El Pecho de Andy was a spanish band from Toledo that enjoyed certain popularity in the second half of the eighties. Its name was a tribute to Lou Reed, and his song of the same title, "Andy's Chest". It was formed by Miguel Ángel García (guitar and voice), Fco. Javier García-Zarco (guitar), María Eugenia "Maruge" Muñoz (bass) and Miguel Ángel Campos (drums). They premiered with the independent Rocco Records, which released their first album, 'El Pecho de Andy' in 1986. The song "El Arrozal" was a true anthem at the time. [SOURCE: GRUPOS NACIONALES NUEVA OLA 80]
Orchestra of Skin and Bone were an Australian post-punk band active from 1984 to 1986. The band's core members were Ollie Olsen, Marie Hoy and John Murphy. They released a self-titled album in 1985.
They also released cassettes on underground noise labels. According to Australian musicologist, Ian McFarlane, the ensemble "proved incomprehensible to local audiences and rarely played live." This tape is a collection of archival material from a band that has taken many forms. Music recorded live, in rehearsal and at studio demo's. All previously unreleased and most previously unheard. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
This mini-LP offers a shorter Nurse With Wound track on the 45 rpm Side A and a much longer one on the 33 rpm side B. The first track, "Nil By Mouth," begins with noisy bursts of percussion interspersed with much quieter interludes with creaking guitars and other noises. The piece builds with intensity until a much heavier guitar finally rips loose and the pounding percussion becomes continuous, as deconstructed rock music becomes reconstructed again into one of N.W.W.'s more charged and energetic moments. The 20-minute piece on the flip side, "Swansong," is far subtler. It begins with quiet washes of white-noise static that rise and fall like ocean waves, very smooth and gentle at first but gradually becoming more forceful and complex. Soon a flute works its way into the mix, while the washes of white noise become choppier. About two-thirds of the way into the piece the waves stop abruptly and after a brief section where the flute's tone rises, a small child's voice intones a short, weird poem while a woman chants in the background, followed very quickly by a jarring wall of very harsh, aggressive static that slowly dies into a rumble to conclude the piece. "Swansong" is one of Nurse With Wound's more challenging works, but also one of the most effective. These two tracks have since been separated on CDs, with "Nil By Mouth" appearing on the 'Sugar Fish Drink' collection, whereas "Swansong" is one of the three tracks on the CD 'A Missing Sense'. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Label:
United Dairies – UD027, United Dairies – UD 027
Format:
Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM, 45 RPM
Country:
UK
Released:
1988
Style:
Abstract, Industrial, Experimental, Dark Ambiente, Sound Collage, Noise
This could arguably be one of the most emblematic instances of the post-punk roots pedigree. Stylistic transition from the band's earlier, proto-hardcore EP's to this album is so palpable, it almost feels like musicians here are at a wrong gig. And yet the results are quite potent. It really is laughably simple and could just as easily be attributed to comparative lack of genre tags, not to mention the, again, comparative dearth of general self-awareness at the time. Middle Class simply play their new (post-punk) material as if they were still their old (punk) selves. Just listen to that hyperactive drumming, or how ferociously the band bang out these chords. It seems awkward at first, as if the songs were written in one state of mind (colder and more detached; the way it should with post-punk) but recorded in a considerably more incensed mental condition. Of course, that is what makes the lasting impression at the end of the day. Neither the record itself stands unique among its peers, not to mention that the band do not offer that much in the way of actual songwriting. And yet, for whatever reason, it is this album by this band that accorded the above impressions already after a cursory listen. It also does not surprise at all that it was an American band that pulled such a trick, for it does take a clean-slate, blue-collar kind of mindset, methinks. [SOURCE: RATE YOUR MUSIC]
British band The Lo Yo Yo was founded by Family Fodder frontman John Pearce, aka Alig, in 1984. The Lo Yo Yo was active for 2 years and released one cassette, one split cassette with Look De Bouk, one full-length LP and appeared on the 'Local International 15-26' compilation cassette on Recommended. The band’s name comes from a Captain Beefheart song titled "Low Yo Yo Stuff" on the 1972 'Clear Spot' LP. The Lo Yo Yo’s line-up was actually more varied and included, along 10 or so other musicians, various Family Fodder members like Mick Hobbs, Felix Fiedorowicz and Rick Wilson. All three also played in The Work and Officer!, sometimes with Pearce himself. Charles Bullen of This Heat occasionally played drums with Family Fodder and co-produced The Lo Yo Yo’s unique LP, 'Extra Weapons', in 1985. Some songs on here are so dope and perfect for a mixed Dj set -especially "Learning to Fly" which is like Letta Mbulu meets Tom Tom Club. Great 80's material here with a lot of the sound trends going on at that time here. Funky, World/African, art band weirdness, post punk attitudes, instrument and electronic experimentalism. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
