Konstruktivists - Jihad-e-Sazendegi Demos (1988) C60

As a few of you may have surmised, I'm coming to the end of my five-ish year mission to digitise my entire tape collection, meaning I've now digitised all of the stuff which leaps out at me as requiring digitisation, leaving just 1) things which will only make sense to me and which I'm not really bothered about listening to, stuff taped from the radio and the like, 2) things which I would digitise and share except I still know the people who recorded them fairly well and haven't yet summoned up the energy to ask whether it's okay to give their shit away to strangers for free because I'm afraid that either they'll say no, or they'll say yes but I'll have to explain what the internet is, 3) collections of tapes by either factor X, Academy 23, or Konstruktivists which I've barely tackled. The reason I've barely tackled the Konstruktivists material is because I have forty-four tapes of stuff Glenn passed on to me and it can be quite a job working out what is what, and what has already seen the light of day in one form or another.

Anyway, no promises, but I think this stuff should be new to at least a couple of you, and hopefully it hasn't already appeared on some CD, or even on a previous download shared through this blog. The cover of Black December doesn't really have anything specific to do with this material, except I thought you might like to see it in colour.

Okay. 1988 is a guess but I think this dates from around then, give or take a year. Konstruktivists had released Glennascaul through Nigel's Sterile Records, recording Ikon during the same sessions and that was supposed to be the next record, a twelve inch single, except it never happened. Ikon was also the first studio track with Joe Ahmed in the group. Glenn then went through a couple of years of domestic difficulties, mainly just the practicalities of holding down a job, getting married, having a kid, finding places to live, and the usual stuff. Jihad-e-Sazendegi (meaning Crusade for Construction) was to be the fifth album and bits and pieces had been recorded at Joe's place in Harlow, Essex, and they sounded fucking amazing too; but somehow it never quite came together what with life getting in the way and everything, and eventually I guess the album was forgotten.

This is my tape of what was recorded, except I'm not absolutely sure of the details. I've a feeling some of these titles may be ones I came up with for the sake of writing something on the inlay card, and although I'm fairly certain the first seven tracks were recorded with Joe for the proposed album, there may be some wiggle room, and the second half of the tape sounds like Glenn solo to me, so is quite possibly something else entirely. Anyway, it's good stuff, so hopefully you'll get a kick out of listening to it.

Download the fourteen tracks by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Militaristik
2 - Islam
3 - East of Eden
4 - First Light
5 - Here it Comes
6 - Jihad
7 - Midnight Leather
8 - Cruising My Decade
9 - Celebration
10 - Last Dawn
11 - New Direction
12 - Fear Teachers
13 - Fourth International
14 - Tracking
 
Return to Index

Family of Noise - Rough Versions (1996) C60

Bit of a dud this week, I'm afraid, but no-one's forcing you to listen to this shit and maybe it will sound as amazing to you in 2019 as it apparently did to me in 1996.

Yes, 1996: I'd just left Academy 23 (or possibly UNIT - can't remember what we were called at the time) because learning all those progressive rock symphonies was beginning to feel a bit too much like homework and I was getting tired of playing other people's songs, not least because I thought mine were better. I was going through a bit of a pre-mid-life crisis crisis and trying to reinvent myself as something less ridiculous, and thusly decided there was no good reason why cunts shouldn't be learning to play my fucking songs for a change. The clock was ticking, so I placed an advert in Melody Maker calling out for musicians with the intention of Family of Noise becoming something which played gigs and got paid. I got a few replies, more than I expected, and made up a demo tape to send out to the authors of those responses which hadn't obviously been prank calls. I was going to reinvent myself as some sort of hybrid of Courtney Love and Marc Almond and these were to be the songs you will be playing, I told my potential minions, should you be good enough to join my amazing band.

The first guy was an Elton John style keyboardist and an American then living next door to Emma Thompson. He said my tape reminded him of Fad Gadget, which seemed fair enough, and he was probably the gayest man I've ever met. He was also massively talented and way out of my league, so I suspect had replied more for the sake of making friends with other weirdos in a foreign country.

The second guy was about fifteen and lived in Chatham with an older, seemingly long-suffering girlfriend. He raved about Hummingbird and then strummed and sang one of his own songs, proposing we might add it to the set. It was called Morphine and suggested not so much that he'd had experience of the drug, but that he listened to a lot of Nirvana records. I reversed from the flat giving a series of positive McCartney-esque thumbs aloft signals, got back to London, then phoned the poor cunt and told him I'd changed my mind.

