The Dovers - The World of the Dovers (1991) C60

I probably already wrote as much as you really need to know about the Dovers here, but if you can't be arsed to read all that for whatever reason, the Dovers were myself and my good friend Carl Glover, although I actually still think of us as the Dovers even now for what it's worth. I played guitar, Carl programmed the drum machine and sang, and we played live quite a lot. Needless to say, we sounded kind of basic, although I personally prefer the term primal, but were fun to watch according to at least a few of the people who saw us and then bothered to turn up at a second gig. I sort of enjoyed the gigs, but I always worried that we might sound a bit like Carter the Unlistenable Sex Machine or one of those baseball-cap-festival-and-references-to-Blockbusters bands of whom there were far too many at the time. We started recording on portastudio around 1990 or so, and took the opportunity to produce something a bit more layered than what we had been doing live, something with room for nuance 'n' shit. We recorded a lot of material but somehow never quite got around to doing anything with the tapes. The World of the Dovers was vaguely intended to be our first album, at least by me, and would have been released through my Runciter Corporation tape label had I got around to it, but for some reason I never did.

I remember this stuff sounding decent, but I'm surprised at how good it sounds now, at least to me - thankfully more reminiscent of Wire or maybe bits of Mark Perry's Alternative TV with an Iggy influence than Carter or Pop Will Regard Itself With Studied Irony or any of that auld shite. I'm also surprised at how good that drum machine sounded, pissing over most of those tedious work / obey marching bands. Actually, listening to this stuff, I really don't understand how we failed to be fucking famous.

Oh well.

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

Tracks:
1 - Chief
2 - The End
3 - Screaming the Blues
4 - So Many Fools
5 - West Midlands
6 - Sentimental Fool
7 - Wide Open to You
8 - When the Power Falls
9 - Call It What You Want
10 - Be My Valentine
11 - You Were Better When You Were Crap
12 - Jimmy Stewart
13 - Fly in the Ointment

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Do Easy - The Metal Tape (1982) C60

If you coped with The Nightmare Begins... posted a coupled of weeks ago, then you can probably handle this. Do Easy was what I did next, having concluded that Post-War Busconductors seemed a little cumbersome as a name; and also I fancied a fresh start, an artistic break from the imaginary band responsible for Jimmy Savile on 45 and endless songs about different kinds of poo. Old man Burton had splashed out on a fancy Sharp music center at Christmas, one with a double cassette deck by which I could bounce tracks from one tape to another and back again, and I was thus suddenly able to achieve something resembling sound quality, at least in comparison to the coal fired mono portables I'd been using up to that point. Of course, there was still the problem that I lacked instrumentation, equipment, and any coherent idea of what I actually wanted to do. I was keen to produce my own version of Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle, and yet at least knew to avoid being too screamingly obvious about it - so Manson references are fairly thin on the ground. Ultimately I opted for free experimentation and avoiding anything which would too obviously expose my weaknesses, which is why there isn't much singing on this cassette, and what there is was recorded fairly quietly.

This cassette was recorded from February to April 1982 using what instruments I had to hand, home made tape loops, found sounds, the piano at school and so on. I have a vague memory of starting it earlier in the year then wiping the first four tracks I had produced having concluded they were too shit even for me, which may possibly have been the first flowering of my critical faculties, for whatever that may be worth. Listening back to this thing, I'm surprised at how much I like it. It's nothing startling for sure, and much of it could have been done better, or even raises the occasional question as to why I bothered, but fuck it - I've heard worse. Of course at the time I felt I had produced either a work of genius or something which would one day be revisited and pored over as the first fascinating steps of a musical and artistic tour de force; and so I wrote to Fetish Records because they had just put out a Throbbing Gristle boxed set and Seven Songs by 23 Skidoo, and I felt fairly sure they would want to sign me, or however it worked. Because I was still a school kid living on pocket money and what I brought home from a paper round, I wrote explaining to the nice man at Fetish Records that he would need to send me some money for a blank tape if he wished to hear my masterpiece. Amazingly I got this reply dated Thursday 13th May 1982 from Rod Pearce:

Lawrence - great letter! Here's a ₤1.00 - you deserve it. We're not signing anything new until autumn but send the tape. Perhaps it's the undiscovered secret we need. Hope you catch Skidoo if they're anywhere near you on their tour. They're the first band we've ever had on tour. We're so professional...

Don't tell anyone I sent you a free record (i.e. hopeful musicians etc.). They might get the idea it's a liggers' paradise here.

