The Glory Box - Intersect

The Glory Box from Melbourne with 1990's Intersect. I was a teenager. JAMC meet JD with a dash of 80s American guitar noise. Splendid I thought. I still quite like it.

*I forgot that  Fitzroy's PolyEster Records had a label for a while. The Donkey EP from which this song emanates was issued on that imprint. PolyEster also released vinyl by the fuzzy psych group Tyrnaround and the 60s girl group meets the new wave of The Wet Ones. 

Another tape I missed out on but here it is on bandcamp. I know next to nothing about Thomas Ragsdale, the name behind the moniker Sulk Rooms, but this is more choice drifting ambient drone in the isolationist vein. If you're getting tired of all the substandard Aphex/BOC death of rave H****ology that is persistently lingering on into the third decade of the new millennium here's a sub-zero temperature drop to take you to the wintry outer reaches of your consciousness. Not that it's unpleasant, it just doesn't play up to your brain's insatiable cravings for remnants of 90s rave culture. Loving this a lot. 

The Superceded Sounds of​.​.​. The New Obsolecents

I keep missing all these limited editions of vinyl & cassettes because I'm not across everything I'm into as 2022 has been a disastrous year for my brain. Anyway this would have been nice and the closest most of us are ever likely to get to owning a physical edition of a Philips 21st Century Prospectives Series LP. These design people today are going to great lengths for their art. Anyway cover aside this is Howlround in collaboration with DJ Food recorded a few years back. This music was commissioned by Johnny Trunk for an all night soundtrack to the Museum Of Last Parties soirée in 2016 which was held at The Museum Of London. Last year The New Obsolecents had time up their sleeves so they culled many hours of tape into this nifty lil' chunk for your listening pleasure in 2022. Isolationist vibes here, pretty fucking choice!

Bloodclot.... ED RUSH

 

Awe....

some...

Major Tom (völlig losgelöst/Coming Home) - Pete Schilling

NOT THE DAVID BOWIE SONG

 

When I first heard the bass in this song a few years ago in the background to a scene in the tv spy drama The Americans I thought "Is this the Hunters & Collectors?" Then when the verse started I thought maybe it's Wire or a Wire solo/side project. Then the song was pushed to the foreground in the sound-field of the show and I realised the gloriously soaring 80s chorus was being sung in an accent. Research had to be done. Major Tom (völlig losgelöst) is sung by Neue Deutsche Welle musician Pete Schilling. So it turns out this tune didn't crack the top 40 here in Australia while just over the Tasman Sea in New Zealand it reached no. 13. It went to no. 14 in America and was a number 1 hit in many European countries including Schilling's native Germany. Of course it went to numero uno in Canada! Anyway it's a classic.

Hang on the plot thickens...while most of the English speaking world already knew this song I did not but it turns out I had heard it before in an episode of Breaking Bad. It's the song Gale Boetticher is singing in English on the karaoke video found in his apartment in the fourth episode of season 4: Bullet Points from 2011. 

*Perhaps the title of this post should be Sad Old Man Discovers Song On TV Show Then Reads About It On The Interwebs. 

The English version & video released a few months later in 1983. This version might even be better than the original!

Richard H Kirk 1956-2021

I've only become aware of Kirk's death in the last week as I'm no longer following media or going online on a regular basis to protect my brain from nonsense. You can thank the morons on both sides of the political spectrum for that. That in turn means both media teams who toe their narrow radicalised party lines. Name calling is what politics has become and you don't even realise you're doing it. Funnily enough this is the sort of subject matter Richard H Kirk, who died mysteriously on the 21st of September, was interested in from the early days of Cabaret Voltaire up until his final recordings. Cabaret Voltaire's paranoid vision was straight out of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four, Ballard, Boroughs and other futuristic and dystopian novels, movies and current affairs. He had a deep distrust of government, and if I recall correctly he thought all politics was corrupt. So his concerns were more relevant than ever in 2021 with the rising tide of authoritarianism in democratic countries, twitter's thought crime, mass psychosis, the surreptitiousness of big tech, The Great Reset etc. Kirk's visions of dystopia are almost fully realised in Western Civilisation today.

I've written about my love of Cabs before so I'm just gonna post some of his music that I've been listening to recently. He had something like 40 solo aliases such as Sandoz, Dark Magus & Al Jabr plus a bunch of collaborative projects like Acid Horse & Sweet Exorcist. He was part of at least three distinct music movements: Industrial (Experimental electronic post-punk), 80s conform to deform alternative dance music and Bleep & Bass (A distinctly British Variant of Techno). His music appeared on labels such as Industrial Records, Rough Trade, Factory, Virgin, Some Bizarre, Wax Trax, Blast First, Warp, Mute, Touch etc. Plus he had his own label Intone.

