DEERHUNTER : Turn It Up, Faggot (2005)

Monomania, the latest album from Atlanta's Deerhunter, was released last week &, despite lingering concerns that they surely couldn't notch up a 4th knock-out LP in a row, it transpires that it's another marvellous effort - & just as good as 2010's benchmark Halycon Digest, in fact.

Labelling itself "nocturnal garage" (cf. "File under: Water", I suppose), Monomania is an oblique, twilit collision of the band's defiled fog of basement-taped distortion (it does sound uncannily like a demo in places) with lyricist Bradford Cox's semi-Burroughsian aggregations of troubled surreality - strung-out, lovesick verses spat though warped mirrors of phantasmal loneliness, crumpled Polaroid memories &, always, a raw & undefinable longing. A lost boy in a mystery vortex. Saudade.

Despite sharing a similar busted cassette fidelity, Monomania has surprisingly little in common with Turn It Up, Faggot, their visceral, erratic debut. For one thing, Cox & his cohorts have developed into much better songwriters in the intervening 8 years (agruably, some of the tracks on T.I.U.F. barely qualify as "songs" anyway). Though primarily eponymous, "turn it up, faggot" is printed in large letters down the sleeve's spine &, by default, has become the record's title. The phrase derives, incidentally/inevitably, from a heckle that was frequently hurled at the band during their early live shows (Cox has previously identified himself as "gay", but currently leads an asexual lifestyle).

T.I.U.F. was released in June 2005 on Atlanta's long-running emo/math label, Stickfigure Records. It was recorded over 2 days the previous July at Helium Studios, in Athens GA. Though Cox has distanced himself from the LP in recent years ("I hate that album, I really do. Liked it when we did it, but we were a young band - just really desperate to put something out - & I don't think we were ready"), ensuring that it's the only Deerhunter album that is not currently in print, it's certainly not the adolescent disaster area he's summarily dismissed it as (imagine: MBV-informed hardcore) & it's worthy of a cursory listen, at the very least.

Young Layer

n.b. Deerhunter were unceasingly prolific during this formative era, & an entire unreleased album from the same year as Turn It Up, Faggot - Carve Your Initials Into the Wall of the Night - has been posted online by the band themselves.

DARLIN' : Shimmies Pour Le Disco (1993-95)

I'm as surprised as you are - more so, probably - that the announcement of an imminent new Daft Punk album (their first since 2005's underwhelming Human After All) should inspire a resumption of activity on I Love Total Destruction after such a protracted lay-off. Stranger things have transpired on-line, no doubt, but really...

While the somewhat daunting previews of their forthcoming Random Access Memories LP suggest that it's likely to be a polarising, & gloriously overreaching, '70s-derived meringue of ostentatious easy listening frommage & magisterial Moroder-indebted synth throb (encompassing, unbelievably, The Muppet Show), the surrounding brouhaha did at least remind me to dig out Thomas Bangalter & Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo's handful of pre-Homework noodlings with the short-lived & under-appreciated (not least by the ex-band members themselves) Darlin'.

Formed in Paris in 1992, Darlin' were a Beach Boys-inspired, guitar-wielding trio featuring Bangalter on bass, Homem-Christo on guitar, & "mystery" third member Laurent Brancowitz on drums. Brancowitz departed to form the riff-friendly Phoenix (whose own new LP has just entered the Billboard Top 200 at #4) when his disillusioned band mates began distractedly experimenting with samplers & loops. Without question, their most widely heard release is their 2-song contribution to Duophonic's Shimmies In Super-8 sampler from 1993, a limited edition double 7" package that also featured Huggy Bear, the long-forgotten Colm, & label impresarios Stereolab themselves. Legendarily, a Melody Maker review of Shimmies... dismissed Darlin's side as "a daft, punky thrash", thereby birthing a monster that would grow, eventually, to exert a profound musical influence over the entire, awestruck planet. Stereolab's track aside, none of the music on Shimmies... has ever been reissued, & an original copy will set you back £70+ nowadays.

Thomas Bangalter: "When we were about 17 or 18, we made this tape which was a cover of a Beach Boys song. We just recorded it at home with guitars & a drum machine. No melody, just the chords. The band Stereolab were coming to Paris & we really liked them because they had these incredibly cool 7" singles, so we gave the tape to a girlfriend who then passed it on to Laetitia (Sadier) from the band. Stereolab put it on a compilation single they made..."

