Električni Orgazam (1981)

Back in the early eighties, my school friend Eggy went on holiday with his family to what was then Yugoslavia. Passing through the airport on the way home, it occurred to him that he should bring back presents for his pals, Grez and myself, and thus accordingly he picked a couple of random music cassettes from the nearest stall. I had first dibs so I took this one, based on the cover looking sort of interesting, meaning Grez ended up with a tape of some bunch named Kamelioni - not very good, apparently, which I'd kind of guessed might be the case.

Amazingly, Električni Orgazam turned out to be a great pick, regardless of my having no fucking clue what any of it was about. I played the tape a lot. When I bought a CD burner, it was one of the first things I took the trouble to digitise, and now, having discovered the joy of hunting stuff down on the internet, I actually have the fucker on vinyl, kindly sold to me by a very helpful Croatian gentleman - nice big sleeve like a proper record as issued by Jugoton, the Yugoslavian state record label! This thing turning up in the mail felt like a message from space or discovering that Lord of the Rings really happened. I slapped it on the turntable, vaguely worrying this was going to be one of those exercises in nostalgia which doesn't quite pan out, faded photos of some distant holiday romance which has everyone scratching their heads, but no - this record still sounds incredible. It wasn't just my imagination.

To get into specifics, I chose Električni Orgazam over Kameleoni because the name sounded edgy and the cover reminded me of both Dadaism and Cabaret Voltaire's Voice of America album; and the first thing I was reminded of when I first played the tape was Cabaret Voltaire dabbling with sixties-inspired organ noodles on Red Mecca and others. Beyond this comparison, I suppose Električni Orgazam were maybe the angular Serbian Wire or Devo or something of the sort, but populist with a faint swirl of the fairground or cabaret about them - weird and spikey, but never quite bleak enough to have been remembered as cold wave. It seems they went a bit chicken in a basket after this first album, also losing Marina Vulić - their female bassist who, it turns out, was actually very, very easy on the eye - although the early warning signs can probably be discerned in both the obligatory Beatles cover and Fleke, the token white reggae number apparently translating as Stain. Then again, whilst the Yugoslavian state may well have obliged artists to a standardised quota of cod reggae and Beatle coverage, I don't really care because both tracks are wonderful. In fact, I prefer Fleke to quite a lot of proper reggae, so nyer.

Aside from Douglas P recording benefit albums for an end to this terrible genocidal war with proceeds seemingly going to those actually doing the genocide, my knowledge of the former Yugoslavia and its music is limited to Laibach, this album, and Mi Nismo Andjeli. Mi Nismo Andjeli is a film of which the title translates to We Are Not Angels and which was sent to me on DVD by some other Discogs bloke apparently because he had a copy laying around and he wanted to say thanks for buying stuff from me. It was made in 1992 and is definitely one of the weirder and more entertaining random presents I've ever received from a stranger. Furthermore, it seems to suggest a comedic sophistication we of the West have historically denied those Eastern block countries because we're too busy chuckling at Borat with his big moustache. In fact, Mi Nismo Andjeli suggests the former Yugoslavia developed strains of sarcasm we still don't understand even now, and which would make sense of both Laibach, and how Električni Orgazam had an unusually jolly quality to all those starkly spiky riffs.

Of all the best kept secrets over which I've ever evangelised,  Električni Orgazam is a genuine work of genius. I only wish they hadn't turned into the Serbian REO Speedwagon after this one.

Sleaford Mods - Eton Alive (2019)

That's better. I'm not sure what it was about English Tapas, but it never quite settled with me as the others did. It felt a little like the first post-chart success album, uncomfortable with its own status and a bit embarrassed at having been introduced by Simon Bates on Top of the Pops, or whatever it is you lot have over in Englishland these days. It felt as though all those appearances on Celebrity Cash in the Attic alongside Stormzy and some former Kaiser Chief were somewhat diluting the font of inspiration from which the other stuff had once gushed forth as from unto a blocked toilet, and the duet with Paul Weller couldn't be too far away.

