Brad Laner ‎– "Ligaments 02" (Captured Tracks ‎– CT/SP-056) 2019

Another rewiring of the ligaments in the ligature of a genre that could be, 'Modular Synthesis".

Personally the sight of wires gives me a migraine,and the cost of this new generation of Modular synths makes me wince. But, at least we have Brad Laner to do it for us.A better candidate to make sense out of this rich retiree's 21st century version of collecting butterfly's I cannot think of.

This second tape is at least far better,and nuttier, than tape one,which was in turn far better than most indulgers in this questionable pastime........and yes, the covers do look like those Industrial Records cassettes.....a tribute within a tribute?

Tracklist:

A Ligaments 02a
B Ligaments 02b

DOWNLOAD some new ligaments HERE!

Brad Laner ‎– "Ligaments 01" (Captured Tracks ‎– CT/SP-055) 2019

 Brad Laner, the step-grandaddy of Synth Punk, among many other OUT-there musical projects too numerous to mention, is,of course, still offending the musical sensibilities of the normals to this day.

More recently Laner has taken the inevitable dive into the ever-expanding universe of modular synthesis, taking many months to record dozens of hours of live improvisations and editing them together. “Ligaments” is the result and is intended to be an ongoing series.

Sure we've all now got a room dedicated to our modular synth collections,but few people on this crumbling rock have Laner's naturally abstract insight into what makes something challenging.

You can either end up sounding like Jean Michel Jarre, or like a disintegrating alien machine.I like my Modular synth workouts to be adequately fried and burnt on at least one side.This is what these things were intended to do.Except this cassette is fried on both sides.

Tracklist:

A Ligaments 01a
B Ligaments 01b

DOWNLOAD this analog madness digitally HERE!

Earth Dies Burning ‎– "Songs From The Valley Of The Bored Teenager (1981-1984)" (Captured Tracks ‎– CT-180)

 

Los Angeles gave us many things;some truly terrible singer-songwriters,some really quite good singer-songwriters(manily from Canada it has to be said),recreational cocaine abuse for the common man,cop-killing,some half-decent post-punk punk groups, the Los Angeles Free Music Society(LAFMS), Captain Beefheart,and.....Synth Punk!

Starting with the very great 'Screamers',it never really caught on,but Brad Laner was there at the begining as a teenager,with Nervous Gender, and after that came 'Earth Dies Burning'.

Mr Laner has been in nearly all the greatest LA Bands, like Steaming Coils, Three Day Stubble,Severed Head In A Bag to name but a few; as well as an integral member of the LAFMS.

'The Earth Dies Burning',is certainly a fine example of how to use Technology,which is, basically, take the instruction manual and burn the fucker.And also, they did a rare example of a PiL cover version!?.."The Flowers of Romance".So that automatically makes this a fantastic record does it not?....you should be saying 'Yes Jonny'!?

Tracklist:

1.Bored Teenager 0:55
2.Duck And Cover 0:39
3.Another Six Year Old 2:21
4.60 Minutes 0:36
5.Bowling For Food 1:39
6.Soaps 1:22
7.True Lovers Of Crime Anthem 1:51
8.Fish Sticks 1:22
9.Interlude 1:51
10.Haiti 1:17
11.Falwell Youth 1:09
12.Vegetables 1:34
13.America America 2:14
14.Pork Yogurt (Studio) 0:41
15.60 Minutes (Studio) 0:19
16.Another Six Year Old (Studio) 1:08
17.Mystery Bedroom Song 1:45
18.The Flowers Of Romance 2:19
19.The Safety Dance (Live At Bebop) 1:29
20.Disco Heroin (Live At Lhasa Club) 2:05
21.Power To The People (Live At Anticlub) 1:23
22.Pork Yogurt (Live At Anticlub)
23.60 Minutes / Duck And Cover (Live At Anticlub) 0:46
24.Psychotic Reaction /Kill The Fascists!(Studio/Live At Anticlub) 07:05

DOWNLOAD the attack of the bored teenagers HERE!

Pink Section - "Sectioned(1978-1980)" (a Die or DIY expanded edition) 2020

There's something about American culture that just effortlessly produces weirdo's.There's the Dave Grohl type of weirdo who's just so sickenly 'Normal'and Nice that he's ceased to exist;or, there's The Pink section who have ceased to exist because they had created one of the greatest handful of out-rock tunes ever written which are impossible to better...not even by Stevie Wonder!

While other Americans were taking the Devo post-punk route,with the musicianly ability to back it up,The Pink Section had nothing like that in their armoury.They just had something that had to be put before the public,then finish. "Shopping" has to be one of the greatest tunes ever written anywhere in the world?

Having just accidently watched a YouTube video of Dave Grohl listing his ten routes to 'suckess', with my mouth open wide in misunderstanding,telling us to to do 'Bad Ass Rock shows'(whatever that is?) as a certain route to entertainment superstardom;finishing off with him and his sickening group melting into a puddle of slime in a desperate need to be liked in front of a massive stadium crowd,who were lapping it up.Band to audience..."we Looove Yoooou!"