Less well known, however, are the 2 untitled songs that crept out (posthumously, perhaps?) in 1995 on Banana Split's De La Viande Pour Le Disco? cassette compilation, which placed them alongside well-established denizens of the early '90s D.I.Y. tape underground such as Silver Jews, God Is My Co-Pilot, Cornershop, Paste, John Davis, Scaredy Cat, & I'm Being Good (&, oddly, Seefeel). Though one of Darlin's contributions hereon retread the fuzzy lo-fi template of their earlier Duophonic appearance, the other is (rather bravely, on reflection) an embryonic house track that appears to sample Bowie's "Starman" - citation required, naturally. Dismayed &/or perplexed (probably both), Banana Split's curator positioned the latter out of harm's way at the very end of side 1 so that the music ended prematurely as the tape ran out. If he/she has hung onto the original tape or CDR it was sourced from, I expect it'd be worth a fortune now. There's a copy of De La Viande Pour Le Disco? for sale on Discogs as I type - a steal at £1,640! Mon Dieu, et al.

Thomas Bangalter: "The rock'n'roll thing we did was pretty average, I think. It was so brief, maybe 6 months, 4 songs & 2 gigs, & that was it".

Lycée Carnot

_________ : Taschenrechner / Dentaku 12" (1981)

Kraftwerk's "Pocket Calculator" was released throughout 1981 in a bewildering array of different edits & Foreign language versions. Ironically, the original German interpretation has never been widely available outside of their home country, while the lyrics - "Ich bin der musikant mit Taschenrechner in der hand" (literally, "I'm the musician with calculator in hand") - are markedly different to the better known, English alternative. French, Italian & Mexican variations were also completed, though not necessarily issued - the Italian translation, for instance, was created exclusively for use during period television appearances such as this one (Ralk & Wolfgang exchange a sneaky smile at 2:23, you'll notice...).

"Dentaku", is an Oriental rendition that appeared on the flip of the British & Germans 45s, & as a single in it's own right in Japan, of course. Despite it's long term popularity in the U.K., it's sadly never been included as part of any subsequent edition of the Computer World album. The Japanese response to "Dentaku" has always been ecstatic - already voracious Kraftwerk fans in the main, they literally go nuts when Ralf sings in their native tongue.

Minor point of interest: the original German fade is a few seconds longer than any of the other versions, revealing an otherwise unheard &, frankly, slightly clumsy, denouement. Nice to know they might be human after all, hmm?

Mini Calculatore

_________ : Kohoutek - Kometenmelodie 7" (1973)

Kraftwerk's debut single, the impossibly scarce "Kohoutek - Kometenmelodie" (aka "Kohoutek- Comet Melody"), was released - though only very briefly - on Europe's regal Philips label in December 1973. Long unobtainable, it contained radically different, surprisingly tentative versions of 2 tracks that would reappear 12 months later, fully developed, on their landmark Autobahn album. As such, "Kohoutek" occupied an ambiguous musical Hinterland, with Hutter & Schneider, still operating as a hermetic duo, poised somewhere between the "failed" experiments of their first 3 Vertigo LPs & Autobahn's mighty leap towards accessibility. "Kohoutek" was Kraftwerk's first outright flirtation with genuine melody, quietly expanding on the Ralf & Florian LP's wistful chamber ensemble miniatures to concoct something one might've encountered on mid 1970s current affairs television. (Nostalgic resonances, faintly recalled.) Though almost 40 years old, it's esoteric ice cream van synths & primitive electronic percussion still sound utterly beguiling, pre-empting the pastoral electronic whimsy of Cluster's Sowiesoso & the like. The elementary drum machine was a Maestro Rhythm King apparently, the same model that Sly Stone used on There's A Riot Goin' On. The metronomic precision of The Man Machine was, needless to say, still some way off...

