Les Joyaux De La Princesse (English: "The Jewels of the Princess") is a French one-man industrial / ambient / neo-classical project active since 1986. The music on his releases varies from heavy industrial noise to melancholic music for organ and piano mixed with historical French speeches. Each record is a sort of small audio document focusing on a single historical event, cultural moment or important personage, usually from France in the 1930s and 1940s. Most of them are sold-out and sought-after collector items due to the small number of copies pressed and the extravagant packaging. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
From Cambridgeshire, England, The Charlottes were one of the first shoegaze bands -beaten to the punch only by My Bloody Valentine and quite possibly Lush- that released a single ('Are You Happy Now?') and an EP ('Lovehappy') before the dawn of the style's golden years of 1990 and 1991. The Charlottes were actually shoegaze of the harder-driving variety, closer to the more aggressive side of Lush and Bleach than early Slowdive's billowy textures. After a pair of singles released in 1990, the band bowed out with 1991's 'Things Come Apart' compilation. The band's drummer, Simon Scott, joined Slowdive after they split. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Bocal 5 were a No Wave art group composed of Doc Pilot (synths, vocals), Zouka Dzaza (bass), Florian Guillou (synths), Mickey Lepron (electronic drums, bass) and Evy Tinguette (lead vocals). The project was born in November 1980 in Tours, France as the brain child of Doc Pilot. Between 1981 to 1986 Bocal 5 recorded one 7” single and a cassette-only album before taking a year off in 1984 to launch X-Ray Pop. Influenced by Erik Satie, Brigitte Bardot, Suicide and Young Marble Giants, they call their music “minimum naive new wave.”
Armed with a Korg 770, MS-10, Prophet Pro-One, Roland TR-707 and TB-808 they crafted their own brand of quirky synthesized electronic pop. Songs are short, concise and well structured; richly textured, moving at a quick speed with hardly a pause. Evy’s pouting, tongue-in-cheek vocals (sung in French) come together for a catchy, sensuous, danceable, eccentric psychedelic ride. This collection shows the group’s sense of humor, vitality and carefree playfulness. [SOURCE: DARK ENTRIES RECORDS]
The APF Brigade were an anarcho-punk duo from Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England.The group was founded by Andi Export (later Xport) and Jon Hindle in the early 1980s. They were members of the cassette culture scene, and released a number of independently produced tapes promoting an anarchist message. Every copy of their first release, 'Live Brigade', was individually recorded live in Hindle's garage, making each a unique artifact, in the tradition of Mail Art. They released no recordings on vinyl, except for the song "Anarchist Attack" on the Crass released 'Bullshit Detector Volume 1' compilation LP (1980). The group's name was an abbreviation of The Animal / Anarchy, Peace & Freedom Brigade.
Xport later worked with The Peace & Freedom Band, with other alternative and indie musicians including Andy Bruce, Paul Rance, and Andrew Savage. Although this group was notable for its disorderly style and musical experimentation, Xport's musical and songwriting skills brought some order to the group. Xport continued to produce solo albums on cassette using the name Man's Hate, with an emphasis on promoting his humanitarian, environmental, and animal welfare concerns. He also produced the International Sound Communication series of compilation tapes, which featured a diverse range of music from various countries, including early recordings by Blyth Power and Chumbawamba. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
The post punk landscape slowly changed in Sydney at the beginning of the 80s with more emphasis being placed on melody and rhythm. More funk, less experimentation and so on. Wild West eased into this nexus with a taut style and a tidy little group dynamic.
The sound of the band was unique without being startling. Peter Nelson's jangly, intricate guitar flitted around Gordon Renouf's liquid, pneumatic bass lines and Phil Turnbull's simplistic chords and sometimes grating synth riffs. Peter Macgregor added a necessary driving force. Eventually Rae Byrom joined with some surprisingly elegant and playful synth motifs.
They released the 'Beat The Drought' EP in 1980. Peter Macgregor left soon after this. He was replaced for a time by Dave Weston, the extra physical drummer from Newcastle's Pel Mel whose style was dissimilar to Peter's but still muscular. Around this time they continued performing including a great night supporting The Birthday Party at the Cell Block in Darlinghurst. Dave's increasingly heavy duties in extending the burgeoning Pel Mel popularity forced him to finally leave them in the lurch once again.
Then they decided to keep it all fairly open at this stage with more reliance on smaller splinter groups whilst still keeping the Wild West name alive somehow. There were a large number of 'Little' bands around at this time including The Tame O'Mearas, Via Veneto and others who were all somewhat aligned to the Pel Mel / Wild West axis. Lindsay O'Meara joined them for drumming duties.
