Pandemic - Third Spacing (1998) C90

Viewers born during the late 1500s may recall Steve Trodd from this Soul Providers tape, along with the two which followed soon after (which should be easy enough to find on this blog unless you're a simpleton). Anyway, this was his own stuff recorded as Pandemic with an assortment of gas-powered synths and, so far as I recall, not much else in the way of equipment. Nevertheless, I've always found it a thoroughly convincing effort and powerfully atmospheric - like a much scarier Cluster or even how Lustmord would sound if any of the reviews reflected what his music actually sounded like. 'Wack up the volume and just feel those textures,' as was I believe Jamie Oliver's verdict, and quite right too.

Also included is my own efforts at remixing one of Steve's tracks, specifically one which was called Harm at the time, but since appears to have turned into something else. With hindsight, I'm not sure I really added anything because most of this stuff sounded great as it was.

Interested parties might also like to pop over to Steve's Soundcloud page.

Download the eight tracks and inlay card by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Crashed and Bled Out
2 - Transmission
3 - Host
4 - Marburg
5 - Decon
6 - Virus
7 - Sentinel-Animal
8 - Harm [rmx]

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Soul Providers - Last Tape (1999) C90

That isn't actually us in the picture, but a different group also known as the Soul Providers, seen here providing something which I expect may be more immediately recognisable as soul. The image came up in a Google image search whilst looking for something with which to illustrate this post in lieu of a sleeve, or even a picture of Ed, Steve and myself rocking out in my front room. I never thought to take photos and the cassette never had a sleeve, beyond a blank inlay card with dates written on it, because this was our last tape - as suggested by the canny title. We never actually filled the tape up, so it was never formally completed and I never made copies or did anything with it.

This final installment of the arbitrarily titled Shoulder Lion was recorded on the same day as Calli Yei as the final leg of the same session - 31st October, 1998. The Last Song was recorded on Thursday the 3rd of July, 1999, again in my front room in Dulwich. I have a vague feeling this recording may have been just Steve and myself due to Ed not showing up, which would possibly explain our improvising just the one twenty-minute track rather than the usual several hours worth of material. I seem to recall Ed having become a bit fed up with our efforts for reasons I didn't really follow, but then again it was two decades ago so who knows? Maybe this last track was all three of us jamming with Wink Martindale and Micky Most making tea in the kitchen. It was a long time ago.

Anyway, it still sounds decent to me.

As a word of warning, if you've been Googling those other Soul Providers (as pictured above) and somehow ended up here, there's a chance this might not quite be your sort of thing. Just saying.

Download the tape by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Shoulder Lion part three
2 - Last Song

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Soul Providers - Calli Yei (1998) C90

I'm not sure there's much I can say about this third Soul Providers tape which hasn't already been said either here or here. Ed, Steve and myself recorded this whole thing live onto tape in my front room on the last day of October, 1998 - which I suppose would have been Halloween. I suppose we should have made something of that, but never mind. Aside from a couple of minutes of me testing the levels right at the beginning, this pretty much works as a single track, and can hopefully be listened to as such. Anyone who has been listening to these things as I post them might also note that this one sounds more expensive than previous efforts. Either I had just borrowed some new fancy effects box and was shoving everything through that, or maybe we were just getting better at it, whatever it was.

Trainspotters might like to note use of a certain drum pattern at one point, a drum pattern which older boys and girls will possibly remember from either Third Door from the Left's Under Attack or even Cabaret Voltaire's Nag Nag Nag. The (admittedly not very interesting) story behind this is that back in the mists of time I asked Kevin Thorne of Third Door from the Left whether he had bought Cabaret Voltaire's old drum machine or something, but it turned out that Stephen Mallinder had done him a cassette of rhythms for his general use, and so Kevin very kindly ran me off a copy. So there you go.

For what it may be worth, the name Shoulder Lion - which I enjoyed for its Dadaist potential - came from an amusingly (to me) poor translation of Acolmiztli, the name or possibly title of a Prehispanic ruler of the Mexican city of Texcoco which appeared in some library book or other. A more accurate translation might be Lion of the Acolhua People, except miztli means feline rather than any specific type of feline, and the name of the Acolhua - one of those cultural groups who have since been erroneously identified as Aztecs - includes a term referring to a shoulder, or which can be taken to stand for the same, but otherwise doesn't directly translate without an essay's worth of explanations.

