Executive Slacks – "Can't Hum In Europe (Live)" - (World Wide Terror) 1985

Big in Holland........wasn't there a band called that?

Whatever, either way The Executive Slacks were.......Big In Holland.

A fact this live in Europe Cassette demonstrates nicely as all of the Dates on this tour seemed to be in The Netherlands....except a couple,which were in Gay Paris,and the inevitable  appearance in Belgium where every band sounded like this with all that Belgian New Beat stuff and EBM.

As listed in the insert notes,as if you're interested, here's the actual Tour Dates for you nerds out there:

Executive Slacks live in Europe '84: Amsterdam (NL) - Venray (NL) - Tilburg (NL) - Rotterdam (NL) - Vlissingen (NL) - Arnhem (NL) - Utrecht (NL) - Groningen (NL) - Wageningen (NL) - Paris (FR) - Brussels (B) - Sint-Niklaas (B)

Nearly every Dutch person I know comes from Groningen, except for long time commentator on this blog, Henk Madrotter, who has admitted liking The Executive Slacks a lot,so I'm guessing that Mr Madrotter was in the audience in Rotterdam?

New wave / industrial band mixing primitive electronics, harsh guitars and aggressive vocals. From Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA...it says here.

And yes we did call this kind of stuff Industrial back in the mid-eighties, although I don't see why,same for Nine Inch Nails. Americans doing this kinda stuff was and is rare.Other examples are Front Line Assembly......or were they Canadian?..Skinny Puppy?.....they were Canadian too I wager? Crash Course in Science came from Philadelphia didn't they?.....as you see we don't google anything on Die or DIY. The Neo-Luddite movement starts HERE!

Well, being the closet Numan Fan fan boy,that I am, I'm hearing Numan here,so I have no right to complain. 

Note the reference to "The Park"...as in,"Down In The Park",Tubeway Army.The same tune fucked over by that Trent Reznor knob,and if i'm hopefully mistaken, by that Marilyn Manson Twat.

Tracklist:

A1 The Park
A2 Sisyphus
A3 In & Out
A4 Cinema
A5 Man Of Christ
B1 Our Lady
B2 Ecce Homo
B3 Electric Blues
B4 I'm Coming

DOWNLOAD executively HERE! 

Various Artists – "When Things Were Perfect" (Peeved Records – PV020) 1985

More Cambridge indie pop via Southampton from a time when things seemed perfect, but on the evidence presented here, wasn't. .....which as i've mentioned several times before is a kind of perfection?

Trouble is, this nostalgia trip very accurately recreates the sound and feel of the black hole that was left behind by the great fizzle out of yer Punk Rock.

There was nothing left to populate the event horizon except a sliding slagheap of middle class studentia playing uneventful Indie-pop...the Uneventful Horizon as one calls it. With only Shoegaze,Twee, and Ron Johnson to assist in the awful choice between C-86 and Acid House.

Tracklist:

A1 The Deviance – The Other Side
A2 The Deviance – Watch It Burn
A3 The Deviance – Frozen Moments
A4 The Deviance – Savage Days
A5 The Deviance – Self Destruction
A6 The Deviance – Happy World
A7 The Children Of Some Tradition– The Last Resort
A8 The Children Of Some Tradition– Town To Town
B1 Perfect Vision– Scratch And Howl
B2 Perfect Vision– Engines
B3 Perfect Vision– Co-Incidence
B4 Perfect Vision– Hole In The Sole
B5 Perfect Vision– Laugh At Breakage
B6 Red Over White– Killed By His Own Tribe
B7 Red Over White– Suffocation
B8 Red Over White– No Shame

DOWNLOAD from when things were far from perfect HERE!

A.N.P / Null – "Dyspareunia" (Nux Organization – NUX-09) 1985

 

The chap who was in Acid Mothers Temple that Collaborated with K.K.Null in Proto Doom Metal combo, Zeni Geva;then obviously went off somewhere else, leaving K.K.Null,otherwise known as Kazuyuki Kishino (K.K.),to become the Brian Eno of Jap noise,collaborating with anyone who'd have him. Half-Man Half-Biscuit did a song on this bothersome subject, called....er..."Eno Collaboration"; but as of yet,no-one has bothered to write a song called K.K.Null collaboration.

Eno and K.K. have one thing in common at least, in that they can't play any instruments proper-like,leaving the door open for collaborations with persons in between jobs who can play an instrument up to a reasonable level of competence.

