Konstruktivists - Jihad-e-Sazendegi Demos (1988) C60

As a few of you may have surmised, I'm coming to the end of my five-ish year mission to digitise my entire tape collection, meaning I've now digitised all of the stuff which leaps out at me as requiring digitisation, leaving just 1) things which will only make sense to me and which I'm not really bothered about listening to, stuff taped from the radio and the like, 2) things which I would digitise and share except I still know the people who recorded them fairly well and haven't yet summoned up the energy to ask whether it's okay to give their shit away to strangers for free because I'm afraid that either they'll say no, or they'll say yes but I'll have to explain what the internet is, 3) collections of tapes by either factor X, Academy 23, or Konstruktivists which I've barely tackled. The reason I've barely tackled the Konstruktivists material is because I have forty-four tapes of stuff Glenn passed on to me and it can be quite a job working out what is what, and what has already seen the light of day in one form or another.

Anyway, no promises, but I think this stuff should be new to at least a couple of you, and hopefully it hasn't already appeared on some CD, or even on a previous download shared through this blog. The cover of Black December doesn't really have anything specific to do with this material, except I thought you might like to see it in colour.

Okay. 1988 is a guess but I think this dates from around then, give or take a year. Konstruktivists had released Glennascaul through Nigel's Sterile Records, recording Ikon during the same sessions and that was supposed to be the next record, a twelve inch single, except it never happened. Ikon was also the first studio track with Joe Ahmed in the group. Glenn then went through a couple of years of domestic difficulties, mainly just the practicalities of holding down a job, getting married, having a kid, finding places to live, and the usual stuff. Jihad-e-Sazendegi (meaning Crusade for Construction) was to be the fifth album and bits and pieces had been recorded at Joe's place in Harlow, Essex, and they sounded fucking amazing too; but somehow it never quite came together what with life getting in the way and everything, and eventually I guess the album was forgotten.

This is my tape of what was recorded, except I'm not absolutely sure of the details. I've a feeling some of these titles may be ones I came up with for the sake of writing something on the inlay card, and although I'm fairly certain the first seven tracks were recorded with Joe for the proposed album, there may be some wiggle room, and the second half of the tape sounds like Glenn solo to me, so is quite possibly something else entirely. Anyway, it's good stuff, so hopefully you'll get a kick out of listening to it.

Download the fourteen tracks by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Militaristik
2 - Islam
3 - East of Eden
4 - First Light
5 - Here it Comes
6 - Jihad
7 - Midnight Leather
8 - Cruising My Decade
9 - Celebration
10 - Last Dawn
11 - New Direction
12 - Fear Teachers
13 - Fourth International
14 - Tracking
 
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Allegory (1992) C40

Allegory was a compilation put together by Mark of Impulse, the only one which wasn't associated with an issue of the mag, and, so far as I recall, dating to the time he was making a go of running his thing as a label - see also Konstruktivists AGM tape and the Muslimgauze 7" he released. I'm sure you're both all familiar with most of the contributors here - Pure Motorised Instinct was Stephen Jarvis from Nagamatzu, Tautologize represents Mark's brief tenure as part of the factor X pyramid scheme, and so on and so forth.

To briefly adopt my Negative Neddy persona, I have to say, thirty years later and I'm still fucking mystified by the brief descent into industrial rock karaoke with underwhelming cover versions of chart smashers by Front 242 and the Throbbing Gristles, not least because I seem to recall Another Headache being somewhat better than this one might suggest; but never mind. Maybe it's just me. Once over those particular humps, the tape settles into a very pleasing rhythm of not-quite-ambient sound concluding with Dark Star's stunning P2C2E.

There was also a tiny wee booklet of artwork with this one, some related, some not at all related and therefore maybe pertaining to persons who failed to stump up their tracks in time (guessing here), so I've scanned that and it's included in the download.

