Lies / Puppets Of War

Mindless Few / Chronic Generation

The debut 7″ single uploaded tonight was a firm favorite of a much younger Penguin, as was the follow up 7″ single ‘Reality / Subway Sadist’ that was released on Step Forward Records also in 1981. When the band followed a handful of others onto Secret Records in 1982 the band seemed to diminish somewhat recording wise which culminated in one of the biggest disappointments in the release of the LP ‘Chronic Generation’. A mighty shame…

The second Chron Gen 7″ single and the CHAOS cassette ‘Live In Leicester 1981′ are both uploaded onto this site if you use the search function to find them.

The name an abbreviation of “chronic generation”, this early 80s, third-generation UK punk band, ranked only below the Exploited, Vice Squad and Discharge in popularity. More melodic than the vast majority of their peers, Chron Gen earned early comparisons to the Buzzcocks, though they never really justified such heady praise.

The band was originally formed as the Condemned in 1977 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England. At this time Glynn Baxter (guitar, vocals) and John Johnson (drums) were still at school, and they were joined by bass player Adam in the formative line-up. The early repertoire consisted of ramshackle versions of old Sex Pistols and Ramones standards, and Adam was soon replaced by Pete Dimmock, before Jon Thurlow was drafted in on rhythm guitar to complete the band’s enduring line-up. While frontman Baxter’s lyrics were fuelled by a life on the dole, his fellow guitarist Thurlow actually admitted to a job as a civil servant. The group made their debut with the “Puppets Of War” EP, a spirited four-tracker where the production partially deprived the band of their live punch. Released initially on the group’s own Gargoyle label, the record sold out of its 1,000 pressing and was picked up for wider distribution by Fresh Records.

Following national exposure on the infamous Apocalypse Now tour (with the Exploited, Anti-Pasti, etc.), it rose into the Top 5 of Sounds music paper’s Alternative Chart. Sounds, with its coverage of both the Oi! and new punk movements, remained the band’s only real advocates within the mainstream. Chron Gen then lost many of their new-found supporters with a debut album that was an unfocused, patchy affair. The promise of songs such as “Hound Of The Night” was tempered by the lack of power and studio skill employed elsewhere, and Chron Gen never really recovered from the blow. They soldiered on for a couple of years, but to diminishing rewards.

Happy Birthday to my mucker Iain Aitch who is celebrating his birthday today…A veteran of the Apocalypse Now tour back in 1981!

CONTORTIONS: Dish It Out / Flip Your Face / Jaded / I Can’t Stand Myself      TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS: Burinig Rubber / The Closet / Red Alert / I Woke Up Dreaming

MARS: Helen Fordsdale / Hairwaves / Tunnel / Puerto Rican Ghost      D.N.A: Egomanics Kiss / Lional / Not Moving / Size

A rare slap of noisy vinyl uploaded onto KYPP today, the original album that bought to the public the sounds of the small ‘No Wave’ scene exploding in New York during the latter part of 1977. The album was produced in New York by Brian Eno, of Roxy Music fame in 1978 and released on the Island Records spin off Antilles Records. A completely raw set of tracks by the movers and shakers in that small scene, The Contortions being my pick of the bunch. A glorious noise indeed.

Text below ripped from allmusic.com

No Wave was a short-lived, avant-garde offshoot of ’70s punk, based almost entirely in New York City’s Lower East Side from about 1978-1982. Like the post-punk movement that was primarily centered in Britain, no wave drew from the artier side of punk — but where British post-punk was mostly cold and despairing, no wave was harsh, abrasive, and aggressively confrontational. Most no wave bands were fascinated by the pure noise that could be produced by an electric guitar, making it an important component of their music (and oftentimes the central focus). Unlike punk, melody was as unimportant as instrumental technique, as most no wavers concentrated on producing an atonal, dissonant (yet often rhythmic) racket. With its assaultive artiness and theatrical angst, no wave was as much performance art as it was music. Two of no wave’s central figures were vocalist/guitarist Lydia Lunch and saxophonist James Chance, who performed together in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks; Lunch went on to a long solo career, and Chance formed an innovative no wave/funk outfit called the Contortions. The defining no wave recording is the 1978 Brian Eno-produced compilation No New York, which features material from Chance and the Contortions, Teenage Jesus, DNA (featuring avant-garde guitarist Arto Lindsay), and Mars. Although none of the no wave performers ever really broke out to wider audiences (Lunch’s prolific, collaboration-heavy solo output brought her the closest), Sonic Youth fused no wave’s distorted cacophony with the more meditative noise explorations of guitarist/avant-garde composer Glenn Branca, and became underground legends after adding more melodic structure to the sound.

THE CONTORTIONS

One of the central figures of the No Wave movement of the late ’70s, James Chance & the Contortions formed in New York City in 1977. They were led by vocalist/saxophonist Chance, a Milwaukee native (born James Sigfried) who also answered to the alias James White. After relocating to the Big Apple to play free jazz, he fell in with the city’s avant-garde community; upon adopting the surname Chance and acquiring a wardrobe of outrageously loud suits, Chance formed the Contortions, an abrasively chaotic funk-noise outfit featuring organist Adele Bertei, guitarists Pat Place and Jody Harris, and drummer Don Christiansen.

After winning acclaim and notoriety for their wild, often combative live shows (the aggressive, nihilistic Chance often picked fistfights with audience members), the Contortions entered the studio with producer Brian Eno to record four tracks for the No New York compilation. After cutting enough material for an LP, 1979′s Buy the Contortions, the group crashed along with the No Wave scene; as James White, Chance soon resurfaced fronting the Blacks, a bizarre disco outfit comprised of most of the Contortions alumni, albeit with the notable exception of Bertei, and released Off White. In 1982, the highly regarded Sax Maniac album was released on Chris Stein’s short-lived Animal label. Unfortunately, the label disappeared quickly taking the album along with it. Chance recorded his final studio project Flaming Demonics in 1983, again for ZE, under the James White moniker.

TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS

The first band formed by vocalist/guitarist/provocateur Lydia Lunch, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks were the center of New York’s short-lived no wave movement. Cacophonous, confrontational, and fiercely inaccessible, Teenage Jesus generally played ten to fifteen minute shows, never released a full-length album, and disbanded after a relatively brief existence. Even so, they were instrumental in laying the groundwork for the noise rock movement of the ’80s, and their work still sounds as forbidding and uncompromising as anything their spiritual followers recorded. Born Lydia Koch in Rochester, NY, Lunch founded Teenage Jesus & the Jerks in 1977 when she was just 16. Initially, the group included saxophonist James Chance (who soon left to form the Contortions), Japanese bassist Reck, and drummer Bradley Field. In 1978, Reck returned to Japan and was replaced by Gordon Stevenson; thus constituted, the trio recorded four tracks with producer Brian Eno for the 1978 compilation No New York, the seminal no wave document.

