uncarved.org blog

Cybore / Box Set Go.

Matt owns a lot more boxsets than me:

These Trojan sets, compiled by Steve Barrow, were the most accessible way to get into Black Ark stuff in the late eighties. They foreshadowed Barrow’s later work with the Blood & Fire label – incorporating great selection, sound quality and design. And also the excellent Arkology 3 CD set on Island.

Sort of “Occult Roots of Big Beat” set, featuring mad breakbeat tunes from across the board. I got this ridiculously cheap (I think 6 quid?) from Berwick Street in the mid 90s.

Test Dept’s first LP with grainy photo inserts. This must have been the first box set I ever bought, in the mid eighties. Ordered via the back pages of “Record Collector” magazine. Also the first record I ever picked up from a Post Office depot, something which seems second nature now! Some if not all of this was produced by Genesis P-Orridge. Another Some Bizzare classic.

This used to be ubiquitous – peaking out of people’s record shelves at you when you visited them for the first time. Shorthand for a particular background and all-encompassing worldview which many of us have now jettisoned most of – but the traces remain. Lots of 4o year old anarchopunk “sleepers” out there, biding their time.

This set includes a whopping great booklet featuring the tragic tale of Stonehenge Free Festival founder Wally Hope. And a full colour poster by Gee Vaucher (which mine is missing, boo!)

I had this on tape for years and then finally found a copy in Reckless Records in Islington (RIP) for a good price in the late 90s.

Why Delila’s HDD Mix by Hipsters Dont Dance

(Big Bashy bashment throwdown. Good for housework / getting ready to go out / pounding the mean streets).

And finally:

 

 Moments In Love: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Moments In Love: Version Excursion by Nguzunguzu.

This is some mad shit, that Wayneandwax and DJ Rupture pointed me at. Many different takes on the Art of Noise classic, beautifully blended together.

But shockingly, not including this one:

…is a short film by photographer Shaun Bloodworth.

It was commissioned by Mary Ann Hobbs for Sonar, and has a soundtrack by my man Grievous Angel.

All three protagonists live in Sheffield as do the various clubs featured. It’s good – some nice energetic positive vibes.

Click the link to have a look.

John Eden “History Is Made At Night” Questionnaire

Damian Marley profile

Damian Marley and Nas “Distant Relatives” album review.

(thanks to my contact at The National for all their work on the latter two!)

previously on “the first twenty three gigs I can remember going to”

I got a “D” in my Psychology ‘A’ Level, and an “E” in Maths. I also completely fucked up Chemistry, again. My parents were both at work whilst I stared at the slip of paper which announced my doom. I helped myself to a stiff drink before calling them.

I was quite upset, I needed better grades to get to where I wanted to be (can’t remember what was in the running, but Leeds and Warwick were up there I think).

So I had to chance my arm with the “clearing” system – where you throw your hat in the ring and see if any College will take you. This seemed to take ages and was quite humiliating, but I just stayed focused and got on with it…

I eventually managed to secure myself a place at the Polytechnic of Central London to do a BSc in Psychology. But I still needed to find somewhere to live. PCL had a reputation for being radical, and my flat hunting confirmed that the students union was a haven for freaks, goths and layabouts. My search for a place to rest my head was exciting but ultimately fruitless.

I might have been desperate to move out of my parental home, but the rooms on offer at the students union only managed to cough up some real dives – places where you couldn’t even get the door open because they were so small. Or a room I’d have to share with a bloke who was monomaniacal with the excitement of being “out” in London.

Luckily one of the grebo freaks in the students union took me under his wing and I was offered a decent sized room in a house in Haringey. Everything else was detail. My awkwardness and fear dissolved into excitement. I’m sure my parents went through a similar process. There was time for one last gig before I hit the Big City on a full-time basis…

23 Foetus Interruptus, Tackhead Soundsystem. Town and Country Club, 20th September 1988.

I’d been waiting for two years for this gig and couldn’t quite believe it was happening. Peter Rehberg had done my mate Wal at C90 with “Hole” by Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel on one side and a bunch of 12″ with all sorts of mad names (You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath, Foetus Art Terrorism, etc) on the other. Wal had duly copied it for me. We absolutely destroyed those tapes and I remember some really intense conversations in the school playground about what the fuck was going on with it all. Jim Thirlwell’s productions still sound amazing, he is definitely up there in my pantheon of sonic sorcerers. Legend has it that he was so driven he once barricaded himself in a studio when his time was up, emerging pallid and scurvied when the job had been done.

