Published on
October 2, 2014
Category
Features
121. VERSATILE NEWTS
‘Blimp’
(Shanghai, 1980)
Uber-brutal, simple guitar-and-drum thud with the dinkiest, daftest two-note guitar non-solo, giving The Buzzcocks’ ‘Boredom’ a run for its money (and surely that was the template anyway). There’s even some warbling recorder hidden away in here, fighting a losing battle with the blunt, disinterested vocal. Who is this ‘New Noise’ on guitar and vocals, anyway? Could that be Lawrence from Felt? It seems a sure bet, given that the Versatile Newts single was the second release on Shanghai, following Felt’s debut, ‘Index’ – apparently, when Gilbert expressed an interest in making a record, Lawrence told him to get off his butt and do it. Somewhere out there’s a story, possibly apocryphal, that Gilbert sent the Newts single to The Fall, who proclaimed themselves big fans, and invited the Newts to share the stage – by this time, they’d mutated (back) into Felt, and one of pop’s weirdest cult groups had truly begun.
122. VISITORS
‘Compatibility’
(Rational, 1981)
Built around the McVay brothers, the Visitors were an Edinburgh-based post-punk group who released three singles. This is the last, and probably the best. In some ways, it shares a stentorian epic-ness with The Colours Out Of Time (mentioned way back in this list) that has me thinking they could have relocated to Liverpool and found their people. But, while I’m usually leery of trusting YouTube comments, I’ve got to salute the chap who observed, quite correctly, that this is a bit like The Gordons’ ‘Future Shock’, one of the most mammoth slabs of wax released in New Zealand. And thus, the connection between Scotland and New Zealand grows ever stronger. Who was Colin Craigie? He was one hell of a guitarist.
123. L. VOAG
‘According To Freud’
(no label, 1979)
Welcome back to the list, Amos – it’s been at least ten records. Under the name L Voag, Amos released one single, Move and an album, The Way Out, which is up there with other gems like Richard Earl’s Egg Store Ilk and the George Harrasment record when it comes to one-man-one-mind, home-baked visionary clatter/clutter epics. Drew Daniel of Matmos knows – he covered ‘Kitchen’ on The Soft Pink Truth’s Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth?. “According To Freud” comes from Move, and it’s a lovely audio verite rant, hissy in all the right places, packed with character and not outstaying one second of its one-minute marathon. Try and find the reissue of The Way Out on Alcohol, if you can. It’s a riot.
124. THE WAKE
‘On Our Honeymoon’
(Scan 45, 1982)
Still going strong, three decades in, The Wake are one of Scotland’s best kept secrets. The visionary behind The Wake, Caesar, has piloted the group through involvement with some of the UK’s finest labels – Factory, Sarah, LTM – and even had the thorough decency to let Bobby Gillespie join the group for a time. “On Our Honeymoon” is their debut, self-released single and its shrouded darkness makes it no surprise that they were picked up soon by the Factory Benelux imprint – The Wake have always had a particularly cosmopolitan, European aesthetic, something that really shines through even nowadays: check out their most recent album, the beautiful A Light Far Out, for further proof. Captured Tracks and LTM have been doing a great job of keeping The Wake’s flame alive recently.
125. THE WEE CHERUBS
‘Dreaming’
(Bogaten, 1983)
Here’s one for the delectable Brogues at the Not Unloved blog, who, from all accounts, is a firm believer in the jangly magic of The Wee Cherubs. Every time I hear this record, I’m still surprised by the tight delay on those drums – whose kind of good production idea was that? But this is a lovely pop song that sits quite nicely alongside the janglier, gentler end of Scottish DIY. Two members of The Wee Cherubs, Graham Adam and Martin Cotter, would end up in C86 reprobates The Bachelor Pad, which is some sort of outcome, for sure.
