The Comedy of Errors: 70 Gwen Party - Auto Killer UK/Smash [Peel Session] (20 June 1992)

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“Stupendous...I’ve said this before, if these people were from Minneapolis, we’d be going mad for them” John Peel during the 70 Gwen Party session broadcast on 20/6/92.

On his 2 January 1993 show, Peel read out a long list of bands which had been tipped for success in the coming year by the writers of Melody Maker.  Some of these bands did indeed go on to lasting acclaim and success (Radiohead and Jamiroquai), others rode the wave for a while (D:Ream, Apache Indian and Transglobal Underground) while the majority remain cult footnotes (The Moles, The Mabuses, Cords etc).  Later in the programme, he played Knee Deep in Evil by 70 Gwen Party.  Afterwards, he pledged unwavering support for the band given that they hadn’t featured in any lists for bands to watch in ‘93.  He would remain good to his word up until Victor N’Dip and Lurgin Pin called it a day in 1997.

Based on the Peel Session that 70 Gwen Party recorded on 26 May 1992, I would surmise that part of the reason why no-one was flying the flag for them in the music papers was probably down to the fact that they weren’t the type of outfit who could have a neat label attached to them or their music.  The best I can come up with is hard rock/funk/electro-clash.  Peel suspected that one his favourite magazines of the period, Your Flesh, would describe their sound as “Experimento pound-thump”.  However, you describe them, their music is an almost unique mixture of punishing rock and danceable grooves.

Another reason why 70 Gwen Party may have remained a secret in musical circles is that their music is unremittingly dark, ominous and chaotic.  The band wanted success and wider recognition, but their music was never going to make a daytime playlist, and if it did, one could only imagine the onslaught of furious calls jamming a Radio 1 switchboard.  The two session tracks I heard on the 20/6/92 show bring together this blend of darkness, noise, energy, fury and fear.  Just as Bivouac had done in the same programme, we’re presented with tracks which sound like the musical scores for lost extreme horror films.  I don’t think I’ve heard anything in quite a while that is conveys such a sense of danger and savagery.  It seemed out of place in 1992, but is perfect for 2020.

Auto Killer UK starts off with a ringing alarm bell and it becomes increasingly clear that we are a long way from Trumpton.  Something terrible and massive is coming, like an alien invasion.  Thanks to the thunderous synth notes, one can imagine the Auto Killers stalking the land and pursuing their victims relentlessly to dreadful ends.  The quieter mid-section evokes a resistance movement being put together to combat these killers, albeit with periodic needs to flee as the alarm bell sounds again.  Ending on a low, growling, unresolved note the track suggests that the human race  may be doomed against these machines and that the forces of dehumanisation will win.
The cackling laughter that opens Smash, sounding like it comes from the cocktail party from hell, segues into what sounds like a demented reimagining of Rio by Duran Duran.  Smash is a song of revolution, a revolution designed to overthrow the bourgeois participants of the cocktail party but which hinges on the sample declaring at 1:58, “The revolution is now complete. We have no more use for that song.  See that it is forbidden.” And as the synth eddies upwards, so the mocking laughter of the overthrown continues behind it.  In the 70 Gwen Party worldview, the revolution eats its own so as to create a new layer of elite and providing those who were torn down with a final laugh either from exile or the grave.  This thinking was out of step in post-Cold War 1992, but appears horribly prescient now.

It’s the way that 70 Gwen Party combine a lack of hope with such head-poundingly danceable energy that makes them so cherishable and ultimately so important.  The world is fucked, burned and dangerous and they will soundtrack our inevitable dance of death towards the flames.  It was tragic for their prospects at the time, but I hope they find some consolation in the fact that their time is now - with the world currently stuck in a handbasket and bringing Hell into being all around us.

The complete Peel Session is on YouTube.  I can recommend the third track, Stop, Resurrect and Fire, not least because it samples from Hellraiser.  Second track, Howard Hughes is a rare dud in which time seemed to hang so heavy that by the end I thought I was danger of looking like its subject.

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