Monday 16 November 2015

Do Easy - The Fourth Metal Tape (1982) C90

Amazingly I was still single.

By the time it came to recording my third Do Easy album, as I definitely considered The Fourth Metal Tape to be, I had apparently taken to a specific methodology. Usually the discovery of some new means of generating or treating sound would warrant an entire track built around the same, or even a number of tracks. By September 1982 I'd worked out how to open up the shell of a cassette tape and respool the innards so as to produce backwards sound effects, and so a fair old chunk of side one was based around a copy of The Second Metal Tape played backwards; and as with The Second Metal Tape, this one features further doomed attempts to recreate some of that Throbbing Gristle magic, here by vaguely emulating the crap bass style of Zyklon B Zombie and others whilst keeping those embarrassing industrial vocals low in the mix so as to make it all mysterious 'n' shit. I'd like to think Good Old Rock 'n' Roll represents a ground breaking foray into industrial whistling, but it was actually just me trying out different things, exercising poor judgement, and listening to Aladdin Sane far too much. The similarly puzzling final track results from my having a listen to my mum's Leonard Cohen album, then having a go myself (and just think, I recorded this track back when Death In June probably still sounded like Skrewdriver!). If nothing else, I suppose I at least take comfort from these tracks showing that I can't have been quite that desperate to resemble Cabaret Voltaire - aside from a couple of predictable experiments with cut-up text.

I don't know. Some of this still sounds okay to me, once you get past how minimal it was. Pisses all over Psychic TV anyway, and they were grown-ups.

In the unlikely event of anyone wondering what happened to The Third Metal Tape, it was actually called Backing Tracks and Alternative Versions and was a C90 of the same, outtakes and, you know - the really rare Do Easy stuff which hadn't spent a million weeks at the top of the fucking hit parade. Don't you just love it when cassette artists no fucker has ever heard of describe something they've done as a rare recording? Anyway, being fairly sure I would soon be famous (and ignoring the fear that it would be for the wrong reasons and I would be viewed as the industrial Gary Numan), I compiled several volumes of Backing Tracks and Alternative Versions mainly for the benefit of the hardcore fans. This also explains the recording of the historic occasion of my phone call to Fetish Records who had by this point gone unusually quiet on the subject of my impending record contract, the fuckers.



Tracks:
1 - Fetish
2 - Shipston at Night

3 - Heavy Metal
4 - Track IV
5 - Television
6 - Burn
7 - Good Old Rock 'n' Roll
8 - Haemoglobin
9 - Destruction is Required
10 - ReDestruction
11 - Not Me At All
12 - Do Easy I
13 - Do Easy II
14 - Their Ugly Urges
15 - Org-Ser
16 - Untitled I
17 - The Power
18 - Desolate Accountants
19 - Untitled II
20 - 6:52
21 - Am I Who You Know?

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