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

Tracks:
1 - Pure Motorised Instinct - Shaking Death's Hand
2 - Voltoid - Tragedy for You
3 - Another Headache - Hamburger Lady
4 - Antonym - Cinnamon Air
5 - The Impulse fX - Tautologize
6 - Attrition - The Third House
7 - Brume - Suck Your Bones
8 - Konstruktivists - Untitled II
9 - Dark Star - P2C2E
 
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Raw Opium Enema (1994) C60

I've nearly digitised all of my compilations now, with only Impulse mag's Allegory and Trev Ward's Power to Destroy (next week probably) still to be transmogrified, so far as I can work out. This one escaped the routine sweeps because I had it under M on the shelf as a Mlehst tape, it being the work of the man behind Bandaged Hand Produce.

Aside from being one of those collections I always found exciting because you have no idea what the fuck is going to come out of the speakers when you first press play, this one is also distinguished by its exceptional sound quality, which seems to have been a thing with Bandaged Hand. I really should have picked up a few more of his tapes when it was still possible to do so.

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

Tracks:
1 - Brume - Ronde
2 - Herb Mullin - Over and Over
3 - factor X - Forever Roses
4 - T.U.O.B. + Okaniwa Fumiharo - n.v.1
5 - Expose Your Eyes - Absolute Spongiforms
6 - Mlehst - Anal Dentist
7 - Cacophony '33' - Riding the Aorta
8 - Lunus - Introductione alla Terra
9 - Expose Your Eyes - Bongo Trasho
10 - Sof Tillan's And - Television Teenager
11 - Cacophony '33' - Carboot (excerpt)
12 - Defacato - Burnett
 

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The Sound of Hate 3 (1991) C60

Please refer to previous posts if you're still working on the assumption that the Grey Wolves were actually a Combat 18 recruitment tool as opposed to, you know, just ramming it right down our throats in the hope that maybe we might wake the fuck up. Cheers.

 

The Sound of Hate was a series of five (to the best of my knowledge) compilation tapes issued by Trev in the early nineties, of which I have just two volumes - this one and five which I'll probably post next week. What surprised me the most about this one, having dug it out of the pile and slapped it in the deck, is that the general sound is a lot more varied than you might expect - plenty of noise, but other elements too, which makes for genuinely unpredictable and exciting listening in my book. Most of the tracks appear on the tape without breaks, so presenting two continuous blocks of sound, and I've more or less edited it in keeping with this ideal rather than inserting the two seconds digital silence at the end of each track as I usually do. This also means that in a couple of cases I found it difficult to tell where certain tracks ended, giving way to something else, so hopefully my application of titles matches the actual material. If not, blame Trev back in 1991.

If you've read this far, I'm assuming you will be at least as familiar with a couple of these names as I am, thus saving me the effort of introductions or explaining how one might use the internet to look stuff up on Discogs. We all remember Pessary and factor X, don't we?

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

Tracks:
1 - AX 66 - Intensifier
2 - Traitor - Scum
3 - Pessary - Untitled (part three)
4 - Pessary - Untitled (part seven)
5 - MØHR - Ein Neubeginn
6 - Enema Och Gejonte - Dedicated to Cantor Hyman Millman
7 - Batchas - Myiase Tape Extract
8 - Allimentation Generale - Myiase Tape Extract
9 - Mindscan - The Pain is the Pleasure
10 - (exit to side one)
11 - (introduction to side two)
12 - Traitor - XK2.521
13 - MØHR - Das Ende Einer Famile
14 - Pessary - Untitled (part twenty-two)
15 - factor X - Untitled
16 - Grey Wolves - Sex Death Ritual
 