Brian,does indeed have one up on K.K. in the concept department,the most famed one being his renaming of quiet electronic Kosmiche Krautrock as "Ambient",and as a result became the face that launched a million bedroom recording projects all over the western world.

Null just sticks to that tried and trusted pattern, at least in Japan,of making a god-awful racket.

This cassette, shared with A.N.P.(Absolut Null Punkt), who he (KK) is also a member of,is a fine example of the formless noise that is so incredibly popular in Japan and various PVC clad knob-ed's in the more fashionable parts of former eastern Europe. But, like Eno's Ambient blueprint,jap-noise is also so very easy to churn out,that any wise-ass can do it...en masse....and they continue to do so...unapologetically.

But, if you are lucky enough to have never heard any of this harsh noise Industrial cacophony before, this will probably be the most exciting thing you've heard since,.....well....Sleaford Mods? 

Tracklist:

Seite ANP:
A1 A.N.P – Meta Beast (14:11)
A2 A.N.P – Od Rising (10:05)

Seite Null
B Null – Dyspareunia D-1 (24:25)

DOWNLOAD some non-eno jap-cred HERE!

Trixie's Big Red Motorbike - "All Day Long In Bliss (Singles, Demos And Peel Sessions)" 1981-85

The fairy prince and princess of twee has to be brother and sister Mark and Melanie Litten who,like many of their Twee contemporaries never got to release an album in their lifetimes.

Haling from a pre-Wet Leg Isle Of Wight ,they released their sparkly gentle pre-teen ditties on their own Lobby Ludd label....which is how my father, strangely, used to refer to Robin Hood?...I blame those Nazi's  and their prison camps and stuff i do.

Amazingly,according to Discogs, Mark Litten was something of a sound tech for Def Leppard!?.....I wonder what those clueless oafs thought of  Trixie's Big Red Motorbike,if they ever got to hear it; as the sole purpose of all this Twee stuff was to distance the wimps who made it as far away from the spotty testosterone fueled nonsense of NWOBHM as possible. I'd like to think that Lemmy would have got it,but not necessarily actually liking it....maybe not?

Where did this stuff evolve from? 

I guess the earliest roots would have to be Syd Barrett's solo work,the more whimsical end of UK Psych, and Velvet Underground's third album.Then the proto-punk nerd-chic of Johnathan Richman and Talking Heads,a bit later the TV Personalities,The Raincoats,and Subway Sect, making rejection of Rock music fashionable in 1978 leading to wimps like Orange Juice,Altered Images,Marine Girls (a marine Girl,Jane Fox, actually appears on a few of these tracks),Young Marble Giants,Dolly Mixture and so-forth.

It all gets quite confusing, with a venn diagram of Twee,overlapping ShoeGaze and Dream Pop.You can find Galaxie 500, My Bloody Valentine, and The Cocteau Twins all in the same space.

However, undoubtedly,Trixie's Big Red Motorbike is firmly entrenched within the Twee area of the diagram, alongside many of the forthcoming entities we shall be visiting making music for Wimps by Wimps.

I may have spent most of my time going to Godflesh and Napalm Death gigs in 1986/7,but nearly every other band on the circuit were Twee befringed Indie pop shoegaze dreamers,which i now realise was rather good,and refreshing......then came the second summer of bloody fucking Love,and the Shoegazers picked up a tambourine and started enjoying themselves,dancing and the like!?.Tut TUT TUT!  

  
 Tracklist:

1 A Splash Of Red 4:16
2 Invisible Boyfriend 3:19
3 Hold Me (Demo) 1:42
4 You Took Him Away From Me (Demo) 3:27
5 Hold Me 1:41
6 Trixie's Groove 2:34
7 One Nation Under A Brolly 0:46
8 Whatever Happened To The Treetops? 2:18
9 You Took Him Away From Me 2:56
10 One Nation Under A Brolly (Demo) 2:23
11 Norman And Narcissus 2:33
12 In Timbuktu 2:00
13 That's The End Of That 1:44
14 I'm In Love With You 2:06
15 When He's By My Side 2:03
16 Fairytales 2:15
17 That's Quite A Lot 2:52
18 What Was In The Loft 7:01

Bonus Tracks:

Peel Session 25/08/1983:

1 That's The End Of That
2 One Nation Under A Brolly
3 Norman & Narcissus
4 In Timbuktu
5 White Horses

Peel Session 28/07/1982:

1 Invisible Boyfriend
2 Splash Of Red

3 Whatever Happened To The Treetops
4 You Took Him Away From Me

DOWNLOAD music for wimps by wimps for you HERE!

