Unkommuniti - Brutality of Fact (1984) 7"

I wasn't going to bother but I already had the gramophone plugged in so as to digitise the Larry Peterson 7", plus I've otherwise digitised nearly everything I can be bothered to digitise, plus there's probably about three of you who either don't have this or still haven't heard it. I'm sure these tracks turn up on that boxed set thing, so consider this free advertising for the same or summink.

The Unkommuniti were what Tim Gane (and others) did before Stereolab, back when we were mates and we all used to go around in a big gang dreaming of fame and fortune, so he'll always be Timbo to me. That was back when you thought the Alarm were the dog's bollocks. Remember that? Thought not.

Technically speaking, the Unkommuniti were actually what Tim Gane (and others) did before McCarthy, except I've never actually heard McCarthy so tend to forget they existed. I also have a couple of the Unkommuniti tapes but I'm keeping those to myself so as to avoid getting told off, plus I'm sure you can find them out there somewhere if you look hard enough.

The Unkommuniti were early Nocturnal Emissions with a Lovecraft obsession, if that helps, although krautrock traces can be heard even in this early stuff.

Enjoy!

Download it yonder.

Tracks:
1 - Brutality of Fact
2 - Wall of Sleep
3 - The Price of Your Entry is Sin

Return to Index

Stuff The Neighbours Play It Loud (1984) 7"

It's not a tape, but same difference. Larry put this out towards the end of Cause for Concern, it being his swansong excepting a couple of reissues as vinyl albums. It came in an A4 plastic bag with a stack of loose sheets of photocopied artwork from the artists, so I've scanned that and it's all included here. I could have spent hours getting rid of the occasional pop or click but I couldn't be arsed, and you're getting the fucker for free anyway. You edit the sound files if you care that much. Or maybe your mom could edit them.

Band of Holy Joy shouldn't really require much of an introduction, and nor should We Be Echo (and for what it's worth I suspect Kevin probably designed the cover or at least the front page, as seen above). The Unkommuniti eventually turned into Stereolab, as you know. I don't know nuffink about the other three bands, and Larry never mentioned them in any of his letters, and nor did they appear on any other CFC tapes from what I can tell. My guess is that at least one of them made it onto the EP by virtue of stumping up some money for pressing as they don't quite sound like Larry's usual fare. That said, there's nothing wrong with them either, and the Nightmare track is pretty great. The other two sound like the Police and Hawkwind respectively, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I used to have about thirty copies of this thing but, having failed to shift any through the mail - having added them to the Runciter Corporation catalogue - I ended up giving them all away to Martin Pike of Stereolab and Duophonic, explaining 'Tim used to be in one of these bands so I figured you could give them away to Stereolab fans or something.' I was able to do this because, by fucking stupid coincidence, I was not only his regular postman at the time, but we lived in the same street - he was about ten doors down the hill from me. I got the impression he thought I was a bit weird, so I don't know what he did with the records, but I sort of wish I'd hung onto them and flogged them on eBay. Never mind.

Download the six tracks and stuff by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Band of Holy Joy - Snow White
2 - We Be Echo - Housewive's Choice
3 - Some Other Year - Nice and Safe
4 - Psy - Sickle and the Hourglass
5 - Nightmare - Mask (of Normality)
6 - Unkommuniti - Yog Sothoth
 
Return to Index

Eat the Rich (1984) C60

For some reason I thought I'd already digitised this one, but I hadn't, so here it is, nearly a year after Political Piggies, the compilation to which it was a follow up, and another obscure chapter in the prehistory of the Grey Wolves. I seem to remember it came out pretty quickly after the first tape, even too quick for me to spam the poor buggers with yet another brace of underwhelming Do Easy contributions in a doomed attempt to spread the word far and wide so that I wouldn't have to get a proper job when I left college.

If you're a regular here, you should know at least a few of these names. The Unkommuniti was Tim from Stereolab with a few others, Brides of Christ II were this lot, Opera for Infantry were er... the Grey Cubs, I suppose, and Pacific 231 was, or rather is, Pierre Jolivet who seems to have kept himself busy over the years. Mass of Black had a couple of tapes on the Subhumans' label. A-Void appears to have been a very early Stan Batcow thing, from what I can tell, unless it's a different A-void to the one listed on Discogs. It does sound a bit like him though. As for the rest, if you're reading this on something with internet access, then you're in as good a position as I am when it comes to typing names into a search engine. Discogs seems to acknowledge that most of the others existed, but beyond revealing that Kteis Sekret once appeared on the same compilation tape as 23 Skidoo, there's not a whole lot I can tell you.