Foetus aka Clint Ruin aka Jim Thirlwell made Totalitarian Pop Music. “Hole” and its follow up “Nail” were precision-tooled pop records made by a psychopath. They distilled The Cramps‘ rockabilly, big band music from cartoons, James Brown funk, film noir soundtracks and jack hammer industrial dance. Tracks like “Calamity Crush” sounded like a marching band of drum machines being conducted by some Hammer Horror mad scientist.

The lyrics jumbled up pop culture with a completely nihilist hodge podge of mass murder, sexual deviance and military atrocities. But they weren’t shocking, they were oddly catchy, darkly funny and manic.

When I finally saw the artwork for the records, I was blown away by Thirlwell’s graphics. Really bold, pop-art styles combined with Maoist propaganda – all riddled through with that sickness.

Foetus was a solo effort, and he never played live. Well, not really. Rumours abounded about live shows he’d done as part of The Immaculate Consumptives alongside Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave and Marc Almond. Supergroup or what? I think they played in London and New York – one-off gigs when I was still working up the courage to go and see Howard Jones.

I slowly amassed a Foetus collection, originally acquiring both “Hole” and “Nail” as official cassette releases that stayed glued to my Walkman. Then onto the vinyl, largely courtesy of the Rough Trade Shop in Ladbroke Grove. I think Wal did the same, so that C90 Peter dubbed us lead to about 30 royalty payments for Clint Ruin Incorporated, and good luck to him.

Foetus was a relentless collaborator, cropping up on records by Coil, Marc and The Mambas, The The, even Nurse With Wound. I grabbed a bunch of these (notably the latter’s incredible “Brained By Falling Masonry” 12″) and filled my life with Foetus. Most of these collaborations were fleeting, the odd track on an album or one-off twelve inch. One of the more enduring projects was Wiseblood – Foetus + Roli Mosimann from SWANS = bludgeoning percussion and even more twisted visions. I’d got into trouble playing their “Someone Drowned In My Pool” 12″ in the 6th form common room one breaktime. To me, it sounded entirely acceptable, a little light ballad about murder. Apparently this feeling was far from universal.

Just when I’d fully embraced the idea of never seeing this stuff live, Foetus Interruptus embarked on a European Tour. They were doing two nights at the Town and Country Club and I was sorely tempted to go to both. But I only managed one, and considered it to be something of a celebration of my successful escape plan.

The support was the Tackhead Soundsystem, i.e. Gary Clail on the mic and tapes whilst Adrian Sherwood made the floor vibrate. I seem to remember that they did this all from the mixing desk, there was nothing to see on the stage. There’s a lot more to be written about that, but I’ll have to leave On-U Sound for another time.

Foetus Interruptus was essentially Clint Ruin backed by most of SWANS. They rocked their way through a load of Foetus and Wiseblood material and it was great, but not amazing. I think my main disappointment was the  impossibility of reproducing that studio wizardry on stage. And even the “I like the way you fill out your clothes” vocal sample introducing “Clothes Hoist” was squealed by Mr Foetus instead. None of this stopped me having the time of my life, however.

A couple of days later I moved down to London with the bare essentials. I’d already sorted out my first evening’s entertainment:

Aside from an unsuccessful attempt at suburban living in Leighton Buzzard in the mid nineties, I have pretty much lived in Haringey and Hackney ever since.

As I said at the outset of this story, these years saw me transform myself “from being a polite boy who toed the line, into a polite teenager with a head full of weird ideas. Who wasn’t quite so sure about that line he’d been toeing…”.

There are probably a million things I’d do differently if I had that time again, but looking back on it now I can see how all the fuck ups and the worrying in my bedroom and of course the obsessing over music has made me the well-rounded, sensitive and attractive man I have undoubtedly become.

