With a lineup of Kevin Smith (songwriter, lead singer and rhythm guitar), Colin Garrett (lead guitar), Mark Morris (bass) and Gary Cotter (drums), Staffordshire band Bleeding Hearts released what turned out to be their only single in October 1980. Issued by Hednesford-based independent Crazy Plane, 'This Is The Way...OK' received Radio One airplay from the likes of John Peel and daytime DJ Peter Powell. After the single, drummer Cotter was replaced by Mark Morris's brother Des. With the addition of a third sibling, guitarist/keyboardist Jim, the Morris Brothers broke away to become Balaam And The Angel, who signed to Virgin in the mid-Eighties. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
Agrimensor K was a Spanish darkwave band founded in the first 80s by Nacho Goberna (vocals, guitar), Ignacio Valencia (bass), Juan José Mourlanch (keyboards) and José Manuel Gandásegui (drums). They just released two singles: 'Principio y Fin' and '¿Juegas al Escondite?'. Goberna and Valencia later would create La Dama Se Esconde. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
All female Christchurch band 25 Cents were part of a vibrant, early 1980s Gladstone Tavern scene that also included The Pin Group, The Newtones, The Playthings and The Androidss. Their sole release in 1982 was one of the early Flying Nun singles and just 305 copies were pressed. Complete with violin, the A-side "Don’t Deceive Me" was a rare original for a band that specialised more in 60s and 70s garage and punk covers ranging from The Velvet Underground to Pere Ubu. But it’s their helter skelter version of The Sonics’ garage classic "The Witch" on the flip side that has been anthologised over the years. [SOURCE: AUDIOCULTURE]
'The Elephant Table Album' and 'Three Minute Symphony' were put out by music journalist Dave Henderson on his label X Tract, the only two releases he ever did. Henderson was well known at the time for writing about some of the more difficult music of the early 1980s, an era rife with electro-experimentation and open to a certain level of arty weirdness, and that’s reflected by the artists he involved in his two projects. The premise of 'Three Minute Symphony' adds an extra level of difficulty for the artists, as each was asked to submit a piece of roughly three minutes in length. For some that may have been stretching their normal song length, but for others the idea of something as short as a radio-friendly three minutes was probably a challenge.
Some tracks like Kill Ugly Pop’s “Let’s Get Real Gone” aren’t that far out there, though follow that with Ptose’s “Waiting For My Soul” and you might start to re-evaluate your own mental stability. This is one of those records you could break down track-by-track, because there’s something unique and different waiting for you around each and every corner. If there’s a common thread here it’s simply the lack of mainstream-ism in general -even the songs with more typical structures, for example Human Flesh’s “L’Ultima Storia”, have their own unique strangeness, that intangible quality guaranteed to keep them as far off the charts as humanly possible.
Perhaps the songs aren’t as “out there” as those on other comps, but more likely the short track durations (the longest song is 3:52, the shortest 1:58) keeps engaged even when faced with the daunting prospect of DDAA’s “Your Mother With A Cake”. Definitely a worth-while pick-up if you find it and want to explore some of the weirder corners of the early 1980s. Unfortunately unlike it’s predecessor 'Elephant Table' this one never go the CD re-release treatment, so vinyl (or an online rip) is the only way to hear it. [SOURCE: LIFE IN THE VINYL LANE]
Zona Industriale was an industrial duo from Cosenza composed by Michele Pingitore and Pino Iannelli and formed in 1983. That year they released their first album entitled 'IZ', initially self-produced and then reissued in 1996 and 2003 by Slaughter Productions. The album, which involved a compositional reassembly of sounds recorded from everyday life, was composed of radio speeches interspersed with radio frequencies, recordings taken from as hairdryers, railway stations or crackling doors and wood, as well as samples taken from special effects records, translating into music the sounds of routine and boredom of everyday life, and totally excluding the usual musical instruments. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
Label:
Slaughter Productions – SPT78
Format:
Cassette, Compilation, Limited Edition
Country:
Italy
Released:
1997
Style:
Industrial
Tracklist:
A1 L'Inizio 3:20
A2 Metamorfosi (Part 1 & 2) 3:40
A3 Les Silences Des La Voix 1:55
A4 Alla Ricerca Dell'Ignoto 3:20
B5 Il Tempio Delle Tenebre 6:31
B6 Inside 3:02
B7 Essere E Tempo 5:34
Notes:
Some tracks are taken from various compilation (1985/87) + unreleased tracks. Limited to 100 copies.
