Death Pact International - Fear Eats the Soul (1986) 2C60

All this Grey Wolves has set me to thinking about how I'd once collaborated with them as part of something called Death Pact International, and yet never heard the finished result. In fact I think I only realised that it had ever existed when Stream Angel, another contributor, had mentioned it on facebook. The deal had been that various persons with whom Trev of Opera for Infantry (or probably Irritant by that point) regularly corresponded should send in a tape of sound, noise, music, or whatever, and that it would all be processed, mixed together, and used as part of Death Pact International; so I suppose you could say it was a weirdy music supergroup on some level. Anyway, I sent him something called Rubbish Like You* - a title I'd pinched from Pok-a-Tok fanzine as produced by Lennart Eilersen of Enhoenta Bödlar - and that was the last I heard, although to be fair I was moving around a lot at the time so it's likely Trev either lost my address or that a copy never got forwarded to me from somewhere I'd been living. Anyway, duly reminded of this tape I had a look around for an MP3 version on the internet, but was only able to find one on a site which, for whatever reason, wouldn't let me download stuff. However, Nils Inge Graven was able to download the thing and thus kindly furnished me with a copy of the files, which was nice. So here, by way of a slight swerve, is something I haven't actually digitised from my own collection, but am sharing because I'm on the fucker.

The files I received took the form of four sides of the double tape each digitised as a single continuous track, which offended my sensibilities so I've put it all through Audacity and re-edited the thing, cleaned it up and so on, although as with Tomorrow We Live, the distinctions I've made as to where one track ends and another begins are guesswork on my part. I've also cleaned up the scans of the accompanying artwork and booklet. You're welcome.

Fear Eats the Soul is collectively the work of members of Opera for Infantry, Con-Dom, Kapotte Muziek, ESP Kinetic, Sperm Culture, Do Easy, Face in the Crowd, and a few others I haven't heard of. My recommendation is that you listen to it as though it were a single two-hour piece.

It's great to hear this thing at last, and I feel sort of proud to have been involved. 

*: The original track as it was when I sent it off to Trev can be heard on Gravesend.

Download the twenty-three tracks and booklet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Bass / Roots Intro
2 - Madrid de Dia
3 - Sucked In
4 - Crawl
5 - Rubbish Like You
6 - Dumb Dogs
7 - Trigger Mechanism
8 - Mutation Nation
9 - Raw Aktion
10 - Piano //?
11 - Daddy, Fuck My Head
12 - Affirmation
13 - Rage Beater
14 - Clear Blue Sky
15 - Burning Down the Walls of Fire
16 - FDN
17 - What Are You Doing Tomorrow?
18 - Tentaciones
19 - Troops Rape Grenada
20 - Red Peace
21 - Ever Forward
22 - Kill at Will
23 - Banned Exit
 
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Another Lost Cause (1984) C90

Little bit of politics there. My name is Ben Elton. Goodnight!

No, I don't remember this one making much of a showing in that year's design awards either, but this might have been the first compilation tape to which a stranger had asked me to contribute (although it could have been Anal Probe's Political Piggies - it's all a bit of a muddle) so that makes it amazing in my book, even though, with hindsight, my tracks probably weren't. Another Lost Cause was the follow up to Refill Tapes' similarly wistfully named Reflections of a Past Age compilation. I suspect it was also their last offering as I don't recall hearing anything from them after this one. I think the tape-buying public's general lack of enthusiasm for Refill product was beginning to get them down; and before anyone says anything, yes I know their tapes looked a bit low budget, but fuck it - they made for some decent listening - apart from my tracks, I suppose.

 

If you've been following this blog, chance is you may already have some of this stuff. Mine appeared straight off the master copy here, for what little it may be worth; at least one of the Opera for Infantry tracks came from Hopsotch; I'm pretty sure all of the Family Patrol Group material is taken from Fear Death by Water; and the Bomb the Day Nursery stuff all comes from the album they released as Enhoenta Bödlar, although you might do best to get it from their Soundcloud page which additionally features a whole bunch of other stuff. I never quite worked out why this same material appeared credited to both Bomb the Day Nursery and Enhoenta Bödlar (and not just on this particular compilation) but assume it would be something to do with Roger Karmanik and Lennart Eilsersen eventually falling out with each other given that Roger went on to record under other names utilising the initials BDN, Brighter Death Now being the best known. The Yttersta Tagghudingen tracks eventually resurfaced on a 12" EP which I'll get around to buying one of these days, although I'm not sure if they're the exact same versions. Yttersta Tagghudingen were also something to do with Lennart Eilersen - or Uddah Buddah as he was also known, and possibly still is.