It was intense, which is why I can remember it so well.

previously on “the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”

21. Skinny Puppy plus comedian. Fulham Greyhound, 21st May 1988.

This was a really sunny day, so a bit of drinking outside the venue was called for. I can’t remember much about the Greyhound  except it was a bit of a hike from the nearest tube. I suspect I was still wearing a leather jacket and army surplus trousers despite the heat. And the obligatory t-shirt.The unwritten rule was that you couldn’t wear a t-shirt of a band which was actually on the bill, but you should try to wear one featuring an act which was similar, but more obscure.

In those days wearing a t-shirt signified being a true fan with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the band in question. At least it did for me. So, yes, I get annoyed by goons wearing Ramones shirts these days who can’t tell you three of their favourite tunes. (Off the top of my head: “Beat on the Brat”, “53rd and 3rd” and “Rockaway Beach”).

The St Albans stoner goth posse were in full effect at this gig. One of the things which put me off drugs as a teenager was that they seemed to make people really boring. I swear I spent whole afternoons sitting around while people argued over whose turn it was to skin up. And then talked bollocks to each other.

They were OK people despite all that – some of them let my mate Wal camp in their garden for a whole summer when he fell out with his parents. Plus it was good to widen the circle of people you traded tapes with. I remember getting a C90 with “Tackhead Tape Time” on one side and Portion Control’s “Psycho Bod Saves The World” on the other, as well as a whole tape of Skinny Puppy. I played the former more often, but Puppy definitely had something going for them.

It’s just a shame that the future gets old so quickly. A quick shonky download of “Cleanse Fold & Manipulate” and “Bites” reveals some cheesy orchestral synths, plodding beats and pantomime growly vocals. And some samples of evangelical preachers and horror film dialogue and all that. Death and War and Disease and stuff, yeah? YEAH? It’s like… WOAH!

Nevertheless this sound proved to be hugely influential with yer Slimelight cyber-goths. In fact you just have to add heavy metal guitars and you have the template for a load of groups which followed – albeit after having passed through the intestines of Trent Reznor. Needless to say, during this process a lot of the more experimental and ambiguous aspects of the original wave of industrial artists got left out.

Meanwhile another branch of industrial would shed any trace of rock music and converge with house and techno… but that’s a different story.

I have no idea who the warm up comedian was – he ranted on and threw raw sausages in the audience. Quite an odd billing.

Skinny Puppy had been heavily hyped in the music press, notably in the Melody Maker  as part of Simon Reynolds’ rather dispersed Arsequake “movement”. Much was made of their singer, Ogre, mutilating himself onstage. This seemed to bring the ghouls out, baying for him to do something outrageous.

There were some theatrics with fake blood and masks and possibly a staged vivisection, I can’t really remember. What stays with me is a packed sweaty mosh pit and a pummeling wall of noise and synths.

Agit Disco 20 by Neil Transpontine « A G I T D I S C O

Neil is involved with the Transpontine and History Is Made At Night blogs.

Agit Disco is Stefan Szczelkun’s collaborative series where people make a compilation of their favourite political music and then write a commentary.

Neil’s contribution is great: lots of interesting ruminations on his own political history and culture in general. And some cracking tunes to boot.

previously, on “the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”

18. Butthole Surfers, Loop, The Shrubs. University of London Union, 26th February 1988.

This gig was sold out. A few weeks before there had been a mini-riot outside the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden when a bunch of people were refused entry. So clearly the Buttholes had moved on from being the band that two freaks in every town liked to something larger. I had to buy a ticket off a tout, for fuck’s sake! I think that’s the only time I’ve done that – and luckily it wasn’t stupid money or anything.

I’m pretty sure this one was a solo mission. I remember pre-loading with vodka. I’d started keeping a half bottle hidden at the bottom of my wardrobe, which I drank neat – presumably because I was trying to kid myself I was some kind of hard-bitten decadent libertine or something. In my rush to get to the venue and secure a ticket I skipped dinner. Which is obviously about as rock ‘n’ roll as it gets, right?

