The main instigators of this teenage rebellion seem to have been Patrik Lager and Robert Lagerström, while those credited on the back cover are Mano, Fader Rotting, Kempe, Boris, Alexanger McGinthy and Landguden (one or two of these names might be aliases for our two visionary heroes). This was all taking place in a cultural wasteland – no disrespect to the town of Stenungsgund or its populace, but this particular locale doesn’t seem to have been a particularly life-affirming area in the 1980s, with its 1960s petrochemical plants dominating the landscape, and said plants cornering all the employment prospects too. I’m taking my cue from the notes here by Marko Gillingsmark, who has a record label and a fanzine called Levande Begravd in Goteborg, and is not only well-informed but paints a vivid picture in his punchy essay, pretty much affirming that teenage boredom and despair are the forces that led to this angsty, disaffected, powerful music. Indeed, Robert Lagerström confirms that the sound of the factory machines (where he took summer jobs) fed directly into every note of music he made.

Gillingsmark tells a compelling tale of how exciting post-punk culture was brought across from London in the form of records by Throbbing Gristle, Chrome, and Fad Gadget, plus a dash of Stockhausen on the side, leading to an experimental music subculture in Stenungsgund; I’m not sure if we can say it was “thriving”, but there was enough going on in underground venues and word of mouth to start swelling the ranks of the Fysisk Fostran collective. Cassettes played a part in this exchange, as did the largesse of the welfare state; the band were pretty much given a run-down old building for nothing, and used it as a rehearsal space and venue. Later it was demolished by the same state powers that had donated it, as things took a bad turn for the band – violent clashes with skinheads and greasers at live events, and a record company declining to press their “wrong-sounding” EP.

If you’re thinking all of this milieu was a fertile petri dish for the breeding of rare European noised-up microbes, you’d be 100% correct; mere moments after clicking the needle on side one, you’ll be hooked into this strange world of inchoate teenage naivety, a virtual cult with very little contact with the outside world or even with like-minded bands / musicians in the vicinity. I absolutely love it, and would personally wish for an entire boxed set of such insane untutored rawness, although it might be this LP is all that has survived from that brief moment in the lives of Patrik Lager and Robert Lagerström and their compadres. Here’s a record that’s easily on a par with that reissue of Musiikkivyöry (Mika Taanila), who was exhibiting not-dissimilar anti-social and concrete tendencies in 1980-1981 in the Finnish underground. He was just 15 years old at the time.

It’s quite plausible to suggest at this point that teenagers always make the best music, especially if they’re sufficiently disaffected and strong-minded enough to run wild with their worst impulses, and overcome anything that might be blocking their free expression. How much healthier and more creative (I would say) to bark it all out in the form of primitive rhythmic noise like this, than to have all your teenage energy drained by bad actors creeping in and out of your smartphone and whispering intellectual contraband in your ears. An essential listen!! From 17 November 2023.

The duo Zöj are attempting to express something about cultural identity, a very tricky and poignant subject in the 21st century – “what it means to be from more than one place” might not cover it completely, but it’s a start. Gelerah Pour is originally from Iran and Brian O’Dwyer was born in Australia. Open up the gatefold and you’ll see Gelerah Pour on the left proudly holding up one of her instruments – either the Kamancheh (Iranian bowed string instrument, and part of the lyra and rebab family) or the Gheychak (Iranian bowed lute) – with the motto “This Machine Kills Fascists” written in full capitals. Folk historians will of course recognise this as the exact same message that Woody Guthrie had inscribed on his guitar, at a crucial time and place in history, i.e. America in the 1940s. But back then, the enemy was easier to recognise. Aiming your musical weapon at “Fascists” in the global 21st century is a much tougher proposition, and what’s more I’d venture to say it’s a moving target too.

