THE BEATLES - ABBEY ROAD @ 55

 

Released on September 26th, 1969, the "sort of" penultimate Beatles LP, Abbey Road, turns 55 years old today. The confusion of its chronology comes from the fact that it was recorded after the Get Back/Let It Be sessions, but released before Let It Be. As such, it represents the last time the Beatles, as a group, were in a recording studio together at the same time.

The background for Abbey Road is inextricably linked with the Get Back sessions that preceded its recording. The Get Back project had rather spun off the rails to a large degree, with its plans for a return to the bands roots, documented in excruciating detail in a planned documentary film and capped off with an elaborate live performance, undermined as the group's internal relationships continued to fragment and their grandiose plans only culminated with a bizarre, albeit infamous, roof-top live performance atop the EMI recording studios (later renamed Abbey Road).

Following the rooftop gig, what would be the last ever live performance by the band, Paul McCartney suggested a regrouping effort to producer George Martin, who agreed to the concept with the provision that he be given full producer authority over the sessions like during the group's earlier albums. The fragmentation of the group had set in during the so-called "White Album" sessions, a situation that the Get Back project had meant to address, but which had only fermented more. Abbey Road was sort of a last-ditch effort to try to restore a sense of unity in the band, but even with the best of intentions, some antagonisms were simply too deeply rooted to extricate.

Lennon's insistence on including Yoko Ono in the sessions was one such ongoing source of conflict and consternation in the band. This even extended to the point where, after Lennon and Ono were in a car crash, resulting in an injury to Ono, Lennon had a hospital bed installed in the studio to accommodate her recovery and allow her to continue to observe the band's activities. Harrison's relationship with the group was also continuing to strain as he attempted to assert a greater influence on the album's content. But it wasn't all gritting teeth and exasperation in the studio. For the most part, the mood was actually mostly cordial and pleasant much of the time, though the underlying stresses would simply never entirely abate.

Despite the percolating tensions, the group's creativity was bolstered by the use of some cutting edge technology, principally in the form of an eight track recording system with a solid state mixing console, both of which helped the group to achieve a far more expansive sound, with the freedom to explore even more complex overdubbing. The other notable bit of kit was the MOOG modular synth system that Harrison had purchased the previous year and used for his sophomore solo release, Electronic Sound. While the instrument had been used for little more than noodling effects on that album, by the time it was incorporated into the Abbey Road sessions, Harrison's prowess with it was sufficient that it became integrated as proper musical accompaniment and not merely for exotic sound effects.

For the album's cover, McCartney had conceived of the idea of a photo of the band crossing the street outside the EMI studios building at Abbey Road, which would also give the album its title. Apple Records creative director John Kosh designed the album cover. It is the only original UK Beatles album sleeve to show neither the artist name nor the album title on its front, which was Kosh's idea, despite EMI saying the record would not sell without this information. He later explained that "we didn't need to write the band's name on the cover. They were the most famous band in the world". The iconic image has since gone on to become one of the most recognized, replicated and imitated group photos to ever be created. Scores of fans have tried to recreated the photo, and in 2011, a webcam was installed at the crossing. The cover also helped stoke the "Paul is dead" conspiracy, with McCartney appearing in the photo as out of step with the others in the band, holding his cigarette in the wrong hand, and the only one barefoot, leading to speculation that these were somehow symbolic of the person in the photo being an imposter.

The album was released with virtually no promotional campaign, amid internal disintegration, with Lennon already having announced his intention to leave and Paul about to make a public statement of his departure, thus formalizing the band's dissolution. But promotion wasn't much required as the album immediately shot to the top of the charts, where it lingered for quite some time. The group machinery continued to hang on long enough for a reassessment of the Get Back material, which was put in the hands of Phil Spector to get it finished while the group disintegrated.

While the sales for the album were brisk, critical response was mixed, with some finding the use of the electronics gimmicky and the songwriting inauthentic. Regardless of this initial ambivalence, retrospectively, the album has become considered perhaps the band's most lauded and appreciated release. While it may not have had the conceptual and cultural impact of Sgt. Pepper, in the long run, aficionados of the band repeatedly cite the LP as their crowning achievement. Whether that's the case is a matter of preference in the end.

JOHN LENNON - WALLS AND BRIDGES @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee at 50 years old is John Lennon's fifth solo studio album, Walls and Bridges, which was released on September 26th, 1974. While the album came along at the tail end of Lennon's notorious "lost weekend" era, its a remarkably coherent release, containing one of his most successful solo singles, Whatever Gets You Through the Night.

Back in June of 1973, Yoko Ono had suggested a separation between her and John, as an attempt to try to create some space between them and allow for a reassessment of their marriage. Lennon, with Yoko's encouragement, left NYC to set up camp in LA, taking along personal assistant and paramour, May Pang. Once in LA, Lennon briefly became involved in the now legendary LA party club, The Hollywood Vampires, an outfit that started as a softball team, but quickly mutated into a cadre of professional boozers haunting the LA strip, which included as its core members: ex-Monkee Micky Dolenz, Alice Cooper and Harry Nilsson. Lennon also got the chance to reconnect with firstborn son, Julian while in LA.

The initial plan was to record an album of classic vintage rock 'n' roll covers, with Phil Spectre producing. While the booze flowed and the tapes rolled, material was recorded, but the album went into limbo after Lennon and Pang returned to NYC and Spectre disappeared for a time with the recordings. The "Rock 'N' Roll" album would eventually get released in 1975, but in the meantime, Lennon returned to the east coast with a batch of new songs and a desire to get back into the studio to record something fresh.

Lennon began rehearsing his new material with studio musicians at Record Plant East in New York City in June 1974, which included Jim Keltner on drums, Klaus Voormann on bass guitar, Jesse Ed Davis on guitar and Arthur Jenkins on percussion. Once sessions began, a number of notable guests popped in, including Elton John, who helped out on Whatever Gets You Through the Night. Harry Nilsson contributed to Old Dirt Road, and son Julian played drums on the album closer, Ya Ya. Despite Lennon's debauchery in LA, the NYC sessions were noted as being surprisingly professional, with Lennon being organized and prepared throughout, though the core musicians were mostly responsible for working out their own arrangements as the recordings progressed.

The album proved to be exceptionally popular with fans, though critics were divided at the time, albeit the majority of reviews were some of the most positive for Lennon since the release of Imagine in 1971. Thought it might have seemed like Lennon was revitalizing his career, Walls and Bridges would turn out to be his penultimate collection of original music. The Rock 'N' Roll covers album would get finished and released in 1975, and then Lennon would take a five year career hiatus as he reconnected with Yoko Ono with the birth of their only child, Sean. Lennon's desire to be a present father for Sean trumped any career aspirations at that time. Sadly, as Lennon and Ono were on the path to reasserting their creative presence with the split Double Fantasy album, Lennon's career and life would come to a tragic end that fateful day in NYC outside his Manhattan apartment building.

THE RESIDENTS - ESKIMO @45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary today is the sixth studio LP from those mysterious masked music makers, The Residents, with their epic masterpiece, Eskimo, being released on September 26th, 1979. It's an album that would indelibly define the iconography of the group, while demonstrating their conceptual depth to a degree never previously achieved, and rarely match afterwards.