So I was probably a bit wasted, which I think you’ll all agree is the optimum condition for seeing the Butthole Surfers. And yes, the irony of coming up to London to go to a gig at a University whilst I was stuck retaking my ‘A’ Levels wasn’t lost on me either.

Loop were like the noisier brothers of Spacemen 3. Wal mentioned this to one of the Spacemen at a later gig and they went a bit mental and derided Loop for ripping them off. A point I can kind of relate to, but it’s not like the various influences were particularly obscure or anything. I was well toasted by the time they came on anyway. Lost myself in the wall of psych-droning, eyes closed. Very cathartic and much needed.

I was feeling a bit wobblier by the time the Butthole Surfers took to the stage. I’d probably filled up the time by having a few beers and still not bothering to eat. The blast of strobes and smoke was initially very welcome, but I started to wobble further when the film reels started. A penis reconstruction video shown backwards on a 30 foot high screen is actually a film of a 30 foot high penis being taken to bits, right? It suddenly seemed very hot in there…

I staggered out of the auditorium and collapsed on some steps, blacking out momentarily. I came round to see a girl with her head in her hands next to me. I asked her if she was OK, more out of trying to overcome my own embarrassment than any genuine concern. She was OK, or at least OK enough to get the message across that she didn’t want any more attention from some pissed teenager who had just fallen down next to her.

I can’t remember much after that, I guess I got some water and went back in to catch the rest of it.

The “inky” music papers like the NME and Melody Maker ran gossip columns at the time. I remember cringing when the next editions came out and one of them included something along the lines of “several people were sick and one bloke fainted at the ULU Butthole Surfers gig last week”. I should have kept that cutting – definitely one for the scrapbook. Of course, at the time I felt acutely awkward about it all and didn’t tell a soul.

There was also a review of the gig in the Daily Telegraph which made my dad laugh a lot, so he stuck it up in the kitchen. My Mum made him take it down. An all too rare bit of cross-generational bonding in our house, which proves that stupid band names can create harmony!

19. Spacemen 3. Dingwalls, 28th March 1988.

I made sure I had me tea this time. Kentish Town is about six stops down the line from St Albans so I was there well early and just walked in.

The venue was pretty much deserted, so I sat down and looked unobtrusive. I prepared various scenarios in my head in case my presence was challenged: fanzine writer, friend of the band, meeting someone, not speaking any English, all that stuff. None of that was likely to work, but luckily I didn’t need to test my Jedi skills of persuasion at all. It was a simple case of waiting around – and being in Dingwalls with various people setting up was much better than being at home.

The venue slowly filled and Spacemen 3 were amazing once again. At some point during their set I looked around to see two pissed blokes fighting, which was a bit of a surprise given most of the turnout was floppy-headed indie shoegazer types.

No ticket for this one, obviously. Blagging into gigs, fainting at gigs, not exactly acquitting myself with honour at this point…

previously, on “the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”

On the 1st of January 1988 my family had a discussion about our new year’s resolutions.

Mine was that I wasn’t going to go to church any more because I didn’t believe in God.

I had, to all intents and purposes, been living something of a double life for at least the previous year. Immersing myself in all this counter-cultural stuff most of the week but then going to church regular as clockwork on a Sunday morning. Even taking the plate round for the collection with a Psychic TV t-shirt underneath my Sunday best.

It had all become untenable. Anglicanism was more central to my family life than politics, and there had been enough rows about that already. So I wasn’t looking forward to breaking the news of my heathenism. My initial plan had been to slope off to University and then slide quietly into a life of decadent secularism, but I’d cocked that up with the exam failures. I couldn’t face the pretense any more.

To be fair to my parents, they took it reasonably well. My Dad recognised I’d been thinking about it all for a long time. My Mum went very pale. They told me that they thought I might find life very lonely without God. Fortunately I have since found things to be the exact opposite.

For me this was all a huge relief and I have never looked back. But 18 years of the Church of England is hard to shake off and remains one of my major influences for good or ill.

Martin is bang on when he describes me as “resembling a vicar”. I used to enjoy the singing but was pretty bored for the most part by the doctrine. I guess I still have a drive to do good work and not to be hugely decadent. I’ve spent the second half of my life so far working for various charities.