By 1979, when the band issued a couple of EPs on the Lust/Unlust label, bassist/percussionist Jim Sclavunos had joined the group; however, they disbanded by the end of the year, as Lunch moved on to other projects.

MARS

Best known in noise circles as the one band on Brian Eno’s No New York compilation that had no musical experience whatsoever, Mars first appeared on the New York noise radar in 1977. Originally called “China”, and formed in 1975, the band that would become Mars would play only a handful of shows in their short career and would be limited to a handful of recorded tracks. The band was headed for split up in 1978 — regardless of their appearance on No New York – but managed to stay together long enough to record material for an EP, a self-titled affair, posthumously released in 1980. That release may be listened to on this site HERE.

D.N.A.

One of the great bands of the short-lived, New York City-based, late-’70s “no wave” avant-garde punk scene, DNA had what barely amounts to a recording career, yet still managed to produce some crucial music. Originally comprised of guitarist Arto Lindsay, keyboardist Robin Crutchfield, and drummer Ikue Mori, DNA’s music was sparse, loud, and noisy — washes of keyboards punctuated by Lindsay’s atonal, free-form guitar explosions. DNA made their recording debut in 1978 on a sampler of no wave bands produced by Brian Eno No New York, and, along with being one of the more interesting bands on the record, also exhibited the most promise. By the time they released their first record, Crutchfield had formed a new band, the far less interesting Dark Day, and DNA had replaced him with bassist Tim Wright, an original member of the seminal Cleveland band Pere Ubu. Now a power trio, and with Lindsay’s guitar the manic focal point of their challenging music, DNA seemed poised to become one of the most exciting bands in American avant-garde rock. Instead, they became increasingly enigmatic, rarely played outside of New York, and never recorded again. After breaking up in 1982, Lindsay formed the exciting Ambitious Lovers, who have released three tremendous albums fusing noise rock with slick pop/soul and Brazilian music (Lindsay is a native of Brazil).

Best wishes go out to Chris Low who is celebrating his birthday today and  irritatingly enough (for me at least) the lad still looks the same as he did twenty five years ago…The ‘Peter Pan’ of The Apostles for sure.  Happy Birthday to you from all at KYPP online.

No Chance In A Million / Living History / Colour TV / United / Stonehenge / Punks On Postcards / You Are Not Alone / If You Dont Like It

Six Foot Rooms / Ten Per Cent Off 

Don’t Worry About It / Fast Forward / Open Mind Surgery / Television Shop / Catching Flies

Pressure / When The Fighting’s Over / Human Zoo / I.S.D.

Uploaded tonight are the two tapes that brought Culture Shock to the public’s attention back in 1986. The band were made up of three separate Wessex bands from the class of 1980, The A Heads, Organised Chaos and The Subhumans. All these bands had disbanded by 1985 and the members created something different and exciting from the ashes. Culture Shock’s vocalist and lyrical guru was Dick Lucas, late of the Subhumans, and later on in the decade vocalist of Citizen Fish. A very intelligent and pleasant man who is still creative in his art and writing today.

Similar to Chumbawumba and Blyth Power, Culture Shock were a great night out at their peak in 1986.  Culture Shock lasted only three years or so but in that time played hundreds of gigs all over the place, mainly benefits in squatted venues, Club Dog style events and lots of festivals, specifically around the Stonehenge area at a certain time of year, which by the time of Culture Shock’s lifespan was basically a police state the weeks leading up to and after the summer solstice. Competing only with Blyth Power at this time in the “how many van miles can we possibly squeeze in with this vehicle for the year?” stakes…The band always seemed to get great receptions at the gigs they performed at,  at least all the times I saw them they did which was a hefty amount in 1986 and all through the following year. The band were tied into performing gigs with like minded souls like Shrapnel, 2000 DS,  Back To The Planet, Life Cycle and A.O.S.

Culture Shock were known for the catchy punkyreggae tunes, a genre which was soon to become bigger with U.S. bands like Operation Ivy and Rancid flying the flag stateside towards the tail end of the 1980′s and early 1990′s. Culture Shock had a bassist who performed in a seriously laid back manner, the rest of the band were well energetic in comparison, and the whole live performance for a bunch of ‘heads’ was  surprisingly clear and tight from start to finish. The guitarist Nige died in 1993 (well after Culture Shock had split up) which was sad. Culture Shock left us with these couple of tapes, some tracks on compilation singles and three LP’s which is not a bad output for a band that performed almost all year round solidly for three years!

The two cassette tapes uploaded tonight have been salvalged from my big box of tapes and unfortuatly the first couple of minutes of the first side of the first tape is slightly damaged aurally. Sorry about that.

On the text written out below we go back in history to the Battle Of The Beanfield which took place on June 1st near the summer solstice of 1985. The event happened before Culture Shock were formed but the text gives a view of the way the police and other authorities were tackling travellers, sound system owners and free thinkers in those days. During the three years the band existed, Culture Shock’s mission, along with other bands and individuals, was to reclaim this sacred site for the summer and winter solstice celebrations.

Before the trouble started

After the trouble finished

Name: Alan Lodge
Date: 1 June 1985
Place: Wiltshire
Facts: Photographer and ambulanceman Alan Lodge was in a convoy of travellers heading for Stonehenge when 1,600 policemen violently tried to arrest them all. Dubbed the ‘Battle of the Beanfield’ in the media, it fragmented the travelling community. Although he subsequently gained a degree, Lodge has since struggled to find work

People don’t like travellers – we lower their house prices – but we hadn’t shown any violence. The police had previous, but the Stonehenge ambush was caught on camera and Dixon of Dock Green don’t do this kind of thing, so there were articles as far away as the Tehran Times.

The first free festival I went to was in the Queen’s back garden at Windsor in 1972. Basically, you’re hanging out with your mates and everyone’s smiling. That carried on until 1974, when 600 Thames Valley police waded in. I was sat round the fire with a cup of tea and suddenly – whoop! A truncheon round the head. We got the message, we were scared stiff, so the People’s Free Festival moved to Stonehenge.

I could see the way the wind was changing so I became an ambulanceman and got involved with an organisation set up to help youngsters who had got in trouble with the law. First in tents and teepees, and then on buses and trucks, people were now permanently meandering around the country. I had a cottage in Wales with my wife and two kids, and we were out and about for roughly nine months of the year.

By the 1984 festival there were 30,000 or 40,000 people at Stonehenge living in tents. Everything you look for in human exchange was there: lack of greed, co-operation, looking out for each other, breaking down mental barriers. Bartering was important. People were grateful for me being an ambulanceman: ‘Can I do your shopping? Can I look after your kids?’ Everything you think about being in a better society was there in the Anarchists’ Free State of Albion at Stonehenge.