Finally I met Gareth who, so it turned out, lived around the corner from me. He was already in a band, specifically a popular Queen covers band as their John Deacon, and I don't think he'd been particularly impressed by my tape, but something I'd said had apparently given me away as a fellow Doctor Who fan (this was before it came back to the screen and was shit in 2005), so he got in touch mainly out of curiosity, and we never formed a band but have been pals ever since.

The universe was trying to tell me something, and that was to not bother forming a band. With hindsight I realise that the universe was probably right. While these tracks aren't entirely without their qualities, I couldn't really sing and the lyrics of which I was once so proud are unfortunately spattered with all sorts of faintly ludicrous references intended to make it sound a bit edgy and dangerous, which it actually wasn't.

The first four were from New Golden Age; I don't think My Remaining Eye ever appeared on anything; Hummingbird and The Girl Who Has Everything were eventually recycled as War Drum tracks; New Breed became UNIT's This Hour's Mine, which is a bit of a sore point; Cenotaph, my token dalliance with martial industrial bollocks, turned up on some UNIT tape I haven't got around to digitising (and probably won't bother); and Shit Factory (which was massively influenced by Third Door from the Left and was recorded in Lewisham with the involvement of the late Andrew Cox of Pump and MFH) ended up on War Drum's Year One tape which I haven't bothered digitising as most of the tracks were from other tapes. Also, the original master is a C54 which truncated the end of Shit Factory. As this tape is a compilation, and not so much a straight digitisation as a reconstruction from the original source tapes, there didn't seem to be much point in truncating the last track for the sake of authenticity, so it's the full version.

Download these ten ill-advised tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Song of the Snake
2 - New Face in SE13
3 - New Golden Age
4 - Tin Men
5 - My Remaining Eye
6 - Hummingbird [inst. version]
7 - New Breed
8 - The Girl Who Has Everything
9 - Cenotaph
10 - Shit Factory
 
Return to Index

Ceramic Hobs - The Garage 21/6/03 (2003) C40

This was a Mad Pride event of some description, hence the opening address by Tim Telsa who wrote something in the Mad Pride anthology put together by Robert Dellar; and this is a tape of the gig I was sent by Stan because I'm on it, so not an official release or anything. I had joined the Ceramic Hobs on stage for about thirty seconds during their previous appearance at the Garage, improvising some shit or other so as to prevent Simon reading excerpts from the Qur'an - which he threatened to do in the event of no spontaneous audience contribution being forthcoming. This time I wrote out a whole thing as an LDB performance, which is track six. I spent a few weeks memorising it, and still forgot a few parts. I'd sent Stan a tape of what I planned to do over an arbitrary loop from Illmatic, assuming the Ceramic Hobs would probably just jam while I dropped science, as we say in the rap biz, but for some reason they used the loop and just sort of noodled over it. I hope no-one was under the impression I was expecting them to use that loop from Illmatic, but never mind.

The gig was recorded due to Stan of the Ceramic Hobs suggesting I hang onto the tape recorder, except I was performing, so I left it with Dave (Apostles, Academy 23, UNIT etc. etc.) and my friend Eddy who had come to the gig, possibly to lend me moral support, or even immoral support. Anyway, that's why you can hear myself, Dave and Eddy yacking away at the beginning and then again at the end of the tape. You can also, if you listen closely, hear Jim MacDougall loudly delivering edgy comments and observations from elsewhere in the audience just in case anyone had stopped thinking about him for a moment. Crazy times.

Sound quality is a bit rough, but it sort of works, I think. Apart from me, it was a pretty great gig, which I'd say comes across on the tape.

Download the evidence by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Introduction (Tim Telsa)
2 - Knight's Move
3 - Native American Healing Chant
4 - Would You Like to Kiss Me?
5 - When I Was a Little Boy
6 - We Don't Do Like That feat. LDB
7 - Xanadu in Veins
8 - Amateur Cops
9 - Lone Twister
 
Return to Index

Power to Destroy (1993) 2C60

Usual terms and conditions apply regarding imagery which is probably supposed to upset you, aside from which, Trev really surpassed himself with the packaging of this one and probably would have won a design award were it not for all the pictures of rotting corpses. The cover was photocopied onto card, with each one presumably individually assembled so as to resemble something like a cigar box, with the tapes kept in a slide out tray thing. The tape itself was likewise pretty decent, with a fair bit of sonic variety, and certainly more than you might have expected from the scarier end of the electronic landscape. A few of these are unlikely to require any introduction (and the Ramleh track is blistering, by the way), and I'm sure you're perfectly capable of Googling the others, because I've never heard of them either.

