Hot Head / Ashtray Heart / A Carrot Is As Close As A Rabbit Gets To A Diamond / Run Paint Run Run / Sue Egypt / Brick Bats

Dirty Blue Gene / Best Batch Yet / Telephone / Flavour Bud Living / Sheriff Of Hong Kong / Making Love To A Vampire With A Monkey On My Knee

I own several Beefheart LP’s including the double set  from 1970 ‘Trout Mask Replica’, but decided to upload the ‘Doc At The Radar Station’ LP tonight as this was the very first Beefheart LP that was purchased by a much younger Penguin. I decided on bagging this LP after hearing some of the tracks off this LP on the John Peel night time show, and also to a lesser extent, after hearing a track on the ‘Cash Cows’ compilation LP released by Virgin records which I used to own for my sins. Actually that’s a little unfair as the compilation was not too bad but the Beefheart track was I thought, one of the highlights amongst some pretty mediocre material (XTC / The Professionals / Mike Oldfield). It did have The Ruts and P.I.L on it though, but whatever, I digress.

I placed some money into someone’s grubby little hands at Virgin records underneath the street in Oxford Walk, W1 (now long long gone, Jim ‘Feotus’ Thirwell used to work down there) and took the plunge into the mind of Beefheart when I got home. Enjoyed the trip immensely to the extent that I then followed this release by purchasing the ‘Ice Cream For Crows’ LP a year or so later. I tried to source out the older material which was not that easy in the days before ebay and discogs et al. It was harder in those days just trying to find information of what Captain Beefheart actually released pre the early 1980′s, again decades before being able to just enter Captain Beefheart in a google or similar search engine! Still, through trial and error and countless visits to secondhand record shops throughout the 1980′s I eventually got a whole heap of early LP’s. I was then, as I am now, content with my Beefheart collection.

Anyway this LP from 1980 is a stonewall classic and I would advise browsers to seriously source further releases by Captain Beefheart especially the LP’s I have mentioned above.

The Don Van Vliet art and the three newspaper reviews of ‘Doc At The Radar Station’ written out below are taken off a wonderfully fulfilling Beefheart site, beefheart.com.

‘Doc At The Radar Station’  review written by Robert Palmer, taken from the 28th September 1980 edition of The New York Times

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band probably would have been an anomaly had they burst on an unsuspecting world anywhere, at any time. Ironically, the Captain, whose real name is Don Van Vliet, grew up in Southern California and put together his first magic band in Los Angeles in the mid-60′s. Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, and other future pop icons were singing folk music and their own sensitive ballads at the Troubadour, the Ash Grove offered pure folk and blues, and the Birds were setting Bob Dylan’s folk songs to rock-and-roll rhythms. For harder rock, one could listen to garage bands. Frank Zappa, who was equally fond of 50′s doo-wop and the electronic moonscapes of Edgard Varese, was beginning to compose pop music that was considerably more adventurous, but even Mr. Zappa’s early work must have seemed a little tame compared to Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band.

The Captain had been on television in Los Angeles at the age of 15, demonstrating his talents as a painter and sculptor, and his music sounded something like action painting or abstract sculpture translated into sound. Rhythms stopped, started, crossed, collided, and fell apart in a manner that seemed pre-planned but was nevertheless disorienting. Metallic guitars playing blues-like parts in no discernible key clashed and slashed and then miraculously melded into whiplash unisons. Beefheart sang chains of free-association images in a huge, gruff voice that spanned a number of octaves. When he recorded his first album (”Safe as Milk,” Buddah Records, 1967), he included a number called ”Electricity” that called on the full range and power of that voice, and his singing shattered a $1,200 microphone. When he wasn’t singing, he was often punctuating the music with whooping harmonica breaks or bursts of manic saxophone playing.

The band that recorded ”Safe as Milk” included John ”Drumbo” French, who as been the magic band’s percussionist off and on ever since, and it included Ry Cooder, a guitarist with country blues leanings who has since made a name for himself as a folk and pop eclectic. The music was transitional, closer to its evident blues roots than anything Captain Beefheart has recorded since and more conversant with pop and rhythm-and-blues song structures. By the end of 1967, Mr. Cooder was gone and the music was full-blown, uncompromising Beefheart.

In 1969, a new magic band, with only the guitarist Antennae Jimmy Semens remaining from earlier groups, recorded ”Trout Mask Replica” for Straight Records, a company founded by Frank Zappa. The album is generally considered Beefheart’s masterpiece, but to these ears ”Lick My Decals Off,” issued by Straight/Reprise the following year and including ”I Love You, You Big Dummy,” ”I Wanna Find a Woman That’ll Hold My Big Toe Till I Have to Go,” and ”The Smithsonian Institute Blues,” is superior. In any event, Beefheart made two more fine albums for Warner Brothers in the early 70′s. But he was an acquired taste; his records sold only to a devoted cult following. Captain Beefheart blamed the record companies for not promoting him; the record companies blamed his music and the bizarre appearance of the Magic Band, whose clothing and bizarre demeanour on the back cover of ”Trout Mask Replica” (Antennae Jimmy Semens was wearing a baseball cap and, over his shirt and slacks, a frumpy housedress) must have led more than one record executive to fear the worst.

Many of Beefheart’s fans assumed that the Captain had taken more LSD than any human being on earth, with the possible exception of the other members of his Magic Band. In the late 60′s and early 70′s, it was easy enough to interpret the clattering rhythms and crazed bellowing one heard on Beefheart records as some kind of free-form psychedelic tribal stomp, but anyone who thought that misunderstood the music entirely. In his music, as in his art, Beefheart is almost entirely self taught, but he is also exceptionally systematic. He whistles or hums melodies and ideas for instrumental parts into a tape recorder and then painstakingly teaches the parts to his musicians, who generally have very little interpretative leeway. The rhythms that disintegrate before your very ears, the xylophone riffs that suddenly appear out of nowhere and cut across the polyrhythms set up by the other instruments, the impossibly dense and atonal chord clusters, all these effects are plotted in advance and painstakingly rehearsed. Casual listeners may still consider Beefheart a wild-eyed primitive, but in fact he’s an American maverick composer who has created his own musical idiom – an idiom that’s related to blues and rock-and-roll but also problematically tangential to them.

Captain Beefheart’s music was innovative from the very beginning, but until the late 1970′s it wasn’t really influential. One occasionally heard saxophone squawks or fractured rhythms and recognised a strain of vintage Beefheart, but his idiom retained its integrity and resisted imitation. The mid 70′s were rough years for him. He attempted to reach a broader audience with two compromised and lacklustre albums for Mercury, made a brief appearance as guest vocalist on a 1975 Frank Zappa album, and then disappeared until 1978, when Warner Brothers/Virgin issued a new LP, ”Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller)” that recaptured much of his old ferocity.

Meanwhile, a number of otherwise disparate rock artists who were popularly lumped together as ”new wave” began making music that was unmistakably (and in most cases admittedly) Beefheart influenced. From New York Talking Heads (whose leader David Byrne cites ”Trout Mask Replica” as an early inspiration) to the ex-Sex Pistol John Lydon and his Public Image Ltd., from Cleveland, Ohio’s abrasive Pere Ubu to the popular B-52′s from Georgia, from the English post-punk band Magazine (which recorded a Beefheart song in homage) to the jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman (whose ventures into electric music bear traces of his mid-70′s friendship with Beefheart), it seemed that almost every interesting rock musician (and more than a few commercially successful ones) were working in areas Beefheart had opened up.

Just when the Beefheart influence began to seem strong enough to overwhelm Beefheart himself, the Captain began recording a new album that’s turned out to be his best record in years, and very possibly the best of his career. ”Doc at the Radar Station,” which Virgin/Atlantic is releasing this week (VA 13148), finds him singing with the energy of a wild man half his age (he’s 39), playing soprano saxophone and bass clarinet with renewed vigour, and leading a revitalised magic band that has learned his idiosyncratic style to perfection. His new songs mix Delta blues riffs (Beefheart is the only white artist who understood and was able to build on the essentially polyrhythmic nature of much early Delta blues) with snippets of synthesised strings that remind one of Stravinsky. Unequal phrase lengths, shifting meters, and rhythms that change radically every few lines keep the unwary listener perpetually off balance.

”Making Love to a Vampire With a Monkey on My Knee,” which is probably the most extravagantly original and perfectly realised creation of Beefheart’s career, involve screams, bits of Cecil B. DeMille-like fanfare, and mercurial changes in instrumentation that fool one into thinking an orchestra is playing when it’s a five-man band with no overdubs. The lyrics are as original and vivid as any Beefheart has written. The album also includes two pristine instrumental pieces in which guitars play things no guitarist would ever have imagined. The rest of the album is exhilaratingly consistent, prime Beefheart.

Is the world ready? Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band are embarking on a European tour later this fall, their first full scale assault on the continent in five years, and then they’ll be touring America. Their venues may include dance clubs as well as concert halls, and now that people are dancing to the likes of Pere Ubu and Ornette Coleman, they’ll probably dance to Captain Beefheart, too. Meanwhile, the Captain broods in his trailer in the Mojave Desert, listens to late Beethoven and Stravinsky (he reportedly considers the new wave rock he’s heard impossibly crude, especially rhythmically), and bides his time.

Will his records sell this time around; will people throng to hear him play? It’s too early to tell. But ”Doc at the Radar Station” finds a neglected American genius back in the rock vanguard, and that’s surely where he belongs.

‘Doc At The Radar Station’  review written by Carman, taken from the January 1981 Down Beat.

Of all musicians loosely considered rockers, Captain Beefheart is the most original. Because his music is a genre unto itself, it’s particularly difficult to describe. Analogy, the efficient critics tool, gets nowhere near the heart of Beefheart’s creations.

Beefheart’s late ’60s work was virtually all self composed, and he taught it note by note, beat by beat, to his Magic Bands. This is probably still true; on Run Paint hear Bruce Fowler, occasional db Pro Session writer, whinny on trombone like a rabid equine. In the beginning, Beefheart relied heavily on blues forms and his own intense, rasping vocals – the closest known voice is Howlin’ Wolf’s. Beefheart also dabbled in pop, soul and folk forms, adding jazz-like reed parts, electronic studio effects and odd meters. His innovative earlier work hasn’t become MOR, but sounds far less peculiar to 1980 ears.

