4:56
6 Sensation / No Sensation 2:54
7 So Far Away 3:12
8 Wax Museum 2:48
9 What We Don't Want To See 3:34
10 Panthea

DOWNLOAD to hear some naughty girls on your monitors HERE!

Doxa Sinistra – "Newsflashes" (Trumpett – TRUM 0031) 1988

More Dutch pals in the form of smartarse Industrial Electronic quartet Doxa Sinistra.Who treat us to an off kilter excursion down the Paul Hardcastle n-n-n-n-n-n-n-Nineteen route,by sampling off the telly,specifically news broadcasts,and some Clint Eastwood samples,adequately Hardcastled on a couple of tracks. It sounds as if they mostly still adhered to the old Skool Industrial technique of using magnetic tape  rather than shelling out for an Ensoniq Mirage,as featured by the bloody fucking awful Big Audio Dynamite group around this time, featuring the Posh Rasta himself, Don Letts. I even bought one when it was cheap in 1989,cost me £500 quid from the big music shop in the centre of Town;...you know,one of those places that leave you standing there like a plonker while the shop assistant plays a Rick Wakeman number on the latest Yamaha digital piano .

"Alright mate, wot can I do you for?" it quipped;.....they are all 'funny' of course,....and pretentiously laid back as if on weed like the failed pop stars the staff of these horrendous places, without exception, were.

"He wants to buy a Mirage!" he shouts across the shop floor."Ha Ha Ha! responds the rather unoccupied staff.

"You're lucky, there's one left, and its on sale", says Dick Wakeman...."Sure you don't want an Emulator 2?"..."er no?"I mumbled,reluctantly revealing my wad of fifties clutched tightly in my fist.

One of the best things about the Internet is that all these places and their equivalents, have now become figments of their own non-existent imaginations,and are now ,thankfully, bankrupt.

The Mirage worked just fine for a while, until the Floppy Disc Drive died. The keyboard was actually rather good,so i used it as a master controller,more than a crap sampler.

One did actually go back to that very same musical emporium to purchase an Akai sampler in the 90's,but this time i was served by a rather attractive young lady,the failed poop-stars were now noticeably absent,who proceeded to sell me anything she could think of,and largely succeeded.The flirting ended as soon as the transactions were registered.....her choice/loss. 

One must say, there doesn't seem to be that much News sampling going on in these Doxa Sinistra tracks,I thought I'd mention them by name to remind you of the subject of this waffle,but there is quite a bit of that Dutch ability to talk like an automated voice program going on.The electronic,mostly analogue,backing tracks would have benefited greatly from no speaking Dutchmen or news samples polluting the nicely minimal EBM Industrial tunage of this,lets face it,it's a concept album innit?...but that's always been the downfall of many a concept album is it not? The reliance on filler tracks to convey a story-line that no-one gives a flying duck about.

The Who's "Tommy" being a prime example....or is that atrocity better described as a 'Rock Opera',like Jesus Christ Superstar, or a lurid example of why Concept albums are generally as terrible as they seemed to obviously be on paper? Tommy would have benefited greatly by the violent death of the title character by the end of track one,then cut it down to be the marvelous EP it certainly should have been.....as for Quadrophenia.....don't get me started!

Tracklist:

Channel One
A1 Station Call
A2 Newsflashes
A3 Media Bomb
A4 Remote Birth Control
A5 Foreign Correspondent
A6 Swindle
A7 The Sky Is The Limit

Channel Two
B1 Televisor
B2 Call Now!
B3 Cocoon World
B4 International Cycling Sport
B5 Il Spirito Di Sergio Leone
B6 The 12 Miss Pelicoes

DOWNLOAD to interrupt your normal program HERE!

Amok – "Warm Leeches Dance" (ADN – ADN TAPES 17) 1985

There are two modern musical idioms that Italians seem to have taken a rosy view upon,Progressive Rock being the most obvious, and the other,being that which is loosely termed 'industrial'. A genre, that is in fact, Progressive Rock for persons who can't actually play any instruments,unless left field literature is an instrument?

Here we find Mr Amok ,Enrico Piva, giving us a lesson in overthinking,inspired by Freud's "Jenseits des Lustprinzip (Death Pulsion)", which we've all read haven't we?