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Cassette Music 5 (1994) C60

Here's the last of my compilations from Dave Hopwood's excellent Personal Soundtracks label - not sure if it's the best of the bunch but it's probably a contender. As for the individual tracks - was never entirely convinced by Brume, although I can no longer even remember why, but this one is excellent and seems to foreshadow a lot of that glitchy laptop stuff by a good couple of years; and talking of foreshadowing, Cacophony '33' were apparently recording vapourwave roughly two decades before anyone else - vapourwave here distinguished as the sort of repurposing done so well by Blank Banshee and others, as distinct from, you know, Africa by Toto and other stuff from which it borrows. I never got around to nabbing any Cacophony '33' material at the time, and I should have done because they had some great stuff on a couple of other compilations too; Ice Pedestal is presumably factor X again, collaborating with - at a guess - maybe Tom Cox, but I could be wrong; Westland seems to be Parisian noise dude Franck Canorel; Konstruktivists are Konstruktivists, obviously; and Cathedra was Mark who published Impulse and ended up in Konstruktivists, possibly as the longest serving member aside from Glenn himself; Ozone Bandits was Dave Hopwood, and I'm not sure about the rest - apart from factor X, whom I'm sure you will have heard about, and M. Nomized whom you will definitely have heard about unless you've only recently emerged from thirty or forty years spent living in the Amazon basin. Chris Brett's track is also particularly fine and worth singling out as such while I'm here.

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

Tracks:
1 - Brume - Le Chemin Duciel
2 - Cacophony '33' - Chill Up A Rising
3 - TAK/fX - Ice Pedestal
4 - The Rorschach Garden - Night Journey
5 - Westland - Hidden in Argentina
6 - Konstruktivists - Alien Blues
7 - Cathedra - Prima Luce
8 - Ozone Bandits - 12/3/94
9 - Chris Brett - Napalm Gtr 2
10 - M. Nomized - Russolo Music
11 - MMATT - Song X
12 - factor X - She's Mine
13 - Ars Moriend - Lack of Light
14 - Manatisa - No Title

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Impulse 5 (1993) C40

Here's the fifth Impulse tape, and in case anyone was wondering, yes, I somehow missed issue four and never had a copy. I haven't scanned the mag on this occasion* because I couldn't be bothered after a certain moaning wanker slagged me off on Twatter last time I shared one of these things, whining what the fuck have you done to our track?, somehow having failed to take into account that it was digitised from a tape which came out nearly thirty years ago, and a tape run off by one of those duplication services and therefore done on the cheap so as to make it practical to give it away with a fanzine, thus meaning people who had never heard of your music would then be exposed to it and might even thusly go forth and buy your fucking records and make you rich despite nothing resembling hard work on your part unless you believe programming a drum machine somehow falls under the heading of graft, your Royal Highness. You'll also notice a certain bit of old tape wobble on a couple of these tracks, so if it's a problem that something you're getting for free isn't quite up to your exacting standards, then simply don't download the fucker, mkay?

 

Anyway, if anyone really feels they need to see the mag that came with this tape, give me a nudge in the comments box and I'll get around to scanning and add it to the download when I get time.

 

You'll probably have heard of a few of these, particularly factor X, Pessary, Smersh, Brume and Left Hand Right Hand whom I only recently found out occasionally featured Karl Blake as well as Charlie Collins from Clock DVA. There's a fair bit of techno on this one, but most of it is pretty well done, and thankfully lacking the usual suggestions of the guy with too much technology pretending to be a frost-faced Matrix cyberstormtrooper in his bedroom in his mum's house; and I'm kicking myself that I never got anything by Left Hand Right Hand.

 

*: Actually, I did in the end.

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

Tracks:
1 - factor X - Determinants
2 - DsorDNE - Orgasme III
3 - Terraform - Meld
4 - Pessary - Dark Shadows
5 - Cathedra - Voices
6 - Smersh - Crazy Orange Atom - Do You Remember Love?
7 - Agonije - Un Soffio Di Immagine
8 - Left Hand Right Hand - White City
9 - Brume - Zindoo

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Cassette Music 4 (1994) C60

This is the fourth in the series from Personal Soundtracks, hence the numerical component of the title, and one which initially seemed underwhelming compared to previous volumes; but it gets its hooks into you with just a couple of plays, and it should be noted that nobody could ever have accused Personal Soundtracks of being predictable.

