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...early worm represents the first recorded output of neil megson back in 1968, up in the attic of his parents house with a few of his layabout friends getting busy with some tribal gubbings, laying down some meandering grooves, some primal thoughts that were outside the psychedelic guidelines of the time and well outside the heavy blues rocking that was making headway through that riotous year...avant garde noodling by cats who ain't in the avant discipline, just getting on with making a noise that somehow follows linear standards without being pofaced and slaveish, a lot of fun was had making these sounds, this much is obvious from the start...cacophonous and cluttered at times yet with the instruments each being subservient to the others, following untutored patterns that come naturally in this small community style format...sometimes a strange ambience comes into play, whilst gleeful campfire singalongs pep up the preceedings giving a close family feel, a warmth that's genuine...giving a couple of listens brings forth some pertinent socio-geographical observations, namely if these college/cafe hooligans had been hanging in the ladbroke grove/notting hill arts movement they'd been getting some serious action supporting soft machine at some fund raising benefit for I.T magazine and in turn getting groovy write ups in said paper, no doubt penned by deviant mick farren who'd invite them to bring up the slack at one of their shambolic outtings in the hippy underworld, middle earth would have got an injection of wobbly avant to liven up evenings of blissed light show daliance...during the day a trip down to indica books would most likely bear some HEP fruit in the style of getting wiggy with paul macca and sucking in a heavy fluxus buzz from yoko, all of which would have resulted in a session at abbey road and a long play disc on apple (this last part maybe stretching reality but the possibilties exist, based on the events dreamed in awakeness)...cats who dig the world according to angus macclise, the cat who left the velvets as they were getting too commercial by getting low pay gigs will dig this free form pile up of goodness, a sound of discordance that fitted in easily to the landscape of 1968 when everything was up for grabs one way or another...
...second volume of crazed early throb noise, racket from the dead zone, music indeed from the death factory, the wreckers of civilization had come to assault the ears of anyone who was near...sounds for the collapse of society, 1984 in '76, coseys guitar strangling, genesis bashing his bass and squealing on the violin with occasional shouting plus treatments from sleazy and chris make this a stew to be waded through by all adventurous and right thinking cats...back in the day this was undoubtably progressive swill for cats who didn't know they liked that type of music, sounds that would creep up from behind and give the noggin a right wallop...best enjoyed when least expected...
...digging this throbs tape of early work a cat can easily see the gristle as some kind of missing link between progrock/DADA (or at least annoyance in the name of ART)/D.I.Y space rock/the sound of tomorrow, take from that what you will, they may well have been the consumate rocking prog outfit of all time...this tape of throb-natious swill comes from studio experiments they indulged in during 1976 and it's all here; pink floyd style jamming from '69/70 (the best years of the second incarnation of floydianess)//hawkind bad acid journeying, floating around some dirty squat high on bath-tub psychedelics//some twisted riffing like CAN were rocking out with, there's kraut rock vibes in the throb-groove but it ain't necessarily a conscious part, more due to chris carter being a bit on the muso side than anything GEN.P would be thinking about...there's some live stuff but it mostly sounds more in the studio live than a proper stage appearance which have been documented fairly well over the years...side one cuts off rather sudden which ain't too cool as that riffing was going on and on, blasting away, anyhow the other side gets off to some genesis verbiage then onto creaking space rock, which would really get a floyd 'fan' down with its trancey repition, which is something to be appreciated even now, the floyd just wern't cutting it after 'meddle', this is the sort of junk they should have been doing, this could be like they were at the 'london free school' in '66, jamming with AMM (it would have been a total blast if the floyd were knocking this noise out during punk, there'd be some awkward journalistic turns in the english music papers, melody maker wouldn't have a clue where to start, this is really up syds alley, easy to see him grooving on this trip)...the second side also ends abruptly...this is for all cats who might be under the misaprehension that the throbs ain't for them, gristle noise should not be confused with the copycat industrialists that came after them...
...some extremely well spiffing proggedout basement power electronics with some riffing and tired droning vocals make up this early look at the gristle...recorded '75/6, the date somewhat lost to the dusty mists of time, this is a very good sounding boot that although not as unsettling as it might once have been will still seperate heads from civilians as all top quality art should...travel back over 3 decades to when the world was younger...
...the whole concept of the throbs was communication and information, how these ideas are formulated and put into action by the power structures that 'govern' the planet, mis/dis-information is used every second of the day to prevent the ordinary joe from knowing what's going on...today there is an overload of information, both trivial and otherwise, so much so that it's difficult if not impossible to sort out what is needed and what's put there just to saturate and make it all redundant...communication via mobile phones and other technological 'advancements' is a top bread spinner (legal at least) for a small elite but the communication is blurred through so much traffic, nothing is really said that makes any sense, it's all just endless chatter, usefull only to certain agencies to keep tabs on the population...when gristle put this LP on the market the cover seemed to communicate the information this was some kind of easy listening disk with the group looking nice and sedate, not upsetting the status quo and the title made a lot of squares think it was some sort of disco record (the number of returns and discs in the thrift bins was testament too, a lot of buyers getting it completely wrong, they seemed to completely blank out the throbbingristle name, going straight for image and 'greats' title which always pulls in the mug punters)...the cover was shot at the english tourist destination 'beachy head', a top suicide spot for those so inclined and the throbs looked like they were enjoying the view, a nice day out to groove about...the sounds in the wax are the throbs with the rough edges hidden behind spacey synths and embellishments that at first seem to make this sound normal but on further listening it's just as unsettling as it should be, it's just more subtle which in the end has a bigger, more lasting impact...of course some early throb admirers, who came to them via punk seemed to get the wrong idea, they got to thinking this was a 'sell out', nice new wave/synthpop, not the swill explosion they were getting used to, so again the information communicated was misconstrued, taken only at face value, no attempt to look beyond the surface was undertaken...as with all gristle work there's plenty going on and repeated listenings unviel untold riches...