All of this led me to anticipate an angrier and more forceful music than what we hear on Fil O Fenjoon (BLEEMO MUSIC / PARENTHÈSES RECORDS PREC19), which turns out to be very moody and wistful melancholic songs and instrumentals, barely straying from a root note and most of them set in the same key. The plight of women in Iran, and themes concerning freedom and courage, inform most of the poetical lyrics and the content, and even the jewellery worn by Pour is part of this statement. I’d imagine the words of the Iranian poet Hooshang Ebtehaj – the basis on several tracks here – are also part of it, and though I’m not familiar with his work it’s an understatement to say he has lived through “political and cultural upheavals” in his part of the world. Voice and playing of Gelerah Pour is front and centre for my money, O’Dwyer providing a very respectful and non-intrusive percussive backdrop, but this is his personal mode of expression behind the kit – he sees sound as a way of making a “connection” and wants his playing to “ebb and flow” in sympathy with his collaborators, and the walls of the room itself. In this context, it’s clear why a stoner-rock drummer would be – ahem – massively misplaced in this group. Contemporary world culture blended with contemporary experimental sounds – that’s their aim, possibly reflected to some extent in the album title which means “Elephant and Teacup” in the Farsi tongue. The duo have been active since 2012, working under the Zöj name since 2016. (24/10/2023)

Another good record by Zea, the vocalist and guitarist Arnold de Boer from The Ex. We Are Still Each Other’s Only Hope (MAKKUM RECORDS MR39) is an entertaining and bewildering mix of deconstructed and imaginative non-rock songs played in his inimitable manner, studio and home recordings, with guest appearances from many of his usual collaborators – Xavier Charles, Mats Gustafsson, Harald Austbo, Hubert Kostkiewicz, and many others. This one doesn’t follow the agenda to reinstate the Frisian dialect into modern culture, and the strange tales are sung and recited in English. We’ve enjoyed Zea since we heard The Swimming City in 2015, and we don’t have any new observations to add at this time. (24/10/2023)

On Acustica (MACRO M74), Stefan Goldmann makes cut-ups of 20th century avant-garde music – or more precisely, recordings of same, i.e. the music of important avant-garde musicians interpreted by orchestras, pianists, percussionist, and other trained musicians. Over 70 years of history was raided by our eager experimenter; he makes no bones about describing it as a “DJ Mix”, and none of the composers are named, nor are the musicians who made the records, although the press informs us that Goldmann has previously executed a similar project using Stravinsky records.

I used to get on my high horse about DJ culture and how I felt it was disrespecting avant-garde music (and jazz, sometimes), but that was in the 1990s and a time when UK DJs were allegedly playing vinyl copies of Pierre Henry’s Les Jerks Électroniques De La Messe Pour Le Temps Présent to death on their wheels, and inadvertently inflating collector’s prices for this commonplace and frequently-reissued Philips album from 1968. Stefan Goldmann’s effort is growing on me however, with its 24 short tracks flowing together in a surprisingly listenable and coherent manner. He seems to have gone out of his way to remove anything remotely shocking or challenging, leaving us with quieter moments, smoothed-down edges, and very subtle contrasts; in places this strategy may be said to depart from the intentions of the original composers, but Goldmann is trying to illustrate overlaps, connections, and interactions from history that we might not have noticed before. And if they weren’t there before, he’s doing his best to force these connections. Admittedly, after the early diffuse and distributed music at the start of the album, things get somewhat more dramatic on the later and longer cuts, with samples of operatic singing and orchestral stabs barging in.

If, unlike me, you’re not too “precious” about the sources, you will find much to engage the ears and mind in Acustica, as you savour each dissonant tone row like a raspberry. Hard to believe this is the same fellow who, as Lucaslavia, produced a bland drone mulch out of avant-metal and dark ambient samples in 2023. He also contributed to that remarkable Sfera album in 2022, which did a lot to cast fresh perspectives on the music of Scelsi, everyone’s favourite modernist master of severity. (24/10/2023)

When it comes to aiming a spotlight on those movers and shakers of the U.K. cottage industry during early post-punk times, I think it’s fair to say that Alan Jenkins (Deep Freeze Mice etc etc) laid some of the foundations, thatched the roof and probably fitted all of the leaded windows. But where the likes of other pioneer types such as The Desperate Bicycles quickly faded from public view, Alan’s endeavours have continued, spanning five decades and counting. A brief tour of Jenkinsville goes much like this…. label boss of the ‘Mole Embalming’ and ‘Cordelia’ empires, (I wonder if the latter refers to Sue Lloyd’s character in ITV’s “The Baron” adventure series?)…the shadowy figure behind Jody & The Creams, The Chrysanthemums and Ruth’s Refrigerator… the originator of Leicester’s beach culture scene with The Thurston Lava Tube, then, re-imagining the banana appeal of V.U.’s debut waxing, alongside visits to ‘Nosetown’, ‘Ratville’ and ‘The Temples of Fido’.