All the advice coming from the third richest drummer on the planet("I did my time stacking supermarket shelves" grins David)....who are the other two richer drummers anyway?.....should all be taken as the opposite route to creative success,retaining a barrel full of self-respect in the process.The Pink Section however did it perfectly,even with a drummer(carl Detweiler) who is likely the third poorest drummer of all time.

Rule number five-ish was 'Be Different'.....er...David????

TRACKLISTING:

1.Tour Of China
2.Shopping
3.Wine World
4.Midsummer New York
5.Flat Dog
6.Part Time
7.Francine's List

8.Safety Instruction

9.Francine's List (live at The Deaf Club 11-3-1979)

10.Jane Blank (live at The Deaf Club 11-3-1979)

11.Been in the Basement 30 Years (live at The Deaf Club 11-3-1979)

12.Lonely Fashionette (Live at Mabhuay Gardens 12-7-1979)
13.Cars Don't Wait For Love(Demo)
14.Jane Blank (Demo)
15.Jane Blank (Cable TV appearence)
16.Shopping (Cable TV appearence)

DOWNLOAD before you go shopping HERE!

Chemicals Made From Dirt ‎– "Ike (1978-83)" (Hyped To Death ‎– Homework #203) 2000

 More hopelessly obscure US Post-Punk quirkiness,or as it is described on the sleeve as "World Class Art-Wave"? A genre within a genre. Just trying to think of other Art-Wave acts who were never referred to as, but were Post-Punk......Talking Heads?...Wire?......things are getting far too complex nowadays! How does an Art-Waver know if he's an Art-Waver or Post Punk?
It used to be far simpler back in the day.....all this was 'punk'.....not even Art-Punk...it was Punk.Heavy Metal was Heavy Metal.There's slow Heavy Metal (Sludge,Funeral,Doom +another 600 varieties), Fast Heavy Metal, (Thrash,Speed,Punk Crossover), Classic Heavy Metal (Judas Priest, Black Sabbath,NWOBHM)...and that's it!

Chemicals Made From Dirt, was a .......they're at it again on these sleevenotes!....a PunkWave.....what the fuck is that?.....Punk?.....from Long Island. So at least they were near the action,rather than some cesspit in Iowa or one of those more medeval states that seemed shut off from the world since the witch trials.

Again we have a group with a name that suggested immediate commercial failure.

At the risk of starting another genre, i'll describe this as that quirky variety of post-Punk which became popular among geeks wanting to form bands in the USA between 1979 and and 1983, approximately between Devo's first album and "Oh No It's Devo".......or Oh No! It's another Quirky Post Punk Band.

Alas, whereas Devo had a compact and memorable name, Chemicals made from Dirt (CMFD....even the acronym is a tongue twister!) had a difficult to remember moniker,if not forgettable.

Me, being a Fan of Quirky Post Punk, or Art Wave, Or art rock in general,beginning with XTC,who were the British Devo/Talking Heads.A face that launched a few post punk novelty acts like The Vapors,but not a wave of the likeminded as in the states.

CMFD left us with 25 songs recorded for posterity back in the day, and put on a disintegrating CD-r by Chuck Warner of Hyped2Death at the turn of the century, and they're all good. Personal fave is "Beatniks Looking For Tourists",'cus I like anything with the word 'Beatnik' in the title.....I'm that deep, that 'arty'.

Let a band spokesman finish off this confused narrative with something sensible:

"We called it an avant absurd experiment...We liked the idea of breaking down meaning to the point of abstraction and then reinterpreting it based on personal associations and meaning rather than having any absolute meaning.".....yep...Artwave alright!

Tracklist:

1 Manikin 2:44
2 M 3:31
3 Hard 3:26
4 Beatniks Looking For Tourists 2:40
5 Protein Pants 2:52
6 Another Dinner 2:41
7 Chemicals Made From Dirt 2:27
8 Panic-No Fusion 2:40
9 Girls My Age 2:40
10 17th Century
11 Communist Calendar Girls 2:41
12 Air Raid Drill 3:04
13 Medicated Elvis 2:09
14 Uh-Oh 1:12
15 Homeless Men 3:25
16 Fast Ocean Puppet 3:05
17 Fly To Work 2:43
18 Multiple Station Wagon 2:15
19 Claus Von Bulow 4:38
20 Dr. Shockley 3:17
21 Lost In The Cave Of Flying Dogs 3:56
22 Barney 4:00
23 Hiding From Bozo 2:48
24 Show World 1:37
25 Rapula 3:39

DOWNLOAD some dirty chemotherapy HERE!

Algebra Mothers/A-Moms ‎– "A-Moms = Algebra Mothers (1977-84)" (Third Man Records ‎– TMR533) 2018

 From the Rock City of Detroit came a bunch of misfits called 'A-Moms',who released a quirky single(get it HERE!) and promptly disappeared....ahhh, but did they? Hence this post-humous compilation cobbled together, minus the single, for Third Man Records a few years ago.

They played all over the massive cosmos,or barren wasteland, that is Detroit, supporting every offshoot of the Stooges or MC5, and Pere Ubu.