Judging by the quaint Cosmonautical sleeve design, it's safe to assume that the single was released to commemorate the appearance of comet C/1973 E1, which was first sighted in March 1973 by Czech astronomer Lubos Kohoutek. It was also observed by the crews of both Skylab & Soyuz 13, making it the first comet to be observed by manned spacecraft. Though hyped by the media as the "comet of the century", Kohoutek didn't perform as spectacularly as expected, hence it's subsequent relegation to astronomical obscurity (not before Sun Ra performed a concert in it's honour in December 1973, however). A "long period" comet, it's not expected to appear for another 75,000 years. Perhaps Ralf & Florian will have finally sanctioned the re-release of their Vertigo back catalogue by then?

Kuiper-Belt Objectivity

n.b. The postcard I've reproduced above was sent by Hutter & Schneider to Neu!'s Klaus Dinger in 1973.

OUR DAUGHTERS WEDDING : Lawnchairs 7" (1980)

Simply one of my favourite 7"s ever, purchased with 50p of own, hard won pocket money from Woolworth's' ex-chart bargain bin. Chances are you may already be familiar with it, though perhaps you've not heard it for a - gasp! - quarter of a century, or more? If not... better late than never, eh?

Originally from San Francisco, Our Daughters Wedding - no apostrophe - began making headway as a prototypical synth trio in New York in 1979, playing New York's legendary Hurrahs club alongside James Chance, Mi-Sex & anybody else they could scrounge a support slot with. "Lawnchairs" was their second single &, like the earlier "Nightlife" 7", was initially released on their own Design label in 1980. An instant U.S. college radio hit, & championed in the U.K. by both Smash Hits & Melody Maker, it was quickly picked up by EMI who commissioned a complete overhaul & re-released it themselves the following Summer. Though it only made #49 on the British charts, it became a massive dancefloor hit both here & in the States, eventually breaking into the Billboard run down & racking up a million+ sales along the way. It's not difficult to see why - loaded with hooks while retaining an aloof, experimental edge, "Lawnchairs" appealed to both the acutely commercial & burgeoning "alternative" music scenes of the period, without debasing it's self-reliant D.I.Y. origins. Crucially, the b-side ("Airline") was almost as good, & both songs remain high water marks in synthpop's convoluted lineage. By virtue of EMI's optimistic pressing run - their label was evidently anticipating a far higher chart placing - affordable, original copies are still relatively easy to track down. Incidentally, ODW were also early advocates of Casio's groundbreaking VL-1 keyboard, which endeared them to many enthusiastic amateur synth boffins (me included) at the time. Many a lonely hour was spent secreted in my pre-teen bedroom, tentatively tapping out Yazoo melodies thereupon with a single, hesitant finger.

Sadly, due either to pressure from their label or a paucity of interesting new ideas, ODW ran out of steam pretty quickly. The subsequent Digital Cowboy EP contained 4 decent enough synth-centric rock songs (5 overseas), but 1982's Moving Windows album was a patchy, compromised affair & EMI dropped them shortly afterwards. Their final release, the U.S.-only "Take Me"/"Machines" 12", didn't appear for another 2 years, by which time they'd come full circle & were back on Design.

The only ODW retrospective to date, 2006's exhaustive Nightlife CD, is already highly sought after, with an exorbitant price tag to match. Early copies were accompanied by an original Design pressing of the "Lawnchairs" 45, returned to them by EMI after their 1981 reissue was released, &"given to you from the band as a way to say thanks for the continued interest in the band". It's that original, superior version I'm posting here.

She's a boy that we like

n.b. An earlier version of this post was published in June 2011.

NICE STRONG ARM : Reality Bath LP (1987)

Nice Strong Arm's debut Reality Bath LP was one of my inaugural shares on this blog, originally posted way back in early 2009...

I can't remember how I originally acquired it, though the sleeve of my copy has a tell-tale, brutal corner nick, suggesting it was a promo copy that Selectadisc had dumped in their already crammed second hand racks. Of course, the late '80s was a boom time for off-centre guitar music, & if a record was cheap, released by Homestead Records, & generally looked a bit odd, I'd more than likely risk a few quid on it, secure in the knowledge I could offload it the following week if my cream remained unclotted. Reality Bath ticked all 3 boxes.