Four of these tracks actually came from me, these being the work of Konstruktivists (of which I was a member at the time), Family of Noise, and Dada X (both of which are represented elsewhere on this blog, so please feel free to have a poke around in the index linked at the foot of this entry) and, at the risk of offending purists, I've actually replaced the tracks as digitised from my copy of the compilation with copies digitised from the master tapes. So they're the exact same tracks, just better quality through not being fourth generation copies.

Download the twenty-one tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Final Solution - Right to Hate
2 - M. Behrens / Junta - Soundtrack for Original Torture Performance
3 - Agony for Pleasure - Primal Scream
4 - Konstruktivists - Monsieur Y
5 - Sudden Infant - Destroy Your Manipulators
6 - MAUTHAUSEN - Kill the P.A.S.T. (1992)
7 - Con-Dom - Patriotism
8 - Ramleh - Melt the Cube (live)
9 - Family of Noise - Upwards and Outwards
10 - Genocide Organ - Kill Useless Nations
11 - Had.It - Interrogatorio a Pietro Maso
12 - Academy 23 / Grey Wolves - Terror Intensifies
13 - Exit
14 - Smell & Quim - Cunnilinguaphone
15 - Family of Noise - Sometimes I
16 - Taint - Orifice Training
17 - Dada X - Chocolate Disco
18 - M. Behrens - Splatterdance (II)
19 - Sudden Infant - Birth is the Beginning of Destruction
20 - Nailchrist - Nails and Blood
21 - Third Organ - Fuck Your Organs
 
Return to Index

The Sound of Hate 5 (1992) C60

...and here's the other one I have, dating from the highlighter pen years. You will have heard of all of the contributors, or you won't have. I don't know. Maybe you could have a look on the internet or something.

Another decent collection. I probably should have stocked up on these back when it was an option, but I always seemed to be skint. Oh well. Not sure why Cacophony '33' was just a number on this one. Maybe he was skint too and couldn't afford the extra letters. Unusually attentive readers will probably notice I've changed all instances of the term extract, as featured on the cover, to excerpt because it are seems more grammarfied. An excerpt can be from a longer piece of music, whereas extract is usually from almonds and may be used when forming cakes, unless you're Steve Fricker. Sorry. It bothered me.

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

Tracks:
1 - '33' - Cacultocophony (excerpt I)
2 - La Función de Repulsa - Kill The Toreros Cabro #87
3 - Taint - #3. III
4 - Academy 23 - Homage to Anton La Vey
5 - Another Headache - Twilight's Last Gleaming
6 - Maylin Pact - Almost Not Quite (excerpt)
7 - Grey Wolves - Nacht und Nebel
8 - '33' - Cacultocophony (excerpt II)
9 - Academy 23 - Terrorphilia
10 - Another Headache - Cacophony Concerto, Third Movement
11 - Mindscan - Distress
12 - Grey Wolves - Cold Steel Odour

Return to Index

War Drum - Fatu Hiva (2000) C90

Fatu Hiva was the fourth tape I recorded as War Drum, the first I can still listen to without wincing, and possibly the best thing I've ever recorded - which I state as someone who generally regards most of his own back catalogue as disappointing at best. War Drum's mission statement (what I thought I was playing at) can be extrapolated by referring to previous entries, but could probably be summarised as Death In June with Precolombian Mexican lore in preference to the European stuff and associated Nazi tendencies. I was trying to do something folky without necessarily sounding folky - Looking for Aztlán notwithstanding. Most of this stuff makes sense if you'd boned up on Mexican history and Quetzalcoatl as much as I had, so please feel free to visit the anthropology or mythology sections of your local book store in order to learn more. That said, Caught in the Glare was inspired by my having read up on the planet Mercury, and is - I suppose - a sound painting, if you will, of radiation blasting back out into space from the planet's night-side surface as it slowly turns. The track Fatu Hiva was inspired by Thor Heyerdahl's account of his living on a remote island of the same name.

Musical points of potential interest might be the covers of tracks by Severed Heads and Tuxedo Moon, also that Andy Martin of the Apostles, Academy 23, and UNIT plays electric guitar and provides backing vocals on Looking for Aztlán; and The Cage and Night Song were recorded with Glenn Wallis of Konstruktivists on vocals when he came to visit one evening. If you want to dig really deep, part of New God was recorded on a digital studio thing owned by James and Jason of Orange Can, who were NME darlings for a couple of months but somehow failed to become the next Stone Roses.

As for the rest, my listening was pretty much exclusively rap, R&B and the like by this point, the influence of which you'll be able to hear in some of these tracks - particularly For Christopher Rios which was my tribute to the recently deceased Big Pun.

