Adventures of Twizzle - Krafty Whank (1985) C60

Here's the last of my AOT tapes, potentially meaning their entire recorded works can be downloaded from this blog - unless they put out some tape I've never heard of, which I suppose is possible. I know about as much as you do where Kraft Whank is concerned as I believe we were no longer in touch by this point so I got the tape direct from Trev Ward. Jude of AOT later re-established contact, specifically writing a letter to Glenn Wallis to inform him that in allowing me to join Konstruktivists (as reported in the Empty Quarter) he had allowed an actual Nazi and former NF member into his band, for Jude didst know of my jackbooted ways from old. I was neither a Nazi nor ever a member of the NF - not even just a little bit - but it was all a PRANK you see, like in that Re/Search book. Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho - oh how we didn't fucking laugh. He was very apologetic once he realised that neither Glenn nor myself had spent any time rolling around on the floor, pounding our fists against the ground with the hilarity of it all, but I found it difficult to think of Jude as anything but a massive knob after that particular jolly jape. Anyway, I believe AOT split due to Paul and Jude falling out a little while after this was recorded. Can't imagine why.

Side-splitting accusations of Nazism aside, this is probably AOT's most accomplished tape, as you will hear - mostly instrumental but quite nice and moody, and it sounds like it might have been done on a four track or something, so that's nice.

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

Tracks:
1 - Flour and Eggs (cake mix)
2 - Hoopdemidymode Cremedepritch Boogie
3 - Haunted Swing Illusion
4 - Manna (Mini)
5 - Yov Kokosh
6 - Break
7 - Twonk
 

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Real Time 7 (1983) C90

I posted a previous volume of this series back in January, and here's another picture (as found on Discogs) of Robert Cox, the handsome fellow who compiled these tapes and recorded as Rimarimba.

Everything I said about Real Time 5 seems to apply here, pretty much, particularly regarding stonewashed jeans bands; and yet like Real Time 5, this is nevertheless a mostly decent compilation with not much fast forwarding required. Robotghost was John Grimaldi, formerly of Argent whom older boys and girls will recall had a hit with God Gave Rock and Roll to You; Len Liggins you should recall from both Real Time 5 and International Sound Communication 10; Gambit of Shame and Mex should be known to you if you've been following these blogs, and No Bounds and 18 out of 20 seem to be variant mixes of those which appeared on their classic 7" - still one of my favourite singles from that era; I've posted about Adventures of Twizzle before as I put out a tape by them on my Do Easy label, although this track was originally on Hitler's Trousers after the Blast; I'm drawing blanks on Magnificent Everything, If All Else Fails, John Ralph, Terry Crocodile, Nine Dangerous Fish Inc., Personal Effect, Martin Barbour, and Three Damn Cheers, although for what it may be worth, If All Else Fails' Sand is probably my favourite track on this tape after the Gambit of Shame numbers; Stress you really should have heard of, being the vehicle of Alan who used to edit Adventures in Reality and Phil Clarke who produced (I think) Damn Latin zine and was (possibly) in the Stick Insects.; leaving just Rimarimba which was Robert Cox's own material, possibly occasionally involving either Smell or Quim of Smell & Quim, according to Discogs.

Dream Syndicate sounds a bit Chris Morris to me.

Download the twenty-five tracks, cover and info sheet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Robotghost - Museum of Fakes
2 - Robotghost - Studio 54
3 - Len Liggins - Boxes (All I Want is a Womb with a View)
4 - Len Liggins - I Know You Know
5 - Gambit of Shame - To Hell with the Carnival
6 - Gambit of Shame - No Bounds
7 - Gambit of Shame - 18 out of 20
8 - Mex - Born to be Killed
9 - Adventures of Twizzle - On and On and On
10 - Magnificent Everything - Blue Sky North Street
11 - Magnificent Everything - Big Casino
12 - If All Else Fails - Sand
13 - If All Else Fails - Blood on Her Produce
14 - John Ralph - Star
15 - Terry Crocodile - Velvet
16 - Terry Crocodile - Dream Syndicate
17 - Nine Dangerous Fish Inc. - Shake
18 - Nine Dangerous Fish Inc. - Lobsters on the Boil
19 - Personal Effect - Tired and Emotional
20 - Martin Barbour - The Other Way
21 - Martin Barbour - Attarine Street
22 - Three Damn Cheers - Peur
23 - Stress - Nothing New
24 - Rimarimba - Steady State
25 - Rimarimba - The Melting
 