Of course the word 'Death' has to make an appearance,but thankfully Enrico has mercifully left out any boringly obvious Nazi references......which makes me think that this isn't Industrial music at all...that's for arse-lickers. This is more like a sound installation,made for an audience of chin stroking sub-intellectual posers who really wish they were at a Van Der Graaf Generator gig...I know I do.

Genesis P. being Ironic..... Again!?
I bet you he'd read "Jenseits des Lustprinzip"....or maybe wishes he had?

Amok, however non-amok this tape is,is perfect background muzak for your Abstract Impressionism soirée held every other Tuesday at the community centre;but if you last ten minutes into side one I'll give you a candy bar,augmented by a nice squishy Leech or two. 

It was,however, recorded in a steel barge in Finland after all?

Tracklist:

A1 Warm Leeches Dance 29:42
B1 Warm Leeches Dance 29:43

DOWNLOAD some dance musick for bloodsuckers HERE!

Doxa Sinistra – "Conveyer-Belt" (ADN – ADN TAPES 15)1985

On the same cassette label that Phil,not Paul, Kelday's New 7th Music released a singular tape on,which fancied itself as one of those rather popular Industrial labels that we were getting sick of by 1985;just as this foursome of ambitious Dutchmen fancied their chances of being a popular chartbound Minimal Wave EBM Industrial combo.

Doxa Sinistra start off sounding like Donna Summer covering one of the sillier Depeche Mode industrial incarnations,and end up on the pretentious platform awaiting the next train to Bollocks-ville.

Anything describing itself as a 'Noise Painting' is to be steered well clear of.

However, a few of these tracks could be described as Minimal Synth classics,which would get many a string vested bondage and leather S&M trend follower working up a lather in his crotchless PVC underpants on the dancefloor on Gay Tuesday back in 1985,and for those of you who are too late for the trend,back in 2010 as well.So i guess we'll be donning our leather bikers cap,plastic trousers and chains again in 2035 if my graph is correct.This stuff never goes out of fashion for too long.

Have you ever noticed that when a Dutchman sings he sounds not unlike Professor Steven Hawkings's Speak and Spell machine voice...and this group are certainly no, exception. 

Tracklist:

A1 The Late Jack Wright
A2 The Networkers Pts. 1 & 2
A3 Shunting-Yard
A4 Large Expanded Halls
A5 Conversation à la Chaîne
A6 Branoff 4
A7 The Enterprise
B1 Exploring Expedition
B2 The Other Stranger
B3 No Car, No Job
B4 Noise Painting, Tableau 1

DOWNLOAD the bastard offspring of master and servant and georgio moroder HERE!

New 7th Music – "In A Dream" (ADN – ADN TAPES 19) 1985

Paul Kelday sometimes appeared on the cassettes made by his brother Phil's improv group 'New 7th Music', which involved doing what you felt like doing and calling it music basically.So don't expect going on a ambient cosmic journey into the farther reaches of the infinite pulsating brain at the center of the universe.This is the kind of music,in the loosest sense of the word,that our hominid ancestors would have played as soon as they picked up a dead beast's jawbone and beat each other to death with it.

As spontaneous music combo's go, these chaps aren't quite of the Derek Bailey,Hans Bennink,Evan Parker ,Scratch Orchestra standard,and more like a club of weirdo's who meet every Tuesday evening at the community centre ,tape recorder in hand......;but that's what I like about it. Ain't no criticism;we exist here to celebrate the Geek,and reject the mundane.....although a lot of the time the mundane is as equally alienating for the vast magnolia coloured armies of pointlessness,as it is mundane.When done correctly the most abominable of species can be used satisfactorily against your brainwashed oppressors.

Just listening to this could well get you euthanised in the new Russian empire that suddenly awoke recently....much to the 'joy' of 84% of the Russian public according to a recent Russian Government Poll which required contact details and ID before receiving an answer,as three tooled-up thugs wait for a signal near-by. 

Tracklist:

A1 Live At The Richmond, Brighton
A2 In A Dream
A3 Violin Phase
B1 The Bitter Humours Of Fermenting Passion Flow
B2 The Circle Of Violence
B3 Life Began From Here
B4 Ritual

DOWNLOAD in your dreams HERE!