As for the rest, there are more details in the booklet, which I've scanned and which comes with the download, and which is as much as I know. This is a little annoying as I now realise I really should have sent for that tape by the Rattle when I had the chance. I've rooted around for any trace of it or them on the internet but can find nothing. I never really noticed them at the time, but I think the two tracks on this tape are fucking astonishingly good - My Bloody Valentine with a Casio VL Tone.

Download the twenty-three tracks, cover and booklet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - Our Friends in America
2 - Do Easy - Documentary
3 - Yttersta Tagghudingen - I Trek from Down Yondah
4 - Opera for Infantry - Playing with Fire
5 - Family Patrol Group - (live)
6 - The Rattle - The Party's Over
7 - Bomb the Day Nursery - That Blind Tormentor
8 - Opera for Infantry - Shoot to Kill
9 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - Theme
10 - White Elephants Over Jamaica - Pyromania
11 - Do Easy - Vicar Vicar Straight into the Public Lavatory
12 - The Rattle - She Loves You
13 - Family Patrol Group - Fear Death by Water I
14 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - The Dark
15 - Opera for Infantry - Hopscotch
16 - Bomb the Day Nursery - The Only Way to Survive is to Commit Suicide
17 - Yttersta Tagghudingen - I'm Nailed to the Barn Door
18 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - Where Do I Go?
19 - Do Easy - Nuove Tendenze
20 - Yttersta Tagghudingen - Golliwog
21 - Family Patrol Group - Fear Death by Water III
22 - Bomb the Day Nursery - Heathen Nordic Temple
23 - Astral Joe & the Nighthawks - Astronauts / Voice of a Psychic
 
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Trilogy - Other Input (1985) C90

This week features a special guest post by the man who actually recorded the thing on the grounds of our having kept in touch (but for a couple of decades somewhere in the middle), and that he naturally has a more informed take on this collection than myself. I'd already released a couple of his tapes on my Do Easy label (which can be found listed in the index linked at the foot of the page) and I had the impression this one was something in the order of tidying up loose ends so as to allow greater focus on the cassette he recorded as Sin, which will probably follow in a couple of months and is a masterpiece in my view. Tom didn't really have a title for this one and suggested I should come up with something, which was unfortunate because my suggestion was so fucking awful I can't even bear to type it out - I'd been very taken with the surreal grammatical phraseology of Lennart Eilersen of Enhoenta Bödlar, author of the mind-boggling Pok-a-Tok fanzine, and this was my lame attempt to weave gold of similar carat. For the purposes of this download, I've opted for Other Input, which Tom wrote on the master copy and which I choose to regard as the proper title from hereon.

Anyway, over to the man behind the music...

Tape to Some Bizarre (2:42) (Dec 1983)
This track started life as a letter to Some Bizarre Records asking Stevo if I could make films and videos for them. I then thought that something as prosaic as a straightforward request was hardly going to get the attention of these “arty” types – so I cut up the text and broke up the words and reassembled it as a kind of poem – with a few stray remarks about hating taxi drivers and Christmas trees (which I don’t – but it was a left over bit from an early recording I made while tripping – which I'm surprised I didn’t suggest for this comp). Anyway the cut-up letter still didn’t quite make it as far as I was concerned and being a Marc and the Mambas fan, I tried singing it over Empty Eyes. That really worked – so after double tracking it to make it more murky and bring in a repetitious quality to my chant, I sent the thing off to Some Bizarre. I never got a reply, but years later I heard from someone who worked at Some Bizarre that my tape had become something of a cult favourite in the office – though no one could figure out what the hell I was asking them for. Well at least I made an impression.

If anyone wants to see the “lyrics”...

“Cut-up” (6:25) (Nov 1983)
A very early piece when I was limited to a Casio VL-Tone, an old reel to reel which I’d picked up for £5 in a jumble sale and my still relatively new Sharp tape to tape. The title is more interesting than the track – which features no “cut-ups” at all – just me muttering and saying the phrase cut-up against overlaid Casio cycles.