The background of Eskimo's genesis is shrouded by a combination of deliberate misinformation, myth and hearsay, with only fragments of the story seeming to have any firm basis in actual historical fact. Even the concept itself, while superficially intended to function as anthropological documentation, is in reality only conjecture based on cultural ignorance and stereotyping. This is a deliberate commentary on how British & European cultural imperialism has chosen to misrepresent indigenous peoples over the centuries. The album's themes and stories are all built on either popular misconceptions of Inuit culture and life, or outright fabrications, informed by consumerist archetypes and slogans. In that sense, the project is a deft commentary on how aboriginal culture has been distorted and appropriated by colonialist interlopers.

According to the group's internal mythologizing, the initial idea for the album came into consideration sometime in 1976, shortly after completing Third Reich 'N Roll, when the group's mysterious mentor, the enigmatic N. Senada. He had reappeared after going missing for a year, vanishing in the middle of the ill-fated Vileness Fats film project. He had apparently gone to the far north, returning with recordings of Arctic wind and a jar of air, and an inspiration for capturing the culture of the native peoples in song and stories. Given the group's penchant for fictionalizing their existence and history, trying to decipher the true instigation of the idea might be a little difficult. I can't be sure N. Senada even existed as a real person. Yet it is at least reasonable to accept that the idea for the album does, in fact, date to the period suggested.

What also seems to be believable, albeit with the specifics still being in question, is that the project became a beast for the group to tackle. It has been said that one critical reason for it taking 3 years to manifest is the fact that the technology for creating the album simply didn't exist at the time it was conceived, necessitating the group inventing instruments and techniques in order to achieve the desired results. Synthesizers were just beginning to become affordable for the average artist, and sampling was still a few years away from practical implementation. The conceptual complexity of the work, and its need to be a fully integrated and coherent expression, inevitably resulted in strained relationships within the collective, as various contributors held on to convictions that didn't always align with others. The brutal intricacy of it all put everyone involved into a state of high stress and exasperation as the project dragged on.

It's no wonder then that the group would have to let off some steam by indulging in some creativity unburdened by excessive conceptual constraints. Concurrent with the production of Eskimo, The Residents would release the Fingerprince LP (1977), and two EPs, which would quickly become combined into a single album known as Duck Stab / Buster and Glen (1978). Additionally, the Satisfaction single would see a reissue, spurred on by the success of DEVO's cover of the same song, and the Not Available album, recorded in 1974 immediately after Meet the Residents and intended to be an expression of the "theory of obscurity" by never being actually released, would be reluctantly issued as a stopgap while Eskimo's release kept getting delayed. According to the band's biographers, these latter releases caused conflicts between the band and their "management", the Cryptic Corporation, but given that those entities were, in reality, the same people, I can only assume what that means is that not everyone was in agreement with these titles coming to press when they did, further straining relationships within the group. There are even rumours of the "band" disappearing with the Eskimo master tapes in protest, requiring negotiations within the organization. Perhaps some faction did indeed take a powder with the masters, but all of this may simply be apocryphal fiction manufactured for the benefit of press and amusement of fans.

Despite all the struggles, the album did, finally, come together, as a single LP with six tracks, each accompanied by a narrative text relating the details of the tale being told by the music. Listeners were encouraged to read along with the music, a similar concept to what Michael Nesmith had done in 1974 with his concept album, The Prison, which was also a selection of songs that were accompanied by a book, with each chapter being integrated with a corresponding song.

Musically, what was presented was the most technically complex the group had ever constructed, with mostly electronic sounds emulating the cold, harsh environment of the Arctic while often unintelligible voices brought the stories to life, sometimes incorporating corporate giggle parodies, like the Coke-a-Cola song, into the tribal chanting. Taken as a whole, listening to the album was an entirely immersive experience.

For the cover graphics, the group debuted their brand new costumes, featuring the members in tuxedos with giant eyeball heads peaked by jaunty top hats. The effectiveness of the image was so utterly iconic and instantly recognizable that, virtually overnight, if became the default image for the group, a representation that would remain indelibly etched in the public mind for the rest of the band's career. Though they would subsequently evolve a wide variety of costumes, with entirely distinctive themes, they'd never be able to shake the association with those outfits.

Eskimo was my gateway into the world of The Residents. I'd seen the Ralph Records ads in various music magazines for a few years, but it was the striking look of that album, along with the crystal clear focus of its concept, that drew me to them, and I soon backtracked through their early catalogue thereafter, and followed the group closely through the Mole Trilogy. In my mind, Eskimo is something of a high watermark for the group, though they hit many highs before and after its release. Still, it remains the most emblematic of their albums. It certainly helped establish them as the masters of weirdness, securing them a dedicated fan-base among the alternative music fans of the post-punk era. They've done many concept albums throughout their career, but Eskimo will always stand in my mind as the most succinctly perfect of them all.

DAVID BOWIE - TONIGHT @ 40

 

Released on September 24th, 1984, David Bowie's sixteenth studio album, Tonight, turns 40 years old today. Coming on the heels of his career peak LP, Let's Dance, expectations were high for a repeat of that success, a situation which would ultimately be a constraint on Bowie's creativity, as the pressure to keep delivering chart toppers bared down on his sense of artistic integrity. It's a situation that, for an artist of constantly evolving influences and passions, can become something of a prison, which is exactly the kind of situation Bowie found himself in during the latter half of this decade. He'd been successful before, but hitting these heights with Let's Dance put him in the sights of a lot of expectations that were impossible to dismiss or ignore.

Production on the album commenced soon after the conclusion of the massively successful Serious Moonlight tour. Bowie and band set up camp at Le Studio in Morin-Heights, in Canada. The catapult into the stratosphere of superstardom, however, had come at a price in the form of Bowie feeling creatively bereft of ideas. It's not an uncommon situation for an artist, after a significant achievement, to find themselves at something of an impasse in terms of trying to come up with fresh inspirations. As a result, when it came to song writing, Bowie was simply not able to put up the goods when the time came, instead relying on close friend Iggy Pop to help bolster his efforts. Bowie wasn't even up for recording another album, initially proposing a live album following the tour, but his label were eager to keep the ball rolling from the momentum of the previous release. Leaning on Iggy made sense because Pop was struggling financially and the success of China Girl had given him a shot in the arm, so the duo were eager to work together more closely on the new album, solidifying their relationship while on a brief vacation together after the tour.

Production on the album would not, however, involve the return of Nile Rogers, who was the producer for Let's Dance. Instead, Bowie self-produced the album along with Derek Bramble. Bowie invited Bramble to Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland, to record demos of his new material with a group of local Swiss musicians. The intent with the new album was to push further into the R&B, funk and reggae styles that had been explored on Let's Dance. According to biographer Chris O'Leary, musicians present at the Tonight sessions said the demos were "tremendous", describing them as "funky, raw, and full of promise". Once Bowie arrived at the studio in Canada, he came prepared with 8 of the album's 9 songs basically all worked out, something collaborator Carlos Alomar noted as surprising, given that he was used to Bowie coming to the studio with virtually nothing, in all the times he'd previously worked with him. It was an unusual case of being ahead of the game.

