Neil, Richard, Simon, Stewart - Durian Durian (1992) C46

The cover, although informative, isn't visually arresting so the above is a picture of all four persons involved superimposed over one another, somehow amounting to Stewart Walden and a few blurry wisps, which represents the music only poorly but at least gives you something to look at.

The four persons were Neil Campbell, Richard Youngs, Simon Wickham-Smith, and Stewart Walden. Neil Campbell you may remember from ESP Kinetic, SWANC (with Stewart Walden), Vibracathedral Orchestra and others, the first two of which are represented by adjacent material right here, if you would be so good to have a look in the index as linked at the foot of this page. Richard Youngs was something to do with Omming for Woks, whom I remember from somewhere or other, and all of them have been in the A Band at one point or another.

Durian Durian seems to result from all four of them recording sounds entirely independent of each other, with the whole lot then mixed together - simultaneous playback, so I gather - resulting in this tape. Anything involving Neil Campbell is usually worth a listen, and this one is no exception.

Download the tapir by clicking on this link.

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SWANC - Mouldy Roll (1992) C90

Here's another one which fell off the back of the Pumf catalogue. Older boys and girls will recall Neil Campbell from ESP Kinetic and from er... being Neil Campbell, accounting for the NC of the acronym. The SW is Stewart Walden who was involved with Smell & Quim amongst other things. I looked him up on Discogs to see if he'd been a member of Bruce Hornsby & the Range or anyone else you will have heard of, and discovered that I actually know the guy on facebook under a different name and never realised; although to be fair this isn't even the first time this has happened. Come to think of it, the previous bloke turned out to have been in Smell & Quim too, which suggest there's a bit of a pattern there.

 

Anyway, apparently this was their third album. As you will hear, it belongs to the general pissing about with a tape recorder genre, in this case yielding a ton of short, occasionally tuneful blasts of absurdity, of which I feel Morons is, in particular, a masterpiece of its kind. As a whole, the thing reminds me of the Residents' Commercial Album, albeit vaguely. Mr. Walden has informed me that the live bonus tracks were actually Stan's idea - they appear in two selections at the end of each side on the cassette, but this sounded untidy to me so I've shuffled them all together to the end of the thing (tracks 40-52).

 

Enjoy.

Download all fifty-fucking-two tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - A Song for Stan
2 - (song)
3 - Good Old Casio
4 - The Park
5 - Mankin' Mr. Big Tits
6 - Fankle
7 - The Ballad of Sticky Foster
8 - Teenage Lobotomy
9 - Waiting for Little Red Riding Hood
10 - Middle Eight
11 - Git
12 - Something of Love
13 - Middle Eight
14 - Rub Down Transfer Song
15 - How to Tell Kids About Pee-Wee
16 - When I Fell in Love
17 - Ten Stewart Walden Lookalikes
18 - Windmill in Old Amsterdam
19 - Me 163 Komet
20 - Hit the People Who Can't Hit Back
21 - Skateboard Song
22 - Caspar the Friendly Ghost
23 - Mouldy Roll
24 - Morons
25 - Twenty-Twenty
26 - Prophet of the Age of Hourous
27 - Screaming Trouble
28 - Backpack
29 - Fit a Little Song
30 - Locked Groove
31 - I'm Glad
32 - Dr. Hungry Casio
33 - Woman in Love
34 - Working Men's Feet
35 - Hatstand Man
36 - Turnip Tulip
37 - Windowsill
38 - Ogle Drive
39 - Don't Pass Me By
40 - SWANC
41 - Feelin' Groovy
42 - Sound of Silence
43 - Morons
44 - Mmmorning
45 - Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue
46 - Lenty!
47 - Home on the Range
48 - Got It Together Again
49 - Caspar the Friendly Ghost
50 - Here's What to Do...
51 - Mom, I Gave the Cat Some Acid
52 - Motorbike Song

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ESP Kinetic - Mission (1985) C90

This was ESP Kinetic's live album. I get the impression they performed quite a bit, and whilst rummaging around in the reliquary in which I store Neil's correspondence - along with mail from Cosey Fanni Tutti, Peter Bagge, Chris Claremont, Billy Childish and my other famous pals* from this crazy world of showbiz - I found a poster for one of ESP Kinetic's gigs, and not even one which is represented on this tape; so I've scanned that and you'll find it in the download.