Paul Kelday – "One Dimensional" (UFO Mongo – UFOMONGO 007) 2006

'Big in Sweden' isn't usually a subject that is risen in many conversations,and it doesn't even really apply to Paul Kelday;but, he seems to have an audience in the land of ABBA,Ikea and Volvo's,no matter how small. There have been a couple of post disappearance compilations of Paul's work that have materialised in the Swedish part of the Scandinavian peninsula. This "One Dimensional" release being one of them,but,uniquely for Kelday,it's on vinyl,.....300 copies of it.

Most of the material has only been available on tapes before but exists here in different mixes than previously released,and a few of them are even exclusive.Whoopee-doo.

I guess Lp's are as close to one dimension as you're gonna get in music enregistration.The other side is not visible,so doesn't exist until you turn it over,and viewed edge on, its just a black line hanging in a defined space.....unless its pressed on coloured vinyl,or as some clever dicks have certainly done before, on invisible vinyl.Place the disc out of sight,and the only clue of its existence is if it's playing,emitting a collection of waves.The nature of a wave is such that it can exist in more than one place at any given time and are invisible,detected by the Brain which then creates its own music based on the waves it receives.As we are all related,we hear the same thing ,which we have lumbered with the tag of "music".Whether lizards or virus's have this ability is up for debate,but one thing is certain,Music doesn't exist without the listener,and,the mammalian brain.

They're Big in Sweden I gather.....mammalian brains?

Tracklist:

A1 One Dimensional 4:01
A2 Emerge From Nothingness 4:44
A3 Short Stay In The Garden Of Optimism 3:45
A4 Plight Of The Butterfly Of Peace In The Web Of Hatred 3:00
A5 Doomsday 3:06
A6 Comet 3:15
A7 One Dimensional (Outro) 2:02
B1 Dehumanization Process 2:59
B2 Gorgon 5:11
B3 Trance 4:02
B4 Cry For The Moon 5:05
B5 Untill The End Of Time 3:38
B6 Bonus Track 0:54

DOWNLOAD sound waves for the mammalian brain HERE!

Paul Kelday – "Odznsodz" (Börft Records – Börft057) 1992

Another Paul Kelday compilation,with a couple of tracks you may have heard before upon it's hallowed ferric oxide.  They fade in,fade out,having no beginning nor end.Quite like the endless dark abyss that surrounds us.Paul drags us gently within several parcecs  of the end of Infinity....which is a loooong way...especially near the end.You think you can see it, but then it gets further away.Always out of reach.What exists beyond the end of the multi-verse? Logic dictates that there has to be Nothing,but Nothing must also therefore be something with defined boundaries,beyond which lies something that is less than Zero,where even nothing can't exist.Beyond that is Paul Kelday? Probably not,but I had to write something,rather than 'Nothing'.Which only exists if you're looking at it,between its quotation marks,just as music only exists if you're listening to it,beyond which lies the Nub. "All of this wouldn't exist if we weren't here to see it,or in this case Listen to it."...for the brighter ones amongst you,that's called the Anthropic Principle" and a fine argument against Intelligent design. Just as the Misanthropic Principle is a fine argument against the continuation of Human 'civilisation'...again,subject to opinion and Quotation marks.One day we will all fade out,just as we faded in...like a Paul Kelday track in fact.

DOWNLOAD tracks previously released on various cassette compilations across Infinity HERE!

Paul Kelday – "Rings Of Jupiter: A Retrospective" (S.J Organisation – S.J ORG 013) 1987

That looks like a badly Xeroxed image of the Earth rather than failed sun, and essentially Ring-less. gas giant, Jupiter. Hmmm? ....No Rings!?......Unlike Uranus (Haha..I had to aqueeze it in somewhere? So to speak phnar! phnar!)

I did mention in the previous Kelday post, that he has now left the building,and had taken up residency at Sun Ra's gaff among the resplendent rings of Saturn;but it now seems maybe I was wrong?