 

Typically, my knowledge is patchy where these folks are concerned, but for what it's worth: fairly sure Dave, the man behind the Personal Soundtracks label, was drummer for the Pranksters, and if I'm getting my wires crossed I'll just have to edit this later, but never mind; I'm not sure what Costes is, but he's been at it for a while and some regard him as a genius. He once sent me a letter which included a photocopy of a nude picture of himself with an erection as apparent illustration to some lyrics which, as I recall, went see the sad boy with the hard cock, don't be sad, boy - you can come in my bum. I didn't write back because I was scared, quite frankly; apparently there's a Vietnamese TV repair guy living in Ho Chi Minh who hasn't heard of factor X, but word on the street is that he's the last one. I'll believe it when and if I ever meet him; and NKVD is of course Glenn of Konstruktivists heard here in his lesser known role of beloved early evening entertainer; Vinci and the Conspiracy appeared on previous volumes of this series but I'm still none the wiser.

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

Tracks:
1 - Vinci - Philosophie Papale
2 - In Sensorium - Pandemonium
3 - The Pranksters - Celery Lettuce Cucumber
4 - Ampzilla's Delight - My Japanese Drummer is HOT
5 - Costes - Rock 'n' Roll Rip Off
6 - Costes - Aging Punks
7 - The Conspiracy - The Fears of Janet Frame
8 - Teknohedfuk - So Good
9 - factor X - 15 Souls of Flowers
10 - factor X - Settee Boy
11 - The Pranksters - Radio Active TV Repair Man
12 - NKVD - A Riddle
13 - Tone Deaf - Armed
14 - The Conspiracy - Brain Surfing
15 - Terropin - Destruction of Fashion
16 - Vinci - Je T'Aimerais Toujours
 

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Cassette Music 3 (1994) C60

Here's another hour of strange sounds from the excellent Personal Soundtracks series. Once again my information on those contributing is patchy to nonexistent, but I'm sure some of you will at least be familiar with Hex Minora, Mlehst, factor X, and Expose Your Eyes who seemed to be everywhere at one point. In fact I'm fairly sure I remember them, or possibly him, filling in for Jimmy Hill on Match of the Day.

 

Anyway, regardless of who you've already heard of, the thing you'll probably notice about this tape is the exceptional quality and high production values with a track list that genuinely keeps you guessing from one minute to the next - which is really what it's all about for me.

 

Very glad Mr. Hopwood conceded to my digitising these things - it's been great digging them out and hearing them again. Surprised no-one has yet done a boutique CD reissue of this series of compilations.

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

Tracks:
1 - Ozone Bandits - Sergio Leone
2 - Phenomena - Skitzpphenomena
3 - Majorana - Grateri Dentro
4 - Hex Minora - Heresy
5 - Mlehst - Bitter Oranges
6 - Clitoral - Pussyshaver
7 - Phenomena - Paramilitary
8 - factor X - In Love w/ You
9 - Vinci - Tribal Night
10 - Expose Your Eyes - &#0149 &#0149 &#0149
11 - Telepherique - Marked Faces
12 - Ozone Bandits - Pliers in My Heart

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Impulse 3 (1992) C40

You will recall Impulse, the magazine which came with a compilation tape, either from Impulse 2 which I posted here, or perhaps even from reality (and in case anyone is wondering - no, I never saw the first issue). Well, here's another volume, short and sweet but with some great tracks. You will be familiar with some of the artists, perhaps not all, in which case, Google is your friend, as snidey forum dwelling internet wankers used to say and probably still do. Out of this lot, the big surprise for me was just now finding out that Cathedra was actually Mark who edited the mag and eventually joined Konstruktivists. Maybe I did know that, but in any case I had obviously forgotten it, despite actually having known the bloke since roughly the time when he was doing this mag. Good stuff anyway.

 

Last time I posted one of these, I scanned the magazine and included it with the download. I couldn't be bothered this time*, having noticed that issue three includes a big fat helping of Misery and Purity, a thoroughly clownish treatise on Death in June by Robert Forbes, also author of The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK & USA, 1979 - 1993, and For Europe: The French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS, although obviously those are entirely different books sharing no thematic common ground with the aforementioned ode to Dougie, so I'm not even sure why I mentioned them. For Europe: The French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS is apparently great according to all the five star reviews on Amazon. It's a well written history of the people who tried to help stop communism according to one bloke, so that's nice. Going back to Impulse 3, there's also an interview with Somewhere in Europe about whom I've never been entirely convinced, plus they have a crap name; so sorry - better things to do with my scanner. If it's any consolation, by not scanning and sharing the thing I am at least helping to preserve the current value of the mag for those investors and shareholders lucky enough to have secured a copy as part of their portfolio. Long live the market.