In terms of the writing, only two songs are credited to Bowie alone, with four tracks being Bowie/Pop compositions and the rest being covers of songs like Brian Wilson's God Only Knows, and one of Iggy's. Don't Look Down, from his New Values album. In a lot of ways, the album is like a return to the relationship Iggy and Bowie had while working on Pop's solo album come-backs in 1977, The Idiot and Lust for Life. Yet while the vibe may have echoed back to that classic Berlin era creative watershed, the results for Tonight were not nearly as satisfying.

Though the album was a commercial success, reaching number one in many key markets, critically it was met with a great deal of disdain, and remains considered one of Bowie's weakest albums. It was ultimately an album that Bowie was pushed into creating when he was not at all in a position to summon his full creative forces. He was depleted by the work on the previous album and a gruelling massive tour across the globe. It's entirely understandable that he'd need time to recharge, and regrettable that the industry would demand he keep producing new works when he was clearly in need of a respite. It's an album that would mark the turning point for Bowie as his career success hit its highest ebb. Not that he was out of the game after this, but he would certainly end up reevaluating his position after seeing his fortunes wane through the remainder of the decade.

THE STRANGLERS - THE RAVEN @ 45

 

Released on September 21st, 1979, the fourth studio album by The Stranglers, The Raven, turns 45 years old today. It's an album that saw the group continuing to evolve beyond the rabble of "pub-punk" aggression, developing their songwriting and musicianship to create music of increasing diversity and nuance.

The album, conceptually, leans into a lot of Norse mythology, especially with the cover graphics depicting a raven on the front, and the band photographed on the prow of a Viking Longship on the back. These concepts are echoed in the album's first two songs, Longships and the title track. The remainder delves into a variety of charged political, social and philosophical topics, like Japanese ritual suicide ("Ice"), heroin use ("Don't Bring Harry"), the Iranian Revolution ("Shah Shah a Go Go") and genetic engineering ("Genetix"). "Dead Loss Angeles" features guitarist Hugh Cornwell playing bass guitar in conjunction with bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel, who wrote the song's heavy bass line. No lead or rhythm guitars feature on the track, whose lyrics were written by Cornwell about his experiences in the United States. Things even take a turn into fringe conspiracy theories with the album's most experimental composition, the munchkin voiced, dirge-looped "Meninblack", a song that would be the springboard for their next album, with its theme of mysterious aliens breeding humans for food. Taken as a whole, it's all rather intellectual for a so-called "punk" band, but these men in black were never that simple, nor simple minded.

The album was originally released with a limited-edition 3D cover. Another limited edition had to be created when the band was forced to remove an image of Joh Bjelke-Petersen from the inner sleeve artwork. Bjelke-Petersen was the subject of the album's sixth track, "Nuclear Device (The Wizard of Aus)".

For some fans of their early albums, the evolution displayed on The Raven may have been a disappointment. I'm sure some critics of the time may have seen this as an opportunity to let loose a backlash against perceived pretensions. However, in my books, this is the beginning of the period when their music became its most interesting and innovative, a trajectory that would continue through the first half of the 1980s, with subsequent albums like The Gospel According to the Meninblack (1981), La Folie (1981), Feline (1983) and Aural Sculpture (1984). It's the era of their career when they matured beyond the adolescent misogyny that characterized their "punk" roots, and transformed them into intellectual commentators on the sociopolitical circumstances of the modern world.

FUNKADELIC - UNCLE JAM WANTS YOU @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is Funkadelic's "war on disco" concept album, Uncle Jam Wants You, which was released on September 21st, 1979. Band leader George Clinton is pictured on the front cover, African warlord style, in a rattan chair flanked by a giant "Flashlight" and "Bop Gun" (nods to the P-Funk songs of the respective same names). Flashing the "on the one" hand sign, combined with the album's subtitle, "Rescue Dance Music from the Blahs", it is a clear declaration of intent. "On the One" is more than just a credo of how to play funk music (accent on the first beat), it's a call to unite and harness the power of togetherness, and a fundamental acknowledgement of the spiritual "oneness" of the universe. It is the first Funkadelic album since America Eats Its Young in 1972 not to sport a cover illustrated by Funkadelic artist Pedro Bell, though Bell did provide artwork for the album’s back cover and interior.

The album's centrepiece, Not Just (Knee Deep), is a 15 minute monolithic groove that is so insistent and insidious, it feels like your brain is being surreptitiously rewired by some sort of "funkateer" subliminal manipulation, reprogramming your responses to get your groove on. The longer it goes on, the more helpless the listener feels in its grasp. That's worth the price of admission all on its own, but there are other treats as well, albeit perhaps not quite as inescapable. Freak of the Week offers up more solid P-funk groove, as does Uncle Jam, but the remainder of the album falls out into mostly filler. It's forgivable though, considering the other two thirds of the album is all winner.

Uncle Jam Wants You (a reference to the "Uncle Sam wants you!" US Army recruitment posters) may be a more militant sequel to the band's previous album, One Nation Under a Groove. As previously stated, it's all about countering the banality of mass marketed disco music, which had slathered the latter half of the decade in mirror-ball mediocrity and dreary dance dreck. On that front, it does what it says on the tin.

Uncle Jam Wants You was the second Funkadelic album to be certified gold.

APHEX TWIN - SYRO @ 10

 

Celebrating its 10th anniversary today is the last released full length album from Aphex Twin, Syro, which was issued on September 19th, 2014. Though there have been a smattering of EPs and singles from Richard D. James since its release, it remains a distant tent-pole in a sparse release schedule that has been the norm for James for the past two decades. It's an odd tactic given the artist's reputation for being such a prolific producer. Indeed, prior to its release, James commented that it was but one of several albums he had tucked away in his archive, though only a smattering of tunes have since seen the light of day. One may wonder whether to take him at his word, but his history, with examples like the massive Soundcloud dump of unreleased tracks in 2015, has certainly confirmed his contentions regarding the amount of music he'd managed to produce over the years.

Prior to the release of Syro, the last official Aphex Twin album to see the light of day was Drukqs, released in 2001. The seeming inactivity is slightly deceptive, however, given that the interim saw the release of the 11 volume Analord EP series throughout 2005, and a couple of releases in 2007 under the pseudonym, The Tuss. Still, there is certainly an appreciable expanse of silence in the period leading up to Syro's 2014 appearance. The unknown reasons for the lack of product have spurred a lot of speculation. Some rumours indicate James' divorce was a factor in keeping potential revenue out of the mix of a settlement, or perhaps the proliferation of file sharing has discouraged releasing material, like it has for many artists who have resorted to touring to pay the bills, because selling records no longer generates significant revenue. Whatever the case, scarcity does ultimately mean that when new releases do hit the shelves, they get a lot more publicity.

The material included on the album was supposedly recorded at various times, using a variety of studios and gear configurations, over a period of approximately six years prior to its release. Rumours of a new album from James had started circulating as early as 2009, with Warp founder Steve Beckett mentioning it in the press. The following year James was quoted as stating that he had as many as six albums in the can and ready for release.

