A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Therapy? - Perversonality (29 November 1992)

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After a couple of recent instances where my teenaged affection for Therapy? wan’t strong enough to include tracks of theirs played by John Peel across the autumn/winter of 1992 on this blog, it comes as something of a relief to be able to embrace Perversonality like a newly met, long-lost friend.  If that analogy sounds like an oxymoron, I should explain that I had never heard Perversonality before hearing it on this edition of John Peel’s Music but straightaway it reminded me  of exactly why I liked Therapy? back in the day. 

All the elements of classic Therapy? are there: strong opening guitar line, funky bass, drumming which feels like a character in its own right, Andy Cairns with another cosplaying serial killer style vocal, lyrical themes of emotional conflict Love you and I hate you in the same breath etc, only for a definitive verdict to be arrived at by the 2:10 mark and which heralds a rapidly building sense of anguish/mania; the aural equivalent of someone prepping themselves for a suicide attempt. This is followed by a burst of guitar which sounds like emergency room procedures desperately trying to bring the victim back to life, only to level off and guide the listener safely through to a sampled testimony from what sounds like a support group meeting for emotionally vulnerable people.  Therapy?’s use of samples was always one of their most fascinatingly striking qualities because, as is the case here, it helped to ground their songs into some kind of relatable reality.  The sample used here feels perfectly in sync with a track whose object of affection and disgust appears to be Cairns himself.  People often got hurt, rejected and damaged within the narrative of Therapy?’s songs, and that damage was often turned inward.  

It’s naughty of me to describe Cairns’s vocal style as cosplaying. Regardless of whether he sang from experience or as a persona, his voice was the sound of scars which were either inflicted on other people’s bodies or his own psyche. For a brief period, Therapy?’s music helped me to both land and absorb my own blows, trivial though they were. Perversonality is the first track of theirs that I’ve heard in a long time which reminds me of how valuable that was for me.

Video courtesy of Therapy?

All lyrics are copyright of their authors.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Codeine - Realize (29 November 1992)

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This was a knife-edge, borderline inclusion and I can well imagine that if I ever had put it onto a metaphorical mixtape, I’d be impatient with it 9 plays out of every 10.  Not to mention the fact that the title is spelled incorrectly - but I’ll have to go along with their foolishness this time, I guess.

Whether they wanted the label or not, New York band Codeine were the anointed kings of slowcore in the early 1990s, a fact which John Peel would wryly reference when cueing Realize up on this programme.  What seems to be apparent is that Codeine were pretty faithful to the tenets of slowcore during their 5 year  career.  Not that they lacked range, they could do loud and they could do strange, but they never really did fast.  This meant that they provided a valuable offshoot to the prevailing sound of American rock music in the early 1990s: all the angst and introspection of grunge but without the harsh, abrasiveness of Nirvana et al. This really was music for people who kept the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun all day, every day.  There’s no rage here, only melancholy mixed with fear, exhaustion and fragility.  If you sprinkle some sugar and food colouring on it, you’ve virtually got twee pop.  For myself, I can only take it in small doses and that’s still the case even after listening to - and enjoying in parts - Codeine’s debut album, Frigid Stars LP (1990), which FACT Magazine, the same people who felt that Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was the best album of the 90s, also found space to include on their list.  It was placed at 97th on their list which is where I would put it if someone held a gun to my head and told me to compile a list of what I felt the best albums of the 90s were but ensuring that I put Frigid Stars LP on there somewhere. I’d likely have it between Left of the Middle by Natalie Imbruglia and One Love by Delakota.

Realize was intended to be part of Codeine’s follow-up album to Frigid Stars LP, but in 1992 there seemed to be something in the air which stopped bands from successfully recording sophomore efforts after making their names with commercially or critically successful debut albums. British rock fans of a certain musical persuasion will be able to tell you the story - like an old folk tale passed down these last 29 years - of how Blur tried and failed to record a follow up to their Top 10 debut album, Leisure, and nearly suffered a premature dissolution as well as squandering EMI’s time and budget.  Well, through an odyssey of studios dotted around America’s East Coast and on a tighter budget than Blur’s, Codeine went through the same fruitlessly, abortive process thanks to a mixture of bad luck, bad decisions, perfectionism and technical incompatibility between the sounds they heard in their heads and the sounds the studios actually made.  However, unlike Blur, who went back to the drawing board, resurrected the best of the content they had tried to record in 1992 and supplemented it with newly written songs to produce Modern Life is Rubbish in 1993, Codeine did have enough completed material from the sessions to put them into an EP which they titled Barely Real and which featured Realize as both its opening track and breakout single release.