A large M-Squared recording happened around this time, most of which never saw the light of day. Peter left to go overseas late in 1981 and that, finally, was that. Gordon continued on with Rod and others in Hope Is A New Coat and Moral Fibro and Rae and Lindsay joined forces for You Peghead You. [SOURCE: NO NIGHT SWEATS]
Jean-Marc Vivenza is a french writer, philosopher, composer, musician and musicologist strongly influenced by esoteric currents and fascist ideologies. He was member of ultra-nationalists groups such as: "Mouvement Nationaliste Révolutionnaire", "Nouvelle Résistance" and "Synergies Européennes".
Jean-Marc Vivenza studied philosophy and worked at the Modern Art Museum in Grenoble. In 1976 he creates the band Glace, first french industrial band in relation to the specificity of his work giving him a unique place in the sphere of this music called industrial, an etiquette he doesn't approve of saying that this word has lost its genuine meaning.
Vivenza immediately places himself in the field of the theorico-political link attached to the Italian Futurists and Russian Constructivists trends whose bruitist-plastic propositions are the only theorical sources having ever been developped with consistency, and rather qualifies his music as «bruitist futurist». Thanks to him, the term «Bruitist» will become from this moment an international word used by everyone, including english speaking people.
Indeed, to Vivenza the knowledge acquired from various plastic trends (conceptual art, minimal art, performance) can't be eclipsed, and have played on his reflection and on the form of his work an important part. What is important is the re-appropriation of noise as a formal plastic aid. He explores the field of perspectives that the acoustico-plastic material offers and works on a concept that he calls «the objective materiality of noise», basing himself on the futuristic thesis of Luigi Russolo, exposed in «The art of noises» edited in 1913 constituting the working guide for Vivenza and remaining the base of any authentic bruitism.
He is then the first, between 1976 and 1979, to build a bridge between the thesis of Luigi Russolo and our time, no one having ever done it before in such a categorical way. Vivenza explains himself that several trends, of which musique concrète founded mainly by Pierre Schaeffer diverge from futurist bruitism. The presuppositions of contemporary music and its electro-acoustic, concrete, acousmatic, pseudo-bruitist and neo industrial sonorous productions suffer according to him either from a theoretical emptiness, or from the idea of a «sonorous object» that Pierre Shaeffer drew from the philosopher Husserl, leading to placing a subjective point of view on an objective sonorous reality. This mistake was to start approaching noise by the idea born in the mind rather than starting with experience, which is for Vivenza a total non-perception of the essence of technique, and leads to severe incomprehensions towards the materiality of noise. To Vivenza the illusion of the schaefferian dream is not only over, but leads to a theorical and practical mistake. To him futuristic bruitism is the unique alternative to the historic deadlock of so called «musique concrète».
In 1978 he founds the band Mécanique Populaire, and after the two other members' departure he he by himself and simply chooses to use his patronymic name Vivenza. In 1983 he is at the head of the Electro-Institut where he continues an artistic research on practical, historical and theorical levels. Besides he develops an international activity through concerts giving to people the occasion to hear and to see the result of his sonorous and visual dynamic conceptions. In 1985 he makes the «Servomécanismes» incorporating the bruitist notions of Russolo with contemporary techniques of acoustic subservience combined with a rigourous care of visual formalism.
His work on noise concretises itself under several forms, in particular … sonorous.
The originality of Vivenza is to use industrial sonorous material in the literal sense of the word (machines, workers in action, factories) and records real industrial sonorities in factories.
Vivenza explains that the process of transformation and organisation of industrial tellurism takes us to the heart of the domesticated matter from which the immense echoe of the langage of the earth springs out, producing noise which is its langage, noise which is its cry, its sense and its form. This concept of «objective materiality of noise» refers to the revolutionary spirit of noise and to the dynamic use of noise as a concrete essence, and Vivenza arranges with rigidity the dynamic fury of mechanical noises, like a king pin of organised noise.