Well, that's all a massive exaggeration, and English Tapas is still a decent record, but it seemed subdued nevertheless, and there was the crooning, presumably born of a reluctance to make the same record over and over - worth a try, but I wasn't sure it worked.

Eton Alive is definitively back on track, and possibly even the best thing since Austerity Dogs. It's hard to tell what they've done which didn't get done last time around, but the sense of shock is back, or possibly renewed in the combination of sardonic ranting and loops suggesting an East Midlands revision of Suicide; and the venom is fresh. Most impressive of all is that Eton Alive isn't some reversion to established factory settings, but continues the cautiously progressive trajectory of the last one, and the best track is probably the crooner, When You Come Up to Me. The difference could be something as stupid and simple as the fact of my having bought this one on vinyl, and that my stereo sounds better than the discman on which I've listened to the others; in which case, ignore all of the above but buy it anyway.

Tangerine Dream - Electronic Meditation (1970)

I came to Tangerine Dream through Phaedra, borrowed from Mark Steedman at college. I think I lent him Second Annual Report in return because we were comparing our fave bands and I hadn't heard anything by his lot, whilst he similarly knew Gristle only by reputation. Phaedra impressed the hell out of me, and I could see there was some common ground shared by the two groups; although at the same time, I recall Phaedra as kind of smooth and dreamy, and while it impressed the hell out of me, it didn't impress me enough to persuade me to pay full price for a record. I picked up Phaedra, Rubycon and Stratosfear second hand, but knackered copies which skipped all over the place and I accordingly played only the once.

Anyway, consequently I wasn't really prepared for this, their first album, which is a very different affair to the airbrushed material for which they became better known. The title suggests something dreamy and relaxing but is hugely misleading. It sits somewhere between early Pink Floyd and the work of Schoenberg, and is electronic mostly in the sense of its amplification and recording. Some of side two might be described as meditative, although I'd say immersive would probably be a better word, but there's definitely an acid trip going off the rails element to this music. Aside from the guitar solos, there's a lot of atonality and a tendency for repetition rather than rhythm, suggestive of the possibility that this record really might be more ancestral to Second Annual Report than anyone realised; and while it's not really Tangerine Dream's doing, I find it difficult to listen to Electronic Meditation without imagining scenes from rustic horror movies of the early seventies, so it's potent and powerful stuff in other words.

Finitribe - Grossing 10K (1989)

I only quite recently found out that Chris Connelly was once a member of Finitribe, which I suppose dooms them to becoming a footnote in the history of Ministry; which is a shame because they were better than that, or at least had the potential. Connelly - for whom I generally have a lot of time, by the way - had jumped ship by the time they recorded this, their second album, and it's one I've always enjoyed whilst never quite being able to get a handle on.

For anyone who hasn't heard Grossing 10K, it really, really sounds like an eighties band who've just bought a sampler and can't leave the fucking thing alone. The way it was put together now feels a bit obvious and hokey, I suppose, at least in so much as that other people did this kind of thing without it seeming quite so brash and silly; but then again, maybe the cartoon aspect - samples from Road Runner, Muttley sniggering and so on - was part of the point. It's hard to tell, because the production is so ruthlessly clean and shiny that it could almost come from the demo buttons on whichever drum machine they were using - and it's one I'd say I've definitely heard before, that crushing kick and the crash of a snare suggesting certain angular haircuts. Digital piano tinkles, whale song is replayed on different keys, and the beat box is far too loud, apparently stuck on machine gun. It sounds as though someone was waiting for the invention of drum and bass.

I think the key to Finitribe is that they were never some industrial dance footnote, but rather were the Scottish Tackhead, or Crass with technology and better jokes, or something of the sort. The production is often a little too clean, but the record makes more sense where it dirties up a little, approaching something Mark Stewart could probably have worked with; but every so often, it all comes into focus and we hear an equivalent of the sunlight bursting through clouds effect, as with Built In Monster, which is just fucking majestic - the kind of heartbreaking pseudoclassical grandeur Foetus only manages every once in a blue moon.

