Xray Dubs - experimentalmusic tag

Severed Heads R.I.P

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 09:26:55 GMT

Via Dennis Remmer of Transcom:

Tom Ellard of Severed Heads has announced his retirement (of Severed Heads, but not his ongoing projects) after 30 years. See http://www.sevcom.com and http://sevcom.com/beta/

The band is a keystone to post-punk electronic music development. Crucial. We were very fortunate to host their last ever live performance here in Brisbane, last October at the Upgrade @ Next Level event.

From where I sit it has been a pleasure to be at the receiving end of *so* much (30 years - unbelievable) creative, intellectual, thoughtful, incisive, evolutionary (and fun) electronic music, video, performance, and media. I count my most influential music artisans with one hand, and Sevs sit on the biggest cushion.

Last ever frigid @newtown ... feat Luke Vibert, June 10.

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 22:07:49 GMT

Line up & info: frigid @ n e w t o w n...

Frigid over the years @ Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/finalfrigid/

The last ever Frigid is being held @newtown on the date of its 10th anniversary. If you are in Sydney this weekend Sat June 10, you should get down to it. As I said on the clan-l mailing list;

Frigid has been really important not just for touring known overseas artists here but also introducing local audiences to overseas & interstate artists as well as fostering local talent. It's a pity that it will be ceasing operations after ten years but in a fickle and shiny-surface-obsessed town like Sydney it's actually rather amazing that it lasted as long as it did.

Big props to Seb and Luke and the rest of the Frigid clan.

Shame I cannot be there at the final moment as I'm now interstate but thanks guys for all your efforts over the years.

thanks & regs
scot.

Little bands, 1981 - 1984

Mon, 05 Sep 2005 12:30:50 GMT

Inspired by what I termed "baby boomer congratulatory back slapping" on Larvartus Prodeo regarding "music’s greatest year ever" (1971 according to Chris Sheil), and up to my usual arguing for the sake of arguing, ladies and gentlemen, I give you the alternative greatest year ever - 1981.

World’s greatest collection of “little bands” — right here, from Sydney, courtesy of Phil Turnbull; Memoirs from various of the aforementioned Sydney bands or more generally Phil’s site No Night Sweats and you can also try Inner City Sound and Australian Post Punk 1976 - 1981.

Geez it was a marvel to be a teenager in 1981 - or a twenty-something in 1984

I would offer a proper discography of 1981, but, in typical generation X slacker style, I could not be arsed. If you push me further I’ll just snarl at the camera, then if you persist I’ll claim that I’m only here for the drugs and the birds after the show, and then finally, declare my total and unrelenting boredom with the entire topic at hand in a very studied and offhand manner.

Chamber Music

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 10:03:06 GMT

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I got a huge blast from the past today. Last week I ordered from Amazon.uk a CD copy of a little record I used to own, which I grew up with and spent most of my late teens absolutely fascinated by; "Leichenschrei" by Socialistisches Patienten Kollectiv or SPK. This record is a little beauty; the title translates to "corpse screams", an accurate picture of the audio content - a mad rush down a dismembered-body stuffed bolt-hole to HELL. All your latter day "dark music" and experimental-noise pretenders know nothing compared to what is on this record. Forty-three (43) minutes of pure aural noise assault, a bad acid trip accompanied by the incidental soundtrack to a 18th century battlefield surgery set in a dysfunctional iron foundry run by lunatics, and visualised for a dispassionately narrated US Army medical description of the results of torture. There are is little in the way of compromise here; nothing remotely resembles pop music, all is non-stop assault. Released in 1982, this record is the forerunner to a long history of industrial music that was to follow; dark noise experiments, experimental synthesiser music, "EBM", it's all here. More focussed than fellow "industrial" music luminaries Throbbing Gristle, less prone than that group to psychedelic noodling, and a thousand times as bleak, one gets the impression rather than a bohemian carnival of insanity that TG managed to project, SPK's music is the very embodiment of the insane.

Track listing

Genetic Transmission
Post-Morten
Desolation
Napalm (Terminal Patient)
Cry from the Sanatorium
Baby Blue Eyes
Israel
Internal Bleeding
Chamber Music
Despair
The Agony of the Plasma
Day of Pigs
Wars of Islam
Maladia Europa