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.

Sounding the Disappearance of Warehouse Space in Inner City Sydney

Fri, 03 Mar 2006 15:16:12 GMT

An interesting article by Ben Byrne about warehouse space in Sydney and it's role in developing the sound culture there; Focusing Incidents » The Space in Between: Sounding the Disappearance of Warehouse Space in Inner City Sydney.

I would like to make a single minor contention. Ben states;

However, the link between sound in Sydney and the space of the warehouse wasn’t expressed concretely until the development of rave culture in the late eighties.

Explicitly, spaces mentioned elsewhere in his article, such as The Gunnery, and others not (e.g. Lost In Space, Sid's, The Pie Factory and others), had most definitely by the mid-Eighties developed a sound culture, one mostly entrenched in the post-punk, experimentalism, industrial-electronic music culture of that time. For example, early Severed Heads performances in art-spaces such as, well, 'Art Space', and similar spaces which were basically converted warehouses and commercial spaces.

See also the geographic-specific events such as the IAU sound performance event in the disused railway tunnels under Hyde Park, and SPK's (in)famous performance inside the disused St. Peter's brickworks. This very site, once the brickwork surrounds has been converted into Sydney Park, was latterly the location of many illegal Vibe Tribe raves and other events such as Clan Analogue's seminal day long electronic music festival "Bob Moog's Birthday" (and incidentally the very first time I ever performed at a Clan Analogue event).

A shout-out also has to be given in this regard to gay party culture. The best, most lucid, and by far debauched parties always held in warehouses where the residents where mixed gay/straight men and women (see again, Sid's) but they also, with a high degree of people involved in various creative industries, had a serious and thoughtful side that was reflected in sound art and musical practice.

Xray Dubs - severedheads tag

Severed Heads R.I.P

Sounding the Disappearance of Warehouse Space in Inner City Sydney