The Captain has continued forward, and still makes all other rock music seem tame. He’s beyond merely modifying the blues and even scorns the work of the new wave rockers who claim him as an influence (“Why should I look through my own vomit?” he asked Lester Bangs in the Village Voice). Though his vocals retain blues mannerisms and his lyrics employ a wacky (yet still traditional) blues hyperbole, Doc At The Radar Station displays throughout Beefheart’s own voice: a coarse, incredibly intense speak-singing.

This album may be the most successful utilisation of the harmolodic ideas articulated by Ornette Coleman. The Captain’s working method is different from Coleman’s; instead of seeking ideas from sidemen, Beefheart claims to dictatorially control his Magic Band members. In description, the music reads like jazz, though. Rhythms are carried by the singer and by all instruments – most often by electric guitars. Drums and percussion usually create subordinate, overlapping patterns. Conventional melody and harmony aren’t prime features, but what exists is played by all the musicians. For most tunes here, Beefheart writes catchy ostinatos which, since several are played simultaneously, seem to undermine each other. As these lines persist, they become more compatible, sometimes resolving into jagged unisons. On the most successful tunes, like Sheriff Of Hong Kong, listeners can’t help stomping.

Dirty Blue Gene is one of the highest evolutions yet of composer – arranger Beefheart’s technique. The opening frantic guitar chording soon gives way to blister fingered single note runs – separate lines by two players. At times, the drummer tightly supports a soloist; at others, he seems to he ignoring the band completely. Controlled feedback shrieks from nowhere; rhythms shift and stop altogether, to he reintroduced by guitar power chords; churning slide guitar drives the tune toward its end. Over it all, Beefheart sings one of the great love songs, about a woman who’s “not bad … just genetically mean.” The Captain’s howls of suffering and the brutality of the woman “swingin’ a sponge on the end of a string” are hilarious and somehow, simultaneously, heartfelt. This tune (and others here) will remain on my playlist for at least the short decade until I’m as old as the Captain (39).

Doc is thoughtfully programmed. Hot Head, even with its highly percussive guitars, is structured like a Top 40 tune. Ashtray Heart features guitar-drum “unison,” and, like all the tunes, off the wall lyrics that are funny or empathetic, depending on the listener’s mood. Two brief instrumental numbers function mostly to relieve the tension of the Captain’s strange sprechesang.

Beefheart is least successful where music and words aren’t well integrated; Sue Egypt and Brickbats come off as poetry recitations with musical backgrounds, although each element has its interest. Every tune contains nuggets, and in spite of its initial density, repeated listenings prove that this album wears well.

Most Down Beat reviewers are too liberal with stars, especially for rockers. Since journeymen like the Clash garnered five stars (London Calling) and won the Readers Poll for best rock album, and since I’ve awarded four and five stars to passionate tunesmith Elvis Costello, four and a half stars to Doc may seem insulting. It’s not. The U.S. government can’t control its inflation, but we can control ours. Next week, when London has stopped calling, hear the Captain howl.

‘Doc At The Radar Station’  review, writer unknown, taken from the 30th November edition of Circus.

As in Captain Beefheart’s best music over the past 14 years, at the cholesterol-filled heart of his new album there is one big, intriguing contradiction. The songs are crawling with grotesque lyrical imagery and bluesy, growling vocals over totally non-conventional music that all suggests a complete breakdown in our perception of things. Yet the weird part is, this is seldom music of despair or destruction. While some other, truly unconventional modern musicians call for elimination or speak of disillusion (Public Image or Lydia Lunch and 8 Eyed Spy), Beefheart’s music is more an act of joyous experimentation. This strange brew of anger and joy can be best seen in a song like “Making Love to a Vampire with a Monkey on My Knee.” It’s filled with Beefheart’s usual chaotic rifts, which scratch and claw their way into your heart, yet it ends with an inspiring delivery of the lyric: “death be damned.…. life.”

Accordingly, the album is stocked with buoyant, challenging rhythms and musical non-sequiturs, beginning with, say, a perfectly reasonable guitar rift that, is suddenly pulled apart by five other sounds zooming in at different angles. Beefheart fans will be used to these palsied rhythms but the pieces hardly come off as repetitions of the past. “Hot Head” has one of his most danceable beats ever, and in “Telephone,” Beefheart almost sounds like a singing version of Yosemite Sam. Also, on the album’s spoken parts he proves once again how successful he is at the skill of “reading” over music (something even Patti Smith has never done so naturally).

Many happy returns to Alistair Livingston whose birthday it is today. Alistair was one of the original Kill Your Pet Puppy scribes and is one of the four cogs that keeps KYPP online driving along the internet road nicely enough.

Have a nice relaxing birthday Al from the other three cogs at KYPP!

Sehnsuchi / U Haft / Schallen / Pygmaen / Schwarz Einsame Wolfin

Schlangensohn / Nin / Gestohienes / Band (ORF) / Kallaps / Bochum (Publikum)

From the ashes of Hamburg’s Ab-warts, Blixa Bargeld created the industrial punk band Einsturzende Neubauten (meaning Collapsing New Buildings in English). This live recording was recorded at various locations between July 1981 and Febuary 1982 and released only on cassette tape via the Rip Off / Ruff Trade label, a label closely aligned to Zick Zack records, the premier and most respected  independant new wave, avant garde record label based in Blixa’s hometown of Hamburg. 

Zick Zack Records had already released a double 7″ single and the much acclaimed LP ‘Kallops’ by Einsturzende Neubauten before this cassette tape from Rip Off was available. Zick Zack records also released Xmal Deutschland’s early works (a 7″ single and a 12″ single) that are both featured on this site somewhere if you care to use the search function. Also Palais Schaumburg were amongst the major Zick Zack recording artists. A compilation of Zick Zack artists may be viewed and listened to HERE

Text below courtesy of  nuebauten.org.

A concert held on first of April 1980 at the legendary Berlin club “Moon” is regarded as the official birth of the Einsturzende Neubauten. Blixa Bargeld, N.U. Unruh and FM Einheit declared war on all conventional hearing habits with the release of their debut album “Kollaps” (Collapse) in November 1981. Tremendously noise-intensive, rhythmically ritual anti-pop was offered as an antidote for the frightened, paralyzed and media-sedated masses. It was made from a range of instruments carefully beaten together from mostly stolen construction site, scrap yard and do-it-yourself supplies, consisting of steel parts, barrels, drills, hammers, saws and an untuned electric guitar. The sound monster awakened to life was crowned by Bargeld’s blood-curdling screams and feverish texts, impregnated by doomsday fantasies that revolved around ruin and destruction, illness, downfall and death. Precisely this nonconformist mixture would lay the cornerstone for a completely new understanding of music, which would influence countless mainstream pop bands, such as Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson and Rammstein.

In subsequent years, the team of musical experts, increased by Alexander Hacke and Mark Chung, continued to expand its pioneering sound field experiments with the highly-stylized albums “Zeichnungen des Patienten O.T.” from 1983, “1/2 Mensch” from 1985, “Fünf auf der nach oben offenen Richterskala” from 1987 and “Haus der Lüge” from 1989, which also became milestones of the Industrial scene. The eruptive noise sections were employed with increasing economy and song structures began to conform more and more to conventional forms. Songs like “Armenia,” “Yü-Gung (Fütter mein Ego),” “Z.N.S.” or “Feurio!” shaped an entire generation and even today continue to serve as frequently copied blueprints for experimental sound art and sound performance. Although the media dismissed them in the beginning as a bizarre, “Walled City” curiosity, Einsturzende Neubauten quickly established themselves as an internationally acclaimed band representing the present and pop culture.

Einsturzende Neubauten famously drilled and (electric) sawed up the stage at a showcase gig at the I.C.A. in the Mall, London in January 1984 as described below by Alexander Hacke of Einstürzende Neubauten in a Guardian newspaper article.

When we played at the I.C.A, we had this Utopian idea of leaving the stage from underneath. The plan was to dig through the stage into the tunnel system underneath the venue, which is supposed to go all the way to Buckingham Palace. Obviously, the venue had no idea of our intentions. We’d already been banned from a lot of venues for using fire and drilling the walls, but the Concerto for Voice and Machinery was billed as a highbrow art thing. There was no connection made to rock music.

I think the I.C.A probably started to realise something was afoot when a cement mixer was set up on stage, alongside electric drills and jackhammers. There was a piano, too, but that would be smashed to pieces. In those days, we’d often take the stage under the influence of substances or alcohol but this time I think we were particularly aware of the potential for danger so we were pretty much straight. When we took the stage, the euphoria was so intense. It felt ritualistic, meditative, like we were samurai.

There’s a lot of controversy over who was actually on stage. Contrary to rumour, Blixa [Bargeld, the singer] did appear, but pretty late. He came on in the last quarter and sang one word, Sehnsucht, which means “addicted to desire”. Frank Tovey, who performed as Fad Gadget, was singing freestyle stuff, these sort of om-like mantras. Genesis P Orridge was also on stage but I can’t remember if he was handling a chainsaw or a pneumatic drill. Because we were using petrol-driven chainsaws, very soon the whole room was filled with smoke, the stench of petrol everywhere. It sounded like a cross between a building site and war. Because I was very young, the others wouldn’t let me near the heavy machinery so I stood, wearing protective gloves and a visor, throwing milk bottles into the cement mixer, which smashed and flew into the crowd.

But we would have kept it pretty straightforward if we weren’t inspired by the reaction of the audience. There’s a famous Walter Benjamin essay about the destructive character, and he says: “The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away.” And that’s how it was. We were thinking, “Actually, it’s not us doing anything. The audience are tearing the place apart!” People were fighting over the drills and sledgehammers. Cables and machinery were pulled into the audience.

The thing about these situations is that no matter how wild it gets, people do instinctively take care of each other. I’m sure there were moments when we thought it was getting out of hand but it was all so quick, it went “Snap”, like a switch being flicked and everyone going berserk.