It wasn't until 2014 when a a test pressing of James's unreleased album, Caustic Window, was listed on Discogs for US $13,500 (£8,050) that the ball really started rolling. Members of the internet forum, We Are the Music Makers - who negotiated a deal between the seller, the forum's administrator, James and Rephlex Records - launched a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to purchase the album. The campaign raised over $67,000 (£41,000) from 4,124 contributions, with proceeds split between James, Rephlex and the charity, Doctors Without Borders. James said the campaign was "really touching, and really sweet" and, upon realizing the continued interest in his music, he was inspired to release Syro.

The album was recorded in six different studios, including James's home studio in Scotland, which he spent three years building and which was completed in 2006. One audio engineer spent three months with James, helping him wire together patch panels before the engineer "realized he was doing it all wrong and had to start again". Describing the overall process as "brutal", James referred to the in-studio technical issues as the catalyst for writing new music that would be featured on Syro. James used various audio setups when composing Syro's material. Rearranging equipment allowed him to explore more writing possibilities; he said "that will achieve some sort of purpose, so the way I've wired it together becomes the track in itself." James also explained that when composing the "logical thing to do is not change anything and just do another one using the same set of sounds", but during Syro's recording sessions he would often "get bored and swap things out".

On the album's overall sound, James said it is his "pop album, or as poppy as it's going to get". Syro incorporates styles including break-beat, drum and bass, techno, acid and disco. While the album doesn't particularly seem to break a lot of new ground, it also manages to avoid sounding nostalgic, offering a veneer of freshness while still fitting into the pocket of approaches and styles that were not at all alien to James's prior works. Vice summarized the sound as "unlike anything else this year - but quite a lot like everything from the past thirty years".

The title, Syro, is a neologism coined by one of James' children. It is a shortened version of "Syrobonkus", a nonsense word his son blurted out while listening to the album. The majority of the album's track titles are named after the working titles stored on James' hard drives and reference individual pieces of equipment James used in their recording, as well as respective BPM values. A comprehensive list of all equipment featured on Syro is included as part of the album's packaging. Syro's cover artwork was designed by the Designers Republic, a graphic design studio that provided designs for previous Aphex Twin releases, including the 1999 single "Windowlicker" and the compilation album 26 Mixes for Cash. The cover art resembles a receipt, with the official Aphex Twin logo and album title printed on it. According to Creative Review, the receipt on the album cover details the production and promotional costs of the album, "from courier charges to photo-shoot expenses, expressed per disc and tailored for both vinyl and CD versions." Perhaps this conception is meant to remind listeners that producing these products is an expensive proposition, something that doesn't get compensated for by pirating digital copies of the album.

The promotional campaign for Syro began when a chartreuse-coloured blimp featuring the Aphex Twin logo and the number "2014" appeared over London, England on 16 August, 2014. On the same day Aphex Twin graffiti was reported outside Radio City Music Hall and various other locations in NYC. Two days later Aphex Twin's official Twitter account posted a link to a hidden service, accessible using the Dark Web software Tor, detailing the album's title and track listing. The service accumulated over 133,000 views in less than a day, according to The Guardian. In the following week several purported leaks of Syro appeared on YouTube and SoundCloud, but James subsequently denied that any of them were legitimate. I remember being briefly fooled by one of them, though not for long.

Once it was finally and officially available, the album quickly garnered critical raves and chalked up some notable chart success, cracking the upper reaches in several markets, including the UK and US. It also managed to score a Grammy award for Best Dance/Electronic Album at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2015, an accolade that pushed sales of the album in the US to increase 101 percent following James' win. It also secured spots on numerous "best of the year" lists in most of the major music publications.

With all that, it's still not an album that's made a huge impression in my personal collection, though I should likely give it another spin to refresh my memory. It's certainly a pleasant enough listening experience, though it's not likely to leave a legacy as one of James' most important releases, but given the lack of titles appearing in the last 20 years, it will inevitably stand out in retrospect.

KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER @ 50

 

Debuting in its weekly series format on September 13th, 1974, Kolchak: The Night Stalker, is marking its golden jubilee today at 50 years old. While the series only lasted a single season, it has since gained cult status, being cited by the likes of X-Files creator, Chris Carter, as a principal inspiration for his own iconic cult franchise.

Originating as a pair of wildly successful made for TV movies, The Night Stalker (1972), and The Night Strangler (1973), the series' first incarnation was actually in the form of an unpublished novel written by Jeff Rice called, The Kolchak Papers. Initially, the main protagonist was a Las Vegas newspaper reporter named Carl Kolchak, who tracks down and defeats a serial killer who turns out to be the vampire Janos Skorzeny. The novel gave Kolchak's birth name is "Karel", although he uses the anglicized version "Carl".

ABC approached Rice with an offer to option The Kolchak Papers, which was adapted by Richard Matheson into the television movie. The Night Stalker, first aired on January 11, 1972. It garnered the highest ratings of any television movie at that time (33.2 rating — 54 share). Matheson received a 1973 Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best TV Feature or Miniseries Teleplay.

Following the success of the TV movie and its sequel, the novel was published in 1973 by Pocket Books as a mass-market paperback original, titled The Night Stalker, with a photo of star Darren McGavin on the cover in order to tie it to the film. With the success of the movies, ABC negotiated with Matheson and McGavin to create a series, with the later given unofficial executive producer status. However, neither ABC nor Universal had obtained novel author Jeff Rice's permission for the series, and he sued the studio. The suit was resolved shortly before the series aired, and Rice received an on-screen credit as series creator.

Also of note in the production of the series was David Chase, creator of The Sopranos, who worked on the series as a story editor, his first regular staff position in Hollywood. Though Chase is credited on eight episodes as story editor, he also helped rewrite the remaining 12. McGavin and others attribute much of the show's quirky humour to his creative input.

As the series evolved, it became a unique supernatural crime drama, with Kolchak's rumpled, gruff persona constantly at odds with his stressed-out publisher and disparaging co-workers. As he dealt with a wide variety of unusual phenomenon and creatures each week, it seemed like nothing he ever wrote got published due to the fantastical nature of his stories. It's a wonder he was able to retain any employment at all, given his incredible and unbelievable subject matter.

His personal life also seemed to be a total disaster, with hardly anything resembling a friend or romantic relationship ever taking any prominence in the series. Yet his isolation from the rest of humanity seemed to be perfectly appropriate for his idiosyncratic obsession with the bizarre and the unnatural. It's not at all surprising he'd be something of a loner, especially given the fact he only seemed to possess a single suite of clothes. He did have a pretty nice little Mustang for a car though. Still, he's the kinda guy who'd probably have fallen in with QAnon weirdos if he were around today.

As a kid, the series had an instant appeal for me. I remember being on the edge of my seat on numerous occasions as Kolchak narrowly escaped one bizarre predicament after another. The series was usually quite good at conjuring up dramatic tension when it came to putting him in tight squeezes. It's no wonder those who grew up with the show never forgot it.

During its initial run, the series was undermined by poor time slots, frequent changes in scheduling and irregular schedules, with hiatuses between clumps of episodes, and some episodes never even airing until the show was in syndication years later. Daren McGavin also had issues with his role within the series, becoming embittered by his lack of credit as executive producer, as well as a lack of financial compensation for his contributions in that role as well. With the lacklustre ratings for the series thrown on top of this, he declined to continue with the series and ABC pulled the show after one season.