The free record was a copy of Z'ev's Wipe Out 7". What a nice man, I thought. I sent him a copy of my tape, but never heard back, which probably isn't that surprising, not least when I recall the gushing overenthused most-likely ten page letter I sent with it and which almost certainly revealed me to be way out of my depth. Still, the interest, fleeting though it was, gave me a massive ego-boost and convinced me that I had at least some potential beyond shoving crap through letter boxes in the pissing rain for a living.

So here it is - The Metal Tape because the master copy was recorded on a Sony metal tape in pursuit of finest possible quality, and I was generally sticking to blandly utilitarian titles for fear of saddling myself with anything which sounded too obviously like I was trying to be Throbbing Gristle, even though I sort of was, or at least Nurse With Wound. Do Easy - both the name under which I was recording and the DIY tape label came from The Discipline of DE, the original name under which I recorded this material, itself taken from William Burroughs' Exterminator!

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

Tracks:
1 - The Metal Tape
2 - On Higher Ground
3 - More Than...
4 - 592
5 - Clouds Over Mountains
6 - Aluminium
7 - Actors I
8 - Really Dried Out
9 - Tape Strangled
10 - Auditory
11 - Random
12 - Actors II
13 - Repeat Another?
14 - Are You Still Going to Paint the Library Wall?
15 - Brass Section

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Manslaüghter - Sofa, So Good... So What? (1992) C15

I'm not absolutely sure quite how this masterpiece came into my possession. I've a feeling that the band originally sent this copy to some fanzine bloke or other, someone who didn't like it and figured it was the sort of preposterous shite I would probably appreciate, which I did. In fact I appreciated it so much that I wrote to them and got a copy of their follow up, South of Hebburn which features the terrifying Sofa Bed of Doom and which will be appearing on this blog at some point in the near future, once you've had time to digest the RAW AWESOME of Sofa, So Good... So What?

Manslaüghter were from Kenton Bar, Newcastle upon Tyne and they looked like this:

This photograph came with the tape, along with a letter of introduction which reads as follows:

The Manslaüghter story continues to get bigger, better and faster by the minute. Here, at last, is the long awaited Sofa, So Good... So What? demo by the world's number one Furniture Metal outfit.

The current line-up of the band is as follows:
Mr. Speed - guitars and vocals.
Leigh O'Slayer - vocals and guitars.
Wort Stockholme - drums.
Samurai Spatula - bass.

The band was formed in the new year of 1990 when three bored flatmates decided to buy instruments and learn to play. The name Manslaüghter was chosen, and they decided to play thrash metal as it was easy. Their primary influences included Slayer, Metallica, Megadeath, Tankard, and The Antiques Road Show. Out of this melting pot came the concept of Furniture Metal.

Early hits included the songs Tea Break and Can't Be Arsed which involved tuning up and then going down the pub. To the original trio of Wort, Speed, and Slug Troll on bass, a second guitarist Y. Axl Cyderblent was added. Slug Troll was soon dropped from the line-up however, as (unlike the rest of the band) he was tone deaf and lacked any coordination. Y. Axl moved to bass and Leigh O'Slayer was recruited from the Strapponz to sing and play guitar. Y. Axl soon left to pursue a singularly unsuccessful solo career playing Kiss covers on the cello. The new bassist was the legendary rock 'n' roll veteran Samurai Spatula. The present set contains a range of hard hitting tunes from the power thrashings of Manslaüghter and Sideboards of Destruction to the fast uncompromising rock of Broken Strings, and the raging speed of Oh! Such Hatred. Also included is some of the already classic material from the band's early days.

 
So there you go - a bit like speed metal or death metal, but make no mistake - this be Furniture Metal. I don't think there's anything more I can tell you, because the music speaks for itself.

People eaten in their homes,
Their corpses strewn like garden gnomes,
Ripped to shreds by evil sideboards,
Fight them off with knives and swords...

Download the seven (well, sort of) songs and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Manslaüghter
2 - Sideboards of Destruction
3 - Oh! Such Hatred
4 - Watch Out, Granddad
5 - Can't Be Arsed
6 - Tea Break
7 - Twilight Zone

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The Post-War Busconductors - The Nightmare Begins... (1981) C60

I joined my first band in September 1980 at the age of fourteen. We were called the Pre-War Busconductors. Pooling our resources we had an acoustic guitar, a harmonica, a borrowed semi-acoustic bass, and an Action Man radio which came with a microphone and could be used as an amplifier. We made drum kits up from cardboard boxes and recorded scurrilous tapes of improvised toilet humour songs about people we didn't like at school. After about a year of churning this stuff out in various bedrooms, garages, and even the bogs in the Telegraph Street car park on one occasion, I decided it might be nice to see if I could produce something more serious, or at least something less obviously stupid. I was already recording solo tapes as the Post-War Busconductors, and so that's where this came from. The Nightmare Begins... was never my first album, but it was the first one without bum jokes.