The thing is like then contemporaries The Fall; with another obtuse lyrical talent at the helm (via Wyndham Lewis), I kinda lost track of Alan’s work over the decades. This of course wasn’t helped by the severe lack of music press interest in anything bearing the ‘A.J.’ handstamp. All I can ever remember is one lousy Deep Freeze Mice full-pager in “Sounds”. Shameful. Nevertheless, it’s good to play catch up every once in a (very) long while. With seventeen, almost segued tracks in capsule form, it’s business as (un)usual. Much like past gems like “…Geraniums…” and “The Gates of Lunch” – absurdism runs rampant. The brief opening salvo of “This isn’t Your Desk” wrongfoots the expectant listener immediately. Its gloom-laden mellotronics tell us that expecting the unexpected should surely be second nature by now. Sample “Sonic Disaster Channel” for example, where elements of The Monochrome Set’s clean/lyrical guitar lines carve out a tribute to early seventies testcard muzak (small girl & clown era). and then in stark contrast, guitar amps are nudged up considerably for an extended solo showcase on the gnarly beast that is “You Must Now Decide”, while the rather lovely “One in Five Crows” odd-man-outs in fine style by recalling German acid-folkies Witthauser/Westrupp. And let’s not forget the pure Stanshalled wordplay dotted around …rhyming ‘spaghetti’ with ‘yeti’ on “Tubenose” being a particular favourite, as is “…you wouldn’t say that to Astaroth!” (on “Jerry”). A sensible word of caution there, contact and chit-chat over tea and biscuits with ‘The Chaos God of Time & Space” can only end in tears or something far worse. Alan knows. Follow his initiative I beg you.

As the Vampires’ cast list namedrops erm, the likes of Lenny Snake, Neil Ska, Lenny Din… Karen Lissitzky and Minnie Bannister (!), I’d suspect that “Minds…” just might be a solo project? Those last two names mentioned though, would be a useful, off-the-cuff description of just what your grey matter has been witness to… Russian Constructivism meets “The Goons”. Splendid.

We Be Echo was just one fellow, Kevin Thorne, but he happened to be making his bedroom DIY music around the time of a fruitful boom period in home recordings and tape trading through the mail, now regarded by many (including myself) as a golden age of underground and independent music. Plus he happened to have a connection with Genesis P. Orridge (who even appears as a performer on Ceza Evi), and thus We Be Echo earned the right to be included in the lineage of “industrial music” as it manifested itself in the UK. As it happens, The Sound Projector magazine ran a short feature on We Be Echo as far back as 1997, not that I can take any credit for it – it was the work of Lawrence Burton, who sang the praises of these cassettes, and DIY culture generally. I think Burton may have had a connection to Kevin Thorne at some level; at any rate he had insider information, and was enthused about the way in which this strange and bleak music was recorded using a Sharp Music Centre. Indeed the press notes here do allude to this use of the built-in microphone that was a standard feature of home equipment at the time, describing the rough overdubbing method that involved playing back the first recorded “layer”, and then recording new music on top of it. This resourceful process – no mixing, no editing – allowed for few errors, but it also led to tremendous spontaneity in the music, all of which is audible on the finished results. Plus of course it created a slightly “muffled” sound, raw at the edges, which is one of the more desirable artefacts of home recording, and got our man Burton so agitated in his enthused writings at the time. (Burton also contributes liner notes to today’s CD reissue).