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

Tracks:
1 - Unkommuniti - Yog Introduction
2 - Geschlekt Akt - The Slave
3 - Brides of Christ II - The Tongues of Boys & Girls
4 - Society's Victims - Reject Religion
5 - Opera for Infantry - Self Discipline
6 - The Cause for Concern - Psychick Pillocks
7 - Dark Party - Night Nurse
8 - Mass of Black - Invision
9 - Berlinerluft - Point 1
10 - Society's Victims - Army
11 - Dark Party - The Edge
12 - Kteis Sekret - Fleischhaken
13 - A-Void - Necropolis
14 - Opera for Infantry - Laughter for Drowned Men
15 - Mass of Black - Overseer
16 - Unkommuniti - On the Washington Monument
17 - Pacific 231 - Useless Weapon (extract)
18 - A-Void - God is Dead

Return to Index

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.

Return to Index

Clench - In the Garden (1984) C46

I'm afraid I don't have much of a clue about this one, and even the year of its appearance is guesswork based on where the catalogue number should appear amongst other Black Dwarf releases listed on Discogs, which this one isn't, for some reason. Black Dwarf was the label run by Tim Gane of the Unkommuniti (and yes - Stereolab blah blah blah), so I have a vague hunch this may have been a couple of other Unkommuniti peeps branching out so as to experience the novelty of recording an entire cassette without H.P. Lovecraft references; but it's a hunch, so I'm not sure. It could be Jonathan King for all I know. I vaguely recall being sent this copy by some Clench person, asking if I would consider releasing it on Do Easy, which confused me because it sort of looked like it was already available through Black Dwarf what with the cover and everything. Maybe that was just some provisional thing and it never received formal release, hence the absence from Discogs. Maybe they just wanted it to appear on a few labels. Anyway, I thought the tape was great but Do Easy had more or less bitten the dust by that point, as I recall. There's a chance I still have the letter from the guy somewhere in one of the six lever arch box files in which I have kept all of my antique correspondence from Cosey Fanni Tutti, Neil Campbell, the Grey Wolves, and other famous people, but it could take a couple of days to find even if I still have the thing, so - well, y'know...

In the Garden stands out as one of the stranger, more interesting weirdy cassettes I've heard over the years - drum machines deployed as sonic effects rather than for the sake of rhythm in the traditional sense, and those weird, dark titles - more like lines of poetry than a list of tracks. Maybe if Michael Gira had been hanging around with Portion Control rather than New York art gallery wankers...

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

Tracks:
1 - Child - Man, a Summer's Day
2 - One Result of Courage
3 - He Was Pushed
4 - Don't Touch... Mine!
5 - Grab Me
6 - Insanity Begins (at Home)
7 - Kata'ib
8 - Why Choose Her, That Poor Little Girl?
9 - Lenny
10 - Instinctuality
11 - Indoctrination Starts Young
12 - Only an Attack Can Do These Things

Return to Index

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

Return to Index

Trilogy - Tapestry (1984) C60

The first full length cassette released on my Do Easy label by someone other than myself was Hopscotch by Opera for Industry (February 1984 I think), and the second - about four months later - was Tapestry by the Complete Trilogy. The Complete Trilogy, whom I seem to recall having been named after some book I'd never heard of, was the work of one Thomas Docherty, whom I suspect got fairly tired of having to explain that no, he wasn't the former manager of Manchester United. He wrote following Larry Peterson having given me the big up in Scum #6 fanzine. He had pretty much the same limited set up as myself, with everything being recorded onto a home stereo, but he seemed to achieve quite a lot with very little, as can be heard on Tapestry - from which I nicked his technique of playing several copies of the same recording out of sync so as to create a sort of budget echo effect. Anyway, I liked the tape so I released it, once I was certain TD - as he signed his letters - understood that I probably wasn't going to make him famous.

The tape sold quite well by my standards, more than thirty, probably not in excess of fifty copies from what I can recall. A couple of the tracks appeared on Black Dwarf's Ars Magna et Ultima compilation, so maybe that was something to do with it. Actually, I seem to recall TD being quite good friends with Tim Gane and the possibility of a Trilogy / Unkommuniti split album was discussed at one point.

Due to his parents' trade, TD lived on a building site in Hatfield and had one of the most amusingly industrial addresses ever, and myself and my friend Grez drove down there to meet him during the summer of 1984. We all bonded instantly over our shared obsession with Laurel & Hardy and TD played us a new track he'd recorded called Words Cannot Describe, elements of which apparently derived from recordings made inside some giant metal pipeline he'd found. To this day Words Cannot Describe remains, at least for me, one of the scariest pieces of mutter mumble industrial music I've heard outside of Heathen Earth or Psykho Genetika - turn off the lights, wack up the volume, and maybe you'll see what I mean.