This French compilation of Kelday's work,compiled by the man himself,is a fitting epitaph indeed.Showcasing his unassuming cosmic abstractions like a warped copy of Tangerine Dream's Alpha-Centuri as reflected in a funhouse mirror.Lovingly benefiting from a severe lack of anything digital,except for human fingers pressing keys and twisting knobs.

Tracklist:

A1 Rings Of Jupiter (from PSI 1981)
A2 New Age Mutants (unreleased 1983)
A3 Short Stay In The Garden Of Optimism (from the compilation New Babel 1983)
B1 In The Air (from Centuries 1981)
B2 Birth Of Planestesimals  (from Another Time, Another Place 1982)
B3 Technofear (from the compilation "Organic Mind Workshop" 1984)

DOWNLOAD from Uranus HERE!

Paul Kelday – "Centuries" (Music For Midgets – M.F.M.12) 1982

As one received a rare comment on a previous Paul Kelday post bemoaning the fact that as cosmic Paul's soul has now joined Sun Ra's orbiting one of the gas giants beyond the asteroid belt......no jokes about the gases of Uranus pleeze!....that most of his vast catalog of recordings will now never see the light again, or will be compacted into liquid hydrogen at Saturn's core rained on by regular showers of naturally occurring diamonds. And indeed Paul was a diamond,who spent the latter years of his life hiding away from society in general, and indeed giving up music altogether,leaving us with the disturbing suggestion that he may have binned all his tapes.

So,here's one that he didn't bin,and,more importantly, one I haven't posted before,called "Centuries",which surfaced on both Music For Midgets, and Integrated Circuit Records around the cusp of 1981/82.

Klassic Kelday,doing classic early Tangerine Dream meets the BBC Radiophonic Workshop....all captured on a Philips Ultra ferro C-60 bottom of the shelf cassette.

Tracklist:

A1 Legopolis (Nov. 81)
A2 Shadows In The Recesses Of The Subconscious (Dec. 81)
A3 Necessitarianism (Feb. 82)
A4 In The Air (Feb. 82)
B Centuries (Dec. 81)

DOWNLOAD without taking centuries HERE!

Ad Nauseam – "Demo" (Manic Tapes – Manic L.0.3) 1984

Ad Nauseam, from Portsmouth(keep that quiet!),were one of those generic UK82 hardcore bands who wanted to be Discharge,but were four years too late,so now they had to lessen their ambitions by just wanting to be the Exploited, mohawks and simplistic politics included.

To their credit, some attempt has been made since their earlier recordings, to 'progress' in some way.

There'a mixture of Hardcore styles on display here,if its possible to register any discernible difference whatsoever between the lot of 'em, apart from the fact that some of 'em play it better than the others.... maybe?

This tape has sections of Yobbed-up US Hardcore,a bit of D-Beat,lots of UK82 street Oi and even a melodious track (i suspect the beginning of track 2 was nicked from Fripp and Eno is it not? Closet sophisticates or wot?).All fronted by a potty-mouthed 'Wattie' clone.

Fripp,Eno and Wattie.....still waiting for that one.

 As much as I enjoy the music(?),for want of a better word, I find the lifestyle these leather clad hooligans lead,a tad nauseating,hence the name, claustrophobic,and more than a tad depressing.If i wanted to join the army or a cult there are better options,mainly a cult with a higher ratio of girls to boys for a start.Is there a tastefully dressed hardcore punk sex cult out there? The Davidians of Waco had a suitable PA system,it just needed some decent music to be played over it rather than just David "I'm Jesus me honest" Koresh. The group could have played as the building burned down,and out-done G.G. Allin,for one night only.

I would hazard a guess that the various members of Ad Nauseam,still dress like that,with receding mohawk hair cuts.....quite like "Wattie" himself,who, several heart attacks later is still the epitome of UK82 hardcore Punk from the British Isles.Now roundly exported to all corners of the known planet

That's entertainment?

Tracklist:

1 No Mercy
2 Undeclared Citizens
3 Who Are You
4 Wheelies One
5 Nausea
6 Destructadisc
7 Throw Down Your Crutches
8 Dog Od On A Sunstroke Pill
9 The Church Creates
10 Still Be Havin Fun
11 Monkey See Monkey Do
12 Ain't Gonna Be No Peace

DOWNLOAD the cult of nausea82 HERE!