 

*: Apparently I changed my mind at some point.

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

Tracks:
1 - Patternclear - Waiting in the Wings
2 - Cacophony '33' - Slander Upon My Head
3 - Doubling Riders - Suite Veritas
4 - Moisten Before Use - Thud Pt. 1 [excerpt]   
5 - Voltoid - Black Mass   
6 - factor X - Happy Birthday   
7 - Konstruktivists - Klub Zodiac '84   
8 - Cathedra - Neolith  


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Cassette Music 2 (1993) C60

Here's the second volume of the excellent Personal Soundtracks series, the first of which can still be found here. There's probably not a whole lot I can say which I didn't already say, although there's some information about the artists on the cover of this volume, so if you'd all kindly promise to give it a look, it will save me some time offering useless statements along the lines of I remember seeing Cabbage Head flyers but I never heard nuffink by them. Mindscan was of course Robert Maycock who ran the label of the same name, published Lockjaw zine, and always seemed like a decent guy in his letters, which is why he gets a special mention here. Close inspection of Fungus & Tongue - of whom I had no prior knowledge or recall - reveals them to have included Nathan Coles - guitarist of Academy 23 and UNIT at the same time as me, so that's interesting. At least it's interesting to me because I didn't know that.

That's all I've got (apart from reminding everyone that Patternclear is Phil Clarke of Stress for the millionth time), but thankfully the quality of this one seems to speak for itself.

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

Tracks:
1 - factor X - URDD
2 - Fungus & Tongue - Night, the Moon
3 - Secret Archive of the Vatican - Fish Drum
4 - Cabbage Head - The Hive Manager  
5 - The Conspiracy - Dave Hammerton  
6 - Mindscan - Crash
7 - Jim Jean - It Was a Dark, Foggy Night
8 - UPL - BFH (edit)
9 - TAC / Eye / fX - Casper
10 - Nux Vomica - Passing a Stone
11 - factor X - Armed w/ a Handgun
12 - Cabbage Head - My God - It's Full of Stars
13 - Patternclear - Inertic (6-7)
14 - Secret Archive of the Vatican - I Often Wonder, Am I Mad?
15 - Technoprimitives - I Desire

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Cassette Music 1 (1993) C60

My perception of the tape scene as was is that it pretty much went tits up in the mid-nineties. A few people struggled on, but we all knew it was over, supplanted by stuff recorded direct onto hard drives and distributed on CDR - a medium conducive to superior quality but which was never anything like so durable and had none of the charm. Of course more recently we have certain berks going back to tapes as some kind of artisanal statement for the same reason you'll occasionally get steampunk wankers issuing their most indubitably delightful examples of musical charivari on wax fucking cylinder, but let's be honest - it's over, upsetting though that certainly is, and you can never go home.

Dave Hopwood's Personal Soundtracks label has therefore come to represent - at least in my mind - one of the last great flourishes of the cassette, someone finally getting it right just before the lights went out, so to speak. There may have been others more deserving of such accolades, but I never heard them, so that's why I'm writing about this tape rather than them. Personal Soundtracks released five of these Cassette Music compilations (at least I'm not aware of there having been a volume six), and the music was always good, or worth hearing at the very least; the covers, as designed by Shaun of factor X, were decent; and it really felt as though some care and attention to detail went into these things - an entertaining sixty minutes worth as Scott McCrae wrote in his review in Music from the Empty Quarter #9. There was a similarly positive write up in Impulse #5, and I was going to reproduce both reviews here, but I've just had a quick look and aside from the thumbs up, they just tell you what's on the tape, so I can't be arsed.