Blows to the Head (1:42) (Mar 1984)
More experiments, but with a good deal more purpose. I now had the Roland SH-1000, so I could produce somewhat more gutsy sounds and I had refined the tape to tape echo effect quite well. Although this short tryout of a chugging white noise blast against an ultra high frequency “tune” wasn’t really developed, I recycled the basic sound a month or so later for Our Patience will End.

Such A Lot (2:58) (Nov 1983)
This particular experiment – only my 3rd “musical” recording - was my first attempt to create a song with lyrics and a recognizable tune. While primitive, it’s quite sweet but the just because she has an ugly face… stanza makes me cringe a bit.

Cosmetic Surgery (5:53) (Dec 1983)
First track to use my newly acquired Roland SH-1000 – probably around Dec 26th or 27th 1983. This SH-1000 was a demented beast of a synthesizer which could always be trusted to make the sounds I least expected. I loved it, although I discovered it was useless live. Back in the early seventies my mum had a brief stint as a “Studio Beauty Advisor” selling cosmetics door to door. Given how painfully shy my mum could be this was a truly heroic thing to try, especially in such a tough-sell area as recession hit Cumbernauld. It could only mean my parents were going through some hard financial times – something I was never aware of at the time. By 1983 all of that was a thankfully distant memory but the introductory record was still around – voiced by none other than The Jaw himself, Patrick Allen.  So I mangled the recording and riffed over it with my synth. I think I made two passes – each time double tracking the previous layer – and introducing some stereo panning via my twenty channel Equalizer. I was pretty pleased with the result. I felt I was now in a brave new world of synthesizers. In retrospect I wish I’d called it Cosmic Surgery – but at the time I would’ve probably shuddered at such hippy like connotations.

Elation (8:49) (Feb 1984)
An early SH-1000 instrumental with a nice free form quality to it. This is actually about half of the original recording – the original had a lengthy meandering opening – and either Lawrence or myself probably decided to cut it for tape space purposes. It’s like a pleasant version of something from TG’s Second Annual Report and the double tracking and EQ panning have developed to the point where there is some nice syncopation at various points.

Our Patience Will End (version) (13:36) (April 1984)
By April '84 I was tired of the somewhat ambient stoned sounding instrumentals I was doing and I wanted to create a really full on piece – something that would actually hurt people’s eardrums. Well, how better to kick this off than with a few samples of Adolf H and Goebbels taken from a documentary my dad recorded. (As Lawrence might say, I was in industrial bad lad mode). I had enormous fun creating and recording this one, really getting into the frequencies. I experimented with channeling the two German samples through the Roland and was delighted to find the syncopation of the speeches bleeding into the frequencies. Finally I recorded a ninety second highly rhythmic version of the Blows to the Head sound onto my reel to reel and was able to give the piece an even more manic feel by manually stopping and starting the tape – basically scratching. I think the original was about twenty minutes long and outstayed it’s welcome by about ten, but from this point onwards I felt I had a clear vision of where I was headed musically. The title is the translation of what Hitler is actually ranting. Incidentally almost all of these tracks were recorded in my bedroom in my folks' caravan on the tarmac site we were living on at that time. Given that my folks were never more than fifteen feet away you might think tracks like this caused a lot of disagreement, but I always worked with headphones on and almost never played what I was working on through the speakers. This is another reason that the few vocals I recorded in this period are very subdued.

Do Not Forgive Them (8:10) (May 1984)
(or playing in traffic with microphones)
A shortened version of this full strength Frenzi piece, one of a quintet of feedback based pieces recorded over a few weeks in May 1984 (in retrospect a very productive time). This recording is one of several road-side performances / freak-outs I carried out at this time - in which I risked road-rage from Essex drivers by creating pieces of noise and visual performance live. Armed with my tape to tape this one took place one evening at an underpass just outside Waltham Abbey. Using two handheld microphones (one for each channel) and the natural echo and ambience of the concrete tunnel - this begins with several minutes of feedback music (sounding a bit like enraged whales) then proceeds to some full-on vocal screaming and invective from Frenzi. My "audience" was at best bemused - apart from a disgruntled motorist (at about 2:02) who tries to end both the performance and me...

