Run the Jewels (2013)

Here's yet another example of my most favouritest favourite thing ever for which I somehow failed to get the memo. Specifically I've still been thinking of El-P as the guy from Company Flow and was somehow unaware of the existence of Run the Jewels - now on their fourth fucking album - until a little over a year ago. It's because I'm old and I dislike the internet, music radio, streaming, kids kicking a football against my fence, and most rap magazines seem to be a complete waste of time these days, from what I can tell.

Run the Jewels came as quite a shock when I first heard them, and it's taken me a couple of days to acclimate, having finally bought myself a copy of this, their first album. The production couldn't really be the work of anyone but El-P, and yet the beats, the rhythms, the rapping border on trap music, albeit a more lyrical version; and by trap I mean the slow, low rider bass and hi-hat jittering along like some tweaker with rapid fire lines delivered over the top. It's a long, long way from El-P's roots in semi-abstract agit-prop over a chugging rhythm that always reminded me of Nocturnal Emissions; but on the other hand, he's always been eclectic, always tried new things, and I seem to recall him hanging out with Dizzee Rascal for a while. As an artist who wouldn't want to be a part of any club that would have him, I imagine he got tired of the indie ghetto, the inverted snobbery of the underground; and even with Run the Jewels being the success it has been, if the sound seems less startling on the same playlist as Lil' Yachty, the material is still thematically uncompromising, even if there's nothing quite so hard and harrowing as Patriotism, or Habeas Corpses or For My Upstairs Neighbour.

The more I listen, the more I appreciate the contrast with and contribution from Killer Mike; and the more I recognise the qualities which have rendered the work of El-P so distinctive, so essential: the grinding b-movie synth, the friction and dirt, the paradoxically epic scale invoked in combinations of broken noises, the arrestingly weird images ingeniously wrapped up in unfamiliar rhyme schemes, particularly on Sea Legs.

Trying not to walk crooked while this anchor's dropped,
But I've been out on them choppy waves,
And it's hard to say,
Where this land begins,
And that water stops.

I still don't know what any of it's about beyond that it's taking no prisoners and this time around the shout outs go to Ice Cube and Spice 1 - which is something I never thought I'd hear - and they clearly had a blast making it.

Still boldly going where no man etc. etc.

Nocturnal Emissions in Dub (2022)

Not entirely to be confused with the one I wrote about back in 2016, this is a fancy physical pressing of the best material from the two previous albums, neither of which were available on vinyl, all beefed up by Dougie Wardrop of the Bush Chemists, if that name means anything. If the idea of Nocturnal Emissions recording dub reggae still strikes anyone as a bit odd, it really shouldn't, and this slab of black plastic blasts away what doubts may be entertained pretty much as soon as the needle finds the groove, settling into a fairly distinctive variation on the digital rasta sound which eventually became dancehall. Like I already said, it's something in which the hand which crafted Viral Shedding is clearly heard, particularly in the bass, but which absorbed a different set of influences from its south-east London environment in a variant timeline.

Nigel has done this sort of thing before, specifically hopping from one genre to another without really being too bothered about messing up the neat progression of the unfolding discography, hence occasional forays into drum & bass, techno, world music, whatever else he felt like doing at the time; and he's one of the few artists who seems to get away with it, thus avoiding looking like Jonathan King's rap album (which hopefully doesn't exist but who fucking knows). I would guess he succeeds because those areas into which the Ayers toe is occasionally dipped seem subject to the same sort of creative considerations as inform the core Nocturnal Emissions material, namely that the pushing of boundaries is actively encouraged.

Being a vinyl record, I listen to this one over speakers rather than headphones or earbuds - as I tend to use with CDs and downloads - and all its digitised sine waves and evidence of programming really come to life through the warmth of analogue reproduction. It may even be one of the best of Mr. Ayers' four plus decades in the biz.

Smell & Quim play Wolfgang Kindermann & Kommissar Hjuler (2021)

Having just looked on Discogs I have learned that this album is apparently called GURKE, which I refuse to acknowledge on the grounds that 1) I've been thinking of it as Smell & Quim play Wolfgang Kindermann & Kommissar Hjuler for the past few months, and 2) that I object to the misuse of upper case, and 3) after the bollocks I endured just trying to get myself a copy, I'll call it what I fucking well like.

'Do you want one of these?' the man asked. 'It's a fancy hand crafted edition and everything.'

'Cor! Yes please,' I spluttered and immediately sent him my money. Nothing happened for a couple of months, so I made the appropriate enquiries. It seems our guy had underestimated how much postage would be required to send the album to Texas which, as you will know, is actually on fucking Mars.

So I sent him a bit more to cover extra postage, rocket fuel, cost of atmospheric heat shielding and the like.

Nothing.

It turned out it still wasn't enough and he now felt embarrassed informing me of this. There followed another few months of my sending increasingly sarcastic messages, demands for my money back and so on in response to a series of promises that it would definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely be sent this week because his dole money had come through, and so on and so forth - somehow missing the point of my having already paid the fucking postage - and then suddenly, a mere eight months later, the record actually showed up on my doorstep.