Obviously talented musicians, they do have a tendancy to all play at the same time,which 'talented' muscians have an unstoppable drive to do.This is when we need producers to tell 'em what to do.

There is the odd bit of Hendrix-y fretboard wankery,but we can forgive that,for this charming delve into the Archives of another group whose abysmal name probably cost them a larger audience....which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it.Personally, I prefer the groups who do their thing then FUCK OFF. A-Moms certainly did their thing,then Fucked Off,so they're at least one up on U2,who didn't.

Tracklist:

1.Carsick
2.In and Out of Order
3.Seesaw
4.Little Mathematica
5.Goo Goo Eyes
6.Ironhead
7.Misfits
8.Nuns in Chains
9.As The World Turns
10.Dance Damage
11.Hollywood
12.Chemical Tastes
13.No For An Answer
14.Swan Song

DOWNLOAD the A-moms of invention HERE!

BOB ‎– "Backward" (Dumb Records ‎– d.7589) 1983

 A fine example of the musical landscape in the USA from 1979 onwards is the ungooglable, 'BOB', from krazy ol'Frisco town.Herky Jerky as fuck are BOB,like Devo if Devo had lived in a nice town like Frisco.

Yeah I know,there'll be loads of Franciscans telling us how hard life is there,like a sub-saharan state transposed to northern California,the seventh richest place on the planet,just six places behind the USA as a whole....poor fuckers.

There were loadsa bands like BOB,with emphasis on the quirky jerky.....i suppose every western country had at least one,overclever,with prog rock style complex time signatures,but with that certain 'Punk' influence. Cardiacs spring to mind for the UK.

I dunno if the name 'BOB' has anything to do with the  guru of the Church of the Sub Genius, J.R. Bob Dodds , but if it does that's ok with me....as is the music. I like Herky Jerky, just not in every other band on the block.

Gimmie some Slack Bob.

Tracklist:

1 Danger City 3:34
2 Insomnia 3:07
3 Who Do You Love 4:04
4 (My Pal) Joe 3:05
5 The Things That You Do 3:50
6 You Know You Gotta 2:14
7 Bye Bye 2:48
8 Dead Animal 3:43
9 Bird Lanes 2:05
10 Voices Calling 5:14

11 Thomas Edison

12 Buddy Boy

DOWNLOAD this sub-genius HERE!

Marine Girls ‎– "Beach Party" (In Phaze Records ‎– 002 1/2) 1981

Once upon a time,back at the Birth of the Indie Sound,which was specific to the British Commonwealth only. We find four sixth formers from Essex taking Young Marble Giants' minimal de-butched rock and putting it through the mangle, squeezing out everylast piece of alpha-male rubbish and flushing it.Also obviously influenced by the Raincoats' demasculated post-punk they were spotted by Indie group numero uno The Television Personalities,who released this on their own Whaam records as a proper LP.

Ok, so Tracey Thorn went on to adorn the coffee tables of the Thatcher 'loadsamoney' generation, but this was one big v-sign,middle finger, to all those butch punkers who,instead of destroying that uber macho Rock nonsense,carried it on,but with a sillier haircut. The Marine Girls were the unwitting pre-cursors of an indie pop future,you can't get Twee-er than this,but,oh, how they tried!

Kurt Cobain was a fan,as he allegedly was of Young Marble Giants also........again.....was he actually listening?

It's not his fault,just another victim of the American need to 'Rock Out Maaan'.This is also why the american Indie route led directly back to where it all came from.....Rock,but this time renamed 'Grunge' for some unfathomable reason.Long hair was back and feet on monitors,calls for seeing hands in the air were heard. In the beginning of the post-punk period,as Punk never really happened in the USA, all the groups wanted to be Devo before they reverted to type,so all the American groups were herky jerky Devo-a-likes,before eventually mutating ,maybe via hardcore, into Dinosaur Jr....which was thee proto-grunge band or what(?); or The Jesus Lizard,who were still Devo really,but Rocked Up and dressed down.

Meanwhile there were no Grunge groups in the UK,post-punk had gone pop,and all that was left were just twee indie bands,and nothing else until Ecstacy hit in '88....and we all know what happened then don't we.Stll living with the consequences today. Just thousands of types of 'Metal' and 'Hip Hop' are the dreadful result of all this chaos.

Recorded at the In-Phaze garden shed.

Tracklist:

A1 In Love
A2 Fridays
A3 Tonight?
A4 Times We Used To Spend
A5 Flying Over Russia
A6 Tutti Lo Sanno
A7 All Dressed Up
A8 Honey
B1 Holiday Song
B2 He Got The Girl
B3 Day Night Dreams
B4 Promises
B5 Silent Red
B6 Dishonesty
B7 20,000 Leagues
B8 Marine Girls

DOWNLOAD on the count of twee HERE!

Various Artists - "Here's The Shit!" (Greenwich Performance Collective) 1984

 

Those wacky chaps at the Greenwich Performance Collective were at it again in 1984 with more classic DIY tchoons from all our favourites.

Cancer Club return with another minimal synth masterpiece that could have been a 'Hit' but is content with just being the 'shit',as are we all?

