Cyclic Amp - Deviations of the Impulse (1986) C60

I had vague plans to digitise and share a whole shitload of tapes from the Pumf label, and then realised that actually most of them are still very much available and as such can be purchased here. Nevertheless, having studied the catalogue I noticed I had a couple of things which Stan was no longer selling (and by a couple I mean literally two things), so having consulted with the lad, here's one of them, shared on the condition that I stress that Stan doesn't actually endorse my giving this stuff away for free and is in no way responsible for my doing so (apart from having sold me the original tape a million years ago, I suppose).

Also, the labels came off the cassette due to whatever glue Stan used not being up to the job (it happened to me too), so for once I've been able to scan those, in case any venture capitalist twats want to fake a few copies and stick them on eBay for fifty quid as rarities - as happened with a Grey Wolves cassette, actually a one off tape Trev had compiled for me personally and which the bloke trying to sell it claimed he'd taped off the radio. Wanker.

I don't know much about Cyclic Amp beyond that they were from Liverpool and had a couple of records out through Probe Plus, and that they seemed to be part of that whole spikey thing which gave us Killing Joke, Southern Death Cult, and all that bunch. This tape was a mix of live and studio stuff, presumably demos, and it's jolly good.

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

Tracks:
1 - Ugly Thoughts
2 - Carrion
3 - In a Hole
4 - Caress
5 - Uniforms
6 - Love and Napalm
7 - Dance
8 - Skin / Scared
9 - Manipulator
10 - Foetus Mountain
11 - Christians
12 - Love and Napalm
13 - Dance
14 - Caress
15 - Carrion
16 - Ugly Thoughts
 
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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
 
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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

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The Sound of Hate 3 (1991) C60

Please refer to previous posts if you're still working on the assumption that the Grey Wolves were actually a Combat 18 recruitment tool as opposed to, you know, just ramming it right down our throats in the hope that maybe we might wake the fuck up. Cheers.

 

The Sound of Hate was a series of five (to the best of my knowledge) compilation tapes issued by Trev in the early nineties, of which I have just two volumes - this one and five which I'll probably post next week. What surprised me the most about this one, having dug it out of the pile and slapped it in the deck, is that the general sound is a lot more varied than you might expect - plenty of noise, but other elements too, which makes for genuinely unpredictable and exciting listening in my book. Most of the tracks appear on the tape without breaks, so presenting two continuous blocks of sound, and I've more or less edited it in keeping with this ideal rather than inserting the two seconds digital silence at the end of each track as I usually do. This also means that in a couple of cases I found it difficult to tell where certain tracks ended, giving way to something else, so hopefully my application of titles matches the actual material. If not, blame Trev back in 1991.

If you've read this far, I'm assuming you will be at least as familiar with a couple of these names as I am, thus saving me the effort of introductions or explaining how one might use the internet to look stuff up on Discogs. We all remember Pessary and factor X, don't we?

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

Tracks:
1 - AX 66 - Intensifier
2 - Traitor - Scum
3 - Pessary - Untitled (part three)
4 - Pessary - Untitled (part seven)
5 - MØHR - Ein Neubeginn
6 - Enema Och Gejonte - Dedicated to Cantor Hyman Millman
7 - Batchas - Myiase Tape Extract
8 - Allimentation Generale - Myiase Tape Extract
9 - Mindscan - The Pain is the Pleasure
10 - (exit to side one)
11 - (introduction to side two)
12 - Traitor - XK2.521
13 - MØHR - Das Ende Einer Famile
14 - Pessary - Untitled (part twenty-two)
15 - factor X - Untitled
16 - Grey Wolves - Sex Death Ritual
 
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British Blood (1986) C90

The above image isn't the cover, because there never was a cover. Instead it's some photocopy of a collage knocked up presumably by Trev upon the back of which one page of a letter was written, because we used to write to each other quite a lot. Trev, as you probably know, is best known as half of the Grey Wolves, and I knew him because I released Hopscotch by Opera for Infantry - a previous incarnation of the Grey Wolves - on Do Easy, my tape label. I gather that at some point in 1986 Trev had said he was going to send me a new tape for release on Do Easy by Nails ov Christ, the name under which he had taken to performing at the time, but, as he explains in the salient letter...