This one was a bit awkward when it came to digitisation, seeing as the track list given on the cover refers only to the venues and dates at which these performances were recorded, which were as follows:

1 - Corby Youth Centre 24/3/84
2 - Wellingborough United Reformed Church 25/8/84
3 - Kettering Rec. Centre 15/9/84
4 - Cranford Village Hall 17/11/84
5 - Kettering Rec. Centre 18/12/84
6 - Northampton Black Lion 16/3/85

The problem for me was that I couldn't work out where one section ended and another started, so instead I've divided it up into the actual songs, where I've been able to recognise them.

Additionally, Mission was originally a C45, from what I can tell. Neil sent it to me on a C90 with a load of other stuff on the b-side, apparently from a Finnish release called Fleck-Nor, but again with no actual list of what the tracks were called. Some I already knew, and some I was able to work out by comparison with a 2008 CDR issue of Fleck-Nor; but I gather the 2008 Fleck-Nor may have been different to the one Neil mentioned as I was still left with three tracks I couldn't identify. So tracks one to fourteen are Mission, and the rest are seemingly from a version of Fleck-Nor other than the Music Mundane release, a few of which still seem to be relatively cheap on Discogs if anyone is interested.

By the way, as a point of interest, the Black Lion, at which some of the live tracks were performed, features in Alan Moore's fifty-million page novel Jerusalem, which unfortunately isn't very good in case you were wondering.

*: You probably haven't heard of some of these people, but I have.

Download the twenty-four tracks, cover and poster by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Under the Bed
2 - Saturday Nite Church
3 - Hinterland
4 - Two Faces Collide I
5 - Cannibal Chant
6 - In Our Afterglow
7 - Two Faces Collide II
8 - Dance as Hallucination
9 - Untitled I
10 - Waltzing on Air
11 - Silence...
12 - God in a Leather Box
13 - Ambition Realised
14 - Anarchy in the UK
15 - Storekeeper Reward
16 - Metropoline
17 - Scared Out
18 - Untitled II
19 - Ambition Realised
20 - Untitled III
21 - Hole in the Ground
22 - Pretine World
23 - Frank S
24 - Untitled IV

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ESP Kinetic (1985) C15

Neil Campbell sent me Mission, the ESP Kinetic live album on one side of a C90 with a whole load of other stuff on the other side. I've digitised it, but I'm still engaged in the detective work of trying to deduce what the extra tracks are called, so while we're all waiting, here's something else from the same stable. This was a C15 Neil sent me featuring tracks for what would have been my third Do Easy compilation tape. I was going to use Metropoline and the tape would have been called Avanti!, but it never happened and I don't even remember why. I've a feeling I may have given the master to one of the contributors - possibly John Jasper - so he could record his thing directly onto the tape, and I never got it back.

Anyway, this is quite a nice little tape in itself, dating from what I imagine must have been near the end of ESP Kinetic's existence as a band, and which I still think would have made a great 12", but for the fact that no-one would have bought it because they'd spunked away all their pocket money on another unlistenable live Psychic TV album. There's nought so conservative as the avant-garde. Speaking of which, in case I never mentioned it before, I saw ESP Kinetic as one of those bands who sounded how Psychic TV should have sounded but didn't due to the Porridge effect - sharing certain interests with the noise weirdies but not scared of a tune or occasionally sounding happy.

...and finally, Cyril?

Finally, Esther - I should probably mention that this is a tape Neil sent directly to me, presumably a one off with a handmade sleeve - bits of photocopies glued to the front and the track list written in biro. Therefore if you see this tape for sale on eBay, sold by some bloke in Bulgaria mumbling something about how he recorded it off the radio, and if he's selling it for forty bucks, and if you buy it for forty bucks, then that's your tough shit. I mention this only as the fucking clown in question is flogging an old Opera for Infantry tape for about the same, having downloaded it from this blog; and I know this because when I digitised the tape, it came with no track listing so I had to listen to the thing and come up with names for the tracks based on Trev's vocal - and those same titles appear on his expensive collector's item, hopeless wanker.