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Adventures of Twizzle - Hitler's Trousers after the Blast (1983) C60

I've already explained Adventures of Twizzle at length, and several times over in the course of previous blog posts here, here, and here. If you can't be arsed to follow the links and do a bit of homework, well all right - Adventures of Twizzle were formed by Margaret Thatcher, an ex-Bay City Roller (but I'm not going to tell you which one) and the man who held the land speed record between the years 1979 to 1985. They had a massive hit with Dancing in the Dark, a song which is usually erroneously credited to Bruce Springsteen. Neither of them ever learned how to ride bikes.

This was their second tape and the first one I heard. It's quite different to most of their other stuff, comprising short tuneful pieces rather than howling noise, and the dates given on the sleeve seem to suggest it was compiled rather than specifically recorded as an album, although I could be wrong there. Also, it came in weird packaging - a Sony C60 loose inside the box of a child's wooden jigsaw - one of those cheapo ones about the size of a fag packet - with their artwork glued to the reverse of the box. Unfortunately at the time I was getting a bit tired of tapes in weird packages which you had to leave in a pile next to your regular cassettes, so I made my own sleeve from photocopies of the artwork and kept it in a regular jewel case; and annoyingly I seem to have lost the kid's jigsaw version, so that's a lesson learned. The scans included in the download are my version of the cover, plus the flyer which first inspired me to write to them - I think it fell out of an envelope full of stuff from Larry Peterson.

I know I haven't said much about the music, but for what it's worth, regardless of the low level of technology involved, I'd still say this is one of the best tapes I ever bought. Sometimes a tape recorder and a good idea is really all you need.

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

Tracks:
1 - Demolition I
2 - Before All That
3 - Cuddly Linda Girl
4 - Flag Miles Short
5 - The Education of a Rat
6 - Adventures
7 - Jude Moan / Silence
8 - Umbah Oombah
9 - Demolition II
10 - Just Listen
11 - Cherry Cake
12 - On and On and On
13 - Bang-Utot
14 - The Deep Love
15 - Don't Look Now
16 - What For?


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Adventures of Twizzle - Complete Sensory Deprivation (1982) C60

This was AOT's first tape, possibly nothing life changing, but not half bad for something you've probably never heard of. AOT were Saul Pol Koatep and Jude Wilton Keel, as I already explained during the course of previous blog entries which can be found by referring to the index as is linked at the foot of this one. Saul eventually went on to run the Hypnagogia label. Complete Sensory Deprivation, which takes up side two of the tape, comprises excerpts from a presumably longer live performance of the same name, and I've tightened the edits up a little so as to avoid twenty second silences between excerpts. Otherwise, I can't think of a whole lot to say about AOT which I haven't already said. I had a look through the letters I still have from them (because I keep more or less everything) but there isn't really much I can recycle in terms of handily anecdotal material about this particular tape, or indeed about anything actually based in reality.

See what I mean? One day I'll reprint all of their letters in a deluxe collectors' edition and it'll make Codex Seraphinianus look like Katie Price's Perfect Ponies. In the meantime, download the tape, open the windows, turn it up, and scare the crap out of the neighbours.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Sonya
2 - Two Harmonicas and a Mouth Organ
3 - Criminal Violence
4 - Die Verwandlung
5 - Goomlock
6 - Complete Sensory Deprivation (Basement, Newcastle 5/5/82)
 

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Adventures of Twizzle - The Little Beast (1985) C60

I already wrote a little bit about AOT here, and this is another one. I don't really know enough about this tape to say anything useful, but luckily Stream Angel, who appears on side two (and also here), kindly agreed to share his thoughts:

It's been at least twenty (if not thirty?) years since I've listened to that tape. Sometimes when I dig out stuff from the underground cassette days, a lot that sounded great to me back in the old days sounds shite to me now, but not so with this.