What I have done instead, and which I think is better than a tape with the two tracks by Nails ov Christ, is send you a C90 that features recordings and excerpts from the very first Opera for Infantry session through to the present with Nails ov Christ and Irritant. As you were the very first label ever to release a tape by OFI, I think it's very suitable that Do Easy release this tape. Please call this historical document, second annual report, or however you would describe it, British Blood. I've enclosed a sheet with the details of tracks featured. It's entirely up to you if you want to include the names of the people who recorded each track. If you'd rather leave them out, that's okay. Hope you like it. You can charge £1.50 (or more if you want) and keep any profits towards running costs of Do Easy. Please design a cover with any artwork or writing you think is suitable. There is nothing I want added to the cover except for the cross on the other page - on the front or on the inside, it's up to you. Please send me a copy when you've done the cover as you have the only copy.

Anyway, the tape never came out, reasons being that 1) I was thoroughly fed up of the whole weirdy tape scene at that point, and 2) it bothered me that Trev had asked me to issue a tape called British Blood with a symbol associated with the British Movement on the cover. I'd already released an Apostles tape with a swastika on the cover against my better judgement, and I wasn't keen to establish a pattern of this particular kind. I understood where Trev was coming from, and I understood the Grey Wolves' two-man mission to scare the living shit out of the rest of us, and I had no objection to the tape existing under either that name or with that imagery, but I didn't want to be the one flogging it to people. So, no-one has heard this thing in three decades, apart from me. This is probably a shame because it's actually a pretty decent collection, and certainly would have been one of the better things on my label had I stuck it out. Here Opera for Infantry sounded more like a primitive Throbbing Gristle than the power electronics tour de force into which they eventually transmogrified - and honorary mentions to Jess Hopkins who also appeared on a couple of these tracks.

By the way, just in case you missed the final sentence of the quote from Trev's letter, I had the only copy. This means that when you see some tosspot selling one of these for sixty fucking quid on eBay bleating about how he taped it off a radio station back in the eighties, don't buy it or anything else he's selling, grass the cunt up, get him chucked off eBay, then go around to his house and do a poo in his pond*.

Download the twenty tracks and information sheet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - [introduction]

     Opera for Infantry
2 - [excerpt from first recording session]
3 - Hopscotch [excerpt]
4 - Self Discipline Not Self Oppression
5 - Io Pan
6 - Anne Bonny
7 - Genocide
8 - War of the Roses [live excerpt]
9 - Feedback
10 - Destroyer
11 - Shorty

      Grey Wolves
12 - Pursuer
13 - Sands
14 - Golgotha Requiem [live]
15 - Programmed to Kill [live excerpt]

      Irritant
16 - Dissection Fuck Up
17 - British Blood [excerpt]

      Nails ov Christ
18 - Vatican Victims
19 - Smash the Sinners [excerpt]
20 - Attack to Caress

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*: This inducement to harassment is entirely rhetorical and is made exclusively for the purpose of entertainment. I strongly advise all who read this blog against taking this course of action, apart from the bit about getting the twat responsible chucked off eBay.

Opera for Infantry - Live 1984 (1984) C60

This was never released, and I don't think it was intended for release, but Trev sent me a copy so here it is. Opera for Infantry - whom younger readers may know better as the Grey Wolves - had taken to performing as a more traditional punk act with guitars and pogoing (presumably), as I already explained here. This was a recording of one of those gigs at Amesbury Sports Centre, May 1984. It's a bit of a racket and I was never entirely certain of what the individual songs were called and have therefore left it as a single piece of music, so you could probably still pretend it's Ramleh if you like.

The rest of the tape was filled with three tracks more recognisably by OFI. It Was Another was apparently a work in progress. The tape actually sounds like it contains five or six pieces of music, and my guess is that a couple of those pieces are actually a single track with a poor quality edit in the middle, so I've had to use my skill and judgement to decide what is what. This also means that Tears and Laughter for a Drowned Man may actually be the second half of Barking at Planes, and the thing I've given the title of Tears and Laughter for a Drowned Man may be just a field recording made on the cassette which Trev later taped over when making me a copy of their live gig - I don't know.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Amesbury Sports Centre 12/5/84
2 - It Was Another
3 - Barking at Planes
4 - Tears and Laughter for a Drowned Man

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Virullex! / Opera for Infantry - The Gentle Art of Murder (1984) C60

There isn't a whole lot I can say about this one which I haven't already said in regard to Opera for Infantry (apart from what a mighty slab of noise and vinegar we have here), so instead here's a guest post from Jess of Virullex! seeing as how it's his hard work I'm giving away for free.