Ad Nauseam – "Mass Murder Tape" (Retaliation Records – Fight Box 7) 1982

Altogether now......

"Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher

Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher Fatcher"

One has to admire the barely articulated rage of the British working class youth back in 1982,as un-articulated by Portsmouth located UK82 Hardcore band 'Ad Nauseam',with their rather catchy underground 'Hit' dedicated to the dubious achievements of a dead Prime Minister,namely the right honorable, former member for Finchley, Margaret Thatcher.....contracted for poetic reasons to just "Fatcher";a pronunciation which helps the tongue twisting nature of expectorating the "Th" sound, at 70 miles per hour several hundred times in the sing-a-long chorus of track number One.

Yer average Sex Pistols fan had to choose which side they were on when their bestest favourite Punk Rock group split up. Go with John Lydon and invent Post-Punk, or go in the shouty leather jacketed direction of the Sid Clone for the rest of their natural lives.

I can quite comfortably say that Ad Nauseam went in the direction of the latter. Although, I must commend the Sid clone on dumping Sidney's total lack of any moral standpoint whatsoever.I don't think Sid gave a shit about war or poverty,but his clones did,rather surprisingly. The G.G. Allin direction was, thankfully, only followed by a small minority of morons......but, one has to say,if you're gonna embrace the cruel inevitabilites of  the Rock'n'Roll dead end in all it's Nihilistic glory and celebrated stupidity,then G.G. and Sid played the role to the very last ransom note letter.

When the Punk Rock Super Nova burnt out,collapsed under its own gravity and left a super-massive black hole to fill;just this side of the event horizon were thousands of inarticulate shouty groups like Ad Nauseam decked out in denim and levver ,but,strangely, with the imported moral mindset of politico-punk sophisticates,Sham 69(?).

Its actually all quite funny stuff ,yet i'm still dumbfounded as to how it all came down to this? Rock'n'Roll's lowest common denominator. 

Tracklist:

A1 Thatcher
A2 Mass Murder
A3 Fuck I Ain't Bovered
A4 What A State
A5 Don't Vote
B1 Why Fight Each Other
B2 Fire
B3 Weapons Of Peace
B4 Once Upon A Time
B5 Daddy Daddy

DOWNLOAD the a-b-c of socially aware pub politics HERE!

Huggy Bear – "WeBitched" (Wiiija Records) 1992

There were other decent acts on Wiiija Records of course,although not Scottish,(i've almost ran out of unpopular Scottish ones now), but we do have some posh student girls in their angry years from the mean streets of Brighton.....life's hard there. Staunchly feminist, even the boys in the group,but we know what male feminists are really after don't we boys?

Named after Huggy Bear,the light relief in Starsky and Hutch; this Huggy Bear were a mixture of angry ladies and useful modern gentlemen, who made a very noisy form of the Riot Grrrl trend imported into Rave-culture obsessed Britain on the coat-tails of Grunge. Yeah, they had heard Bikini Kill and decided to have a go at that aggressive ladies malarkey.

Also, this gives me a chance to relay my Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch story again.....yeah,basically i met him in a pub in Leicester, and he bought me a Guinness,while he stuck to zero alcohol Kalibur! When i asked him what is he doing in a Pub in Leicester he replied,"It's good to get out and meet the people".....you won't find many of them round here I said......he had virtually no clue what i was going on about.

Never got to meet the saucy femme's in Huggy Bear from Brighton however.They would have hated me anyway during my lost weekend period back in the 90's.

Apparently They were on "The Word", the so uber trendy that it made one wanna piss on one's telly box,late night modern magazine programme on Channel 4, and performed a song in front of a hand-picked audience of trendy fuckers. The angry ladies in the group took offence at some twin models or something sillier, and one of them bit the face of a producer during a heated argument......shock bleeding horror...and it was compared to that Sex Pistols' absurdly lame Grundy thing.However ,unlike The Pistols group,it didn't catapult them to the top of the pop charts...not for want of trying though.

I once thought I'd like to have a Riot Gurl girlfriend, but had trouble with faking an interest in Feminist philosophy,and the walking on eggshells conversations,and the special needs type "wild" behavior was a turn off,and rather boring. They just wanted to  be a housewife  with a Husband really.