Sweet Exorcist is Richard H Kirk's groundbreaking project in collaboration with Richard Barrett aka DJ Parrot. They became the first act to release an album on WARP Records.

John Murphy: Drums, Screams, Trumpet, Guitar, Electronic FX, Songwriter, Vocals, Gong, Samples, Gamelan, Timpani, Synth...

Speaking of John Murphy, who played drums on peak era Associates records from 80-82, here he is along with with Ollie Olsen performing Rooms For The Memory.  Whirlywirld never officially released this song unfortunately. This audio is apparently taken from the desk at The Crystal Ballroom in Melbourne's beachside suburb St Kilda in 1979. This was Whirlywirld's first ever live show. Michael Hutchence would later record this tune for the film Dogs In Space (1986).

The first time Michael Hutchence collaborated with Ollie Olsen. Their musical partnership would later blossom into the Max Q project, that would also include John Murphy, a few years later. The drum programming is credited to Olsen here but there is a dude playing drums in the clip but I can't make out if it's Murphy or not.

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The best incarnation of Whirlywirld recorded this EP in 1978 and disbanded before ever playing live. This line up included John Murphy, Andrew Duffield (Models), Dean Richards (Equal Local, Hot Half Hour), Simon Smith  and Ollie Olsen

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Signals was co-written by Murphy & Olsen and appeared on the flipside of the Whirlywirld EP which was recorded in 1978 but released in 1979. Wicked bleak minimal electronics.

John Murphy formed this noisey Melbourne group in 1985. They are a little known obscurity of a subterranean scene compared to the cult underground groups he worked with like SPK, Lustmord, Death In June, Current 93, Whitehouse, Shriekback, Nurse With Wound, Box The Jesuit, Hugo Race's True Spirit etc. God knows what Murphy's contribution is here. He was playing guitar, drums, effects and even singing by this stage. 

Murphy continues his musical partnership with Ollie Olsen with Orchestra Of Skin & Bone. Their one LP was released in 1986 and pretty much dropped all synthetics for acoustic instrumentation played with an intense hard edge. Sometimes would later be revamped by Max Q into an unlikely dance-rock tune to become a top 40 hit in Australia.

Speaking of Max Q this Todd Terry remix from 1989 of Ghost Of The Year is fucking awesome. 

Max Q was an Australian underground/overground crossover supergroup sensation. The Band consisted of John Murphy, Gus Till, Bill McDonald, Michael Sheridan, Arnie Hanna, Ollie Olsen and Michael Hutchence. Murphy is in fine form with this rhythm. If you stripped the vocals off here it would resemble a Basic Channel/Chain Reaction style of minimal tech many years before it even existed. Tuuuuune! 

This 1990 EP was improv avant-noise-metal inspired by Hendrix & Chrome apparently. It pretty fucking choice. Murphy on drums, Michael Sheridan on guitar and David Brown on Bass. They were mind-blowing live!

Crashing Cars In Germany

Quite possibly my favourite Bowie songs (as opposed to his instrumental trax) along with The Bewlay Brothers, Five Years, Life On Mars &...

When i first heard this on Melbourne radio as a 15 year old in the 80s I couldn't fathom what I was hearing. I knew it was music that I'd been waiting for. I mean i knew The Model as it was a top 40 hit when I was in primary school but subconsciously that was filed along with great synth-pop like Soft Cell, Human League etc. and the Euro new wave of Plastic Bertrand, Falco et al. but Autobahn was a whole other type of beast altogether. 

This was around the same time I first heard The Velvet Underground as those brilliant archival records VU & Another View were getting loads of airplay on underground Melbourne radio. It was a similar thing too as I'd heard "Walk On The Wild Side" as a pre-teen and was then a staple of classic FM radio but tracks like Ocean, Foggy Notion, Rock'n'Roll etc. were totally something else. The connections between these two acts wouldn't reveal itself to me until a few years later. 

Two revelations that would grow, stay relevant and stick with me forever. Anyway back to cars.

As I've said many times before New Wave was the best music for pre-teens and this great song left an indelible impression on me.

I never heard this until I was in my 20s. The Scottish Associates didn't have hits or appear on pop tv in Australia so they were a group you had to discover on your own somehow. I think I got into The Associates because legendary Melbourne drummer John Murphy of Whirlywirld, Orchestra Of Skin & Bone, Max Q and The Dumb & The Ugly fame joined the band for their peak chart era. Anyway tuuuuune! 