I had heard a little bit of Throbbing Gristle, some Residents, and quite a lot of Public Image Limited, and I wanted to produce something comprising pieces of music rather than songs as such, principally because I couldn't really sing. Whilst I wrote a mean lyric - or so I believed - once beyond subjects such as which kid at school was rumoured to have shagged a chicken, I was less confident and thus elected to allow atmosphere alone to communicate whatever it was I had to say. So I had an acoustic guitar, a cheap electric guitar and amplifier, a knackered toy ukulele found in a charity shop, a recorder, harmonica, two mono portable tape recorders, and that was more or less it, aside - I suppose - from a sort of percussive activity center I had made out of Meccano. I had no means of creating sophisticated effects, and no means of multi-tracking beyond a hissy tape played on the second tape recorder positioned next to the first. My theory was that, creatively speaking, what I did was of greater importance than the technological sophistication of the means by which it was done, and mostly it was a question of judgement - knowing what to do and when to stop, and recording within the limits set by my musical ability, which has never been great.

Aside from girls and their non-availability, I've no idea what any of this was about, although my whistling the march from Carmen would have been a reference to my then recently departed granddad who used to whistle it all the time. Certain musical quotations - notably theme tunes from some BBC motoring show and Noah's Castle - were used probably just because I knew how to play them. Lacking the literary credentials which would have given this work the philosophical weight I felt it needed, I fell back on Doctor Who references (which will be obvious to those who look out for such things), one being the name of the tape. Accordingly, the tune appearing at the end of The March (Nestene) was originally an earworm which came to me years before as I lay ill in bed reading Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion by Terrance Dicks. I would have been about eight, and I still have no idea whether this tune was something I picked up from television, or whether it may even have been an original composition on my part.

So, to summarise, this be some creaky-ass shit, poor quality, kind of repetitive, and with an unusually low point arriving at the end of what was originally side one when I start singing - comically obtuse lyrics in a voice which can't decide whether it wants to be Bowie or Numan, but not so loud as to draw the attention of my mum who was probably in the kitchen making my fish fingers at the time - but now that I've listened to it again, after a break of about thirty years, I think fuck it. It may be piss-poor shite, but it's my piss-poor shite, and is as such still superior to the entire careers of In The Nursery, Porridge, Skinny Puppy, whoever is on the cover of The Wire this month, that bloke from Ministry, and his mate - that drummer, the one who has been in every single industrial rock band ever at one point or another. Even though The Nightmare Begins... failed, I was only a sodding kid for Christ's sake, and at least I tried; and I'm still pleasantly surprised by how the last track actually sounds okay, like it happened on purpose, so screw you!!!

Download the ten songs and cover by clicking on this link, if you're feeling brave.

Tracks:
1 - India
2 - Drown
3 - Three Viewpoints of a War
4 - Jazz Undertow 1 (10/12/81)
5 - Jazz Undertow 2
6 - The March (Nestene)
7 - The Contest of Wills
8 - Remembrance Day
9 - Precambrian
10 - The Sad but Expected Death of Aluminium

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Illyana Rasputin in Pittsburgh (1988) C60

This was myself and John Jasper, the man behind the Joneses, thirty minutes of which can theoretically be found by referring to the index. I had been recording my own stuff under the name Do Easy since about 1982 or thereabouts, the problem with which was - as I began to realise - lack of quality control and the absence of any clear idea of what I was doing. Pieces of music which were obviously rubbish were taped over at source, but unless it was completely shit, I usually stuck it on a cassette in the hope of someone buying it. Additionally there was the problem that my tapes would vary wildly in style and quality from one track to the next. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to be Throbbing Gristle, Soft Cell, Karlheinz Stockhausen, or Leonard Cohen, so it probably all sounded wildly inconsistent. By the time 1988 wheeled around I fancied a fresh go at it with a new name and efforts made to ensure that successive tracks would at least sound like the work of the same person. Illyana Rasputin was a character whom I fancied from the X-Men comics, of which I was reading a ton at the time due to having very little in the way of a sex life. It sounded vaguely exotic and not even remotely industrial, so that was what I went with. This tape was recorded on and off throughout 1988 around at John's house. I and the Village, Pure Finger Point at Earth Scum, In the Ruins of Becelaere, Waterside at 12, Let the Bayonets Speak! and Groove 1889 all came from previous incarnations as Do Easy songs, or at least demos left at varying stages of completion, but half of these compositions are John's doing, and he's the reason I can still listen to any of it without wincing too hard.