Besides the Throbbing Gristle connection, and the Cabaret Voltaire comparisons, there’s a back story to this project which dates from around 1979 and the formation of the duo Third Door From The Left, which was Kevin Thorne and Raye Calouri (i.e. Raymond Georgeson); what’s interesting to me is that they met up at a TG / Cabs gig in London, so evidently already shared some common ground even before they started making music together. Picture the moment as two pairs of disaffected alienated eyes made contact in the crowd. Third Door From The Left made a couple of cassettes in 1981 and 1982 – the first of these, Face The Firing Squad, has an unsettling cover image of the duo wearing hoods holding guns pointed directly at the viewer, and its aggressive track titles do not shirk from talking about alienation and death. I never heard it (although I see the whole thing is audible on YouTube now), but all that seething anger and hostility seems very redolent of underground music from the period, and not just the music of TG. One thinks of Ramleh for instance, who exhibited a sociopathic nihilistic attitude to the whole human race – not just the straights and normals, as punk rock had done in the 1970s, but everyone. At least by the time of We Be Echo, the imagery on the covers has softened a little bit and is content to remain merely ambiguous and strange, although Kevin Thorne did design his own sigil-like logo with the letters WBE inside a triangle, which I sense is a familiar trope in the “industrial” genre designed to add mystique and a sense of the impersonal.

The music of WBE and TDFTL did lie in abeyance for a few years, until the reissue label Vinyl On Demand started to pick up on it, presumably as part of that label’s general plan to hoover up every last piece of experimental electronic or industrial music released on cassette in the 1980s. The compilation Decades (VOD57) came out in 2009, with sleeve notes by Burton (under his Cindy War Arrow guise); before that, there was also a vinyl reissue of Face The Firing Squad in 2008. All of this makes today’s Cold Spring reissue quite noteworthy, and for much of the music here it’s the first time it’s being heard, and it’s all remastered by Martin Bowes from Attrition and there’s new artwork from Thorne himself. On today’s spin, I’m finding with some relief that it’s not violent or hateful music, and my love of post-punk, cassette culture, raw production and DIY aesthetic is being amply satisfied by these home-cooked hand-knitted sounds, particularly the drum machines of a vintage that you just can’t get nowadays, the clangy guitar FX, the primitive bass riffs, the listless singing…all wrapped in the miasma of nth-generation recording and re-recording. But this doesn’t account for the sheer oddness of Thorne’s vision; the music is perhaps cold, alien, and distant, but not repellent – something draws you in with a mesmerising fascination. A lot of the tracks are short and puzzling, a stranger exhibiting a blank visage that reveals little, often walking out of the room on grey plimsolls just at the moment when things start to get interesting. The use of found voices, and varispeeded voices, may seem a little dated nowadays, but they still contribute a lot to the overall twilight charm of these minimalist creepsters. And, perhaps surprisingly, there isn’t really that much use of echo chamber or delay – despite the band name.

I suppose the principal achievement of Kevin Thorne is to have achieved such striking and memorable results using relatively primitive means, and all of this is a testament to the fellow’s imagination, determination, resourcefulness, and the strength of his musical vision. Very good. From 25 July 2022.

The S4L story is one that really should be rubberstamped ‘strictly personnel’, inasmuch as this was initially a solo project brainstormed back in 1986 by Gordon H. Whitlow of U.S. avant-garde outfit Biota (née The Mnemonist Orchestra). Jesus Wept, his self-released cassette debut was followed some thirty-five years later by the excellent but misleading See it Alone (on Klanggalerie), in which the cast of one was seen to expand with the addition of Legendary Pink Dots c.e.o. Edward Ka-Spel and Martin Bates of Eyeless in Gaza. I’ve always had a lot of time for both the Dots and the Gaza-Men; the latter’s quintessentially British explorations into weird songcraft should really have racked up the same warm affection that say, The Cardiacs, have enjoyed since their passing. And as for Martin Bates: his soulful, full-on vocal delivery has blazed a fascinating trail over the past four decades or so. If he’s someone who’s passed you by, a perusal of his lengthy but rich back catalogue is surely overdue…

With Remember… , their latest lasering, the line-up has grown again, with the doctored/prepped guitars of Colorado-based Janet Feder complementing the haunting glow-in-the-dark trail left by ex L.P.D. violinist Patrick Q. Wright. As you’d expect though, with two vocalists with that much experience and emotive ability, it’s their show and as previous, it’s the songs that eat up much of the pie-chart. “Milk Wood (Polly’s Song)” interestingly, has words by the great Dylan Thomas and details, amid mournful swathes of reverb and the desolate trill of the tin whistle, Polly’s recounting of the tragic drowning of a former lover, that one memory etched deep and prone to playing on a continuous loop. Those sombre moods are also felt on “Mansions at Rest”. Though simpler and somewhat akin to a child’s nursery-rhyme in construction, it has a certain double-edged quality as the Ka-spelled lyric appear to suggest that the ‘real’ afterlife is some huge b & b where the ‘no visitors, no pets’ cliché paints a picture of a strict regime in which St. Peter has now been moved sideways during a recent office reshuffle.