Feeling that there was a subculture of people out there who had thrown off the shackles of religion was very useful in helping me to strike up the courage to do it myself. A lot of those anti-religious punk songs and comments in fanzine interviews seem pretty trite now, but they certainly played their part at the time.

So that was the context for the beginning of 1988…

17. Glenn Branca: Symphony no. 6 (Devil Choirs at the Gates of Heaven). Queen Elizabeth Hall, 30th January 1988.

I don’t think I told my parents what the title of the performance was, it just wouldn’t have helped. I probably played up the neo-classical aspects of the gig and the auspicious venue. Eighteen and off to a Glenn Branca gig: fucking cred or what?

Say what you like about eighties electronica and industrial but it was a fantastic “gateway drug” for all sorts of avant garde ideas, art, music and people.

I’ve written before about chasing names dropped oh-so casually in interviews, or sending SAEs away for fanzines, but it cannot be overstated how important that little information network was to me. It gave me an appreciation or an inkling of all sorts of stuff which I then rejected or sucked up like a sponge.

Some of it existed solely as ideas for me, untainted by actual experience. So my mind was blown by the idea that Stravinsky (or was it Stockhausen?) would be able to compose a “Symphony For Metal Hammer”, but I never managed to track a copy down in the eighties and I don’t really want to these days because I doubt that it would live up to my expectations. (The work was referenced by industrial journo Dave Henderson once and has stayed with me ever since).

Unlike today, opportunities to check stuff out were very rare. I remember being transfixed as a teenager by an edition of the South Bank Show dedicated to minimalist music one Sunday night. We didn’t have a video recorder, so I knew that I would never get a chance to see it unless I checked it out right then. It gave everything an extra urgency.

The local library’s NMEs and Melody Makers provided some other context and gave me my way in to the whole New York avant/noise scene.

The library also had a copy of Experimental Pop: Frontiers of the Rock Era by Billy Bergman and Richard Horn which I devoured. Loads of mad stuff in there about Laurie Anderson using a violin bow made of cassette tape (with a tapehead on the violin, natch) and bits on hip hop, Eno, Neubauten, etc etc. So Branca would have been referenced in some Sonic Youth piece in the NME or MM and then there’d be a bit more mention of him in Experimental Pop. Slowly but surely more pieces would be added to the jigsaw which became my personal mythology.

The library also had records by Laurie Anderson, Brian Eno, Run DMC, Neubauten and a host of others to borrow. People generally treated them well. I still have some C90 cassettes of things recorded from the library – it was my 1980s Google. Say what you like about the Manic Street Preachers, but that first line of “Design For Life” is bang on.

Glenn Branca did orchestral works with up to one hundred electric guitars and had some involvement with Sonic Youth. And he was coming to London.

My college mate Martin came along with a friend of his who commented sagely “Looks like there are two types of people here tonight. People who like art, and people who know this is going to be REALLY FUCKING LOUD”. Sure enough the audience was evenly divided between well dressed couples and scruffs like us in leather jackets.

We all sat respectfully in the QE2 while a bunch of people onstage tinkered with horizontally placed electric guitars and built up this unbelievable wall of sound. Events like the Test Dept gig and even SWANS had opened my ears to what I can only call the transcendental properties of noise, but this was on a completely different level – not least because there were nothing like “songs”. I remember it being quite ordered, not like a jam session or anything. I just zoned in and out of it, transported by sonics.

It was one of those performances which left you a bit speechless. They were selling posters in the foyer, but one wiley leather-jacketed punter noticed a load blu-tacked up near the exit and got his own souvenir. We followed suit along with a dozen co-conspirators – simultaneously bolstering the avant garde and sticking it to the man.

I had a lie-in the next morning, a further pleasant side-effect of coming out of the closet as an atheist. While my family were at church I stuck my stolen Glenn Branca poster up on my bedroom wall.

previously, on “the first 23 gigs I can remember going to”

16. Suicide, Spacemen 3, Into A Circle, 999. Town & Country Club, 13th December 1987.

It was cold. Sign on the door of the T&C: “Unfortunately 999 will not be appearing tonight”. The general consensus in the queue was that this was fine by everyone. I associated 999 with the uncreative dregs of punk, purely because their logo (a raffle ticket) appeared on the back of leather jackets alongside the Anti-Nowhere League, Exploited and all those other bands I could never be arsed to check out.