Grossing 10K is a novelty album with a social conscience, silly, elegant, and chilling all at the same time; and if there's room for improvement in some respects, it still doesn't sound much like anything else.

Cosey Fanni Tutti - Tutti (2019)

I've never really given much thought to who made the greatest contribution to the general Throbbing Gristle sound, beyond a feeling that it probably wasn't Porridge; although it would seem logical to assume that the ratio is comparable to how much I've enjoyed what the individual members have done since. What I've liked of Psychic TV has usually been down to the involvement of someone who wasn't in Throbbing Gristle, and I've never really understood what people saw in Coil. I still enjoy the first handful of Chris & Cosey albums up to a point, that point probably being 1985's Techno Primitiv, but Cosey Fanni Tutti's solo material has always been exceptional. I almost wore out the tape of Time to Tell when I first bought it as a single sided C60 issued by Flowmotion, and Tutti is similarly fannifuckingtastic. It turns out there was another one in 2008 which I didn't know about, something called COH Plays Cosey which I'm listening to on One'sTube right now, and I'm definitely seeing a pattern here.

Whilst I never really saw her as only Throbbing Gristle's trombonist, it seems significant that both Time to Tell and Tutti invoke the very best TG material without simply duplicating it, which isn't precisely true of what I've heard of the other three. Tutti is mostly rhythmic, with just enough splurging electronic weirdness to keep it biological, and nothing to pin the sonics down to any familiar boxes or machines; and it sounds a little like side one of Second Annual Report reborn inside The Matrix, or at least reborn inside The Matrix in a world where The Matrix wasn't a deeply stupid film starring the tall one from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. I'm assuming Gristle can't have been mostly Cosey Fanni Tutti with the other three stood around talking about cars and lawnmowers, so maybe it's that she understood what they were doing better than anyone else, or something, so her influence over the whole was the most profound.

Well, I don't suppose it matters beyond credit being given where it is due, and I think most of us have accepted that Cosey's contribution was significant by now. What seems more worthy of note is just how good this record is. It may even be the best thing she's ever done.

The Dentists - Heads and How to Read Them (1990)

The Dentists were the local big deal when I first moved to Kent, or at least they were the local big deal which didn't involve Billy Childish. Once they began to enjoy success further afield, local goth types of my acquaintance took to a degree of sneering, therefore requiring that I venture a little way outside my limited social comfort zone in order to hear the music of the Dentists and decide for myself, and once I did, I quickly realised that they were popular for a reason; the reason being that they were fucking great.

Later they apparently became associated with something called C86, which was something to do with an NME compilation tape and has been retroactively declared a movement, specifically a movement of mostly jangly sixties-inspired bands. I still don't quite see this, being as most of the C86 bands were - excepting Josef K and maybe two or three others - fucking atrocious. Never mind.

Anyway, I vaguely knew the Dentists, seeing as how they were local lads. I once spent a boozy afternoon around Mick Murphy's house; Mark Matthews put out the first ever fanzine to feature something I had drawn; and I knew Alun, their second drummer, fairly well. Indeed, I vaguely recall the grumbling amongst members of Apricot Brigade when Alun jumped ship to tap the skins for what was frankly a much better band - following Ian, the Dentists' original drummer, having been temporarily inconvenienced. Grousing accompanied the release of Down and Out in Paris and Chatham, the first record to feature Alun but I went out and bought it anyway, and actually it was a magnificent record.