“Soul Wanderer” and “Ravens Flying” seem to have immersed themselves in the world of seventies U.K. prog-folk. The former’s heartfelt Batesian vocal accompanied by banjo and dreamy atmospheres, triggers thoughts of the peerless C.O.B. and possibly even a smidgeon of Tir Na Nog. The latter’s corvid threat (and c.d.’s cover star?) reveals itself to be less threatening than imagined. The Swarbrick-like fiddle and heavenly choir successfully keeping the dark clouds of foreboding at bay by providing a back-drop for a love song like very few others.

Before I close, there’s a medium-sized question mark hovering over their moniker. I wonder…can Sorry for Laughing really be named after a 1981 single by Scottish new wave band Josef K ?? Someone? Anyone?

There are times when I think I’ve led a fairly uneventful life, but after reading about the white-knuckle exploits of Kiev Stingl (“Germany’s enfant terrible” and a man who “embodies massive deviance…”), perhaps I’ve been dealt a fair hand after all. Redolent of say, an old grainy b/w episode of ITC’s Danger Man T.V. series, a particularly fraught time in Herr Stingl’s life began in Madagascar, February 1982, whilst being a guest of Jean-Pierre Martini, a maths professor at the University of Madagascar. That presumed idyll was shaken to its core when Kiev was arrested by the secret police, who accused him of helping the CIA in an attempted coup. He was then imprisoned, narrowly escaping a death sentence (!!) and was eventually smuggled out to Paris c/o the German Consulate General. Back from Paris and keen to add to his repertoire of albums, which included Teuflisch (Philips/1978) and Ich Wunsch den Deutscher Alles Gut (Ahorn/1981), a session at Teldec Studios in Hamburg was arranged with the help of ex City Preachers’ Götz Humpf on keys and guitar. This resulted in five numbers being recorded but only two saw release. Producer Achim Reichel‘s decision to shelve these tracks effectively putting the blocks on the career of one of the German underground’s most intriguing performers.

With reworkings courtesy of producer Niklas David, here’s what we missed…. The tick-tocking of an acoustic rhythm guitar locking in to the rusted shards of its electric counterpart (“Ozean”). On “Spiel den Brief”, Martin Rev is distracted by a Nintendo Gameboy, while Kiev’s sinister monologues, speaking of jealousy, poison and destruction hover overhead like a sulking black cloud. “Shang Hai Café” lightens the mood slightly and showcases Götz’s poignant and sensitively played Spanish guitar figures. The odd one out (from 1984) “Feu Follet” briefly fleshes out the set as a solo piano vamp. Its origins coming from the artist’s visits to a certain brothel in Hamburg’s ‘St Pauli’ district, where the kindly owner of said establishment would give him unlimited access to the eighty-eights. Exemplary customer service, I think you’ll agree. Even though these numbers are delivered in Kiev’s native tongue, one can easily detect a world-weary/resigned atmosphere, draped just so, over the furniture. Leonard Cohen’s New Skin… and Uncle Lou’s chin-on-floor operetta Berlin would be likely precursors to this worldview.

While being interviewed for Rolling Stone, Flake (?) of Rammstein said that “For us, Kiev Stingl was God!”. Well, I wouldn’t go that far, but the rediscovery of X R I Nuit does shine a welcome light on a skid patch masquerading as a career; details of which, and I’ll stick my neck out here, have never graced the pages of any of the British music weeklies at the time. Think of this as redressing the balance a little.