Burden Of Friendship – "The Head Of Your Goat - The Son Of Your Dog, Vol. 2" (Self-Released) 1985

One man's Friend is another man's Eric Burden; especially after he left the Animals and went a bit Funny,but still looked like an ex-coal miner in a kaftan.All this, While the humble geordies of Newcastle toon were left behind in the decidedly un-swinging sixties oop North.These simple un-tuned in folk were certainly not meeting the godhead through chemistry while Eric and his New Animals 'Turned On',absolutely Not!His old town mates were meeting their maker using such exotic delights as Emphysema and neumoconiosis.Newcastle is also a place that used the term 'Man'long before the Hippies popularised it.....'Why Ay man',is still used to express approval in certain areas of the North East. So I doubt yer redundant miner would have said 'Why Ay Man'when confronted with Geordie escapee Eric talking about peace and love with a flower sellotaped to his grown out short back'n'Sides. Not all the Ex-Animals wasted their time on such misogynistic nonsense as Eric did of course. Chad Chandler discovered Jimi Hendrix and formed The Jim Hendrix Experience,wisely In London and most definitely Not in Newcastle.And Alan Price wrote "Andy Capp-The Musical"..the less said about that the better.

Well know Punk Rock hater, Eric,does have one superior aspect that sets him apart from his hopelessly obscure U.S. Industrial counterparts Burden of Friendship;...he at least has some kind of Talent,no matter how naffola....but don't ask me what that is,but its probably something in relation to his writing some toe-curlingly bad boastful Flower-soul tunes that brighten up anyones day with its pure hippie naivity and toxic misogyny.

He accidentally created the sickening atmosphere that these legions of Throbbing Gristle-a-likes were trying to spew forth from 1985 onwards.

I could never write such a morally bankrupt pop song as "Man/Woman" by Eric Burdon and the New Animals", but I could easily churn out "The Head Of Your Goat-The Son Of Your Dog Vol.3" in my lunch-hour. No 'Talent' needed whatsoever to churn out endless 'Industrial Noise' cassettes.They are all the same, and Not at all funny like Eric's transition from hard geordie white man's blues thuggery to ugly older bloke with medallion who gets to shag loads of young women.....and they better thank him for it too. That's far more shocking than any Industrial experiment,but it does take...cough,slight retching of gastric juice....Talent!?

There are scores of tapes like this on this blog,and its time to post some more,'cus my public like it,and i've ran out of ideas...rather like Industrial music did in the nano-seconds after the Big Bang.

By 1985 however, these bedroom dwelling types could now afford a sampler,so the tape loops and found sounds from extermination camp documentaries became a lot easier to do....even less talent required.

But Fuck that...let's Boogie! 

Tracklist:

A1 The Lesson And The Knowledge Gained
A2 Thanksgiving At Unarco
A3 Novone Mix
B1 Joy
B2 As Much Static As Possible
B3 Horror & Mortal Terror Pt. 3
B4 Bison Remembers
B5 I Was Marlon Brando's Fat Cell
B6 And The Revox Played Itself
B7 Why He Joined The Army
B8 What Is The Doctor Doing For Lunch?
B9 Metaphysical Jabberwocky
B10 White Man's Living Room
B11 It Smells It Stinks
B12 Bosco's Stomp

DOWNLOAD this daughter of a bitch HERE!

The Golden Palominos – "A History: Vol. 1 (1982-1985)" (Mau Mau Records – MAUCD 625) 1992

Fuckin' 'ell Anton Fier,of virtually every band that was worthwhile in New York and Cleveland in the 80's bur primarily the mainstay of The Golden Palominos ,has also kicked the bucket;but in this case it was an 'assisted' bucket kicking in one of those dodgy 'non-profit' clinics in Switzerland,Dignitas innit? Of which I saw no mention anywhere.

He wasn't ill apparently. He just decided he'd had enough. He couldn't drum as well as he wanted anymore and said he felt he had achieved everything he wanted and it was time to go. I thought that kind of behavior was illegal if you weren't ill?...or was he? It's been a long time since he had a record out? Did he have some degenerative disease or summut? The drummer with Strobe Talbot has MS,and discovered that by forcing himself to drum,he could regain his cognitive abilities on said instrument......!?...Maybe Anton was a tad hasty with his decision to top himself at the age of 66! What's the point of suicide anyway, we have eternity to be be dead,and we were all dead for an eternity before we were born.Wrong decision Anton. There are plenty of children getting their heads blown off by a bunch of Russian Wankstains who would love to have swapped places.