1984: the miners' strike, that nice Mrs Thatcher's enemy within. She was unstoppable, coasting on a wave of self-interest and good old British entitlement. Since monetarism wasn't actually working for most of the country, left wing voices were drowned in a shiny tabloid outsplurge of WARandLIESandTITSandBINGO.

Since every point the left made was drowned out by all the ME!ME!ME!ism that had swallowed the country, my generation, in a piss-poor attempt at rebellion, started drifting towards fascism. Left-wing paper sales started to die as brutal half-a-dozen-on-one attacks on diffrunt peepul escalated.

The national focus was on the 'positive'. The Falklands was a glorious victory for those who hadn't been killed or maimed – and a huge hit with armchair generals everywhere. Union flags whipping in the wind, our brave boys serving their country. And those - on both sides - who bled out in the mud, screaming for a mother, thousands of miles away, they were swept politely under the carpet, innit? As Jeremy Beadle announced, “That’s right! You’ve been GAME FOR A LAUGH!”

In this rotting womb, Virullex! took shape. Driven by disgust and revulsion, I wanted to create an antidote to all the toothy boys with guitars tucked under their chins, singing about lurve. Something that described, not the shiny surface we were all supposed to be wanking over, but the hidden horrors that held it up and made it all possible.

I was isolated. None of the people I associated with listened to the funny noises I enjoyed. And so, the letter writing and tape exchanging began. I didn't start it, but contact was possible with others who hated what was being done to the 'best years of our lives'.

Joe (Ashenden) Banks, Andy (Apostles) Martin, Malcolm (Trench Music Kore) Brown, Tim (Un-Kommuniti) Gane, Gordon (Flowmotion) Hope, John (Interchange) Smith, many others who've disappeared without trace into the nothings in the last thirty years.

Cassettes would arrive through my door: obscure live Velvets recordings, Italian horror movie soundtracks and most importantly, "we done a gig last Saturday. The left channel's a bit quiet..." Other sick weirdos like myself, makin'-an'-a-sharin' their funny noises. It was a fucking goldmine.

I got in touch with Trev Ward and Dap Padbury sometime in 1984. We collaborated on a live tape, The Wars of the Roses, which was meant to be a Virullex! Gig in Edinburgh and an Opera For Infantry gig in Amesbury the same night – I was unable to find a venue, so I ended up hitching down and performing as part of OfI.

Trev was the acerbic one, all shaved head (a sort of round mohican, if that makes sense) and intense stares. Dap was the McCartney to Trev’s Lennon, the quiet one. We discovered a shared enthusiasm for liquor (and its effects on carbon-based life forms) and instantly became blood brothers.

I envied their work ethic. Opera for Infantry spewed out cassettes the way other bands threw badges at their audience. And so, (I think this was ex-mess 1984), we sent each other 30 minutes of backing tracks (In envelopes. With stamps on. This was the dark ages, remember?) And we collaborated, each piling our own racket on top of that of our opponents.

Until yesterday, I hadn’t heard this in a good twenty, twenty-five years. It’s been polished to a high standard and still sounds as dense and exciting as it did when things weren’t half as bad as they are these days. You fucking kids today, don’t know you're born, neither you do.

Here’s a shameless plug for some of my present day shite:

Funny noises for senile delinquents with too much time on their hands.

Pervy sex & politics for people with too much money lying around.

Religious emergency toolkit that you’re expected to pay good money for.

The last dying sparks of a badly burned mind.

...and finally:

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

No track list as it should probably be experienced as a single track, which is how I've edited it.

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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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Tomorrow We Live (1986) C60

Last week I posted Opera for Infantry material from a tape I'd made up myself, copied from things which Trev Ward had sent me over the years. The last track on the tape was a massive slab of noise identified only as being by Irritant, a name Trev briefly used for his solo recordings. I had a hunch I'd probably just copied it straight from Tomorrow We Live for the sake of filling up a tape, so I went to check, then decided I may as well just go ahead and digitise the thing seeing as I was planning to get around to it eventually; meaning that April is Grey Wolves Month here at Ferric Archaeology Towers.