Yet the show's impact would see it return in various incarnations and repackaging attempts, gaining a strong cult following when it was aired in late night. It has subsequently only grown in stature as its impact has become more pronounced in popular culture. As previously mentioned, The X-Files owes a huge debt to the series in terms of inspiration, with Chris Carter frequently integrating sly references into his series. He even planned to have McGavin reprise his Kolchak character for an episode, though McGavin refused to return for the role, albeit he did eventually agree to play the character of an FBI agent who had been an early investigator of the so-called "X-Files" department. Carter also incorporated a character in the X-Files revival in 2016 who wore Kolchak's trademark rumpled white suit and straw hat.

An attempt to reboot the series was made in 2005 by ABC, who still had rights to the Character, but low ratings saw the series vanish quickly. I've never seen any of those episodes, and didn't even know that it existed until I started research for this retrospective piece. In May 2012, Disney announced a film adaptation was in the works with Johnny Depp starring and producing, and Edgar Wright directing, but there doesn't seem to be much momentum on that lately, so who knows if its still in the works. It's the kind of property that could certainly be successful in a re-imagined version, if it had the right people behind it, with the proper backing, but for now, the original series is still floating around out there, currently streaming on AppleTV+, for those looking to discover its charms.

COIL - ANS @ 20

 

Released in September of 2004, Coil's sprawling ambient monolith, ANS, is marking its 20th anniversary this month. The primary release of the album consisted of a box set including three audio CDs and a DVD with abstract visual accompaniment. The initial run of the box set included art prints, though some purchasers, myself included, never received their art prints due to issues with manufacturing that were further complicated after the death of Jhon Balance in November of that year.

All sounds on the album were created utilizing the ANS synthesizer, "a photo-electronic musical instrument created by Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin from 1937 to 1957. The technological basis of his invention was the method of graphical sound recording used in cinematography (developed in Russia concurrently with USA), which made it possible to obtain a visible image of a sound wave, as well as to realize the opposite goal—synthesizing a sound from an artificially drawn sound spectrogram." It was built around half a century ago and still to this day sits where it was originally conceived; in the Moscow State University.

At the time of its recording, Coil consisted of Jhonn Balance, Ossian Brown, Peter Christopherson, Thighpaulsandra, and Ivan Pavlov, all of whom contributed to the creation of the album, to some degree, in terms of the creation of the etched transparent plates that were passed through the machine to create the album's sounds. None of the participants understood the exact mechanism for composition when it came to creating etchings, so they essentially created doodles that did not adhere to any fixed musical notation theory specific to the device. It was all a bit of an experiment to see what would happen. Images of the sound plates were included in the graphics package for the box set.

Prior to the full release of the box set, a single CD, identical in content to the first disc in the finished set, was issued in a limited edition, black clam-shell case version in 2003, which was sold at various live shows throughout that year, with the fully packaged box set issued in September of 2004. The album, while perhaps lacking in clear intent, offers up some interesting ambient tonalities. It's a bit like an abstract audio seance, conjuring sounds from the ether in a manner that yielded some unexpected and surprising results.

COIL - MUSICK TO PLAY IN THE DARK VOL. 1 @ 25

 

Marking a quarter century on the shelves, at 25 years old this month, is Coil's Musick to Play in the Dark Vol. 1, which was released in September of 1999. The album represented a striking thematic shift for the group and, despite its genesis within the womb of excessive drug use, manifested as some of the most cohesive and intentional music from that era of their existence.

Given the group was primarily the purview of two gay men, their initial conceptual focus was decidedly "solar", or masculine. Solar symbolism was frequently in play, whether it was the Black Sun logo, or the references to gold, an element distinctly connected to solar imagery, though both are also decidedly scatological in nature as well. Their 1984 debut EP release, How To Destroy Angels, was specifically dedicated to Mars and the "accumulation of males sexual energy", deliberately excluding and avoiding female influence as a matter of process. Yet with Musick to Play in the Dark, a realignment had occurred. Jhon Balance specifically announces on the album that this is "Moon Musick", aligning the group's focus with intentionally feminine energies, like tides and cycles of nature. The result in the music is something entirely more atmospheric and ephemeral than much of their prior work.

The album was recorded at a sprawling Victorian manor that Peter Christopherson had purchased in the coastal community of Weston-super-Mare in the UK. He and Balance had set up a recording studio in their new home, and the group, at this time, were augmented by Thighpaulsandra and Drew McDowall.

Their social scene was heavily involved with the consumption of large quantities of MDMA (Ecstasy), the semi-psychedelic party pill popularized by the rave scene of the preceding decade, so the process of recording was done in something of a barely remembered blur of intoxication. It's something rather perfectly captured in the album's opener, Are You Shivering, a reference to the distinct teeth chattering & grinding that occurs with sufficient indulgence in the aforementioned substance. If you've ever taken enough, you will recognize the sensations intimately.

Technically, they were working with some of the latest digital tools that were changing the shape of music making for electronic producers at the time, with Christopherson always keen to work on the cutting edge of the available tech, though there was some balance as well with the use of older gear. Advanced recording software like ProTools and more versatile and sophisticated samplers and synthesizers were combined with vintage gear, like their collection of old rhythm boxes and an Optigan, a keyboard from the 1970s which replaced their unwieldy and unreliable Mellotron and it's tape loops with a much more stable optical flexidisc sound library interface.

Given the nature of the substance abuse involve in the production of the album, one might expect them to have done the obvious thing and delved into the electronic dance music genre, inspired by their late nights at raucous rave-ups, but nothing could be further from the results that came about for this album. The style of the music was predominantly in the ambient vein, though with bizarre intersections through Krautrock influences, similar to early Tangerine Dream, or elements of cocktail jazz, spaced out and slowed down to capture the sense of deep, chill-out late-night altered state listening.

The Lunar conception for the album was intended to be pursued in a series of recordings, with a "Vol. 2" of Musick to Play in the Dark issued the following year, though these were both preceded by the Moon's Milk series of EPs, released in 1998. Collectively, these recordings represent Coil reaching a new peak of creative inspiration, and they have gone on to be valued as some of the group's most accomplished and effective works. They would also provide the momentum for them to take their unique sound on stage in the early 2000s, where they performed many of these pieces in concerts that have since become legendary. Most were documented on video and issued on the limited edition DVD box set, Colour Sound Oblivion.

Unfortunately, this era would be sadly abbreviated by the tragic accidental death of Jhon Balance in 2004, when he tumbled off a balcony in their aforementioned Victorian home. His struggles with substance abuse had taken their toll on both his physical and mental well-being, as well as his relationship with Christopherson, who had recently relocated to Thailand where he would remain based until his own tragic passing in December of 2010.

With both of the group's principal creatives now gone, there has been some confusion in terms of the plethora of reissues that have appeared and who, exactly, has the authority to manage their catalogue. Regardless, the group has left an astonishing canon of work in their wake, with this album sitting among the top of the heap in terms of its significance.