The list of groups bands and soloists that Anton has added his drumming and artistic skills to is far too long,and boring to list here (Pere Ubu blah blah blah....),but the most Anton-centric of the lot has to be The Golden Palominos,who existed from 1981 to the twenty-teenies. So, as the best days of any band, are the early days, I have decided to post a compilation of the those very ''Early days when he wasn't in 'The Feelies'.

The understated, and under reported, method of his passing,was also a tribute to the man,having never sold out to the commercial opportunities of someone who could boast a Cv as long and comprehensive as Anton Fier's....you know I still dunno how to pronounce his name!?..insult or tribute, you decide.

Here's the legal Swiss  bumpf on assisted suicide from non-selfish motives.It's legal, if, for example, lethal drugs are prescribed and the intended recipient takes an active role in the drug administration? Sounds a bit dodgy to me, but who am I to stop anyone from deciding for themselves when they can end all this surreal madness at a time of their choosing.

He leaves us with a vast legacy of work,some of which is on this early nineties compilation,that even boasts Michael Stipe and John Lydon as guest vocalists,...i'll cease the name dropping and present to you this rather fancy compilation of some genuinely great downtown Noo yawk fancy-pants music...sophisticated and experimental,so you can bet yer bottom dollar that Bill Laswell is hanging out waiting for the photo ops...you know the crowd,Zorn, Lindsey, Laswell etc,the kind of downtown sophisticates that people like us should curtsy to if allowed within their golden auras. 

Quite a bit of the later tracks sound like that terrible PiL album,called 'Album'...mainly because it had...you guessed it Bill Laswell on it...and the drums, played by the late Anton himself,reminds one of the (uncredited) drumming on 'Album',which i had previously presumed was shared by twin legends,Tony Williams and Ginger Baker....by this evidence it was Anton Fier who did the drumming and skillfully avoided a credit in the process;and also why Lydon makes an appearance on this comp, from just around the time he was making that offending disc to confirm to himself,and those dumb enough to think Levene and Wobble made the music in PiL, his own genius....or lack of therein.

Tracklist:

1 Hot Seat
2 Under The Cap
3 Monday Night
4 Cookout
5 I.D.
6 Two Sided Fist
7 Boy (Go)
8 Clustering Train
9 Omaha
10 The Animal Speaks
11 Silver Bullet
12 (Kind Of) True
13 Buenos Aires
14 Only One Party

"Anton Fier is no longer playing drums." (Syd Straw)

DOWNLOAD the results of a life well spent HERE!

UT – "Conviction" (Out Records – OUT R 03) 1985

UT recorded at This Heat's / David Cunningham's Cold Storage facility shocker! Recorded/produced by Henry Cow chap Tim Hodgkinson,who contributes his nefarious saxophonal abilities,as well as some dodgy drumming.....all assisted by all round 'decent chap' Charles Bullen,late of This Heat. You may even notice,Tim's ugly fizzog displayed on the cover surrounded by pretty avant-garde rock chicks looking moody and existential;or is that Antonin Artaud?...also looking moody and existential...he was an Ac-tor you know.I also suspect that our fun chum Antonin is the fellow in an unfortunate postion on the cover too. 

It seems,even experimental avant-rock No wave music never fails to cash in on having a pretty lady on the cover at the slightest opportunity.

At the risk of being brought to tears by a mob of livid and shouty vegan lezzers I must approve of this brazen use of female imagery as bait for the casual male music nerd to chance an arm on....or at least a wrist?

As jolly good UT are.....i think they are still going sporadically?....they seem unappreciated in their native lands,never gaining a release there from a US based label. Brits always like a less successful in america american looming on the local scene don't they? And dismissing them as Avant-Wank fodder is a trifle disingenuous of me....but funny.However, this debut Lp doesn't quite reach the dizzying heights of their later work .....don't get me wrong,it's still jolly good,it's just that there was better to come....oh alright I fancy them too.....they have pulses don't they?

Tracklist:

1.Confidential
2.Sick
3.Phoenix
4.Absent Farmer
5.Stain
6.Prehistory
7.Bedouin
8.Kcahsmahs (Spare Coconut)
9.Mouse Sleep

DOWNLOAD out of cold storage 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!