The 'Well Known Wankers' scum up our current political situation nicely with "Government Scum", and 'Your Heterosexual Violence' return with an attempt at sensitive songwriting.....did they ever make an album?...dunno, but, they are on Bandcamp incredibly!?

'Psyco Psyco' are a new GPC act that didn't appear on "Dennis",with the Post-Punk anti-war classic "Headstrong Big War", and the 'Bulbous Skunk Cabbages' show that not only can your bandname finish your career, your songs can too.

But that's not the point is it? Careers are for the others,as are profits too.This selection displays all the lack of ambition, lack of professionalism, and lack of commerciality of a pure independant soul. Property is theft, but sharing isn't.

TRACKLISTING:

DOWNLOAD the hits not the shits HERE!

Various Artists ‎– "Dennis" (The Greenwich Performance Collective) 1984

 Balancing carefully on the zero degrees longitude meridian ,and therefore at the center of the Earth, The Greenwich Performance Collective were also balancing on the watershed point of the 80's,at the point when the Proles started to get into vintage clothes and buy hit Cardiacs singles....like Punk never happened.Worse was to come with surreal visions of white factory fodder dancing to electronic music and getting Psychedelic. Not that I can imagine 'Your Heterosexual Violence' from the Greenwich Performance Collective (the GPC) ever shaking a tambourine to the funky drummer beat.

This collective compilation is Indie/DIY crossover at its zenith before the unwashed masses heard that the Roland TB303 bassline wasn't a piece of shit after all, oh the purity.

One does suspect that a lot of these marvellously named groups on 'Dennis' contain the same members,but its rather better disguised than some of Jim Whelton's attempts at faux-compilations,like the otherwise excellent, "Psst!Wanna Buy A Tape"

The best part about making music is always making up band names.It's ALL downhill from there.Whether you're in 'The New Catalonian Slipper Boys','The Dandy Lions','Dead Celebrities','0.2.WOT',it's all going the same way. If only Boy George was in 'Cancer Club' and not the sickening concept that we're all in this together and getting on with each other that suggests the name of his own group, then we probably wouldn't hate the fucker's guts anymore....there would have always been the name to raise a smile instead of a small bit of vomit into the buccal cavity.

Basically,my adice to any youngsters who wanna rediscover indie pop,just find a name that makes you laugh,then just keep it at that,forget the music part.

Who wouldn't want to be in a group called 'Your Heterosexual Violence' for chrissakes? An added bonus is that musically they sound like a more incompetant Nightingales.

I also like the fact that there's a group called 'Dali's Car'at exactly the same time of that Neu Romantic/Goth supergroup pairing of Mick Karn and Peter Murphy...also called 'Dali's Car'....unless they are the same entity,in which case mucho respect to Karn and Murphy.Personally I like both of Dali's cars.I also like Dali's moustache,a version of which I now proudly sport on my upper lip.

It's not just DIY and Indie punk on this fantastic cassette, there's stuff for the intellectuals and european music fans,some cosmic and minimal synth stuff,so,sadly, it's not totally offensive to the average music bore.There's also some disco for dancing, and even some white boy Rap.....you may never need another tape?

Tracklist:

A1 –Your Heterosexual Violence - Incredible Story
A2 –The Vinegarettes - Guilded Youth
A3 –0.2.WOT - Skeleton Fields
A4 –Dead Celebrities - Dead Celebrities
A5 –Almonds And Diamonds - Talk
A6 –Malvinas Brothers - Hollywood
A7 –Unknown Colours - Gun In Your Pocket
A8 –Violet Circuit - Ash Wedding Wednesday
A9 –Thee Mystery Trend - Count Down
A10 –Cancer Club - There Is No Fate Worse Than Death
B1 –Adventures In Colour - Cost Of Living
B2 –Replaceable Hedz - I Can't Sing It
B3 –Climbing Frames - The Pick Up
B4 –Dalis Car - Glad To Be Alive
B5 –Spring Hippies - Christ Died In Springtime
B6 –The Ringing - Doctor
B7 –The Dandy-Lions - Engine No.9
B8 –Paul Dunbar - The Regressus
B9 –Ptah Sokar - Pyramid Rise
B10 –The New Catalonian Slipper Boys - B.B.C.
B11 –The Pus - Split The Party

DOWNLOAD a tape called dennis HERE!

Various Artists ‎– "Swindon This Is Swindon" (Redbrick Records ‎– RED 00001) 1980

I 've been to Swindon but once, to support my beloved Leicester City against the home team in the second tier of the English football league in about 1993. I'm damned if I can recall the score, but Glenn Hoddle was their player manager...he's the one that got sacked by England for saying that disabled people must have done something bad in a previous life.....so that's him disabled in his next life then?

The other 'bad' thing Hoddle did was manage Swindon Town FC when they beat Leicester in the play-off final at wembley with a contentious penalty after the Foxes had come back from 3-0 down to level the scores. Swindon got promotion to the Premier league and got thrashed every week,never to be heard of again......rather like the Bands on this Local Bands EP.