A few months later, TD decided to shorten the name to Trilogy and revise the tape, replacing Metallic Grey with Words Cannot Describe. Personally I wasn't too sure about this, believing that music albums should be left as products of their time, but I did it anyway. Words Cannot Describe is probably the better track, although oddly I find that Metallic Grey - despite the obvious Throbbing Gristle influence - seems to foreshadow the twisted cabaret sound of TD's later material recorded as Frenzied Encounters. Anyway, I've digitised both versions of the tape, so once you've downloaded I suppose you could shuffle either track six or seven to see which version of the album you prefer; or just keep them both because they seem to work together just fine, I'd say. I should probably point out that the recording volume on the original tape varies wildly, presumably so as to give greater dramatic impact to the really noisy stuff such as Our Patience Will End. I've done what I can, but you may want to fiddle with the volume a bit, and you'll definitely need to wack Words Cannot Describe right up for full impact.

TD is still in existence today and can be found here on YouTube, along with some of the stuff he's worked on over the years since Tapestry.

Download the tape, two covers, flyer and TD's additional notes by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Tropical
2 - Non-Malignant Breakthrough
3 - Our Patience Will End
4 - Clean Recording
5 - The Dark Night
6 - Metallic Grey
7 - Words Cannot Describe
8 - Tapestry
9 - Orchestral

Return to Index

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   

Return to Index

v/a - Moraals (1985) 2C90

I'd already done one compilation tape, and I wanted to do another, but an hour just didn't seem long enough to include stuff from all the people I knew, either by mail or in person; so a double C90 set it was, and I figured I may as well throw in some sort of accompanying booklet of band artwork seeing as that was what everyone else had been doing, or at least what Larry Peterson had been doing. By the time it all eventually came together I had moved out of my parents' place and was half way through taking a degree at Maidstone College of Art, and the thing had been dragging on for ages. My enthusiasm was therefore probably a little diminished, although honestly it probably didn't make a lot of difference. The thing was always going to be what it was, although I gather certain contributors were somehow shocked when their contributor copies turned up in the post, having somehow garnered the impression that I was some kind of luxuriously funded arts institute and individual copies of Moraals were to be presented as 180g collectors' vinyl discs encased within a hand crafted marble lecturn supporting a hardbound edition of artwork pressed in gold leaf on hand crafted paper. I was fucking eighteen and financed by pocket money, a paper round, and then a student grant, most of which I spent on beer and fags. It was the best I could manage at the time, and bollocks because I still think it sounds pretty great. The "booklet" was actually hand photocopied sheets inside an artisan clear plastic envelope of the kind purchased in packs of twenty from WHSmiths, but then I wasn't going to blow half my grant at the printers without some sort of indication that people might actually buy the thing. I sold a few copies as I recall, but not many, although my publicity machine was kind of winding down by that point. Yes, that's probably the reason.

Anyway, here's the lot - all three fucking hours of it split into two separate downloads so as not to clog up your internet connection and spoil the enjoyment of anyone who happens to be watching episodes of Ice Road Truckers on Netflix in the next room. The cassette cover - as designed by Klive Humberstone of Tex Mirror H, who also suggested the title - is included with the second download, and both cassettes had the same cover, in case you were wondering why there only seems to be one of them. Also included in the second download is a folder containing scans of all of the booklet artwork I have at my disposal. The pages for Mex and Opera For Infantry are missing as they all featured naughty pictures which I felt uneasy about stuffing into my luggage when I flew back to England to retrieve this material, and I'm not sure there ever was any Family Patrol Group artwork.