If this is yourself reading this, oh eBay retailer of my downloads, get a fucking job.

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

Tracks:
1 - Metropoline
2 - Integrity
3 - Storekeeper Reward
4 - Absolute Relaxation
5 - Sieve

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ESP Kinetic - The Message is No Message (1985) C60

Here's some more ESP Kinetic, once the vehicle of Neil Campbell and Andrew Watson, as you will already know if you downloaded the first one I posted, or if you were actually there. This one sounds a bit more confident to me and, with hindsight, sort of like a cross between Sea of Bliss era Nocturnal Emissions and the Virgin Prunes - which I vaguely recall as being quite refreshing because no-one else putting out tapes really sounded like this at the time, at least in terms of the emphasis on vocals, theatrics, and narrative - assuming that's what I mean.

 

I had a couple of zines done by these chaps, and notably one which interviewed the Cravats - which impressed me as I've always thought the Shend and co. were very much underappreciated in the weirdy music community. I would have scanned them and included them in the download but for having flogged them on eBay a couple of years ago. Oh well.

 

You live and learn.

 

Oh - there's a bonus track. I was sufficiently curious about A Nice Snog, the obligatory backwards song, to wonder what it sounded like forwards, in case there was any amusing hidden lyrics about boys' bottoms or whatever (there aren't). Anyway, I reversed it and the extra-special exclusive rare bonus jackpot bonanza freebie forwards version is included in the download. Merry Christmas.

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

Tracks:
1 - Slave is Slave
2 - God in a Leather Box
3 - Silence...
4 - Saturday Nite Church
5 - In Our Afterglow
6 - A Nice Snog
7 - Stoned to Death
8 - Fighting Winter with Fire
9 - Under the Bed
10 - Live Extract - Corby 24/3/84
11 - Hinterland
12 - Honey-Blonde
13 - Two Faces Collide
14 - A Nice Snog (reversed)

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ESP Kinetic - Dance as Hallucination (1985) C60

If you're not sure who Neil Campbell is, there's always Wikipedia. His name came up a lot when I was churning out gushing reviews of stuff no-one listened to for Sound Projector, and it was a truly weird moment when the penny dropped and I realised it was actually Neil C (as he signed his letters) from ESP Kinetic to whom I used to write back in the sixteenth century; so even though no-one knows much about his early work, lost as it is in the hallowed mists of time, as I keep trying to explain to any passing clowns who've taken it upon themselves to write the history of (cough cough) industrial music - that vital early chapter in the story of Ministry - some of us were actually there, fuckface.

 

ESP Kinetic were the first band I heard who inspired the thought, this is what Psychic TV should have sounded like - at least based on their apparent interests, penchant for weird noise, and not being scared of the occasional tune; and those of you who have been paying attention will recall they also turned up on Fear Eats the Soul, they being Neil and Andrew Watson, although ESP Kinetic seemed to occasionally bring in others depending on the demands of the music. When I emailed Neil to ask if it would be okay to give away his ancient history for free, his response was:

Digitise those old tapes? Ha! You are insane for keeping them, but by all means do it. There was a CDR I did and the LP on Harbinger that dredges the "good" bits of those tapes, plus other bits, so not sure who'd bother to wade through the rest.

So, there's a Harbinger album I'll be tracking down, but in the mean time here's the first ESP Kinetic tape, so far as I'm aware. It probably won't change your life, but it still sounds good to me. The Message is No Message and Mission will follow when I get around to digitising those. 

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

Tracks:
1 - ESPK
2 - Wall of Words
3 - Waltzing on Air
4 - Passive Partner
5 - Dance as Hallucination
6 - Slumber-Shake
7 - Jump Deeper
8 - Cannibal Chant
9 - Kissing
10 - Ambition
 

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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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