Poison – "Bestial Death (Demo II)" (BFM Tapes – BFM 002) 1985

Oh my God......sorry all you pale blue-veined metallic youths...I mean Oh My God of Evil,the great Satan and all his fantastic demon mates...I fall to my knees in thanks that you are but a very early prototype for a system of control...and a majority of the modern Planet still, STILL(?) falls for it.

Despite hardly ever being mentioned in that toilet fiction best seller by authors unknown, "The Bible", your influence still makes the god fearing  among us fear the concept of 'evil'...even the very intelligent among us are sucked into this ludicrous experiment of mass hysteria.That is far more frightening than any fictional devil,mainly because its fucking real!

The main tripping point for Death Metal,or just plain satanism is ,that if Satan exists then so does God,or Jehova, or Alan.....please don't kill me, I meant Allah!. Therefore,you are condemning yourself to eternal torture because you didn't waste your life grovelling for forgiveness for sins that ,apparently, Jesus Christ had already absolved us all for when he ,allegedly, provided the perverted image of himself nailed to a cross to remind us all.Although there are no photographs to prove it, so we'll just have to take the word of a bunch of madmen, who seem to have an exclusive hotline to the main office of the Almighty God above,and so can inform us of which confused nonsense this evasive deity wants us to know.

So, Death Metal bands are either comfortable in the knowledge that neither God, Nor, Satan, almost certainly do NOT exist ,and are just having a bit of fun, or they are totally stupid,worshiping the wrong side. I've heard that Satan, doesn't pull the punches when it comes to torture and eternity...even though it says fuck all about it in the Bible.However, one must say it's great fun annoying, and better still, frightening the shit out of dumbass believers by pretending to worship Satan,Lucifer, Beelzebub ,or whatever other stupid fucking name they give this ghost.

Now back to the slightly more logical world of terribly bad recordings of Death Metal band Poison, from Germany.

If it could be possible, Poison's second Demo, has an even higher rating on the Shit-Fi scale than the first. This one seems to have been recorded in a shoebox,with the drums outside in the car park,but the vocalist is the same room as you, spraying large clumps of sputum in your ear.The lyrics of which are unlikely to be sophisticated ruminations on the human condition.....well...either that or about death,evil and the Devil.It's truly bizarre stuff,and naturally its also very silly, but there's nothing else that sounds quite like it.

Tracklist:

1 Intro : The Vision 0:54
2 Satan Commands 4:21
3 Witchfynde 3:25
4 Wake The Dead 8:03
5 Antichrist (Death To Christ) 3:09
6 Alive (Undead) (7:55)
6a Intro 1:08
6b Song 6:47

DOWNLOAD a bestial ear bumming HERE!

The Decay – "Tonight, (Back From The Death) E.P." ( Sick Records – Sick 001) 1985

 

Ah bless 'em......classic Swiss punk by numbers with a guitar sound that must have been fed through a transistor radio then miked up through a cheap but louder amp. I had a similar amplification device in the 80's, purchased from Tandy called the Archer mini-amp,which you could easily overdrive the fuck out of and it would sound not unlike Andy Riot of The Decay's fizzing and spitting Guitar sound,if fed through the PA.

The infamous Archer Mini amp by Radio Shack!

The staggering,hopefully intended, incompetence on offer on this EP is as accidentally abstract as The Accused of "Mell Square Musick EP" fame from 1980.(more Accused HERE).

This undoubted charm remains intact from Insane Johnny(the Singer) and the boys,despite the wonderfully meandering time signatures,which in classic Beefheartian style seems to involve at least two different timings playing at the same time,which is very difficult to do, unless you're doing it by the forgivable mistake of incompetence,or got no monitors?

I can't imagine anyone notating the parts on these wild tunes, Drumbo style;but this Drummer, Rotten Love (!?),has that rare talent of doing just what the fuck he feels like doing irrespective of what the other musicians are contributing.This is how Punk Rock should sound.Listen to rock'n'roll decaying in front of your ears and dream of what might have been. 

Tracklist:

Seite Eins

A1 Tonight1:57
A2 Police State USA 2:06

Seite Zwei

B1 Holidays In London 1:16
B2 Anarchy And Peace 1:30
B3 Self Destruct 1:09

DOWNLOAD the decay of rock'n'roll HERE!