On our way there the next year we were given papers by the police outside Salisbury stating that we’d be arrested if we went to Stonehenge because of an injunction they had taken out. We were used to this – the existence of the travelling life is an offence – but we didn’t know this meant they’d assembled 1,600 policemen on our route. The convoy stopped adjacent to the famous beanfield, well outside the five-mile radius of the court order, so I hopped out of the cab to take some pictures. Suddenly I saw this black cloud coming down the line, a load of coppers with riot shields. They went up to the motors, many with kids in, and were whacking them with their sticks. Two pregnant ladies were dragged out of the broken windscreens by their hair. The screams are with me now.

Rather than let them come our way we turned and drove through the hedge into the field by the road. For the next five hours there was a stand-off, skirmishes continued with people trying to get out of the field. I tried to liaise with senior policemen but their attitude was, ‘We’re going to arrest you all.’ I’m bandaging bleeding heads, but then there’s truncheon wounds where you can see the skull and I’m getting nervous of people dying. So we get them out on a Wiltshire ambulance.

At seven in the evening all the coppers boiled on to the field, smashing up the vehicles and arresting everyone. ITN were there and took footage of the level of violence. The operation wasn’t just about arresting people, but also part of a ‘decommissioning exercise’, hitting people so hard and ruining their homes so they’ll think twice about leading this lifestyle. Overall, 520 were arrested and spread around police stations up and down the country for three days, the biggest single number since the Second World War. Children were put temporarily in care. The charge was ‘obstruction of police’, which is one up from a parking ticket. The government was cheering on from the sidelines. Douglas Hurd said we resembled a bunch of medieval brigands.

I thought, ‘I’m a British citizen whose tribe’s been treated badly, we can go through the courts.’ We got 24 together to take an action against the police. Five years later, the jury awarded us £25,000 damages but the judge said we’ll split the £7m cost of the case in half, so our damages went towards that. Two of the jury burst into tears.

In 1986 parliament passed an act which criminalised 12 vehicles gathering on common land to reside. So we’d gather, stay up all night and have a rave instead. In 1994 Michael Howard’s act made this impossible, and then this last lot pass a law that means a traveller parked on the edge of a housing estate is involved in antisocial behaviour. So now a lot of people are shoved into the city where the community splits up, they can’t support each other and the kids have chips on their shoulders. The return to the cities hastened the use of serious drugs.

It’s over 25 years since the major trashing of my community, travelling on the way the make the “Peoples Free Festival of Albion” at Stonehenge. It was a regular event on the calender.

This is my account, of the events that day, and its aftermath …….

They said: something had to be done! Stonehenge appeared central to the situation. Police “Operation Solstice” was initiated.

At a meeting of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), in early 1985, it was resolved to obtain a High Court Injunction preventing the annual gathering at Stonehenge. This was the device to be used to justify the attack at the “Battle of the Beanfield” on the 1st June in Hampshire. Well it wasn’t a battle really.

It was an ambush.

It was a magnificent convoy stretching and snaking its way over the Wiltshire Downs, as far as you could see in either direction. It was a warm Saturday afternoon as we drove through villages, people stood outside their garden gates, smiling and waving at us. A carnival atmosphere with little evidence of the ‘local opposition’ that we had been lead to believe was one of the reasons for obtaining the court orders.

A police helicopter watched overhead but there was little other sign of trouble until……..

Seven miles from Stonehenge (the exclusion order was for four and a half miles), just short of the A303 and the Hampshire / Wiltshire border, two lorry loads of gravel where tipped across the road. Up to this point, no laws had been broken. I got out of my truck to take photographs when I first saw some twenty policemen running down the convoy ahead of me smashing windscreens without warning and ‘arresting’ / assaulting the occupants, dragging them out through the windscreens broken glass.

I and others who saw this were fearful of the level of violence used by the police in making arrests. Clearly we were in for a beating, again! Running back to our vehicles, we drove through a hedge in to the adjacent field.

The scale of the police operation was becoming obvious. The same level of violence had been applied to the rear of the convoy. Large numbers of police in many lines deep could be seen on the road forming up.

From then on, the situation grew more tense. More police reinforcements were brought up wearing one-piece blue overalls – without numbers!, ‘Nato-style’ helmets with visors and both full length perspex shields and circular black plastic shields. A ‘stand-off’ situation developed with sporadic outbreaks of violence.

Working with the festival welfare agencies, I was directed to a number of head injuries that has resulted from the initial conflict on the road. All of these injuries were truncheon wounds to the back of the head and some people were quite distressed. I was shown one man, about 20 years old who was semi-conscious with yet another head wound. I was fearful of him dying. An ambulance was called and I assisted the attendant and helped convey the casualty through police lines. The ambulance crew were initially apprehensive about their safety but assurances were given.

In between the taking of photographs, the copious first aid and concerns for my family and friends, I attempted to start negotiations and set up lines of communications with the middle-ranking ‘line’ officers. There was no ‘middle ground’ to be found, so, with others I organised a meeting with Assistant Chief Constable Lional Grundy. He was in charge of the overall operation. It was early evening before we were able to meet him. The tone of the meeting was ‘do what your told or else!’ He reiterated that people should be leave their vehicle and be arrested.

Because of the fear of what that might intail (after viewing the violence earlier in the day), those I met with were reticent about this. I met Grundy again a little later and attempted to reason further with him, but the ACC then threatened to arrest me for obstruction if I persisted.

Police in full kit were now massed in large numbers and obviously getting ready to charge. It turns out that police had been arresting a lot of people around Stonehenge earlier in the afternoon. At 7.00pm, Grundy had sixteen hundred policemen from six counties, Ministry of Defence police and some believe, army officers in police uniforms!!!

They had been briefed that we were all violent anarchists rather than a bunch of young people and families with children.

They charged.

The scenes that followed were recorded by media that had evaded the police blockade. The story was international news. ‘Dixon of Dock Green’ type policing was dead. That which Britain was noted for had now changed to para-military operations against minority groups.

Kim Sabido of ITN, a reporter used to visiting the worlds ‘hot spots’ did an emotional piece-to-camera as he described the worst police violence that he had ever seen.

“What we – the ITN camera crew and myself as a reporter – have seen in the last 30 minutes here in this field has been some of the most brutal police treatment of people that I’ve witnessed in my entire career as a journalist. The number of people who have been hit by policemen, who have been clubbed whilst holding babies in their arms in coaches around this field, is yet to be counted…There must surely be an enquiry after what has happened today”.

There wasn’t.

When the item was nationally broadcast on ITN news later that day, Sabido’s voice-over had been removed and replaced with a dispassionate narrator. The worst film footage was also edited out. When approached for the footage not shown on the news, ITN claimed it was missing. Sabido said.

“When I got back to ITN during the following week and I went to the library to look at all the rushes, most of what Id thought wed shot was no longer there,” recalls Sabido. “From what I’ve seen of what ITN has provided since, it just disappeared, particularly some of the nastier shots.”

Some but not all of the missing footage has since surfaced on bootleg tapes and was incorporated into the Operation Solstice documentary shown on Channel Four in 1991.