The band Officer! Is Mick Hobbs, Felix Fiedorowicz and Bill Gilonis, and while I’m not here to trace the complicated lineage and careers of these excellent players, there are connections to The Work, This Heat, Family Fodder, The Hat Shoes, The Lowest Note, The Murphy Federation…many personal favourites of this listener in that list of bands, and (if you know the music) you’ll note there’s a certain oppositional political strand there, especially in the early 1980s band The Work, a band in which Hobbs and Gilonis played and amazingly managed to include Tim Hodgkinson from Henry Cow, bringing an extra Marxist dimension to their fiercely critical work. I mention this as perhaps it makes Officer! (originally founded around 1983) the ideal collective to tackle the songs and music of Cornelius Cardew, himself no stranger to provocative political texts.

This very unusual English composer famously embraced Maoist politics in his career, and decided he must turn his hand towards producing popular songs and accessible classical music, in stark contrast to the avant-garde compositional and improvisational forms he embraced so whole-heartedly in the 1960s, which he now rejected as elitist. It was a very dramatic shift – a former assistant and student of Stockhausen, he turned against the German maestro in a big way, denouncing him and his work in a notorious book, of which the central argument seems to be that anything (especially romantic and mystical music from egocentric geniuses) that distracts us from facing up to the big issue, i.e. the Vietnam War, is the enemy of the people. Cardew was also a co-founder of AMM, that most ornery of UK improvising originals, albeit his time with the band was exceptionally brief (especially if you take the long view of that group’s existence). I personally enjoy some of Cardew’s avant-garde music, and The Great Learning and Treatise are very interesting and original examples of how to compose using a graphic score and other unusual methods, and those methods when applied by the right players have resulted in beautiful music too. His “People’s Liberation” songs, not so much; those I have heard, performed live one evening at Conway Hall in London (I think this was Cornelius Cardew Day, 29 December 2001), were a bit embarrassing, coming over like leftovers from a very stale form of 1970s Socialist sloganeering and closed-minded dogma.

Which might explain why I approached today’s collection with some trepidation. But I need not have worried, as it’s an exciting, diverse, and very imaginative take on the material, stressing musical endeavour over politics. Yes, plenty of songs about the Cultural Revolution, and texts from Confucius, and even approved lyrics from the Central Political Propaganda Composition Committee (which sounds like the kind of controlling organisation we would all want to stand against), but also original compositions by Hobbs and Fiedorowicz, some great settings for the songs, and mainly some extremely left-field and unexpected contributions from a large number of international left-wing weirdoes and musical freaks, including Alig Pearce from Family Fodder, Xentos Fray Bentos, Mary Currie (partner of Gareth Williams from This Heat), Rick Wilson, and many others from France, Switzerland, and America. Matter of fact the album was recorded in these locations – the project took place during lockdown in 2019-2021, and has obviously involved a lot of planning and logistics. The finished results amount to a baffling, semi-disconnected sprawl of information – songs, readings, collage, radio broadcast snippets, and electro-acoustic assemblages, amounting to a very oblique tribute to the work and music of Cardew.

If there was a problem with the Conway Hall evening, it was that the stiff singers and players on the stage were far too earnest, trying hard to show their respect for the great man and honour the composer’s intentions by sticking doggedly to the letter of the text. Here, the Officer! crew have taken things in quite a different direction, allowing much leeway in interpretation and execution, and while this album may not please purists who insist on preserving the ideas of Cardew in a form of 1971-vintage amber, I believe it reinvigorates the work, opening up fresh perspectives and avenues of inquiry, and adds a bracing dose of post-modern doubt and ambiguity to the mix. Recommended to listeners who enjoy the 1980s music mentioned in shopping list above, to which I will add of course Kurt Weill, Art Bears (classic Rock in Opposition music featuring the hardline Communistic sentiments of Chris Cutler) and Girls At Our Best! – a quasi-feminist poppy post-punk band from Leeds, who used melody and bright female vocals to smuggle subversive points across as they gained airtime on the John Peel show on BBC Radio; at least one song here, ‘The Song About Navigation’ sung by Alison Craig, could easily have fit in the mouth of Judy Evans.

I’m not sure if I’m now a convert who’s about to rush out and pay a collector’s price for a copy of the never-reissued 1985 double LP Cornelius Cardew Memorial Concert on Impetus, but I’m certainly enjoying this CD. From 16th December 2021. Also available as a double LP.