In between the end of Opera for Infantry and the beginning of the Grey Wolves, Trev recorded solo as both Irritant and Nails ov Christ, although I can never remember which secret identity came first. Anyway, this one was a split tape with Ramleh. The Ramleh side seems to be from some live performance, although I have no clue as to where or when, and the booklet doesn't give anything away. It also seems to share a roughly similar track list to a few of their early Broken Flag tapes - from what I can see on Discogs - which I never actually heard, so I don't know how well it stands up in the wider context of their oeuvre. Ramleh's Blowhole is one of my favourite records, but is almost the work of a different band, and their tracks on Broken Flag's Statement album are pretty solid, but I guess you probably have to be a bigger fan of Ramleh than I ever was to get something from this live set. I mean, it's okay, just sounds like a lot of other things. Titles appear where it seemed like a new track had begun to my ears, because otherwise it's just twenty minutes of more or less continuous noise. I know I could have left it as a single track whilst editing the sound file and no-one would have given a shit, but it felt as though it would be wrong to just leave it, because I'm a pedant.

Same with the Irritant side of the tape - the noise changes about eighteen minutes in so I've assumed that's where Assault System starts. I have to say, this Irritant material is probably one of the most powerful slabs of noise I think I've heard, and I vaguely recall thinking it was about the best thing Trev had ever done at the time.

I wasn't going to bother scanning the booklet because I'm sure you've all seen pictures of bad guys before, but what the fuck - here it is scanned and included with the download for the sake of being thorough. Enjoy.

I seem to recall the tape came loose in a sort of envelope made of an A4 photocopy folded over and stapled closed, which annoyed me because I LIKE EVERYTHING TO BE NICE, so I made my own cover (using photocopies of the envelope version) for the sake of sticking it in a case and neatly filing it away with my other tapes, like nature intended; so I've scanned my version of the cover. I don't have the envelope version. It's probably worth about a million quid now too.

Finally, in case it still requires an explanation, you will notice that the artwork of this tape features a heapin' helpin' of Oswald Mosley and his British Union of Fascists, whom older readers of the Daily Mail may remember with some affection. My feeling, based on years of personal correspondence with Trev and the fact that I'm an adult, is that the presentation of Tomorrow We Live was intended to provoke an extreme and unpleasant reaction, rather than being as it is because, as some have suggested, Trev thought Oswald Mosley was probably a right nice bloke. The intention of most of Trev's work, as it seems to me, has been to provoke horror of such strength as to inspire change within society, so it's simply not the case that he's ever presented a vision of society he would like you to support. He's trying to scare you into pushing back. I personally think he may have misjudged the effect of what he was doing on a couple of occasions, but the Grey Wolves were never the musical wing of the far right, regardless of how it may have seemed from a cursory glance. Were it otherwise, I wouldn't be sharing this thing, mkay?

Smiley face. Smiley face.

Download the tape, cover and booklet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Irritant - British Blood
2 - Irritant - Assault System
3 - Ramleh - Throatsuck
4 - Ramleh - A Return to Slavery
5 - Ramleh - Nordhausen
6 - Ramleh - New Force
7 - Ramleh - Phenol
8 - Ramleh - Koprolagnia

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Opera for Infantry - Band Sessions (1984) C60

Back in 1984, Opera for Infantry - Trev Ward and David Padbury who eventually went on to form the Grey Wolves - briefly spent some time as a punk band with guitar, bass, drums, and songs. It was really an experiment, an exercise in audience expectation, as Trev wrote at the time:

We've been busy working out a set for our next gig which is going to be on May 12th followed by one on May 26th that is a benefit for the ALF. What we'll be doing at these gigs is some punk stuff so that people will think that is what we are, and at the gig after that we are going to do something completely different so as to shatter their expectations and to let them know things are not as they appear to be. They couldn't stand it at the very first gig when we played Hopscotch (very loud) and smashed all this metal stuff to pieces. 99% of the crowd left the hall as soon as they could and after our set they filtered back in moaning about the violence of it all, the unbearable noise. We couldn't stop laughing as we cleared the mess up. So next time they'll get what they want, so they'll think we have changed and then we'll hit them again with something different. I find that these people who call themselves individuals and open-minded like the punks in this area turn out to be very conservative and don't like change, preferring to stick to their safe 'rebellious' music which actually isn't rebelling against fuck all or changing anything.