Public knowledge of the events of that day are still limited by the fact that only a small number of journalists were present in the Beanfield at the time. Most, including the BBC television crew, had obeyed the police directive to stay behind police lines at the bottom of the hill “for their own safety”.

One of the few journalists to ignore police advice and attend the scene was Nick Davies, Home Affairs correspondent for The Observer. He wrote:

“There was glass breaking, people screaming, black smoke towering out of burning caravans and everywhere there seemed to be people being bashed and flattened and pulled by the hair….men, women and children were led away, shivering, swearing, crying, bleeding, leaving their homes in pieces…..Over the years I had seen all kinds of horrible and frightening things and always managed to grin and write it. But as I left the Beanfield, for the first time, I felt sick enough to cry.”

During the charge, I took photographs, but I put my camera away. My (ex) -wife and I comforting and cuddles with each other for fear, before we were attacked..

530 were arrested that day (both at the Beanfield and at Stonehenge), the most in any operation since the Second World War.

Photographic evidence is scant because of the nature of the action. Ben Gibson, a freelance photographer working for The Observer that day, was arrested in the Beanfield after photographing riot police smashing their way into a Traveller’s coach. He was later acquitted of charges of obstruction although the intention behind his arrest had been served by removing him from the scene. Most of the negatives from the film he managed to shoot disappeared from The Observers archives during an office move.

A friend and fellow photographer Tim Malyon narrowly avoided the same fate:

“Whilst attempting to take pictures of one group of officers beating people with their truncheons, a policeman shouted out to get him and I was chased. I ran and was not arrested.”

Tim Malyon’s negatives have also been lost with only a few prints surviving.

One unusual eye-witness to the Beanfield nightmare was the Earl of Cardigan, secretary of the Marlborough Conservative Association and manager of Savernake Forest (on behalf of his father the Marquis of Ailesbury). He had travelled along with the convoy on his motorbike accompanied by fellow Conservative Association member John Moore. As the Travellers had left from land managed by Cardigan, the pair thought “it would be interesting to follow the events personally”. Wearing crash helmets to disguise their identity, they witnessed what Cardigan described to Squall as `unspeakable’ police violence.

Cardigan subsequently provided eye-witness testimonies of police behaviour during prosecutions brought against Wiltshire Police.

These included descriptions of a heavily pregnant woman “with a silhouette like a zeppelin” being “clubbed with a truncheon” and riot police showering a woman and child with glass. “I had just recently had a baby daughter myself so when I saw babies showered with glass by riot police smashing windows, I thought of my own baby lying in her cradle 25 miles away in Marlborough,” recalls Cardigan.

After the Beanfield, Wiltshire Police approached Lord Cardigan to gain his consent for an immediate eviction of the Travellers remaining on his Savernake Forest site.

“They said they wanted to go into the campsite `suitably equipped’ and `finish unfinished business’. Make of that phrase what you will, says Cardigan. “I said to them that if it was my permission they were after, they did not have it. I did not want a repeat of the grotesque events that I’d seen the day before.”

Instead, the site was evicted using court possession proceedings, allowing the Travellers a few days recuperative grace.

As a prominent local aristocrat and Tory, Cardigans testimony held unusual sway, presenting unforeseen difficulties for those seeking to cover up and re-interpret the events at the Beanfield.

In an effort to counter the impact of his testimony, several national newspapers began painting him as a `loony lord’, questioning his suitability as an eye-witness and drawing farcical conclusions from the fact that his great-great grandfather had led the charge of the light brigade. The Times editorial on June 3rd claimed that being “barking mad was probably hereditary.”

As a consequence, Lord Cardigan successfully sued The Times, The Telegraph, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Daily Mirror for claiming that his allegations against the police were false and for suggesting that he was making a home for hippies. He received what he describes as “a pleasing cheque and a written apology” from all of them. His treatment by the press was ample indication of the united front held between the prevailing political intention and media backup, with Lord Cardigans eye-witness account as a serious spanner in the plotted works:

“On the face of it they had the ultimate establishment creature – land-owning, peer of the realm, card-carrying member of the Conservative Party – slagging off police and therefore by implication befriending those who they call the powers of darkness,” says Cardigan.

“I hadn’t realised that anybody that appeared to be supporting elements that stood against the establishment would be savaged by establishment newspapers. Now one thinks about it, nothing could be more natural. I hadn’t realised that I would be considered a class traitor; if I see a policeman truncheoning a woman I feel I’m entitled to say that it is not a good thing you should be doing. I went along, saw an episode in British history and reported what I saw.”

For three days (and nights), without adequate food, sleep and many to a cell, we filled police stations across the south of England. From Bristol, where I was taken, to Southampton and London. We were then charged with the serious offence of ‘Unlawful Assembly’. Most charges were eventually dropped after all of this.

Some had lost everything they had. Parents where frantic in locating their children that had been taken into care. Vehicles had been taken to a ‘pound’ some 25 miles away and people had to go through further humiliation in reclaiming what was left of their homes.

Twenty-four of us took out a civil action against the Chief Constable of Wiltshire for the wrongs that were done to us that day. Nearly six years later at the High Court in Winchester, we won most of our case and were each awarded damages against the police. The Guardian said “Need to preserve pubic order does not permit the police to ride roughshod over the rights of ordinary people”. After a four month hearing, (during which we were made to feel like we were on trial), on the last day, the Judge made an order on court costs that, as we were getting legal aid, meant we got nothing.

What’s new!

As Lord Gifford QC, our legal representative, put it:

“It left a very sour taste in the mouth.”

To some of those at the brunt end of the truncheon charge it left a devastating legacy.

Things have never been the same again since the Beanfield. Throughout the rest of the year whether in small groups or at events, travellers were continually harassed.

It had defiantly changed us in many different ways. There was one guy who I trusted my children with in the early 80s – he was a potter, amongst other things. A nicer chap you couldn’t wish to meet. After the Beanfield I wouldn’t let him anywhere near them. I saw him, a man of substance, at the end of all that nonsense wobbled to the point of illness and evil. It turned all of us and I’m sure that applies to the whole travelling community. There were plenty of people who had got something very positive together who came out of the Beanfield with a world view of `fuck everyone’.

The berserk nature of the police violence drew obvious comparisons with the coercive police tactics employed on the miners strike the year before. Many observers claimed the two events provided strong evidence that government directives were para-militarising police responses to crowd control. Indeed, the confidential Wiltshire Police Operation Solstice Report released to plaintiffs during the resulting Crown Court case, states: “Counsels opinion regarding the police tactics used in the miners strike to prevent a breach of the peace was considered relevant.”

The news section of Police Review, published seven days after the Beanfield, stated:

“The Police operation had been planned for several months and lessons in rapid deployment learned from the miners strike were implemented.”

