Absofuckinglutely gorgeous tune from an underrated Flying Nun band. Recorded in 1988.
JPS Experience Get My Point
From one my favourite Flying Nun records of all time The Size of Food. This is a fucking incredible intense psychedelic track. I love how he's losin his mind at the end. More gold.
Wow I cant believe how great this is every time I hear it. I can't put my finger on what it is about this tune. From 1985 this is their only 7" before singer/guitarist James Darroch died in a car crash en route from Sydney to Melbourne for a tour. There was an EP recorded prior to his untimely death released posthumously. What could have been? More mid 80s gold from when Sydney was the place to be.
Glitter punk into New Wave from 1979. I love this song. Can't deny classic status for this track. The godfathers of Eddy Current doncha reckon? Frankston area scuzz.
Forest Of Evil II - Frank Reidy & Eric Allen (De Wolfe)
This would have to be in my top 5 library LPs of all time. Splendid Haunted Arrangements from 1981. Strings and electronics. Perfect for days like these. The title says it all. Class and quality all the way. This shit should get a reissue, can't recall where I found this though. I've been tryin' to track down Volume 1 for years now but to no avail.
Cold Nose - Franco Falsini
For fans of mellow kosmiche. Laconic atmospheric guitar and electronics from this Italian chap recorded in 1975. Reissued last year on the fine Spectrum Spools label
Tellus #13 Power Electronics - Various Artists
Downloaded this from UbuWeb and wow what a revelation. Only a couple of familiar names here for me Merzbow, f/i and Rhys Chatham. The rest ?? But the rest are fucking great. Who'd heard of Merzbow in 1985? The guys at Tellus were certainly documenting the cutting edge. I'm loving the track excerpt from between Space by Psyclones which is prime space rock electronics with radio and turntable manipulation by the sounds. The Heaviest from Master/Slave Relationship is a gas that sounds like it could come from the current cassette underground. Joseph Nechvatal's track How ToKill is an Oswaldian deconstruction of Janet Jackson's Nasty Boys. There's even a Christian Industrial band, Blackhouse, amidst these nihilistic fiends. Anyway that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's plenty more. Controlled Bleeding are here who once did a split LP with Maybe Mental who also feature with 2 tracks. A lot of these bands recorded for the Ladd-Frith cassette label which was run by Brian Ladd of Blackhouse & Julie Frith of Psyclones. Other labels connected to these groups include SubRosa, Subterranean, Staalplat, RRRrecords etc so you know it's quality. F/i finish the set with the most er... rock (if you can call it that) track which sent me on this mission of rediscovery....
Space Mantra - F/i
This is classic space rock from 1988. Space Mantra is possibly the greatest scuzz psych/space rock LP of the 80s. Who else was doing anything remotely like this in the mid to late 80s? These are sonic transmissions from amongst the space debris. Occasionally stopping off in clangorous ethnic tribal colonies. This deep space rock drifts into black corridors then blasts itself out of the vortex. This is all driven by these Galaxian rockers F/i from er... Milwaukee. Then there are the rest of their 80s records The Split LP, Why Not Now?.... Alan, Paradise Out Here and The Past Darkly compilation which are all gold (More on those another time).
On a recent trip to the semi-arid zone of Sunraysia district for a family wedding during the late throes of an Indian summer, I found myself listening to Delia Derbyshire (music & documentary), BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Ekoplekz, eMMlpekz and an audio book of JG Ballard's first novel from 1962 The Drowned World etc. A couple of the tunes from the eMMplekz record Izod Days surprisingly fit the draining summer heat, eMMplekz Theme and Bocanet particularly. I was going for that incongruity thing.
Later smoking out in my sister-in-law's backyard I heard the Dr Who theme (arranged & cowritten by Derbyshire) tune wafting over from a neighbour's TV set and thought 'yeah, right, that sounds perfectly normal to me. It's from my childhood and I spent that time in this geographical zone!'