Amazingly, it was worth the wait.

I have no real clue what's going on here beyond that Wolfgang Kindermann is an Austrian poet and Kommissar Hjuler is a German sound artist who was apparently a cop up until 2013. Musically, the record features one lengthy piece each side - electronic sound collages with loops, noise, the Teddy Bears' Picnic, and the usual underlying suggestion of something aromatically pornographic about to transpire. It's immediately recognisable as the work of Smell & Quim, which is an odd realisation given that Smell & Quim are nearly always immediately recognisable despite the dizzying sonic range they've covered over the years, alternately resembling bedfellows to the Grey Wolves, Gristle, Whitehouse, the Residents and Beefheart depending on which way the wind happens to have been blowing; and here's another one sounding as weirdly disgusting and screwy and yet as paradoxically fresh as their earliest material.

The fancy hand crafted edition I bought - when honestly the regular version would have been fine, except I'm not even sure there was a regular version - has someone's hard drive physically hot-glued to the cover, meaning it's likely to fuck up my copy of the Smiths' Hatful of Hollow should I attempt to file it away with my other albums, thus demanding I keep the bastard to one side as some sort of art object. So, factoring in the additional process of flying it through space in the first place, Smell & Quim play Wolfgang Kindermann & Kommissar Hjuler probably counts as the most awkward record I've ever bought, besides which, even the Nocturnal Emissions one which came wrapped in a nappy may as well be Strollin' with Max Bygraves. It's therefore a fucking good job that it delivers.

PBK & Nocturnal Emissions - Erosion of the Monolith (2022)

Mr. Ayers seems to have engaged in some particularly fruitful collaborations of late, and here's another one. This time he's trading drones, clangs and scraping sounds with Philip B. Klingler who has been recording as PBK for over three decades and is himself renowned for works executed in collaboration with other purveyors of unsettling noise. I'm not sure what I've heard of PBK, although I know I've heard a few things here and there, and although I'm entirely familiar with the work of Nocturnal Emissions, it's difficult to guess at who did what for Erosion of the Monolith. That said, it doesn't really matter, the important thing being what comes out of the speakers. What comes out of the speakers is, in this case, fairly difficult to describe. Drones are involved, and a distant atmospheric howl invokes a near physical space suggesting environmental recordings made on a planet which probably wasn't Earth. Foreground ripples, squeaks and rumbles drift in and out of the mix without resolving into anything found in nature, or at least terrestrial nature; and the whole is emotionally powerful, despite that we're driven to depths of feeling - something almost like nostalgia, funnily enough - for a place which exists only on this record, so far as anyone can tell; and somehow it doesn't sound quite like any other album of its kind, possibly aside from distantly reminding me of the late, great Andrew Cox's Methods.

Coldsore - En Dolor y Rebelión (2021)

The recent rebirth of Sterile Records brings a welcome return to Nigel Ayers' stewardship of a label which releases work of persons other than members of Nocturnal Emissions; which may seem a strange point to make and I'm certainly not disparaging Earthly Delights as anything other than the home of the hits, but Sterile issued some weird and wonderful stuff back in the early days - Controlled Bleeding, Maurizio Bianchi, and others - and it's always nice to have someone else coming through.

Naturally I'd never heard of Coldsore, but a minute or so of the first track on the Bandcamp page was enough for me to be sure, and now I've been listening to this thing for the best part of a week. They're from Finland, they make a noise, and they're politically progressive - which makes for a nice change. This one is inspired by and dedicated to the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico - which gets a thumbs up from me, obviously. Coldsore's tumblr page seems to make reference to something called doomdrone, which I'll ignore because labelling gets on my tits, although there are probably worse descriptions. What we have are two lengthy pieces of approximately thirty minutes each, utilising electronic and possibly environmental sounds - nothing resembling an instrument, or even suggesting that you could plug a keyboard into it. It's the ambient howl of factories and processing plants abstracted to the point of resembling music, so even if it's not exactly tuneful, there are notes which do what notes customarily do and the effect is powerfully haunting, even moving in an emotional sense without coming too close to anything you might call noise. For the sake of making the usual lazy comparisons, En Dolor y Rebelión isn't a million miles from Nocturnal Emissions more droning efforts - at least in terms of mood - although there's an element which reminds me of Einstürzende Neubauten for reasons I can't quite pin down, a sense of space perhaps. It doesn't feel like something generated from within a metal box. I seem to have ended up listening to quite a lot of atonal things this year, and this is undoubtedly one of the best.