The manufactured reasoning behind such heavy-handed tactics was best summed up in a laughable passage from the confidential police report on the Beanfield:

“There is known to be a hierarchy within the convoy; a small nucleus of leaders making the final decisions on all matters of importance relating to the convoys activities. A second group who are known as the lieutenants or warriors carry out the wishes of the convoy leader, intimidating other groups on site.”

If the coercive policing used during the miners strike was a violent introduction to Thatcher’s mal-intention towards union activity, the Battle of the Beanfield was a similarly severe introduction to a new era of intolerance of Travellers.

Over 25 years later, some of us still suffer the consequences of this action.

Alan ‘Tash’ Lodge

We have just found out facebook have created a Kill your Pet Puppy community page on their site.

Not sure what it’s all about – but there you go.

link: go to face book and search for kill your pet puppy.

Edit to add: we can’t add stuff to it so will try and set up a proper site on there by Sunday 23rd (23!)  if not partied out at the Winter of Discontent Festival. What this?  see link below, ironically to facebook:

 http://www.facebook.com/pages/Another-Winter-of-Discontent-Festival-2011-at-the-Gaff/174325925927614?v=info

Transmission / The Unconventional / Wish You Were Black / Performance / Lovers On Main Street / Don’t Rain On My Parade

Suburban Love / Adolescent Sex / Communist China / Television

Fourth day into the new year and we already have a casualty. Mick Karn legendary ex-bassiest of Japan died earlier of the cancer he was diagnosed with just a few short months ago. Although this debut LP uploaded tonight is not Japan’s best work, it is still a fine snotty punk funk masterpiece and an LP that should have been around the Puppy Collective squats more so perhaps than the later works ‘Quiet Life’, ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’ and ‘Tin Drum’. Mike Karn’s smooth bass lines can just about be heard in this release but the Mick Karn sound that dominated Japan’s recorded works comes along nicely after the dawn of the 1980′s and continued up until the bands demise late on in 1982.

Mick Karn 1958 – 2011.

Text and photos lifted from these sites; lifeintokyo.net and starling.rinet.ru.

CHILDREN OF GLAM 1974 – 1978

Looking and sounding a bit like The New York Doll’s snotty, misguided younger brothers, the generally derivative glam leanings of British band Japan’s formative years gives one little indication of the critical and commercial success the group would achieve by the time of their disbandment in 1982.

Formed in London in 1974 as an after school diversion for brothers David and Steve Batt (later Sylvian and Jansen, respectively) and friend Anthony Michelides (later Mick Karn), the group began practicing at the Batt’s home. Looking to flesh out their sound, the trio enlisted classmate Richard Barbieri to play keyboards and found lead guitarist Rob Dean through an ad posted in Melody Maker. The name Japan was supposedly decided on backstage before an early gig, when the band realized at the last minute that they needed to call themselves something.

Sylvian’s calculated androgynous posturing gained the attention of manager Simon Napier-Bell (industry veteran behind The Yardbirds, Dusty Springfield, Marc Bolan and later Wham!), who said Sylvian resembled “sixties Jagger crossed with teenage Bardot; young Elvis with adolescent Fonda”. Napier-Bell took on the band, though he originally only wanted to manage Sylvian as a solo artist. Following a label sponsored talent contest in 1977, which Japan lost to The Cure, the group signed to German label Ariola-Hansa and began modest touring, including opening for The Damned during a UK tour that spring.

Their first two albums, “Adolescent Sex” and “Obscure Alternatives,” released by Ariola-Hansa in 1978, yielded little success in the UK, though the group did catch on in Japan (likely based on the name and their pin-up looks). Mostly filled with routine rock numbers covered in a trashy glam-escent coating, the first two albums did manage a handful of interesting tracks, including a few with definite funk, soul and reggae influences. During this time the band toured with Blue Öyster Cult, however, their opening set was generally met with mixed reactions. Their big hair and snarly sound were clearly not working out, both personally and commercially, and by 1979 Japan began heading in a completely different direction.

Japan’s debut album is so much different from their later career that not only the band’s fanbase, but even David Sylvian himself issue constant warnings that this is not “true” Japan and that the band should only be taken seriously beginning with its second record. This may be fine and dandy, but, in my opinion, need not detract from seeing Adolescent Sex as a super-cool album in its own right. True, it is possible to throw it away as a piece of dated late Seventies’ junk, especially upon one’s first listen – but one man’s dated junk is another man’s timeless treasure.

First and foremost, Adolescent Sex lays out a completely unique, unprecedented style. In between 1970 and 1978, the world had gotten its overdose of progressive rock, glam rock, decadent rock, funk rock – evolving into disco, punk rock – evolving into New Wave, and was ready to move on to the commercial ca-taste-rophy of the Eighties. But not before someone would come up and intelligently and thoroughly summarise all of these achievements, at the same time pointing out how their legacy could be incorporated into the newly upcoming bunch of early Eighties’ styles. Now, it would be overbearing on my part to say that Japan was that very band, but bear with me all the same.

The backbone of Adolescent Sex is funk. That much is clear. Funk, mind you, not disco; maybe the rhythm section of Steve Jansen and Mick Karn is a bit too stifled and uninventive to match the high achievements of 70s funk gods, but there’s more than enough different rhythmic patterns explored on here for anybody to complain that Japan are, at any point, constrained by the suffocating chains of disco. However, unlike so many of their less smart European colleagues, they are fully aware of their instrumental limitations, and never try to work according to the “just set the groove and the rest will come to you all by itself” mentality. Not a single track on here is a ‘groove’ in the traditional sense – even the two lengthy compositions with extended instrumental workouts showcase individual skills of the players rather than a steady collective “lock-in” which they aren’t capable of.

Instead, they compensate with pop hooks – mighty pop hooks – and, occasionally, memorable guitar riffs – mighty memorable guitar riffs. Every song has a serious vocal twist that is bound to get your attention (sometimes, due to subtlety, it might take a few listens), and every second song has a super-duper guitar melody which might actually not be funky all by itself, but, upon becoming intertwined with the funky rhythm section, becomes funky. On top of it all is David Sylvian, wailing, sighing, and panting in a world-weary, but also quite sexy wheeze that is quite different from his later patented trademark vocal style – and his lyrics, something of a cross between Bowie and Bryan Ferry with a pinch of typically late Seventies hedonism thrown in for good measure.

About the worst thing I can say about the album is that the hooks that I have mentioned often sound kinda hollow. Maybe take that to another dimension and say that the entire album sounds a little artificial and, what, emotionally dead, perhaps? Maybe this is how Kraftwerk would have sounded had somebody slapped them hard at one point for refusing to let the guitars in. But that’s the point, after all, an emotionally dead album for an emotionally dead time. With disco slowly sucking out life and feelings out of commercial music, Adolescent Sex is something of a cruel in-joke on the times, swaggery, cynical, and merciless. Even Bryan Ferry and Bowie had their fair share of starry-eyed idealism – David Sylvian leaves no such hope for us. This is adolescent sex, after all, not adolescent romance. And let us not forget that the harshness of punk had already set in – and there’s a big chunk of punk attitude in Sylvian’s delivery.