Much to enjoy here in the songcraft, the arrangements, the programming…each song is a compacted gem of angst-strewn pop, with spare playing, taut melodies, and close attention paid to instrumental balance and mixing. Who knew that The Stranglers had it in them? I really must investigate that Euroman Cometh album… The main attraction Mona Mur has a strong and steely voice, just on the right side of being mannered, and full of constrained emotions…many of them rather angry emotions, but she hisses like a cold snake in bursts of concentrated steam rather than roaring out her rage like aforesaid divas Lunch and Diamanda. The melodies somehow match the tone and tenor of the songs, full of planned discords and jarring notes in among the attractive bright production, the jolly beats, and the pleasing chords. As well as being a great singer, Mona Mur is a story-teller, and character actor too, inhabiting the roles she creates for herself, and doing her best to convey a narrative across the length of each 3-4 minute epic. Building on this drama-cinema aspect, it’s no wonder Christina Mohr’s notes call this album “a sung film noir”. While many of the songs deal with star-crossed meetings and doomed lovers and dwell on unhealthy emotions (anger, jealousy, frustration) it would be quite wrong to suppose that Mona Mur is a man-hater wreaking revenge on the world…although, there is her version of ‘Surabaya Johnny’, a Brecht-Weill composition which I know and love from a Lotte Lenya recording. It’s a song with a heartbreaking tale of wrecked lives, the age-old story of an abused woman who still unaccountably clings to her abusive partner…where Lenya brought out the tragedy in plaintive and dramatic tones, Mona Mur seems to be aiming for something much more opaque, almost updating the story for a 1980s audience at some level. The Neubaten musicians play on this track, adding much heavy irony and bitterness. Also…award a bonus Bilgerbrau for choosing this lesser-known song from Happy End, instead of the more obvious ‘Pirate Jenny’.

For this remastered CD version, the producers have messed around with the track order slightly, but we’re compensated by getting the maxi 12-inch version of ‘Bastard’ weighing in at 6:30 mins, and four tracks from the 1982 Mona Mur & Die Mieter EP. Very nice to hear these productions with much flanged guitar, angular beats, rubbery bass and many other 1980s features which don’t show up on records much these days…plus Mona’s voice is slightly higher in the mix. She also sounds more haunted and desolate, more foreboding. Makes an interesting contrast with the much-better production of the 1988 album, but both recordings are well worth hearing. Very nice discovery – and now I want to get a vinyl original…from 6th September 2021.

Storm Bugs fit in well with this catalogue, arguably. Featuring the core duo Philip Sanderson and Steven Ball with guest player Sarah Pomeroy, the music here was made with the VCS3 synthi, tape recorders, radios, guitars, vocals, and percussion, all assembled into strange, unusual and somewhat bleak vistas; even after many years of hearing these fave tunes, I still never quite get used to them, and they seem to convey half-stories in dreamlike fashion, using surreal blurry images. The results, and the techniques, no doubt emerge from the interest in experimental cinema which both Sanderson and Ball share, and I would argue that few UK musicians have come closer to delivering sound work that is analogous to some of the output of the Structuralist-Materialists. In particular, there’s the same concern with tape as material, not unlike the materialist practice of some of the hard-core Film-Maker’s Co-Op brigade; Storm Bugs call attention to the properties of magnetic tape, and the devices used in the process of assembly – including loops, varispeed, edits, and processing. You may want to liken them to tape-wranglers of the Schaeffer school, but Storm Bugs have the advantage of growing up in 1960s and 1970s UK, absorbing and advancing the post-punk thirst for experimentation in rock music. They came up with their own unique hybrid, is what I’m trying to say; they didn’t completely abandon song form, or rhythm; at the same time, they didn’t produce harsh noise for its own sake.

