We have a short break in our stay in South Wales, and briefly return back across the Severn Bridge to Bristol via Penzance, as some kind person has provided us with the missing Unreleased Chorcazade album from the famed mass group extinction year of 1988. The strangely titled "Death Is Eeklo".
Here,they sound like a intriguing mix between early Felt and a Josef K 45 played at 33rpm, although the Slint parallel remains.
Production values are up on the "Made To Be Devoured" album.As are the number of unfathomable words like 'Eeklo' and the unpronounceable group moniker,which is apparently pronounced thus: Cork-ah-zayde!?
Tracklisting:
01) Night Ferry
02) Laughing Gasman
03) Amorous Gasman
04) Wheel
05) Treacletime
06) Checkered Soul
07) Smiling Wessex Ghost
08) Neat Around Nought
DOWNLOAD is eeklo HERE!
Proto-Post Rock is the made-up genre for this deeply buried and deeply good lost album from another lost British group. Pre-dating the very american Slint to the claims of inventing Post-Rock by a couple of years at least.
This is one of Slint producer, Steve Albini's, favourite albums,which suggests an undue influence on those tiny giants of post-rock , by the giant of american alternative rock himself. He was always whipping out his copy of "Made To Be devoured" in the control room apparently; explaining the undeniable parallels with that "Spiderland" album.
But you won't find Chorchazade doing sell-out(in both senses of the word)tours performing "made To Be Devoured" in its entirety to packed audiences of middle-aged bankers, oh no. I doubt the individuals involved even remember,or care, they were in such a bizarre group as this at all.......at least I hope not.
Tracklist:
A1 Pie Maker
A2 Half A Crown
A3 Beak (Concise Version)
A4 Felix Rex
B1 It Aint Because
B2 Twain
B3 Tom Dander
B4 Out Of This World
"Indie" was supposed to be music for misfits,but even within these ranks there were outsiders.None more so than this Cornish bunch of outcasts with an unpronounceable name....Chorchazade??? WTF!?
Impossibly obscure and from Penzance,on the most isolated tip of England.This is a weird kind of Aspergers Syndrome Rock, that doesn't seem to care if anyone ever listens to it;the last thing they seemed to want to get is attention or love.With a name like Chorchazade they were destined to get what they wanted,and they certainly got it..... total obscurity!
The music they somehow managed to write,is a bizarre form of Outsider-post-indie,or an even more autistic form of proto-post-rock,making Slint look like Metallica in the process.
They did however manage to perform sporadic concerts in Britain and Europe from 1977 to 1988, often supporting such luminaries as the terrible James, Marc Riley and the Creepers, A Certain Ratio, The Blue Aeroplanes and The Brilliant Corners.
They eventually released this 12 inch EP which John Peel played a track off;but said that he 'wished the group had a simpler name, like the Moody Blues’' and never played another of the group's recordings.They also played at the Glastonbury festival in 1988, but only on the 'warm-up' Thursday. It rained heavily and the only sound between songs was the buzz of scrambling motorbikes in an adjacent field. The group’s manager(they had a manager???) and one of their girlfriends(They had Girlfriends?????) stood alone, watching from under a large golf umbrella.
Chief Chorchazader Chris said:"At the end though, the last few songs, when the sun came out and all these people wrapped in bin liners appeared from nowhere, nodding their heads and shaking the rain out of their hair. We had back stage passes for the whole festival but we went home as soon as we'd finished playing. We played the Ashton Court festival a few times of course, when it was free, before it turned into the total shit that it is now. We even played second to last on the main stage Saturday night once. The review in the paper said we 'went down like a fart in a spacesuit.' It was true too, all those people expecting a dance and a good time and everything. Hmmmm."
In 1989 the band apparently, recorded an album called 'Death Is Eeklo' and went on a short tour of Belgium to promote it. The group’s minibus was found, empty, in a lay-by a mile or so outside of Waterloo like an Indie Marie Celeste. Half eaten baguettes, a cigarette still smoking in the ashtray. The tour was not completed and the album was never officially released.In 1995 a benevolent caretaker rescued hundreds ( estimated to be 75% of the total number originally pressed ) of the group's vinyl records from a skip outside a Bristol music distribution factory. A lot of them have warped and look like shallow black bowls now. If you own a Chorchazade record, you have a very rare thing.
Tracklist:
A1 Aah,You Are,As Light As A Feather 5:03
A2 Where There's Brera 3:05
B This Is His 8:13