When I ran out of bottles, I wandered off the stage so I could look at what was happening from in the crowd. There were heated discussions going on between officials at the entrance. They couldn’t really throw themselves into the fray, it was hopeless. After 21 minutes they pulled the power. It was the only thing they could do. But the audience just carried on banging things.

By the end there was a big hole in the stage but we didn’t make it through to the actual stone structure of the venue, so we failed!

Joy Division – Auto Suggestion / From Safety To Where? – Thursdays – Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay

Thursdays – Perfection - Basczax – Celluloid Love / Karleearn Photography

Second in the Earcom series of 12″ EPs on the Fast Product label. Joy Division we all know, and the two tracks offered for this 12″ are suitably moody. Thursdays, a three piece band from Edinburgh seem gritty enough in a Gang Of Four vein, decent version of Otis Redding’s ‘Dock Of The Bay’. Basczax from Stockton according to the sleeve notes evolved from several bands including Blitzkreig Bop, Protex, Purity, Erection, Monitor, Taragon, Hypertension and (the best name yet) Amamanda Chubb! Cor blimey… A slight synth orienated  sound (a precussor to the New Romantics perhaps) on these tracks strangly enough both on the subject of films and photography (a New Romantic subject for sure).

Text below ripped from da wikkie…

Fast Product was an independent record label, established in Edinburgh, Scotland by Bob Last in December 1977. Its first release was also the first single by the Mekons, released on January 20, 1978.

The label is probably most notable for having issued the first records by a number of early and influential post-punk bands from Northern England, including the original Human League, the Gang of Four and the Mekons. Fast Product also released the first singles by the Scottish punk bands Scars and Flowers. The label also released compilations of various new bands called ‘ear comics’ or Earcom. Many of the label’s releases were also produced by Bob Last.

Fast Product’s releases challenged pop music conventions (hence the label’s early monikers: “difficult fun” and “mutant pop”), and through its releases and marketing invoked a DIY punk spirit and generally socialist political outlook. Often packaging records with a caustic yet subtle sideswipe at consumerism (for example, the image of a wall of gold discs on the cover of the Mekons’ first single), Fast Product attempted to show that all aspects of the record business, from musicianship to design to distribution, could be taken out of the hands of the major labels.

The label was name-checked by the Clash in a lyric from the song, “Hitsville UK”, the band’s homage to UK indies:
“When lightening hits Small Wonder/It’s Fast Rough Factory Trade”.

Bob Last also established the Pop: Aural label, releasing singles by such acts as Flowers, Boots For Dancing and The Fire Engines.

Love Puppets / Wall Purges Night / Lisa’s Party / Arzhklahh Olgevezh / Pruumptje Kurss

Waving At Aeroplanes / Hiding / Doll’s House / The Palace Of Love / Stoned Obituary

Sounding somewhere between Robyn Hitchcock’s Soft Boys, Wire and the Television Personalities (all with extra synths) this third Legendary Pink Dot’s LP released on the In Phaze record label has bag loads of charm and some interesting material stuffed within both sides of the grooves cut into the vinyl. An absolute gem of a record.

The incredible and informative text below is a transcript of long hours’ passionate talking with Edward Ka-spel and I, one of Dots’ keyboard-players, in an Amsterdam cafe courtesy of  Snowdonia fanzine from 1987. The text is translated from the original Italian for the legendarypinkdots.org site.

Sn: Initially, when did you first get into making music, and were you a writer/poet before making music?

E. I was a poet who used to put his poems in a drawer for years and years, and it was in 1980 I kind of thought that, it was a time of Throbbing Gristle and people who couldn’t play were making music, but it still sounded great. I thought, well if those guys can do it, and they were encouraging other people to do it, I could do it too. Myself and Phil, our keyboard player, went to Stonehenge Free Festival and saw a little band playing at two o’clock in the morning at the end of a field. We were the only audience and that was probably the second that the Legendary Pink Dots were conceived. As soon as we got back from the festival, I bought a very cheap synthesizer on hire purchase, and an old drum machine and amplifier, and suddenly there was a band there. We were quite obsessive, right from the start, playing about 15 hours, improvising night after night. It was a time when many people were making cassettes, selling themselves, designing the covers themselves. This all really appealed to me, basically, that’s how we started.

Sn: Why the name ‘The Legendary Pink Dots’?

E. It was to do with these mysterious blobs of pink nail varnish on the keys of the piano, and we were talking about those `legendary pink dots’, and nobody actually christened the band at any time – we were just stuck with it.

Sn: That was the first band you were in?

E. Oh yeah

Sn: Was it ‘industrial’ music, like Throbbing Gristle, that was the influence on the band’s sound initially ?

E. No, not so much musically. It was quite ‘industrial’ but more like industrial…nursery rhymes! Very much our own kind of sound, we never wanted to sound particularly like anybody else. We Just basically improvised all the time.

Sn: So the first album was Brighter Now on In Phaze. Was In Phaze your own label?

E. Oh no, it was run by a guy called Pat Birmingham. Actually, we got dreadfully ripped off, right through the In Phaze years.

Sn; So, how long was it between that and being picked up by Play It Again Sam, as they are now re-releasing all the old material?

E. Well, there’s been four labels, in fact. We went from In Phaze to this little Dutch label called Ding-Dong who absolutely murdered us as well. We quickly got out of that and went to another small label in Holland. and they weren’t so good, and then it was Play It Again Sam who actually signed us, although we’d already had two albums out on PIAS.

Sn: In 1985, the band emigrated to Holland. What were the reasons behind the move and why choose Holland?

E. Well, it was the first country which acknowledged our music properly, you know. We’d just brought out The Tower in England, which was a really important album to me, because it was all about England. It was about a trend that I saw in England, like this growing fascism type of thing – it was a real scream against it, and it was ignored! Apart from David Tibet, who did a review in Sounds, but even that was six months after the album came out. I just thought, well, ‘Damn You, but it was praised in countries like Holland and Germany and countries like that. Holland seemed a good country to live, and l had a girlfriend at the time who was Dutch so there were all sorts of reasons to go. It also forced me to try to make a living out of music without any kind of jobs.

Sn:  I’ve always wondered about the many reviews Legendary Pink Dots have had in the past, going on about a psychedelic side to your music and I could never fathom really how deep that was.

E.  There IS a psychedelic side to it …

I.  It’s quite natural, though…

E.  I mean, not by design.  I do like a lot of early psychedelic music, sure, but we just want to go our own way, the way it started, really, we just followed our own kind of paths.  There is an overall concept which is “Terminal Kaleidoscope”.  The Psychedelic references are mainly something the press dubbed onto us, not ourselves;  people always go on about how apparently Legendary Pink Dots was a form of acid, which is like there are rumours of how much acid we take, and in fact nobody takes any kind of … y’know smoke the odd joint but that’s as far as it goes.  No one is into drugs, not that we could afford them, for a start!

I.  I think we would all prefer to live with a clearer perception

E.  But that’s how I’d like it to stay.  I think drugs seem to cloud the mind rather than expand it or suppress things and I don’t want to suppress anything, all I want to do is expand them

I.  If people want to expand their minds, they should be doing it by discipline, you know, meditation, yoga and things like that.  That’s the best way if you want to expand your vision and search out new things, not via artificial substances, really.  We are psychedelic I think in the true sense of the word in that we are many-coloured and that comes very naturally, everyone likes to put in as many different colours as possible into our pieces of music.

E.  I’ve tried various things in the past but it was a decision by me to stop.  I wasn’t actually getting the benefit by the drugs (nothing particularly heavy), so I found, yeah, the most open state you can get, you can get naturally just by simply process of brightening.

Sn:  Musically, do you feel close to any sixties’ groups?

E.  No, probably the closest for me – although every member of the band would cite different influences – are the early German bands, Can, Amon Duul, Faust …

Sn:  Sometimes you can hear a cosmic resonance or a feeling of wide spaces in the Dots’ music …

E.  It should be like a kind of movie for the ears where anything can happen, one of those most wild pictures and the wildest are outside reality, and yet grounded in reality

I.  The music forms pictures in the hearers’ minds

E.  Without a doubt the idea is to create altered states in other people. What we are involved with is this dividing line between reality and fantasy, which is a very thin dividing line anyway!  I don’t know if you’ve ever had recollections of things you’re certain you’ve done, really vivid memories, and in actual fact you’re not remembering something you have done, you’re remembering a dream!  That dividing line has gone then, and that happens to me all the time

I.  It’s transcending the different levels of consciousness, if you see as levels in a building, as some writers have described the human being. It’s like, in certain states even if you are not someone who has trained himself to do so, well in certain states of mind you can accidentally climb up the stairs to those other levels and find yourself there …

Sn:  You might get frightened!

I.  You can get frightened, very easily

E.  But you become frightened of less the more you go through each particular barrier

I.  Just becoming aware that there’s more to the world than initially meets the eye!

E.  I’ve never wanted anything to be a closed book to me, my life I want to keep on discovering things, I want the edge to be kept, just wandering naively into this experience and that, that’s what makes life great.  And once you think you’ve seen it all, you know it all, you’ve heard it all, then the life’s finished;  and that’s why Pink Dots’ music tends to change all the time as well, it’s always expanding and once it’s stopped expanding that’s the time to stop altogether.  But I don’t see that for quite a while … we are on a long trip at the moment!

I.  Coming back to our influences, the essential thing for me is finding your own path and steering to your own goals so that you are creating a unique vision and something that will eventually stand up amongst other things

Sn:  Do you thing an album is going to be stronger if it lets itself be obsessed be a single idea that runs through it, I mean, are you bothered at all by ‘concept albums’, like “The Tower” seemed to be?

E.  Every album is actually a part of same concept, which is a different thing.  If you go back to the earlier albums or the earlier cassettes and there are characters, situations that will occur later and that will be developed (characters like Lisa, the Captain, Monkey, Astrid);  lots and lots of different strands in the same massive story that starts in our first cassette and continues right through to “Island of Jewels”.  And all the “China Dolls” works are tied up to the same concept and so it “The Tear Garden” (a collaboration between me and Kevin [sic] of Skinny Puppy); lyrically, there are references throughout: we are building our own reality.