Hoddle was also incredibly guilty of releasing a pop duet with be-mulleted geordie mate Chris Waddle, called "Diamond Lights",another moment that had to be endured gazing through one's fingers. Don't do it Glenn,we implored,but...too late!!!!

Also the very great XTC came from Swindon.Those slight americanisms in Andy Partridges vocal inflections were actually his local west country accent, not an attempt to mimic those American pop stars we all love.....not that I can name any,they were all Canadian anyway. Probably explains why there's a growing cult stateside for XTC.

Alas,no XTC on this EP however, just a quartet of post-punk and power pop also-rans....y'know the kind of stuff we all love . "Narrow Feint"...wot?....do a deaf glee club party's version of Elton John's "Saturday Nights Alright for Fighting".......i'm in no doubt Sir Reg and Bernie Terrapin would sue if they ever heard this blatant rip off of their terrible yob-glam anthem's chorus. 

The terrible names continue with "Wheelz",whose charming ditty will have you whistling all afternoon;.... whistling what, is another story all together.

'Bantu' treat us to another belter that you're sure you've heard somewhere before....it'll come to me.

'The Early Bathers' (how do their minds work in Swindon?) finish off with a tune you culd have sworn was on "Hicks From The Sticks"....or at least on "Songs From Pigland" which was the LP version of the local yokal post-punkers around Wiltshire.

Its charmingly simple stuff,and we love it.....another UK DIY classic.

Tracklist:

A1 –Narrow Feint - Saturday Night 3:17
A2 –Wheelz - I Can See Everything 2:45
B1 –Bantu - This Time Around 3:35
B2 –The Early Bathers - Impact Adhesive Man 2:46

DOWNLOAD the great rock'n'roll swindon HERE!

Bona Dish ‎– "EP" (In Phaze Records ‎– IP 010) 1982

So, we've established that The Shaggs were the first 'Indie' group, Subway Sect Guitars, Beefheartian syncopation, charityshop elegance, twee vocals,and all that the Velvet Underpants contributed were the Sunglasses apparently?

That's until some smart arse finds a group obscure Patagonian herdsmen whom the Shaggs ripped off,both musically and satorially. There's one for every genre,like, apparently, some black dudes from Detroit called, Death, invented Punk Rock as we know it.....just that they only played a couple of empty gigs in 1974 and made some incompetant demo's that accidentaly sounded.... well.... 'punk'? They were just trying to sound like The Stooges, but they were even more incompetant than that lot even. Generally the rule of thumb is that your style of music,especially 'Rock' music, usually gets a name during the lifetime of its originators; anyone before that event is something else.

For me it was either Subway Sect or The TV Personalities wot done the Indie thing first,as much as I wish it was The Shaggs.

Bona Dish were there at its inception, and this cassingle is a rather good example of what creature was swimming about in the Indie primordial soup at the beginning of the 1980's
 
Tracklist:

1. 8 AM 3:15
2. Sand 2:06
3. Fractured Heart 3:04
4. Normal Day 2:30

DOWNLOAD an extended bona HERE!

Bona Dish ‎– "On C30" (In Phaze Records ‎– IP003) 1981

As discussed on the previous post, what was and what wasn't 'Post-Punk';putting my revisionists hat on again, one came to the conclusion that there wasn't any Post Punk until it got a name.

This third Velvet Underground album inspired 'Post-Punk' cassette, on the legendary 'In-Phaze' DIY label, could have a claim to be the first 'Indie' band on record? It could have been titled Bona Dish on C86 if only they had a pop music crystal ball and saw the near future.

The acronym 'C86' itself conjures images of twee light weight pop,with a Velvet Underground leaning, but that actual cassette was full of the more spikey end of the independent music scene in the UK at the time.....I mean, Bogshed were on it for Lou Reed's sake!?Again betraying another fake scene as invented by the British music press,still desperate for another Punk Rock.

Who were the first Indie band then?....Well obviously it was the post-cale Velvets, a 'Proto-Indie' band if ever there was one;but, compared to the UK Indie sound they were virtually Heavy Metal when put alongside stuff like Bona Dish. Clean Guitars, Beta-male rhythm section,twee girly singers, fringes, apathetic and proud. Was Indie nothing more than well-played UK DIY,or post-punk with a rosy outlook?....the answer may well lie on this C-30.

Tracklist:

A1 Mutation
A2 Challenge
A3 Intense
A4 Jungle
B1 Actress
B2 Girl
B3 See - Line Woman
Β4 Etc.

DOWNLOAD a dishy boner HERE!

The 49 Americans ‎– "Too Young To Be Ideal!" (Choo Choo Train Records ‎– CHUG 2) 1980

Blimey! In the space of less than a year the next 49 Americans EP cost a whole One Pound and fourteen new pence more than the first one. Now's thats galloping inflation on a Zimbabwean scale!?

And what do you get for your extra expenditure? 

A lousy extra six minutes of The 49 Americans in action!

The cover states that this is a Twelve-Inch Single......so its the extra five inches of plastic that gets the blame for the increase in entry fees is it? And I thought these guys were a bunch of communists?

Can't trust anyone these days,even back in the 1980's it seems?