The Drowned World I thought would be incongruous too, but as I thought about it; not really. As this district I was in was once part of an inland sea. Despite now being 500km from the sea, remnants of that inland sea remain - massive sand dunes, sand bars along the Murray River give the river that weird beach-like vibe, without the waves of course and the salinity problems in the soil. Post apocalypse stuff fitted too, consideringMad MaxI and II were filmed a few hours north of Mildura and contain similar features to the terrain of Sunraysia. Man made disasters from damming once great rivers, now drying up and salinity problems caused by over-irrigation and so on. All this stuff on my ipod seemed well, normal, and quite fitting. Blue Monday on the wedding dance floor - natural - as Joy Division/New Order were part of the soundtrack of my youth here.
Funnily enough, the most incongruous music moment happened back in Melbourne in an inner-city suburb. At 4.30 in the morning, a party started up next door, full of 18-22 year olds where they were singing Billy Joel's Uptown Girl at the top of their lungs, followed by a bunch of early '90's mainstream alternative tunes. Weird? This also parallels recent footage of a friend of a friend's 16 year old daughter being dragged on stage at a recent Springsteen concert in Melbourne to dance the Courtney Cox part during Dancing in the Dark.
It made me think of the atemporality of the times. The kids don't own their own times like they used to. My dad dragged me to an Everly Brothers concert as a young teen. As a protest, I pretended to go to sleep. The Models and INXS were playing a concert in Melbourne that night and there I was at the Everly Brothers, how naff. Now, of course, I think I was being naff by being an obstinate brat. But you had that rebellion to make a generation gap and to have your own soundtrack to your life.
More BBC Radiophonic Workshop gear here. This time it's a video documentary produced by the BBC called The Alchemists Of Sound from 2003. This is an hour long doco and features Oliver Postgate, John Baker, Delia Derbyshire, David Cain, Wendy Carlos, Sonic Boom & a dude from Portishead.
Been diggin this Darkside mix from Blog To The OldskoolI Can't Believe How Dark It is. Heaps of great gear here for old and new converts. This genre is fast becoming one of my top 5 eras of music ever. On the evidence here, I also still have much to learn and that excites me. I missed a lot of this stuff first time around, only being aware of the major playerz. More treasure from Blog To The Oldsckool. Onya!
Hang on...... more dark science dropped here for Halloween last year at Blog To The Oldskool. Two & a half hours, 70 + trax of prime Darkside gold for your pleasure. With a classic section half way through featuring the panic attack trax Ricky, Scottie & Johnny. Can you handle it?
I've got to say I'm Impressed by Woebot's 80s list. There are 10 artists I've never even heard of. Of the 33 records he specially recommends I only own 9. There is one worry in the Goth category, that's Sisters Of Mercy's Floodland. Is that a joke? Then there is Thin White Rope's Moonhead which is in the highly recommended category. This is an LP I expected to love when I heard it, maybe 3 years after it was released and was shocked that I couldn't stand it. I must admit I've recently thought I should give it another go. Hey Woebot how secret can a Police LP be? Is this in the hiding in plain sight category. Hey Man Without ShameRapeman's Two Nuns And A Pack Mule gets a recommend. Is it becoming a cult internet record all of a sudden? It's had 2 mentions in 1 week!
Here's the unknown 10 (well as it turns out only 5 are unknown artists).
??? Just saw this was produced by Philip Glass!
Turns out this is Charles Hayward's post This Heat
project. Who knew? Gotta check this out.
Turns out this is Gil Trythall who I do know and actually
own a few of his records including the title track of this
LP which I think was recorded in 1973.
Bill Laswell & Rammellzee. Bootsy on da bass on
one track.
This is a Bill Laswell project with Manu Djbango
amongst others.
Electronic Canadians apparently.
French bloke.
Arthur Russell plays cello on this and Pete was the
trombone man on many of Russell's trax.