So there you go, on the strength of being arguably the least-shit thing I've ever done, please download and enjoy this one. Amazingly it sold about a hundred copies, or at least I had to do a second run of fifty copies at the place I used to use in Bromley, and by the time I got around to packing up all my shit to move to America, they were all gone; so even if I didn't sell every last one, Fatu Hiva was at least much easier to give away for free than all my other stuff.

Download the eighteen tracks, cover and lyric sheet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Caught In The Glare
2 - Chicoce Coatl
3 - Looking for Aztlán
4 - Fatu Hiva
5 - Kingdom Hall
6 - Southern Cross
7 - Maguey Hare
8 - Nation
9 - On Mission
10 - The Cage
11 - Jaguar Sun
12 - Caxtollice Toxcatl
13 - New God
14 - Night Song
15 - Celebración de la Noche Triste
16 - For Christopher Rios
17 - Tepetlaoztoc II
18 - Land Of Thorns

Return to Index

War Drum - War Drum by War Drum (1998) C90

Usual terms and conditions apply as previously stated here, particularly regarding martial shit, the token bit of neofolk karaoke, and Thanksgiving because it's fucking awful and sounds like one of those shitty Ibiza comedown tracks, all hopefully mitigated by potentially bewildering covers of material by Link Wray and All Saints. I was fairly pleased with this one, for the most part. The tracks came out more or less how I hoped, and it was all recorded on a four-track with access to more technology than had been customary for me. So pleased was I that I splashed out on a two-colour cover so as to invoke the national flag of my beloved Mexico. 

By this point I had given up on rock, pop, industrial, and other music made by white people because it had mostly turned to shit. I went through a period of just listening to old classical albums, and by the time it came to this cassette I was getting into rap, garage and R&B, thanks mainly to people at work, and the influence of that stuff can be heard here in places; although Twilight Years owes its existence to my encountering the first seven studio albums by Iron Maiden in a junk shop on Lordship Lane for the same number of quids and all in good nick.

Andy of the Apostles, Academy 23, and UNIT handles the vocals on Flaying of Men, and whilst we're here, America, Awake! was my adaptation and repurposing of Academy 23's Europe, Awake! to hopefully less dubious seeming ends given that the perspective is changed from that of a white European to a Native American. I wasn't a Native American at the time, and I'm still not one now, but my intentions were noble.

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

Tracks:
1 - One Handed Tormentor
2 - Protomammal
3 - Plains Dweller
4 - Crusader
5 - Nanautzin
6 - Twilight Years
7 - Soul Rebel No. 1
8 - Blood Garage
9 - His Day Sign Was Fortified
10 - Take Everything
11 - Rollergirl
12 - Ce Quiahuitl
13 - Sixth Extinction
14 - Scapegoat
15 - Java Sunday
16 - Thanksgiving
17 - Fat Back
18 - My War Drum
19 - Flaying of Men
20 - Remembrance Day
21 - America, Awake!
22 - Love for the World
23 - Yei Mazatl Quecholli
24 - War of Nerves

Return to Index

v/a - Circumcise the Foreskin of Your Heart (1983) C60

Here we go. Everybody and their milkman had a compilation tape clogging up fanzine column inches and I was determined that I shouldn't be left out. Additionally I had certain ideas about the sort of thing I wanted to hear on a compilation tape, and the sort of thing I didn't want to hear, and had already begun to formulate cynical thoughts about those independent tape labels which quite clearly just wanted to be EMI, or at least 4AD, and were only slumming it with the rest of us because they couldn't afford to do otherwise, wankers; and, to be more ruthlessly honest, it had also occurred to me that no-one could say what should appear on my tape but me, and I'd sent tracks off to a few tape labels only to be told either that my stuff was shite, or was else not worthy for inclusion on the grounds that I didn't know anyone from SPK.

Fuckers.

Anyway, at the time I was corresponding fairly busily with Larry Peterson of Cause for Concern tapes, architect of the genuinely wonderful A Sudden Surge of Power C90 featuring Chris & Cosey, Attrition, Test Dept and all sorts - the finest compilation of that entire era, I would argue. Larry encouraged me to get a compilation of my own together, and then fobbed me off with a few tracks he'd been sent but obviously didn't want to use for his follow up to A Sudden Surge of Power, and also he put me in touch with Kevin Thorne of We Be Echo who accordingly sent me a track out of the blue without my even having to ask. Plus, I wasn't entirely without my own resources so...