ZERO KAMA - THE SECRET EYE OF L.A.Y.L.A.H. @ 40

Released on cassette in September of 1984, the debut and only full studio album from Zero Kama, The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H., turns 40 years old this month. Subsequently reissued on vinyl in 1988, and CD in 1991, with a special edition remastered 30th anniversary edition in 2014, this might be the most sinister sounding album ever created. If any recording is capable of summoning "Evil Dead" style undead demons by playing it, this could be IT!

Austrian native, Michael Sperlhofer, later Michael Dewitt, now Zoe Dewitt, was an avid admirer of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV in the late '70s and early '80s, respectively. Dewitt engaged in frequent correspondence with members of both projects, especially Geoff Rushton (John Balance), before deciding to found the cassette label, Nekrophile Rekords, with the 1983 release of the compilation, The Beast 666. After initially working under the name, Korpses Katatonik, utilizing fairly standard tools such as tape loops and electronics, Dewitt began conceiving of something far more transgressive, leveraging an interest in occult practices, specifically those of Aleister Crowley and his Thelemic esoteric system. Rechristening their project as Zero Kama, Dewitt began making excursions to the mausoleums of the local graveyard, which were often poorly maintained, with minimal or no security, to procure raw materials for this new endeavour. Various skulls, leg and arm bones were collected, dried, cleaned and carved into a collection of ornately decorated percussion and wind instruments. It was a long process requiring painstaking and often grim preparation.

The resulting recordings created with these hand-crafted instruments, were nothing if not evocative of the most clandestine ritual music one could expect to find in the deepest darkest caverns of some obscure Satanic cult. Initially the identity of the creator of this music was kept a bit secret, which helped develop a mythology around the production of the music. Record collectors could only imagine the sorts of depraved ghouls who would put something like this together. Eventually, it would become common knowledge that Dewitt had been the sole creator of these recordings, likely keeping it quiet initially to avoid potential legal issues.

Since its initial release, the album has gone on to become somewhat legendary in avant-garde music circles as one of the more controversial products of the underground music scene. It inspired other artists like Metgubnerbone to go grave robbing for raw materials as well, though not as discretely since they did face legal blow-back from their actions. Dewitt would subsequently put on a couple of live performances as Zero Kama before withdrawing from pursuing the project any further, though in recent years, a revival has taken place. A lecture by Dewitt at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna on April 30, 2015, offered a detailed exploration of the creation of the album and its relationship to the broader spectrum of experimental music at that time. It is linked below and is well worth the time as a unique perspective on the scene.

 

LAND OF THE LOST @ 50

 

Debuting Saturday morning, September 7th, 1974, the classic children's adventure series, Land of the Lost, is marking its 50th anniversary today. Produced by Sid & Marty Kroft, creators of a string of live action Saturday morning puppet fantasies such as H.R. Pufnstuf (1969), The Bugaloos (1970), Lidsville (1971) and Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973), Land of the Lost saw the pair shifting gears into a decidedly more mature and dramatic tone for this particular production. Though still leaning into the "stranger in a strange land" trope that had been the common thread through their previous work, this particular series left the surreal psychedelic fantasy creatures behind for something somewhat more realistic, albeit still otherworldly, with a more legitimate science fiction style structure, utilizing less puppetry and more stop motion animation.

Originally conceived by the uncredited David Gerrold, the premise of the show involved the journey of the Marshall family: father Rick, son Will and daughter Holly, who were mysteriously transported to some kind of alternate reality/time/planet, where dinosaurs still roamed alongside a primitive primate species, the Pakuni, and an enigmatic and antagonistic reptilian race, the Sleestak, who had devolved from highly technologically advanced ancestors. Particularly in its first of three seasons, the series focused on relatively sophisticated science fiction concepts, as the stranded Marshalls attempted to find a way home while learning about the strange domain where they found themselves trapped. Though the series was restricted to a minuscule budget by being Saturday morning kid's fair, the Kroft production team were able to recruit some serious genre writers to help with the scripts, including Star Trek luminaries like D.C. Fontana and Walter Koenig and other respected talent such as Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Ben Bova and Norman Spinrad. With this set of minds creating the stories, the first and second seasons were often surprisingly sophisticated in terms of the concepts being explored, particularly when they introduced the advanced remnant of the Sleestak race, Enik, who helped the Marshall family uncover the mysteries of the pylons and the ancient Altrusian technology for creating dimensional doorways, the means by which the family arrived in this "lost land".

The series lasted for three seasons, though the already limited production values suffered by cutbacks in the third, with the story sophistication giving way to more comical and childish themes. The cast also lost the father as Spencer Milligan quit the series over disputes regarding compensation, especially in relation to the merchandising of the characters for toys and other memorabilia. He was abruptly replaced by an uncle, who conveniently managed to stumble into the same dimensional doorway just ad poor dad gets sucked out. After its cancellation, it went on to be revived in syndication over the years, developing a strong cult following while becoming an iconic source of childhood nostalgia for the generation that grew up watching the series. It even had a successful big budget feature film remake in 2009, though with a decidedly comedic bent with Will Farrell staring as the father.

It was certainly a staple of my Saturday morning viewing when I was a kid, though I was just old enough to recognized its flaws in terms of its budgetary limitation. However, I always found the basic concepts of the fallen advanced civilization fascinating and worthy of more serious development. I could very definitely see this show succeeding with a reboot aimed at a more mature and sophisticated implementation.

THE SLITS - CUT @ 45

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is the debut LP by The Slits, Cut, which was released on September 7th, 1979. It's an album that would highlight the core of the "girl power" substrata inherent in the punk and post-punk scenes of the era, with a collection of distinctive and innovative songs, influenced and infused by dub reggae and underlined by the DIY idiosyncrasies of the culture.

The band originally came together in late 1976 after founding members Viv Albertine and Palmolive had a stint earlier that year in the mythical Flowers of Romance, a band that never performed live or recorded, but which had a revolving door of notable members who included the likes of Keith Levene (The Clash, Public Image Ltd), Sid Vicious, Marco Pirroni (Adam & the Ants, Siouxsie and the Banshees) and Kenny Morris (also a Banshees member). The impetus for The Slits formation was an October 1976 Patti Smith gig attended by Ari Up, Palmolive and early member, Kate Korus. Ari had got into an argument with her mum, future wife of John Lydon, Nora Foster, before being approached by Palmolive and Kora with the idea to form a band. After an initial lineup shuffle, the principal early lineup stabilized with Ari, Viv, Palmolive and Tessa Pollit.

This configuration of the group spent the next couple of years performing and touring, mostly as a support act, often with bands like The Clash, Buzzcocks or The Jam as headliners. Their early sound was characterized by the dominance of Palmolive's primal, tribal aggressive drumming style. However, after she left the group late in 1978, joining The Raincoats by January of 1979, the addition of future Banshees drummer, Budgie, had a profound effect on the band's sound. His style helped to push them into the more refined, bass heavy dub reggae influenced sound that would be their calling card by the time they got to recording their debut LP.