Label:
Floppy Discs – FLOP 1
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Album
Country:
UK
Released:
1985
Style:
New Wave, Art Rock, No Wave, Art Pop, Post-Punk, Zolo
Old school hated band from Boston, Kilslug formed in 1982 from the ashes of The Sickness and always known as the bastard child of the Boston punk scene. While SSD, DYS and the rest of the Boston Crew were playing fast singing about straightedge and unity, Kilslug were playing heavy slow dirge with singer Larry Lifeless whining evil and twisted lyrics. They released two 7"s and an LP on Taang! in 1985 before breaking up in 1987. [SOURCE: INTERPUNK]
Label:
Stinky Bike – S.B. 002
Format:
Cassette, EP
Country:
US
Released:
1982
Style:
Punk, No Wave, Doom Metal, Noise Rock, Sludge Metal
Tracklist:
A1 Snake Pit
A2 Vampire Fire
A3 Kill The Commies
B1 Elizabeth
B2 A Curse Will Fall
Notes:
Debut release. 5 track cassette EP. Includes lyric insert.
Janitor Of Lunacy was a electronic new wave band from Brescia active between 1981 to 1986. The band was formed by members Roberto Covre, Claudio Asserini and Syd Bosetti. Syd Bosetti left the band and was replaced by Gabriele Farina. They produced their first demo-tape in 1983. This is a split tape with Unit, distributed with number three of VM fanzine, limited to 200 numbered copies. [SOURCE: NTS]
Label:
Produzioni VM – PVM 03
Format:
Cassette, Limited Edition
Country:
Italy
Released:
1985
Style:
New Wave, Goth Rock, Darkwave, Post-Punk, Minimal Synth
There are bands that have been acting ruthlessly in the shadow for years, in a completely confidential manner, then one day chance makes you find one of their recordings, listen to it, and at that moment you could kick yourself for not having discovered these soundscapes earlier and you try to find all of them. That is exactly what happened to In Aeternam Vale, a strange name that will surely remind you of nothing in particular, and that is really a shame. At the basis of this band, a guy named Laurent Prot, a kind of equivalent to what Frank Tovey represented in England or Dirk Ivens in Belgium, an electronics fanatic who experimented all the sounds that you can obtain from analogical synthesizers and rhythm´n boxes.
The two tapes 'Recovered Flesh / Out of Terror' (1989) are in this same research for a music to dance to but very dark. There are even titles close to what we can call “dark ambient” (“She Said”), nightmarish soundscapes foreshadowing the Cold Meat Industry style, but the essential things to remember from this period are the collaborations with the female singer Chrystelle Marin and her astonishing voice recalling nocturnal goddesses such as the early Siouxsie or the sensual Mona Soyoc from Kas Product. Laurent Prot went on recording tapes in the 1990´s, going from trance-techno to ambient and now to house music, but with still a lot of analogical sounds. [SOURCE: MINIMAL WAVE RECORDS]
Label:
Organic Tapes – OT.030 Format:
2 × Cassette, Double Cassette In Vhs Box Country:
France Released:
1989 Style:
Minimal
Tracklist: A1 Car And Girl A2 La Pendule A3 Wounded Heart A4 Diesel A5 Eat Your Brain A6 Discomobil B1 Daygloo B2 Wounded Heart 2 B3 Art U.S. B4 J'ai Raté A1 Autown A2 Money For Fall A3 On Your Back A4 Several Times A5 Bad News Today A6 D. For Fun A7 Untitled B1 Good Day Dance B2 On Strike B3 She Said B4 Hit The Ground
Hearing Nick Currie singing in a decidedly youthful and almost too precious for words fashion that makes his later work as Momus seem like Bon Scott is one thing, but is the album itself any good? Happily the one full-length work that The Happy Family gave the world, expanded on CD thanks to the inclusion of the 'Puritans' single, is a wry little treat. Its connections to Momus' solo work is almost exclusively through the vocals, and even those, as noted, don't quite sound the same -otherwise, the results from the band are rushed pre-Smiths post-punk indie pop, the type of thing that Girls at Our Best! fans are likely to love. There's plenty of hints of the Postcard-era material that inspired Currie as well (then again, what else could be expected with Weddell in the band) not to mention a bit of goth work here and there (check out the instrumental breaks on "Letter From Hall" or the tense start of the title track). The guest sax from Steve Kettley and violin from Kirsteen McCormick add a nicely off-sense of semi-sophistication to the whole affair, and as a whole 'The Man on Your Street' sounds pitched somewhere between the try-anything-once early-'80s U.K. pop scene and its understated indie milieu. Currie claimed to feel himself as the cross between Mark E. Smith and Kasper Hauser, but generally he comes across as the Bowie-worshipper he undoubtedly was, crossed with a jaunty smoothness that suggests what the musichall tradition would have sounded it if it were more French than Cockney. No matter, it's all good fun spiked with the sly bitterness later Momus records would bring to the fore, and some of the lyrics are still a hilarious scream: "I'm tying up my future with a fine organization/It's called the Red Brigades and they treat employees well."
[SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Label: 4AD – CAD 214 CD
Format:
CD, Album, Reissue
Country:
UK, Japan
Released:
16 Nov 1992
Style:
New Wave, Art Rock, Post-Punk, Indie Pop, Art Punk
Tracklist:
1 The Salesman 3:19
2 Letter From Hall 3:39
3 The Luckiest Citizen 4:34
4 Revenge! 4:27
5 The Courier 3:31
6 The Man On Your Street 4:46
7 A Night Underground 4:57
8 Two Of A Kind 4:15
9 March In Turin 5:16
10 Puritans 3:15
11 Innermost Thoughts 3:18
12 The Mistake 4:46
Notes:
Tracks 1 to 9: from 'The Man On Your Street' LP (CAD 214). Tracks 10 to 12: from 'Puritans' 7" (AD 204). Subtitled "Songs From The Career Of Dictator Hall".
The link between the two bands is guitarist David Mitchell (who went on to play in the truly wonderful 3D's and Ghost Club).
Exploding Budgies were quite insane in a lot of ways (not that you'd pick up on that from these recordings). They split toward the end of 1984. David Mitchell then joined Goblin Mix, visually quite confusing. Whereas The Budgies had the standard 'back-to-the-dolequeue-on-Monday' look of many of their contemporaries, each member of Goblin Mix sported a distinctive image. Dave Mitchell had the dishevelled drunken slob look and a rather frightening afro, the other guitarist looked like he was about to drop his guitar mid song and head off night-clubbing with his trendy clothes and perfectly coiffed haircut. The bass player had a sort of Teddy Boy look, but with an outrageous mulleted hairstyle and biker jacket. He also constantly looked like he was about to burst into tears. The drummer was a Robert Smith type goth who looked sorta furtive and embarrassed to be there.
Musically they ranged from Mitchell's Dinosaur Jr'ish thrashes like "Venus Flye Trap" and "The Travelling Grave", to the other guys folk rocky fare with rather flowery romantic Blakes'ian prose (lots of 'Thy's, Thee's, 'Thou's' etc...) and violins. He may have also been a bit of a Pogues fan 'cos he sounded a lot like Shane McGowan.
The Budgies were a really good forgotten band from a time (1983-85) when Auckland had very few decent ones. They knock it up a notch. [SOURCE: RATE YOUR MUSIC]
Label:
Flying Nun Records – FNCD193
Format:
CD, Compilation
Country:
New Zealand
Released:
1991
Style:
Indie Rock, Dunedin Sound, Indie Pop
Tracklist:
1 – The Exploding Budgies Thornfield
2 – The Exploding Budgies Kenneth Anger
3 – The Exploding Budgies Hank Marvin
4 – The Exploding Budgies See You Around The Stones
5 – The Exploding Budgies Sunflower
6 – Goblin Mix Lament
7 – Goblin Mix The Water
8 – Goblin Mix Time Away
9 – Goblin Mix Unusual Wish
10 – Goblin Mix Travelling Grave
11 – Goblin Mix Venus Fleye Trap
12 – Goblin Mix The Winter Song
13 – Goblin Mix The Drinking Mans Curse
14 – Goblin Mix Coleridge / Up From The Sink I Spy
15 – Goblin Mix Fruit Of The Womb
Notes:
Sixteen tracks are listed on the rear tray card but only 15 tracks are on the disc. Track 14 is made up of two songs. The back of the CD booklet also lists a 17th title "Ely's On Smack" which doesn't appear on the disc.