With its unchanging tempo, Realize feels like a first draft idea, but what the band achieve successfully with it is to filter through the track a tangible sense of ennui and drift that, for all my carping about it, successfully draws the listener in to its unhappy mood.  I can sense just how comforting the wash of John Engle’s guitar and the gentle implorations of Stephen Immerwahr’s vocal must have been to listeners who either found the weight of the world too heavy to bear most days or as implied by the line, Look at me just with your eyes were desperately, shyly trying to catch the attention of the love of their life.  People needed the protection which a track like Realize offered.  It would have been churlish to deny it to them back then, and equally churlish to deny it to them now.

Video courtesy of tommygunx.  Lyrics are copyright of their authors.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Aphex Twin - Schottkey 7th Path (29 November 1992)

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Having started 1992 by releasing one of the year’s most striking 12-inch singles, Richard D. James ended the year by releasing his debut album. Seven years in the making, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was a collection of ambient electronica tracks recorded by James, predominantly live and in many instances, on nothing more complex than a cassette.  It took the ambient templates set down by the likes of Brian Eno and incorporated loose elements of acid house and techno - arguably the two key non-verbal  musical genres to emerge over the period 1985-92 - with a subtlety and immense technical precision which helped birth a new sub-genre: Intelligent Dance Music (IDM).  Having listened to the album for the first time yesterday, I found myself reflecting that the tone of the album sounded familiar, mainly because so many other artists jumped in on the sound in the intervening years.  For a viewpoint on why Selected Ambient Works 85-92 was regarded as a gamechanger on its release, I recommend reading factmag.com’s selection of the 100 best albums of the 1990s, not least because in their view, it was the best album of the decade.

On its own, Schottkey 7th Path is a pleasant, contemplative piece of music.  It conjures a dubby, slightly jungalist vibe and on a mixtape, would represent a welcome moment of breathing space.  Heard in context of the album, it sits between  We Are the Music Makers, another track which showed just what an influence Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory had on dance musicians. and Ptolemy.  These are two of the more upbeat tracks on the album and both invite the listener to lose themselves in the collective consciousness of the crowd. Schottkey 7th Path provides the lifeline to one’s individuality among the masses. It’s an aural Blue Room for trippers to decompress before throwing oneself back onto the dancefloor.  If I ever find myself back in a job where I have to commute into the city and charge around in the pursuit of a living, I may make this part of the breakfast time playlist.  A moment of individual calm before submersion into the motorway or train carriage.

Video courtesy of R & S Records

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Automatic Dlamini feat. PJ Harvey - Putty (29 November 1992)

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John Peel’s programmes could get people to overcome all sorts of biases and ignorant attitudes towards music.  Although there may be genres of music that one wouldn’t rush to embrace, Peel’s playlists invariably meant that there would always be something that would catch your attention and cause you to reassess your attitude towards the merits of that genre.  Likewise, Peel shows could also help you to look more closely at artists and performers that you may previously have been dismissive of or inattentive towards.  Such is the case here for me with John Parish and his band, Automatic Dlamini.

When I fell for the charms of PJ Harvey in 1995, John Parish was part of the picture and sound that helped sweep me along through the television appearances that Harvey made that year promoting tracks from her To Bring You My Love album, a record which Parish had co-produced with her.  Standing to her left, in classic lead musician position and either playing the relentless, unstoppable riff on Meet Ze Monsta or playing the shaker on Working For the Man, he clearly played as much of a part in constructing the soundscapes and ambience of Harvey’s music in that period as she did herself.  It shouldn’t be forgotten just how much of a stylistic shift To Bring You My Love was to those who remembered the PJ Harvey trio

sound of Dry and Rid of Me.  But it paid off, critically and commercially, and this may have been what persuaded  Island Records to sign off on their next PJ Harvey release being a collaboration between herself and Parish, in which he would set her lyrics to his music. It may also have been the label realising that this would probably be the only way in which they were liable to get any kind of timely follow up record from Harvey who had run herself into the ground during 1995 touring To Bring You My Love with the result that she ended up being signed off sick at the start of December 1995 and cancelling a string of live shows through that month, including the last show of the year in Bristol, which would have been the first ever “proper” gig that I was going to attend.  In the circumstances, sharing the load on a new album seemed like a sensible idea.

When the album, Dance Hall at Louse Point was released in September 1996, I learnt a little more about the ties that had bound Harvey and Parish together and how Harvey had started her musical career by joining Parish’s band, Automatic Dlamini. He had clearly been a huge influence on her, yet if you had said to me then, “Would you like to listen to an Automatic Dlamini album so you can hear a bit more of John Parish’s music?” I’d have probably made my excuses that I had something more urgent to do.  And this would have been purely down to snobbish incuriosity on my part.  I didn't mind hearing him working behind PJ Harvey, but why would I have wanted to hear him on his own?  She had the profile, he didn’t. And if he was so influential, why wasn’t his profile higher?  Oh, such shallow thinking and as ever, thank God for John Peel providing an opportunity to learn some musical lessons which I would otherwise have been too ignorant to do.

Formed in 1982, Automatic Dlamini look to have been a frustrating band to have followed if you were hoping for regular material from them. Their first releases including debut album, The D is For Drum came out during 1986/87, but 5 years had passed by the time their second album, From a Diva to a Diver appeared.  Not that they were inactive during that time. Harvey joined the band in 1988 and played on an unreleased album titled Here, Catch, Shouted His Father.  But she left in early 1991 together with drummer, Rob Ellis, although she contributed to several tracks on From a Diva to Diver including Putty, which with its brushed drums, slide-acoustic guitar and dustbowl blues tone feels like a warm up for tracks on Dance Hall at Louse Point such as Rope Bridge Crossing.  Lyrically, it has clear resonances towards the kind of music they were to make together on future projects with the sculptress of the song putting together the model of a feckless man and making cuts and slices into the clay like a voodoo sorceress.  A role which Harvey seemed born to play on a future track.  You can be sure that somewhere, some poor soul was experiencing a burning sensation somewhere painful as the sculptress uses fire to firm up the putty that she mutilates.

I had to take the opportunity to listen to other John Parish compositions on earlier Automatic Dlamini tracks and what struck me, from the admittedly limited sample I heard, was how Putty appeared to mark something of a departure for him from the predominant tone of Automatic Dlamini songs.  In Putty, and through his future work with Harvey, he sounds like Nick Cave with songs which feel like they are set in small, dimly lit cabins in the middle of vast desert wildernesses.  But with earlier tracks like Principles vs Feelings or Crazy Supper, he writes like Jarvis Cocker and sounds like Nick Heyward, by creating songs of intense but lyrical urban domestic disharmony.  If ever you wanted to make a Spotify playlist titled Yuppie Kitchen Sink music, then Automatic Dlamini would need to feature on it.  So, Putty represents quite a shift for Parish in the way that To Bring You My Love would be a shift for Harvey.  Their artistic bond has lasted up to the present day, but ultimately, who influenced who?

Video courtesy of blackartfox

Oliver! appendix: Krispy 3 [Peel Session] (7 December 1991)

Long time readers of this blog may remember that I often cited the Peel Session recorded by Chorley hip hop trio, Krispy 3 for broadcast in his Radio 1 show on 7 December 1991 as one of my Holy Grails given how much I loved it on first hearing and its apparent unavailability.  Whenever a previously missing track from 7/12/91 turned up, I would include it as an appendix here, but never lost an opportunity to reference that Krispy 3 session, almost as a way of saying, “Yes, New Mind were great, but if you had heard Krispy 3’s Peel Session, then you would truly be in the presence of greatness.”

Well, my benefactor and champion, Webbie has kindly uploaded a recording of the session from that show together with Peel’s links.  It’s a wonderful capsule which showcases just how entertaining and fun, Krispy 3 were.  Peel had been an enthusiastic supporter of them through late 1991, and they first came to my attention through their excellent single, Don’t Be Misled. Which made it all the more surprising that I’ve heard nothing from them in any of Peel’s 1992 shows, although he may have played some tracks from their debut album which was released just as The Comedy of Errors was finishing and I was about to go on a short acting hiatus which meant that Peel’s shows and tracklistings for the period July-September 1992 fell outside this blog’s remit.  All is not lost given that they continued to record music up to 1999, so hopefully more music from them will turn up through the years.

Krispy 3’s particular genius was the way in which they used seemingly mundane or unglamorous scenarios as cover for more serious topics.  Second track, Where We Going? starts out with the crew pondering the problems of getting lost while going camping in the countryside - a notion since reclaimed in recent years by the black community in the rush of “Ever See a Black Person go to/do....” memes*. However as the track progresses, the Where We Going refrain changes from “which way up do I hold this compass?” fish out of water style self-mockery to a more searching question of where the black community may find itself going in the future. Similarly, opening track Answer Me, Will Ya uses the pretext of a customer survey to ask the audience about the associations (and prejudices) they may have towards anyone in a hip-hop group.  It’s all done with subtlety and with a heavy layer of humour, but no irony, so it cuts through more deeply and invites more self-recognition from the audience than might be offered up when they are lectured by The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprasy, though by the time they get to session closer, Hard Times, they are less coy about confronting the listener with tales of degradation, hypocrisy, poverty and lack of charity. 