I.  If the concept is big enough, then there is no problem.  I mean, if you’re limited to a very narrow concept, then of course you’re gonna have big problems.  I see it in slightly different terms to Edward, although basically we are on the same wavelength, in terms of the philosophy behind the band

E.  Terminal Kaleidoscope is a philosophy!

I.  I agree with you, but I think I tend to see slightly more of that aspect, than you do.  I am not so much involved in the characters and that, in the finer details, which you obviously are, as lyricist.

Sn:  What did the Terminal Kaleidoscope stand for?

E.  It takes the premise that the planet is rather like a drowning man, and like a drowning man sees his life flash before his eyes, you take it on a planetary level in that the one thing that is for sure is that everything around us is accelerating;  we take the premise that eventually we’ll reach overload, saturation, which will be a time of cataclysm, and that is the Terminal Kaleidoscope, when you are being bombarded all the time by images … I do believe you come out the other side of this cataclysm, because that’s the other basic concept:  everything is eternal.  Yeah, you can’t do anything to prevent this, you can’t slow it down, you can’t change the world, all you can do is cherish it and embrace it, feel lucky that you are approaching this time of cataclysm.  It may be a thousand years before overload time, it may also be happening in eight seconds’ time …

I.  I personally hope, I sort of agree with Edward in that it’s very difficult to do something to arrest the approach to this cataclysm because there are so few people who realise it and the majority of people are part of it, careering on towards it, but I think possibly you can make it more possible for us to survive AFTER it, by creating some kind of groundwork now.  I think some people do an excellent work, pan-national groups like Greenpeace and that, which have realised that they transcend politics now because politics is too individualistic, too nationalistic to have any real meaning in the long term, according to basically ecological grounds, coz either we help this planet live or we help it to die

E.  It can’t die, it just transforms because that’s the eternal law ‘Nothing will be created or destroyed’, just simply takes another form, human life can become entirely different!

I.  Yeah, but you would agree that we can turn it into a wasteland!

E.  Of course, but there’s always a way out of the wasteland.  I do believe in spiritual life, and that’s another thing:  you cannot kill the spirit.

I.  That harks back to the different levels of consciousness.

E.  I mean, we are no Psychic TV, or sort of some religion.  The idea is that we are simply providing a soundtrack in the terminal kaleidoscope. We tend to do no more than present it to the world:  we don’t give listening instructions, we don’t tell people to go to rituals, nothing like that.  Just:  be aware.

Sn:  I think most people are aware of this acceleration in the change, the information that is coming to us with greater and greater speed, but perhaps most people would agree that’s a positive thing!  We live in the information age, everything is becoming global … you start with the premise that you can’t arrest this and you think of it as a negative thing, don’t you?

E.  I don’t say it’s a negative thing, or a positive thing.  I say it’s inevitable, it’s something that’s happening that can’t be slowed down. But there is obviously … where is there peace anymore?  We’re sitting in a cafe in Amsterdam, there’s a radio playing over there, people are talking there, clattering of glasses, and the noise level is going to get higher, and all other levels with it, the radiation levels are gonna get higher in the air, it’s just the natural development!

I.  There is a large negative aspect to it, though, because these new developments are in the hands of people who believe in the current systems that we have and think they are never-ending.  And they aren’t. There’s an ‘n’ number of factors involved, they don’t even know, and the holes and pitfalls of this capitalist system we have generally in this world are getting larger and larger…

E.  Isn’t it true that a lot of the real beneficial developments have actually come as a result of weapons research, like sidelines, as if they managed to build the weapons first and the found a beneficial sideline. We’re going to have a bomb that can actually crack the planet in half, that’s for sure.  I don’t say they’ll ever use it, I don’t think that will ever happen.  I don’t think there’ll be an atomic war, simply because thankfully I think the awareness is high enough to know what it would mean.  But still, when the breakdown comes I believe it will do in a natural way, something like this thing that happened in Cameroun: poisonous gas, mountains and heavens blowing up, or some geological changes suddenly coming to the surface…

I.  It’s like a little boy playing with dynamite, man cannot control nature.  What we have to do is learn how to work in harmony with it, trying to control it is ludicrous.  Irrigation schemes and massive dam building in California, in China have actually backfired, because man hasn’t been able to foresee the outcome

Sn:  I was thinking, there’s another aspect, they say that Legendary Pink Dots have got ‘black humour’.  How does this tie in with this realisation of what the world is coming to?

E.  If you look around, you laugh, you really laugh!

I.  You need humour to survive!

E.  This world is so bizarre:  it just amuses me incredibly.  There is  lot of dark humour, and there is a lot of very emotional things as well. Part of it is very very personal, may be a love song or a lost love song, and it’s real.

I.  I think people when they listen should be prepared, there’s a very light side to the band, some light humour as well…

E.  Light humour?  Where?

I.  I think so.  Well, take “Fifteen Flies in the Marmalade” [off "Asylum" double LP], that has to be one of the most humourous tracks the band’s ever done, and I can’t see anyone taking that very seriously!

E.  That was meant to be a song rather like Marlene Dietrich.  I’ve always liked Marlene Dietrich.  I thought ‘Well, what’d she sing about?’ and the I thought she’d sing of fifteen flies in the marmalade.  I wanted to sing it in German originally, but my German isn’t good enough.

I.  But you can’t really call that heavy dark humour!

E.  No, but that’s the only one I can think of that fits into that category …

I.  Also in the musical side, though, there’s a lot of humour in music, like “Glory Glory Hallelujah”, that cut-up at the end of…

E.  That’s cynical!

Sn:  Also like wordplay, in the track called “Rope and Glory”…

I.  I agree that’s slightly heavy!

Sn:  Do you write all the lyrics?

E.  In “Asylum”, “The Hill” was written by Patrick, Julie wrote the one she sings on “Femme Mirage”, otherwise, yeah.

Sn:  One of my favorite records is “The Tower”, as I got hold of the lyric sheet.  I was impressed.  I wanted to know whether your coming away from England, the fact you particularly view England in such a bad state, whereas the situation we were talking about before is actually happening all over the world, so why is Britain particularly singled out to represent today’s evil?

E.  I believe in England it is worse.  I don’t like the way England is turning into a kind of Nazi Germany, and you are getting all the signs: first the decay, a hard sort of government that is there, that is gradually becoming harder and harder, much more subtle than the way Hitler did, for sure, but the racist laws, the fact that if you come from India you now need a visa.  And they have such a huge backing even among working-class people;  firebombs against immigrants’ homes, families are known to have been killed by sort of equivalent of Nazi stormtroopers.

Sn:  Is that what “Vigilantes” is about?

E.  Yes.  I detest that.  I am totally apolitical.  I don’t go for any particular party that exists, or has ever existed, but for me there are degrees.  Fascism is like the lowest of the low.  There’s a lot of aspects to what is called Communism that I detest, too.  In fact, if I’m honest I think the only politician I could say I ever really respected is Gandhi. I can’t relate to any others I can think of, at all.

Sn:  I remember those words at the end of “Tower One”:  “No one has the key to the Tower”

E.  The Tower is one of the oldest political prisons in the world:  the Tower of London.  We’re taking the premise that if you take things to their logical conclusion of the trends in England:  they are going to be saying ‘why don’t we open the Tower?’  But it will be for the deviant, and the deviant can be any colour other than the white, the deviant can think in any angle except the straight line, the deviant can be just plain ugly.  They will reopen the Tower and they will turn it into Tower Town, the Tower Complex.  “The Tower” itself musically as well as lyrically reaches back to the time when the Tower was a political prison, in the Middle Ages.  But it’s mixed with futuristic overtones;  ultimately you get something which is timeless, ‘cos that was always another thing about the Pink Dots:  we destroy the concept of time, I suppose in a way like the surrealist paintings.  “Island of Jewels” goes even further, lyrically it is set 5 years on from “The Tower”, when it is turned into Tower World, that’s actually when the cataclysm comes.

Sn:  Are there any books that you had in mind when describing this sort of ‘science-fiction’ vision?  I have read some SF books that depict a future political society where everybody is going to be confined…

E.  No.  It was a reaction to a particular occurrence.  When I was living in England, the Conservative government had been in for 4-5 years and there was a general election.  For the first time in my life ever I voted, for Labour.  And the Conservatives just got in again.  I couldn’t believe it. “The Tower” was written in anger, and that’s why we say “you chose your grave.  Now lie there”.

Sn:  In what way is it better in Holland?

E.  I moved here specifically because my girlfriend lives here.  I mean, I have to eat, I have to live, and I want to live on the music alone.  I couldn’t keep up this double life, going to boring jobs during the day and trying to work during the evening.  I wanted to make a step and if I’d made a step in England then the whole thing would have fallen flat on its face, ‘cos I couldn’t play anywhere, couldn’t survive, and here I can.

Sn:  Do you think also that in Europe you fit in with what Tuxedo Moon have been doing?  I’d say perhaps in England you are considered a bit too ‘arty’, whereas in Europe we are more used to this kind of music as well…

E.  That’s very true, actually.  I mean, Tuxedo Moon are as big as we are in England.

I.  As SMALL as we are!

E.  We certainly don’t follow Tuxedo Moon musically, they go their way, we go ours.  I enjoy their music very very much and they enjoy ours.  That’s the only kind of band I respect.  I don’t care in a way how well they do it, as long as a band follows its own path.  And there are a lot of good bands and people like this:  Steve of Nurse with Wound, for a start.  It’s just purely personal, pure self-indulgence, he does it ‘cos he loves it and a lot of the time he’s laughing, it’s full of humour right from the start, which people have missed.  But the guy’s also a genius, he does things that if he wasn’t Steve Stapleton he would be a respected avant-garde classical composer.  I think he’s brilliant, there’s never been a bad Nurse with Wound album as far as I’m concerned, they’re always different and if you knew him you’d love the music even more.  I mean, Laibach, another band that really intrigues and fascinates me, ‘cos people always think “Are they fascists, are they not?”, I think they’re obviously not. They’re very very clever, in that they use the words of Tito, who’s one of the ‘good guys’, but it sounds like fascism, they could also be Buddhism!