The details at which I still wince are entirely mine, and time hasn't healed the wound. Because it was the eighties and I had everything Throbbing Gristle ever recorded (including the ludicrously rare private Death Factory tapes from '76, so nyer nyer nyer all you Johnny-come-lately part-timers) I spent at least some of the time exploring controversial ideas and imagery, just like every other sad fucker with a delay pedal and a copy of that Emlyn Williams book about the moors murderers. Accordingly one of these songs is named after a painting by Adolf Hitler, and another was one of Mussolini's catchphrases, to whom there are a number of additional lyrical references for the sake of flavouring one's Riesling with just a splash of urine for sake of texture. Personally I always saw the referencing of the transgressive as roughly in the tradition of the Surrealists and their like. It honestly never occurred to me that there might actually be genuine Hitler enthusiasts out there strumming acoustic guitars whilst singing about Himmler being a bit like some nice flowers, and getting away with it because industrial music fans are generally as thick as fucking pig shit. When not making daring references to bad 'uns, I was mostly singing about how I hadn't had it off in ages. Why this should have been so is obviously a mystery to me.

It actually took me a couple of years to get around to shoving this tape out under the banner of Runciter Corporation, a name stolen from a Philip K. Dick novel under which I also produced various comics and fanzines. I ran off about fifty or so copies, so far as I can tell, although I'm not sure how many of those I actually sold. The tape was also released by Carl Howard's Audiophile Tapes in the US. I'm not sure how many Carl sold, but from what I can tell by looking at his facebook page, he doesn't appear to own a yacht, so US sales may not even have hit single figures. I probably should have recorded a better tape, I suppose, although for all its innumerable flaws, I've heard worse - even if I do say so myself. I only wish the good bits had been my fault.

Whilst I'm here, I feel I should mention Space Patrol!, Carl Howard's net radio show for which there is a facebook page to be found here, and a dedicated group here. It seems like something worth supporting, so you know what to do.

Download the eleven songs and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Rorschach Love Song
2 - I and the Village
3 - Sad Fascination February 1988
4 - Pure Finger Point at Earth Scum
5 - In the Ruins of Becelaere
6 - Scavenger
7 - Waterside at 12
8 - Let the Bayonets Speak!
9 - Musik in My Gasmask
10 - Pittsburgh
11 - Groove 1889


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Enhoenta Bödlar - Ogreish Guttural Wounds (1984) LP

Vinyl album rather than cassette this week, but this one seems conspicuously absent from the internet so far as I can tell, and I haven't noticed any boutique labels fighting over the right to reissue, so here we are; and here we are because Ogreish Guttural Wounds is a lost classic in my opinion, one of the greatest (or at least weirdest) records ever to be saddled with the unfortunate label of industrial. Enhoenta Bödlar - Swedish for One-Handed Tormentor - were Uddah Buddah and X-Terminator of Ljungby, Sweden or thereabouts. As I understand it, X-Terminator operated the synth whilst Uddah Buddah handled vocals and percussion, although it may not have been quite so clear cut as that. X-Terminator later became better known as the Brighter Death Now guy, and I gather that he and Uddah Buddah may have fallen out shortly after this was recorded. Uddah Buddah was known to his mum as Lennart Eilersen, and he was the person to whom I wrote in his capacity as big cheese of Selbstmord Organización, his tape label which branched out into at least this one slab of vinyl with its photocopied cover held on by masking tape. Its apparent subsequent lack of availability may be on account of the group being so ashamed of it that they buried all the unsold copies, at least according to what Lennart Eilersen told me in one letter:

We have our 1st LP our by Enhoenta Bodlar, but that was so bad that we don't even wanna sell it anymore. The rest of the copies left are meant to be buried in cemetries.

