Impulse 3 (1992) C40

You will recall Impulse, the magazine which came with a compilation tape, either from Impulse 2 which I posted here, or perhaps even from reality (and in case anyone is wondering - no, I never saw the first issue). Well, here's another volume, short and sweet but with some great tracks. You will be familiar with some of the artists, perhaps not all, in which case, Google is your friend, as snidey forum dwelling internet wankers used to say and probably still do. Out of this lot, the big surprise for me was just now finding out that Cathedra was actually Mark who edited the mag and eventually joined Konstruktivists. Maybe I did know that, but in any case I had obviously forgotten it, despite actually having known the bloke since roughly the time when he was doing this mag. Good stuff anyway.

 

Last time I posted one of these, I scanned the magazine and included it with the download. I couldn't be bothered this time*, having noticed that issue three includes a big fat helping of Misery and Purity, a thoroughly clownish treatise on Death in June by Robert Forbes, also author of The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK & USA, 1979 - 1993, and For Europe: The French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS, although obviously those are entirely different books sharing no thematic common ground with the aforementioned ode to Dougie, so I'm not even sure why I mentioned them. For Europe: The French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS is apparently great according to all the five star reviews on Amazon. It's a well written history of the people who tried to help stop communism according to one bloke, so that's nice. Going back to Impulse 3, there's also an interview with Somewhere in Europe about whom I've never been entirely convinced, plus they have a crap name; so sorry - better things to do with my scanner. If it's any consolation, by not scanning and sharing the thing I am at least helping to preserve the current value of the mag for those investors and shareholders lucky enough to have secured a copy as part of their portfolio. Long live the market.

 

*: Apparently I changed my mind at some point.

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

Tracks:
1 - Patternclear - Waiting in the Wings
2 - Cacophony '33' - Slander Upon My Head
3 - Doubling Riders - Suite Veritas
4 - Moisten Before Use - Thud Pt. 1 [excerpt]   
5 - Voltoid - Black Mass   
6 - factor X - Happy Birthday   
7 - Konstruktivists - Klub Zodiac '84   
8 - Cathedra - Neolith  


Return to Index

Hole - Mr. Bojangles 28/9/90 (1990) C30

This came on one side of a C60, one of about a million random tapes which fell out of a Jiffy bag sent by the gentleman behind Hoax! magazine back in the nineties. I knew nothing of Hole, and still don't, beyond that this version was nothing to do with Courtney Love and may even have predated her use of the name, and that it was something to do with John Everall.

 

I don't actually know much about John Everall beyond that he used to write for Empty Quarter, recorded Mesmeric Enabling Device with Nigel Ayers and Mick Harris, and is sadly no longer with us. Discogs describes him as a techno artist*, and I suppose this sort of qualifies, although the first thought I had when I first heard it was that it reminded me of Viral Shedding era Nocturnal Emissions - which is a good thing because that's one of my favourite records of all time. Given Everall's later association with Nigel I would be surprised if Nocturnal Emissions hadn't been something of an influence.

 

Anyway, it's a live tape complete with hiss, crowd noise, and even a bit of wow and flutter at the beginning, and yet the quality of the music somehow shines through the limitations of how it was recorded; which is why this one at least didn't just get taped over.

 

No idea what the individual tracks were called so I've listed them numerically, I-V. He had a couple of records out as Hole, but with different tracks to whatever we have here so far as I can tell (this conclusion based on seeing what's on YouTube rather than actual ownership of the aforementioned records).

*: It doesn't although I'm sure I read that somewhere.

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

Return to Index

Adventures of Twizzle - Hitler's Trousers after the Blast (1983) C60

I've already explained Adventures of Twizzle at length, and several times over in the course of previous blog posts here, here, and here. If you can't be arsed to follow the links and do a bit of homework, well all right - Adventures of Twizzle were formed by Margaret Thatcher, an ex-Bay City Roller (but I'm not going to tell you which one) and the man who held the land speed record between the years 1979 to 1985. They had a massive hit with Dancing in the Dark, a song which is usually erroneously credited to Bruce Springsteen. Neither of them ever learned how to ride bikes.