Sn:  Pink Dots have done a lot of recordings, but they’ve also embarked in solo projects and collaborations with other people.  Weren’t the Legendary Pink Dots enough to convey everything you wanted to do?

E.  Not exactly.  Partly, it ties in with the concept:  the acceleration means an acceleration for me too, you must continue, you can’t slow down. It was also during a particular time in the band when I was coming up with new numbers that the rest of the band didn’t necessarily think they fitted into the Pink Dots…

Sn:  Well, it doesn’t seem to me that the music of your solo records is that different, that’s because I was wondering.

E:  “Chyekk China Doll” is very much a sort of Pink Dots album, without a doubt.  The others maybe not so.  Once I started it, I enjoyed doing this, so I keep it going, too.  There are also a lot of projects:  the “Tear Garden” is an ongoing project with Kevin of Skinny Puppy, there’s supposed to be an album with members of Minimal Compact and Tuxedo Moon, there’s an album with Steve planned …

I.  Patrick, the violinist is recording a solo album, and I should be doing at first just small performances, maybe just piano recitals or keyboards, and then working with Patrick.  Soon we’ll all be together here in Holland; Phil Harmonix, the other keyboard player, will be moving shortly from London.

Sn:  Why such exhilarating names?

E.  They’re all extensions of our own characters, they’re not just made up for the sake of it.  When somebody asks me, what are your real names?  I say ‘These are our real names, it’s the old ones that are false’.  It’s who you are at the time, which changes all the time, and we can change our names with it.

Sn:  All part of the creation, isn’t it, you assume new names, a new language … Gralnezh khazh ….

E.  It comes out basically when you scat-sing, you’re just improvising vocal sounds and it sounds rather like a language, it goes beyond, the pure language of emotions.  I like the sound of it, sounds like Russian, we aren’t the first who have done these things, it’s just for the pleasure given by the sounds…

I.  Some of them, it’s strange, tend to mean something emotional:  those words that I like have a strange correlation with your brain.

E.  It’s the equivalent to ‘speaking in tongues’, which no one ever explains, but that’s what it is.  It’s the language of the trance state and oddly enough it does have meaning.  You can’t explain exactly how you feel, all you can do even with your rational, day-to-day language is give some vague reference.

Sn:  Some of the tracks do have some religious connotations, references to rituals, like “Lisa’s Baptism” in Edward’s “Chyekk” solo album….

E.  I am fascinated by witchcraft, the old religion which is the pre-Christian religion…

I.  … nature worship…

E.  It’s not something I’ve actually practiced, a way of tapping other deeper forces, which you do all the time and often you do not realise it.

Sn:  You think that the ‘official’ religion, by turning it into an institution has lost a very important link with these elementary forces?

I.  I’ve been to some Christian services, and it’s undoubtedly true that some people get something out of it, but, you know, I can’t really agree with most organized religions just because to present them to the people they have to water them down so much and include so many rituals to the point where the ritual becomes more important than the message, and therefore totally meaningless.  I mean, one of the religions I have a lot of time for is buddhism, which undoubtedly has some rituals in it but they’re generally for the adepts and not for the average person.  The average person who is a Buddhist has virtually no rules he has to follow, he can do it in his own time, it’s totally up to him how much he wants to put into it.  That’s something I can identify with, without, say, having to appear every day at the same time somewhere, or every week.  A lot of religions are coming from the old religion, nature worship, of the forces that ran along ley lines, and the moon and the sun… I don’t know a lot about it, I’m personally embarking on a study of these; I’m reading a very interesting book by Robert Graves called “The White Goddess” which is about mythology and the presence of these associations between mythology and poetry.  I mean, there are so many forces that float around in the air that the ancient people were aware of because they didn’t have this general noise level which obliterated them all.  But you can feel ley lines … you go to churches, and most old churches do feel very holy and the reason most of them do is, especially in England, that they’re actually built on the old sites of nature worship which were specifically along ley lines, at the crossing of ley lines.  Modern churches which haven’t been placed without that in mind at all, they just don’t have the same feel, they feel very cold, they are just a building.  I want to explore all that because I don’t like living on the skin of this earth, I want to understand.  You’ll never understand it all, but you can expand your knowledge.  We livein a multicoloured planet, we may as well make use of it, try to gain all the pleasure we can from it.

Sn:  I was thinking of people like Psychic TV, they do exploit these religious themes.  On the surface, I suppose they go back to the basics, to destroy what Catholic Church has superimposed, and corrupted.  But this kind of ‘anti-religion’ may well conceal a fascination for those aspects they would like to undermine, so that in a way they’re trapped within it.  What do you think?

E.  I try to strike a balance.  Some of my things are very religious, but it’s my own religion.  I don’t feel bound to any existing philosophy or religion, it’s just what I feel and what I live.  OK.  I do occasionally attack other religions, like “The Price of Salvation”, I don’t like money-grubbing Bill Grahams.  A lot of it has to do, again, with my own personality and imperfections, yes, I do have sometimes messianic illusions.  I am aware that I’m really an imperfect human being …

I.  Listening to a great piece of music, the best way I can describe it is like ‘being a very religious feeling’, it’s the right word to use.  It just takes you out of yourself, it frees you, you become less aware of yourself and more aware of the whole.

E.  You should drink it, you should achieve nirvana.

Sn:  You yourself were saying that your live concerts are a sort of church experience…

E.  They are.

Sn:  You were holding a candle in a photo I’ve seen!  Does it help your concentration?

E.  Everybody who is present at a gig, they should not be merely observing a spectacle, they should not be merely entertained, they should feel the emotion, feel the laughter, the sadness … everything as one.  The perfect gig is where the audience to a man flies out of himself and watches it from the ceiling!  The band will never just go onstage and just play, for the money, ‘Ah, let’s get this gig done’.  You have a spare atom of energy, well, the audience gets the lot.  Some people – you can tell when you’re looking at the audience – they have to look away, they get really frightened.  In Germany it was happening, ‘cos I always stare into the audience, a lot of people can’t take that, so they went a bit to the back, and we’re not gonna do anything, attack them!  But they felt this extraordinary energy emanating from the music.

Sn:  Doesn’t it often happen, tho’, that part of the audience may be puzzled by the variety of styles you play?

E.  I think they’re hit by the emotions, not just by the music. People tend to be scared by very intense emotions.

I.  When we’re playing we’re not just standing there, we’re actually thumping instruments, or even laughing … giving our all!  Any good gig, there’s so much emotion and energy in it!  I’m a really great believer in giving the audience everything.

Sn:  How did the critics back in England use to treat you?  I think, you got not so many reviews, but the ones you did get were quite good.

E.  Pathetic.  It’s not worth talking about it.  I mean, the concept of what is ‘experimental’ in England is laughable:  the Smiths are highly respected as a band because they’re considered to be breaking new ground!

Sn:  Of course now there’s a wide street-credibility connected with renewed pop-attitude….

E:  The best guitar ‘psychedelia’ band, the ones I really enjoy are totally ignored, ‘cos they have their own albums out for their own little label are The Deep Freezed Mice.  I really enjoy their music because it’s done from the heart.  A lovely band.

Sn:  What exactly do you have against all the old rock’n'roll ‘ethics’?

E.  It’s down to personal tastes, really.  It doesn’t take me anywhere.  I like to be affected emotionally or spiritually by something and rock’n'roll doesn’t do it, apart from some of the Velvet Underground, sort of like “Sister Ray”.  I do like Pink Floyd right through to “The Wall” ‘cos I always thought they had a sound of their own, and it’s dishonest the way people looked upon them especially after 1976 as though they were big dinosaurs;  they weren’t dinosaurs, they just carried on going their own way!

I.  It was just a big reaction against complex music, which although some bands did overdo it and there were bands that came up which were copying the Genesis, you can’t take away the fact that there were an awful lot of bands doing that kind of stuff extremely well, with their own sound, and their own individuality.  And to sort of slag it off as all pompous or as three chord wonders really gets right up my gullet.

E.  I mean, I like quite a wide range of things, I do like the early Genesis, also some of the P.I.L. (not now, but something like “Metal Box”).  As Pink Dots we came out actually of new wave industrial music.  I wasn’t moved to do anything by the Clash, the Damned, but when the Cabaret Voltaires, the Throbbing Gristles came on, I was interested again, even though I think Cabaret Voltaire have always been a second-hand band and never went as far, always stayed roughly within safe limits while other bands were bounding all outside those limits, but they did at least spark something in me.  Originally our music was a fusion of industrial music but with a heavy melodic side to it which nobody else was doing in 1980.

Sn:  Were those the very first cassettes you were releasing?

E.  Yes, it was that kind of fusion.  Some of it was very beautiful, but it could be very hard!  We used to mix those two sides together and what everybody said was ‘it was psychedelic!’ which is crazy, but there again I don’t mind.  I like psychedelic music if it means a mind-expanding music.

I.  It really depresses me, the general musical atmosphere in England.  I can’t help thinking that all these guitar-bands … I mean, the Beatles were great, so were the Stones, and the Kinks, but for a start they don’t even approach their simple yet complex music of those bands, they’re just boys playing with toys, they might be having fun but I can’t see what they’re doing as having any relevance, really.

E.  That happens in so many fields.  You take industrial music.  I was always interested in that;  Throbbing Gristle really affected me and “Second Annual Report” would send shivers down my spine, their lyrical content and overall philosophy.  But there are so many sub-TG who just say ‘let’s get in a bedroom, let’s make a noise and let’s call it art’ and it’s garbage!  I think industrial music should have stopped completely after SPK made “Leichenschrei” because that was the ultimate, it was a brilliant album that nobody could make a better, more definitive work in industrial music.