I suppose how bad it could have been is now the obvious question. Personally I wouldn't say it was bad at all, but it is seriously fucking odd, and it doesn't bear much comparison with many other things which have been labelled industrial. One of the greatest things about the Roland SH101 synth is, in my opinion, the arpeggio feature, or whatever the hell it's called - hold down as many keys as you like and the synth runs up and down the sequence over and over like some sort of seasick Dalek pumped full of nose-candy. It's a peculiar, disorientating sound without which Ogrish Guttural Wounds would have been a spoken word album. Aside from the afterthought of metal percussion - teatray, spoon, and metal chair leg by the sound of it, and occasionally apologetic taps on the pads of an MPC Industries Kit - this incarnation of Enhoenta Bödlar had more or less the same dynamic as Whitehouse, but for sounding nothing like them. Instead of the screeching feedback we have that weird electronic sawing noise, and instead of a man ranting about his plonker we have this disturbingly polite Derek Nimmo version of someone from the Church of Satan; or something like that. It sounds like it was recorded on a music center in somebody's front room, and yet the sheer insanity of the enterprise renders it much, much greater than the sum of its parts. Lennart Eilersen cited Monty Python as at least as big an influence as any of the usual droning suspects, which makes a lot of sense, and which probably makes this album at least as great as it is in my imagination. Seriously, if you'd rather listen to Lustmord than this, I feel sorry for your parents.

Oh... and also, I've included Antichrist Ne Telleth which comes from the Carnage in a Country Garden cassette compilation on Anal Probe (1983).

I'm Jesus Christ masturbating.
Just give me concentration, will you.
I need concentration.
I'm Jesus Christ masturbating.
Just give me your hands, will you.
Do it faster!
Do it nicer!
Do it slower!

It's good, you know...

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

Tracks:
1 - Ogreish...
2 - One-Handed Tormentor
3 - We Will All Be Warm-Eaten
4 - Thee Only Way...
5 - Semene Stains
6 - Heathen Nordic Temple
7 - Thwart Thy Lethal Leprosy
8 - Mere Dewy Christian Cunt
9 - I'm Jesus Christ Masturbating
10 - Antichrist Ne Telleth

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The Joneses - Keeping Up With The Joneses (1989) C30

The Joneses were John Jasper, just one bloke with a portastudio who lived around the corner from me in Chatham, Kent. John was musically prolific, recording his own rhythmic dub material heavily influenced by Adrian Sherwood and the On-U sound under the name Regular. We also collaborated on a cassette recorded as Illyana Rasputin, and then there was all his other stuff - things which just never quite seemed to fit in anywhere else. Foremost amongst this most severely mutated material was one side of a cassette he gave me containing these fourteen tracks. The Joneses were unlike his other imaginary bands, particularly in terms of the raw force of sarcasm utilised during recording - assuming it was sarcasm, because frankly it was sometimes difficult to tell what the hell he was playing at. The Joneses most obviously rips huge streaks of piss out of the Smiths, but also seems to take sideways potshots at Mark E. Smith, the Cocteau Twins, and possibly Alan Bennett. The other side of the tape appeared to be taken up by something called Reg Varney's Mobile Coconut Shy.

John was a lovely guy but a pain in the arse, one of the least reliable, most pathologically flaky people I've ever met. He would lend me tapes of Keith LeBlanc albums and swear blind they had been recorded by a friend of his, some guy who lived in Devon. Then he was going on tour, playing bass with Wolfgang Press - really he was. He would fail to show if you arranged to meet him at the pub, or you would go around to his house and he'd pretend he wasn't home. He seemed, at times, a bit mad, and thus provided some evidence in support of that equation about the thin line dividing madness from genius, as expressed in his music. The Joneses, with all its deliberate mistakes, tape distortion, pointed crash edits, and armpit farting noises is a long way from the Barron Knights tradition of satire, comic send up and note perfect pastiche, so far in fact that it exists more or less on its own terms and as such predates Chris Morris and Blue Jam by nearly a decade.

I don't know how well this stuff will translate. Maybe you had to be there. All I know is that the Joneses still make me cry with laughter a quarter of a century later.

He sometimes likes to lie in his bedroom and remove his trousers,
But sometimes his trousers remove him...

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

Tracks:
1 - Edwardian Trout Feef
2 - Reg
3 - Tossing and Turning
4 - Bending Down, Naturally
5 - Don't Eat Sausage
6 - Cor - Strewf!
7 - Night-time Biscuit Horror
8 - Walnuts
9 - Horror in the Office
10 - Spoons
11 - I 'Ad a Ake
12 - Ronnie Rowe
13 - Bedtime Cigar Interruption
14 - Fluffy Fluffy Big Pink Man

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