Batora (3:00) (June 1984)
I was very interested in Martin Denny at this time, having heard Momba from a PTV tape compilation – but when I tried to get hold of one of his albums all I could find was a much later piano only album with no bird sounds to be heard. So I decided to create my impression of a Martin Denny track – with a very tribal vibe. This was one of those tracks that came together incredibly quickly, in about an hour when I was on lunch break from my summer job – working for Tarmac Construction in Hatfield.

Soul Mind (4:50) (Sept 1984)
This is a much more formally experimental piece – with the premise of meeting a girl on a date and the many ways it could go - most of them horribly wrong, but all ending with the same line, and then I went home and I wept. This was a pretty frustrated time for me sexually so I let my imagination run rampant, writing eight different scenarios which I then read over one another, assuming a different version of myself for each. I wanted to see if a meaning would emerge through the jumble of words and different voices. I then added a melancholy melody on the SH-1000 and this is the result. For a while I was unsure of whether I actually wanted to put this out – since I was genuinely uncomfortable with some of the scenarios I created – but in the end I think Lawrence persuaded me it was worthwhile.

Power Control (4:56) (July 1984)
An attempt to do something a little more poppy than my usual – with a lot of scratching on the TV commentator – from a program about propaganda.

Existence (2:24) (Aug 1984)
The second recording using my new echo machine, and my first attempt at synchronising Super 8 footage to my music – although I never committed the results to video. Throughout this summer I was filming material with a video-music project in mind – this would lead to Disease by Sin. So this is a kind of dummy run at themes I was developing for that one.

Point One (4:54) (Aug 1984)
This very spacey sounding piece was my first recording using the Boss echo machine – and boy do I use it. I relished the way even my Casio suddenly sounded rich and luxurious and this would feature on virtually every recording I made from this point on.

Waking Dreams (17:24) (6th Nov 1984)
This one was created simply to fill some space on side two of this compilation. Essentially out-takes and isolated parts from Words Cannot Describe & Pagan Orchestral (as it was later known) which appeared on the Disease: First Movement tape. Since I had just recorded the latter I still had all the separate bounce tracks of the various layers and so I created a somewhat new track for this compilation. 

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

Tracks:
1 - Tape to Some Bizzare
2 - "Cut-Up"
3 - Blows to the Head
4 - Such a Lot
5 - Cosmetic Surgery
6 - Elation
7 - Our Patience Will End (version)
8 - Do Not Forgive Them
9 - Batora
10 - Soul Mind
11 - Power Control
12 - Existence
13 - Point One
14 - Waking Dreams


 
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Enhoenta Bödlar - William Bennett in the Sky with Diamonds (1985) C60

I don't know much about this one, at least not beyond what I've already said about Enhoenta Bödlar in previous blog entries - and before anyone gets snippy, the name seemed to get a different spelling every time it appeared, so I just stick with the one I like best. This came out on Trev Ward's Anal Probe - a tape label which seemed to switch identity every year. By 1987 they were probably Zeal SS or something else I'm slightly wary of naming here for fear of attracting undesirables, and this tape was listed as the work of Bomb the Day Nursery. Actually, as my copy came with what appears to be the original artwork for the sleeve - letraset and bits of paper glued on rather than a photocopy, it seems likely I had the last copy sent out before gender reassignment.

For a period it seemed that the duo of Uddah-Buddah and Roger Karmanik recorded and released material as both Enhoenta Bödlar and Bomb the Day Nursery, and a few tracks from Enhoenta Bödlar's first album appeared here and there credited to Bomb the Day Nursery. That said, I always assumed that Bomb the Day Nursery was more Roger's thing given his enduring fascination with those initials in Bodies Drowned Natural, Brighter Death Now, and possibly others I've never heard of. William Bennett in the Sky with Diamonds may be just Roger for all I know.

There's no track list below because there isn't one on the cassette, just two lengthy pieces, each taking up one side of a C60, and probably released through Anal Probe because of Trev's interest in ritual and atmospheric music, that being as good a description for this as any. If you want to know what you're possibly about to download, it's mostly layered loops with a heavily tribal feel, something in the direction of Muslimgauze or even that stuff David Byrne did with Brian Eno. I wouldn't absolutely swear that it dates from 1985, but it can't have been much later, and whenever it was, it was some way ahead of its time when you consider what else was around. I've never quite worked out the significance of the reference to the Whitehouse dude, and assume that was just someone pissing about and having a laugh, but it seems coincidentally and peculiarly prescient considering how much this shares with the stuff he ended up doing as Cut Hands.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

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v/a - From Down Yondah (1984) C120

Here's another relatively obscure compilation, another one on which I had a track, and rooting around on the internet I realise there were some genuine unsung weirdy music pioneers here, quite aside from those we all already know about; so my ego is a little larger than it was just before I digitised this tape.