In case that all sounds a little cynical, I seem to remember another letter which claimed it was just a case of diversifying, appealing to a different audience - although I can't seem to find that letter right now, but given all the punk bands Trev put out through his label, and all those OFI supported, I'm sure it wasn't just Trojan horseplay; plus it's worth taking into account that the music is actually pretty fucking great, and hardly the work of someone who is merely faking it for the sake of knowing industrial chuckles.

This stuff comes from a tape I compiled myself, because everything Trev sent me was always on the cheapest shittiest car boot sale cassettes money could buy, so I usually copied the music onto a TDK or something; and this particular TDK contained the three tracks contributed to my Moraals compilation on Do Easy, only two of which I actually used, recorded when we were feeling a bit down, I seem to remember him saying, and possibly the best things Opera for Infantry ever recorded in my opinion. The rest of the material is from the rehearsal tape, complete with fuck ups, false starts, chatter and so on. Some of the titles are self-evident, but I've had to guess at a few of them. Trev is on vocals, and I definitely came across a letter (which I now can't find) referring to a drummer named Chris, and I don't know about the rest. There's a segment of the tape where Dap is mentioned, something about working out something for the bass for when Dap turns up, so I'm guessing he wasn't on this recording.
 

Download the eighteen tracks by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - It's Later Than It's Ever Been
2 - Self Discipline not Self Oppression
3 - Time is...
4 - (introduction)
5 - Technological Valium I
6 - Brenda Spencer I
7 - Brenda Spencer II
8 - Men of England
9 - Brenda Spencer III
10 - Chemical Warfare
11 - Policed
12 - Massacre
13 - It Could Be You
14 - Burning (false start)
15 - Burning
16 - Nothing's Wrong
17 - Don't Worry, Animal
18 - Technological Valium II


 
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Do Easy - Gravesend (1987) C90

I'd pretty much lost interest in Do Easy by 1987, and finished art college that summer meaning I no longer had access to any decent recording equipment, besides which I was playing guitar for Total Big by then so if I had energies, I expect that's where they were going. Gravesend was a tape which had been laying around unfinished for a while, never really considered for release, and which I suppose took form as part of a ferric spring clean during which (I assume) I added the two versions of Saxon Chief and gave titles to tracks which had been without one up until that point. Typically, considering it's basically here's some shit I had left over if anyone cares, it's probably a better tape than any of the earlier ones into which I put a bit of effort.

Rubbish Like You was a postal collaboration with Trev Ward, then recording as Nails ov Christ. He sent me a tape and I added to the noise. I assume it may have appeared in some form on his Fear Eats the Soul, but I'm not certain because I never actually had a copy. He probably didn't know where I lived by the time it came out; or he thought I was a bit of a knob or something.

We Can Build You was similarly a postal collaboration with Thomas Docherty of Trilogy. I'm not sure if this was me roping him into the whole Death Pact International tape thing, or something in its own right. I think the percussion track you can hear eleven minutes in was from a live improvised thing by Steve McGarrigle, Garreth Roberts and myself which I'll post here at some point, if I haven't already.

Arnold Layne was recorded with this guy, and I have no idea why. I don't even like Pink Floyd, and I don't remember ever particularly liking them.

Life is a Domestic Bliss cover. I have a vague feeling I was collaborating more and more, or trying out cover songs (which I'd never done before) in an effort to reignite my enthusiasm. Anyway, Domestic Bliss were probably what you'd call local heroes when I was growing up. They released a single called Child Battery, of which Life was the b-side, and Simon Morgan worked in Discovery Records, my local independent store, and was as such the man who sold me my copy of Never Mind the Bollocks. Simon is a great guy and his more recent works can be found on his Bandcamp page. I might ask him if I can digitise Child Battery for this blog. It's still one of my favourite punk singles, and the original of Life somewhat pisses all over my slightly whinier version.

Saxon Chief, arbitrarily named after the pub in which I spent most lunchtimes while at art college, was the very last thing I ever recorded on my beloved Sharp double tape deck before it gave up the ghost back in 1985. I never really worked out what to do with the track as it steered a bit too close to Depeche Mode even for me, so it remained instrumental and ended up on this tape because I realised I was never going to get around to finishing it off. The drum machine was programmed by Mex, by the way.

