Cultural Terror

Roughly sixty-five million years ago towards the close of the Cretaceous period, I dabbled in cassette tapes of noisy electronic shite. Noisy electronic shite was the internet when most of you lot were still agonising over Optimus Prime's latest bout of existential nausea in the Transformers comic, and you were probably also listening to the Electric Light Orchestra and watching Michael J. Fox films on a VCR the size of Battersea power station, yer twat.

Amongst the more enthusiastically offensive of my many, many correspondents of the time was the excellent Trev Ward - a lovely bloke in person, and the man behind a tape label known as Zeal SS in 1987 or thereabouts. The SS stood for Severe Systems, naturally. I released a couple of Trev's tapes on my own tape label, and he put out one of mine - a live recording to which he gave the title Death in a Milan Square.

This double cassette compilation was a label sampler comprising excerpts from everything that was available at the time. I'm featured - doing a fairly poor impersonation of Whitehouse as recorded in the sculpture studio at my college in Leamington Spa; as are ESP Kinetic - musical organ of the famous Neil Campbell, Thee Unkommuniti - Tim Gane's group prior to Stereolab, Final - which was the bloke from Godflesh, Asepisis - which was my mate Jez from school making a noise on my stereo, the Apostles, Ashenden, Grey Wolves, and others you may recall if you have a long memory and were into the noisy electronic shite; and it's available for free download here.

I say noisy electronic shite, but the compilation is actually quite varied, even musical providing you're not expecting the Monkees. Some of it may appear extreme to the uninitiated, but it should probably be remembered that this was the decade in which a badly photocopied picture of a concentration camp was probably confronting society with its own inherent hypocrisy whilst hoping to upset you as much as possible, rather than suggesting that concentration camps had necessarily ever been a good thing. I realise there may have been some room for ambiguity in more recent years, particularly amongst those on the fringes of power electronics and certain fat Nazis who seem to be of the belief that the wrong side won the second world war, but if there was any of that here, and I'm pretty sure there wasn't, then I remain unaware of its presence in case that needs stating. We were young and stupid, and it was supposed to be repellant. That was the point.

...and I'm surprised at how good it is to hear this stuff again.

White Stained Covers

About a million years ago, back when I lived in Lewisham, Mark Crumby of Impulse fanzine told me that he was putting together a book about the power electronics group Whitehouse. This was to be accompanied by a free cassette of cover versions of Whitehouse tracks, and I was asked if I would like to contribute. Mark explained that the covers could be fairly liberal interpretations, and that the point was to have fun with the material. I mentioned this to my friend Andrew Cox as we convened for our evening session in The White Horse, and he was very much tickled by the idea, and thus were born Stan Presley & the Glitterdust All-Stars for the express purpose of failing to see the humour in Rock and Roll, a track originally recorded for Birthdeath Experience, Whitehouse's 1980 album and one of the few that doesn't sound exactly the same as the other two thousand they have since recorded. I also turded out two further tracks, and Andrew played guitar on one of these, but I can't remember which as I don't have the cassette with me, and I haven't heard them in two decades. This is also why I'm not going to name my other two tracks, in case it turns out that they were shite after all. Apparently William Bennet of Whitehouse was somewhat bemused by the cassette when it emerged. Perhaps he thought we had failed to treat his oeuvre with due reverence, or perhaps he was simply angry because our versions were much better than all that ranty ravey I'm going to feel your bottom! stuff of his. Actually, that's probably it, I should think.

Anyway, White Stained Covers has been reissued, for some reason, albeit as a limited run of numbered copies by the Bleak Netlabel in conjunction with something called aufnahme+wiedergabe.