From Down Yondah came as a C120 selotaped to a knackered charity shop record with a vague stack of associated A4 photocopies - vague, because it was sort of difficult to tell where the compilation artwork ended and Lennart Eilersen's manic accompanying letter began. Lennart Eilersen, also known as Uddah Buddah, was the man behind Selbstmord Organisation - one of my favourite things to emerge from the whole noisy tape scene of the early 1980s; and From Down Yondah was the label's international assemblage of friends and sympathetic parties. Cloister Crime, We Be Echo, Asepisis, and Do Easy are already fairly well represented on this blog, so please refer to the index and make sure you download the Cloister Crime tape if you haven't already done so because it's a fucking cracker. Opera for Infantry turned into the Grey Wolves, Unkommuniti turned into Stereolab, and Swedish Nature eventually became Brighter Death Now. Club Moral, FâLX çèrêbRi and Die Form surely require no introduction. The Cause for Concern was Larry Peterson who used to run the tape label of that name and who is now some sort of Thunderbirds puppet mogul or summink. Yttersta Tagghudingen was something to do with Lennart Eilersen, as referred to above, some kind of outgrowth of his magnificent Enhoenta Bödlar - which also featured Roger from Brighter Death Now and whose Ogreish Guttural Wounds is probably the greatest album ever recorded. The rest can be looked up on Discogs, probably.

While we're here, here's another masterpiece from the same label just in case you missed it. Someone really needs to write a book about the Swedish weirdy music scene. Those guys really had their shit together. Maybe it was something in the water.

I've always been a bit wary of C120s so have probably only played this thing a couple of times at most. Unfortunately for the sake of enduring quality this probably hasn't made a lot of difference as the tape appears to have been copied at an unusually low sound level. I've done what I can to restore the thing. Also, my own track was split between the end of side one and the beginning of side two for some stupid reason, so I've replaced it with the original uninterrupted version from The Fourteenth Metal Tape.

Also, I've scanned the Selbstmord catalogue, so that's included in the download for the sake of curiosity. I'd love to know how much of that stuff actually saw the light of day. I still have the first issue of Pok-a-Tok (which is, by the way, possibly the greatest fanzine I've ever read) but I have no idea if the promised From Down Yondah issue ever came out.

Finally, is it my imagination or does this version of The Witches Burn sound different to those posted previously on this blog? 

Download the twenty-five tracks and artwork by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - (introduction)
2 - Club Moral - Tegen Het Ik   
3 - IMCP - Day of Stunts   
4 - Asod Dvi - Det Synkende Synkende Skip   
5 - Live Loop - Breathings   
6 - Caspar Hausers - Slow Albanian Stucco   
7 - Cloister Crime - Sacrum Sacrifice   
8 - The Audience - We Need Fast Paint   
9 - We Be Echo - The Witches Burn   
10 - Asepisis - Genetik Product Control   
11 - Family Patrol Group - Bottle Fuck   
12 - Autentisk Film - Svarte Fugler   
13 - Opera for Infantry - Black Christmas   
14 - Do Easy - United States of America   
15 - The Cause for Concern - To Life + Death   
16 - Laxative Souls - Bryseri Half Anticipation
17 - Unkommuniti - Fry Day 2   
18 - The Rimbaud Brothers - Bite the Bullet   
19 - FâLX çèrêbRi - Olympic Games   
20 - Comando Bruno - Racaille   
21 - Interaccion - X y E   
22 - Die Form - Il Coltello nell Acqua   
23 - Swedish Nature - Suck It   
24 - Diseño Corbusier - Escuadra Popular   
25 - Yttersta Tagghudingen - Amschaspand Abrasax   

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v/a - Carnage in a Country Garden (1986) C90

