Heyday - The Church

Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock Part V

The Church - Heyday (1985)

Quite the befitting title right here. Cherished among fans of The Church, Heyday's full of great tunes like Already Yesterday, Myrrh, Tristesse, Columbus and the blistering live favourite Tantalized. On Night Of Light and Youth Worshipper they reach Forever Changes levels of sophistication with fabulous horn and string arrangements. The Church made the 80s version of the 60s awesome, hang on that's not really fair is it? Although this is probably their most 60s inspired set, it's those shirts that make you jump the gun to such stupid conclusions. There was a lot of 70s, 80s and future Church idiosyncrasies at play here too......... It was most definitely 80s music though, you know like The Smiths were an 80s band. They may have had influences from other eras but just because it didn't sound like Nik Kershaw doesn't mean it wasn't quintessential 80s music!..... er.....that goes for both bands. Still you can get out your pointy shoes and paisley shirts and relive this classic LP. Funnily enough I had a paisley shirt on today, and straight black jeans but unfortunately I don't own a pair of pointy shoes any longer, I had to just go with me brown suede boots. I'm sure Marty Willson Piper would have been proud of my outfit though as would Steve Kilbey, I reckon.

They were the coolest. No doubt. This makes you wanna roll a joint and enjoy your life.

In the classic tradition of AC/DC, playing on the back of a truck for your film clip. Priceless!

This video is sound and vision perfection, doncha reckon?

*A fucking phenomenal live version of Tantalized here. Talk about kickin out the jams, wow!

**I've written about Heyday before here.
***Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock series is taken from the HIGH CULTure website.

Seance - The Church

Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock Part IV

Séance from 1983 is the third Church album and, like their two previous LPs, it's a classic. This time they get Nick Launay to produce. This is a strange combination to be sure and some fans were shocked by the studio affects, particularly the drum sounds, on this recording.  About half of the record is studio trickery, strings and keyboards added to their usual dual guitar interplay. The other half is fairly true to their trippy jangling live sound. Séance is a moody and atmospheric affair. Steve Kilbey travels darker terrain than usual, which is fine because there isn't a bad tune to be found here at all.

*Track 5 Travel By Thought here.

The Blurred Crusade - The Church

Tim's Ultra Rough Guide To Rock Part III

The second Church album is where they really hit their stride. Steve Kilbey (singer, songwriter, bass player & slide guitarist) even describes it as ‘an unimaginable leap forward.’ The LP title says it all. It’s a Blurred Crusade. The production here is warm and puts The Church into a lush soft focus. What’s striking listening back to it today is how much keyboard action there is, pianos, harpsichord, hammond and even a Celeste, all played by Kilbey. Nick Ward was replaced by the phenomenal Richard Ploog on drums. Ploog freed up the band to be more spacious and fluid. So began the classic line-up of The Church which continued for the next 8 years. This LP hit the top 10 in 1982 and went double gold in Australia. It opened with the definitive Church song Almost With You, a top forty hit which had a fabulous spanish guitar lead break by Peter Koppes (lead guitar, backing vocals, tubular bells & percussion) very 1982. When You Were Mine was next and what a rocking epic it was. Marty Willson-Piper (electric, acoustic & 12 string guitars) describes it as ‘a snarling beast.’ The guitars here are metallic and driving while the keyboards are eerie and cold. Willson-Piper sings lead vocals on Field Of Mars despite the lyrics being written by Kilbey. This is a wicked haunted trip, complete with the usual jangle, bent lead breaks, otherworldly keyboards and even some bells to top it off. Apparently it’s about a graveyard where a deceased friend of Kilbey’s resides. God that’s just the first three tunes. We’ve got rockin toe tappers (A Fire Burns), almost cosmic country sweetness (Don’t Look Back), sumptuous romantic janglers (To Be In Your Eyes), Hallucinogenic psych outs (An Interlude), mysterious lullabies (Secret Corners) and 12 string workouts (Just For You). Then there’s the all time classic 8 minute epic You Took which contains the lyric that would become the album title and the best way to describe this song. You Took is a band at the peak of their powers resulting in an astonishing display of rock dynamics. While The Church had a few things in common with LA’s Paisley Underground like a love for psychedelia, The Byrds, The Velvets, 12 string guitars etc. they were much more than that. The Church also loved the pop end of prog, recent British music of the time like John Foxx (solo & with Ultravox), Be Bop Deluxe (?), Gary Numan, quite possibly the entire history rock and god knows what else. Most of all The Church were an incredibly distinct unit whose intangible chemistry could never be replicated so their music was always original, never mere pastiche. Glorious.    