Flowers In The Dustbin ‎– "All The Best People Are Perverts" (96 Tapes ‎– 96/14) 1985

Of course, it should read "All the best perverts are People",not too sure that all of those lovely shiny 'Top' people are pervs...maybe 80% but not ALL of them.They ARE better than us after all.

Having said that, not all the best Punks were perverts it seems.Although heavily influenced by Glam, the Punks didn't seem to follow in the footsteps of Gary Glitter sexually...unless someone knows better.

However, if someone was walking around looking like a 1982 Punk in 1985, one would have to disguise a snigger or two. This means they must be thick? Things had moved on by then,but there was always a few Punky combo's what got through the net, like the sartorially awful  Rubella Ballet,and Flowers in the Dustbin. Both associated with the Anarcho-Punks, but far too 'pop' to be taken seriously,Chumbawumba style.The orthodox Punk look in 1982 was not a good one,and as for the punk music wot da punx liked,with the exception of US Hardcore and Discharge, it was profoundly dull,stuck on repeat for  at least the previous five looooong years,and something to be tossed into the Dustbin along with the flowers.

Comfortably 35 years distant from those times, one can now sit back and enjoy the gothy pop/punk of the long defunct Flowers In The Dustbin. They had the tunes if not the hairstyles to match, but their audience were those living museum pieces that still had blue hair and bondage trousers thinking they were being subversive. These people still exist,nearing 60 years of age,and still dressing like they did as teenagers, but worse still their kids and grand-kids carry on the tradition today!? The new orthodoxy.

Awww cum onnnnnn,its only entertainment innit?.....you know what, it was never thought of as entertainment,until these bloody singers started to complain that no-one was dancing. Then,it became entertainment. We live with the flowers of punk showbiz today...its time to send the fuckers to landfill and it's one thing that shouldn't be endlessly recycled. Flowers In The Dustbin were irrelevant in 1985,and their relations still are.

"Last Tango In Vietnam" is quite a good tune however,and I can imagine a bunch of punx dancing to it in their ignored ghetto's everywhere.

The Track listings on the insert pictured above by the way.

DOWNLOAD some minority entertainment HERE!

Otomo Yoshihide (大友良英) – "Early Works I '81~'85" (Maboroshi No Sekai – P…0010) 1994

Back in the early eighties,guitarist and musicology student,Otomo Yoshihide, decided to dump his conventional music career after discovering free jazz and free improvisation musicians like Derek Bailey, saxophonist Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi (from whom he had lessons).

As great as his influences were,Otomo had rather more strings to his bow than his heroes,using virtually anything he could lay his hands on,notably an early exponent of 'Turntablism",and sampling. In his hands the Turntable and,later, the sampler, would not be as cliched and unimaginative as most of his contemporaries would make them sound.He would go on to make dozens of albums which sounded largely completely different to each other...unlike Abe Kaoru and Takayanagi,his mentor in chief.

Here's a collection of Otomo's early experiments with tapes,electrified springs,turntables,radio's mixed with some obligatory free sax and guitar improvisation.

Tracklist:

A1 Religion-4
B1 Guitar Solo Improvisation
B2 Religion-3
B3 Sax Of A Kind + PB Radio '84
B4 Religion-1
B5 Religion-2
B6 NS-500

DOWNLOAD  what religion's 4 HERE!

The Blue Daisies ‎– "Wilt" (Iridescence Records ‎– I-23) 1985

Oh Alright, let's call this 'Art Rock'.

Highly possibly done by unemployed actors as well by the sound of it. Brad Laner played some Drums on this, not the drums that sound like Bobby Gillespie's skinwork in The Jesus and Mary Chain...the more inventive stuff at the end.

I know less than nothing about this band,except that they come from L.A. although I understand that they liked to take their clothes off on stage regularly.......now, if they ain't actors I'll share a dressing room with Kevin Spacey the next time I tread the boards at the Old Vic.

Fairly original abstract,slightly rude, avant-rock is what this is.

Featured on the soundtrack to 1986 movie 'Circle of Violence'(yeah neither have I!) starring long dead child star River Phoenix, who hated both the Blue Daisies and their music apparently.If that isn't a recommendation I dunno what is?

Tracklist:

A1 Anthem/Pillars
A2 Slot
A3 Sack Me
A4 To Be, Continued
B1 100 Tears
B2 Dance Dance Dance
B3 Everything And Nothing At All
B4 Es Amor
B5 Beautiful Kid

DOWNLOAD whatever thou wilt HERE!