Recorded at Ridge Farm Studios in Rusper and produced by Dennis Bovell, the album was a proper fusion of punk and reggae, two musical styles which had intertwined throughout the previous few years, without being a case of cultural appropriation. What the group took as influence was a sincere hybridization, rather than a case of white people ripping off black music. It had its own originality and distinction that was completely idiosyncratic to The Slits. Provocatively packaged in a cover showing the band's female members topless, covered in mud and sporting loincloths, it was a thumb in the eye to the concept of sexual exploitation and, rather, was a proclamation of female empowerment, with the album's title, as it was, being but one letter shy of obscenity. These girls weren't anyone's playthings or victims, and were in complete control of their creative process and what it manifested.

Cut's mark has been noted on several musical movements. The Guardian's Lindesay Irvine saw the album explore "adventurous" sonics while maintaining a "defiant" attitude. This included a full embrace of Jamaican music influences, with which he credited the Slits as one of the first bands to do so. Indeed, PopMatters felt that Cut spoke to post-punk's appropriation of dub and reggae clearer than any other of the genre's records. While only modestly successful at its release, it has become enshrined as one of the essential albums to have come from the UK punk scene of the late 1970s. It may have taken some time for the band to get a record on the shelves, but it sure was worth waiting for.
 

PHASE IV @ 50

 

Celebrating its 50th anniversary today is the classic science fiction macro-photography masterpiece, Phase IV, which had its theatrical release on September 6th, 1974. Inspired by an H.G. Wells short story from 1905, Empire of the Ants, the film featured groundbreaking cinematography of its insect stars, and may have provided the instigation for the crop circle phenomenon to boot!

The idea for Phase IV was apparently hatched over cocktails in 1971, when Peter Bart at Paramount had dinner with Raul Radin and asked him, "What's cooking?" Radin responded, "an ant story", though he actually had nothing. Radin subsequently called graphic designer, Saul Bass, who had a friend who worked with ants and they quickly agreed to work together. Bass was hired as the film's director, though he was mostly known as a graphic artist, creating title and credit sequences and posters for feature films, with a list of credits that included such major releases as Psycho, Spartacus, Ocean's 11, West Side Story, and dozens of others. Ken Middleham, the wildlife photographer who shot the insect sequences for Phase IV, also shot the insect sequences for the documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle. Both feature extensive use of macro-photography of insects.

The film tells the story of an isolated research station in Arizona that comes under siege by a colony of mysteriously evolved intelligent ants. This hive mind organism begins creating megalithic architectural structures in the desert and engaging in tactical assaults on the research station in response to its various provocations and experiments. The activities of the ants are depicted in striking macro-photography scenes, where real ants are shown performing a variety of seemingly intelligent behaviours, many of which beg the question of how they were coaxed to perform so perfectly on cue. There's even a scene where the ants create a crop circle, the first known appearance of such a construct on screen. The film predates by two years the first modern reports of crop circles in the United Kingdom and it has been cited as a possible inspiration or influence on the pranksters who started this phenomenon. Though the setting is in the US, actual principal photography was done at Pinewood Studios in England and exterior locations were shot in Kenya. In addition to the spectacular insect photography, the film is also notable for featuring real computer systems, like the GEC 2050, rather than faked props.

While the film was a solid flop in its theatrical release, it began accumulating a cult audience as it made its way onto TV movie night broadcasts, and further solidified its cult standing by being featured in an early episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Contemporary critical reviews were mixed, with Jay Cocks of Time saying the film was "good, eerie entertainment, with interludes of such haunted visual intensity that it becomes, at its best, a nightmare incarnate", while A. H. Weiler of The New York Times wrote, "For all of its good, scientific and human intentions, 'Phase IV' cries for a Phase V of fuller explanations." Perhaps it didn't help that an extended ending montage showing the post-revolution impacts of the new "ant empire" was chopped out of the final edit for the theatrical release and lost for decades before being rediscovered and included as bonus material on later HD remastered discs and streaming releases. As a result of its box office failure, it was the only feature Saul Bass ever directed.

I saw the film as a kid on TV in the mid 1970s and immediately fell in love with it. The idea of an evolved, intelligent hive-mind ant colony was a totally unique conception for me, long before the Borg would appear on Star Trek, and it remains a theme that has stood the test of time quite well. I've recently watched it again in a lovely HD version and it retains a maturity and sophistication that make it an essential title in the realm of '70s science fiction classics. The astounding insect photography alone is worth the price of admission, and a cracking good story to boot makes it all a worthy viewing experience.

HAWKWIND - HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN GRILL @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee today, hitting the half century mark on its journey through deep space, the forth studio album by space-rock pioneers, Hawkwind, Hall of the Mountain Grill, was released on September 6th, 1974. The album saw the group going through one of its many lineup changes, with with lyricist/vocalist Robert Calvert and electronic effects wizard, Dik Mik departed and replaced with Simon House on synthesizer, Mellotron and electric violin. Future Motörhead founder, Lemmy Kilmister, was still with the band, though this would be his last time working with them before he got dumped while on tour in the US.

Despite the turbulence of the personnel changes, particularly significant without the conceptual guidance of Calvert, the album is still considered by many as a career highlight. In the wake of Robert Calvert's departure, lead vocals for the album were performed by Dave Brock, along with Lemmy on "Lost Johnny" and Nik Turner on "D-Rider". The band's line-up would continue to shift during the year. Del Dettmar left prior to the release of Hall of the Mountain Grill to live in Canada, and Alan Powell joined as an additional drummer. Science fiction author and friend of the group, Michael Moorcock, stepped in to read poetry at their concerts.[

The album's title was a nod to Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King", and to a Portobello Road cafe called The Mountain Grill (now closed), which was frequented by the band and their contemporaries from the Ladbroke Grove scene in the early 1970s. Hawkwind's frequent solo support act and occasional live guest musician Steve Peregrin Took had a song "The Ballad of the Mountain Grill," released in 1995 on a Cleopatra Records CD under alternative title "Flophouse Blues (in the Mountain Grill)". At one point, underground newspaper International Times had its print-works in the upstairs of the Grill.

Hall of the Mountain Grill reached number 16 on the UK album charts and number 110 in the US. Retrospective reviews have been generally positive. Though they were critical of the title track, AllMusic called Hall of the Mountain Grill "The band's best studio album" and "the quintessential guitar-oriented space rock record". Head Heritage were far less impressed, contending that the departures of Robert Calvert and Dik Mik were losses that Hawkwind could not remotely compensate for, and that the entire album "has the undeniable feel of a stop-gap album released half-desperately to keep the machinery of Hawkwind's constant touring well-greased". Regardless of the lack of critical consensus, it's one of the band's albums that I can return to repeatedly for a proper dose of their patented intergalactic musical excursions.

FRONT 242 - NO COMMENT @ 40

Marking 40 years on the shelf this month is the sophomore LP from Belgian EBM pioneers, Front 242, with No Comment being released in September of 1984. The album contains the actual first documented use of the term "electronic body music" in the album's credits, which included the phrase "Electronic Body Music Composed and Produced On Eight Tracks by Front 242", a reference to their use of an 8-track recording device. Although Cabaret Voltaire had arguably cut the first stylistic swath into the EBM genre with their Crackdown LP from the previous year, Front 242 codified the style on this release.