Nocturnal Emissions / Frag - Esoteric Sedition (2021)

Frag is the musical organ of Stephen Āh Burroughs, here in collaboration with Nocturnal Emissions with whom I'm going to presume you're all familiar. Frag seems to have been a fairly noisy affair, and is a new one on me, although Burroughs was in Head of David, which should at least indicate some of the general aesthetic to be found here in so much as that it's not massively sunny. Being reasonably familiar with the work of the Emissions, it's tempting to hear the more melodic element as Nigel's doing, sitting on a church organ and moving his bottom up and down the keyboard while Burroughs hoovers the nave, or possibly just jabs a screwdriver angrily into the innards of a transistor radio; but its probably nothing so simple. What we have are twelve relatively short pieces - not quite ambient, not quite noise - contrasting drifting notation with grinding electronic texture to surprisingly emotional effect, working by means of a sort of neoclassical melancholy without necessarily resembling anything you would expect from such a description. Nomical Index in particular reminds me of Górecki's third symphony, for example.

I have no idea how Esoteric Sedition figures within the broader span of Burroughs' other work - which seems worthy of investigation on the strength of this - and while Nigel has released a ton of discs of this general type over the years, collaborations included, this is possibly one of the very best.

Meteor F. Atomic - This is How I Dance (2021)

I gather this is Danny Ayers, brother of Nigel and formerly of both the Pump and the first line-up of Nocturnal Emissions, which should be enough to at least dispel expectations of This is How I Dance sounding like the Detroit Spinners. I'm not sure whether this ever had any sort of official release back in 1981 when it was recorded, but suspect it was probably a few copies handed out to friends, at best. Anyway, here it is again, possibly for the first time, thanks to the revived Sterile Records, and I'm surprised it's taken this long in some respects. I'm not saying This is How I Dance is life-changing, but it's surprisingly listenable for something with such basic ingredients.

What little background detail we have reports that This is How I Dance was recorded directly onto cassette, which is entirely believable; and it might be viewed as a single lengthy work in four movements, if you really want to. Most of it seems to be mains hum, rummaging around inside a transistor radio with a screwdriver, things recorded off the telly on shitty condenser mics, hiss, and the sort of feedback we used to summon by holding our massive Tony Blackburn style headphones up to the microphone. There's a degree of repetition but I'm not even sure our man was using anything so fancy as a tape loop, and it may just be actions repeated over and over live into the cassette deck. The second movement, if that's what it is, utilises a Boss DR55 drum machine, albeit more as a noise source than for the sake of rhythm, phase pedals, and what sounds like a Casio VL-Tone; so suffice to say, the whole enterprise resembles things I've heard before, albeit a long time ago, and yet remains fresh thanks to the Meteor's sense of invention and the sheer impossibility of working out what the hell's coming next, plus the textures, rough as fuck though they often are, are gorgeous. Imagine Tissue of Lies without the sensory overload, and oddly hypnotic. This is How I Dance proves that the size of either the budget or the studio never mattered.

L'Eclipse Nue - Faces from Dreams (2021)

 

Here's another name I've never heard of, as usual, but one I'll certainly remember. Internet research reveals L'Eclipse Nue to be the work of one Daniel Sine who has been at it for at least a decade and produced a million albums under that banner; but I'm too fat and old to keep my finger on so many pulses and refuse to feel embarrassed for showing up late to yet another party. Besides, I'm only just becoming accustomed to the idea that noise can do much more than just the one traditionally scary thing - which I realise is ridiculous given how many Nocturnal Emissions albums I own - and L'Eclipse Nue represents a significant further expansion of my horizons towards symphonic noise, or stadium noise, or some other fucking silly category that's probably already done the rounds while I was looking the other way. Faces from Dreams is harsh as buggery, but selectively so, and its distorted squalls of feedback are palliated by both the ultra-high definition recording of the same and the contrast of quieter, pseudo-choral passages suggesting sunrise on alien worlds, at least to me. The cover lists eight distinct tracks, although it feels like a singular piece of work, operating in much the same way as a symphony, albeit by means of mood and texture rather than notation. I'd guess there's a lot of layering here to account for the richness and breadth of what we hear, and the whole is overwhelming but in a good way. Just when you think you've pretty much got a handle on what can be done with noise, something like this comes along and demonstrates that we're only just getting started.

We Be Echo - Beat of the Drum (2020)

 

We Be Echo were one of a handful of groups who emerged at the beginning of the eighties in the wake of Throbbing Gristle removing themselves from the picture, specifically a handful of groups enjoying varying degrees of association with the same, even if just through members having met at some Gristle performance. Dave Henderson wrote about them in Sounds, and there's a reasonable possibility that you will have heard of at least Konstruktivists, Test Dept, Nocturnal Emissions, and Attrition. We Be Echo unfortunately never achieved quite the same level of relative infamy, releases being mostly limited to cassettes sold through the mail. By rights, some record company really should have been chucking money at Kevin Thorne, but it apparently wasn't to be.