Well before Facebook and post-truth we had Post-Punk.So if we applied the same criteria as applied to alternative facts, that means that Post-Punk is actually Punk that wasn't Punk......it's all so clear to me now.At the time I thught all Punk was Punk,and that, there being a time when the term Post-Punk had yet to be coined,I thought stuff like Gang Of Four, The Pop Group,and Wire were actually 'Punk'.Then some bright spark Journalist,either Jon Savage or Paul Morely, came up with this pigeon hole around 1980-ish,meaning bands who didn't sound like The Ramones or look like The UK Subs;when before the term used to mean everything after 1976.

The first genuinely Post-Punk bands were stuff like Siouxsie and The Banshees,Wire,and PiL;but bizarrely there were Post-Punk bands before Punk too,like Pere Ubu,and Talking Heads...proto-post-punk anyone?

This is the true spirit of Punk Wok, moving forward,striving to be an individual,and not being a UK Sub doing 'Stranglehold' for the upteenth time in your seventies.

Punk Wok is The 49 Americans,doing it yourself,and not copying the Womones and the Thex Pithtols, that's....Wunk Pock.....as in the last post I used a 'Palindrome'event,now is the chance for me to use a Spoonerism.....and I'll do it again,watch....Wunk Pock. Ta Daaah!

I'm too old to be an Idealist!

Tracklist:

A1 Theme
A2 Woe Ballad
A3 Yucky Nightclub Job
A4 Love At First Sight
A5 Don't Sing The Blues
B1 I'll Make You A Star
B2 Love Has Solved My Problems
B3 Successful Wonder Glory / Success Turns Sour
B4 Big Decision
B5 Should Be More Ideal

DOWNLOAD the lost ideals of youth HERE!

The 49 Americans ‎– "The Hit Album" (NB Records ‎– NB 4) 1980

Radio Free Europe may have asserted that 'All Americans Are The Same', but there were at least 49 of their compatriots who were certainly NOT the same......mainly because 48 of them were made of pasty faced English wimps,the types who'd get sand kicked in their collective faces by those real American boys who all look like Henry Rollins, while berating them as a bunch of Fags. Which of course, in England-land is a packet of Cigarettes,or ciggies. 'Fag' was also a Public School term,used by the sixth form,for their 1st year servant boy,who would invariably end up being abused violently and sexually by their adolescent masters. ...."Come here Blenkensopp,I'm going to give you a damn good bumming,you snivelling little Turd!"

This is what the British Empire was built on,alongside Tea, and a leaky raft of 'Good Intentions';and we all know the road to hell is paved with these good intentions"(C.S.Lewis)...don't we? 

A deadly accurate portrayal of British Public school life can be viewed here,Episode 1 of "Ripping Yarns"...."Tompkinson's School Days"

Using Rape as a weapon is the time honoured way of creating generation after generation of traumatized and suggestable future leaders.Most of the British Govenment have been through it....I mean just look at Boris Johnson!?......its a system that seems to work,keeping everything just fucked up enough to function, yet dangle a distant unattainable carrot of hope to aspire to,dangling on the far side of the pit of dispair. I'd love to know for whom Johnson fagged for at Eton,he does,after all come from 'New Money',so he probably got an extra special bumming in the 'Boot Room' at Eaton.

You Americans don't know how good you've got it....yep, it's that bad!

The 49 Americans were recruited from the J-Arthur ranks of the London Musicians Collective by the sole American in the group, ex-pat Andrew "Giblet" Brenner.This included such improv luminaries as David Toop, Steve Beresford, Max Eastley, Lol Coxhill and Peter Cusack, as well as Nag and Bendle of The Door And The Window ,Vivien Goldman and 'Slit' Viv Albertine (I somehow doubt that her time with 49 Americans will make it into the proposed cinema biopic of her life).

This amateurish, no-fi, non-pop...er...pop(?), is about as far as one can get from a standard rollicking,rocking,or Rawking, American Group as you can get.All that for 85 new-pence,with each mini-symphony lasting 58 seconds, which is a numerical palindrome of 85.Those krazzee kidz!

Tracklist:

U.S.A. Side:
A1 American Wonder Song 0:58
A2 Newton's Law's 0:58
A3 What We Want 0:58
A4 Gail Was A Victim 0:58
A5 Move Around All Day 0:58
A6 Is This Rock And Roll? 0:58
A7 Julie Andrews (A Tribute) 0:58
U.S.B Side:
B1 One Germ 0:58
B2 Intelectuals On Parade 0:58
B3 Pigs 0:58
B4 The Uncertainty Principle 0:58
B5 Architecture Stops 0:58
B6 Missionairies 0:58
B7 Stupid Boy 0:58

DOWNLOAD all the hits HERE!

Radio Free Europe ‎– "´79B" (MiG Records ‎– MiG 102) 1980

 Texas is hardly the most open minded venue for weirdo's, gays, and athiests,no matter how much open space they have. There is one oasis of sanity  however, in Austin,which remains a surprisingly bohemian outpost to this day,even in the Trump Era. No matter how much the local republicans and cowpokes would love to follow Donald's ally Russia's example,and make it legal to throw homosexuals off rooftops, and beat up your wife,as long as the injuries aren't visible; there is a thriving counterculture there that doesn't agree with all that nonsense,and risks serious injury with its non-christian ways.