Oh I was meant to write something tying all these records together with road movies in some kind of meaningful way mentioning journeys and destinations and how that line is blurred blah blah but er... I forgot. Sometimes writing about music is pointless and dumb anyway. Just listen to these fabulous tunes! 

Marc Acardipane - The Most Famous Unknown Expansion Packs 6 & 7

Many more remastered classics here. Still the most modern music you'll here this year!

MOVIES - PART 44

RECENTLY RE/WATCHED

MINI TWO SENTENCE REVIEWS

Terrific suspenseful crime movie from 1954. Robbery, border towns, singing in bars, messenger boys, cop killing and more starring the sterling Sterling Hayden & the glorious Gloria Grahame.

George Segal is an incredibly convincing charismatic junkie & Karen Black is his charming girlfriend in 1970 NYC pre Mean Streets (1973). I recommend.

A low key yet devastating 1970 cult film with ageing Gregory Peck as a sheriff & Tuesday Weld as the daughter of a bootlegger somewhere down south. A fed arrives in town ensuring things in this small town will go awry. Highly recommended.

Excellent debut feature for Paul Thomas Anderson about shenanigans in the underbelly of Las Vegas with great performances from Philip Baker Hall, John C Reilly, Gwyneth Paltrow & Sammy Jackson. 

A dude with ptsd from WWII gets angry with a dude with ptsd from the Vietnam War at a secluded lake resort plus a rape revenge subplot. Fine entertainment.

A prisoner escapes and is out for revenge in this brilliantly suspenseful late in the cycle film noir. Directed by the legendary Budd Boetticher.

Dude pretends to be another dude. How do you reckon that works out? Very eerie ending. Fantastic 1975 Antonioni film.

Melodramatic colour desert noir somewhat lacking in the good story department starring the wonderful Lizabeth Scott who seems to just drive up and down the street. Also stars the undeniable Burt Lancaster and the ever reliable Wendell Corey. Nobody calls their kid Wendell any more.

Pretty weird 1970 movie where a mother (An ageing but still fabulous Rita Hayworth) believes some strange dude is her long lost son. Peculiar events unfold. Tops.

Phil Karlson doesn't make bad movies. All the right ingredients are here in this 1953 crime flick: Jewel thieves, boxers, murder, framing & escaping the country. 

Too wordy and trying to be too smart for its own good. One of Hitchcock's worst & most dated films despite its two fabulous leads.

Ace opening with the an incredible car chase followed by the great train robbery that becomes a snooze fest, worth a look though if only for the outstanding chase sequence. Robbery is directed by Peter Yates who would direct the far superior Bullitt (1968) the following year.

Casinos, mobsters, robberies, murder and false identities: What more do you need from a 40s crime movie? Joan Bennett you say...well she's here too.

Boring 2008 Aussie horror movie that everybody else seems to like. Gimme The Loved Ones (2009) any day!

Top noir murder mystery where the great Elisha Cook Jr doesn't even get his name on the poster.

Excellent Spaghetti Western with Franco Nero & George Hamilton, directed by Lucio Fulci need I say more?!

Everybody loves this 1946 crime flick that goes on a bit too long. It's alright but overrated in my book. It wouldn't make my top 50 Film Noir list.

Great 70s bleak neo noir starring iconic couple Burt Reynolds as a cop & Cathy Deneuve as a sex worker. 70s films don't get much better than this.

90s thriller masterpiece that verges into horror. A yuppie's wife goes missing after their car breaks down in the desert. 90s movies don't get better than this.

Paranoid 1952 heist flick of the highest order where a criminal crew of strangers are assembled by Mr Big. Sound familiar? You'd have to think Tarantino took plenty of ideas from here for Reservoir Dogs (1992). Directed by the wonderful Phil Karlson.

Don't go to the county fair in Kansas City. Demented 1972 film about a rivalry between two Irish Mobsters, Lee Marvin & Gene Hackman. Sissy Spacek's plays a sex slave in her debut film role. 

In 1949 an ageing boxer must decide between his marriage or boxing. I was thinking "I hate boxing movies. Boxing is a very odd stupid sport. Why did they ever come up with that?" Then halfway through the film you're going "Yeah this is awesome. Plus Raging Bull (1980) & Fat City (1972) are two of my favourite movies!"

Ben Gazzara is at the top of his game in this choice Peter Bogdanovich 1979 character study set in Singapore about an American pimp with a some kind of heart. Don't go in expecting anything too plot driven, it's all about the vibe which is perfectly realised.