Rock Music derivatives
Original position in magazine: pp 40-44
Contents: This Heat, We Be Echo, A Sudden Sway
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This Heat
This Heat
Made Available: John Peel Sessions
UK THESE RECORDS THESE 10 CD (1996)
This Heat cast a long shadow and still have the faithful and the followers clamouring for release of rare materials. They recorded two John Peel sessions in 1977 (incidentally, the first session was also broadcast by Alan Freeman!) and as this CD shows their music has a timeless quality that makes it as important as any music being performed today. The opening cut ‘Horizontal Hold’ is a performance of devastating power, one of their best compositions and belted out here with urgent relish. ‘The Fall of Saigon’, comprised mainly I think of tape loops - most notably the resonant woodblocks making a rhythm track - the principal performed sections `are the vocal and guitar solo. I’ve always loved the disturbing story of this song which dispassionately depicts cabin fever, madness and cannibalism through its elegant word-play and economic written qualities. Eating furniture and then eating people! Whether there’s any connection with the actual political events of Saigon, I know not; but I enjoy the psychological suggestion of the behaviour of human beings in extremis. Performed with a This Heat stylistic signature, a basso profundo voice singing the same line as the lead vocal. An unholy Caliban-esque twin of the storyteller leaning over his shoulder.
‘Rimp Ramp Romp’ must rate as the ‘undiscovered classic’, a treat for hungry This Heat fans like myself. An eccentric brute of a piece that justifies this CD’s existence at a stroke. A shining example of the unique chemistry they had when they were full-on. Perhaps it’s a throwaway improvisation, perhaps semi-arranged, perhaps edited; whichever way it’s a flash of inspired music. Dynamic is This Heat’s middle name - this piece physically shoves you from one place to another, perhaps two different rooms in the same dusty Svankmajer house; where one room tucks you up in bed with a wild ape, the other has bright sunlight calmly pouring through the windows. I’ve often felt their quieter, abstract work was investigating the corners of an unfamiliar room; listen to the three other non-vocal pieces here. ‘Sitting’ has piano and synth burblings joined by an uncertain clarinet, while ‘Basement Boy’ features a melodeon line (rarely heard outside of reggae music), both instruments hesitatingly feeling their way around an alien environment.
‘Makeshift’ (which later became ‘Makeshift Swahili’) has the harsh Dalek voice barking its ferocious message which is perhaps the only feature to have dated somewhat. But listen to what the instruments are doing here, everything’s working overtime, standing out, driving the piece forward, supporting the others. This Heat evolved a semi-utopian working method, where no musician shows off or is allowed to fall asleep for a second, as if part of an idealistic quasi-Marxist commune. This may tie in with the extremely radical political content of their message (evident on the second LP Deceit).
Having been on the bootleg circuit for some time, these cuts are at last officially available; it seems the band members themselves remain largely unmotivated to release further items (and I agree that artistically it can be tedious and distasteful to have one’s past achievements dredged up over and over - surely the work you’re doing now is what counts). However, in Japan there have been rumours of four or five live CD boots…
ED PINSENT
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The Horror and Mundanity of WE BE ECHO
By War Arrow
Someone once remarked to me that they considered ‘Industrial’ music to be evil. Not through any religious motivation, but rather from the tendency of artists tarnished with that brush to concentrate on the morbid. I disagreed then as I do now with such a subjective judgement. A soundtrack of relentlessly oppressive noise kept me sane during my teenage years spent in small-town, redneck, chicken-shagging England. ‘Industrial’? Who comes up with these spurious categorisations?
