Even though they couldn't really play and never released anything besides one track on 'Bullshit Detector One', The Eratics (before that they were known as The Pox, The Dogclips, The Clones and some other names) were still a part of the 'Anarcho' punk scene with their intelligent ideas and connections with Crass. Formed somewhere around 1979, The Eratics were bassist Terence 'Stringy' Castle, guitarist Martin 'Snout' Seward and drummer Kevin 'Bondage' Lester on drums while they were all in school in Waltharn Cross. After seeing the first wave of punk play around the United Kingdom including Crass, it inspired them to get up and just start a band, no matter how bad some of them were at playing instruments.
The Sinyx formed in the Summer of 1979 and played their first gig at the Focus Youth Centre in early 1980. The bands first line up consisted of Alien on Vocals, Paul Brunt on Guitar, Auntie on Bass and Vints on Drums. The bands name was based on the name of the ancient Greek movement of anti-societal rebels 'The Cynics'. They quickly attracted a fervent local following amongst the regions Punks and Skins, and began playing concerts further afield with groups sharing a similar outlook, including The Epileptics, Flux of Pink Indians, The Eratics and local band The Icons. [SOURCE: SOUTHEND PUNK ROCK HISTORY]
Die Haut were a German Post-Punk band from Berlin. The band originally planned to play strictly instrumental music. But during their career they recorded much of their music with guest vocalists. The only constant member was Christoph Dreher who worked also as author, director and filmmaker.
Guest vocalists live and on recordings include: Nick Cave, Kid Congo Powers, Anita Lane, Debbie Harry, Mick Harvey, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Blixa Bargeld, Lydia Lunch, Alexander Hacke, Arto Lindsay, Kim Gordon, Cristina Martinez, Laurie Tomin, Alan Vega, Louisa Bradshaw, Danielle de Picciotto and others. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
Chronics were a
Punk / New Wave band from Cleveland, Ohio formed in 1978. Members
were Bill Elliott (guitar, also member of The Wild Giraffes, another New Wave band from Cleveland), Dave Deluca (guitar,
active in the late-1970s to mid-1980s in Cleveland bands such Radio Alarm Clocks a.k.a. The Clocks), Dan Didonato (drums) and Tim Dorman (bass). They only relased the 'Test Tube Baby' single in the Nuclear Records imprint (also the only release by that label). "Test Tube Baby" is a good punk song with a UK vibe while "Calling All Cardinals" is art punk with a Devo sense.
Label: Nuclear Records – NUKE 101, Nuclear Records – NUKE 102
All the Bone Orchard stuff prior to this EP is very, very indebted to The Birthday Party. So much so that, if you were to mention Bone Orchard to someone, you'd almost always use The Birthday Party as a point of comparison.
But not here.
There are a couple of tracks here that sound like triple-time Stooges tracks. "Eyesore" either sounds exactly like "T.V. Eye" sped way up or IS "T.V. Eye" sped way up, and "Penthouse Poultry" sounds like Stooge-abilly. Also, instead of the Nick Cave-ian snarls, the singer's doing a sort of Iggy Pop/Joni Mitchell hybrid thing here that works, somehow.
Oh, and there are also saxophones on a few tracks, but most noticeably on "Dead Eighteen", which is a sort of hyper-syncopated goth/funk/free jazz thing.
It's an incredibly interesting EP. [SOURCE: RATE YOUR MUSIC]
On their sole Flying Nun album, the avant- punk trio Alpaca Brothers created a paranoid and edgy brand of rock similar to labelmates The Gordons and Bill Direen. This recording from '84 is a precursor to their later incarnation in the '90s as Trash, where they continued to sound like a combination of The Velvet Underground and Motorhead as they had defined it a decade earlier. 'Legless' is antipodean slang for drunkenness, and the wall of Joy Division-like guitar noise cascade and skittering propulsive rhythm is certainly intoxicating. A post-punk obscurity that holds up over time as one of the more muscular releases on the Flying Nun label, a stable where delicacy and sophistication flourishes in the indie guitar world, it is curious that throughout the years would throw out wild card like this. Having the angular energy of Gang of Four style art punk, this is anomaly in the catalog along with The Dead C's 'D.R.503'. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
After an incursion in a rock & roll group during his adolescence (Los Presumidos), Javier Corcobado (born in Frankfurt in 1963 and based in Madrid) formed in 1982 429 Engaños, a highly experimental band that lasted a couple of years. The group was completed by Gerardo Romera, Javier Rodrigo, Charly and Manuel Presas.