Yximalloo is Naofumi Ishimaru alone, but he drafts a loose ensemble of players, including the core of Shigeo Ootake and Takashi Korgo (who appear on all discs), as collaborator-executors. All of his releases are on his own label, and none have seen a distributor yet (which is why you very rarely find his CDs in stores). Ishimaru works like a Japanese Jandek without the angst, like the Boredoms minus the bombast. Spiritual kin to early artpunk and especially the LAFMS, he revels in mock-ethnic music and nonsense. Lo-fi, sweet and primitive, he uses ancient drum machines, hand percussion, and electronic droplet noises, sometimes set to melodies gathered from some imaginary South Sea island where the traditional instrument is seemingly an old '80s synth. Handclaps and chanting abound, but Yximalloo has also been painted as a Japanese Half Japanese -Jad Fair himself has collaborated with Ishimaru and draws the covers several releases (gorgeous dayglo and glow-in-the-dark covers in iridescent plastic cases). [SOURCE: YXIMALLOO]
Miss Sox (Fabio Zigante) formed XX Century Zorro around 1981, after leaving The Great Complotto scene of Pordenone. Created using tapes, recorders and minimal instruments and verging on a lo-fi, avant-garde (dada) oriented new wave, their first and only LP is 1983's 'La Volpe du XX Siécle'. The vinyl was recorded through a sound system called Monster System that Miss Sox himself patented. [SOURCE: RATE YOUR MUSIC]
The Wirtschaftswunder was a German band consisting of musicians Angelo Galizia (vocals, Italy), Tom Dokoupil (guitar, Czechoslovakia), Mark Pfurtschneller (keyboards, Canada) and Jürgen Beuth (drums, Germany). They were part of the so-called Neue Deutsche Welle that emerged as part of the English new wave/post-punk movement in the early 1980s and included bands such as D.A.F., Malaria!, or ZK (predecessor of Die Toten Hosen). Their most characteristic feature was Angelo Galizia's singing with a heavy Italian accent. After their 4th album 'Pop Adenauer' in the same year and their final single in 1984 they dissolved. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
Label:
Ariola – 206 092, Ariola – 206 092-620
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Album
Country:
Europe
Released:
1984
Style:
Disco, Leftfield, Synth-pop, Neue Deutsche Welle
VS was the very first all girl punk band in California. Formed in early 1978, VS was the brainchild of bassist Olga DeVolga, fresh from The Offs; the other original members were Anny Unger, guitar (later to go on to The Gun Club) and Jane Weems (Insane Jane), drums (from The Maggots), as well as a few nameless guitarists. In their brief early history, VS included Carola Anderson (Rosenthal), first on sax, then later on some vocal duties. VS were in the orbit on the very early punk scene of San Francisco. They played the very first "Off Broadway" show with The Avengers and The Dils, and were the very first band to ever step onstage to play the historic 1839 Geary Temple Beautiful venue.
After recording an early demo, they disintegrated, breaking off into other bands. Later incarnation of VS were to include a constant succession of other members, including men, but the first original line-up proved to be the most visually true & powerful to the original concept of Olga's. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
Un Département was a French Minimal Wave and Experimental Rock trio formed in 1980 in Orléans and disbanded in 1985. Members were Marcel Kanche (saxophone, vocals), Phil Gaz (bass, drums, guitar, and keyboards) and Bruno Tollard. They released one 7” and one 12” 1981, one tape in 1984 and one LP in 1985 (‘Le Album’). After Un Département disbanded Marcel Kanche was in various punk bands that allowed him share stage with, among others, Les Rita Mitsouko, Pere Ubu, Alan Vega or The Cure.
Label:
Illusion Production – IP 019
Format:
Vinyl, LP
Country:
France
Released:
1985
Style:
Experimental, Avantgarde, New Wave. Minimal Wave, Industrial, Art Rock
Total was the side project of Skullflower guitarist Matthew Bower, and actually predates his more well-known band (Total sprang into existence in 1982). It was originally the group that evolved out of Pure, with much of the early Skullflower's same lineup. Somewhere between 1985-1987, Total mutated into Skullflower, and Total subsequently became Matthew Bower's solo project. At that point it served as a more "ambient" counterpart to Skullflower's wall-of-noise approach; in recent years, however, the dynamic reversed itself until Total's releases were often considerably noisier and more chaotic than Skullflower's. [SOURCE: KORPERSCHWACHE.COM]
Label:
Majora – LP-5755
Format:
Vinyl, LP
Country:
US
Released:
1993
Style:
Noise, Experimental, Death Industrial, Drone
London (Ontario)'s reputation as a sort of stolid, whitebread wasteland was never really fair musically -hell, any city giving birth to and then actually managing to keep the likes of the Nihilist Spasm Band would always have an undercurrent of creative cool. Similarly, for its size that burg spawned a thriving late-seventies/early-eighties punk and post-punk scene with bands like The Demics, Mettle, The Zealots and Sheep Look Up keeping the hipsters entertained.
Sheep Look Up of course took their name from John Brunner's 1972 dystopian novel. Though the band trace their origins to 1982, their line-up really started to crystalize a year later, when new guitarist Gilbert Smith entered the fold. He would be joined by singer Will Power (ne Matt Owen), drummer Greg Moore, bassist Mark Deroux, pianist/saxophonist John Francom and (sometimes) Lisa Patterson on sax and keyboards.
In 1986, with a U-Know award for Best Non-Recording Artist under their belts and songs on the 'Animals Fight Back' (1984) and 'CHRW - London Underground' comps, Sheep Look Up released this self-titled 12" EP, which charted on numerous college stations, as well as drawing attention from as far away as Bath (UK) and Milan. Sheep Look Up is fairly typical of the time, melding gothic gloom, pained vocals, and cavernous production, an effect which dredges up the ghosts of early Joy Division or pre-MTV Modern English. "Falasha" features some rather intense sax, an underrated feat for such an abused instrument, while the twangy guitar licks on "Spaghetti Western" -the finest track here- are curiously more John Barry than Ennio Morricone. [SOURCE: CANUCKISTAN MUSIC]