The first single from the album was the band’s drastic rearrangement of Barbra Streisand’s ‘Don’t Rain On My Parade’ – loud, brassy, splattered in cocky guitars and with that sneering poisonous-sounding guy, too. But it’s the original compositions, after all, that make up the backbone of the album, so let’s concentrate on a few of them. If we’re talking the ultimate in vocal plus instrumental hook combos, your best bet would be ‘Lovers On Main Street’. Complex funk riffs usually pass me by, providing some entertainment but not enough of an impression; ‘Lovers On Main Street’ is a big fat exception, opening – and throughout based on – a riff of such splendid magnitude that I’m almost willing to reject the entire tendency. And there’s no better accompaniment for that riff than Sylvian’s consciously forced, painfully prolonged chanting of the refrain – ‘lovers on main stre-e-e-e-e-et, lovers on main stre-e-e-e-e-et…’. Besides, love songs have never yet been like this. The way the lyrics are strung and the vocal attack is coordinated, you really get the idea of “love on Main Street” as something of a vicious curse imposed upon the lovers – and given Japan’s intentional positioning themselves as “queens”, visually serving as the obligatory link in the chain from the New York Dolls to Duran Duran, this becomes even scarier. This is no longer just hedonism and decadence – this is hedonism and decadence getting ready for the imminent fall. Thank God it’s not Freddie Mercury singing the song.

Aggressive, but doomed sexuality of this kind runs through everything else as well. When, on ‘Suburban Love’, Sylvian squeezes the ‘earth wind, earth wind and fire/Cannot take me, take me much higher’ refrain through his half-closed teeth, you really get the impression that perhaps getting as high as the song protagonist positions himself is not necessarily such a good thing. The seven-minute performance is a total blast – even after David has shut up for good, Richard Barbieri continues piling up the mood with the creepy synthesizer runs, later passing on the baton to Rob Dean who cranks out a solo that’s somewhere in between ecstasy and apocalypse, sometimes emulating both. Technically, they’re picking up from where Bowie originally left off with ‘Stay’, but where ‘Stay’ was still very much alive and breathing, ‘Suburban Love’ is a plain terminal case. It’s the logical conclusion to ‘Stay’, and there’s nowhere to go from here except in a different direction. Not after Dean hits these ultra-high notes at 6:10 into the song, and for about forty seconds the song is transformed into the triumphant dance of the Angel of Death. During which the unsuspecting public can, of course, be happily dancing under the light of the crystal ball, rendering the effect complete.

Actually, there is hardly one track on the album to which you couldn’t dance if you wanted (well, maybe ‘Communist China’ with its half-expected breaks in tempo would be a bit hard upon first attempt). Funk or disco, you’re supposed to dance to it, after all. This may have ultimately been one of the two main reasons why Adolescent Sex wasn’t commercially successful (the other one being the arrogant title, of course) – people were plain confused about the message; is this lightweight stuff to dance to or a serious art rock statement? To understand that this is both at the same time was probably just as hard as it was for the ancient dwellers of the Roman Empire to accept the Trinity doctrine. And even when the lyrics are understandable, they fuckin’ bite. ‘Dancing to your heart, oh what a way to start’ (‘The Unconventional State Line’) may be a cool chorus to twirl your hips to, but the next lines that come out of his mouth are ‘no perversion / in this unconventional love’ – yikes! (Wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the album was a big hit in gay bars, though). In between this, the album title, and other provocative song names like ‘Wish You Were Black’ (even if the lyrics betray the line as bearing an obviously metaphorical meaning – the complete lyrics go ‘I know I wish you were black, but ain’t no use singing gospel’), We The People must have been shy even by 1978 standards.

Also, there’s just too much poison and punk for the disco-goers, just like there’s too much smoothness and danceability for the punk crowds. Certainly a track like the closing nine-minute rave-up of ‘Television’ wouldn’t do well in dance clubs, with its wild screaming and nasty guitar tone and messy, aggressive soloing. And the title track, with the intentionally dumbed down, repetitive ‘get on up, get on up, take it much higher’ refrain sounds like an open parody on the club-goers and their obsessions. The ‘Whatever gets you through the night’ line directly mocks the Lennon/Elton John dance hit, after which they add ‘just keep on dancing’ and add a little jab at the Bee Gees as well. In short, everybody and everything gets their due.

So this is one mean motherfucker of an album – sweeping almost all of the Seventies’ values in one big heap and then brainstorming it like a supergiant vacuum cleaner. It’s quite possible that I’m reading much more into these songs than was the original intention, but then isn’t that what all of us are doing with records that strike us hard? Whatever the answer might be, to me, one thing is for certain: this is one of the most intelligent and superbly created dance-pop albums of the decade, and I’m certainly not responsible for all the pussies that slouched away from it upon reading the title and/or checking the length and colour of the band members’ hairstyle. 

Be like Me 

Ten Miles High

Another year rolls away and we are now in 2011. For the first  post of this new year I have chosen Zos Kia’s essential second vinyl release on the Temple record label run by Genesis P Orridge of Psychic TV out of his Beck Road base in Hackney.

This record was played to death at the time of it’s release in a much younger Penguin household. The track ‘Be Like Me’ being a real foot stomper, after a couple of minutes introduction of pleasant piano, with lyrics courtesy of the Reverend Jim Jones, infamous leader of San Francisco’s Peoples Temple that met a sudden and violent end in 1978 with the suicide of more than 900 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the killings of five other people at a nearby airstrip.

Play this record at maximum volume and then some…

The debut single from Zos Kia ‘Rape’ released on the All The Madmen record label which was also based in Hackney is also available on this site right HERE the third and final Zos Kia release, also released on Temple Records, may be listened to HERE

Photographs below courtesy of Min and Andrew Rawlings, black and whites from the Psychic TV’s Sordide Sentimental booklet that accompanied the ‘Roman P’ single and an image from the Psychic TV ‘Transmissions’ video inserted into ‘The Grey Book’.

John Gosling 2006 interview text below robbed from barcode.com.

Zos Kia was initially formed by John Gosling along with John Balance and Min. This trio, along with Peter Christopherson on sound and other guests, recorded and performed several concerts in 1982/83 under the names Zos Kia and Coil and some of this material is available on the Coil/Zos Kia release ‘Transparent’.

In 1983, Balance and Christopherson left to concentrate on Coil full-time. All material released under the Zos Kia name alone was primarily the work of John Gosling. After retiring the Zos Kia name after two singles ‘Rape’ and ‘Be Like Me’, Gosling went on to record with Sugardog, Psychic TV and work solo as Sugar J and Mekon.

John Gosling evolved from being a bit-part member of Psychic TV into an influential remixer and producer of big-beat techno throughout the mid-90s.

