Mysterious Kitchens (1980)

 

More recently reissued on CD by Klang Galerie, Mysterious Kitchens was a Terse Tapes compilation cassette from way back in the depths of the Precambrian. Terse Tapes, as you will doubtless recall, was the Australian organ from which the mighty Severed Heads didst squirt forth. Featured artists include Pissy Relay Switches, the Nobodies, Wet Taxis, Mr + Mrs No Smoking Sign, Lamington Lady, Holiday Funn, and Mindless Delta Children amongst others. As you may have guessed from the fameproofing of the names in combination with this being a cassette from 1980, what we have are weird noises recorded on cheap equipment by a subs bench of about ten persons working in various combinations under different names. Mr + Mrs No Smoking Sign may be vaguely familiar as an early incarnation of the Severed Heads, which it is, although Tom Ellard and Garry Bradbury are each involved with half of the other named artists on Mysterious Kitchens so it's six of one, half dozen of the other, and Pissy Relay Switches actually sound closer to Clean or Ear Bitten. Standouts include the Nobodies, seemingly the only act failing to share its membership with anyone else from what I can tell, who fall marginally closer in sound to early Cabaret Voltaire or Devo, for want of a better comparison; also Garry Bradbury's Wet Taxis who notably managed something of a career beyond this compilation. Primitive rhythm boxes, cheap keyboards, tape loops, hiss, and one effects pedal between the lot of them accounts for the sound, generally speaking, although there's plenty of variation, with Tom Ellard's involvement betrayed by his luxurious Pre-Raphaelite melodies which sound gorgeous even when recorded on what may as well be one of those little plastic records you used to find in the back of your talking Action Man.

One for the kids there.

Mysterious Kitchens is rough as fuck but has a joyous peculiarity that elevates it way above the standard photocopied industrial collections of its day - closer in spirit to the Residents and their like than any of the Gristle bunch; and honestly it's a lot more fun and interesting than many of its more technologically adept successors.