Now - in anticipation of Darkness is Home, We Be Echo's first new album in a while - here's a reminder of what we missed, material dating from just after the Ceza Evi cassette which never really got a fair crack first time round. I've heard most, if not all, of these tracks on tapes which briefly did the rounds among friends of friends, and I've a feeling a couple of them may have been issued by the Mystery Hearsay label at some point; but Lordy, it's nice to have them cut into a big fat slab of vinyl at long last. A few of these feature a female vocalist rather than the taped voices which distinguished Ceza Evi, and so might be deemed, for want of a better description, what we all assumed Chris & Cosey would probably sound like before we actually heard Heartbeat. There's a dark edge, but nothing you could really call gothic, and the synths pump and pulse away in contrast to the moodier sort of ambient noise you may have associated with Gristle. Of all the Wild Planet bands, We Be Echo actually seemed to be the one you could just about play to friends who might otherwise shit themselves in the absence of anything recognisable as a tune. They might have seemed a fairly logical foreshadowing of Nine Inch Nails and the like, had anyone been listening; but were ultimately doomed to have become a sort of English counterpart to San Francisco's Deviation Social, among other names which should be better remembered.

Still, as Lenny Kravitz is my witness, it ain't over 'til it's over, and the new album is stunning. So here's a chance to get yourself up to speed - a pleasure which shouldn't be taken for granted given that for at least a decade it very much looked as though We Be Echo had fallen off the edge of the map.

Nocturnal Emissions in Dub volume two (2020)

When the first one came out, I assumed it would be - you know - a remix of Going Under or No Sacrifice with more echo, but no, it actually did what it said on the notional tin, and actually did it without making me think of Alan Partridge. For anyone still wrestling with the idea of Nocturnal Emissions as dub reggae, all I can suggest is that you listen to the stuff because he's not fucking about. As with other stylistic bathtubs into which the Ayers toe has been submerged, the man knows what he's doing, and after a couple of plays the shock should have worn off.

With hindsight, I realise the first volume probably wasn't such a surprise after all because for all that its heart seems clearly rooted in the general vicinity of the Effra Road, the percussive sounds, the hi-hat, and the shreds of musique concrete all skitter around the bass and the melody with a rhythm - and a disregard for rhythm - which you will certainly recognise from those previous Emissions less conspicuously in thrall to King Tubby, Scientist and the like.

There seems to be less stretching of boundaries on this one, or at least less of them stretched in a particular direction off towards something distantly related to drum and bass; or to put it another way, volume two has more of a traditional sound in so much as that most of this could have come from a semi-regular band going through a sound desk. It's more organic, less about wave forms pasted to another part of the screen, at least spiritually. This isn't, by the way, to suggest musical conservatism, more like if the first volume took us up to maybe eleven in the evening, this one takes us to around four in the morning, by which point we're all seriously fucking stewed, barely even able to stand (not that we have any need to do so) as we're sucked in by the rhythm. I'm assuming that description should be familiar to at least some of you.

Volume two takes it back from the digital rasta vibe of its predecessor to something predating dancehall, something in which the hand which crafted Viral Shedding is clearly heard, particularly in the bass, but which absorbed a different set of influences from its south-east London environment in a variant timeline. This is a mighty and righteous sound, as they probably say.

Nigel Ayers - Painted by Spirits (2019)

Nigel, as you will most likely know, has been recording as Nocturnal Emissions for several decades now. I'm not sure it's technically possible for a member of a one-man band to release a solo album, but here it is anyway. Of course, this is hardly the first work he's issued under the name to which his council tax bill is addressed; and for what it may be worth, I seem to recall a period during which Mr. Ayers expressed a certain weariness at having saddled himself with the name Nocturnal Emissions and the presumably industrial associations which tend to result from potential listeners failing to have read the memo; and I'm not sure whether this has any bearing on anything, or whether Painted by Spirits should be viewed as distinct from the Nocturnal Emissions back catalogue. My guess would be that a name such as is Nocturnal Emissions might be a bit limiting when attempting to extend one's reach beyond the usual audience.

Nevertheless, here's more of the quality work you've probably come to expect - distinctively identifiable as Nigel Ayers without simply pressing the same buttons out of habit. It's sort of ambient, but not quite, exhibiting that quality common to his more atmospheric works where the washes of sound never truly fade into the background, instead holding one's attention. Here the sounds seem to be derived from mostly conventional instruments and have kept most of their tonal qualities intact whilst being otherwise repurposed, so Painted by Spirits has more of a classical feel than previous releases and could probably be reproduced by a string quartet, albeit a patient string quartet. It's been a while since I listened to Henryk Górecki's third symphony, and too long to say whether there's any actual resemblance, but it at least reminds me of listening to Henryk Górecki's third symphony if that helps. As ever, and as is suggested by the title, Ayers channels rather than plays or composes in the traditional sense, so all of these assorted strings and blowy things have the rhythm of the natural world, calls heard in a forest, the metronomic creak of wood as it dries or stones cooling as the storm breaks. Considering how so much of his work tends to be of a certain type, at least since The World is My Womb, it's impressive how Mr. Ayers never quite repeats himself.

Available here.

