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 - Reflections of a Past Age (1984) C60

I'm Dead was Keith Goldhanger, later of Headbutt, and IVE released a very fine full length tape through Refill (which will probably turn up here when I get around to it), but otherwise I'm in the dark about most of this lot, at least beyond what was written in the booklet that came with the cassette. Refill were a small operation based in Devizes, Wiltshire whom I knew through Trev Ward and Anal Probe, or possibly the other way around. I say small in reference to the extent of their legend and how little it seems to loom here in 2017, which is a shame, because Refill was actually run by three people (as opposed to the usual one bloke in his bedroom, like me) who used to write nice letters, full of enthusiasm despite a somewhat dour outlook when it came to the possibility of anyone ever buying their tapes, presumably outside of Trev and myself. They didn't make much of a dent in the polls at that year's design awards, but they released three decent tapes - two compilations and the aforementioned That Infernal Chemistry by IVE; and technical considerations aside, they did a pretty good job.

I've edited the tape, as is my custom, so as to remove bewilderingly lengthy fifteen second gaps between songs and to round off some of the harsher edits and clicks, but some of this is kind of low-fi so there was a limit to what I could set straight - notably the wow and flutter you may notice on Haircut Off, which I've a feeling may have been on the master tape, possibly even on the original.

There - that's about all I can tell you, which by happy coincidence is probably about all you need to know. I played this one a lot back in the day and there's not a duff track on there - even the token helping of cod reggae is good. Turn this one up until it rattles the windows.

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

Tracks:
1 - IVE - Haircut Off
2 - I'm Dead - With Memories Gone
3 - Synchronization - Strange Travel
4 - Plan-Net Werk - You're So Pretty
5 - Mike Moore - On My Way Home
6 - Mike Moore - Into the Distance
7 - IVE - I Must
8 - IVE - Rain
9 - Synchronization - Recreation Reggae
10 - Dross - Ill Repute
11 - Plan-Net Werk - Moondrift Daughter
12 - I'm Dead - Iceland
13 - I'm Dead - Stay
14 - Dross - No Words
15 - Mike Moore - In the End

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Khmer Rouge - Year Zero Disco (1981) C46

I asked Mex if it would be okay to slap this one up here as a freebie (along with a couple of other Dead Hedgehog releases) and not only did he say yes, but he very kindly sent me his own digitised file of the tape, meaning 1) I didn't have to do nuffink, and 2) being closer to the source, the quality may be marginally better than it would have been taken from my copy.

Anyway, I don't really know much about Khmer Rouge beyond what can be gleaned from the artwork, all scanned and included with the download. The late Robert Dellar apparently plays some keyboard on this one, for what it may be worth, and of course Mex was involved and should require no introduction, but in the event of your having missed all the memos, please refer to this website and don't be afraid to buy an ice cream while you're there. One of the things I always appreciated about Dead Hedgehog Enterprises was their obvious love of disco in an era and culture in which it had become more or less a dirty word. There were plenty of tapes with the circled A of anarchy doing the rounds, but only Dead Hedgehog slapped DISCO! on the cover of their tapes in that font you otherwise only ever saw used on the signs of newsagents.

Year Zero Disco is punky and low-fi by the standards of your regular disco artist, but it rewards repeat listening, and begins to sound like something in the general direction of Public Image Limited, LCD Soundsystem, Shriekback and those guys, once you're accustomed to it.

The tape came in a plastic sleeve of the kind you would buy so as to protect the cover of a 7" single, so the artwork - two sheets of A4, were folded over so as to fit into the package. This annoyed the hell out of me at the time, so I made my own cover from photocopies of the original so as to fit a cassette in a jewel case neatly filed away under K, between my tapes of David James and Killing Joke as nature intended. I've also included a scan of my reconfigured cover in with the download just in case anyone gives a shit.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Boogie 'Til You Drop
2 - Come Dance With Me
3 - Love Like Dynamite
4 - Take Me (Across the Floor Tonight)
5 - Tuesday Relay
6 - Disco Suicide

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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

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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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