This cassette ain't half bad actually.

Tracklist:

A1 Can`t Kiss
A2 Into The Mission
A3 Coral Kill
A4 Sour Cream Stag
B1 Bumper Sticker (Version)
B2 Cherry Cherry
B3 Her Jazz
B3 T-Shirt Tucked In
B4 Blow Dry
B5 Hopscorch

DOWNLOAD future solicitors going ape HERE!

Silverfish – "T.F.A. E.P." (Wiiija Records – WIJ5) 1989

I thought this lot were american,but they weren't as well drilled.....geddit?...as american Noise Rock groups were,so I smelled a rat. They looked as if they met in a Pub,which is a dead give away,sure they're British,and that american twang in the lead screechers voice is because she's Scottish.....which gave me a reason to post this rather good EP,as I seem to be posting noisy groups from beyond Hadrian's Wall during the Grunge sickness of 1991 this week.

All band members have Dole Snooper avoiding names,like back in the halcyon days of Punk Rock, and that shouty female singer is listed as L.F.Rankine,Lesley to her new (in 1989) English friends.

While waiting for the next in a lengthening line of losing referendums which Scots Nationalists live in hope that one of them will eventually deliver the result that they dream of (be careful or it may just come true!). The Scottish are never slow in slagging off the English,and watching Braveheart over and over again(not bad for a film about a loser,a Scots tradition still adhered to faithfully today);but they can't seem to wait to escape to England at the first opportunity,and Lesley did just this,and ended up in one of the few bands in Britain not to have a funky drummer beat and an extraneous dancin' fool at the side of the stage in 1989.

Yep, you guessed it....Madchester was happening,or Shitchester as I prefer to call it.

Tracklist:

1.Total Fucking Asshole
2.Die
3.Driller

4.One Silver Dollar

DOWNLOAD it HERE! you total fucking arsehole!

Badgewearer – "F.T.Q." (Gruff Wit Records – GRUFF 0006) 1991

 As much as I was oblivious during the 1990's, there did seem to have been a limited rise in interest in noisy avant-math rock types with their feet dangling in the limpid pools of both the Magic Band and Jesus Lizard camps....in Scotland?  Up until Brit-pop,the 90's were one endless party, unless you like Grunge culture,so didn't really have time to listen to a lot of this stuff,when just owning a new wave of Jazz record made me instantly allurable to the fairer sex in those happy pre-consent form carrying days.A Badgewearer album wouldn't cut the mustard. I suppose Post-Rock was the 90's too wasn't it? That was a largely interesting way to nurse a hangover,and a toll-free highway back to the music that started all this...Progressive Rock.

In many ways this math-punk noise was indeed progressive Punk Rock that, in hindsight, would have been rather popular in my household were it not for the many distractions on offer.

Badgewearer was another production job by former Stretchhead 'Richie',and it certainly has a few reference points that hark all the way back to the C-86 era,with its high-speed plectrum blur guitar attak a la Wedding Present, bIG fLAME etc,and admirably disjointed like a Glaswegian Shrub(s).

Very Ron Johnson.

Dunno what F.T.Q. means,but i'm guessing ,'Fuck The Queen',which would have appealed thirty years ago,but now the Queen's a nice little old lady, who could possibly dislike her? If you do you're a T.F.A......see next post. As,The Queen is the rightful heir to the Russian Throne,maybe 'Fuck Putin' is more appropriate? Sever the head of the snake and replace the poisonous dwarf,built up heels and all, with good Queen Liz?

Oh Yeah,this record has a song called "Rod Stewart's Penis"....i bet the plastic Scotsman himself never needed a consent form?...oops, a little bit of sick just appeared in my throat!

Tracklist:

A1 Inflexible Expendable
A2 N'Alien Head
A3 Too Much Soap
A4 We Want Your Name
A5 Moneylenders/Cumbernauld
A6 Impersonal Stereo
A7 Karioke Casualty
B1 Aftershock
B2 Woollenhead And Ears
B3 Static
B4 Rod Stewart's Penis
B5 Syndex
B6 Satellite Dish
B7 Liquid Cosh

DOWNLOAD and hail the rightful queen of Russia HERE!