Manna is not bad, though actually did sound a lot better back in the days when me, Jude & Koatep were smoking lots of dope. All these hypnotic loops (made on a Wem Copycat machine) sounded great when I was stoned, but I'm not a dope smoker any more, and listening to it now doesn't do much for me. Still, it's a good example of sound collage, though it feels a bit directionless. It's still head & shoulders though above the plethora of pointless noise cassettes that flooded the scene in the following decade. At least you can tell that AOT are trying to do something interesting, and have put some effort into it.

Jock Medal, Hard Medal is great. For me, it sounds as good as any early Nurse With Wound album (even more impressive considering that AOT had next to no equipment). The first twenty minutes of it are exceptional, though I think it meanders a bit after that. I've no idea what I would have contributed to that track, other than there's a repeated sample (after about twenty minutes) of someone saying I'm ninety-two, and I'm full of shit and that came from a recording made by me.

I'd say that covers it, although Manna still sounds great to me, and I've never been into the space fags. This tape came with a booklet of AOT's surreal collages, which I've scanned and included with the download.

For many years, I always liked the idea that if Aleister Crowley was truly the Great Beast then logically there would also be a Little Beast, and that was probably Lonnie Donegan. Only now have I discovered that the Little Beast shown on the cover is actually Bobby Thompson, a stand-up comedian from Sunderland with whom AOT had a minor obsession, tapes of whom can be heard on some of their material. The title of the booklet, The Great Waster is also a play on the work of Mr. Thompson. So there you go.

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

Tracks:
1 - Manna
2 - Jock Medal, Hard Medal


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Adventures of Twizzle - Party Ritual Extensions (1985) C60

Adventures of Twizzle were Saul Pol Koatep and Jude Wilton Keel, or at least that's how they signed their letters. They lived in Newcastle and were responsible for a series of noisy, low-fi and occasionally surreal cassettes distinguished by application of a well-developed sense of humour. The first one I heard was Hitler's Trousers After the Blast, from which point on I was immediately a fan. They also wrote great letters comprising peculiar flights of fantasy lavishly illustrated with wax crayon. One of my favourite was a postcard, a publicity shot from some old film to which Jude had selotaped a sachet of tomato ketchup and amended with what was either a joke or philosophical inquiry:

Q: Who is the Dada Jack?

A second postcard settled the issue about a month later:

A: Tommy Steele's Reggae Bagpipe.

Obvious really. Anyway, Party Ritual Extensions was a live tape they sent me and told me I would be releasing on my Do Easy label, which I did. The performances were two years old by then, but they seemed worth hearing. Listening to them again in 2017, this stuff is a bit basic but it still sounds good to me, and the tape makes for quite a powerful experience listened to in its entirety.

We lost touch soon after this, or specifically they wrote to me and I never bothered writing back. The two of them had apparently been nicked for fare dodging and had a massive fine to pay, so they photocopied a stack of legal stuff relating to their prosecution and asked if I could help them out, which I couldn't because I was a starving student and living on tinned potatoes at the time, so the request struck me as a bit fucking saucy. Then nearly a decade later, Jude saw my name mentioned as a member of Konstruktivists in an issue of Music from the Empty Quarter and so wrote a letter to Glenn explaining that he knew me of old and that I was in the National Front* and possibly also the Freemasons. It turned out to be a joke, just a bit of a wheeze, albeit one of those jokes which seems funnier when you've had your head stuck inside a bong for three days. So we corresponded, and he was clearly abrim with genuine regret at having libelled me for wacky fun-filled chortles, and explained that he had lost touch with Saul and was now a Hare Krishna. There didn't seem to be a lot to say after that.

Saul phoned me a few years later, mid-nineties some time, but it was at three in the fucking morning when I had to be up for work at five and he sounded somewhat off his tits, so I don't recall much of the conversation apart from that I found it heavy going. He'd found my number in an issue of The Sound Projector because I had stupidly included it in an advert for Ce Acatl tapes. He told me he was behind a label called Hypnagogia, of which I had actually heard, and sent me a few CDs and a 10" by Anomali, his most recent musical endeavour; which was nice, and at least better than writing to any of my friends and claiming to remember me having been on trial at Nuremberg.

Nowt so fucking queer as folk, eh readers?

*: Seriously - what do you fucking think?