Viper - Big Tits 4 U Errday (2015)

I can see how some might have reservations about this one, but I personally take the view that Viper is simply a man who understands his audience. Big Tits 4 U Errday seems to be part of a mammary themed cycle of releases, others in the series including Suck Her Tits and Luv Dem Big Milky Tits. Without wishing to seem like some beardy hipster whose tastes are limited to whatever you've never heard of, you can probably be forgiven for being unfamiliar with these works on the grounds that no-one seems to actually know how many albums Viper has issued beyond that it's been literally thousands in the last decade, albeit as downloads. Apparently his back catalogue is therefore mostly remixes or chopped and screwed variations on a theme, but for what it's worth, this is the third I've bought at random, and there are only three tracks I recognise, or at least which appear to sample material I've already heard; and against all odds, Big Tits 4 U Errday is every bit good as You'll Cowards Don't Even Smoke Crack and Kill Urself My Man.

Viper's sound is pretty startling when you first hear it. Wikipedia defines it as cloud rap, so I looked up cloud rap but the first sentence of the article referred to cLOUDEAD so I didn't bother reading the rest.

Let's try again.

Viper's sound owes a lot to the quarter speed cough medicine beats of DJ Screw and the like, but otherwise follows its own rules. It's hypnotic like vapourwave and sounds as though it was recorded on some cheap hunk of shit which probably cost about fifteen dollars. At first it sounds like an accident, hence the dubious classification of Viper as an outsider artist, but the more you listen, the harder it is to deny his power. Viper's baritone mumble, sounding as though it was recorded over messenger on a dial-up internet connection, slows to a crawl with percussion reduced to a distant ticking and a bass so distorted that it crumbles into digital slurry and genuinely leaves the cut resembling a dreamier version of something from one of those early Nocturnal Emissions albums, or even My Bloody Valentine transposed to Texas. It shouldn't work, but having now heard three albums of this stuff, I'm forced to conclude that it's no accident and that this guy is a visionary by some definition, at least musically.

Lyrically he's maybe a little basic compared to, off the top of my head, Nas, but nevertheless cuts what is very much his own furrow. For a collection named after boobs and sporting a picture of the same on the cover - or on the associated illustration seeing as this is download only - Viper is unusually respectful regarding women, and we find neither hoes nor bitches on this album so far as I noticed.

Girls love me 'cause I'm so real,
'Cause I'm laid back, 'cause I'm so chill.
Sharing they emotions and how they really feel,
That's why, with me, they make life-long deals.

I appreciate it probably isn't the full Andrea Dworkin, but it's nevertheless a long way from Bitches Ain't Shit. The same easy-going and strangely amiable vibe informs the entire album, meaning that regardless of whether he's trying to sell us crack or otherwise telling us how amazing he is, it's really difficult to dislike Viper. He somehow manages to peddle this schtick while seeming like a nice guy, or at least like it's not anything personal. You'll doubtless be disappointed if you're expecting A Tribe Called Quest, and I suppose it's kind of annoying how the titles bear no resemblance to the tracks they describe (and there aren't any songs about tits either), but this cranky underground weirdo keeps putting out albums which are better than anything by most of the big names. Don't be mislead by the je ne sais Sunday Sport ambience of the title, Big Tits 4 U Errday is a powerfully beautiful piece of work.

Headyello - Road to Elsewhere (2019)

Being somewhat out of the loop, I have no idea whether this is what people are presently referring to as noise, or whether this sort of thing is fairly commonplace for those with digits on cultural pulses, so bollocks to thee and thine should I give cause for sneering at my Grandpa-esque observations.

I generally don't do downloads, and yet here we are once again and not regretting the experience. Road to Elsewhere was approximately recommended to me as the work of a fellow Texan, and although Fort Worth is at such a distance that I've only been over that way twice this decade, it turns out to have been a good recommendation. As stated, I don't really know if this counts as noise, although if it does, symphonic noise seems as reliable a term as any. My initial impression was of random electronic farts, squirts, and bursts of tape hiss in the vein of factor X or maybe the nineties version of Nocturnal Emissions, and if there's a harsh element, it's to be found in the composition rather than the actual sonics. The album, which we may as well refer to as an album, comprises two lengthy pieces of respectively twenty minutes and half an hour duration. It's mostly found, treated sound from what I can tell, snatches of radio, telephone maybe, the buzz of a starter motor interfering with a tape recording, quiet sound sources peaking and distorting as the needle swings into the red, mains hum, things which sound like memories of the engine rumble on a childhood car journey. Excepting bursts of pop hits overheard, there's nothing musical, and yet the arrangement lends this whole thing a sort of tonal progression which becomes apparent with repeat listening. Loops cease to sound any more like loops than would be refrains repeated for the sake of a chorus in a more regular piece of music, and the rumble comes to complement the squeak and the squeal in much the same way as a cello might underpin the higher strings in an orchestra; and all the while Road to Elsewhere retains its sense of chaos, certainly nothing so twee as noise regimented as music. It's emotionally quite powerful is what I'm trying to say here.

If none of that makes any sense whatsoever, then I suppose you could say it's Max Ernst's Europe After the Rain as distinct from Jackson Pollock splashing it all about like Henry Cooper; and if that doesn't make any sense, maybe just take the plunge and listen to the thing.

Stop it and buy one here.

