Friday 9 September 2016

Nocturnal Emissions - The Garage 22/6/99 (1999) C90


This, as the title suggests, was Nocturnal Emissions live at the Garage in London back at the tail end of the last century, an event either put on by or serving as a recruitment drive for the Association of Autonomous Astronauts. I've seen them - or if you prefer him - live on a couple of occasions since, and this was probably the lesser of the gigs I attended, but it was the one I attended with a tape recorder stuffed into my trusty green canvas bag, so here we are. When asking Nigel for permission to give away his work for free, I described this tape by saying I'm certain we've both heard worse which probably explains why I never really made it in marketing. It's not terrible, but the PA was far too quiet on the night and I was stood at the back, so you can hear a lot of background chatter on the recording. In fact the recording sort of suggests Nigel tinkling away on the piano in the corner of a restaurant full of yappy fuckers. Anyway, I mentioned that the tape also captures ten minutes worth of my travelling home on the tube after leaving the venue, which sort of makes it a field recording - as Nigel also suggested - which might be a better way of looking at it.

The material is great, and the sound quality is actually decent - allowing the listener to fully appreciate John Eden and myself arguing over which of us owns the rarest Maurizio Bianchi bootleg album even during the noisier sonic assaults* - and it's a faithful record of the live event, if not the music performed, if you see what I mean. Superior versions of a couple of these tracks (albeit not from this gig) also appeared on the definitive Nocturnal Emissions live album Electropunk Karaoke, if you can find a copy. If you can't, you might try the Earthly Delights site. Maybe he'll reissue it at some point.


Tracks:
1 - (launch sequence)
2
- Tharmuncrape an'goo
3
- One Nation the ImagiNation - One Race the Space Race
4
- Bring Power to its Knees
5
- Do It '99
6
- Venus in Furs
7
- No Sacrifice
8
- Imaginary Time
9
- Going Under
10
- No Separation
11
- Levity's Rainbow
12 - (re-entry sequence)


Return to Index

*: John won as proud owner of Schrecklich Tropft aus dem Hahn des Führers which is just the sound of a tap dripping with the dialogue from an episode of the BBC's Colditz in the background. A copy was recently sold for four thousand quid on Discogs.

1 comment: