en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 60 http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal The Last.fm journal for scotartt. Last.fm journals are a place to talk about all things music. http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2008/02/16/47j_severed_heads_rip Sat, 16 Feb 2008 08:02:22 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2008/02/16/47j_severed_heads_rip 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.

For myself I want to say, Severed Heads, both musically and in my personal life, were a huge influence on me, and many of my contemporaries. As far as I am concerned the album Since the Accident is one of the most pre-eminent electronic music albums ever made - in any era, and many other of their musical works are not far behind. My Australian pressing of Since The Accident, very rare, with the program in the run-in and the two lock grooves, is one of my most prized musical possessions.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2008/02/16/47i_my_accidental_history_of_spod Sat, 16 Feb 2008 07:45:05 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2008/02/16/47i_my_accidental_history_of_spod I first saw Spod at the Sydney Livid 2003 after party at the Taxi Club in Darlinghurst, in the top floor disco. On the dance floor. Writhing around in the middle of the punters and the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. and 1/3 or 2/3 of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I don't think any venue could have been more fitting for an introduction to Spod.

Coupla weeks later, I bought the album Taste the Radness on spec, because I spotted the cover whilst browsing at HMV Pitt St (!) (I was probably looking for David Bowie's Low on CD if I recall correctly).

Googling the details on the album (Spod, not Bowie) led me to the album launch at the Camperdown and it was only at that point I connected the awesome Taxi Club dance floor performance with the great album I had bought on spec. Ha.

Some time later at a Spod gig at Club 77, I bought the poor guy a shot of Tequila after he had to ask audience THREE TIMES for said shot.

Soon after I left Sydney for Brisbane. At a gig in the old church in Warner St in the Valley I bought Spod a second shot of tequila ... he still owes me those two shots of Tequila!]]> http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2007/08/04/47h_atone Sat, 4 Aug 2007 09:27:45 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2007/08/04/47h_atone I am writing this journal entry because all these years later I love listening to Atone: not the johnny-come-lately French imposter whose promo-blurb dominates the Last.fm artist wiki, but real Atone, the Anglo-Australian artist Andy Fitzgerald. Simply put, he is a pioneer of the electronic dub sound, his productions are beautiful, and I still listen to all of his albums, even over 10 years later -- a sure sign of quality.

I hate the way last.fm mixes up artists.

If you love dub, and dub influenced works, (e.g. early Massive Attack for example) be sure you get a couple of Andy Fitzgerald's Atone albums, if you can still find them.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2007/04/14/47g_how_to_get_burial Sat, 14 Apr 2007 15:19:26 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2007/04/14/47g_how_to_get_burial Hmmm ... now I bought the Burial album on mailorder from boomkat when it first came out last year. I've been listening to dubstep for some years now, mainly off 10 and 12 inch vinyl (eg Horsepower Productions, Hyperdub and so on), and the big hype around the Burial album really sucked me in at the time. I already had the South London Boroughs EP, which the album is very similar in feel to.

Now I'll have to admit that when I bought the album I didn't see what the fuss was about. I thought it was good ... but not that good, to, you know, warrant all the hype. I mean I was just comparing it against the stuff that I know Kode9 had produced (Sine (Of The Dub), Kingstown, Nine Samurai etc), Skream and Benga, whom I regard as the best of the best dubstep producers that I've heard. But, Simon Reynolds and the others who hyped the record last year, they would have been well intimate with all this output, so I just had to think "ehhhh" and chalk it down to my typically contrary tastes.

But, then, tonight I finally "got" Burial.

Well, normally I listen to music on relatively expensive speakers - either my Aussie-made Krix in the loungeroom, or the M-Audio Studiophile BX8 active monitors in the studio. Both of these speakers have deep and rich response, the Krix being a lot more delicate and revealing and the Studiophiles having fantastic weight and drive with the excellent clarity as you'd expect from a mid-price studio monitor. Usually both are excellent speakers for listening to (or making) electronic music.

Yeah and normally I'd stream the music to the lounge room via my Slim Devices Squeezebox, but tonight, I had installed a new server upgrade and was mucking round with the settings. So to test the setup of the new SlimServer, I was using the Softsqueeze Java player on my Macintosh, rather then the Squeezebox, to avoid annoying Lisa who was working on her lecture for next week in the loungeroom.

So, on the cheap and tinny laptop speakers ... the genius of Burial's track Southern Comfort, finally comes through to me, what, nearly a year later.

Yep, always mix for the crappiest speakers I reckon.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2005/08/31/47f_leichenschrei_by_spk Wed, 31 Aug 2005 10:40:44 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2005/08/31/47f_leichenschrei_by_spk Chamber Music.

SPK
Leichenschrei

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

1. Genetic Transmission
2. Post-Morten
3. Desolation
4. Napalm (Terminal Patient)
5. Cry from the Sanatorium
6. Baby Blue Eyes
7. Israel
8. Internal Bleeding
9. Chamber Music
10. Despair
11. The Agony of the Plasma
12. Day of Pigs
13. Wars of Islam
14. Maladia Europa

industrial musicpost punk]]> http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2005/08/24/47e_the_birthday_party Wed, 24 Aug 2005 14:12:37 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/scotartt/journal/2005/08/24/47e_the_birthday_party The information on The Birthday Party as listed at last.fm is incomplete.

The Boys Next Door, the original version of the band, featured as members, Nick Cave, Mick Harvey and Phil Calvert (who is left off both band's member lists) from their high school days. After this time the band added Tracey Pew on bass and Roland S. Howard on guitar. This line up was the mainstay of both bands for most of their career.

The Boys Next Door had a minor hit in Australia with the song Shivers, which also featured on the Dogs In Space soundtrack (the film starring Michael Hutchence documenting the Melbourne "little band" post-punk scene of the late 1970s).

The first album, was released in Australia on Channel 7 records (who licenced it from Missing Link Records). In Australia at least, the album, featuring the songs Mr Clarinet and The Hair Shirt among others, was titled "The Birthday Party" (a Harold Pinter play), and the artist was "The Boys Next Door", as I can verify from my personal copy of the LP.

Later versions of the album credit it to the "The Birthday Party" as it release was around the time the band changed their name and left for England.

This album doesn't seem to exist in the last.fm system with either artist/title combination so I cannot link it - even though it is a seminal and highly influential post-punk album.

The offical Birthday Party web site says of this album;


Originally credited to Boys Next Door. 1982 rerelease has a different cover, and doesn't mention Boys Next Door anymore.
Mr. Clarinet
Hats On Wrong
The Hair Shirt
Guilt Parade
Riddle House
The Friend Catcher
Waving My Arms
The Red Clock
Cat Man
Happy Birthday


Poor Phil Calvert (drums) also seems to be done hard by here as he remained a member of the band until 1982 just before the "Bad Seed EP" when he was unceremoniously dumped from the band.

Tracey Pew (bass) sadly died in 1986 from complications due to epilepsy.]]>