For the sake of clarification, ‘Industrial’ as a generalisation is commonly applied to that part of the experimental ’scene’ (man) which sprung fully-formed from the wake of Throbbing Gristle at the end of the 1970s. Cabaret Voltaire and 23 Skidoo are amongst those who achieved wide recognition, but there were loads of the buggers, holed up in broom cupboards across the country, churning out cassettes or records of occasionally dreary but often innovative and exciting music. Dave Henderson, writing for Sounds music paper, attempted to cover this phenomenon in his ‘Wild Planet’ columns, which ultimately served to show that whatever this was, it wasn’t a scene. There was no coherent ‘Industrial’ sound. All that unified the individuals concerned was their diversity, and only a fool could’ve attempted to shoehorn them into any teen fad of the day. One common factor however seemed to be a certain sense of nihilism, also present I’d argue in any half-decent punque roque ditty of the time, which separated this wave from its immediate musical - if not conceptual - forefathers: Faust, Can, Neu!, and those other crazy hairy dudes. And by the way, is it just me or are Stereolab, much as I love them, really just the Showaddywaddy of the 90s? ‘Yes’, I hear you cry in unison,’but who de fuck are We Be Echo?’ I’ll get to the point.
Kevin Thorne (KT) and Raymond Georgeson (RG) are names known to any industrial trainspotter worth his (or her, but probably his) salt, conversant with catalogue numbers and playing times of obscure import singles by ‘Swedish Nature’ (for pedantic example). KT and RG are mentioned on the cover of Throbbing Gristle’s Heathen Earth album (which is like, a classic, dude) as members of the specially invited audience present at the recording. Duly inspired, the duo paired up to record and perform as Third Door From The Left (TDFTL), staying together for a little over a year, after which Kevin went solo as We Be Echo. The differences between these two groups are negligible, so I’ll discuss them simply as components of a single body of work. The combined influences of Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and to an extent Joy Division are apparent to greater or lesser degrees throughout Kevin Thorne’s criminally obscure musical career, which apparently was used as a negative criticism in fanzines of the day. What such reviewers overlook is that a lot else was going on in there as well.
The sleeve notes penned by Iham (of Nanavesh mag, fact fans) for the special edition Cesa Evi cassette mention Kevin’s frustration at his own limitations, and this is understandable given the modest recording set-up at his disposal. Youngsters today (who, by the way, don’t know they’re born) may moan about the poor bass response of their 8-tracks or their sampler’s inability to store more than half an hour of sound. Fucking pouffs! We Be Echo recorded most of their output on a Sharp Music Centre! As part of his diminutive sonic arsenal, Kevin held a few cheap synths and cranky old drum machines of the kind which certain people will now pay thousands of pounds for, having spent ten years taking the piss out of you for hanging onto ‘that antique’. Add a few bog-standard effects pedals and a rickety guitar and one might, with good reason, suspect this to be a recipe for prolonged and uninteresting listening. Not at all. In spite of such an impoverished range of tools and by the intervention of a remarkable instinct for inventiveness, We Be Echo produced a small but daunting catalogue of work of consistently high quality. Tracks such as ‘Under Attack’ and ‘Witches Burn’ still scare the living shit out of me ten years on, in a way that Ministry (to name one of many groups of contemporary comedians dubbed ‘Industrial’ by clueless whippersnappers) never could.
Kevin’s work fell into three distinct phases, the first of which is represented by the two cassettes issued by Third Door From The Left. The music here is largely driven by drum machine, with guitar, bass, synthesizer and tapes of found noise or speech contributing to a quite overwhelming sound, undiminished in its disturbing impact by its extremely poor quality (sounding like it was mastered on one of those cassettes available in packs of 20 for a quid at car boot sales). The mumbled monotone delivered by Raymond Georgeson in lieu of actual vocals should have elevated TDFTL to legendary status. There was nothing half-assed about this group. Even the lyrics (in particular ‘Tear Out My Heart’ and ‘It’s Not Us’) work as poetry in their own right, unlike that tedious toss churned out by yer average rock star. John Lennon is but one of many names that spring to mind here. Songs, fine. Poetry, my fucking ringpiece! Oh, while I’m on the subject…can we all please stop banging on about The Beatles now? It’s getting boring. TDFTL succeeded in producing truly dark Gothic music, with great innovation and none of the laughable pantomime which one justifiably associates with that term.