If you've been following this blog, you should be familiar with a few of these names - Operation Mind Control, factor X, Chemical Plant, and Symboliks at least; Patternclear was Phil from Stress, the Stick Insects and others; Antonym was Mr. Burnham who edited Soft Watch - and I have a couple of his tapes to digitise at some point; Venus Fly Trap were, so I believe, Alex Novak, later of Attrition, and others - a familiar name, usually as the token rock band on tapes full of people reading poems over the sound of refrigerator hum, but it was always a pleasure to see their name on whatever had just fallen through the letter box; I believe Mr. Hopwood himself played the skins for Pranksters at some stage, and I'm not sure about any of the others - except the Chemical Plant track makes me wish I'd picked up more of their werks at the time.

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

Tracks:
1 - Patternclear - Dreamscape
2 - Operation Mind Control - Spark Intro
3 - Westland - Pterodaktyl
4 - Symboliks - Andeluvia
5 - Pranksters - Brut Force
6 - factor X - determinants
7 - Antonym - Tranquil Skies
8 - Chemical Plant - Dark Water (second mix)
9 - Ozone Bandits - Black Rain Edit
10 - Ozone Bandits - Slank
11 - Er - Who
12 - Symboliks - Getting Back
13 - Architects Office - A0809.7
14 - Pranksters - Govt. Agents
15 - Antonym - Song for Karen
16 - Venus Fly Trap - 19th Incident
17 - Patternclear - Flamenco
 
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v/a - Shake the Foundations (1991) C90

Here we are, as promised last week. I've already said probably all I can usefully say about Chainsaw Cassettes, and here's one of their compilation tapes. Most of it's pretty great, as you will hear should you choose to download the thing, and I at least played it enough to inspire further investigation regarding Operation Mind Control and the Symboliks. You should have heard of a few of the others here - at least factor X, Headbutt and Somewhere in Europe. You can probably find out something about most of these artists by looking around on the internet, or just reading the booklet which originally came with the tape, and which I've scanned, so that comes with the download.

Enjoy!

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

Tracks:
1 - Operation Mind Control - C.U.T.
2 - Psycho Karaoke - Don't React
3 - Billy Clark - Untitled #1
4 - Chemical Plant - Episode 2
5 - Somewhere in Europe - Butterfly in a Vice
6 - The Invisibles - Disease Called Sunday
7 - Guts - I Work for the BPI
8 - Symboliks - Behind the Word
9 - Billy Clark - Untitled #2
10 - factor X - Grand>Dada
11 - Pinkie Maclure, Fiona Sail & Chemical Plant - 1.47
12 - Dominic Thomas & Steve Dell - Fifty Alarms
13 - Symboliks - Home Base
14 - Chemical Plant - Aphids One
15 - Headbutt - Bush Baby (live)
16 - Psycho Karaoke - Deep Pearl Blues
17 - The Leper Colony - People Are No Good
18 - The Invisibles - Blankety-Blank Generation
19 - Somewhere in Europe - Carnival of Resistance
20 - Symboliks - Dreamcurdling (live)
21 - Operation Mind Control - Soundrench
22 - Operation Mind Control - DeSona
23 - Billy Clark - Untitled #3

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F*** F******* - For Our Real Fans Only! (1992) C60+

The story so far is to be found here and here, should it be necessary. This album was produced in a limited edition of two copies, which is perhaps why you've never heard of it. It was a compilation mostly of stuff I had laying around and which hadn't been recorded with any particular destination in mind (with a few exceptions), and it was compiled for my friend Carl's birthday seeing as he seemed to get something out of this shit. Hence I recorded a special birthday song (see if you can tell which one it is), and a song which could be transferred to Carl's telephone answering machine, should he feel inclined to do so (and I seem to remember that he did) as a sort of additional birthday present.

Tribute to factor X was originally sent to the sound-artist-bloke-project-entity of the same name for possible inclusion on one of his Radio Dada tapes, although I don't know if he ever used it; probably not, the miserable cunt. My droning DJ impersonation was based heavily on the bloke you may have heard on We Be Echo's Psychick Kontakt Specials a couple of months ago; and (in case anyone really cares) the Green Men actually existed and featured my friend Jez's dad along with other members of the village bowling team. They had the song pressed as a 7" single and I expect they sold it in the local pub or something. The test tone you hear at the beginning of Tribute to factor X was on the other side for some reason.