Dawson – "How To Follow So That Others Will Willingly Lead (Oh My Godley And Creme Cheese)" (Gruff Wit Records – GRUFF 005) 1991

Another crazy as a deep fried mars bar in a box of frogs groop,again from Scotland,and,containing a former Drummer of Stretchheads,is the unforgettably named, 'Dawson'.A derived from various band members' art teacher,who happened to be called...'Dawson'.And there was me hoping they were named after the great Lez Dawson...knickers,knackers,knockers missus!

For those who give a shit....in other words,if you;'re Scottish,they hale,or Hail,from...yeah that's right, Glasgow (pronounced Glaz Go)...or as Joe Biden says it, Glazz ,Gow as in Cow.

Plenty fractured chord sequences and obvious Beefheart influences here kemosabi ...think God is my Co-Pilot,The Shrubs, and Stretchheads with their amplifiers turned off.....very clever they seem to be...falling just short of too clever by 'arf.

Wasn't 1991 the year 'Punk' Broke in USA?...so we had to endure all these,as far as I could determine,heavy Rock groops from Seattle polluting our sceptered Isle with long greasy hair,checked shirts,and lots of quiet then noisy,then quiet,then Loud and so-on, rock songs,as if The Pixies had never existed. Once an ex-acquaintance boasted to me that he'd seen The Pixies six times; I said i could out do him on that one,as i've seen this band who looked like the cast of the Office,or more likely from a real Office, who'd formed a weekend Rock Group precisely ZERO times,and had no plans to change that.

But,the new wave of Punk had been hatched,and spawned a legion of white middle class nerds all claiming to have seen Nirvana when they were the support for Tad. Now if Tad were the only grunge band that existed.I'd be cool with that.....they were basically how Heavy Metal should sound but without the black trousers, topped off by Trucker Caps with plenty meat manufacturer logo's adorning their fashionable, for 1991,Pedophile Trucker chic.Yeah Tad were good.

There were NO British grunge bands (i'm proud to say),except, apparently some big in America token Brits,called 'Bush'.....never heard them I'm pleased to admit.

Alas, wot the British Isles did have,apart from 50 million 'mad for it' Ravers,were a few traditional rock instrument wielding loonies, who made something like the east coast USA style avant-punk,such as God Is My Co-Pilot,and....er...God Is My Co-Pilot?....can I say it again?...or something Japanesie,such as The Boredoms.

Indeed, off-kilter rhythms,fucked up chords,wayward time signatures,nutzoid singing,silly song titles,... you know, Prog Rock by any other words.Why do you think Godley and Creme get a mention?

Glorious Side:

A1 From Bearsden To Baghdad (Via The Erskine Bridge)
A2 Leaf Sweepers And Sandwich Men
A3 Surface Tension
A4 Crick
A5 Records
A6 Booger Hall
A7 George Bush's Family Oil Business (Sanitized Version)

Heavenly Side:

B1 Bodies Under The Floor
B2 Pwep Dub
B3 Barb
B4 Datsun Panel Beating Co.
B5 The Chairman Of British Gas Graciously Accepts His £150,000 Pay Rise (BPM 58-75)

DOWNLOAD so that others may follow HERE!

Stretchheads – "Five Fingers, Four Thingers, A Thumb, A Facelift, And A New Identity" (Moksha Recordings – SOMALP 2) 1988

Stretchheads first proper Lp,with a few 30 second symphonies repeated in new form from the earlier cassette. Short songs were rather fashionable around 1988,epitomized by Napalm Death's "You Suffer", clocking in at one second...unless some smart alec adds reverb like on the Peel Session version,so that version was timed approaching the ten second barrier.

One must take issue whether a 20 second tune actually qualifies as an actual 'Song'? 

Just playing a high speed riff with a lunatic repeating a phrase a few times, then stopping at a random moment around twenty seconds isn't really enough.I mean, what's stopping you playing the same riff for a whole hour  with the same sentence screamed over and over again (sounds good to me?) ,is that a different song?Or Not a song?

An Avant Garde statement on the disposable culture of the 20th and 21st century it may be,but Songs have to have some kind of structure to be called yer actual 'Song' innit?