Phase Two: working solo as We Be Echo, Kevin began to reach a larger audience, relatively speaking (I’m unaware of any appearance he may have made in the top ten). His cassettes sold probably a few hundred, rather than in tens; he made it onto vinyl; received fleeting recognition in national music papers; and was played on college radio stations as far afield as America and New Zealand. His distinctive graphic design work graced a number of record sleeves, notably one by Chris and Cosey; at one point he was chalked in to play bass with them, though sadly this never came about. We Be Echo, as represented on the bed-wettingly fine Cesa Evi cassette, were a musical refinement of the organised chaos of TDFTL. The rhythm programming shows an increased complexity, lending tension to the bass and keyboard components. In place of vocals there are deftly-manipulated speech recordings, providing a thematically provocative narrative to the tracks. Speech and sounds are juxtaposed, edited and repeated, in or out of context, to great effect. Many others have tried similar things (often with access to superior equipment) but few succeed so well as We Be Echo. Perhaps being forced to work that little bit harder, given the austerity of Kevin’s ’studio’, produced something far greater than the sum of its parts. Much of Kevin’s work from this period, owing largely to a refined use of speech tapes, has a documentary nature; as though the music itself is providing evidence of some event, without comment, or even human intervention. Tracks such as ‘Survivalist’, ‘Sex Slaves’, and ‘I’m a Gambler’ (not, I must stress, to be confused with Madonna’s hit single) are good examples of this. The music races on, heavy with implied emotional undercurrents, whilst the vocal track meanders casually onwards, curiously blending the horror and mundanity of the narrative into an ultimately dispassionate dialogue.
The final phase of Kevin’s musical output began in 1984, when his wife Bobbie came in as vocalist. Happily the Linda McCartney effect is not too much in evidence here (though I do have problems with the theory that Linda had a detrimental effect upon Paul’s songwriting, which was quite frankly shite at the best of times, with or without the influence of her indoors). With the emphasis now on Bobbie’s vocals, the music was stripped down to little more than basic rhythm and sequencer patterns, with a few atmospheric effects thrown in for good measure. Personally I find this period the least interesting of Kevin’s career. The music, even taking into account its increased minimalism, somehow seems less finished, less carefully considered than before. Bobbie’s voice is not always up to the requirements of the tracks. Having said that, this line up thankfully avoided pursuing the obvious course of becoming a verse-chorus orientated pop synth type thang and some of the work, ‘Housewife’s Choice’ or the especially beautiful ‘Witches Burn’ for example, still stand up as masterpieces to this day.
Despite a slow but steady increase of interest in We Be Echo, Kevin threw in the musical towel in late 1986. Was he disillusioned with his own limitations, the lack of support for the musically esoteric, or maybe even surfeited with marital bliss, who knows? I was personally saddened, having become irritated by the vast wealth of piss-poor derivative crap flooding the experimental cassette scene. We Be Echo were one of the few name bands who could be relied on to provide consistently worthwhile listening. Before concluding I wish to stress that I anticipate criticism for this article along the usual lines, ie some tosser banging on about a band no-one’s ever heard of and probably didn’t even exist, in a vain attempt to demonstrate superiority through obscurity. Please don’t bother. I’m long past the stage of apologising for my listening proclivities, whether esoteric (Morris Dolby and the Bouncy Lobster Band, anyone?) or otherwise (Iron Maiden - cos they ROCK, dude!) and by the fiery staff of Huitzilopochtli I declare We Be Echo were an important band. It grieves me that a combo of such high calibre floundered and petered out without so much as a whimper, considering the unconditional praise squirted towards any old wanker with a sampler and a Tortoise T-shirt by Melody Maker - toilet paper with delusions of grandeur that has on more than one occasion proclaimed itself to be our chief proponent of the avant-garde … er … run that one by me again?