Antipodean Urban Space

Three fucking great mental tripped out driving tunes. Psychedelic post-kraut/punk urban intensity that could have only come from one place and one time, New Zealand in the 80s.
*More on Scorched Earth Policy here.

Ghostface Killah - Twelve Reasons To Die II

ADRIAN YOUNGE PRESENTS TWELVE REASONS TO DIE II STARRING GHOSTFACE KILLAH
I kept seeing this cover everywhere on the interweb. It's obviously a homage to 70s Italian Giallo film posters and it got me intrigued so much so that I coughed up the dough to see what Ghostface Killah is up to now, plus I heard it was pretty good. The last Wu Tang Clan related release I bought was his very own Ironman from 1996 (can you believe that's 19 years ago?). I did have taped copies of Wu Tang Clan's The W and Iron Flag and those tapes were ok but they were nowhere near the magnificence of Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) from 93 and the classic run of solo LPs from 94 to 96: Method Man's Tical, Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return To The 36 Chambers, Chef Raekwon's Only Built For Cuban Lynx, Genius/GZA's Liquid Swords & the aforementioned Ghostface classic Ironman. Apparently Ghostface Killah recorded several other post-Ironman classics (during my rap blackspot era) such as Supreme Clientele (2000), Fishscale (2006) and the first volume of Twelve Reasons To Die (2013) amongst others.

I'm used to listening to modern hip-hop with its crisp drum machines, synth keys, electronic bass and general digital textures so it's weird to hear an album like this. When I first heard 12 Reasons To Die II I thought it was deep crate digging at its finest (Ala Paul's Boutique or Entroducing) with samples of Turkish psych bass lines, Allessandroni fuzz, old funk beats from obscure 45s, strange Euro easy listening, divas from Morricone/Nicolai soundtracks, scratchy dub singles, trippy Moog sounds from library records etc. So I thought it was a sampladelic record, but on about the 3rd listen when I started listening closely, it all seemed a bit too smooth and cohesive. Upon further investigation it was revealed that the backing tracks are actually all live instrumentation (I think) from retro arranger extraordinaire Adrian Younge. So Younge has replicated a sample laden hip hop album by playing all the instruments instead of sampling them. I'm not sure if there's a point to this strategy apart from the reactions 'Wow that's quite an effort!', 'Gee These are Strange days indeed!' or 'Is he following the kind of manifesto put forth by Daft Punk on Random Access Memories, whatever that was?' Anyway Adrain Younge seems to have swallowed a cool 70s pill. Several layers of retromania are at play here. Firstly we are put it in a mid 90s Wu zone with the propulsive and intense rapping of Ghostface Killah and his chums Raekwon & RZA and the return of the Tony Starks pseudonym who originally appeared on the brilliant Only Built For Cuban Linx LP. Secondly Younge's backing trax have a Finders Keepers/Lo Recordings/Now Again etc. vibe which is both 70s and post-millennial as most of us never heard this sort of shit until it got extensively reissued in the last 20 years by the likes of these and many other record labels. Thirdly it's a live instrument recording produced by a one man producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist harking back to the days when Stevie Wonder did this kind of thing. I'm not really sure what to make of these observations. It is what it is I suppose.

Anyway when Ghostface Killah's voice appears it's like an old friend showing up like nothing's changed since the mid 90s. Raekwon is a welcome feature on five of these tunes and RZA pops up on a handful of trax too. Twelve Reasons To Die II runs at half the time of Ironman and this leaves you wanting more. Which is better than wishing a quality control editor had been employed to get rid of the filler to keep the LP more concise. I'm not really into comic books and I'm not a 100% sure what he's on about on every track but it sounds so good, what does it matter? It all adds to the Wu mystique and there are no bad tunes here. Who'd have thought Ghostface Killah would be making one of the best hip hop albums of 2015? Dunno, but he has.

Antipodean Space Debris III

Strange and haunted. When I first heard this I thought this was a sound that could only come out of New Zealand like Pink Frost....er....and I think I was right.

Lovely

Strangely lovely

Nice

Strange and beautiful soundz from NZ once again. Peter was previously in the Great NZ band This Kind Of Punishment with his bro Graeme who released at least two masterpieces This Kind Of Punishment (1983) and Beard Of Bees (1984). I can't comment on their 3rd LP as it's never crossed my path. This tune is from his terrific debut solo album The Last Great Challenge In A Dull World (1990). This Xpressway tape features NZ underground rock royalty ie. David Mitchell (Goblin Mix/Exploding Budgies/3Ds), Bruce Russell (Dead C), Kathy Bull (Look Blue, Go Purple), Robbie Yeats (The Verlaines), Alastair Galbraith (The Rip/Plagal Grind/Solo etc.) and a few others. Quite a line-up eh?