Nocturnal Emissions - Beyond Logic, Beyond Belief (1990)

I never quite got to the bottom of what this one was about beyond that it was clearly about something. It initially seemed to be some kind of celebration, an acknowledgement of Nocturnal Emissions first decade - the ten year anniversary of the release of Tissue of Lies without necessarily representing an extension of the same, at least not so far as I was ever able to tell. The sleeve claims the material to have been recorded between 1980 and 1990, which I assume refers to sound sources more than it does to any notion of previously unreleased tracks, so perhaps this is Nigel engaging in recycling, or at least making collages from his own back catalogue; which would account for the sample of Caroline K operating a hand drill - which I'd swear I've heard elsewhere, although not on Tissue of Lies at least.

Internet sources refer to some light having been shed in the first issue of Network News, which it isn't because I've checked. In fact I've checked the first three or four issues, none of which seem to contain this observation from our Nigel:

What's important in this culture we're now cultivating is we can gain an understanding of the world which speaks to us directly without the filters of belief which go within a spirit system, without the filters of logic that go with a science system.

So, if that's from the first issue of Network News, then I guess it isn't the one published in my reality; which may actually be approaching the elusive point, at last.

The last decade of the twentieth century had just begun, and Sterile Records was recently reborn as Earthly Delights, sort of its thematic opposite given the preoccupation with fertility and growth, but still releasing art which channelled rather than described its world - not quite refocussing so much as working from a much broader, even cosmic palette rather than limiting itself to the human cultural sphere of society ruined by industry. This was the point at which Nigel noticed how his earlier works had been changing hands for silly money and so decided that some of this money might be better spent in support of living art rather than historical documents, so this was issued in an edition of just 250 copies for what seemed a lot at the time, being more than the customary tenner, but I'm fucking glad I had the foresight to buy one. One bloke on the internet suggested this might even be Nocturnal Emissions' greatest work, and even if it isn't, it's easy to see why someone might have made such a claim.

Beyond Logic, Beyond Belief is well into what has been poorly characterised as the ambient years, but isn't really anything of the sort. It's atmospheric, evocative, and powerfully emotional without quite doing anything musical in the traditional sense, possibly excepting the oddly bluesy Memphis. Aside from the obvious sampling, it's not even particularly electronic. At the risk of turning into Paul Morley, and in light of the few clues afforded by titles, sound, and the above quotation, I'd say this is Nocturnal Emissions scrabbling at a description of reality analogous to Plato's ideal forms, the thing in itself, whatever the hell is there before we muss it up with sentences such as this one, or any language for that matter; and that's what the best art is all about. If I were able to describe it, it wouldn't need to exist.

Genuinely magnificent.

C.W. McCall - Black Bear Road (1975)

Having spent the first decade of my life in a rural area - specifically growing up on the farm which eventually became the set of Teletubbies - trucks, trucking, farm machinery, and country music loomed larger than they probably would have done had I grown up in some more urban setting. Amongst my school friends were a significant group of three - Paul and two other kids, both named Tom - who seemed particularly attuned to the rural automotive current and would spend hours yacking on and on about trucks, engines, mileage, differential gearboxes, and so on. They were quite naturally way ahead of the curve when CB radio kicked in.

To get to the point, Paul was one of the first kids I ever knew, living on the farm along the road from ours and so we were friends at a very young age, and he taped me a few tracks from this album once I got my first tape recorder. Having long since recorded over the tape, I spent years wondering what this music had been - admittedly without breaking much of a sweat in my efforts to find out given that it was clearly the work of the guy who recorded Convoy - only finding out in the late nineties that it was an album called Black Bear Road, because er… Nigel of Nocturnal Emissions kindly ran me off a tape of the record, somewhat substantiating his claim of never having been particularly industrial.

Now finally, I've splashed out on my own copy of the fucking thing; and I knew it wasn't my memory playing tricks. I knew it was worth getting hold of.

Peculiarly, it turns out that C.W. McCall may be considered an early form of idoru, a virtual entertainer, an image serving as a front for the men behind the music. He began life as a trucking character in a television commercial for Old Home Bread, eventually developing a life of his own as the creation of William Dale Fries Jr. with music written by Chip Davies. The strangest realisation for me is that it could be argued that Black Bear Road - which sounds so ruggedly authentic that I've actually had to wash the dust and grit from myself after listening to the thing - is actually so manufactured as to make the New Kids look like Bob Dylan; therefore fuck!, beyond which I guess it doesn't matter. The first six tracks, side one plus Convoy, represent what country music does best, or did best before it turned into that rhinestoned spangled autotune shite we have now: crafted, populist, full of soul, genuinely funny and witty when it's cracking the jokes, homespun and sentimental without quite tipping over into parody - what white people had instead of blues music and very much a parallel to the extent that it's difficult to miss the common ground now shared with rap: urban folk tales told amongst a small community using a language very much exclusive to itself, private jokes, quick talking, plenty of blues and telling it how it is.

