KUKL – Gramm Records – 1983

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

3 comments
  1. Lion
    Lion
    September 3, 2010 at 10:12 am

    Peyr were not very good as I remember — and didn’t Jaz run off to dance around bonfires with these bands?

  2. ALEXANDER MORGAN RAMIREZ
    ALEXANDER MORGAN RAMIREZ
    February 16, 2013 at 2:02 am

    Wow I’m blown away … I’m from l.a. value and here I thought I knew everything … thank you … better late than never … T.S.O.L.

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