Another thing that the USA didn't really have much of,is anything that sounded like UK DIY, mainly because of this inate need to 'ROCK OUT'!

Radio Free Europe are likely the only American band that achieved this unlikely feat, and of course, they came from Austin. Like it says on the insert,as a kind of subtitle for this C-45, "Americans Are All The Same"....well apparently they aren't....not much Rocking Out here on offer, and could easily pass for a DIY cassette made by a bedroom band from Preston, Lancashire in 1979. The same goes for American Post-Punk,which seemed to drop the doom which was so prevalent in European Post-Punk, and become almost exclusively a nation of Devo's.....this trait is reassuringly absent from this US DIY cassette classic. Nothing wrong with Devo mind,but do we really need hundreds of them? This need for a herky jerky nerdsville in every US town explains why XTC are an increasingly popular cult stateside....and there's definitely nothing wrong with that either. It's just that American in yer face Henry Rollins syndrome that needs eradicating... pronto......there are no intense shouty man Rollins types in Radio Free Europe, so you can relax......its subtle; a word expunged from Websters Dictionary, as full of spelling mistakes as it is.

Tracklist:

"Americans Are All The Same"

A1 M-Squad
A2 Dakota Trench
A3 Occupation Of French
A4 Suggested Reentry
A5 Time Between Seconds
A6 Manny´s Blues
A7 Shreds
A8 Alien Day (Houston)
A9 Falling Million Years
B1 After The Hum
B2 Adada
B3 Astral Airports (Austin)
B4 Mother´s Day (Austin)

DOWNLOADS are all the same HERE!

Jonathon Briley ‎– "The Loss Of Innocence" (Broken Flag ‎– BF 54) 1986

Blimey Guvn'r, Briley got on a proper UK Industrial Noise cassette label too! Broken Flag,as run by Gary Mundy , late of premium power electronic outfits Whitehouse,Sutcliffe Jugend, Ramleh, Kliestwahr etc.
Somehow ,the devils' representative on earth, the 'evil' Jonathan,or the very silly Jonathan, got his work on cassette in the UK,whereas the rest of Sleepchamber didn't.

Ahaaaaa, 'Loss Of Innocence',an occurrance I mourn deeply within myself. I wish I didn't know about Dachau,Bestiality,Bloodfucking,whimpering wails of woe...well...so-called 'evil' in general really.

You may laugh,but I have managed to claw back a modicum of denial within the black whole of experience in my soul, but after watching that Polish War film "Wolyn" the other night,I think I've returned to square one! Bloody Hell Humans are capable of such bestial deeds that I'm beginning to be frightened of my own reflection. I wouldn't call it 'Evil' though, we merely represent the brutal ruthlessness of mother nature,and the will to survive.There's no place for morals in this fruitless struggle just to survive for one second longer than your opponents,or your neighbours.

In Nature, Innocence is just weakness;but being blessed, more accurately Cursed, with some kind of insideous intelligence, we are placed in a position of contradiction between higher being and beast.....and the Beast invariably wins out.

This is basically what Industrial culture bangs on about to the point of cancelling itself out. The music has become nothing more than the background musick to a lifestyle,or a pose,however entertaining. Scrapes,deep fried electronics,and self-immolating effects have replaced mantovani's string sections, and Richard Clayderman's syrupy piano as the muzak of the early 21st century. I, in particular enjoy cooking to the sound of Sutcliffe Jugend's "We Spit On Their Graves" especially. This may be a symptom of my unending search for my Innocence,but it's true.

Even Jonathan Briley has a tribute track to Mellow Jazz Chanteuse Sadé at the end of side one.....or is that 'de' Sadé or 'de Sade',as in the Marquis of?.....I'm sincerely hoping for the former. There IS a place for humour in Industrial culture....isn't there????

Tracklist:

A1 Feral 4:22
A2 Blackfields 4:09
A3 To The Power 4:33
A4 Corpus Experimentale 5:51
A5 Whimpering Wails Of Woe (Live) 4:13
A6 For Sade (Live) 3:45
B1 Bestiality 4:51
B2 The Long Thin Line Between A Whisper And A Scream 11:43
B3 Last Exit To Dachau 4:47
B4 Bloodfucking 2:55

DOWNLOAD jono's big break 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!

Jonathan Briley ‎– "From Kain To Abel......." (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 45) 1987

Enter another Sleepchamber member who made better music on his own.

He was the one from the eighties incarnation who looked like a naughty school teacher.

It's all well made standard Dark Ambient Industrial style muzak.Real good as background sounds to a board games evening with a group of special friends.Which is probably why I don't have any friends anymore?

This stuff may get dismissed as american late-comers by those Industrial snobs who were....er... "There"... when these things were happening,but its jolly good fun to just absorb the silence by.

Right, now where's me Toast?

