Long term inmates will already have been exposed to the work and existence of John Jasper here, here, here and possibly also here - paragraph nine onwards if you want to cut to the chase. This was one of a number of tapes John ran off for me when I first met him, something to give me an idea of where he was coming from; and, as you will hear, he was coming from somewhere roughly equidistant between PIL's Metal Box and Adrian Sherwood's On-U label, but with enough of his own thing to oblige the rest of us to at least have to work at spotting the influences. John had a weird habit of occasionally mixing his own stuff up with that which had patently been recorded by other people - notably one thing he claimed some friend had sent to him which I almost immediately recognised as Keith LeBlanc's Major Malfunction album. The last time I saw him - late nineties, I think - he passed me a tape of his work with a few tracks sounding suspiciously like something off the Leftfield album. Anyway, I'm reasonably certain this one was all John, excepting that I played the bass on February '88 (the first thing we collaborated on), and the first two tracks of side two were from a Jah Wobble record, which I haven't included here for obvious reasons; and as for recorded live at the Hope & Anchor, sure, John, whatever you say...
Frankly, this guy was funny as fuck and an artistic leviathan where his music was concerned. Had he been able to resist weaving all those weird self-defeating webs of mystery and half truth around his efforts, we might now be buying the 180gsm vinyl reissues of a massive back catalogue rather than hearing it for the first time as a download of a tape that's been sat at the bottom of a cardboard box for the last couple of decades, but never mind. If it weren't for all the bewildering subterfuge, he probably wouldn't have been John.
Frankly, this guy was funny as fuck and an artistic leviathan where his music was concerned. Had he been able to resist weaving all those weird self-defeating webs of mystery and half truth around his efforts, we might now be buying the 180gsm vinyl reissues of a massive back catalogue rather than hearing it for the first time as a download of a tape that's been sat at the bottom of a cardboard box for the last couple of decades, but never mind. If it weren't for all the bewildering subterfuge, he probably wouldn't have been John.
Tracks:
1 - A Joke from the Neck
2 - Scratch
3 - Version Yellow I
4 - Version Yellow II
5 - Metal West
6 - Disco (Jerk Off)
7 - Three Cat Juggle
8 - Ground Under Sound
9 - Metro (with Colour)
10 - Shortwave Globetrot
11 - (no title)
12 - February '88
13 - Absence
14 - Into Thin Air
15 - Dry
16 - Collage
17 - Mind Sweeps Back
18 - Rubberneck
19 - A Joke from the Neck II
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