Download the tape and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Set Up
2 - Shoulder Lion part one
3 - Shoulder Lion part two


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Soul Providers - Ehecatl Calli (1998) C90

I already introduced the Soul Providers with this first tape, so please read the accompanying blog entry if you haven't already as that just about covers most of it. For this material we became a trio as Ed and I were joined by Steve Trodd. I think Ed somehow knew Steve through Savage Pencil, and he was a card-carrying member of Sons of the Desert which was good enough for me. In fact, being a Son of the Desert he probably could have just turned up with a paper and comb and I would have been entirely happy to include him in the group, so even better that he brought along an ominous looking vintage synth involving all sorts of knobs and patch leads.

We improvised these three tracks directly onto my stereo, so far as I recall - Steve and Ed on synth and electric piano, with myself pissing about with boxes and other stuff whilst mixing it live through Eddy Walsh's four-track. I always expected our sessions to yield something of a confrontational electronic racket, but they sound quite tuneful to me now, even possibly soulful, or roughly like how I imagine early Pink Floyd probably sounds, or should sound (this statement made without actually knowingly having heard early Pink Floyd) but better. Yes. Quite pleased with this one.

Whilst we're here, Steve is still recording great music, some of which can be heard on his Soundcloud page here. 

Download the three lengthy tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Sometimes I Feel Like Throwing My Hands Up in the Air
2 - New Testament
3 - From Out of Chicomoztoc, Firing Arrows

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Soul Providers - Cipactli Nahuatlamatl (1998) C90

I first met Ed Pinsent through comic books and his involvement with Fast Fiction, then later came to know him a little better when I realised that we lived in roughly the same part of London and shared an interest in weirdy music, as expressed by Ed starting his own magazine and asking if I would like to contribute. The magazine was called The Sound Projector and still exists today in concert with an associated radio programme broadcast on Resonance FM, all of which should be investigated by following this link. Anyway, back in 1997, both Ed and myself were furrowing along related musical parallels. My crap is sporadically documented right here on this blog, whilst Ed recorded and performed with Attack Wave Pestrepeller (famously including Savage Pencil) and Mystery Dick - improvised and occasionally noisy outfits whose works on vinyl and compact disc are well worth the effort of hunting down should you feel so inclined. I vaguely recall Ed and myself recording together mainly because it seemed crazy not to, given certain shared musical interests, although it may also have been significant that Alan Mason's girlfriend had given me an electric piano and Ed was quite keen to have a go on it. The electric piano was free on the grounds of it being the size of a small car and that Alan's girlfriend had grown tired of carting it around with her each time she moved. The contacts could have done with a clean, and the thing was so huge that I ended up giving it away for the exact same reasons that the thing had come into my possession; but it had a good sound, so it was nice that Ed made such great use of the thing whilst it was around, not least because his tickling of ivories had a little more going for it than my characteristic one fingered Gary Numan tributes.

Anyway, the story behind these tracks beyond that which is already described above is that we set up every instrument or sound producing object we had at our disposal in my living room and just improvised, although the first three significantly shorter tracks were recorded by making stuff up along to an already improvised backing track bounced onto my tape deck. I was probably worrying about them sounding too sparse or something.

The titles and artwork were more or less arbitrary choices derived from my Mesoamerican fixation of the time, as was the name of our "group" - the Soul Providers, which I liked because it sounded more like some RnB thing than a bunch of noise merchants, and I was mostly listening to RnB at the time. I'm not sure what Ed ever thought of the names or my turning this stuff into tapes, although Soul Providers didn't make him frown quite so hard as had my first suggestion - Shinjuku District, which came from a Godzilla film and I now realise would have been a dreadful choice. I had the impression he was really mainly just interested in the music, the improvisation and so on; which is fair enough. Listening to this stuff nearly two decades later I realise I still enjoy it. It still sounds good to me - at least once you get over the terrible hiss generated by the recording process of the first three tracks. In fact, I'm actually sort of proud of this tape, which isn't something I can say about many of them.

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

Tracks:
1 - Tepetlaoztoc
2 - Eight Deer Jaguar Claw
3 - Amplifier
4 - First Migration
5 - Chiconahui Cuetzpallin

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