This was their second tape and the first one I heard. It's quite different to most of their other stuff, comprising short tuneful pieces rather than howling noise, and the dates given on the sleeve seem to suggest it was compiled rather than specifically recorded as an album, although I could be wrong there. Also, it came in weird packaging - a Sony C60 loose inside the box of a child's wooden jigsaw - one of those cheapo ones about the size of a fag packet - with their artwork glued to the reverse of the box. Unfortunately at the time I was getting a bit tired of tapes in weird packages which you had to leave in a pile next to your regular cassettes, so I made my own sleeve from photocopies of the artwork and kept it in a regular jewel case; and annoyingly I seem to have lost the kid's jigsaw version, so that's a lesson learned. The scans included in the download are my version of the cover, plus the flyer which first inspired me to write to them - I think it fell out of an envelope full of stuff from Larry Peterson.

I know I haven't said much about the music, but for what it's worth, regardless of the low level of technology involved, I'd still say this is one of the best tapes I ever bought. Sometimes a tape recorder and a good idea is really all you need.

Download the sixteen tracks, cover and flyer by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Demolition I
2 - Before All That
3 - Cuddly Linda Girl
4 - Flag Miles Short
5 - The Education of a Rat
6 - Adventures
7 - Jude Moan / Silence
8 - Umbah Oombah
9 - Demolition II
10 - Just Listen
11 - Cherry Cake
12 - On and On and On
13 - Bang-Utot
14 - The Deep Love
15 - Don't Look Now
16 - What For?


Return to Index

ESP Kinetic - Mission (1985) C90

This was ESP Kinetic's live album. I get the impression they performed quite a bit, and whilst rummaging around in the reliquary in which I store Neil's correspondence - along with mail from Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Bagge, Chris Claremont, Billy Childish and my other famous pals* from this crazy world of showbiz - I found a poster for one of ESP Kinetic's gigs, and not even one which is represented on this tape; so I've scanned that and you'll find it in the download.

This one was a bit awkward when it came to digitisation, seeing as the track list given on the cover refers only to the venues and dates at which these performances were recorded, which were as follows:

1 - Corby Youth Centre 24/3/84
2 - Wellingborough United Reformed Church 25/8/84
3 - Kettering Rec. Centre 15/9/84
4 - Cranford Village Hall 17/11/84
5 - Kettering Rec. Centre 18/12/84
6 - Northampton Black Lion 16/3/85

The problem for me was that I couldn't work out where one section ended and another started, so instead I've divided it up into the actual songs, where I've been able to recognise them.

Additionally, Mission was originally a C45, from what I can tell. Neil sent it to me on a C90 with a load of other stuff on the b-side, apparently from a Finnish release called Fleck-Nor, but again with no actual list of what the tracks were called. Some I already knew, and some I was able to work out by comparison with a 2008 CDR issue of Fleck-Nor; but I gather the 2008 Fleck-Nor may have been different to the one Neil mentioned as I was still left with three tracks I couldn't identify. So tracks one to fourteen are Mission, and the rest are seemingly from a version of Fleck-Nor other than the Music Mundane release, a few of which still seem to be relatively cheap on Discogs if anyone is interested.

By the way, as a point of interest, the Black Lion, at which some of the live tracks were performed, features in Alan Moore's fifty-million page novel Jerusalem, which unfortunately isn't very good in case you were wondering.

*: You probably haven't heard of some of these people, but I have.

Download the twenty-four tracks, cover and poster by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Under the Bed
2 - Saturday Nite Church
3 - Hinterland
4 - Two Faces Collide I
5 - Cannibal Chant
6 - In Our Afterglow
7 - Two Faces Collide II
8 - Dance as Hallucination
9 - Untitled I
10 - Waltzing on Air
11 - Silence...
12 - God in a Leather Box
13 - Ambition Realised
14 - Anarchy in the UK
15 - Storekeeper Reward
16 - Metropoline
17 - Scared Out
18 - Untitled II
19 - Ambition Realised
20 - Untitled III
21 - Hole in the Ground
22 - Pretine World
23 - Frank S
24 - Untitled IV

Return to Index