Mex produced some of the greatest pop music ever recorded so far as I was concerned, and it was a great moment when he sent me a tape for my compilation. I would have punched the air if I'd been American back then. He is still in existence today, and you should conduct further investigations here.; Trilogy was my friend Thomas Docherty (not to be confused with etc. etc.), author of some of the greatest weirdy sounds of that whole era, and I'll be ripping some more of his old tapes once I can rescue them from across the seas but if you're unable to wait, have a rummage in his YouTube channel.; Members of Tex Mirror H achieved wider recognition as In The Nursery and, as I say, Klive provided the cover and title of this compilation. They also had a track on an Adventures In Reality compilation.; Saul Pol Koatep was half of AOT 418 who released tapes through both myself and Anal Probe and others. I think they had something to do with the New Blockaders, and Saul was behind the Hypnagogia label, if anyone remembers that.; Do Easy was obviously myself, apparently trying hard to turn into John Cougar Mellencamp at the time of recording, although I definitely don't remember it as a conscious ambition. Still, the other two tracks are all right, I suppose.; The RSM, standing for Rob, Shend, and Mart, were an improvised music project initiated by my friend Martin, who also contributed as Mart E. Knee. The Shend and the Rob in question were Cravats and later Very Things whom Martin knew fairly well, having been a founding member of the former. Martin's YouTube channel can be found here.; Scram Ju Ju was David Lebens-Wankling, formerly of Urge with the semi-legendary Kevin Harrison, and whom I first encountered as a contributor to Gary Levermore's Rising from the Red Sand compilation. Apparently I was the first person to write to him as a result of the Third Mind tape, which is kind of depressing. He should have done a song about a murderer or summink.; Anarchist Angels were a bloke called Steve from Sunbury-on-Thames plus friends, and their As the Innocent Suffer tape remains one of my all time anarchopunk faves and is as such due for a ripping just as soon as I can get hold of my copy. Steve's tracks are probably my personal favourites of the whole compilation, possibly excepting those by Opera For Infantry, who of course later scared the living shit out of everyone as the Grey Wolves. Trev said something in his letter like we were feeling a bit sad when we recorded this stuff, and he's probably ashamed of it these days, but I still think these two tracks are wonderful. I also have a tape of Opera For Infantry rehearsing as a punk band with guitar, drums, and Trev yelping about TV standing for technological valium - just trying something different, and another one for the retrieval list.; Thee Unkommuniti, as you're probably aware, was Tim who later achieved wider recognition with Stereolab, of whom you can hear formative traces in this stuff if you listen closely. Vinyl-on-Demand put out a boxed set of Unkommuniti material a while back, but it costs about a million quid and anyway I still have all the tapes, thank you very much.; Lead Shoes were two Steves from my degree course, one of whom was much nicer than the other one and with whom I am still in touch on friendface. I think he's some sort of dance/techno luminary these days.; Also from my degree course was Paul Mercer who named his thing after a phrase in an article about bats which described them as Acrobatic Champions. For some reason he found this funny, but then he was kind of gothic in certain respects, and I always thought his music was excellent - in fact I still do, even though apparently we hate each other's guts these days - and there is some more of it here.; NKVD is Glenn from Konstruktivists who sent me these early versions of tracks which ended up on Black December.; I started writing to Family Patrol Group after I saw them supporting Whitehouse in Birmingham. They had split by the time I was putting together this compilation, but Colin suggested I lift some sections of noise from their tape Fear Death By Water, which was what I did.; and the rest were mostly people I was writing to or swapping tapes with at the time.

Download the twenty-two tracks of the first tape by clicking on this link...

Tracks:
1 - (introduction)
2 - Mex - The Kid is a Little Monster
3 - Trilogy - Do Not Forgive Them
4 - Tex Mirror H - Out of Reach
5 - Saul Pol Koatep - Thou Shalt Not Kill
6 - Morris Dolby & the Bouncy Lobster Band - Len Fairclough
7 - Human Trapped Rhythms - Fish Tale
8 - Tryouts - Superior Human Beings
9 - Do Easy - Inspecting the Experimental Grain Fields at Ostia Near Rome
10 - The RSM - Rounds A No. 14
11 - Scram Ju Ju - After All
12 - Anarchist Angels - One in a Million
13 - Help! Help! I've Got My Head Stuck Down the Bog! - I'm In Love (With My Lavatory)
14 - Unkommuniti - Winterkill
15 - Do Easy - Nobody Can Describe How We Truly Feel
16 - David James - Pooh Disease
17 - Lead Shoes - Baseball on Sunday
18 - Anarchist Angels - Sick But A Shepherd
19 - NKVD - Eastern Vein III
20 - Acrobatic Champions - Three Minutes
21 - Scram Ju Ju - Ruled by the Heart
22 - Opera For Infantry - Time Is...

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

Tracks:
1 - David James - Untitled
2 - Tryouts - If You Take Advantage of Me
3 - Human Trapped Rhythms -The Message (Roll Down and Die)
4 - Tex Mirror H - Absorption
5 - Family Patrol Group - Extreme Nature
6 - Mart E. Knee - Bone Structure
7 - Unkommuniti - To Us Unseen
8 - Anarchist Angels - Untitled
9 - Do Easy - Our Tune
10 - Opera For Infantry - It's Later Than It's Ever Been
11 - Lead Shoes - Sniffing Glue
12 - WEOJ - Pyromania
13 - Family Patrol Group - The Fight Is On
14 - Acrobatic Champions - Order and Disorder
15 - Cause For Concern - Me Mucking About
16 - Anarchist Angels - Force His Mind
17 - NKVD - Eastern Vein IV
18 - Do Easy - Pair of Trousers
19 - AOT 418 - Beckie's Mission
20 - Morris Dolby & the Bouncy Lobster Band - Eggy Soldiers
21 - Family Patrol Group - Fear Death by Water
22 - Mex - Simplicity

Return to Index