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - The Basement, Newcastle 22/6/83
2 - Widdershins
3 - Morden Towers, Newcastle 16/11/83

 
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Do Easy - The 35th Release (1985) C60

So I'd started at Maidstone College of Art and had already been insulted by Traci Emin. I'd successfully gained entrance to a nude female lady of the opposite sex, at the same time pissing off my oldest friend who had been labouring under the illusion of her being his bird - as described in more detail here; and then in a display of irony so massive that interstellar travellers could have settled on it and started a new life, she'd dumped me for some fanzine bloke. I wasn't a happy bunny by any description of the term. Worse still I seemed to have mislaid what I regarded as my musical mojo. The tapes had dried up. I'd recorded a few things but the complete change of surroundings combined with my discovering pubs had proven confusing. Additionally, I think I may have begun to realise that my Do Easy material wasn't as amazing as I had originally thought, so I had grown frustrated with my inability to produce anything which still sounded all right the next day. Partially this was because since The Fourteenth Metal Tape and the er... singles, I'd put out a compilation, was working on a follow-up, and had also released tapes by Opera For Infantry, Trilogy, Sin, Acrobatic Champions, and Adventures of Twizzle, all of which even I could tell made my own stuff sound amateurish and poorly realised.

Anyway, by 1985 I had vaguely enough new material for a full C60, and this was it. The live recording from 1984 was mostly improvised by myself with Henry Probert and Dave Browning of the Shining, and improves substantially once I've got the pound-shop William Bennett out of my system. Dave and Henry came over to my house in Shipston the week before and we'd worked something out together, and it ended up sounding like this. The remaining tracks are a mix of things recorded as soundtrack material - a fuller account of which can be found here - and generally disappointing attempts to recapture the Do Easy magic of yesteryear. I was miserable, but not very good at articulating it without sounding ridiculous - although I still quite like What's the Fucking Point?

This ended up being the last Do Easy tape I released, the last for which I did a cover and which I sold to anyone through the post. I continued to record music as Do Easy, particularly when in the second year of the course I was granted access to the college sound studio, and although I always intended to sell tapes of that stuff, I'd stopped caring about the tape label by that point and never bothered.

This one's some way short of a masterpiece, so download at your peril. The one thing in its favour is that it almost certainly sounds worse to me than it will to anyone else. 

Download the full hour of unrelenting misery by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Green Dragon, Stratford-upon-Avon 6/8/84
2 - Nowhere Nuthin' Fuck Up '86
3 - Project
4 - Pagan Filth
5 - All in the Mind
6 - Within These Walls
7 - What's the Fucking Point?

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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

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v/a - Circumcise the Foreskin of Your Heart (1983) C60

Here we go. Everybody and their milkman had a compilation tape clogging up fanzine column inches and I was determined that I shouldn't be left out. Additionally I had certain ideas about the sort of thing I wanted to hear on a compilation tape, and the sort of thing I didn't want to hear, and had already begun to formulate cynical thoughts about those independent tape labels which quite clearly just wanted to be EMI, or at least 4AD, and were only slumming it with the rest of us because they couldn't afford to do otherwise, wankers; and, to be more ruthlessly honest, it had also occurred to me that no-one could say what should appear on my tape but me, and I'd sent tracks off to a few tape labels only to be told either that my stuff was shite, or was else not worthy for inclusion on the grounds that I didn't know anyone from SPK.

Fuckers.

Anyway, at the time I was corresponding fairly busily with Larry Peterson of Cause for Concern tapes, architect of the genuinely wonderful A Sudden Surge of Power C90 featuring Chris & Cosey, Attrition, Test Dept and all sorts - the finest compilation of that entire era, I would argue. Larry encouraged me to get a compilation of my own together, and then fobbed me off with a few tracks he'd been sent but obviously didn't want to use for his follow up to A Sudden Surge of Power, and also he put me in touch with Kevin Thorne of We Be Echo who accordingly sent me a track out of the blue without my even having to ask. Plus, I wasn't entirely without my own resources so...

Some of these you may as well just look up on Discogs or wherever given that I never really knew much about them. I understood Citipati, for example, to be something to do with the excellent Adventures of Twizzle (who came up with the title Circumcise the Foreskin of Your Heart, which is from some religious source, possibly), with whom I was in correspondence, but Discogs seems to think they were some sort of New Blockaders side project; and The Prison was the best song on a five track demo which Larry passed on to me, a demo by a band which never actually responded to any of my letters, so I thought fuck it and stuck the track on there anyway. It seemed to fit. I guess it's the same track which appeared on something called Sing As We Go from the previous year. Oh well.