Assuming they have no objections, at some point I'm going to be digitising and sharing some of the stuff I have by Opera for Infantry who became better known as the Grey Wolves in more recent years. As some of you may be aware, the Grey Wolves have been subject to a certain degree of criticism for their use of extreme right wing imagery, with some of this criticism suggesting that the Grey Wolves might even be sympathetic towards the politics of those whose flags they once slapped all over their tape covers. The thing is, I've known them on and off by various degrees of separation for about three decades now, and I still have a stack of letters from Trev of the group from when we used to write to each other back in the day, and with this in mind I respectfully suggest that whilst one might legitimately criticise their possibly irresponsible use of scary pictures, the idea that they could be genuine Nazis, closeted or otherwise, is complete bollocks; but it's really an argument for another time. I always viewed Opera for Infantry as more or less Crass with a synth and a fuzz pedal instead of guitars and drums, at least in terms of where their politics lay, and it really isn't hard to find material to support this if you can be arsed to look, not least all of those early compilations on their Anal Probe label, noisy but well-rooted in anarchopunk and squat culture and usually released as a benefit for some worthy cause or another, and no - we really aren't talking about anything comparable to how Death in June used to play at Rock Against Racism events...

Anyway, to get to the point, this was Anal Probe's third, fourth or maybe even fifth compilation cassette, a noisy affair as you might expect, but with a lot of variety too. I've written about Enhoenta Bodlar, Asepisis, and Do Easy - which was me - elsewhere on this blog with downloads which can be found via the index at the foot of this entry, and I wrote about Human Trapped Rhythms here, and as for the rest: Final was the bloke from Godflesh, and I think Chris Low who drummed for the Apostles was in Political Asylum, and you're probably as well-equipped to find out about the others as I am, should you feel you need to know. A few of this bunch turned up on other compilations, but they remain mostly just names to me.

As Do Easy, I played a live gig in support to Opera for Infantry and the Subhumans in Amesbury back in September 1984, so that's when I met Trev and Dap. After the gig we went back to their place - which I vaguely remember as being full of punk rockers - and I happened to have the tape of my tracks for this compilation on me, so Trev made a copy there and then on his ghetto blaster. I noticed the levels were whacked right up on the machine, and my bargain bin Matt Johnson impersonation was transformed into something off the first SPK album as it was being copied, but I was too polite, or possibly terrified, to say anything. Anyway, if anyone cares enough, slightly clearer versions of the Do Easy tracks appeared on one of the Purifier tapes. Of course, that was 1984 and this came out in 1986 according to Discogs, which leaves a bit of an odd gap, so either my memory is wrong or some Discogs subscriber has messed up on the dating.

Anyway, four-hundred years later, this doesn't sound anything like so noisy as I remember it being, and it's also nice that it's not just twenty-seven tracks of different blokes screaming that they're going to do you up the bum; yes, quite a pleasing collection, I'd say.

Download these twenty-seven tracks, cover and inserts by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Enhoenta Bodlar - Antichrist ne Telleth
2 - Der Verboten - Walking
3 - Vox Populi! - White Man in Africa
4 - Human Trapped Rhythms - Part of the Same
5 - Final - Belief
6 - Political Asylum - Symptom
7 - Asepisis - The Presence
8 - En Halvkokt I Folie - Men Pensionarer
9 - Kosa - Watt Tem
10 - Do Easy - In the Moral Hit Parade
11 - Nun - Vermilion Sands (extract)
12 - Kallous Boys - Sovereign
13 - Opera for Infantry - Hate Machine
14 - Der Verboten - Your Cancer My Sort
15 - Kosa - No Trouble
16 - En Halvkokt I Folie - Invitation to the Blues
17 - Vox Populi! - Mind
18 - Political Asylum - A Day in the Life
19 - Kallous Boys - Tolerance
20 - Do Easy - Mussolini and a Plate of Gruts
21 - Der Verboten - Slem Jem
22 - Kosa - Pole Sud
23 - Nun - The Disaster Area (extract)
24 - Vaccine Damaged Children - Last Train to Auschwitz
25 - En Halvkokt I Folie - Senator Bizarre
26 - Human Trapped Rhythms - Suck Mud
27 - Kallous Boys - Elizabeth

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Fysisk Fostran - Vi Behöver Ett Odöpt Barn (1983) C60

I have no idea about this one beyond that it was sent to me by Lennart Eilersen of Selbstmord in Sweden, the man who helped birth this masterpiece. I've barely listened to the thing over the years, but mainly because the actual cassette tape looked like one of those five for a quid crappo specials you would buy either from car boot sales or Sid's electronics shop in Church Street in Shipston, and I suspected it was only a matter of time before my player chewed the thing up. This is a shame because listening to it now I realise I like it a lot, and that it at least lives up to the promise of obscure Swedish avant-noise. The more I listen to this stuff, the more I wish someone had dragged these guys into a fancy studio and given this material the blistering production it deserves.