...early worm represents the first recorded output of neil megson back in 1968, up in the attic of his parents house with a few of his layabout friends getting busy with some tribal gubbings, laying down some meandering grooves, some primal thoughts that were outside the psychedelic guidelines of the time and well outside the heavy blues rocking that was making headway through that riotous year...avant garde noodling by cats who ain't in the avant discipline, just getting on with making a noise that somehow follows linear standards without being pofaced and slaveish, a lot of fun was had making these sounds, this much is obvious from the start...cacophonous and cluttered at times yet with the instruments each being subservient to the others, following untutored patterns that come naturally in this small community style format...sometimes a strange ambience comes into play, whilst gleeful campfire singalongs pep up the preceedings giving a close family feel, a warmth that's genuine...giving a couple of listens brings forth some pertinent socio-geographical observations, namely if these college/cafe hooligans had been hanging in the ladbroke grove/notting hill arts movement they'd been getting some serious action supporting soft machine at some fund raising benefit for I.T magazine and in turn getting groovy write ups in said paper, no doubt penned by deviant mick farren who'd invite them to bring up the slack at one of their shambolic outtings in the hippy underworld, middle earth would have got an injection of wobbly avant to liven up evenings of blissed light show daliance...during the day a trip down to indica books would most likely bear some HEP fruit in the style of getting wiggy with paul macca and sucking in a heavy fluxus buzz from yoko, all of which would have resulted in a session at abbey road and a long play disc on apple (this last part maybe stretching reality but the possibilties exist, based on the events dreamed in awakeness)...cats who dig the world according to angus macclise, the cat who left the velvets as they were getting too commercial by getting low pay gigs will dig this free form pile up of goodness, a sound of discordance that fitted in easily to the landscape of 1968 when everything was up for grabs one way or another...
...second volume of crazed early throb noise, racket from the dead zone, music indeed from the death factory, the wreckers of civilization had come to assault the ears of anyone who was near...sounds for the collapse of society, 1984 in '76, coseys guitar strangling, genesis bashing his bass and squealing on the violin with occasional shouting plus treatments from sleazy and chris make this a stew to be waded through by all adventurous and right thinking cats...back in the day this was undoubtably progressive swill for cats who didn't know they liked that type of music, sounds that would creep up from behind and give the noggin a right wallop...best enjoyed when least expected...
...digging this throbs tape of early work a cat can easily see the gristle as some kind of missing link between progrock/DADA (or at least annoyance in the name of ART)/D.I.Y space rock/the sound of tomorrow, take from that what you will, they may well have been the consumate rocking prog outfit of all time...this tape of throb-natious swill comes from studio experiments they indulged in during 1976 and it's all here; pink floyd style jamming from '69/70 (the best years of the second incarnation of floydianess)//hawkind bad acid journeying, floating around some dirty squat high on bath-tub psychedelics//some twisted riffing like CAN were rocking out with, there's kraut rock vibes in the throb-groove but it ain't necessarily a conscious part, more due to chris carter being a bit on the muso side than anything GEN.P would be thinking about...there's some live stuff but it mostly sounds more in the studio live than a proper stage appearance which have been documented fairly well over the years...side one cuts off rather sudden which ain't too cool as that riffing was going on and on, blasting away, anyhow the other side gets off to some genesis verbiage then onto creaking space rock, which would really get a floyd 'fan' down with its trancey repition, which is something to be appreciated even now, the floyd just wern't cutting it after 'meddle', this is the sort of junk they should have been doing, this could be like they were at the 'london free school' in '66, jamming with AMM (it would have been a total blast if the floyd were knocking this noise out during punk, there'd be some awkward journalistic turns in the english music papers, melody maker wouldn't have a clue where to start, this is really up syds alley, easy to see him grooving on this trip)...the second side also ends abruptly...this is for all cats who might be under the misaprehension that the throbs ain't for them, gristle noise should not be confused with the copycat industrialists that came after them...
...some extremely well spiffing proggedout basement power electronics with some riffing and tired droning vocals make up this early look at the gristle...recorded '75/6, the date somewhat lost to the dusty mists of time, this is a very good sounding boot that although not as unsettling as it might once have been will still seperate heads from civilians as all top quality art should...travel back over 3 decades to when the world was younger...
always good to throb
ReplyDeleteyou know it...
ReplyDeletegood write-ups and incidental insect-lit insights, twangy guitar chords, Dick Clark make it or break it, dolby-ized hiss, hiss, hiss, hiss, machinegun notes, Billboard Top 40, ring of locusts, airplane buzz, calliope yell, bzzz bzzz, this blog rulez. ~Anonymous Rex
ReplyDeleteyour kind words are much appreciated sir, good on you and yours...
ReplyDelete