Personally I'd like just one half hour tune, played in the classic Stretchheads' Beefheart meets Melt Banana in  Pycho-Ward Z at hyper-sonic speed stylee.....no unwelcome end of track and here's another one stuff;a bit like watching adverts i suppose...or another Avant-Garde Proto-Grind statement on the corporate west....I dunno do I?

Either way, there was certainly nothing like this bunch of nutters in 1988...at least outside of Japan.

The Front cover depicts a classic scene of Spontaneous Human Combustion,leaving just the extremities .......kinds sums up The Stretchheads most adequately indeed.

Tracklist:

1 Fans
2 Long Faced German
3 Headache
4 Asylum Suck
5 Skinrip
6 Yiddish Yoddle
7 Shape & Cleanse
8 Land Of Ming
9 Rex Perplexed
10 Semtex
11 I Should Be So Lucky
12 Confront
13 Sidatorium
14 Spleng
15 Archive Footage Of A Fish
16 Jaw Box
17 Chicken Fish
18 Everythings Going To Break In A Minute
19 Ilness
20 Cancer
21 Shut Up

DOWNLOAD a classic case of spontaneous musical combustion HERE!

Stretchheads – "Three Steps To Heaven" (Self-Released Cassette) 1987

"She's got Myra Hindley Eyyyyyeeeessss".....remember that Hit for Kim Carnes?....or was it Dickie Davies Eyes?.....one of the two anyway.

Dickie Davies, for the minuscule minority who are ignorant,on a need to know basis,that,Dickie Davies presented Itv's 'World of Sport' every saturday on British TV.Oh yeah, and Myra Hindley was the blonde one in The Moors Murderers....Nooooo, Not that Punk Group of the same name which Chrissy Hynde and Steve Strange were in for five minutes in 1977, yer actual child killing Moors Murderers.

Anyway,Those Scottish types ooop north weren't wasting their time watching World Of Sport on saturday lunchtime,oh no...they were down the pub getting pissed (as in 'very drunk' for you yankophones).In the case of the Stretchheads,they were busy getting Pished (scottish for Pissed for you Anglophones),then going on to rehearsals after last orders.I'm sure they intended to sound like The Shrubs,but ended up sounding like an Exhibit A recording of one of The Moors Murderers'(not the group!) victims being tortured,....if they were in their twenties and extremely pished.

This deranged version of Grind-core meets Captain Beefheart, on past their sell-by date amphetamines, would have been the perfect soundtrack for a child killing,but Brady(The Scottish one)and Hindley's artist of choice was The Ray Conniff Singers christmas album (This is pure Evil...the Little Drummer Boy) to accompany the torture of Lesley Anne Downey,which they recorded.....crazy but true.That one was indeed Exhibit A at their trial,and doubtlessly still exists in the vaults at New Scotland Yard.....potentially Throbbing Gristle before Throbbing Gristle?...Whereas, Stretchheads were potentially Grind-Core before Grind-Core, but without any reference to Impending Nuclear destruction or evil multinational corporations leading us all from enslavement to obliteration.....y'know, that kind of thing.

The nearest equivalent has to be something Japanese? Maybe Melt Banana? A duet between Yasuko Onuki(Melt Banana) and P6 (that's the name of the Stretchheads' singer,screamer,vocalist etc???);would be something to behold.....except The Stretchheads split up and Melt Banana plough a lone furrow of truly demented Hardcore still...so no headlines of "Melt Banana Split" can get me off the hook anytime soon!

Any group with a vocalist called P6,high speed prog rock chord sequences,and recorded well into the red Zone has to be good? No?

They should have been rightly revered by the Noise-Core youth of today, but they did the right thing by splitting,citing record company theft as a primary motivation....so they now advocate illegal downloading of their back catalog....so you can make the band happy by starting HERE!...and make me feel like Dennis Moore giving lupins to the Poor again.I love you all.

Tracklist:

1 Sidatorium
2 Chicken Fish
3 Confront
4 Fans
5 Headache
6 The Illness
7 Skinrin
8 Jawbox
9 Cancer

'Steal' from the stretchheads' former record companies HERE!.....but its still sharing as far as i'm concerned.