Jonathan Briley ‎– "Darker Profits" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 26) 1985

 

Well I like this stuff, even if it is akin to listening to Green Day (or Brown Day as I prefer) and saying you're into Punk Rock. It does also represent the blind alley that making Industrial musick leads one into. One can only listen to Throbbing Gristle, and their a-likes from the old Skool era so many times before you wish there was someone else making similar tones that everyone hated because they were "jonny-cum-lately's", yet if we didn't know what we know we would have a different attitude,would we not? Hearing something you haven't heard before does have its merits.However after saying that, I would never allow a Green day album anywhere near my record player no matter how many times i've heard The Clash.....I could always dig out 'Sandinista' if i wanted something sobering,even though I don't think i got through the first side before filing it away in a dark corner of my attic.Another band that shouldn't have made a second album!Like Sleepchamber,but nobody noticed the forty plus 'second albums' they released from 1983 onwards.

Tracklist:

1 Whimpering Wails Of Woe 4:24
2 Sea Of Bones 3:31
3 Arbeit Macht Frei 5:07
4 The Pain Of Sleep- Soundtrack Excerpt 7:08
5 Seranade Grute'sque 5:57
6 Into The Abyss 3:53
7 Metal Erection 5:37
8 Please The Lord (In Praze Ov Hymn) 4:04
9 The Hunter 5:59
10 At The Alter Of Lies 5:29
11 Site Of Pain, Site Of Pleasure 7:17

DOWNLOAD and profit from jonathan's darker moments HERE!

Jonathan Briley ‎– "The Will To Power" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 34) 1985

 Hmmm a Nietzchean title, images of torture on the insert,inverted crucifix's, the odd reference to the Marquis de Sade,faux biblical text readings....this must be a mid eighties Industrial tape?

Heavens to Murgatroyd,it IS a mid eighties industrial tape dagnabbit!

The opening track,Requiem To A Small Blind Boy,has the most hilarious amateur dramatic rendering of some silly alternative Bible style parable,probably something to do with Satan or things equally as daft.It seems that our Jonathan is a frustrated actor,and he'd do any Faustian deal to be famous.

He so wants us to think he's evil, the poor lad.

The music is a nicely relaxing style of Industrial Dark Ambient of the Lustmord variety,encrusted with lots if Industrial bling.Especially pleasing are the dialogue sections on the rather controversial subject of Vivisection,which i assume the 'evil' Jonathan is all for?

Tracklist:

1 Requiem To A Small Blind Boy 4:32
2 Wheels Of Agony 6:23
3 Vivisection 5:43
4 Scorn Of The Sireens 8:37
5 The Breathing Meathod 4:44
6 For Silling (The 120 Days) 3:58

7 Insanity Loop 3:31
8 Of Purest Blood 4:59
9 13 Steps To The Whipping Pole 3:23
10 Metropolis 4:58
11 Shemham Forash! 7:05

DOWNLOAD from a mid-eighties hell HERE!

7 From Life ‎– "Tantra Vendetta" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 40) 1985

"Nostalgia is an act of Cowardice", says Lawrence Van Horn on the insert for this score for a Ballet about the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Whether its pro or anti-Tibet is anyone's guess. I may run a small opinion poll,....For the Occupation; Against the Occupation; Occupation,what Occupation?;or Don't care!,are your choices......I rather think 'Occupation,what Occupation?, would win comfortably, with 'Don't Care!' clear in second place.

Whenever a left field underground artist starts writing music for a Modern Ballet, it's a sign that he's finished as a creative force.

As Nostalgia is now a form of Cowardice,according to the philosopher that is L. Van Horn, then this blog is full of Cowards,and I don't like being called a Coward ,mainly becuse I am a Coward;and let's face it, this Blog overfloweth with Nostalgia......otherwise why the hell would we be listening to a bunch of 35 year old cassettes by Lawrence Van 'me?A Coward, Naaah' Horn? Nostagia for the invasion and occupation of Tibet doesn't seem to bother him one bit.

The music itself is like walking through a fog of tear gas during a slow motion riot....which in itself is a kind of Modern Ballet.Actually its a Ballet i'd probably go and see,as long as it's coreographed by actual rioters.It can start off with a real innocent man being shot in the back by some dumb Cops,then take it from there until the theatre is in flames.