As entertaining and enjoyable as Krispy 3 were in this session, they did show themselves as being inescapably in thrall to some of hip-hop’s more eye-rolling traits. Third track, Too Damn Ignorant, takes its cue from the inferiority complex which seems to bedevil so many hip-hop groups, namely the sense that they’re not getting the respect that they feel they deserve. In Krispy 3’s case, that might be rooted in the fact that they came from Chorley rather than Manchester, and it provokes an attack on those who accuse them of lacking big city authenticity. Though while the complaints may be genuine, “We’re not country bumpkins!” etc, they manage to turn it around in order to attack the small-mindedness and bad habits of some of the city-slicker figures in the hip-hop fraternity.

*I didn’t come up with a very good label for this, but earlier tonight I saw an advert promoting European Black History Month which featured a number of black people talking about things which they and their community didn’t generally do despite being a part of British society. It was all very tongue in cheek but included statements like “Black people don’t eat Sunday roasts” and “Black people don’t go to Cornwall on holiday” which is the black community’s loss, if true.  But the point remains that these perceptions/prejudices have been reclaimed by the black community in recent years.  Nobody did it better than Stephen K. Amos in his alleged response to a punter after a stand-up gig in Bow, who approached Amos and said, “Fuck me, mate! I never knew black people were funny.”

To which, Amos replied, “Some of us ride bikes.  Have been known to ski. Can work with rudimentary tools.”

Video courtesy of Webbie.  Check out their Peel related podcast.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: John Peel’s Music - Sunday 22 November 1992 (BFBS)

 The audio files which contain the BFBS shows for October-December 1992 appear no longer to be accessible. In a YouTube world, that makes no odds in terms of presenting the selections I chose from those Peel shows, but unfortunately it means that the notes posts which cover Peel shows for the periods will be a little scant for a while.  For instance, on this show, Peel told an anecdote about being taken to watch horse racing as a child by his parents at Bangor-On-Dee. He was surreptitiously encouraged by his father to place some bets and had a moderately successful time of it, winning as he remembered, about £40, which in those days would have bought you a small country estate with full shooting rights.  Unfortunately, he never got to see or spend the money he won due to his father looking after it.  Now, I’m able to present a little context to that anecdote, but as things currently stand with those audio files, I can tell you nothing about how a play of Superstar by French band, Lucievacarme linked to Peel’s own experience from earlier in the week of spending 90 minutes in a hot TV studio to record a 30 second link for a French television programme.

Had the Luicevacarme track been available, it was a definite candidate for inclusion from this show, which it has to be said contained a fairly high number of tracks which made my list. Inevitably, a few fell from favour, such as...

Therapy? - Accelerator - This nearly got in on retrospective grounds given that in early 1993, I became quite a fan of Therapy? but listening to this track, and a few others from the period which didn’t ultimately make the cut, I wonder what I saw in them.  It gives me no pleasure to write that.

Pond - 11x17 - Taken from a CD released on Sub Pop which Peel admitted he hadn’t liked during his initial listens to it, but which he was learning to love on subsequent listens.  It obviously grabbed me first time around, but lost its impact when I went back to it.

Nirvana - Here She Comes Now - a cover of The Velvet Underground track.  When I revisited it, I learnt that when it comes to Here She Comes Now, all I can say is that as far as my preferences are concerned, There She Goes Again.

Full tracklisting

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Strobe Man - Punished For This [Dalek Mix] (22 November 1992)

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I’ll spare you my Dalek impressions, they’re barely recognisable anyway. John Peel after playing Punished for This on 22/11/92.

Strobe Man was a one-off alias for Andrew E. Beer.  The Strobe EP was his only release under this name and the highlight of the record was Punished for This, which would have stood a very good chance of inclusion on this blog even if it had been terrible, due to the title sample being taken from the Doctor Who story, Genesis of the Daleks (1975).  In this case the line, “You will be punished for this!” is not said by a Dalek, but rather by their creator, Davros.  How could I resist a record which gave this Doctor Who fan the opportunity to enjoy MC Michael Wisher.

I don’t know where the opening sample of speech comes from but having ended it on the line about “evil” and then segueing that onto the rantings of the creator of one of the most evil alien races in science-fiction, Beer’s audio masterstroke is the introduction of angelic diva vocals from around 1:05 onwards.  These serve to act as a soothing antidote to Davros’s ranting and the other harsh, metallic sounds which punctuate the track.  It serves to act as a reminder that even amidst barbaric surroundings, goodness can still be found in the most unexpected places.  However, the way that the track fades out on both the angels’ sighs and Davros’s threats is a reminder that good and evil, violence and peace constantly live side by side. The question is which one will drown out the other?

Video courtesy of BzERK IE