Some of these you may as well just look up on Discogs or wherever given that I never really knew much about them. I understood Citipati, for example, to be something to do with the excellent Adventures of Twizzle (who came up with the title Circumcise the Foreskin of Your Heart, which is from some religious source, possibly), with whom I was in correspondence, but Discogs seems to think they were some sort of New Blockaders side project; and The Prison was the best song on a five track demo which Larry passed on to me, a demo by a band which never actually responded to any of my letters, so I thought fuck it and stuck the track on there anyway. It seemed to fit. I guess it's the same track which appeared on something called Sing As We Go from the previous year. Oh well.

The Desolate Accountants were Pete and Graham, my two friends from school and half of the Pre-War Busconductors, which also included myself and Eggy. The Pre-War Busconductors were a fairly raucous (not to mention stupid) cardboard box drum kit punk band, included here mainly so as to annoy anyone anticipating a fifteen minute track of mains hum by Coil's dentist and named after Aleister Crowley's favourite holiday destination, but also because we all enjoy having our bollocks whipped from time to time, don't we? I included the two Desolate Accountants tracks because I always loved them, and thought they were the most musical of our imaginary bands, the one name from the bunch which could justifiably fill a Vinyl-on-Demand release without too many people asking for a refund.

The Cause for Concern was Larry Peterson having a go at noise as he did from time to time before he realised there was no money in it, and none of the bands on his tape label would ever be famous. I realise with hindsight that Mike Finch was a pseudonym used by Dave Fanning of the Apostles and later Academy 23 with some frequency, so I assume this may have been something to do with him given that he did stuff with Larry on a couple of occasions. He also played bass for Three Heads Nodding, or so I heard somewhere. Three Heads Nodding were, so far as I know, Neil, Kev (possibly) and some others who lived in a squat in the Brougham Road in Hackney just a few doors along from the Apostles. Neil also drew and wrote Ka-Ka Komik back in the days when Viz was still a fanzine sold in Newcastle pubs. Ka-Ka Komik was fucking mint!

NKVD was an alias of Glenn of Konstruktivists to whom I had been writing since A Dissembly came out. I think this version of Mansonik No. 2 may be the original portastudio demo which Glenn later took into the studio and had fancified by Dave Kenny ready for its appearance on his second album. I could be wrong about that, although it sounds different to me.

Asepisis was my friend Jez from school, another Gristle fan who recorded a load of stuff on my equipment, and actually seemed to make a better job of it than I did with the whole noisy electronics schtick. He did a great C60 called The Glory of Punishment for whatever the Grey Wolves' tape label was called at the time, but we fell out (which was my fault). I'm still trying to work up the courage to ask him if I can reissue his C60 here as a free download.

Do Easy was myself, obviously, sounding a lot more Numan-influenced than I remember being the case. Neither did I realise my voice was quite that nasal, although it was pointed out to me, in fact it was even pointed out to me by the bloke out of ABC. Oh well. I still say some of my lyrics were decent, even if the execution left something to be desired.

Probably the best tracks on the whole thing were from Irsol, a band which featured Ash from Attrition and a couple of his friends. Irsol put out two exceptionally wonderful cassettes which have recently been given the vinyl treatment, two exceptionally wonderful cassettes which remain amongst the absolute best of the entire cassette scene to my ears. I've a feeling they may have been a bit pissed off upon discovering that their lovingly recorded tracks ended up sharing tape with an assortment of tossers rummaging around in a broom cupboard and a song called Whip My Bollocks. I actually had my mum drop me off at one Irsol member's house on the Kenilworth Road in Coventry so I could leave four complimentary copies of Circumcise with his dad, or whoever the guy was. They never wrote back. I suppose it might have been the wrong house.

Anyway, that's your lot. It didn't set the world on fire. I think it sold about sixty or seventy copies over the space of a couple of years. There were worse compilations. I'm not sure what else I can say.

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

Tracks:
1 - We Be Echo - Soma Improvement
2 - Desolate Accountants - Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree
3 - The Cause for Concern with Mike Finch - Look in the Mirror
4 - Do Easy - My Remaining Eye
5 - Three Heads Nodding - Sloven Song
6 - Pre-War Busconductors - Whip My Bollocks
7 - NKVD - untitled
8 - Citipati - Improvisations April '83
9 - Irsol - Time Domain
10 - Do Easy - British Movement
11 - Three Heads Nodding - Hitch Hiker
12 - Konstruktivists - Mansonik No. 2
13 - Asepisis - Accidents with More People
14 - His-Create-He - The Prison (that Jack Built)
15 - Irsol - The Stranger
16 - Desolate Accountants - Interview

Return to Index