Trilogy (1984) C15+

This was the second thing I released by Thomas Docherty, then recording as Trilogy - three tracks on a C15 for a mere fifty pence and a stamped addressed envelope. I seem to recall it sold fairly well by my admittedly humble standards, and quite right too given the quality of the music. This was July 1984, following the album which I'd put out a couple of months earlier.

 

Astute readers will probably notice that what you have here are thirteen tracks amounting to sixty minutes of music, hence C15+ rather than just C15 in the title of the listing. This is because it seemed to make more sense to digitise the chrome TDK master copy of these recordings than the WHSmiths C15 sub-master for the sake of quality, and seeing as TD had filled the tape with related material - some of which ended up on compilations, some of which was just stuff he happened to be working on at the time and which remains unreleased until now - you may as well think of this as the extended version of the C15 with DVD extras.

 

...and no, I don't know why there are two versions of Words Cannot Describe or what the difference is, aside from one of them being shorter.

Download the thirteen tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Batora
2 - Emily
3 - Slave
4 - Feedback Assault
5 - Do Not Forgive Them
6 - Dialogue in the Background
7 - Train Recording I
8 - Power Control
9 - Recorded in an Hour
10 - Words Cannot Describe I
11 - Words Cannot Describe II
12 - First Recording with DM
13 - Train Recording II

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v/a - A Person's Healthy Guide to Listening (1991) C70

This was a cassette release by Regelwidrig Recordings, the work of one Simon Kelly whom I vaguely recall as a wonderful guy with whom Glenn Wallis, myself, and Paul Condon shared pints at Bradley's Spanish Bar in Hanway Street. Annoyingly, it was one of those cassette releases which came clad in fancy, fiddly packaging which meant you couldn't just slot it in with the others on the shelf. I appreciate the effort to keep things interesting and special, but there were a few people guilty of this sort of thing and it was always kind of annoying, and the end result nearly always seemed kind of half-arsed and never as good as the artist presumably hoped it would look. This one came in a large card box with a photograph slapped on the cover at an angle and an apostrophe missing from the title; and anyway, should it not be A Person's Guide to Healthy Listening? Wouldn't that make more sense? Anyway, opening the box - which is no longer necessary since it all fell apart with age and now looks even crappier - caused bits of paper to spill forth across one's listening space - track lists, information, and bits of artwork which I presume to have been supplied by the individual artists because they're all different shapes and sizes and only five of the contributors are represented in this way.

Which is probably why I never listened to the fucking thing more than once, which is a shame because Simon clearly put a lot of effort into it and spent some money on getting it properly mastered and so on, as you will hear. In fact, this tape makes for pretty convincing listening once you've sat down, having swept up a million bewildering pictures of Islamic shoes supplied by Bryn Jones, the man who invented the racist instrumental, it could be argued.

You should probably know of at least a few of these artists, and of the ones I hadn't heard of either, there's not much I can tell you. I always assumed Shock City was something to do with Stefan Jaworzyn of Whitehouse who briefly ran a similarly named label and publishing imprint, but apparently not.

Anyway, enjoy!

Download the thirteen tracks and various related scans by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Nocturnal Emissions - Raised Beach
2 - Shock City - One World Before the World's Ways Waste the World Away
3 - Das Kunst - Probe
4 - Bourbonese Qualk - O Sonambulo
5 - Konstruktivists - Desire (part one)
6 - Konstruktivists - Desire (part two)
7 - Asmus Tietchens - Lemminge
8 - Jouissance - Delirium Dosage
9 - Illusion of Safety - Musikfuck
10 - Shock City - Alienateaghurkin
11 - Due Process - RRRadio WCVW Extract
12 - Contact with a Curve - Balloon
13 - Muslimgauze - United States of Islam


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Acrobatic Champions (1985) C60

Not to be confused with its predecessor, the similarly untitled C15 with a cover which looked almost exactly the same and which can be found here. This was the album released in the wake of the hit single, I suppose, and everything useful (or otherwise) I may have to say about the Acrobatic Champions has already been said here - and that's the same link as was provided in the previous sentence, in case you already clicked on it.

 

So that leaves us with just the music, which is probably better heard than discussed. Most of this was recorded in the sound studio at Maidstone College of Art on a couple of four track reel to reel machines, making extensive use of Paul's own WEM Copycat echo - as you will doubtless notice. Most of it is just Paul, although I played bass on the first two tracks and electronic percussion for the two performances - both played in different areas of the aforementioned college with audience comprising whoever felt like standing around and watching for a bit.

 

On reflection, I realise that most of this music would now be termed dark ambient, except of course it's about a thousand times better. I know I've had my differences with the bloke, but Jesus - this was some good shit, yes siree.

Download the C60 and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - The Sound Room
2 - You Fill Me
3 - AV142
4 - Mirror Glass
5 - Performance 1
6 - Hand on White
7 - Flowers (part)
8 - Performance 2
9 - Negative as Before
10 - The Audience
11 - Carmilla


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