Fourwaycross is a Goth band from 1985-1989. Their sound ranges from Joy Division to Red Temple Spirits to Moev, gothic rock to dark new wave. As with their self-titled debut, this is a very intriguing album that falls down every time they shift from one angle of their sound (the longform ambient seriousness of
"Climate And Weather" and "Trench") to another (the brittle, raw and funky post-punk of "Apologize" and "U.S.A.") to another (the dreamy pop of "So For You", "Unconcerned" and "Dream") to another (the straighter, gloomier post-punk of "Losing" and "Dirty News").
The opener's almost ten minutes long and spends its first four minutes on ambience and atmosphere. It's followed by a kickass jam that stops abruptly at the two minute mark. Which is followed by a very noisy post-punker with lotsa feedback and drumming overdubs. Which is followed by limp, safe pop. Which is followed by a slow, gnarly post-punker with flangers set to melt (rate/speed all the way down, regen/resonance all the way up).
It's the sound of a band that doesn't want to stick to one genre or "sound" on an album, but, as with that debut, it's more than worth a listen. [SOURCE: RATE YOUR MUSIC]
Label:
Motiv Communications – motiv prod 2
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Album
Country:
US
Released:
1986
Style:
Post-Punk, Goth Rock, Industrial, Dream Pop, Experimental Rock
Elli & Jacno is a French pop duo active in the early 1980s, composed of Elli Medeiros (lyrics and vocals) and Denis Quilliard, aka Jacno (composition). The band was formed in 1980 after the duo left the French punk band Stinky Toys. Their music is recognizable by Jacno's minimal melodies, essentially composed of chords obtained on a synthesizer, and by Elli's lyrics, often evoking love, whether sad or gay. A polyinstrumentalist, Jacno played and then mixed synthesizer, guitar and drum machine himself on tape, and sometimes accompanied Elli on backing vocals. The duo broke up at the beginning of 1985 and Elli Medeiros continued her career as a singer and actress. As for Jacno, he released several albums and continued his career as a producer. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
It is truly sad most (ex) Yugoslavian synth-pop bands never really learned anything from their creative strengths and songwriting talent. Denis & Denis are no exception in this matter -everything they provided with on their debut album with such naive charm and sensuality, they also happen to have thrown away very quickly as their pop-career progressed.
'Čuvaj se!' (meaning: "Take Care!") is a deserved masterpiece of early 80s Yugoslavian electro-pop, these days its voice extending far beyond the borders of the former federative republic. While many continue pointing out to their mega-hit (ironically, the only official single from the LP) "Program tvog kompjutera" (meaning: "Your Computer Programme"), the album itself is one true "Greatest Hits" beatfest.
Also the duo were continually compared to a certain Eurythmics (eventually Yazoo), but with this particular album Denis & Denis were much closer to the likes of The Human League (singer Marina Perazić pretty much resembles Susanne Sulley's look on the front cover), cleverly taking over the latter's blueprint, transforming it into something just as uniquely modern. In the year 1984, Philip Oakey and Co. released 'Hysteria', a rather half-baked electro-pop album shying away from 'Dare!' but still as desperate to catch up with it -and then somewhere in the Eastern part of Europe, a strange folie-a-deux took the perfect formula, creating something of a 'Dare'-esque twin brother of an album, smart at displaying the source and avoiding risk of plagiarism.
These songs throw obscurity, optimism, sex-appeal, desire and melancholy into the mix to great effect; the opening track "Čuvaj se!", echoing loneliness, tells a story about a woman in endless search for comfort, "Tek je sedam sati" ("It's just about 7"[o'clock]) adds sense of irony to the context of relationships, "Dvadeset i osam minuta do pet" ("Twenty-eight Minutes to Five") is a revue of daily routines, "Telefon" ("Telephone") sings of desire to re-establish physical contact, "Ti i ja" ("You and Me") and "Program tvog kompjutera" being about cause and effect between two people in love, "Doba noćnih kiša" ("Rainy Nights") is a moody uptempo track with darker overtones wrapped in autumn's shades of grey, a beautiful ballad "Sačuvaj nešto" ("Keep Something") about a relationship ending and the album's jewel -the closer "Dio refrena" ("Part of the Refrain"), a magnificent electro-monologue of utter paranoia.
The most amazing feeling about the album, 'Čuvaj se!' is conceived well ahead of its time and while it captures the essence of the early 80s' music perfectly, it still sounds as fresh -the song "Ti i ja" for example, is a rather accidental reflection of House music, way before House actually officially reached the ears of the general public. It's latin-induced intro in strange collision with a drum machine quite reminiscent of New Order's "Blue Monday" is worth alone to explore this album. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