In 1993, a group of electronic troubadours set about writing and recording a tribute to their favourite band, Whitehouse. Amongst them, ex-Whitehouse member Glenn Michael Wallis, founder of industrial pioneers Konstruktivists, former stagehand for Throbbing Gristle. The recordings were given away with the book Still Going Strong, a collection of interviews, reviews and newspaper snippets about Whitehouse and their legendary live actions. Created, edited and published by Mark Crumby's Impulse label, it has become a massively sought after collector's item - the book, that is; not the tape. The tape never got the attention it deserves, and everything around it seems to be embarrassing for the involved persons. It took twenty years to unveil the mysteries to it, to identify the names and persons behind this labour of love. While considered a parody by many, including William Bennett, we feel that this highly underrated work by dedicated artists should be brought to a new generation of power electronic kids.

So there you have it. The tape is not yet available, but is available for pre-order, possibly from this place, or maybe from their friends. Ordinarily I would wait for it to be on sale before plugging such an item, but it'll probably be sold out by then, given that this is how such things tend to go and it's now possible to sell a bit of paper with the word industrial written on it on eBay for thousands of pounds.

History of factor X (1983​/​1994) as remembered

Probably bit of an esoteric one this, but I have - much to my surprise - turned up on History of factor X (1983​/​1994) as remembered, a downloadable album thingy for which you name your price - so it's free if you want, or more if you feel inclined to donate some money that Shaun may have food on his table and shoes on his feet. I'm playing guitar on the track in question, which dates from 1994 back when we were sending each other tapes of stuff. The music of factor X has always been adventurous, tending towards experiments, humour, noise, and the like, but with a common touch, I suppose you might call it - that is to say, even when it sounds like cement mixers falling down a hill, it's composed for the sheer joy of sound, rather than so as to frown at you whilst wearing a black leather coat.

Download History of factor X from bandcamp

Eggs, Beans & Mayonnaise CD

In September 1980, as I was about to turn fifteen, I formed a band with three of my friends - Pete Avery, Graham Pierce and Eggy Webb. I could play one string tunes on the acoustic guitar Santa had brought the previous Christmas, notably a slightly lob-sided version of the intro to 'Babylon's Burning' by The Ruts. Graham was a little better and could form bar chords on his brother's acoustic guitar providing you gave him time to get his fingers into the right shape. Pete and Eggy couldn't really play anything, but Pete had quite a good voice and was probably funnier than the rest of us, and Eggy just seemed to have the right attitude. We amplified the guitars with an Action Man radio to give them a distorted punky sound, used cardboard boxes for drums, and recorded cover versions alongside our own puerile "compositions" (if that isn't too generous a term) on cassette whenever somebody's mum pissed off to the shops and we could get away with making an unholy racket.

Calling ourselves the Pre-War Busconductors, we spent the next two years churning out cassette after cassette of shambolic children's TV themes with unsavoury lyrics, sarcastic tributes to Garry Bushell, and numerous fairly predictable songs with titles like 'We're Going to the Bog'. We improved musically, but not really by much because whatever the point may have been, that wasn't it. Our band was either a work of fractured and poorly executed genius, or a complete waste of time depending on personal preference and probably whether one was actually a member. By now you should probably be able to tell whether this sounds like something you need in your life. If you read Mojo magazine and have opinions on Rod Stewart's back catalogue, then the Pre-War Busconductors probably aren't for you.

For some reason, Pumf Records collected the best of the Pre-War Busconductors a few years ago, putting these tracks out as a reasonably priced (four quid in the UK) CDR; so it's nothing new, but this is the first time it's occurred to me to advertise. With a novel soon to be published, I will almost certainly be extremely famous by this time next year, so this is your chance to get in on the ground floor, if you see what I mean.

Eggs, Beans & Mayonnaise is available here (the catalogue number is PUMF427 - it's about half way down the page) in the event of anyone being stupid enough to want a copy; and whilst we're all here, Pumf Records is one of the longest running survivors of the 1980s punky DIY cassette scene and is as such almost certainly deserving your support, so you might like to have a look around their extensive catalogue of cranky yet wonderful stuff. Of what I've heard, I'd actually recommend most of it, but some of the Ceramic Hobs and Howl in the Typewriter releases are particularly good, and I'd go so far as to describe the Ceramic Hobs' Straight Outta Rampton as a masterpiece.

We now return you to your regular programme.