Sn:  But then it dragged on and on and on …

I.  The trouble is in some fields some people put themselves in a box and then they can’t get out of it.  I don’t see the point.  Music is about melody, rhythm, harmony, sound and space and you should be free to use any of those, and I’m for anyone who can do that with a bit of imagination, or the awareness of their own individuality and originality.  Young people or “in” pop-writers are all into ‘well-crafted pieces of pop’ and I hate the idea of disposable music. If I write a piece of music, I want it to be heard in a hundred years; it’s not for now, then next year this is it, this stuff is old, it’s no good anymore.  It’s not how we work!  I’d like to see musical barriers broken down more, because there’s so much snobbishness in the music world, you get classical or serious music, and there are people working in what they loosely term the avantgarde … and they won’t accept anything unless that person has a certain history, a certain background.  And there’s people outside that, what they call ‘experimental’, a term I hate.  We are dubbed ‘experimentalists’, we are not experimenting, we know what we are doing!  we’re not just throwing things into a pot and hopefully they will come out OK.  We’ve learnt an awful lot of things and we know if we wanna create something we’ll do it.

Sn:  I think you play a very structured music, although there are some moments that seem more improvised.  Do you actually do that?

E.  There have been totally improvised gigs!  and you don’t know what you’re going to do:  all the words were improvised, the structures, the combinations, but it’s only recently we reckon we are able to improvise well in that the level of skill within the band has to reach a certain point before you can do it well.  Technique IS important, because the more technique the more freedom …

Sn:  On the other hand one could argue that what you call pop music or punk was a necessary outlet for young people to go and do something, without saying ‘I’ve got to go to school first and learn music’, no, just as a spontaneous expression.  Of course it is restricted in a way, but that first impulse …

I.  I agree with that totally.  What I don’t like is the general attitude that that is totally where it’s at, 16-17 year-olds make music but when you’ve reached 23 you should hang up your guitar and go onto something else because you’re an old hat, and you shouldn’t be cluttering up the ground so that the new youths can get in.

E.  When somebody decides to CREATE, that’s brilliant;  I don’t care what they’re creating as long as it’s done with the thought in mind ‘yeah, I’m doing it because I wanna create something, not because it’s an easy way of making money.  Do it because you wanna create something and don’t stop!  Just keep this going, finding new things about yourself and what you can do with things.  Keep moving;  if you wanna keep it in a channel and say ‘I hate that, I hate everything else apart from what I’m doing’, then forget it.  A lot of people just build their own little tunnel and stay in it;  I like people that want to create WORLDS!

Sn:  How do you stand within the music market, because I’m sure you realise that no matter what kind of music you do, you are in a sense a part of the music business.  Does that get in the way …

E.  It’s caused us more problems than anything else.  We’ve been cheated, robbed right throughout our history.  Four of our first five albums we didn’t receive a penny.  The music business continues and will always disgust us;  it’s not about music at all, it’s about money.  But unfortunately it’s a necessary evil.  We are lucky now in that finally after years of trying we found an honest record company, who actually treat us fairly, that’s all we ask.  We got to a point where “Asylum” nearly became our last album, because we had been cheated so badly by Ding Dong…  They pressed 2000 of “The Lovers” and we got a copy each! It’s a very long involved story, but they almost split the band up. “Asylum” was waiting to be recorded and that was like a scream, that’s what we felt we were in at the time, the thing we were witnessing:  an asylum.  It took longer than any other Pink Dots album to record:  over two months’ recording sessions.  We would sort of begin and then stop before we’d even started because somebody was becoming emotional and he would run out, almost at breaking point.  But we came out the other side.

Sn:  Are you satisfied with that?

E.  Yeah, I’m very fond of “Asylum” because it represents very purely the emotional state of the band.  Very little bad blood around because of the type of band it is, because of the struggling involved, and the poverty!

Sn:  I bet you become very close!

E.   … sometimes people can’t take it, all the emotion.  I mean, we’re all very close friends.  I could never be in a band where I hated everybody, or everybody went their own way.  A lot of these bands exist, you know, but it’s not for me.

I.  There is tension in the band.  I think it’s kind of healthy tension. Out of that comes a blend …

E.  A six piece band, six people whose ideas all sort of try to find their space, but the one thing nobody would tolerate is compromise … It sounds really like an impossible situation, but somehow it works!

Sn:  What about this new album, why is it called “Island of Jewels”?

E.  Originally it had to be called “After the Tower” ‘cos it’s the sequel to “The Tower”.  Really coincidentally all the albums have actually taken up tarot cards, like “Curse”, “The Tower”, “The Lovers”, “Asylum” (that was our first deliberate tarot card reference).  So we wondered ‘What’s the card that comes after the Tower?’  and we came up with “Island of Jewels”…

I.  Which was perfect!

Sn:  Have you ever thought of Legendary Pink Dots as having a potentially commercial crossover?  Have you tried even to pursue that?  Like “Curse” was perhaps ‘poppier’ …

I.  I think that was done naturally.

E.  I mean, if we had a hit, then it would’ve happened by accident.  As long as we retain the total freedom, and we’ve done a catchy song and some people like it and then it’s bought in their millions, we’d reserve the right to make a follow-up single with a 15-minute piece of backward running tapes with a slowed down cello!

Sn:  Given your following a strictly individual path, you don’t have a particular relationship with the punk or squatters movement, the social centres here in Amsterdam…?

E.  I don’t believe in following movements.  You follow a movement or a trend, then you have to accept certain st rules and I’m not going to accept any rules other than the rules that I make myself.

Sn:  You wouldn’t describe yourself as an anarchist…?

E.  I suppose I am, in a way.  In the true sense:  anarchist as one who lives by his own rules.  The thing that makes me laugh is when you get someone who calls himself an anarchist and immediately join up with other so-called anarchists and draw up a set of rules, which isn’t anarchy! Even though they are not anarchists, one set of people that I really admire is Crass, and they are not anarchists, nor communists:  they are ‘Christians’!  Early Christians, even though they deny the whole concept of Christianity, they’re living by those rules, and they live it as a group. The Pink Dots don’t do that, we are a group, but everybody is such an individualist!

I.  There are basic set of ideals which I would like to think were common, just compassion, helping someone when they need it, respect … the very early Christian principles, people like Jesus Christ, Gandhi, I can’t argue against those kind of principles at all!

E.  But you don’t need to read them in a book.  If you are aware of them, you should feel it rather naturally!

Sn:  Do you feel strongly on issues such as vegetarianism?

E.  Vegetarianism is right for particular persons, they’re right following it.  Four of us are.

Sn:  Well, your way out is eating less and less!

E.  It’s true.  I forget to eat, mainly when I’m making music.  I sort of become a bit entrenched in it, totally obsessed by it.

Sn:  Do you respect your body, or you just think it’s an accessory to your mind?

E.  I think it’s an accessory to my mind.  Its use is functional.  I dwell too much, in a way, on higher things and forget the day-to-day living.  It’s just my way, I don’t say it’s right or it’s wrong, but it’s right for me.

Sn:  It seems to me that the spiritual side to your music is quite important…

E.  Everything revolves on music.  I look at it as a form of art, not because we feel superior, but because we care for it, we put all our better energies into it, to turn it into an emotional soundscape, something with its own perfected shape, its own depth, the bitter and tragic beauty of a work of art.

Sn:  Tell me that ‘story’ of the statues, the myth of the statues as symbols of perfection.

E. Imagine a deserted wasteland, ravaged by destruction, at a time when the memory of the human race had been cancelled by the lapse of time.  On that planet, only a ghostly shade of the former Earth, there land a group of visitors from other worlds.  The only thing they can see (books, films, records will have crumbled into dust by then) is these gigantic statues, like an avenue lined by collapsing temples, where these sculpted images of men, women, and gods, are still standing, untouched.  It may well happen that the aliens will take this people of statues, motionless but nonetheless perfect, for the original inhabitants of the Earth, and that they will say:  This is really a divine race!  The irony is that we’ve never been a divine race, we had been the first and foremost cause of our own destruction; but these monumental statues will remain, retaining for a long time, even ‘afterwards’, the idea, the ideals.  Because the ideas don’t die so easily, they are turned into cold stone, long after our bodies have stopped leaving traces. The statues will be our spiritual heritage, a spirit embodied in matter, apparently dead, in reality the only living thing left of us. And music, I think, creates this emotional landscape, surreal if you like, of statues, of memories. There’s also another version of this tale:  the sculptures will hold within themselves something of our vital spark, like the bleeding religious icons, these statues will perhaps still show our mortal wounds, and one day the statues will shine in the daylight, the sunrays will shed light on the stigmata inflicted on them overnight.

Sn:  And the dolls in the “China Doll” series are like replicas of those statues …

E.  They are the statues of our childhood!

This post is respectfully dedicated to the adorable Tinsel on the day of her birthday. Originally from the parish of Welwyn Garden City, Tinsel eventually ended up in the same places and spaces as members of the the Kill Your Pet Puppy collective. All at KYPP online wish you a nice relaxing and happy day today. x

Slogun

Mekano (Factory)

Debut UK released 7″ single by Surgical Penis Klinik released on Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial Records imprint in 1980. As you would expect, a fair amount of fun and joy is packed into the two sides of this 7″ single from Surgical Penis Klinik.

The debut S.P.K. LP and the band’s second LP can be listened to HERE and HERE

The text (that sits below the Industrial Records press release and the Slash Magazine review of this record) concerning the ‘real’ S.P.K (the organisation, not the band) is lifted from heathenworld.com. Thanks to that site in advance.

IR 0011 PRESS RELEASE: 1980

Subject:- SLOGUN / MEKANO by S.P.K.

Index Number: IR 0011 45rpm single

Side A:            Mekano (Factory)
Side B:            Slogun (Slogan)

Well, as promised, here we are again! Here is a single by Australian group S.P.K. 
          

The cover and centre labels are somewhat confusing. On the cover, the  A side is “MEKANO”, but on the centre label it is called “FACTORY” and is numbered as the B side. Factory was its original title, then the words were changed. On the cover the B side is called “SLOGUN” but on the centre label the A side is called “SLOGAN”. This is the B side. Probably.

The group are called S.P.K. but for this single prefer to be known as Surgical Penis Klinik, for reasons best known to themselves. They have called the whole package “MEAT PROCESSING SECTION”!