You Don't Have to Say Please was my improvement on an inferior Whitehouse song recorded for Still Going Strong - Impulse fanzine's collection of sarcastic Whitehouse covers, presently available from [aufnahme + wiedergabe].

...and the rest were mostly just me pissing about, except I Know What I Like which featured the late, great Andrew Cox on guitar, and Let the Bad Times Roll on which harmonica is played by my fellow Catford postman, the multi-talented Billy Playle. He carried a harmonica with him most of the time and would whip it out and give us a few mournful bars during tough mornings in the sorting office to underscore that plantation vibe. The last three tracks are covers of songs by the Leather Nun, Death in June, and Led Zeppelin. Behind the Rose and In My Time of Dying weren't actually on the original tape, but I've added them here for the sake of tidiness. I recorded the Leather Nun song partially because that's where the band's name came from, and the Death in June song is recorded in the club style because why the fuck not, and In My Time of Dying happened because someone had to bring together the majesty of Led Zeppelin and the mighty force of the Casio VL Tone, and it turned out that this person was me.

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

Tracks:
1 - Happy Birthday to Carl
2 - Please Leave a Message
3 - Tribute to factor X (WKXK radio session)
4 - This Old Man
5 - When We've Had a Couple of Beers
6 - Invokation
7 - You Don't Have to Say Please
8 - Stupid (instrumental)
9 - I Know What I Like
10 - Bad Time Blues (live)
11 - Sniff Your Ass
12 - You Don't Have to Say Please (live)
13 - Let the Bad Times Roll
14 - F*** F****** of America
15 - Behind the Rose (Fields of Rape)
16 - In My Time of Dying

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Dada X (1992) C90

I drew my first Dada X cartoon strip in 1988, inspired in equal parts by Alfred Jarry, Zippy the Pinhead, punk rock, and how I imagined the first Nurse With Wound album probably would have sounded had I bought it. Dada X - whose name should properly be rendered with the X as a mathematical exponent - was a nonsense character in a horned wooden mask which allowed me the liberty to produce strips without giving two shits about whether or not they made sense. Four years later, Carl Glover and myself, having been playing and recording as the Dovers for a while, took to a sudden and dramatic change of direction for reasons I can't quite remember, but possibly just for fun. We'd recorded a shitload of thrashy rock songs, that being our default setting, and now undertook an instrumental work of quite different complexion.

Dada X seemed an appropriate name. It would be a C90 with a single track taking up each side, a slowly evolving sound collage. We would refrain from using conventional or programmed instruments aside from, I suppose, the human voice, and all sounds would be derived from either non-musical sources, or compact discs, records, or tapes supplied by our friends, all of which would be heavily treated with effects. The end result features tape loops, samples, a food mixer, bath sponges as percussion instruments, and one hell of a lot of ourselves farting into the microphone over and over until someone had to open a window.

The idea was to regard this as composed by Carl and myself with everyone who had given us a tape of noise we could use listed as a member of the orchestra. Some tapes were supplied on request by those concerned, others we just had laying around and we used them anyway. Unfortunately neither of us bothered to write down just who was in the orchestra, so the following list is from memory, and what can still be recognised:

Source material provided by Glenn Wallis (Konstruktivists), Andrew Cox (Pump, MFH), Timothy Griffiths, John Powell, Shaun Robert (factor X), Paul Condon, Martin Woodall, Martin de Sey (Cravats), and there were probably others but it was a long time ago.

A particularly noisy passage occurring roughly twenty-five minutes into part one was given the title Chocolate Disco and appeared in isolation on the Power to Destroy compilation tape released by Trev Ward's Lebensborn back in 1993. There was a page of artwork supplied, although I don't think he ever used it, and so it is reproduced here for the sake of giving you something to look at, simply because this cassette never got so far as having a cover.

Quite chuffed with this one.

Download Dada X by clicking on this link.

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