Nosing around on the internet I'm pleased to find there are actually a couple of Krabbkropp tracks on YouTube, apparently posted by one of the group, who gives this account:

Krabbkropp were a duo consisting of Robert Lagerström and Patrik Lager who were active in Stenungsund, Sweden around 1980-81. The band expanded in 1982 to incorporate additional "musicians" and were called Brosk for a period, releasing a few cassettes under that name before becoming Fysisk Fostran later that year. As Fysisk Fostran they released a number of additional cassettes and a 7" EP called Day of Reckoning.

It took me years to work out quite what the hell this was, who it was actually by, and whether it was some sort of split tape or not, but I guess what we have is basically a compilation of what was more or less the same group of people at different stages. Krabbkropp became Fysisk Fostran - meaning something like either Physical Education or Physical Upbringing - and I guess the Dance of the Washer-Woman material was recorded by one of the same people.

Whilst researching this oddity I couldn't help but notice that someone else has already posted a freebie download of the same, but I've gone right ahead and posted mine regardless seeing as I'd already spent half a day editing the thing. It can't hurt and maybe one of our respective digitisations is better than the other, hence greater choice for the consumer. Plus the site seems worth a look. God bless capitalism etc.

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

Fysisk Fostran - Vi Behöver ett Odöpt Barn We Need an Unbaptised Child

1 - Intro / Vill Era Gäster Ha Fiber? (live) Do Your Guests Want to Have Fiber?
2 - Det Blodrika Djuret The Blood-Rich Animal
3 - Döda Lollos Mamma (KK) Mother of Dead Lollo
4 - Vi Var Gudar (Vi Tog Betalt För Oss) We Were Gods (We Got Paid)
5 - Jag Har Ett Möte Med Jim H. Gud I Have a Meeting with Jim H. God
6 - Det Mystiska Talet 'E' The Mysterious Number 'E'
7 - Vill Era Gäster Ha Fiber? Do Your Guests Want to Have Fiber?
8 - Den Förtroliga Kammaren The Confidential Chamber
9 - Vi Kan Allt Få Dig Att Springa! We Can Really Make You Jump!
10 - När Arkeologerna Grävde Upp Min Hustrus Kropp When Archaeologists Dug Up My Wife's Body
11 - Jag Har Tältata Med Döden I Have Camped with Death

Krabbkropp

12 - Krabbkropp Crab Body
13 - Ett Krabbigt Förslag A "Crabby" Proposal
14 - Krabbornas Bröllop Crab Wedding
15 - Krabbans Klagan Crab's Lament
16 - Krabbkaka Crab Cake
17 - Krabbkroppar Crab Bodies

Dance of the Washer-Woman - Som Bombsplitter I Själen As Bomb Shrapnel in the Soul

18 - part one
19 - part two

Many thanks to Nils Inge Graven for the translations.

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Cloister Crime - Devilish Music for an Unredeemable (1984) C46

I have no idea - some Swedish bloke called Stalker* apparently, and my guess is that he probably wasn't averse to the occasional spot of the Gristley Throbbers whenever Dave Lee Travis happened to spin one of their songs on the wireless. My other guess is that Stalker probably wasn't his real name. I vaguely recall sending Lennart Eilersen of Selbstmord Organización some crappy tape of mine and suggesting he send back whatever he had laying around as a swap, and so I ended up with this, which wasn't actually on Lennart's label, but I guess he knew the guy because he's thanked on the tape. Of course it's potentially a bit of a political minefield offering up this sort of blatantly industrial obscurity given that most of the fuckers seem to have ended up as Conservative politicians or worse, so for all I know this bloke may presently spend his day banging on about the dilution of the white race by impure stock (etc. etc.); but let's hope not, and if so, sorry, I looked high and low but drew mostly blanks.