If you review it we suggest you tell people to ask for S.P.K.-Surgical Penis Klinik and give index number IR 0011 if the shop seems confused! Well, what can you expect from people from down under…

Background:- S.P.K. was the name the group took from a group of mental patients in West Germany who, inspired by the Baader-Meinhof group set up their own terrorist cell with a “SLOGUN” Kill Kill Kill For Inner Peace and Mental Health. Unfortunately this group blew themselves up whilst trying to make and hide bombs in their Mental Hospital.

S.P.K. was originally 4 people in Sydney, Australia. They released two singles on their own S.P.K. label and pressed 200 copies of each. They sent copies to Industrial Records who liked them so much they offered to re-release their favourite two tracks again. By this time S.P.K. had only two members left, one a certified schizophrenic, a patient in mental hospitals; the other a certified mental nurse who works in mental hospitals!

This perhaps explains the complex inconsistency of their packaging.

Since this record was made the schizo-member has left the group. S.P.K. is now one person who is alive and cynical and living in Paris. The cover was designed by S.P.K. Most copies sold in shops will include the stick on front picture inside with the record.
A peely penis to stick on or up yourself. Other copies will have the penis already attached in the frame on the front, like yours…

SLASH FANZINE Vol.3 No.5

SURGICAL PENIS KLINIK (MEAT PROCESSING SECTION)

Industrial IR0011

Here’s a fun story: S.P.K. got their name and inspiration from a group of West German crackbrains who set up a “terrorist cell” in their hospital under the slogan “Kill Kill Kill – For Inner Peace and Mental Health” and then blew themselves to shredded hell with homemade explosives. Likewise, S.P.K. (the musical unit) also fractured down to two members – one, a nurse at a mental hospital; the other, a certified schizophrenic, after making the tapes from which this single was culled.

I don’t care whether this story actually is true or otherwise, it’s a great myth and adds just the right touch to Meat Processing Section, which is one of the most ghastly, genuinely disturbing singles made since 1959. This bastard is diseased from cover to core, a bad virus that only incidentally infects plastic, paper, or canvas. Maybe it’s the nearest soundtrack available for S.P.K.’s own home movie – the sickly yellow one that flickers incessantly in their raving noodle.

Sure, I’m laying it on thick. Don’t take my word for it, you can let it into your own living space and see: if the cover, showing a real live penis with a quarter-inch rod shoved through it, doesn’t grab ya, the sounds inside sure will.

“Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv” / “Patientenfront” / “Patients’ Front”

Members:

Dr. Wolgan Huber – founder of SPK

Ursula Huber – in charge of Working Circle of Explosives

Carmen Roll – member of SPK Working Circle of Explosives

Sigfried Hausner – member of SPK Working Circle of Explosives

Bernard Brown – involved with SPK and Movement June 2

Friederike Krobbe – SPK member involved in Schleyer kidnapping

Hanna Krabbe – member of IZRU, group formed after SPK’s demise

Alfred Mahriander – student member of SPK

Margit Schiller – student member of SPK

Christian Junshke – student member of SPK

Lutz Taufer – SPK member

Karl Dellwo – SPK member

Ulrich Wessel – SPK member

Ekerhard Becker – lawyer involved with SPK

Rolf Reinder – SPK associate

SPK was organized in Working Circles:

Working Circle of Dialectics

Working Circle of Education

Working Circle of Explosives

Working Circle of Judo and Karate

Working Circle of Marxism

Working Circle of Photography

Working Circle of Radio Transmission

Working Circle of Religion

Working Circle of Sexuality

“Bomb, Bomb, Bomb for mental health”

“Kill, Kill, Kill for inner peace”

“Turn Illness Into a Weapon”

“Therapy through violence”

SPK is a somewhat obscure “pro-illness” group founded by Dr. Wolfgang Huber at Heidelberg University in 1968. The group members were mental patients, and were considered by media to be a leftist / Marxist group. The group forwarded the view that the “capitalist performance of the Federal Republic was sick within itself and was thus producing mentally sick people which could only be changed by violent revolution.” They organized into the working circles listed above.

In 1970, Dr. Huber and 120 patients were kicked out of the clinics they were using. The patients revolted, occupied offices, went on a hunger strike, etc. until they are provided with a few rooms. The patients revolted again, demanding blank prescriptions pads, and released a communique the same year supporting the SDS. The university lost patience with the situation and kicked Dr. Huber out, and tried several times to evict SPK. The patients released a communique titled “Suicide equals murder / starvation equals murder” after one patient committed suicide. Dr. Huber and some patients were arrested in 1971, prompting the group to release another communique titled “Turn Illness into a Weapon”. The group’s workshops included crime, guerilla activities and sex magic. Interaction between SPK and Baader-Meinhof group was widely suspected. SPK denied any connection. The patients demanded 500 weapons and raised hell in other ways before dissolving in 1971 and reappering under the name InformationsZentrum Rote VolksUniversität (Information Center of the People’s Red University) ..IZRU Dr. Huber and several patients were in prison for the next few years.

There were numerous leftist terrorist groups active in West Germany at the time, but SKP was unique because of their mental therapy angle. Two of the best known were the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhoff Gang and the anarchist “Movement June 2″, which took its name from the date in 1967 when a student named Bennoi Ohnesorg, was killed in anti-Shah riots in West Berlin. A famous RAF saying is, “Society is corrupt; it must be destroyed; that which comes later will be better.”

A list of activites:

SPK set the State Psychiatric Clinic near Hiedleberg on fire.

The Working Circle of Explosives tried to blow up a train carrying the president of the Fexceral Republic, but the plans fell apart. Carmen Roil arrived with the bomb after the train left. Reinder Mahriand with two other members shot one of two policemen who tried to detain them.

Christian Junchke with other SPK members robbed a bank and were interrupted by a policeman. They tried to run him over and eventually shot him. Margit Schiller and two others were later approached by two policemen. they shot and killed both policemen.

In October of 1971, a woman from SPK and a member of the RAF were stopped by police in Hamburg. They were wanted for questioning related to the attempted murder of two policemen on the Freiburg Basle autobahn. The woman shot one policeman.

SPK members carried out their best known action under another name. On April 27, 1975, six people who called themselves the “Holger Meins Commando” seized the West German embassy in Stockholm. Four of the six people, Friederike Krobbe, Karl Dellwo, Lutz Taufer, Sigfried Hausner and Ulrich Wessel, were originally SPK members. By this time they were affiliated with the RAF, which is widely credited with this action. After entering the building, the six took twelve hostages: Ambassador Dietrich Stocker, several senior diplomats including military attaché Lieutenant Colonel Andreas Baron von Mirbach, embassy officials, secretaries and messengers. The “Holger Mains Commando” sent their demands to the Bonn government – within 6 hours, 26 prisoners including Esslin, Baader and Meinhoff were to be released, given $20,000 and be waiting safely in a plane at Frankfurt airport.

As these demands were considered, Swedish police inside the lower part of the embassy were fired on and warned by telephone to quit within fifteen minutes or Von Mirbach would be executed. When police refused to leave the embassy, the West German military attaché was marched to the window, shot several times, and thrown off a balcony on the third floor. He died shortly afterwards in the hospital. Then, minutes before the deadline expired, The Swedish Minster of Justice informed the terrorists that the Bonn government had rejected all demands. He then offered the gang safe conduct out of Sweden if they freed the remaining hostages unharmed. The economic attaché was shot and three secretaries released with a final ultimatum. Before this could be met, the explosives which Hausner had rigged up exploded, setting off live ammunition, scaring Wessel into dropping a grenade and blowing himself up. The explosives blew up the top floor of the embassy. The badly burned body of Heinz Hillegaart, the West German economic attaché, was found later in the wreckage. Hausner was injured in the explosion, and died in the hospital. The four surviving members of the “Holger Meins Commando” were deported to West Germany, tried, and found guilty.

In September of 1977, the RAF kidnapped top industrialist Dr. Hans-Martin Schleyer in Cologne, Italy. SPK member Fred Krobbe was involved. Five terrorists armed with sub-machine guns ambushed Schleyer’s Mercedes as he was driven home from work, escorted by a second car carrying three armed bodyguards. The gunmen murdered all three bodyguards and Schleyer’s chauffeur, then abducted the unharmed industrialist in a waiting van. They offered his life in exchange for the release of eleven imprisoned West German terrorists, payment of $43,000 each and safe transport to the country of their choice. A massive search was mounted for Schleyer. Five weeks later the kidnappers released a photograph of their drained, wretched captive, showing him holding a banner with the inscription “Commando Siegfried Hausner” and “Martyr Halimeh”. Hausner was the SPK member who died in the hospital after the Stockholm embassy siege of 1975. “Halimeh” was the Arab name given to an unidentified German woman who was shot by Israeli troops when she tried to hijack a plane. They eventually killed Schleyer, and released a statement excerpted below:

“After 43 days we have ended Hanns-Martin Schleyer’s pitiful and corrupt existence… His death is meaningless for our pain and our rage… The struggle has only begun. Freedom through armed, anti-imperialist struggle.”

Dr. Huber is still active. He was a few books in print. Notable titles are “SPK – Turn Illness into a Weapon” and “SPK Indeed – What the SPK Really Did and Said”. Huber denies some things that this article and historical sources have stated. This excerpt, for example, includes his explanation that he was not fired from the university and conventional history is wrong about the working circles. His writing is hard to follow, and an interesting window into how his mind works. You are encouraged to read it and decide for yourself. Huber’s official website for SPK is spkphf.de. He is a complex character who’s activities cannot be fully summarized in this short article.

Songull

Pokn

Fine and very rare debut 7″ single by Bjork’s early punk outfit KUKL released on the excellent Gramm record label based in Iceland.

KUKL went on to support Crass in 1983 at the ‘We Demand A Future’ festival held in Reykjavik which may be listened to HERE . Penny Rimbaud was absent for the drumming duties at this particular gig due to a perferated ear drum. The post was taken up for the night and the drumming successfully completed by Martin of Flux Of Pink Indians. KUKL also performed with Psychic TV in the same city in Iceland, a recording of Psychic TV’s performance was also released courtesy of Gramm Records in 1984.

Crass were important to KUKL during 1984, the band setting up at Southern Studios on two occasions and completing the recording sessions for the two LPs released on the Crass record label.