Partly responsible for the uprising of the British breakbeat sound, originally influenced by American hip-hop culture, associations with “Mad” Frankie Fraser (Revenge of the Mekon) and Schoolly D (Skool’s Out), followed Gosling’s 1994 debut, Phatty’s Lunchbox.

Gosling’s third solo album, Some Thing Came Up is arguably his best – featuring strong collaborations from Roxanne Shante, Marc Almond, Afrika Bambaataa, Alan Vega, and Bobby Gillespie, via artistic direction from Alexander McQueen.

Can I first ask how you became involved with Psychic TV and what your role in the band was? I got involved with them through being a big Throbbing Gristle fan basically, I used to come up with drum loops, just any kind of loops – that was my obsession at the time, just looping up bits of tape and providing backing and rhythm tracks.

Was that the days before sampling and drum machines? No, I think drum machines had just come in. Just when they started getting good anyway, it was a DMX (Oberheim) the first one we had.

Was Genesis P. Orridge your introduction into the band? Yeah, through Throbbing Gristle, going to their gigs basically.

And what was your introduction to music? I guess I always go back to James Brown and The Velvet Underground, they were my real early loves, the two bands that made me wanna make music. It was quite unusual to like both of those when I was a kid, because you were either this or that. I’m going back a long way (laughs). But that’s how it was then, you were either like a skinhead or a greaser. I was kinda like a druggy skinhead (laughs).

A skinhead who liked James Brown? Yeah, I loved James Brown. When I was about 14 I used to take magic mushrooms and trip out to James Brown.

You studied saxaphone and bass guitar didn’t you, at first? Saxaphone was the only instrument I really had any lessons in, sax and drums. But I was not really any good at either (laughs), which sort of led me into being more experimental. I realised that I was never going to be the world’s greatest saxaphone player or drummer.

But something must have led you towards bands such as Throbbing Gristle? That whole scene? I guess through bands like 23 Skidoo and Cabaret Voltaire, there was quite a big scene going on in the early eighties. Clubbing was not what it is now, if there was a club on in London that was good, y’know that would be the one. You would see the same fifty people at that club as you would at the next; it wasn’t like the mass thing that it is now.

So what was it like working with Genesis P. Orridge? The last time I saw him he’d got himself a new pair of tits. Yeah, someone told me something really funny. Some old TG fan went to see them recently when they played at the Astoria – it was Andy Weatherall that told me this story, I said “what did you think of Throbbing Gristle?” and he said “that wasn’t Throbbing Gristle that was Eddie Izzard.”

I can see what he meant. Scary innit? All power to him, he never gives up Gens. You have to kind of respect the fact that he’s being doing it so long and he’s still as hardcore as he ever was. It must take something to sustain that level of mentalness.

He’s completely mad basically, but that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing in an artist, especially these days when things are particularly bland. He’s a really clever guy, and he’s very wordy – if you ever read his writing it’s quite impressive.

Listening to your new album (Some Thing Came Up), it has a very contemporary electronic sound but also quite rocky as well? It was done quite instinctively; I like all those kind of things. For me the battle is always to try and incorporate all my influences because they’re quite disparate and don’t give themselves naturally to blending together. When I start out, what I actually end up with is completely different to how I envisaged it. It’s not like I thought, right let’s make this sort of record; that’s just the way it ended up.

When you get this fusion of hard rock and a prominent electronic sound you tend to end up with what people call ‘Industrial’. Is that a genre that appeals to you? What industrial? Yeah, very much so, I spent years sitting in damp cellars banging bits of metal (laughs). I do like that whole thing, and on the other hand I like Alexander O’Neill – so that for me is a real challenge! How the fuck do you get those two to work together? To go back to what I was saying earlier, I’m not a naturally gifted musician, so I kind of feel my role is to try and push things that haven’t been done before, whether I succeed or not is for other people to say.

The cover art (an image of a rectum) is interesting to say the least? (Laughs)

You got Alexander McQueen to do it – did you need to give him much artistic direction? I didn’t give him any, when he presented me with what he wanted to do I was like, “go on then, do what you want mate!”

Did you say you wanted something that was… (interrupts) I didn’t say anything, I said will you do my artwork, thinking he would come up with something elegant. But he’s like that, he’s the kind of guy who’ll go “right, I’ll fucking show you – you want me to do your artwork for nothing, how do you like them onions mate?” And I sort of double-bluffed him and went “no, that’s fine!” and when that was all I ended up with I was like “oh my God!” *(laughs).

Did you give him a copy of the album beforehand? Yeah I did, I gave him a copy to begin with and he was really into it, which was nice.

He obviously picked up on its harsh sound, maybe quite provocative? Yeah, maybe that is the case. He said, “God, I quite like it” – like he was expecting to hate it, which actually quite surprised me. But he very much works like that himself. With the album, I didn’t have any money so I just let people do exactly what they wanted. It would have been taking the piss to say, “do this” but I’m not gonna pay you. What I quite like about it is that, in a way, it was like what I was saying earlier about industrial and soul music, because on the outside it looks like a Barry White cover and on the inside it’s so not.

I was going to say, it’s such a contrast – let’s just hope the disc art’s not a self portrait. It’s definitely not me, and it’s not him actually – it was actually part of a series of about ten of them in a gallery, and the guy who took the original photograph said “you know what, I don’t recognise that one”. I’m like, it’s kind of just as well mate, it’s be a bit worrying if you did!

Well from listening to the album, I noticed the beats and drumming were quite fluid. Would I be correct in saying there’s a mixture of live drums and programming? Yeah, true and the guy who programmed it is a drummer first and foremost.

So you’re getting a drummer to drum and then sampling the end product? Yeah, exactly that. We did go into a half decent studio and record lots of live drums and then chopped them up and made them sound variable. I really liked that period in music, I think things have become too digital and tight. I like it when the electronic thing wanders out here and there, wanders out of time, because it adds longevity to things. Stuff that’s really precisely programmed only has a certain shelf life. I don’t know why that it is.

Maybe because people get over-reliant on using sampled loops and you start hearing the same loops on dozens of different records. Exactly, and it’s just so much more fun as well working with live musicians. Plus things are so geared to digital now, I think you have to try and have a bit of analogue in there. I think it’s amazing what you can do with a computer now, it’s completely mental. The kind of thing you’d have paid a grand a day for you can now have in your front room – I’m all for that, but it can get too much.

The technology can sort of lead you rather than the other way around? Yeah, and you tend to end up doing what a lot of other people are doing because of the way the programs are designed.

One of the best tracks is Blood On The Moon, maybe even one of the best tracks I’ve heard this year. I understand has quite an interesting concept behind it, lyrically? Probably (laughs). It was sung with Alan (Vega), but I didn’t have any idea what he was going on about basically until I read a piece he had written about me and I realised “oh, that’s what it’s about.”