Sound Levels in Arabia is here remixed from the original in an attempt to make it less shit, which didn't really succeed.

Music for Carol happened because someone called Carol asked me to do some music for her. I think she was going to write songs and sing over whatever I came up with, but I don't think she liked what I came up with, so never mind.

All That's Left apparently also features Steve McGarrigle and Paul Mercer playing in some capacity, but I accidentally taped over it and this was all that was left of the track, hence the title.

I've a feeling the track I've called Gravesend was actually something I recorded and sent to Trev for finishing off under the Death Pact International banner. Who knows?

The title of both the tape and the track of the same name was added much later for the sake of completism, probably early 1988 when I went for a job interview in Gravesend and found the place depressing beyond belief. The similarly arbitrary photo chosen to illustrate this blog post (taken in Leamington Spa in 1984) because this one doesn't really have a cover, just an inlay card which isn't really worth scanning... ahem... the similarly arbitrary photo was chosen because it looks how I felt when I caught the bus to Gravesend on that not particularly fateful day.

Anyway, this one is probably better than you might expect from my Eeyore-esque hard sell, and despite the moment where I shout I'm surrounded by fools! Honest.

Download the twelve tracks by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Rubbish Like You
2 - We Can Build You
3 - Arnold Layne
4 - Life
5 - Saxon Chief I
6 - Sound Levels in Arabia (remix)
7 - Music for Carol
8 - All That's Left
9 - Love is Dead
10 - Time Killer
11 - Gravesend
12 - Saxon Chief II

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Opera for Infantry - Scumworld (1984) C60

Here's the second tape I put out by Opera for Infantry, and God only knows why they gave me such free reign with their covers. I think I'd just bought Meet the Residents that week, and that's where the phenomenal pop combo gag comes from.

It's okay. If you need to roll around a little longer, pounding one fist on the floor and crying with laughter, I can wait.

As you will be able to hear, this is essentially a live tape but with the backing track used for the performance taking up the first side on the grounds that it sort of works as a bit of music in its own right, or works as a bit of noise in its own right if you prefer. The gig itself comprises a set of several numbers, but I've digitised them all as a single track, as I suspect that's how it was intended.

As you may well know, Opera for Infantry eventually became the Grey Wolves, so for the benefit of anyone who has a problem with that, or who still suspects the Grey Wolves to have been some sort of covert British Movement recruitment drive, Scumworld is probably as revealing an insight into both their founding and actual political sympathies as you're likely to need - Crass meets Throbbing Gristle if you'd rather get it in primary colours: just listen to the words of the live performance (and the tape is pretty decent quality, all things considered, so they're fairly clear), then reacquaint yourself with Reality Asylum if the penny still hasn't quite dropped. Of course the images were horrible, because they were supposed to be horrible, because it was supposed to get you thinking rather than just nodding your head and agreeing that vivisection was a bad trip. I sort of wonder if it wasn't the frustration of Opera for Infantry actually having to explain that they weren't hoping to bring about some totalitarian state (when their stance was fucking obvious if you bothered to listen), which ultimately drove them to greater extremes as the Grey Wolves. I still have a ton of correspondence from Trev from around this time, and it's obvious that he was frustrated by a certain complacency which he saw as having overtaken the anarchopunk scene. So there you have it, I suppose. 

Thirty years later, I'm surprised at how good this one is - not at all the racket I remember. It sort of makes me wish some enterprising sugar daddy had whisked them off to IPS studios and got some of this material recorded with some kind of sound quality.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Before Scumworld
2 - Scumworld (Amesbury Sports Centre 2/8/84)

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Opera for Infantry - Hopscotch (1984) C60

Opera for Industry were the first band to write to me and ask if I'd like to release their tape. I think they got my address from Colin of Family Patrol Group. The tape was called Hopscotch, and it was a bit rough, but nevertheless a fair bit more convincing than any of my own efforts in the same noisy direction, so naturally I said yes. Then they changed their name to Opera for Infantry as acknowledgement of their residence in Amesbury, Wiltshire, a town full of squaddies and camouflaged types; and then they started their own label and released a million tapes, including one of mine; and then they eventually became the Grey Wolves.

