Finitribe - Noise, Lust and Fun (1988)

 

Advanced apologies for the spelling but I just can't see Finitribe as two words. Anyway, having had my nuts quite literally blown off by Electrolux, which was on one of those Funky Alternatives records, I immediately ran to my local high street record retailer and made purchase of Finitribe's Grossing 10K. Apparently this was the one I should have bought, which I didn't because I had no idea that it existed until fairly recently. Therefore D'oh!

While Grossing 10K is largely great, it sounds like the Art of Noise had they not been formed by members of Cambridge University's Important Music Faculty now that I've heard its predecessor. This one is a lot more free-range and bubbles with the sound of people trying things out to see what happens rather than trying what someone else already did to see if it sounds the same. The easiest and probably laziest comparison to make is with formative Tackhead, at least rhythmically, but with pseudo-classical touches and bits of cabaret contributing to a whole which sounds more tribal than anything. Annie Anxiety is on here, along with the legendary Jess Hopkins of the Iron Brotherhood and, so I presume, Chris Connelly before all that industrial metal stuff, so it seems a potent mix of talents which proves at least as weirdly fascinating as you would hope. There's plenty of sampling, but not enough to plant toes on common ground shared with the aforementioned Art of Noise, and a lot of it works very well as soundtrack music with tribal grooves rumbling on beneath some fucking beautiful and powerfully emotive piano. Another year later and everyone would be pulling on their combat boots and pretending to be futuristic robots, but this is an insight into what you could do with this kind of tech before the usual cultural feedback loops swamped all originality and sense of adventure.

Peter Hope & David Harrow - Sufferhead 85/13 (2020)

Here's a couple of EPs originally released by Hope and Harrow in 1985 and 2013, now reissued as a single album; which works surprisingly well despite the three decade gap between the original sessions, with five tracks per side adding up to a nice and tidy album length. The 1985 material sounds very much of its time and geography - which isn't a criticism - very much birthed from the same milieu as Hula and digital-era Cabaret Voltaire with hard gated beatbox rhythms pulled out of shape by horns, tapes, even some metal bashing, then formed into something fierce and bluesy by Hope's powerful voice, yielding, I suppose, sound pieces as much as songs, like short, moody films lacking only their visual component. It's quite harsh, almost not quite musical, and yet there's a kind of funky tension keeping everything tight, keeping it all from springing out of shape. Think Tackhead pushed further, twitchy and sleep deprived.

I tend to listen to a lot of music first thing in the morning while doing things around the house, washing dishes, wrestling cats, cleaning up shite and so on; which has begun to feel a little awkward since my wife's company decided, in their finite wisdom, that they could make a great saving by having her work from home while hiring out the office space to someone else. She isn't too happy about the arrangement, which means I'm additionally a little self-conscious about my morning soundtrack, given her arguably more traditional musical tastes. As she has made clear, I'm quite welcome to listen to what she refers to as that pipe banging music, but I nevertheless feel a bit uncomfortable about blasting her with DDAA or Headyello first thing.

Getting back around to the point, I sensed funny looks coming in my direction when I played the aforementioned 1985 material, although Mrs. Bricklaying seemed to acclimate to it after the first couple of days. More surprising, at least to me, was how much she seemed to enjoy the second side of the record, the material from 2013, even asking who was responsible and what the tracks were called. Side two maintains the mood but otherwise slows everything to the pace of a comedown with intricately woven sequencers dominating, and less of a temper. We're still on the short, moody films, but now they feel like film noir, mysteries half seen from a rain soaked doorway.

Internet research reveals David Harrow as having worked with Jah Wobble, Adrian Sherwood, and others already resident on my shelves, which makes a lot of sense given the sonic territory he inhabits; and his soundtracks provide a perfect complement to Hope's image-heavy narrative. I realise I seem to have gotten into the knee-jerk habit of unquestioningly buying everything issued by these two on the strength of name alone - limited run vinyl, CDRs, lathe cut things and what have you - but they deliver every time so it seems justified, and I'm already looking forward to the Revbjelde album.

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.

Cabaret Voltaire - Code (1986)

I've just had a look for my Don't Argue 12", it being the last Cabaret Voltaire record I ever bought new as it turned up in the racks. I was hoping to compare notes because I recall it being fairly rubbish with soulful backing vocals in the spirit of Go West, Johnny Hates Jazz and all the other useless pop wankers of the day. It seemed like Cabaret Voltaire's equivalent of Bowie's Let's Dance 12", not much more than a slightly smelly appendix to an impressive but suddenly finite catalogue indicating that the game was up and there would be no need to bother with future releases. I was hoping to compare notes because the album version of the same track is pretty decent, being thankfully bereft of some woman wailing no, don't argue with me, you better watch your step, boy - woah yeah and all that. Anyway, I no longer have the 12", so I must have got rid of it due to it being shit. Never mind.

No don't argue with me, you better watch your step, boy - woah yeah was why I didn't buy Code. I picked a couple of later singles out of bargain bins, and if they weren't quite so bad as the aforementioned extended jacket with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows megamix of Don't Argue, neither did they do much to change my mind; and then the boys turned up on the telly in track suits adopting acid house mannerisms of such hilariously opportunistic thrust as to make Altern-8 look like Miles Davis. It was clearly all over.

Au contraire, some bloke on the internet explained to me in seemingly implausible defence of Code; so I bought one because it was cheap on Discogs, and both Bill Nelson and Adrian Sherwood are involved - which has to count for something - and curiosity got the better of me.

I was a relative latecomer to Cabaret Voltaire, discovering them mainly through spurious association with Throbbing Gristle - apparently it was usually the other way round for most people. They have become the eternal second name of the list for tedious wankers taking it upon themselves to bring us the story of industrial music - everything from Ministry to U2 and back again. Disregarding for the moment the fact of the term industrial music being a complete waste of time, I personally think the list has it the wrong way round. Throbbing Gristle were often wonderful, but once you've listened to them a few times the novelty wears off, the shock subsides, and it becomes clear that they only ever really did just the one thing. Cabaret Voltaire's back catalogue on the other hand continues to yield new aspects years after the moment has passed. You can listen to those things over and over and still find unfamiliar and unexpected elements. It sounds like a cliché, but I guess that's because they really were all about the music, man, or at least the sonic experimentation but let's call it music anyway. There's weird and startling, but not much in the way of shock effect, and no boggle-eyed interviews banging on about how the Third Reich were really, really interesting.

So here we are, and much to my embarrassment, Code turns out to be pretty damn great. It's clearly something that wouldn't have scared the living shit out of fans of Go West, and doubtless some Parlaphone marketing drone had his fingers crossed for that very reason, but it still sounds like Cabaret Voltaire. Adrian Sherwood's ruthless application of precision sampling and all those hard gated snares works well given that Tackhead records of the time probably weren't a million miles from mid-period Cabaret Voltaire, in spirit and approach if not actual sound. Still we have those elusive sequencers pinging away in the background in approximation of the treated guitar parts on earlier records, and it never quite adds up to a tune or even songs so much as a groove. There's always been a dance element to our music is almost always bullshit, but it applies here when you consider that the influence of dub, James Brown and even Parliament could be heard at least as far back as The Voice of America, certainly more so than anything of more obviously Caucasian thrust.

I had assumed Code to be the sell-out album, probably because I read as much somewhere or other, but it really isn't. The grooves are possibly harder than before, but they aren't doing anything they hadn't already been doing at least since Rough Trade. On the other hand, I had a listen to Groovy, Laidback and Nasty - the one which came after - on YouTube, and the cunt sounds like eight variations on Take That's Relight My Fire, so I think I'll leave it there for a while.