They were clearly influenced by bands like The Residents, Cabaret Voltaire, Tuxedoomoon or 23 Skidoo.
They worked on scores, but always leaving room for the random component that gave their music a certain air of controlled chaos. What was written for drums was executed for the keyboard. In the change of roles the difference was sought. At that time it was important, and decisively artistic, not to sound absolutely like anyone else. It is not difficult to imagine that, in those outbursts of strong creativity, more than one believed himself to be the legitimate heir of the Dadaists for a day.
In the midst of the spiral of the "Movida", 429 Engaños remembers as their most outstanding concert the one they offered at the main meeting point of the cream of the crop of the time, Rock-Ola, in May 1983.
That same year, Radio 3 broadcasted a couple of songs from their demo: "¿Qué es un Sentimiento?" and "Historia de Amor". After some more demos and personnel changes, the group was renamed Mar otra Vez, and later, Demonios Tus Ojos.
Corcobado has continued his solo career with a first album in 1989, 'Agrio Beso', interspersed with the creation of the group Corcobado y Los Chatarreros de Sangre y Cielo between 1991 and 1995, with whom he released three more albums. He has also been producer of several groups (Esclarecidos, among others), lyricist (Los Enemigos, Clónicos, Luz Casal, Andrés Calamaro) poet and novelist with several published books. [SOURCE: GRUPOS NACIONALES NUEVA OLA 80]
Label: Not On Label (429 Engaños Self-released) – none
Vita Nova
was a French Industrial / Experimental / Electronic label of the 80's that issued this compilation in 1984, comprising artists such Savage Republic, Étant Donnés, Nurse With Wound, Bruno Cossano, Deviation Social, Die Tödliche Doris, Victor Nubla and Angst.
Hailing from the Los Angeles underground of the 1980s, Savage Republic forged an astonishing reputation for themselves with their legendary performances. Their brand of ritualistically tribal exhibitions blurred the boundaries of Post-Punk and Industrial music. Their music incorporates minimalist bass rumbles, exotic and/or militaristic drumming, Arabic melodies, primal chants and even a bit of surf guitar.
Étant Donnés is an experimental/industrial duo formed in Grenoble in 1980 by brothers Eric Hurtado (born in 1959) and Marc Hurtado (born in 1962), who were originally from Rabat, Morocco.
Étant Donnés have collaborated with with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Alan Vega, Michael Gira, Mark Cunningham, Lydia Lunch and Christophe.
Nurse With Wound, often stylised as NWW, is a British experimental music project, formed in 1978 by Steven Stapleton, John Fothergill and Heman Pathak. In 1979 Heman left the group, and in 1981 it effectively became a solo project of Steven Stapleton, with a variety of assisting musicians over the years.
Focusing on aesthetic ideas and philosophies that began with the Surrealist movement, Stapleton has referred to the project as a contemporary extension of Surrealism and the project has been referred to as 'purveyors of sinister whimsy to the wretched.'
Deviation Social was a multi-media Industrial/Experimental 'group' that was active from 1981-1986. Monte Cazazza was an unofficial member, assisting in the two San Francisco performances.
Die Tödliche Doris ("The Lethal Doris"; a pun on "tödliche Dosis" meaning lethal dose) was a performance art and music group based in West Berlin from 1980 to 1987. Founded by band members Wolfgang Müller (born 1957) and Nikolaus Utermöhlen (1958–1996) and later joined by Käthe Kruse (born 1958), Chris Dreier,Dagmar Dimitroff, and Tabea Blumenschein, the group was known for their anarchic performances and constantly changing sound, willfully attempting to move away from notions of organised music into something akin to what the Deconstructionist philosophical movement had done with writing and text.