Weird Antipodean space. These two were both in the fabulous rock band The 3Ds.

More beautifully askew soundz from the ends of the earth. This time Jefferies collaborates with Robbie Muir of The Rip and Plagal Grind.

Antipodean Space Debris II

I thought we'd have a little Church trip with some of their most epic tunes through the ages. This is from the first record Of Skins & Heart (1981). I suppose then this is their first epic. I still love a very lot (sic).

I've never seen this video in my life. Anyway this is the biggest epic on their epic laden 2nd LP The Blurred Crusade (1982). Still a live killer to this day.

This is from the 3rd LP Seance (1983) and would be their most experimental tune up to that point in time. Still very fucking cool

Trance Ending was actually a b-side to Columbus a single off Heyday (1985). Great middle eastern trip out. Nice.

One of the great things about The Church was their album opening tracks and this is one of their greatest. You have to keep in mind these guys were on major labels throughout the 80s and they really didn't give a fuck about trends. They had top 40 singles in Australia and America so that was a problem for Indie people but The Church were also doing their own thing alienating them most of the time from the mainstream. They really didn't fit anywhere making them true cult outsiders. They also inspired a legion of groups who were obviously enamoured by their talent and artistic vision not to mention their fashion sense. You could never recreate that unique synergy though and those acolytes must have soon realised being as effortlessly cool as The Church wasn't quite as easy as they made it look. Starfish (1988) was their 5th classic in a row and their most popular and successful LP of their career. It even went gold in the US.

Let's forget about album number 6 shall we, Seve Kilbey's been trying to ever since 1990. Here's another great opening tune this time to their 7th album Priest=Aura from 1992. Kilbey claims this LP to be the true follow up to Starfish. If it had been perhaps they would have been as big as their contemporary The Cure, in The USA at least. America is still their bread and butter though as well as Australia. Having said that they were quite a cult band throughout pockets of Europe during the 80s and remain so to this day. Funnily enough I think after Johnny Marr and Stephen Patrick Morrissey had a meeting and decided to form The Smiths they went out that night to a Church concert. I reckon you can tell Marr must have loved their guitars and was influenced by them. Priest=Aura was probably their last consistently excellent LP until 98's Hologram Of Baal and their recent classic Untitled #23 (2009).

With this opening 1994's Sometime, Anywhere I thought we were in for an absolute killer album. The LP was ok but contained a couple of naff tunes and was perhaps a little long. It did have many other excellent songs though but this is the most memorable one for me. 

Another choice LP opener this time for their 9th album Magician Among The Spirits from 1996. Jesus I've forgotten how good this is, must dig out the cd. Surely this is the only place to you'll hear Jeff Kennett, Ida Lupino and Milli Vanilli mentioned in the same song. I always thought Kilbey said Alan Moulder (the legendary engineer/producer of JAMC, MBV, The Boo Radleys etc.) at the end of this tune but disappointingly the youtube uploader reckons it's Alan Muller* whoever he is? This is a phenomenal trippy spaced out improv (shhh!) psych jam. Steve's answer to Madonna's Vogue, doncha reckon?

*Uh huh, Alan Muller painted this! Great painting of SK. He must have painted the cover for SK's 4th solo LP Remindlessness (1990) as well. Actually looking at them together now it's the same picture just zoomed in, I think, maybe....

More on this classic double LP in a future blog post.

Antipodean Space Debris - A CardrossManiac2 Tangent

Hardly Baked has a few clips here of The Church & The Go-Betweens. Steve Kilbey is not only a brilliant songwriter/musician but he's a massive music fan. He loved The Go-Betweens so much he coerced Grant McLennan into collaborating with him on the Jack Frost project. This was recorded, after The Go-Betweens had broken up, in 89 or 90. Number 11 is the tune that stuck with me most from their debut LP. Anyway see below to see how much of a fanboy SK was and still is of Australian rock.

Of course as pointed out in this speech by a heckling ex manager Kilbey wasn't always a card. He was quite renowned for being a sullen bastard in the 80s. So much so that after Kilbey did a poetry reading in Melbourne one night I refused to get my book of his poetry signed in case he was not particularly nice. I think his drug change up from pot & heroin to uppers has made his true personality come to the fore. He's become an all round entertainer. This is a guy who wouldn't appear on Australia's most popular 80s variety show Hey Hey It's Saturday. Now I reckon he'd love to be part of that show's dodgy repartee. As Julia Zemiro points out, at the end of this crazy off the cuff speech, he really could host his own show. This is the best speech I've ever heard without a doubt and I fucking hate awards shows and speeches in general. It's true gold like many Church albums. He's a national treasure and we are blessed by his continuing fabulousness.