Since then I've tended to regard the difference between those first two incarnations of the Dentists as a sort of Beatles-Stones thing, with softer, poppier songs giving away to something more raw, as characterised by You Took Me By Surprise - which I've only just noticed almost borrows from The Word by the Beatles; and listening to Heads and How to Read Them, I notice my Beatles then Stones equation doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. Heads is a different beast to Some People, but is great for similar reasons, and is by no means a lesser record. For the uninitiated, the Dentists did that pure pop thing like a distant cousin to the Smiths but without the burden of Morrissey, having some of that breezy quality of the Monkees without it being some cheesy fresh-faced sales pitch - just consistently great songs with hidden depths and of such quality that the usual labels seem a bit pointless. This second album is notable for the peculiar key change - or whatever the technical term may be - during the chorus of House the Size of Mars, and the infectious waltz of Crocodile Tears, amongst other things.

There were a couple of later records, and whilst there's nothing specifically lacking in what I've heard of them, there seems to be a faint major label sheen, something suggesting some A&R twat may have been drooling over the possibility of selling the boys to all those Ravey Daveys who thought the first Stone Roses album was the greatest record of all time; when actually it was the wrong way round, and the Dentists were always the superior group, which goes for those Smiths comparisons too.

Einstürzende Neubauten - Fuenf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala (1987)

I'm not sure why I never noticed it before, but I'm beginning to think we've been wrong about Einstürzende Neubauten all this time, or at least I have. Simon Morris of the Ceramic Hobs, an approximately close personal friend with whom I often enjoy a round of golf and himself no stranger to an ear-splitting racket, recently opined that he regarded them as either shit, grossly overrated, or a combination of the two, without quite being able to put his finger on why; which intrigued me because, although very much a fan, I could see that he had a point somewhere in there, or at least a perspective. I bought the earlier albums when they came out, and yet despite having just described myself as very much a fan, it's somehow taken me thirty-two years to bother with this one and I'm not sure why.

The first person I knew to listen to Einstürzende Neubauten besides myself was a vaguely gothy art college girl who also liked Tom Waits and ended up singing in a jazz band. She would occasionally drift off into a reverie about Blixa Bargeld's cheekbones, a fixation which I came to associate with her slightly disturbing monologues about the pleasure taken in not eating much and being able to feel her own rib cage. I suppose that's art school for you. Bargeld of course ended up in Nick Cave's band, presenting a similarly unfortunate association. I'm not saying Cave is lacking talent, but I've never seen whatever it is that others apparently see in his music, possibly excepting The Mercy Seat which is as wonderful as the rest is a droning racket. All of which seems to characterise Einstürzende Neubauten as the noise band most likely to turn up on the soundtrack of a Neil fucking Gaiman adaptation; but there's a reasonable chance I'm talking bollocks here.

The realisation that comes to me after a week of listening to - and enjoying, I hasten to add - Fuenf Auf Der Nach Oben Offenen Richterskala, and the thing which leads me to think we've been wrong about Einstürzende Neubauten all this time, is that they're actually more traditional than you might realise. Clearly they take delight in the subtleties of sounds derived from non-musical instruments, so we're still some distance from the Spencer Davis Group, but the noises and scrapes and clangs tend to form something vaguely Brechtian, very theatrical and - I suppose - amounting to medieval serfs forced to scrape a lament together with whatever metal objects happen to be at hand. I probably shouldn't be so surprised. Drilling holes in the ICA was nothing if not theatrical. They pull faces and make noises, but it's still entertainment.

Here they cover the Grateful Dead's Morning Dew, and it sounds oddly like Even Better Than the Real Thing by U2, but better, and preferable to the original to my ears, although probably not so good as Devo's rendering. It doesn't sound even remotely out of place either.

Having come to this realisation, I dug out Halber Mensch and gave it a spin, and sure enough, beyond the fact that we're hearing some dude thumping plastic water bottles with a wrench, at heart it could be a late seventies Bowie album. I don't suggest this to be a bad thing, by the way, and it doesn't mean I enjoy Einstürzende Neubauten any less, but it's been eye-opening and explains the Cave association. Further objections should probably be ignored on the grounds that the worst aspect of anything will always be its stupid fucking fans.