Restorer of the concrete and truth, Vivenza invites us to penetrate the vital energy being at the core of reality, to «listen to the matter of which we touch the essence by binding to it in a kind of primitive virginity» (Marinetti) and to blend in with its vibrations. Because reality is the subject of futurist research. Jean-Marc Vivenza also exposes his work, his researches and thoughts in various theorical texts, essays and musicologic studies. [SOURCE: LAST.FM]
Ting Voice only released a 12" on Konkurrenz, the same label as quite a few great acts, including Bal Paré, Exkurs, Die Kapazität, and Matthias Schuster (who is featured on this record). You'll definitely hear familiar sounds on this. Female vocals and plenty of synthwave goodness. [SOURCE: CRISPY NUGGETS]
In 1986, estranged The Sisters Of Mercy members Craig Adams and Wayne Hussey began touring as The Sisterhood. On a revenge streak, Andrew Eldritch immediately enlisted the help of collaborators Alan Vega (Suicide), Lucas Fox, Patricia Morrison (The Gun Club), James Ray (James Rays Gangwar) and Doktor Avalanche (The Sisters' drum machine) to record an album and release it in a week, to prevent the name from being used. For contractual reasons, Eldritch himself was not permitted to sing on the album, but he wrote and produced it.
"Gift" is the German word for 'poison'. An alternative mix of "Giving Ground" was released as a single, backed with an instrumental version. "Colours" was later re-recorded by The Sisters Of Mercy, with vocals by Eldritch, and released on the B-side of 'This Corrosion' in 1987. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
Rudimentary Peni are a British anarcho-punk / deathrock band formed in 1980, emerging from the London anarcho-punk scene. Lead singer / guitarist Nick Blinko is notorious for his witty macabre lyrics and dark pen-and-ink artwork, prominently featured on all of Rudimentary Peni's albums. Blinko is also rumored to have written the band's 'Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric' album while resident in a psychiatric hospital. Bassist Grant Matthews has also written a number of songs for the band, though his lyrics primarily focus on sociopolitical themes. Very few photos exist of the band, as their albums feature Blinko's drawings instead, but Pushead published a few in an early edition of his magazine.
Blinko and Greville had met years prior in Langleybury Comprehensive secondary school. Greville had been playing drums since he was young, beginning lessons at the age of 10, and slowly became interested in punk rock around the time 'Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols' by The Sex Pistols was released. After meeting Blinko through a mutual friend, the pair began the experimental electronic duo The Magits, formed in 1977 and dissolved around 1980. The Magits released their first and only EP, 'Fully Coherent', in 1979 on Blinko's newly formed Outer Himalayan Records; it was the label's first release.
Blinko, Greville, and Matthews subsequently formed Rudimentary Peni. By 1981, the band had played their first show, along with the S-Haters and Soft Drinks in Watford, Hertfortshire. Greville later characterized the first show, as well as the ones following it, as fairly disappointing, setting a precedent for the band's distaste for playing live. While they were inspired by punk rock, the band did not adopt the look of the day.
They recorded their first EP, an eponymous 12-song 7", in 1981 at Street Level Studios in London and released it on Outer Himalayan. It was fast, loud, and often described as "demented" due to the sound, as well as Blinko's lyrics and artwork, which adorned the cover and inner sleeves. After the release of the EP, the band played their first London show on 18 September 1981 along with anarcho-punk bands Flux of Pink Indians and The Subhumans.
Early on, Rudimentary Peni had connections with fellow anarcho-punkers Crass, and their second 7" EP, 'Farce', was issued by Crass Records. Up through the band's first studio album, 'Death Church' (1983), their records were packaged in fold-out paper sleeves full of artwork, lyrics and poster graphics characteristic of Crass and many other bands in the anarcho-punk scene. In 1987, the band's first two EPs were collected by Corpus Christi Records as 'The EPs of RP'.
Rudimentary Peni stopped performing in the mid-1980s after bassist Matthews was diagnosed with cancer. After a four-year hiatus, they recorded 'Cacophony' (1988), a sonic tribute to seminal New England horror author H. P. Lovecraft. Mark Ferelli of Part 1, a contemporary English deathrock band, introduced Blinko to Lovecraft; the pair also pushed each other's pen-and-ink artwork forward via friendly competition.
The band continued to record and release material into the 21st century, including the album 'Pope Adrian 37th Psychristiatric' (1995) and the EPs 'Echoes of Anguish' (1998), 'The Underclass' (2000), 'Archaic' (2004) and 'No More Pain' (2008), and have maintained a diverse cult following in the United States punk scene. Most reissues of their 1980s albums are now out of print.
Blinko authored a semi-autobiographical novel called "The Primal Screamer", originally published in 1995 by Spare Change Books (his bandmates and Ferelli appear under false names),as well as the more recent "The Haunted Head" (2009, Coptic Cat) and "Visions of Pope Adrian 37th" (2011, Coptic Cat). Blinko has also become increasingly popular in the outsider art scene. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