The Desolate Accountants were Pete and Graham, my two friends from school and half of the Pre-War Busconductors, which also included myself and Eggy. The Pre-War Busconductors were a fairly raucous (not to mention stupid) cardboard box drum kit punk band, included here mainly so as to annoy anyone anticipating a fifteen minute track of mains hum by Coil's dentist and named after Aleister Crowley's favourite holiday destination, but also because we all enjoy having our bollocks whipped from time to time, don't we? I included the two Desolate Accountants tracks because I always loved them, and thought they were the most musical of our imaginary bands, the one name from the bunch which could justifiably fill a Vinyl-on-Demand release without too many people asking for a refund.

The Cause for Concern was Larry Peterson having a go at noise as he did from time to time before he realised there was no money in it, and none of the bands on his tape label would ever be famous. I realise with hindsight that Mike Finch was a pseudonym used by Dave Fanning of the Apostles and later Academy 23 with some frequency, so I assume this may have been something to do with him given that he did stuff with Larry on a couple of occasions. He also played bass for Three Heads Nodding, or so I heard somewhere. Three Heads Nodding were, so far as I know, Neil, Kev (possibly) and some others who lived in a squat in the Brougham Road in Hackney just a few doors along from the Apostles. Neil also drew and wrote Ka-Ka Komik back in the days when Viz was still a fanzine sold in Newcastle pubs. Ka-Ka Komik was fucking mint!

NKVD was an alias of Glenn of Konstruktivists to whom I had been writing since A Dissembly came out. I think this version of Mansonik No. 2 may be the original portastudio demo which Glenn later took into the studio and had fancified by Dave Kenny ready for its appearance on his second album. I could be wrong about that, although it sounds different to me.

Asepisis was my friend Jez from school, another Gristle fan who recorded a load of stuff on my equipment, and actually seemed to make a better job of it than I did with the whole noisy electronics schtick. He did a great C60 called The Glory of Punishment for whatever the Grey Wolves' tape label was called at the time, but we fell out (which was my fault). I'm still trying to work up the courage to ask him if I can reissue his C60 here as a free download.

Do Easy was myself, obviously, sounding a lot more Numan-influenced than I remember being the case. Neither did I realise my voice was quite that nasal, although it was pointed out to me, in fact it was even pointed out to me by the bloke out of ABC. Oh well. I still say some of my lyrics were decent, even if the execution left something to be desired.

Probably the best tracks on the whole thing were from Irsol, a band which featured Ash from Attrition and a couple of his friends. Irsol put out two exceptionally wonderful cassettes which have recently been given the vinyl treatment, two exceptionally wonderful cassettes which remain amongst the absolute best of the entire cassette scene to my ears. I've a feeling they may have been a bit pissed off upon discovering that their lovingly recorded tracks ended up sharing tape with an assortment of tossers rummaging around in a broom cupboard and a song called Whip My Bollocks. I actually had my mum drop me off at one Irsol member's house on the Kenilworth Road in Coventry so I could leave four complimentary copies of Circumcise with his dad, or whoever the guy was. They never wrote back. I suppose it might have been the wrong house.

Anyway, that's your lot. It didn't set the world on fire. I think it sold about sixty or seventy copies over the space of a couple of years. There were worse compilations. I'm not sure what else I can say.

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

Tracks:
1 - We Be Echo - Soma Improvement
2 - Desolate Accountants - Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree
3 - The Cause for Concern with Mike Finch - Look in the Mirror
4 - Do Easy - My Remaining Eye
5 - Three Heads Nodding - Sloven Song
6 - Pre-War Busconductors - Whip My Bollocks
7 - NKVD - untitled
8 - Citipati - Improvisations April '83
9 - Irsol - Time Domain
10 - Do Easy - British Movement
11 - Three Heads Nodding - Hitch Hiker
12 - Konstruktivists - Mansonik No. 2
13 - Asepisis - Accidents with More People
14 - His-Create-He - The Prison (that Jack Built)
15 - Irsol - The Stranger
16 - Desolate Accountants - Interview

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