I mean here's some evidence right here. The Church released one of their best songs ever Space Saviour in 2009 like 30 after they started.

Kilbey loved The Triffids too. I once saw The Triffids 5 or 6 years back in Melbourne obviously sans one Dave McComb but they had a bunch of guests taking over vocal duties. The highlight of the show was when Steve Kilbey came out with no guitar, just a mike, in a sleeveless truckers shirt and made four Triffids classics his own. By that I mean 10 times better than the originals. The peak was when he did an incredibly intense version of Field Of Glass, one of the most memorable live rock moments in my life. So incredible this was that my wife wife can't listen to The Triffids anymore because Steve changed those songs forever. Of course he's the coolest guy on the planet so that's totally understandable.

This is the original which was recorded at the BBC in November 84 for a Peel Session.... I think. Overwrought to the max. Weirdly this could almost be a Bad Seeds tune from 1994. The late Dave McComb was a Nick Cave fan and at the same time Mick Harvey was a Triffids fan. Then of course in the 90s The Bad Seeds gained ex-Triffids bass player Martyn P Casey who remains an integral part of that band to this day.

To complete the circle here we've got the late Grant McLennan introducing The Triffids Raining Pleasure on Rage circa 1999. Which was kinda weird as we were led to believe that The Triffids and The Go-Betweens were arch enemies in the 80s. That was probably a media beat up but a good story none the less Now this tune is evocative of Antipodean space.

So many classic Forster lines in this one - " it's not my cup of thrills"

Spring Hill Fair is definitely The Go-Betweens LP I've played the most and is my favourite, I don't get why it isn't everybody else's. I mean the first four Go-Betweens LPs (Send Me A Lullaby, Before Hollywood, Spring Hill Fair and Liberty Belle And The Black diamond Express) are pure fucking gold aren't they? While the last 2 (in their original 80s stint) Tallulah & 16 Lover Lane are quite patchy and in 16 Lovers Lane's case way overrated. I mean it got it's own episode on *Australian Classic Albums??

*Perhaps more on that absurd and problematic show another time.

I remember hearing an interview with drummer Lindy Morrison who was Robert Forster's romantic partner up to this point in time. Anyway when she first heard this tune she knew it was his way of saying goodbye to their relationship. Only Forster could be hilarious, scathing and so fucking poignant at the same time. What a bittersweet song if there ever was one. 

All of this is reminiscent of my brother and I sitting around listening this record and the joy it brought us. Of course Forster was a funny bastard with great comic delivery. He was just as funny when he was serious as well. Forster was also a sterling songwriter. Then there was Grant who we thought was funny too but for different reasons. He seemed a little too earnest, over confident, serious and very uncool. There was no denying Grant's gift for songwriting though. The juxtaposition between these two personalities was strange and sort of comic as well. I guess they complimented each other though. Later on in my life I met them both and they were absolute gentlemen as you would imagine.

DJ Mustard - The Mixtape Volume 1 (10 Summers)