I use the term blatantly industrial for reasons which will be obvious once you listen to the thing - harsh noises and what Sir Kenneth Clark would almost certainly have described as a beastly undercurrent in the lyrics, which probably isn't too surprising given that Charlie and My Double were originally poems written by one of those serial killer types, and I wouldn't bother looking the guy up on Wikipedia because it's all characteristically disgusting. Obvious reservations aside, I remain surprised by how good this one sounds regardless of it having worn its influences so blatantly on its sleeve, and it probably helps that Chrome must surely have been significant among said influences.

Finally, I did what I could with the original tape, but there's some drop out in one channel for a few seconds during a couple of the tracks, and it was beyond my powers to fix it. Hopefully it shouldn't spoil your enjoyment.

 

Download the seven songs and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Bunker Neighbourhood
2 - Too Tough
3 - Charlie
4 - My Double
5 - The Mean Lip
6 - To Suck
7 - I Wanna Be Your Nun

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Enhoenta Bödlar - Ogreish Guttural Wounds (1984) LP

Vinyl album rather than cassette this week, but this one seems conspicuously absent from the internet so far as I can tell, and I haven't noticed any boutique labels fighting over the right to reissue, so here we are; and here we are because Ogreish Guttural Wounds is a lost classic in my opinion, one of the greatest (or at least weirdest) records ever to be saddled with the unfortunate label of industrial. Enhoenta Bödlar - Swedish for One-Handed Tormentor - were Uddah Buddah and X-Terminator of Ljungby, Sweden or thereabouts. As I understand it, X-Terminator operated the synth whilst Uddah Buddah handled vocals and percussion, although it may not have been quite so clear cut as that. X-Terminator later became better known as the Brighter Death Now guy, and I gather that he and Uddah Buddah may have fallen out shortly after this was recorded. Uddah Buddah was known to his mum as Lennart Eilersen, and he was the person to whom I wrote in his capacity as big cheese of Selbstmord Organización, his tape label which branched out into at least this one slab of vinyl with its photocopied cover held on by masking tape. Its apparent subsequent lack of availability may be on account of the group being so ashamed of it that they buried all the unsold copies, at least according to what Lennart Eilersen told me in one letter:

We have our 1st LP our by Enhoenta Bodlar, but that was so bad that we don't even wanna sell it anymore. The rest of the copies left are meant to be buried in cemetries.

I suppose how bad it could have been is now the obvious question. Personally I wouldn't say it was bad at all, but it is seriously fucking odd, and it doesn't bear much comparison with many other things which have been labelled industrial. One of the greatest things about the Roland SH101 synth is, in my opinion, the arpeggio feature, or whatever the hell it's called - hold down as many keys as you like and the synth runs up and down the sequence over and over like some sort of seasick Dalek pumped full of nose-candy. It's a peculiar, disorientating sound without which Ogrish Guttural Wounds would have been a spoken word album. Aside from the afterthought of metal percussion - teatray, spoon, and metal chair leg by the sound of it, and occasionally apologetic taps on the pads of an MPC Industries Kit - this incarnation of Enhoenta Bödlar had more or less the same dynamic as Whitehouse, but for sounding nothing like them. Instead of the screeching feedback we have that weird electronic sawing noise, and instead of a man ranting about his plonker we have this disturbingly polite Derek Nimmo version of someone from the Church of Satan; or something like that. It sounds like it was recorded on a music center in somebody's front room, and yet the sheer insanity of the enterprise renders it much, much greater than the sum of its parts. Lennart Eilersen cited Monty Python as at least as big an influence as any of the usual droning suspects, which makes a lot of sense, and which probably makes this album at least as great as it is in my imagination. Seriously, if you'd rather listen to Lustmord than this, I feel sorry for your parents.

Oh... and also, I've included Antichrist Ne Telleth which comes from the Carnage in a Country Garden cassette compilation on Anal Probe (1983).

I'm Jesus Christ masturbating.
Just give me concentration, will you.
I need concentration.
I'm Jesus Christ masturbating.
Just give me your hands, will you.
Do it faster!
Do it nicer!
Do it slower!

It's good, you know...

Download the ten songs and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Ogreish...
2 - One-Handed Tormentor
3 - We Will All Be Warm-Eaten
4 - Thee Only Way...
5 - Semene Stains
6 - Heathen Nordic Temple
7 - Thwart Thy Lethal Leprosy
8 - Mere Dewy Christian Cunt
9 - I'm Jesus Christ Masturbating
10 - Antichrist Ne Telleth

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