Just for the record, and seeing as this one has come up a few times, and I feel I'm in some sort of position to address it, having known these people on and off for the last three decades, albeit at a distance - I always understood the whole point of the Grey Wolves to be protest mounted by means of a sort of sensory overload, bombarding the audience with horror upon horror to the point at which there is no choice but to react - which is more or less directly stated in their Cultural Terrorist Manifesto; and this is why they've been accused of extremist right-wing sympathies from time to time, because they've made use of imagery suggesting the same but, I would argue, towards entirely different ends to those from which such imagery has been appropriated. In other words, the point is to inspire a positive reaction against the authoritarian status quo not by educating you, as Crass might do, but by scaring the living shit out of you. Whether or not such tactics work or are at best badly misjudged is another thing entirely, but that's how I've always seen it.

Anyway, Hopscotch was their first album, so far as I'm aware and is fairly revealing as to where the lads were coming from. Confrontational electronics was kind of a new thing at the time, and those dabbling were still very much experimenting rather than just forming Whitehouse tribute bands, which came a bit later. To me, Hopscotch always sounded like it owed at least as much to Reality Asylum and the other, noisier works of Crass as it did to Gristle and the like, particularly Winds of Mauthausen.

Hopscotch is a racket, and a primitive racket amounting to two blokes with a Jen SX1000 and a ghetto blaster making a noise in a scout hut, the hard electronics equivalent of Link Wray or something, I suppose; but I'm surprised at how powerful it still sounds, all things considered.

I've cleaned it up as best as I can, editing out all the clicks and pops of turning the tape on and off with what sounds like a cheap Woolworths cassette in the deck. Also, three different inlay cards are included, a homemade version forged from swinging mags in which the initial cassette was presented to me for my consideration, a photocopied one which came with the master tape they sent once I said I'd like to release it, and the overly fussy fold out Do Easy tape cover.

Download the seven tracks and variant covers by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Hopscotch
2 - Winds of Mauthausen
3 - Repetition
4 - Hopscotch Revisited
5 - Playing with Fire
6 - Propaganda
7 - Black Christmas


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v/a - Political Piggies (1984) C60

This was the first compilation put out by Trev Ward and Dave Padbury, then collectively known as Opera for Infantry. Opera for Infantry eventually morphed into the Grey Wolves and had a string of hits, as you'll probably remember, whilst simultaneously stirring up controversy of a general thrust implying they might actually subscribe to some of the extreme Fascist beliefs blasted forth in their music. Having met them a couple of times and spent at least a few years writing to Trev, I'm confident of this being complete bollocks, and clues as to why I might hold with such a conviction can be found here, a tape firmly rooted in the short-lived but fertile period of cross fertilisation occurring between weirdy electronics and the anarchopunk scene; and yes, I'm well aware of all that post-left green anarchist shite having been plopped out of the same arse, but that's something else entirely...

I think this was also the first compilation to which I was asked to contribute, so apologies for my tracks. Marginally less crackly versions can be found elsewhere on this blog if you're stupid enough to look for them. Anyway, it was massively exciting finding myself sharing ferric oxide with Nocturnal Emissions, Nurse With Wound and the Apostles, and I still say this was a fantastic genre-busting tape. You'll probably recognise a few of the names here, and I'm pretty sure the Nocturnal Emissions and Nurse With Wound tracks resurfaced elsewhere, although The Strange Life of August Strindberg was almost certainly an exclusive at the time. Steve Stapleton was known for his generosity when it came to tape labels no-one had heard of asking him for tracks. There's more by Anarchist Angels and Family Patrol Group elsewhere on this blog, if you want to check the index. There's more about Epidemic on the excellent Punky Gibbon site, and Alternative and the Destructors were pretty big names at one point so you should be able to find something about them if you look. Alternative released stuff on Crass, for example.

I suspect they may have been experiencing some technical difficulties at Anal Probe Tapes world headquarters when they were running off my copy of this tape, unless the fuck ups were on the master copy. The tracks varied in recording volume quite a bit so I've tried to bring the quieter ones up to the same level. Also there were a couple of instances of what sounds like a lead cutting out - first during Living a Lie, after which the track comes back much louder. I did some fucking about, raised the volume of the first verse, and copied the missing riff from later in the track so as to effect a repair, which is hopefully better than listening to the track with a few seconds silence just as the chorus kicks off. There was also a gap in the middle of Seen through Tear Stained Eyes, occurring during a sung passage ruling out the possibility of making a repair by copying anything from elsewhere in the song, so I've er... just copied and reversed a bit to at least make the screw up sound deliberate, which will probably make more sense if you listen to the thing.