DJ MUSTARD - THE MIXTAPE VOL 1 10 SUMMERS
After the disappointing 10 Summers album of last year I didn't think I'd be going back to DJ Mustard at all. I thought his time was up and it was time to move on but after listening to RJ & Choice's Rich Off Mackin my mind was swayed to believe he still had something to give. You would have thought he'd have distanced himself from the 10 Summers title though, so it's a little odd that he recycles it for this much improved release. I assume Choice who turns up here is the same man as Royce The Choice of the great Midnight Run which was my favourite tune from DJ Mustard's brilliant Ketchup mixtape from 2013. Anyway Choice along with RJ dominate this mixtape appearing on a third of the tunes. Mustard's old mates Teeflii, Ty Dolla $ign and TC4800 pop up on a tune or two each. YG is is conspicuous by his absence. Iamsu! from the HBK Gang is a fabulous new Mustard trump card. Iamsu! should be as big as Kanye and perhaps he will be. He's got the pop smarts with a delivery that's 2010s rap perfection. Broke Boy is soo good, surely it would be a no 1 smash if released as a single. Mustard is upping the R&B dosage and cutting back the banger intake but that's not a bad thing at all. There's nothing worse than a tune wanting to be a banger but not working. RJ & Choice are pretty much killing everything they do in 2015 and somehow Mustard leaves room to let their idiosyncrasies ferment even further. Dijon (Mustard geddit?) surely realises he's struck gold with these two artists and compliments RJ & Choice with his beats rather than upstaging them. Previously it sometimes sounded like Mustard's rappers had been given a completed beat where they had to try to fit their raps to it, no matter how unaccommodating it may have been. Now it feels like Mustard is more flexible, organic and collaborative. I don't know if he's changed his working methods but it sure sounds like it. Last year I thought DJ Mustard had reached some kind of sonic arrested development but here he proves, with a little perseverance, that he is still mutating. Regression is part of this move ie. several tunes go further back than his past retro-activities ie. some songs reference stuff earlier than Dre circa 92/93 or mid 90s Three Six Mafia. Some of this stuff has got 80s R&B, funk and slow jam vibes. I guess he was always tipping his hat to these zones but perhaps not as deliberately or explicitly as he does here. Then you would swear Shooters was an instrumental outtake from Tricky's Maxinquaye. Actually come to think of it a few tracks have a Massive Attack/Trip-Hop feel. I haven't counted but there seems to be less military chanting on Vol. 1. which is probably a good thing as that started to seem a little formulaic and stale. I don't know who Justine Sky is but fuck she gives Cassie and Tinashe a run for their money on Love. This mixtape ain't no Ketchup but it also ain't no bloody 10 Summers either ie. I'm not deleting this off my computer, I'm about to give it another spin. Dj Mustard is transitioning. Let's hope he continues to in a good direction.

On The Hi-Fi Part ??? - Jungle/Tech-Step Special

DA INFLUENCE MIX PART 1 - BASIC RHYTHM

I can't really remember how I found this mix. I'm not even sure who Basic Rhythm is but this is a mix of some choice mid 90s jungle cutz. Dillinja is in there and DJ Krust. Plus a whole bunch of stuff I've not heard, heard and can't necessarily id. 

TECHSTEPPIN - VARIOUS (EMOTIF RECORDINGS) 1996

Keeping the hardcore vibes going, I finally got a copy of Techsteppin. After re-appraising Tech-Step a while back when listening to the excellent No U-Turn comp Torque, I thought I'd check this out. While it's still got very faint traces of jazz (the darker side of 70s Miles Davis) there no lightness like there was was in in intelligent or jazzy jungle. Distress, claustrophobia and paranoia are at the heart of darkness in these tunes. Torque, released a year later, would pummel out any source elements of jazz in Tech-Step. Actually by the end of this cd that's pretty much what's happened anyway. This is Drum & Bass that's all about the bass. While the beats keep to an almost military-esque stringency like industrial but vaguely funky, the bass is like subterranean scud missiles breaking through the earth's crust. This thick bass goo hits you like a vengeful blow to the body. Techsteppin contains tracks from No U-Turn luminaries Ed Rush plus Trace & Nico under the aliases of Skyscraper and Rollers Instinct. I guess Doc Scott is like the godfather of Tech-Step who was from the original milieu of Darkside Hardcore (NHS EP, Here Come The Drumz etc.) and he shows up here with a sterling performance on Machines. His Tech-Step swarms, buzzes and drones with astonishingly ominous dread. Techsteppin's harsh urban nowhere reached a bleak dead end and I mean that as a compliment. This is another reason to prove that getting off the hardcore continuum around 1995/96 (which is what I did) was wrong. Get numb.

*"It's too purple. Reading that felt like someone doing a bad impression of you."

*Special comments from Mrs Space Debris. She doesn't pull any punches does she? She didn't appreciate me describing the bass as 'like underground thick pools of mutant goo'. So I rewrote it. Is she my new editor? I don't necessarily take purple as a criticism. I mean the best part of reading Melody Maker in 87/88/89 was the purple prose they used to excite me about the likes of Young Gods, AR Kane, My Bloody Valentine, Loop, Butthole Surfers etc. I was never disappointed when I got my hands on those records either.

PEARSALL PRESENTS SURGICAL SOUNDS - DOC SCOTT

Continuing on with the hardcore........Pearsall presents a mix of the aforementioned Doc Scott. This set includes Scott's remix work for the likes of System 7, Spring Heel Jack and Goldie. Then we've got his own solo tunes plus those under the pseudonym Nasty Habits. Pearsall points out Doc Scott never phoned in his remixes, he makes them his own. Doc's own trax are even more outstanding. Another mix that's a bewdy from Mr Sonicrampage!