So an odd choice for the lineup, but perhaps not as odd as Showaddywaddy supporting Einsturzende Neubauten around the same time. Which I missed out of guilt at my exam fuck ups. Bah. I suppose this gig was like an early xmas present to myself. I think I probaby went along with either Chris (an old school mate) and/or Martin (a mad Ramones fan I had hooked up with doing resits).

Into A Circle were on a psychedelic/pop/goth tip. They had evolved out of Getting The Fear, who had in turn spawned from Southern Death Cult. Bee, their singer, had some connections with Psychic TV which obviously piqued my interest. Their single “Forever” had been on the Chart Show and was pretty good. They had some nice collages as projections and tapes of flowing water between songs.

I picked up some leaflets from the stall and found you could order some demo tapes and collage artwork off them. They also had a pseudo-TOPY magickal group associated with them called “The Game” if I remember rightly. I ordered some tapes and a collage. The former was pretty good and even had a recording off them at the end talking about financial arrangements for a gig. The collage arrived in a clipframe which smashed into a million pieces in the post (it was just in a regular jiffy bag).

There was  buzz about In To A Circle, but they didn’t really get anywhere. Bee was rumoured to be the source of PTV’s “why don’t you just enjoy your own fucking body” vocal sample, taken from an answerphone message. (The other story I heard was that it was the bloke from Bomb The Bass.)

“1987 and all I want to do is get stoned
All I want for you to do is take my body home.”

Spacemen 3 were excellent. I’d first heard them on Peel (he’d faded a 25 minute track of theirs in and out a few times in between other records). I suppose the Spacemen were the flipside of the Butthole Surfers in the eighties psych revival. Dreamy gentle drones and some almost-pop songs with choruses vs the Surfers balls-out chaotic rock. I saw Spacemen 3 a good few times and they were always completely brilliant. They often finished up by taping down several keys on their synth and leaving this huge cavernous drone running. I’ve never really bothered with Spiritualised, though.

As I pointed out in a previous episode, I spent a large chunk of the summer of 1987 rinsing valve casings in paraffin:

1. Pick up one casing in each hand from the dirty pile on the left.
2. Rinse in small vat of paraffin.
3. Place carefully in the clean pile on the right.
4. Repeat.

To help pass the time I’d think about the records I was going to play when I got home. It only helped a bit, I was completely isolated without anyone to talk to and was probably going a bit mental. Possibly the actual records I was listening to didn’t help very much. “Industrial Music For Industrial People” sounds very evocative if you’re on the dole or in an office, I guess.

One of the records I was caning was the first Suicide LP:

“Frankie teardrop
Twenty year old Frankie
He’s married he’s got a kid
And he’s working in a factory

He’s working from seven to five
He’s just trying to survive
well lets hear it for Frankie
Frankie Frankie”

I probably tried to kid myself that I was having a really hard time of it like Frankie but the reality was that I was living with my Mum and Dad and was spending virtually everything I earned on records and gigs. But that Suicide LP is perfect – from the lush ambience of “Cherie” to the timeless astro-rockabilly of “Johnny”, it really has it all. The debut has been a staple of my late night listening for the last 22 years. In fact it is so perfect that I have studiously avoided hearing anything else by Suicide in case it detracts from my enjoyment of them.

They were awesome live. Martin Rev (basically Dr Teeth from the Muppet Show in a squatted space station) and Alan Vega (one of them androids out of Blade Runner channeling the ghost of Elvis) ruled the stage like they were a 32 piece ensemble. I’m not sure if Suicide or Sparks can claim to be the first synthpop duo but Rev held it tight, barely moving from his minimal equipment, yet conjuring up walls of incredibly rich sound. Vega prowled the stage, every inch the superstar.

Such was the iconic minimalism of the Suicide schtick that Vega decided they’d make up a song for the encore. How cool is that?

This was a Sunday night gig, so I think the place was half full. That didn’t stop me getting completely immersed in it all…