After band member Wolfgang Müller published the book "Geniale Dilletanten" ("Ingenious Dilletantes", mind the dilettante spelling) for the MERVE publishing house, which focused on French and German postmodernist/post-structuralist philosophy, critics began to apply that title to the band (along with similar artists like Frieder Butzmann, Einstürzende Neubauten, and Malaria!).
Victor Nubla (Barcelona, 28 de julio de 1956-Ib., 31 de marzo de 2020) was one of the original members of the laboratory group MACROMASSA, founded in 1976, experimenting with electronic modifications of the wind instruments and voice through the advanced or unknown ways of rock, jazz, industrial music, noise or minimal. More than 40 recordings and hundreds of concerts are the product of those years. His solo work started in 1980, founding the Laboratorio de Musica Desconocida ("Unknown Music Laboratory") and working in improvisation, electronic experiments, soundscape, installations and music for cinema, video, theatre and contemporary dance. Wrote the book "La Nueva Música, Del Industrial al Tecno-Pop" with the alias of Adolfo Marín, published in 1984 by Editorial Teorema.
Angst is Erik Vloeberghs, a Belgian artist (lyrics, synthesizer) who was active in several nihilistic experimental music bands in the 80's.
His writings have been extensively published in Force Mental, a magazine published by Club Moral (an Antwerp venue where numerous exhibitions, performances, concerts, lectures and film-shows were organised. Also linked with the noise band Club Moral) and which deals with 'excesses of all kinds'.
He continues to work as a civil servant, responsible for the website and digital newsletter of the Belgian National Institute of Statistics.
Werkbund is an enigmatic industrial / experimental band from Hamburg, Germany. The sound deals mainly with marine tales and myths from Northern Germany. So far it is not known who the artists are. It has been guessed that Felix Kubin and Uli Rehberg and other artists from Hamburg might be involved. Some people pretend that both Werkbund and Mechthild Von Leusch involve the collaboration of Asmus Tietchens and Uli Rehberg, though Asmus Tietchens repeatedly and vehemently denied any participation in the band. [SOURCE: MONOTON]
Label: Walter Ulbricht Schallfolien – WULP 007
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Numbered
This album deserves way more attention than what it receives. It’s not overly long in terms of number of tracks only capping at six of Verve’s earliest shoegaze monsters, but every minute of this album is staggering. The bass sets a fantastic groove on tracks like "Slide Away" and "Gravity Grave", but the effects on the guitars on those two tracks make them incredibly special. This version of "Gravity Grave" is absolutely electric and the noisy-ness that the studio version doesn’t have takes it to another level. "One Way to Go" is another track that blows its studio version out of the water and it’s drop in the latter half of the track gives the goosebumps.
The next track is a very rare one called "South Pacific" that has some of the best guitar work on the entire album from Nick McCabe and this track feels like it really explodes in between the verses. "Already There" is another blistering track similar in vein to it’s album-mate "Slide Away" and is another very strong addition to the album. Finally we have a live version of the early classic Verve track "She’s a Superstar". This is essential listening for anyone who’s a fan of shoegaze. [RATE YOUR MUSIC]
Label: Jolly Roger Recordings – Jolly Roger 2
Format:
Vinyl, LP, Limited Edition
Country: US
Released: 1993
Style: Space Rock, Psychedelic Rock,
Shoegaze, Neo-Psychedelia, Space Rock Revival, Noise Rock, Post-Rock, Dream Pop
Tracklist:
A1 Slide Away 6:02
A2 Gravity Grave 8:26
A3 One Way To Go 5:58
B1 South Pacific 3:59
B2 Already There 4:45
B3 She's A Superstar 6:45
Notes:
Live tracks recorded in London and New York in 1992.
Who are The Underlings? No one else but The S-Haters. After a change of drummer, the band decided to change the name as well as they felt it wasn't appropriate for the music they made. But the sound is not quite different as The S-Haters records on Midnight Music, it tangles between goth rock & post punk music. 'Fatal Purpose' is the sole full length of The Underlings. Before this one, there's the 'That Little Girl' 12". The band split up for good after the album but a 12" called 'Centurion' was released as the epitaph of the band. [SOURCE: LAST.FM]