126. GARETH WILLIAMS & MARIE CURRIE
‘Breast Stroke’
(Flaming Tunes, 1985)
If there’s such a thing as a perfect album, Gareth Williams & Marie Curie’s Flaming Tunes might be it. The late, great Williams was a member of This Heat, and after that combustible trio flew apart for the last time, he hooked up with Curie and recorded this beautiful cassette, which effortlessly takes This Heat’s penchant for studio experimentation and wired intensity and lands it in a more bucolic, agrarian space. There’s a similar melancholy on Flaming Tunes to Robert Wyatt’s hermetic, personalised Old Rottenhat album, though there’s less of the dinky keyboard presets, and greater warmth from acoustic instruments. Reissued a few years back by Blackest Ever Black, it’s an album you’ll not tire of. So don’t miss out, buck.
127. THE WORK
‘I Hate America’
(Woof, 1981)
Crawling from the darker recesses of the RIO crew, The Work was one of Mick Hobbs’ outfits, joined by Bill Gilonis, Tim Hodgkinson and Rick Wilson, with appearances from Catherine Jauniaux and (you better believe it) Amos. So, again, they’re pretty deeply embedded in the Henry Cow, News From Babel, Officer!, The Momes etc. nexus, but with added fire and fury – these records really take off from a point of intensity that even many of their hard-edged colleagues couldn’t reach. Self-released, too, on Woof, the excellent label run by Hodgkinson and Gilonis, the home of many of her fantastic records – check out The Lowest Note On The Organ’s sole 7”, the Gilonis/Hodgkinson collaborative 7”, and fantastic albums from The Momes, Het, The Work and Jauniaux/Hodgkinson, amongst others. A classy collection of music.
128. XS DISCHARGE
‘Hassles’
(Groucho Marxist Record Co-Operative, 1980)
Groucho Marxist released two compilation singles, and then branched out with two single-artist 45s, one by Defiant Pose, and this one, the wonderfully titled Life’s A Wank EP (excess discharge, uh-huh). XS Discharge were the closest that the Paisley Punk community came to rama-lama pure punk rock action, but there’s still gruffness to the playing and recording that pegs this one as coming from bedrooms and backrooms, not the style shops and scene queens of London punk.
129. THE 012
‘Asbestos Lead Asbestos’
(Flicknife, 1984)
The 012 was the group formed by Keith Dobson aka Kif Kif Le Batter around the time of his Fuck Off Records dalliance, and before he began to break cover with World Domination Enterprises. They released one great album, Let’s Get Professional, from whence came this early version of ‘Asbestos Lead Asbestos’, World Domination Enterprises’ enduring classic. Here Dobson and crew take it at a slower clip, but the guitars still have plenty of nasty raunch, volcanic, thick lava flows of nasty, unkempt noise. The liner notes state, “The 012 would like it to be generally known that they have now sold out completely, but will be doing all they can to maintain that urban guerilla pop star image in the future”, but no-one’s going to mistake this for a Meat Beat Manifesto record in a hurry.
130. 391
“What’s Wrong With My Hi-Fi”
(Arts-Council Grant, 1983)
Excellent, drooling experimentation from Mark of The Instant Automatons, with occasional appearances from Nigel Jacklin of Alien Brains (Mark and Nigel were in The English Assassins together). If the Instant Automatons were particularly emblematic of the cassette culture, Garageland end of DIY culture, 391 takes things one further, and starts to push things out into the real of industrial/experimental/noise territory. But it’s a fascinating teetering point to land at, and there are plenty of moments of non-conventional beauty buried deep inside tapes like this one, or No Way Out. How exciting it must have been to be tracing the arcs of all of these weirdo personal units, the postal service a fundamental life-line to modern cultures of refusal.
131. THE 49 AMERICANS
‘Stupid Boy’
(NB Records, 1980)
…and why not end close to where we began, with The 49 Americans, one of the collectives that formed, somewhat loosely, around the LMC / Door & The Window axis. The floating membership on these records is pretty heavy – Nag & Bendle of The Door & The Window, David Toop, Steve Beresford, Terry Day, Vivien Goldman, Lol Coxhill, Peter Cusack, Viv Albertine of The Slits… Pretty much a roll-call of thet most interesting musicians floating in and out of the DIY / post-punk / improv / dub netherworlds in London at the time, and the end result was two albums and two singles of wild, short, sharp pop-non-pop songs and nerve-jangling experimentation. “He thinks he’s made a single – stupid boy.”
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