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.