26 years on, I still know virtually nothing about Nice String Arm, merely that they were a shadowy trio of Austin origin (thereby continuing Texas' steadfast psychedelic lineage - from The Elevators & The Red Krayola, via The Butthole Surfers, Scratch Acid, & The Jesus Lizard, to latter day psychotropic explorers like The Black Angels, & Charalambides), & that Reality Bath's eye-catching Allen Burris sleeve art seemed to be everywhere when it first appeared. Presumably still flush from Sonic Youth's early success, Long Island's prolific Homestead Records issued it alongside a seemingly non-stop sequence of Live Skull, Volcano Suns, Phantom Tollbooth, & Death of Samantha albums - quickly cementing the "Homestead sound" (hint: there wasn't one). Despite being granted acres of column inches & advertising space by the more reliable underground music mags of the era (Forced Exposure, Chemical Imbalance, Your Flesh, Option, et al), Reality Bath was lost in the vinyl melée & quickly achieved a forlorn bargain bin omnipotence. Tellingly, I've never met anybody else who owns a copy, so I assume, despite it's bottom dollar "remaindered" status, virtually no-one bought it at the time...

Though they'd release a further 2 albums, neither equaled the often downright peculiar Reality Bath for bent-minded, quasi-grunge hallucinogenica. It's finest moments still remind me of Helios Creed's earliest solo records - a bedraggled, patchouli-reeking, backwoods Hendrix figure, staggering out of a drug-warped American south in oil-stained bells & a tatty Guru Guru t-shirt. It's never been granted a CD issue either (a 2-fer with 1988's Mind Furnace would've made complete sense) so, like many outstanding Homestead records of the period, it sadly slipped off radar some time ago.

Everyday an ambulance

ETON CROP : Gay Boys On The Battlefield EP (1983)

Taking their name from a severe, slicked-down haircut favoured by England's educated gentry (& later adopted by singer / dancer Josephine Baker), Eton Crop formed in 1979 as an Undertones-inspired pop-punk band in Nieuwkoop, Holland. Anglophiles from the outset, their lyrics freqeuntly referenced British culture (New Conservatives, Bob Monkhouse, Bell Fruit tokens, et al), & mined similar sonic territory to The Fall, The Mekons, & early Gang of Four.

1983's "Gay Boys on the Battle Field" 12", their third single, was the last (& best) of their initial, post-punk influenced releases. Issued c/o their own, short-lived Bigger Bank Balance label, it was produced by Jon Langford, a founding member of both The Three Johns & The Mekons. Returning the favour, The Mekons occasionally performed this e.p.'s "Roger Troudman" live - as can be heard on Hits & Corruption's "all killer, no filler" Skin & Bone cassette from 1985 (a crucial document of a near-forgotten musical era). Somewhat inevitably, I first heard "Gay Boys on the Battlefield" on John Peel's show, & wasn't entirely sure what to make of it if I'm honest - I was still immersed in New Order's elemental strum und drang back then, so Eton Crop's comparatively light-hearted (though, thematically, no less morose) anti-war chant sounded very odd indeed, & was certainly a bit of an eye (& ear) opener. In common with many primary bands of the "proto-Shambling" period, Eton Crop's mid-'80s back catalogue has never been reissued, so if you want to own this intriguing trio of songs you'll have to fork out for an original copy of the 12" (don't panic, it's still affordable - I picked a copy up for under a tenner a couple of years ago). Peel was evidently very fond of them as they recorded five sessions for him in all.

Immediately hereafter, having spotted a potentially lucrative niche, Eton Crop evolved into a very British-sounding indie-pop band, virtually a Les Trois Jeans homage act in fact - writing catchy guitar-driven songs of a similar persuasion, commissioning Jon Langford sleeve art, & even borrowing their legendary drum machine (as did the nascent Sisters of Mercy & March Violets, of course). They'd also record a terrific cover of The Nightingales' "Paraffin Brain" at this juncture (they missed a trick by not releasing it as a single, I reckon), & tirelessly toured the U.K. a staggering seven times. Later still, they'd change direction again, recording a possibly ill-advised cover version of The Human League's "Don't You Want Me" (yikes) before pursuing a chart-friendly, dance-inspired sound. Predictably, therefore, it's their earlier, left of centre sound I'm most fond of. It's a shame they didn't complete an L.P. prior to their transformation, it would've been a minor classic, I suspect?

Finally, the customary completist's plea: if anybody can help me out with copies of their debut Timmy Barker is a Coward 7" (1980), or any of their experimental cassette releases, please get in touch.

Give it some clog