Unfortunately, whilst none of the last four numbers - tracks seven to ten on side two - are terrible, the drop in quality following Convoy is weird and dramatic. We start with a record where no two tracks sound the same, powerful heartfelt music which makes you feel as though you're there, songs so strong that you forget you're listening to any particular genre; then suddenly we have four b-sides, songs which do a job and tick certain boxes, but which sound like every other seventies country record you've ever heard whilst channel hopping past a commercial break for some fifty disc golden oldies boxed set aimed at retired persons.

I don't know how the album could end as it has, but maybe it doesn't matter, because few artists have ever recorded anything as powerful as McCall's Ghost Town, and probably never will.

Salford Electronics - Communique No. 2 (2017)

Salford Electronics is one of the Grey Wolves, whom I gather have now ceased trading as a collective concern. I have to admit that I'm only loosely familiar with what the lads have been up to during the past couple of decades. I'm assuming they didn't have a Bavarian oompah phase or spend a couple of years as a sixteen piece ska band, but my estimation of where this disc stands in relation to the last few Grey Wolves releases, sonically speaking, will probably be somewhat off target, so you may have to bear with me.

The Grey Wolves I remember were nothing if not confrontational, where Salford Electronics seems to be a less demonstrative concern. Somebody somewhere will already have described Communique No. 2 as dark ambient, which I'm not going to do because I'm trying to discourage the use of such silly terms, and because the music of Lustmord is always described as a dark ambient, and this is much better than Lustmord—pardon me, I meant Lustmørd. The plain black cover seems as initially inscrutable as the ten electroacoustic soundscapes on the disc, but as with patterns seen once you've gazed into the shadows for sufficient length of time, some sort of narrative emerges after a few plays; or rather a non-narrative because Communique No. 2 feels like what we're left with once all the words have been used up, nothing left to say, which it could be argued constitutes a statement in its own right. There are no songs, tunes, melodies, nor even rhythm - well, not exactly - just a pseudo-organic noise resembling that which endures when there's no-one left behind to operate the machinery. It's the sound of concrete, underground car parks, waste disposal machines going through the motions in a world denuded of humanity - what happens to the cities after we've gone, like an urban cousin to Nocturnal Emissions' invocations of the natural world. It ceases to be ambient once you turn it up to the sort of volume at which it deserves to be heard.

Very impressive.

Bliss Signal (2018)

I've had a look on the internet in an attempt to find out what's going on here, but I'm too old and it's too confusing with all sorts of unfamiliar terms, such as electronic metal. In my day, metal was a portly lad in a denim jacket with Judas Priest written on the back in biro in slightly wonky old English lettering, and usually spelt wrong - Judas Preast or whatever. Should you attempt to engage him in a conversation about electronic metal he'd probably decide you were gay, thus ensuring your never being able to enjoy a drink in the White Bear ever again, at least not without some of it being poured over your head by random bikers you don't even know but who've heard all about the local bum bandit.

Anyway, metal has thankfully moved on, and now sounds a bit like some of Nocturnal Emissions darker works of the nineties, which is fine by me. Bliss Signal present walls of guitar decay tempered with that machine gun bass pedal thing - blast beats, according to the man on the internet; beyond which I'm left trying to describe this thing without invoking either cathedrals of sound or collapsing black holes. It's huge, and is suggestive of vast things happening a long way away, yet all coming together to somehow form a symphony much like that aircraft formed by a hurricane blowing through a scrapyard so beloved of creationists who don't understand stuff.

Electronic metal is probably as good a description as any, if you really need one, and it's not as annoying as dark ambient. Bliss Signal is better though, a hint towards something celestial, and a cause of fear only because it otherwise defies description. Jolly good.

Hey kids, check out the totally crucial sound of the Bliss Signals by 'logging on' to this wicked 'website'.

Nocturnal Emissions - School Party Room Numbers (2018)

This seems as good a place as any to review this record, given that it doesn't actually exist but might be fun to pretend that it does.

It came to me in a dream, mostly set in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, where my grandparents once lived. My grandfather appeared in the dream at some point, even though I knew he died in 1979. Anyway, the crucial detail is that Nigel Ayers gave me a task to perform. He had this large plastic bucket with a lid and a wire handle, the kind customarily used to store industrial quantities of margarine and the like. He needed me to bury this container - which was white plastic, by the way - on the moors, although I'm not sure which moors, and I don't know why he wanted me to bury it. It may have been performance art of some kind. Anyway, I had a look in the container, although I knew I wasn't supposed to, and found it contained two large coats, of the kind you wear in cold weather, both of them hooded. One was in white and the other was a camouflage pattern; and in addition to the coats was the only existing copy of School Party Room Numbers, that rare Nocturnal Emissions vinyl release, so I thought 'I'm having that!'

The cover was fairly bland, just the title on greeny-yellow, as seen above, and the album contained just four untitled tracks, two to a side. The tracks were instrumental (and I somehow knew all of this without listening to the record), like more rudimentary versions of the material on Songs of Love and Revolution but with added bossanova rhythms; and they had been recorded for listening in the party rooms of schools, which would be where they let the kids have parties, I suppose.