I’m not going to proclaim We Be Echo as the saviours of the human race, but if you have an inquiring mind and a discriminating ear they are worthy of your attention. In particular the quality and sophistication of this music, recorded as I have said on a Sharp Music centre with very little equipment, is a fine illustration of what effort and invention can produce. The number of bands today with a vast NASA-style studio set up is alarming, and in spite of all this wonderful technology there’s so little new music one could truly call inspired. To be frank most of it’s a load of poop, produced by people not worthy of stirring Kevin Thorne’s tea.
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(A) Sudden Sway
Sir Savoir, Her Valoir
By Harley Richardson
Filed away in the ‘Great LPs I’ve bought for one quid’ section of my record collection is ‘76 Kids Forever by Sudden Sway. On its release in the late 1980s, this record totally failed to take the nation by storm, spending six months in the bargain bins of every second-hand record shop in Britain and then vanishing to a vinyl landfill site somewhere. No wonder. Ostensibly an ‘Original Soundtrack’ to an imaginary West End musical, ‘76 Kids sounded to many like an unfunny joke concept LP, and it’s not hard to imagine any interest from the indie scene (it came out on Rough Trade) being killed off by the record’s slick white soul-boy musicianship and bad tampon-advert aesthetics of the sleeve art.
But I love every track on this LP which, apart from a brief tap section, doesn’t bear much resemblance to that of any West End show I’ve been to. Sure, it has the energy and exaggerated emotion but instead of pompous, sub-classical orchestral numbers we get compact, upbeat and catchy pop songs. Lyrically it does have certain elements in common with, say, Jesus Christ Superstar - for example the articulate, wordy, and mostly first-person narrative, as well as characters who break into song at the drop of a hat - but Sudden Sway can do much better than the mind-bendingly crass lyrics of Rice and Lloyd Webber. And of course we’re also spared the dumb overblown visuals.
I’d agree with anyone who says that lyrically, ‘76 Kids Forever isn’t very funny, but I claim that parody is only one part of what they were up to. Taking a swing at musicals is hardly difficult (or a gesture of much consequence) and I think I’d find a wholly ironic or superior attitude pretty unpleasant for that reason. In this case I reckon the ‘concept’ behind the LP is more than anything a convenient, if slightly strange, peg on which Sudden Sway hang their peculiar observations on life. Its subject matter concerns a loose bunch of friends in their early twenties who are in the process of seeing their dreams being superseded by a routine of jobs and weekend drinking and clubbing. But no Bill Forsyth film, this: instead of a single-minded attempt to realistically portray an aspect of British culture, we get a string of stray and tangential thoughts running through the minds of the characters, mixed up with references from the far corners of the central theme and pulled into coherent and entertaining character studies such as ‘Solo Store Detective Man’ and ‘I’ve got a Tinnitron Amusement Centre’. In this respect Sudden Sway are quite avant-garde. Their approach to narrative points your brain in many directions and leaves you to make of it what you will.
This is complemented by the background info which rounds out the package. There’s a run-through of the (pretty mundane) plot which describes where the different songs fit, and a lyric sheet to tell us which character is singing at any point, identifying backing singers in appropriate places such as ‘lunchtime business drinkers’ or ‘admin department’. There’s also short pieces about the fictitious ‘actors’, weirdly treating them as if they were characters in the musical. All in all ‘76 Kids Forever makes a great excuse to skip your next trip to the West End.
Having been bitten by the Sudden Sway bug I was curious to find out how a band on a label like Rough Trade had developed so differently to the rest of 80s indiedom. A delve into the Sound Projector archives turned up several 45s and LPs which gave me some pointers. In 1980, the nucleus of Mike McGuire (vox and keyboards) and Pete Jostin (bass) were part of just another low-fi new wave combo. The single ‘Jane’s First Party…/Don’t Go’ was sparse, heavy on bass and drums, with vocals and lyrics full of alienation. By the sound of it, the guitarist was new to the instrument, finding his way round this problem by abusing his guitar to achieve eerie effects. These same ingredients and methods have produced some great music - Sonic Youth’s ‘Burning Spear’ for example. Sudden Sway doing the same thing sounded uncomfortable, the result kind of like The Cure on a particularly bad day : morose and aesthetically misled.