Tracklist:

A1 Vortex-(Instrumental Remix) 7:51
A2 Heaven's Sounding Sweeter All The Time 5:21
A3 Rize Ov The Carrion 3:02
A4 Dead Virtues 6:45
A5 Sermon Sur La Mort 4:00
A6 Kiss Ov The Whip 2:43
B1 (Untitled) 2:13
B2 To Baudelaire 6:41
B3 Hour Ov The Wolf 4:53
B4 Rituals 4:00
B5 The Last Time We Made Love 7:09
B6 Final Vision 3:50

DOWNLOAD as a sacrifice to Yahowa 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!

7 From Life ‎– "Souls Of Dead Sharks" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX-13) 1984

7 From Life was a gruesome looking charaster called Lawrence Van Horn, and despite the name, he wasn't an alter ego of John Zewizz, even though Zewizz seemed to be on the horn most of the time. There's a refreshing lack of pervy sexual references from van Horn,although he is one of those people who actually look like the music they make.He has that Harvey Wankstain bubblegum rolled in cat hair look that most perverts seem to  enjoy.Imagine him and Zewizz on a night out? They'd empty any bar of women within half an hour.Then they could play one of their tapes and empty the same bar of the remaining males within another five minutes.

Lawrence Van Horn, the Harvey Wankstain of Industrial Musick

You get the eerie feeling that if Larry didn't make music like this he'd be one of those characters with a hidden apartment underneath his house, full of kidnapped women and several of his malnourished offspring chained together.

The music is wonderfully creepy,more along the lines of Musique Concréte rather than classic Old Skool Industrial. This could pass for avant-garde if only Larry had gone to a fancy Conservatoire de Musique in Vienna;but I doubt they'd even let him out of the country never mind into another.Especially if his passport photo looks like the picture above.Ugh Shudder!

Tracklist:

A1 Chalk Streetcars Vicious As Insomnia 8:51
A2 Nemesis 8:45
A3 Galloping Lampshades 6:43
A4 Sahara Isolation Tank 5:53
B1 Deutsches Handlung 3:44
B2 Dominion As Heritage 5:02
B3 Ju-Ju Pig Sacrifice For Conjuration Of Robots 4:32
B4 Subdued By Shadows 9:58
B5 Hysteria In The Snow 3:03

DOWNLOAD and converse with some dead sharks HERE!

Hidious In Strength ‎– "Line Of Souls" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX 08) 1983

 No, he still can't spell!?...isn't there an 'e' in Hidious?

Maybe John Zewizz is dyslexic, dunno,but such bad spelling on a music release hasn't been seen since the heady days of Slade,and probably never will again.

More Synth noodlings from the future man in the Women of the SS. 

Back in the day if you could afford a cheapo synth and a cassette recorder you could easily emulate your synth wielding hero's by just twisting a few knobs and pressing play and record. The result was an international dumpster of sounds exactly like this tape. As for underlying themes, they could be just as easily assimilated from the burgeoning Industrial underground, y'know,torture, human primitives,Nazi Death Camps,systems of control,Blah Blah Blah. All a bit prdictable really,but it looked good,sounded ok no matter what you did,and was eaaaaaaassy.

Tracklist:

A1 Enter Forever
A2 Return To Forever
A3 She Feels Her
A4 Life Of Sussain
A5 Death Of Sussain
A6 Line Of Souls
B1 War Soul
B2 Bath Of Yentha
B3 The Storm
B4 The Weeping
B5 Breakthrough
B6 Genocide

DOWNLOAD an online soul HERE!

Noizeclot ‎– "Music For Torture, Bondage & Leather Sex" (Inner-X-Musick ‎– XXX-10) 1984

 

Staying on the theme of pervy sex,here we have a fake band called,rather attractively,Noizeclot;which was a short lived Inner-X-Musick project that utilized distorted tapes/noise instead of traditional instruments. The members of the group were listed as Andrew Barry, Grayem Carrol, and Sue Zan, but in recent years John Zewizz confirmed that this was in reality just another of his solo projects and that the band members were completely made up.Cheeky Sod!

According to Inner-X-Musick, Noizeclot is: "Pure noise, control of distortion and extreme sound. Antisocial music for those who have other interests, other than what the masses are interested in."....I saw that explanation and was mildly amused that Zewizz had just described myself,just like this blog is written for the same archetypal person described above. For the decerning Misanthrope..... with hobbies.

The music for torture part of the title,doesn't really apply, as the US Gestapo at Guantanamo Bay used Barney The Dinosaur and AC/DC played at ear blistering levels for hours on end as their torture weapons of Choice. I'd be admitting to the JFK assaination,9/11,anything, to get it to stop,even to voting Conservative, within the first few notes of the theme tune to Barney the Dinosaur,or even quicker when Barney sings the "I Love You" song! Horrific stuff that John Zewizz wishes he could equal only in his dreams!Pure Liquid Evil!

As for the noise on this tape,by modern standards this is pretty mild.Fuzzy warm background noise for flotation tanks or shopping malls.Most certainly not for room 101 in any interrogation center.

Tracklist:

A Torture-(Sound For)- 26:06
B Bondage-(Sound For)- 28:09

DOWNLOAD for that torture bondage and leather sex session you had planned for later this evening HERE!