I read somewhere that it was about a colony on the moon, or America building bases on the moon, which makes the title fairly self explanatory. Yeah, I’m sure that is what it’s about (laughs). He’s quite political Alan, certainly not shy.

So it’s Alan Vega from Suicide on there and also Bobby Gillespie from Primal Scream? Yeah, he’s no shrinking violet either.

When you heard their contribution you must have been delighted? Oh god yeah, over the moon (laughs). Absolutely, to me, to hear people singing passionately is really exciting. When I took it in to Wall Of Sound, they were like “that’s a bit strong”, and I was like “well, if not now, when?” It’s great for me to hear people doing something that is not just, I don’t know, saying nothing! I’m quite surprised there’s not more songs like that out there really. Where’s the voice of anyone in the music world? No one’s saying fuck all about what’s going on, and what’s going on is really quite out of control and horrendous and scary. You can’t imagine previous generations putting up with it, or not having some say about it.

“Yeah, I loved James Brown. When I was about 14 I used to take magic mushrooms and trip out to James Brown.”

I also like the track Delirious, with Marc Almond? Oh, I’m glad you like that, I really like that one.

Did you write the track with him in mind as vocalist? Erm, yeah – actually we wrote the track around his vocal. We originally gave him a really simple groove to work with and he put the vocal down, so everything was done completely around his vocal, quite organically.

I believe you’ve worked with Marc in the past? Yeah I’ve known him years; it’s scary how long I’ve known him – something like 20 years, going back to the Psychic TV days when we were both on the same label.

Is there an element on this album of taking these artists and deliberately putting them in unfamiliar surroundings? Yeah, there is, that’s very astute.

I was wondering how contrived it was or whether they’re just mates of yours and you wanted to use them? Both really, they’re mates, people I respect, or a better way of putting it – a big fan of. But I also wanted to put them in environments I hadn’t heard them in before, because that’s more interesting to me.

The final song, K Blues, written with Kevin Mooney – once of Adam & The Ants – is very interesting, a sort of electronic/country music hybrid? Yeah, I basically just gave him a drumbeat, and the original thing he came up with was this sort of heartfelt blues. And I know the guy and I know his life story and what he’s singing about is very… he’s not making it up. I didn’t want to just do a blues song, so again, we built the track around it, and hopefully no one else would think of doing it in that kind of way.

I mean, that really is an example of an experimental approach to combining electronic music with other genres of music? I don’t think I’ve heard many songs like that before. Well that for me is a success then in that case, even if it’s no good – as long as you’ve never heard anything like it then I’m happy (laughs).

The only thing I think I could compare it to was maybe Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus? Yeah, that’s actually quite true. That’s certainly no insult because I like that song a lot; I like Johnny Cash’s version as well.

There’s also a banging techno track with Afrika Bambaataa? Yeah, god knows what that’s all about.

Is this someone you’ve always wanted to work with going back to your days as a hip-hop DJ? Absolutely, yeah, totally – he’s the leader of the Zulu Nation (laughs). To me, he represents all that’s good about hip-hop – that era for me is particularly golden – so to actually work with him, I’m sitting there thinking, “wow, this is amazing!”

With all these collaborations, was there a lot of file swapping going on or did most of them come down and work in the studio with you? For (Roxanne) Shante and Bam, I went over to New York and recorded them, just because it would be crazy not to. Alan sent his in the post, but actually sent me the wrong vocal the first time – he sent me the track but without the vocal on it (laughs). Bobby came down because he lives round the corner and he’s a big Alan Vega fan and really wanted to do it.

So there must have been a lot of data to wrestle with, did this represent any problems to you? Yeah, it did take a long time – at least 3 years. That’s partly down to the fact that I didn’t have a deal so I was doing it all off my own back.

You’ve remained on Wall of Sound; didn’t they give you any backing? No. They couldn’t see it at all. When I had taken it in there they were like “what the fuck is this?” It’s hard out there, especially when you’re an old git like me (laughs). Now it’s like a package, then people can see it, but when you’re schlepping round with a bunch of tracks on a CD people just don’t get it. People like you who are going to write about it might say “oh yeah, it is good record”, but, honestly, they haven’t got a fucking Scooby Doo most of these people.

A lot of labels would welcome the sort of stuff you’re doing. Really? Well put me in touch with them, cos it’s only on license (laughs).

Are you a Pro Tools man? Both, Tools and Logic. Because I worked with these two ridiculous drummer/programmers – one of them works in Logic and one of them works with Tools, and they both swear that the one they work on is completely superior to the other one.

Do you use a lot of hardware or is it mostly software-based stuff? Quite a mixture of both basically. I’ve got a kit set up and old analogue synth; it’s my favourite synth, which actually used to belong to Throbbing Gristle, a Roland SH5, which I pretty much use on every track. It’s my favourite thing in the world and it’s the only thing that I’ve got going back that long because I’ve sold everything else down the years. The bass lines are 99% from the Roland.

Now you’ve also remixed over the years for the likes of Madonna, Peter Gabriel, and Goldie. Is this an area of production that you still get involved in often? Not as much as I’d like to, because I really like remixing, I like that whole process. This is the reason for putting records out, it gets you a bit of exposure and then people come to you and give you remixes. I still keep my hand in, but it’s not like people are beating down my door for remixes like they used to (laughs).

I’ve often wondered, with these so-called “big name” artists, do you have total freedom to just disappear and put your angle on a track or does the artist or the label channel you into a particular direction? Well, they generally like to hear a version with the vocals, so what I normally do is give them that and then give them a version I like. But it depends on whether I like the vocal to begin with. But generally they want to hear some element of the song in it, and the bigger the artist the less freedom you get.

I understand you did a track with that old gangster, ‘Mad Frankie Fraser’, Revenge of the Mekon wasn’t it? Yeah, that’s right – he was really easy to work with. He’s kind of like old school – trots about, I suppose after 40 years of prison you learn a little routine.

He did rapping did he? I don’t know if you’d call it rapping (laughs). He just sort of told various stories; then I chopped it up and added a menacing soundtrack.

What sort of music are you listening to in your spare time? I really like Justice, Klakons, and The Sunshine Underground. I like that band, The Knife?

What direction do you think music should be going in now? I think people now have got very broad tastes, which is reflected by iPod culture. You can’t really say, right, I’m gonna be a rock band and ignore dance music, people want to hear something that covers all the genres – that’s what you’ve got to give people.

In modern music there doesn’t seem to be any scenes emerging from anywhere; like you used to have house, acid, techno, jungle, but in the last four or five years nothing at all. I’m sure something will happen, because that’s always like the best time, when it seems like nothing’s happening. But something’s bubbling up and a void’s being created that everyone’s just going to fall into. I mean I’m hoping (laughs).

Do you ever get the impression that electronic music has become so sophisticated that it’s reached an impasse and has to go backwards to go forwards? I think you’re right yeah, I think it has to be pulled apart and destroyed, and to go backwards to go forwards people will have to become a bit more primitive