The key elements for this music came from the new generation of synths, drum machines and sequencers that were taking over the gear racks at the time. The introduction of digital sample based drum machines allowed for a much tighter and tougher drum sound than what was typical with earlier analogue machines, while the more sophisticated digital "composer" style sequencers allowed for much more complex arrangements than the primitive step sequencers that preceded them. There was also the introduction of a new generation of synthesizers, incorporating "FM" digital synthesis, which also broadened the musical palettes available to electronic artists. This trifecta of innovations directly fed into the evolution of EBM as the dominating alternative variant on the dance floor in the mid 1980s. No Comment became a blueprint for a genre that has continued to thrive in various branches over the past forty years.

BOURBONESE QUALK - HOPE @ 40

 

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this month is the sophomore LP from Bourbese Qualk, Hope, which was released in September of 1984. Bourbonese Qualk began in Southport (UK) in 1979 when Simon Crab and his brother Ted began working together to create experimental music. By the recording of Hope, the band were a trio consisting of Simon Crab: Instruments and electronics, Julian Gilbert: Voice and electronics and Steven Tanza: Drums. Although they get lumped in as part of the second wave of the UK "industrial" scene, their style was diverse enough that the fit into that box was always misleading, though their style could come close to early Cabaret Voltaire in terms of their penchant for funky grooves combined with strange noises.

Like their punk counterpart, CRASS, they were highly politically active and, by the time of recording this album, had squatted a large abandoned building, The Ambulance Station, converting it into a studio and communal artist space. Working independently, they released their albums on their own label imprint, Recloose Organisation. Though Hope was their second vinyl LP, the group were also extremely active in the cassette tape exchange culture, where they released a number of cassette only titles. Hope saw the group expanding its musical palette to incorporate a wider variety of styles and instruments.

During the 1980s the group were quite visible as they were often contributors to numerous compilation releases of the time. That's where I first encountered them, on releases like The Elephant Table. They fell into neglect after their peak in the mid 1980s, though they continued to release albums sporadically up to 2003, mostly with Simon Crab as the principal contributor. I'd nearly forgotten about the group through the 1990s and early 2000s, but found myself rediscovering them at the beginning of the new millennium. Their entire catalogue was initially archived on their website and available for free for many years, but a reissue campaign in recent years has helped revive interest in the band as their albums can now be purchased via Bandcamp.

NURSE WITH WOUND - CHANCE MEETING ON A DISSECTING TABLE OF A SEWING MACHINE AND UMBRELLA @ 45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary this month is the debut album from Nurse With Wound, Chance Meeting On a Dissecting Table of a Sewing Machine and Umbrella, which was recorded in September of 1979. In addition to introducing the world to one of the UK's most unusual post-punk experimental concoctions, it provided collectors of strange music with one of the most useful laundry lists of artists ever assembled.

Prior to forming Nurse With Wound, Steven Stapleton was an avid record collector with a refined penchant for the strangest and most unusual music he was able to track down. As a graphic artist, commercially employed as a sign painter, he'd developed a passion for surrealism and sought out music that reflected that aesthetic. The founding of Nurse With Wound (NWW) then came about as a bit of rather serendipitous fortune, due to one of Stapleton's sign painting jobs for an independent recording studio. While on the job, Steven got to chatting with one of the engineers, Nick Rogers, who began lamenting his boredom with recording commercials and voice-over work, musing how he would love to be able to work on something more adventurous and creative. That twigged Stapleton, who immediately offered Rogers the opportunity to record his "band", an entity that didn't actually exist at the time. It was a moment of seizing an opportunity, with the practical aspects being left to work themselves out, after the fact. Stapleton immediately contacted two of his close music collector buddies, John Fothergill and Heman Pathak, instructing them to get hold of instruments for a recording session, thus establishing NWW's first official lineup.

The trio booked a six hour session for one day in the studio and showed up with their gear and no idea of what they were going to do, as they'd spent no time rehearsing or planning anything. For the recordings, the "group" was Stapleton on percussion, Fothergill on guitar (with built-in ring modulator) and Pathak on organ. Engineer Rogers also contributed what was credited as "commercial guitar". The studio's piano and synthesizer were also used. The session consisted entirely of on-the-spot improvisations that shook out into three different movements that were subsequently edited slightly and given a few minor overdubs before they were able to walk away with a finished mix of their debut album at the end of the session.

The trio then decided to release the recordings via their own newly minted label imprint, United Dairies, utilizing a vinyl pressing plant that normally specialized in classical recordings, to ensure the quality of the pressing was best able to capture the recording's dynamic range. 500 copies were pressed for its first run. The group's name came from a scene in the film Battleship Potemkin, and the album's title is a quote from the surreal poetic novel, Les Chants de Maldoror, by Uruguayan-born French author Isidore-Lucien Ducasse, written under the pseudonym Comte de Lautréamont. Stapleton designed the cover utilizing images pilfered from pornographic magazines, which resulted in some outlets insisting on the album being concealed in a brown paper bag, though some of the more adventurous outlets, like Virgin and Rough Trade, were happy to let it be seen in all its kinky glory. Here, I've cleverly plastered a NWW logo over the offending portion to thwart Facebook filters!

The original hand-numbered 500 copy pressing was sold within weeks. Among those who bought the album were Tim Gane, later of Stereolab, and William Bennett of Whitehouse, both of whom would later work with Stapleton. Critical response to the album was also surprisingly positive, if not a bit confused. Sounds summed up their response by abandoning their usual star rating system to award the album a full 5 question marks! In later reviews, the album has been lauded as "one of the more glowing examples of late-70s industrial noise" (All Music), and FACT magazine ranked the album at #51 on their list of "The 100 best albums of the 1970s".

One of the most influential aspects of the record's packaging was the inclusion of an A4 printout of the now infamous "Nurse With Wound List", a veritable "who's who" of experimental musical performers from the era prior to the record's release, all of whom were considered influential by the band. Dozens of artists were cited in the list, which has become an invaluable resource for collectors of strange and unusual music from that era. Having been mentioned on the "List" has become something of a guarantee that avid collectors will likely be hunting for your records, and has undoubtedly resulted in numerous reissues of rare releases in the ensuing years since its first publication.

Chance Meeting... has subsequently seen a number of represses and reissues, some of which have expanded its contents, like the 2001 CD special edition that added the fourth track, "Strain, Crack, Break", which consists of a heavily cut-up recording of David Tibet reading the "List". Though certainly a notable example of experimental improvisation, the album is not particularly indicative of what NWW would soon become. The lineup for the band would quickly diverge, leaving Stapleton as the sole proprietor of the venture by the third album. His techniques and approaches would rapidly develop over the course of those early releases as well, with the album, Homotopy to Marie (1982) being the release where the true NWW sound and aesthetic, in all its sophistication and complexity, would first come into its full flower. Since then, NWW has involved innumerable collaborators and a vast range of approaches and styles, with its output continuing to rank as some of the most collectible artifacts of the underground music scene. 

The "List" included with the album is documented here...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nurse_with_Wound_list

The album can be streamed and purchased from Bandcamp.
https://nursewithwound1.bandcamp.com/.../chance-meeting...