This album doesn't exist, but sooner or later someone is going to read this fake review and leave a message asking where they can get hold of a copy, and sooner or later someone is going to read this fake review and leave a message asking where they can get hold of a copy without it being part of the gag; and eventually it'll turn up on Discogs, because this is apparently a post-truth universe.

Nocturnal Emissions (2017)

Lordy - 'tis good to have brand new Emissions vinyl through the mail in 2017, even a brand new vinyl assemblage of material recorded more than a quarter of a century ago. This would be greatest hits but for the relative obscurity of the material, and that everything here was specifically generated back in the eighties, so nothing from Mouth of Babes, Collateral Salvage or the reggae album.

Regarding the Emissions, one quote which has always stayed with me is the description of Caroline K as a sort of female John Cooper Clarke, which I recall having read way, way back, possibly even before I'd even heard the band, although somehow not in the 1981 issue of Neumusik wherein it first appeared. The screwy thing is that, as I see from the insert which comes with this vinyl double, the review was written by Andrew Cox, whom I first met in 1990 and knew for a number of years prior to his somewhat tragic demise in 2009, and who was my best pal for a long time, roughly speaking; and yet I never realised it was himself who wrote that description until now. I'm not even sure what to conclude from the revelation, except that it's possibly indicative of how important the music of this band has been to me over the years; if you want to call it music, because you don't have to and it probably doesn't matter either way.

I always thought the John Cooper Clarke comparison was a bit silly, personally, but never mind. I assume Andrew was referring to When Were You Last in Control of Your Dreams and Aspirations?, the first track on both this and Tissue of Lies from which it is taken, and upon which Caroline intones a blandly officious list of contacts, to the secretary of the British charity commission and so on. Tortured instrument noises noodle away and underneath it all is a rhythm which sounds like a ticker tape machine doing the hucklebuck. It's a peculiar track not because of the noise or juxtaposition of contrasting elements, or because it sounds like it doesn't realise anyone would be listening to it as music, but because it isn't even trying to be art from what I can tell, at least not art by the usual terms. As with much of what Nigel Ayers has done over the years, even those tracks which sound like pop records, there's still that suggestion of channelling, or of something which simply resembles art or music from where the rest of us are stood. I don't know if there's been a concerted effort to avoid the more mannered, affected renderings of those working in roughly the same field, but sometimes it feels like it. The music of Nocturnal Emissions often seems to represent an attempt to get at the unalloyed essence of its subject, whether that subject be social, political, or psychogeographical. There's no showbiz here, no angle, no sales pitch, no pandering to an audience, no attempt made to sell your own anger back to you.

The big surprise with this collection is how well it all hangs together, how consistent it all sounds with the same basic sensibility underpinning the noise, the dance music, and even the prospective whale song. It's all coming from the same place, which wasn't so obvious when these tracks were limited to separate discs, and there's a truly generous spirit to this music, a joyful dissident noise which will have you punching the air even when the thing coming from the speakers sounds like a truck reversing over a photocopier.

Atari Teenage Riot - Burn, Berlin, Burn! (1997)

I expected this to sound like Altern-8 with a bit more welly, but as I now realise - admittedly two decades after everyone else - the hardcore of Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore label refers as much to the sheer racket of Bad Brains and other 500MPH American punk bands as it does to anything more closely associated with a dance floor. Many years ago when I was in Academy 23, Pete Williams - our drummer - told me that it was his ambition to combine punk rock and industrial music; because it was 1993, and everyone and their milkman had some fucking project on the go, because no-one would be seen dead admitting that they just wanted to rock the fuck out. It had to have a higher purpose, and inventing a cross between Bourbonese Qualk and the Cockney Rejects was Pete's, give or take some small change. Anyway, leaving aside the sheer arseache of anything invoking the much overused term industrial music, I guess Alec Empire beat him to it. The tools of composition may be the same as whatever it was 2 Unlimited used in construction of their mammoth eurosmash No No No-No No No No-No No No There's No Limit, except the samples are mostly a wall of punk rock guitar and the tempo knob of the drum machine has been twisted around as far as it will go; and surprisingly, the production is kind of rough and dirty, so it actually resembles early Nocturnal Emissions or something off the first SPK album more than anything. I expected noisy but sort of clean, maybe a variation on that Trent Reznor sound - but no, it's just a big fucking distorted noise, a bomb going off, over and over at rollercoaster headache velocity with some girl yelling about the evils of capitalism until she gives herself a sore throat.

If that sounds like a criticism, it isn't supposed to be. Like any form of music overdriven to the point of absurdity, the noise works on an almost physiological level with appreciation coming as much from the point at which it stops as from the actual distorted signal. It works as a slab of overwhelming rage delivered in short bursts, yet with the yelling conveying a much stronger sense of purpose than any of those Cookie Monster metal bands to which Atari Teenage Riot bear superficial sonic resemblance. This is what Sigue Sigue Sputnik failed to deliver combined with what riot grrrl managed only some of the time, but louder, angrier, and - against all expectation - more fun. I expect this also explains why the Prodigy turned their back on children's novelty records round about the same time.