Shift forward to their 1983 Peel Session, where they had taken on a more conventional but artistically successful quality. For a start, the band (now with one Simon Childs on guitar) had learned to play. Their records from now on would belie all my preconceptions of what makes good music: Sudden Sway were slick, funky and professional, with slap bass in one hand and sequencer in the other, playing songs that reeked of composition over long deliberation in the studio rather than being born out of any musical rapport between band members.
But somehow they had something that set them apart from both their nearest mainstream relatives, best forgotten mid-80s bands like Hipsway and Hue & Cry and of middle of the road ‘indie’ groups such as Aztec Camera and Prefab Sprout. Now they’d got into their stride Sudden Sway had more musical sass than their peers, and even serious over-production couldn’t hide the sheer vivacity of their tunes.
Their Peel Session featured a breezy mixture of song and spoken word comedy; their targets were perhaps slightly obvious, but it showed off a lightly cynical sense of humour which would be nicely sharpened in time for the next two singles, released in 1986: the infectious and punchy ‘Sing Song’, and ‘Autumn Cutback Job Lot Offer’. The latter contained a set of neat 30-second jingles, selling bogus items like the ‘Desktop Germ Receiver’ and ‘Latest Autobation Rug’, making a handy musical companion to the Innovations Catalogue.
By this stage Sudden Sway were putting a lot of effort into their packaging, making light-hearted digs at consumerism, and (no doubt infuriating their record company) releasing eight separate versions of Sing Song. They took to covering the sleeves with nonsensical logos and hilarious cut-up pseudo-marketing quotes - the kind of thing that U2 congratulate themselves for doing so earnestly, but much more fun! Through all this Sudden Sway attempted to stay anonymous, presenting themselves as a corporate entity rather than a band, although they were partly thwarted in this by Strange Fruit (who routinely document band line-ups on the covers of their Peel Sessions EPs).
After ‘76 Kids Forever I know of only one Sudden Sway release - Ko-Opera, another concept LP. This added some techno lines to the formula, but it now sounds sluggish and depressing. Perhaps the band needed a change of direction to avoid diminishing returns.One other LP was recorded but to this day remains unreleased.
I’ve no idea whether Sudden Sway ever toured - they were certainly tight enough to be practised live musicians. They were however prone to staging strange public events, which included a gig played over a telephone chatline, and a mystery treasure hunt starting from Rough Trade shop in Covent Garden. I remember hearing that they spent a week inside a perspex cage in Canary Wharf, where any passers-by could request songs by pressing buttons on the outside of the cage. (This was also seen on a BBC2 Saturday nights art programme at the time - Ed). But this masochistic-sounding undertaking endears them to me all the more. You may have to search hard to find any of the records below. Let’s look up and smile…
Thanks to Rhodri Marsden of the Penguin Rough Guide to Rock, whose Sudden Sway entry on the Internet filled some gaps in my knowledge.
Incomplete Sudden Sway Discography
1980 Jane’s Third Party…/ Don’t Go 7″ Chant CHANT 1A
1981? To You With Regard EP ?
1984 Traffic Tax Scheme
1986 The Peel Sessions 12″ Strange Fruit SFPS 005
1986 Sing Song /Creative Marketing in 8 Dimensions 7″ Blanco Y Negro NEG 18V1-8
1986 Spacemate 2 x LP Blanco Y Negro?
[1986] Autumn Cutback Job Lot Offer 7″ Rough Trade RT 183
1988 ‘76 Kids Forever LP Rough Trade ROUGH 133
1987 The Barmy Army 7″ Rough Trade RTT213
1989 Ko-Opera LP Rough Trade ROUGH 142