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

Tracks:
1 - Nocturnal Emissions - Rabbits Don't Cry
2 - Anarchist Angels - I Cry with Despair
3 - Destructors V - Urban Terrorist
4 - Do Easy - Waterside at 12
5 - Epidemic - Living a Lie
6 - White Elephants Over Jamaica - Adverts
7 - Alternative - Seen through Tear Stained Eyes
8 - Do Easy - Kick the Dwarf
9 - Epidemic - No Identity
10 - Family Patrol Group - Cronus
11 - Opera for Infantry - Resettlement
12 - Destructors V - Khmer Rouge Boogie
13 - The Cause for Concern - The Occasional Me and You
14 - Alternative - Caroline's Carnival
15 - Nurse With Wound - The Strange Life of August Strindberg
16 - The Apostles - The Phoenix

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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 - Ars Magna et Ultima (1984) C60

Here we go - the Black Dwarf label compilation Ultimate Arse Magnets by popular request. Black Dwarf, as you probably know, was the H.P. Lovecraft-fixated home of the Unkommuniti and therefore the work of Tim Gane, more recently and better known for McCarthy and Stereolab. A few of those featured here should be familiar to you if you've been following this blog, and shouldn't need much of an introduction, but just for the sake of argument: Trilogy were here just last week, and still known as the Complete Trilogy when this tape went out. These tracks were taken from Tapestry, although Our Patience Will End / Clean Recording is actually a single track made from the two originals edited together, presumably by Tim; the Cause for Concern piece seems to be yet another offering culled from that same afternoon when Larry got to play with a ring modulator around his mate's house; I know nothing about Ashenden except that I really wish I'd got hold of the bloke's tape back then - I have a couple of the fanzines he produced and he was clearly an interesting guy; Opera for Infantry eventually became the Grey Wolves; Smear Campaign - tellingly named after the Nocturnal Emissions hit single - eventually became Godflesh, or at least one of them did; and Mass of Black were a Bolton based punk band who released a few things through Bluurg Tapes as run by Dick of the Subhumans. As for the Kallous Boys, Last Breath, VVH, Spinebender and Assailer, they all seem so closely associated with Black Dwarf as to make me wonder whether they might not simply be Unkommuniti solo-projects given how the Unkommuniti were more than just Tim, from what I gather.

I had to take a slightly different approach to editing the digitised file of this tape, given Tim's propensity for punctuating the track listing with bits of what sounds like Edgar Allen Poe, not to mention his tendency to segue certain tracks into one another leaving it ambiguous as to where Smear Campaign end and Crusade begins, for one example. I've inserted my standard two second gaps where appropriate, but otherwise tried to preserve the flow of the cassette, as was. I've rendered Larry Peterson's amazing contribution in proper mono, as opposed to stereo but only playing in one channel - as appears on the original tape for no good reason I can think of aside from that something probably got unplugged by accident and Tim was too busy reading At the Mountains of Madness to notice. Also included in this download are a couple of Black Dwarf catalogues from the time, plus some sort of manifesto.

More Black Dwarf chortles next week, readers...

Download these sixteen tracks, cover and Black Dwarf catalogues with this link.

Tracks:
1 - Yogge Sothotha
2 - Kallous Boys - Tranquilise
3 - Trilogy - Our Patience Will End / Clean Recording
4 - The Cause for Concern - Hey Juden
5 - Unkommuniti - Pit
6 - Last Breath - Down in the Drains
7 - VVH - Blackfire
8 - Spinebender - Step on Your Backbone
9 - Assailer - I Did It Mi-go
10 - Trilogy - The Dark Night
11 - Ashenden - Jesus Ipsation
12 - The Cause for Concern - Last Doomsday Reprisal
13 - Opera for Infantry - Self-Discipline Not Self-Oppression
14 - Smear Campaign - Processor
15 - Unkommuniti - Crusade
16 - Mass of Black - I Feel

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