A cassette release recorded in Paris in 1984 is also available to listen to on this site HERE and just for fun there is also a UK performance with Chumbawumba HERE .

That’s all your KUKL needs sorted out for a little while then! If anyone has a decent recording of any of the KUKL gigs on the Flux Of Pink Indians / D&V tour in 1984 please contact me on this site. Specifically the Ambulance Station performance down the Old Kent Road.

Flux Of Pink Indians were also very important to KUKL way after the bands performed together on a UK tour, Derek Birkett from Flux set up One Little Indian Records in the mid 1980′s after his earlier label, Spiderleg Records was dissolved. One Little Indian released records and CD’s from Bjork’s, then new band, The Sugarcubes in the late 1980′s, and the label continued to release Bjork’s solo material throughout the 1990′s and as far as I am aware still does to this day.

Text below lifted lock, stock and barrel from the Southern Studios website. Thanks to them in advance…

ALL THE LOVELY PEOPLE: WHERE DO THEY ALL COME FROM?

Our story begins some years ago when we co-existed in different groups in the very same country.

PEYR was a band that gained a reputation in foreign countries, but when they had had their name spelled in Japanese they tactfully ceased to exist and left God Krist. and Tryggur floating in the Ether waiting to make themselves manifest.

PURRKUR PILLNIKK was another band, never too bothered but quite possibly too concerned. They played with FALL in England, then they too ceased to exist and Einar kept spinning around hoping to hit someone.

TAPPI TIKARRASS was still another band. When their charm became stagnant Bjork decided it was time for an evolutionary leap and sent us a bright smile that opened our hearts.

Birgir caressed his bass in a band called MED NOKTUM, but when the call came he knew he had to obey and left his fellow workers in the Vineyard for the Cosmic Unity of KUKL.

And there was one with the name of Melax who had spent his time within the framework of the surrealist group MEDUSA, alternatly making phallic Bird Cages and Music for Miro on the Moon. He too heard the call and obeyed.

KUKL thus became the logical conclusion of the Icelandic Musical Evolution. They depict the Marriage of Heaven and Hell: the Union of Opposites, Cold Claustrophobic Winters with the Agoric Midnight Sun of the Summer Months. Snow fused with Vulcanic Activity: A Cold and Calm Outside covering Catastrophic Aliveness that may tear the ground from under your feet.

KUKL will not prostitute itself, the group will play on special occasions only, so as to retain its inspirational quality.

KUKL played at “WE Demand a Future”, a concert that had over 2% of the Icelandic population present. And KUKL played with PSYCHIC TV at the legendary concert in Reykjavik.

As the time is ripe now, KUKL will expand into various parts of Europe and give the Europeans a taste of what KUKL sounds like and what the group stands for.

EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEWS

Our aim is to work for the betterment of humanity through our music. We feel that music is one of the strongest mediums that you can have access to in the Western world as money is not our game we rely on the inherent power of our group.

Our power is what we are and what we do: through listening to us people will become part of the transmission of that particular power, even should they not realize what we are about. Whether we should be considered artists, does not really matter at all.

We leave that problem to those who want to define to understand. – We only want to wake up in people dormant powers which even they did not know existed. Sometimes we even don’t know ourselves what we are doing, as we are still learning. The “magic” has not been intellectualised or consciously assimilated to what we are doing.

Even the name of the group shows this: KUKL, meaning “Psychism” implies dabbling with some unknown forces and we don’t want to get stuck in any definitions as to contents or procedures as that would put an end to our learning process and our transmission. This “something” that we are dealing with is also a thing that we are against definging. We are not preaching convictions as they tend to produce convicts. The only clearly definable thing in our floating philosophy is that there is more to life than THIS. We want to be able to blow a few sparks into a consuming fire, burning away restrictions. A large portion of music in our times is serving us a tool with which people are lulled to sleep while those in charge are steering us towards our doom.

We want and we must catch the attention of those lunatics and show that we want to be reckoned with when it comes to defining the rules for our life and death. Our music is our strongest weapon in that battle, it is also nourishing for us and gives us strength to tackle this devilish problem. But as to the future we don’t have any five-year-plans – although in a sense we feel we have been booked for eternity…

PARANOIAC CRITICAL ACTIVITY IN MUSIC AND MASS-REVOLUTION

Paronoia (from the Greek “Para” (Demented) “Nous” (Mind), has become a universal state of being.

It is representative of the Schizophrenic Split in our society: a healthy reaction towards unhealthy surroundings. Burroughs has defined a paranoiac as “one who knows what is going on”, – we would see him as someone who fears the worst, knowing that habitual pessimism always yields the “best” results.

We know by now that our destiny is to a large extent governed by pestilent characters and emotional plague-bearers: people who have given up their humanity for the Secondary Gain of feeling in power, delighting in the fact that they can treat their fellow human-beings as pawns in their pathetic power-games. These people will direct your destinies according to their whims and fancy for the sheer enjoyment of being able to do so. The herd-morality inherent in the structure of our civilization makes it all too easy for those people to exercise their power over the individual as people are literally born into the power-structure and are not likely to move up towards the apex of the pyramid unless they make the right sacrifices at every step. Thus at the base we have people who still retain their individuality but are unaware of its use or power. As you move up you will be given more and more power over others, but your individuality will be stripped off accordingly: You will always be a slave of the system, the final step being that you have become the system incarnate. There is always an open invitation to become a cog in this mindless monstrosity, the dung-heap of diseased morals that ages of insane rulership have built up. But the apparent strength of the system is also it’s main weakness: its inflexibility will be its undoing in the end, but do not let yourself be lulled into passive observation or into participation in pseudo-revolutionary movements.

The strongest hope lies in the abberation of the individual, random-revolutions on the individual-basis which introduce a margin of error into governmental calculations. Through Cybernetics we learn that a system which has the greatest flexibility will eventually end up as the ruling system: this is a learning that can and should be employed on the individual level.

Do not conform, not in your life-style, your art or your attitudes. By using this law in our music we introduce a incongruence into the Psyche of our audience and as we do not attempt to utilize this to our own ends, this leaves space for the individuals to fill up for themselves. A single non-conforming attitude will breed a host of others. You have no right but to BE YOURSELF!

SOME PRESS OPINIONS:

We had expected some combination of PEYR and PURRKUR PILLNIKK, but we were served with suprise in evey respect. The music retains the manic quality of P.P. and the sophistication of PEYR, but it moves far beyond. At first I thought I could not stomach the rhythmic frenzy and the crazy tonal combination but then my stomach and eventually my whole body began to move along. And who am I to disagree?

S&T

April 84

For once I find myself at a loss for words. This concert can not be described. Those who lived it will have it with them for the rest of their life.

DV

Nov 83

SHOCK: An Icelandic band whose name nobody knows, except it has to be shouted, stormed into life and made perhaps the nicest noise of the whole evening. Apparently with two lead vocalists, (immpossible to see over the rhythmically swaying snoggers) this curious bunch generated an intensity born of a vaguely Fall-ish chaos everything getting wonderfully hysterical, but all the while, foundations remained under control, easily enjoyed.

SOUNDS

Jan 84

A new interpretation of Rock-Music, unlike anything I have ever heard before.

DV

Sept 83

Their musical creation literally explodes into the faces or masks of the audience, thrusts itself into its consciousness and even if you don’t happen to be interested, there is no way of avoiding it or refusing to take it into consideration…

DV

April 84

Kalashnikov Collective cover The Mob’s No Doves Fly Here with haunting turned up to eleven.

From the Kalashnikov collective’s album “Living in a psycho-caos era” (DIY 2010).

Kalashnikov were born in 1996 on the dirty floor of a squat in Milan, to give vent to the adolescent restlessness of three guys with their ears clogged by Wretched, Bad Religion and Clash. Under the drunkenness of the heavenly libertarian nectar and rejecting the ruling alternative thrash music, Kalashnikov are created with the wish to put together their own utopias and passion. Through the years there were many changes either in the line-up, or in our music and our lyrics, but anyway some features have lasted: Kalashnikov have always played a concentration of melodic and fast music with high libertarian spirit, following the path of DIY.

More details on the official website HERE

Leo from Soundbox Studios, Thomaby Gardens, Edmonton, N18 passed away on Friday 20th August after losing his fight against cancer.

He was an important part of the anarcho-punk scene and I am sure his friends and members of bands that he worked with would like to know about his passing on.

Other than being involved in a huge way with DIRT, Rubella Ballet and Crass, Leo had hundreds of musicians pass through his studio over a period of 30 years. Bands like the Stratford Mercenaries and Shwartzenneger, both bands with Steve Ignorant on vocals after Crass had folded. Other notables going through the studio were Lack Of Knowledge, Omega Tribe, Honey Bane as well as members of the Buzzcocks, Angelic Upstarts, Citizen Fish, and so many more it would just run on and on like a who’s who of punk. Similar of course to the other north London studio, Southern Studios in Wood Green run by the late John Loder who knew Leo well.

Leo also done lighting for all the bands DIRT toured or performed (before 1983) with like Flux Of Pink Indians, The Mob, Conflict etc. Notably Leo also was in charge of the lights at the Zig Zag Squat all dayer, the same gig that Fox and Vomit, both of Leo’s sons left DIRT.

Fox and Vomit DIRT at the Africa Centre Covent Garden - 1980

The DIRT skull was also Leo’s design. He designed and painted the logo / banner long before Fox and Vomit joined Gary, Deno and Lou to form DIRT.

It was the backdrop for Fox’s and Vomit’s old punk band called the Gutter Rats, a band that was going nowhere, so it was used for DIRT for which it is now best known.

The logo nowadays is of course an iconic anarcho-punk image from 1980 in the same way as the Crass symbol or the Poison Girls ‘crow’ symbol has become.

Leo’s funeral is at 3:30pm on Monday 13th September at

Enfield Crematorium

Great Cambridge Road

Enfield

EN1 4DS.

Vince has informed me that anyone who knew Leo is more than welcome to attend.

Vomit (Vince) son of Leo and bassist of DIRT 1980 – 1983

Fox R.I.P son of Leo and drummer for DIRT 1980 – 1983