Tracklist:

Act One
A1 Tonal Reflection #1 : An Ocean Of Stars 15:00
A2 Spellbondage 6:02
A3 Panic In A State Of Grace 2:43
A4 A Face Full Of Pie-In-The-Sky 5:33

Act Two
B1 Tonal Reflection #2 : Horizans In Flames 21:56
B2 Llaman Lamentation 5:50
B3 Guerrilla Mantra 3:53

DOWNLOAD tantrically HERE!

7 From Life ‎– "Coral Assault" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX-21) 1985

 
In a time when Coral is under assault from all angles due to the stupidity of the human race, it seems Lawrence Van Horn, of 7 From Life, wanted to draw this idiotic anti-life violence to our notice thirty years before it was even mentioned? Well maybe not,maybe he just wanted to creep us out, and make doomy music? It does have a tune about the bombing of Dresden on it,of which my father was a very rare witness.He was on a forced death march from poland back to the fatherland,when they rested on a hill over looking Dresden on the evening the British were bombing it flat.I could add the relevant section from his memoirs,but it would take over the post, and poor old Lawrence would feel ignored.....just like he must have been by all of woman kind......(you can download the entire memoir HERE if you're so inclined. He described it as being a "lovely display of colour's like a firework display";not a mention of the innocent civilian life being lost in the ensuing firestorm. That's what he was like,stoic and emotionless,which were the talents that got him through the whole of the war.

Oh Yeah, the tape!?
I dunno about you's but by 1985 I'd had enough of all this industrial and Punk shit,and had adopted an ironic Miami Vice look,and was starting to get into easy listening. But in america, they were only just getting into this Industrial fad,and duly claimed ownership,just like they did ten years after Punk Rock had died. Richard Hells' haircut wasn't enough evidence,especially when confronted with a picture of Bowie on the cover of Space Oddity's re-released version in 1972;when RichardMeyers was still in reformed school with Verlaine,who also didn't invent symbolist poetry,and also wasn't in Quicksilver Messenger Service,which was basically Television in bad clothes. The USA did in fact invent Rock'n'Roll,but why aren't they satisfied with that?
We may have all been bored with Industrial by 1985, but 35 years later we can now appreciate the late-comers contribution ,and it seems to have come from so far back that it all sounds as thought they had invented this pop-fad after all; and in the future, with all this revisionism going around, who knows, but maybe "7 After Life" did invent it all after all?...maybe he even invented Rock'n'Roll..I dunno anymore, or, care!?

Tracklist:

A1 Tombs Of Maya 5:41
A2 Shroud Of White Darkness 7:21
A3 Fome And Tide 4:13
A4 Hash Of Masks 6:07
A5 Cobra Dance 1:50
A6 Dresden 1945 4:05
A7 Insolation 2:15
B1 Invocation 3:07
B2 Stigma Machine 5:14
B3 Beyond Worms 4:21
B4 Chello Tango 2:18
B5 Nous Sommes Tous Sauvages 2:15
B6 Light Vector 4:31
B7 Mental Anguish Psyhic Reflex 5:31
B8 Withdrawl 3:07
B9 End 0:16

DOWNLOAD the gunfight at the not ok coral HERE!

7 From Life ‎– "Sting Of The Honey Spider" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 27) 1985

 He had the name of a Porn Star, and the looks of a toilet cleaner, but Lawrence Van Horn's recorded output is probably the best stuff on the Inner-X-Musick label.Another from the Nurse With Wound sonic collage school,who had in turn nicked it from former 'Homosexual' Jim Whelton,and his various terminally obscure cassette releases; the most well-known being L.Voag. It turns out that NWW had appropriated virtually everything to make their first album,and i'm sure Larry uses the same time-trusted method with his sound sources.

To blot his copybook a tad, Van Horn was in several line-ups of the not-so-good,and very dated sounding, Sleepchamber,but don't let that put you off.

Tracklist:

A1 The Cliffs Of Oblivion 5:52
A2 Lagoon Noir 2:44
A3 Necklace Of Tears 8:09
A4 Phantom Pain 3:30
A5 Anathematical Arousal 2:26
A6 The Gathering Thorns 4:43
A7 Rain Of Ashes 2:23
B1 Resisting The Limit 3:32
B2 Fruits Of Abuse 4:21
B3 A World Of Pure Salt 3:12
B4 Bitter Rapture 5:27
B5 Plate Tectonics 4:29
B6 Ascendancy In Tatters 3:16
B7 Intermezzo 2:13
B8 Lying In Wait 4:33

DOWNLOAD some sweet arachnophonics HERE!