All of this radicalism, I would argue, continues to carry an edge, can still matter in today’s polymorphous culture, and the cold photocopied brutalist greyness of these 1980 experiments will still resonate. Side A of the original cassette, originally three tracks (four on the LP) is now presented as a single suite – ‘Mesh of Wire’ through ‘Objective’ to ‘Car Situations’ to the reprise, 16:36 mins of delirious creepoid tape collage, where the voice reciting “take a child on holiday” still causes goosebumps with its surreal incongruity (100 miles better than any given NWW LP). ‘Hodge’ and ‘Solely From’ lack the voice and collage elements and feature some demented synth sequencing that is genuinely strange and troubling, a distorted and more febrile take on the early experiments of Conrad Schnitzler. Featured on this reissue are three “bonus tracks” – an extra 13 minutes from this period that are most welcome. ‘He Rose Up Again’ is a cryptic wave of chill from the tomb which reminds me of the Two Daughters LP; it has that same sense of faded horror, a supernatural meeting at twilight. ‘333’ – the only track here credited to both creators (the remainder are composed by Sanderson) appears to contain traces of a live performance, percussion and guitar (?) swathed in echo and tape wobble doing battle with non-natural synth sounds on an arena strewn with rubble and fragments. ‘Table Matters Soundtrack’ may or may not have appeared on their 1980 EP by this name (Loop Records LOOP 323), but it’s a tiny gem of construction; echo chamber percussive sounds, evil synth tones, colliding loops forming a carefully-controlled chaos, while somewhere in the murky background, desperate voices of lost souls continue to wail.

Lastly, there’s the new cover art; across three panels of the digipak, we have stills taken from the Table Matters movie filmed on Super 8mm by Storm Bugs, also of 1980 vintage. The CD artwork reproduces the original lettering from the cassette too. A real gem – required purchase for any serious student of 1980s post-punk, industrial music, cassette culture, and DIY experimental genius. Arrived November 2020.

Bomis Prendin were an actual band, rather than one guy in a bedroom with a lonely synth, and may have numbered five or six members at one time; they worked hard to be experimental and unusual, embracing the DIY aesthetic that flourished so healthily in cassette culture, and used cassette tapes, hacked electronics, and toys alongside the slightly more conventional bass-guitar-keyboard setup. They also opted for odd formats; their first records Test (1979) and Phantom Limb (1980) were issued as 9″ flexi-discs and played for 25 minutes, a packaging decision that evidently got the attention of Nurse With Wound and got them added to the notorious “List”. After that, Bomis Prendin went down the slightly more conventional route of releasing cassettes, of which the first was Clear Memory from 1984 (released on the Artifacts label). There were only 50 copies (estimated) made and it was only sent to those in the “immediate circle”, which I mention as I’m always impressed how it’s possible to cause sizeable ripples in the culture with a fairly small footprint (or print run, in this case). Originals are rare and expensive now, so this reissue – the first time it has been reissued, mark you – on LP and CD is welcome, and on the surface this record will tip a lot of tenpins for listeners who like to roll strikes in the alley of 1980s oddball synth music, and whose appetite leans towards those Vinyl On Demand box sets from this period.

I found Clear Memory enjoyable enough, but somehow lacking in adventure. One can immediately detect influences from The Residents, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but the Prendin crew aren’t anything like as inventive in their song construction, and don’t go far enough with their “weird” sounds; most of the tunes just sound quirky rather than unsettlingly strange. They never get especially carried away or explore troubling emotions, instead maintaining a mannered stance, full of quasi-cryptic surface, and a very studied form of weirdness. My other stumbling block is the guitar player, who may be Miles Anderson, whose contributions frequently lapse into “straight” rock or blues-influenced licks, which in this context seem somewhat out of place and even a little corny at times. On the plus side, the keyboards of Bomis Prendin himself are often tasty and addictive, and he’s not afraid of embracing a “cheap” sound in pursuit of his musical aims. The beatbox, perhaps one that comes with a Farfisa organ, adds considerably to this “playtime” feel. I’d also liked to have hear them do more songs, as sometimes lyrical themes help me to get a handle on where a band is going, but they don’t do many of them here; however ‘Respect The Road’ is a good song, a nice low-key and slightly skewed take on a road-movie topic with implied subtexts of a Ballard-ian nature.

Hearing this makes me wish someone would reissue the catalogue of Radio Free Europe, the Texan minimal-industrial band who made one album and one tape in 1980. The reissue includes an essay by Klemen Breznikar and photos printed in the booklet. From 14th July 2020.