Shriekback Jam Science Rarely Develops
“The fact that it isn’t breaking its back to be anything is quite liberating,” says Barry Andrews, pondering over the music he’s currently making with Shriekback. “It’s what it is – individuality is quite refreshing. Like those old guys who walk down Oxford Street carrying banners saying ‘stop eating peanuts’. It makes you feel good about people.” Specifically, he means a new single called “Sexthinkone” and a mini-LP labeled “Tench”.
Both are on Dick O’Dell’s Y Records, and both their sound and the manner of their making suggest something a little bit out of the ordinary. There’s the basic nucleus of Shriekback, for a start. It’s a trio – Barry Andrews, Gang of Four’s former bassist Dave Allen and guitarist Carl Marsh, who used to be with Out on Blue Six. On top of these three, any number of friends and accomplices might drop by the studio to help out. “Sexthinkone” itself features departed member Brian Nevill on percussion, plus Linda Nevill and Andrea Oliver on vocals, a strange character allegedly called Carlo Lucius Asciutti on piano and xylophone and Dick O’Dell himself on “paperweight and claptrap of death”. Dave Allen, who talks most, backtracks.
“What I wanted to do was get together a loose collective of people where you would maintain a sort of unit, but it wouldn’t ever be a band. It would come out with a lot of material that would involve a lot of people that you wouldn’t necessarily keep on. 'We’ve got to the point where the three of us now work together very well and very easily, and this is the unit.
Now we just invite people down who we think would be suitable to perform on our tracks, so it’s like a very loose collective with Shriekback as the sort of mentors and producers.” Andrews – who used to be with XTC – and Allen both shudder when they think back on their days with big groups on major labels. Both loathed the duhumanising process of touring, and both now find it incredible to think back on the thoughtlessness with which groups are sucked into the ponderous mechanisms of “rock’n’roll” and its attendant money-wasting potential. Andrews: “I hesitate to use the word ‘decadent’, but that’s what it is.
Working with Y means a lot more work on our part, like we actually have to do a lot of stuff like artwork and looking after day to day logistics ourselves, but it also means you know who’s responsible for what and things don’t keep getting passed round offices.” Carl Marsh chips in: “If a group like this had been involved in a major label it’s possible it wouldn’t have survived the process, because there’s so many pigeonholes you’re supposed to fit into.” For example, the “Tench” LP contains some 26 minutes’ worth of music and retails at £2.99. “People can afford £2.99,” says Dave Allen. “Skidoo proved it.
There’s just no reason to put out 10 or 12 tracks, four of which you don’t really like, and sell it for £4.50 because the record company want to get its money back.” Shriekback have kept operating costs to a minimum by seeking out various small, cheap London studios, and recorded “Tench” at KPM, a 16 track demo studio owned by their music publishers EMI Publishing. It had never occurred to anybody before to make records there, but as the Shrieks point out, there simply isn’t any good reason to spend £50 and upwards an hour in a big-name studio when you can achieve excellent results at a third of that cost. And the music? As Andrews points out, it’s my job to label it, not his, but I’m at a loss for some glib handle to attach to it. How can you describe the ominous stalking of “Mothloop”, or the curious obliqueness of “All the Greekboys (Do The Handwalk)”?
The photograph on the label of “Tench”, by the way, inspired the latter song. “I think he’s probably Turkish, but it didn’t scan,” confides Andrews. But mark my words, there may be a new force in the land. Adam Sweeting Masterbag July 8-21 1982 Tench has been reissued and remastered, with additional tracks and a bonus CD of the never-before-released 1983 Detroit concert.
You can purchase this via our. : So there we were in 1981-2, at the end of Restaurant for Dogs/the beginning of Shriekback and things were, realistically, not looking all that promising. I had squandered quite a lot of goodwill: the RFD’s gigs, which had attracted a lot of interest, had been so chaotic (and not in a good way) that all record company bets were off. I had tried my hand at being a Session Player (sort of go-to post-punk keyboard guy was the idea) with Iggy Pop and Robert Fripp, both projects being flawed and my contributions ambivalent (I wore the Mantle of Session-Player about as well as I did in XTC -which is to say grudgingly and with half a heart). So I was at not at my most gung-ho when this Dave Allen guy turned up asking me to be involved in his new (post G4NG) project but he was not to be put off. It was obvious that the combi of ex-G4NG and ex-XTC would look at least slightly intriguing on paper, so I had, in his in mind, become integral to the project. Thus I had my first taste of the Unstoppability of Dave.
I didn’t return his call? He’d make some more. I blew out a rehearsal? He’d book another one.
In the end I gave up. I still wasn’t taking it all that seriously though. I thought it was probably another Rn’D situation where I could experiment using someone else’s studio time. Especially since no-one seemed to have a clue what they were doing. Then there was the Speed. Carl Marsh -this guy who had written an incredibly articulate letter to Dave explaining, successfully, why he was the guitarist for the job, yet, in person, hardly said a word, was never, it seemed, without a wrap or two of ‘The Great God Rotor.’ and it became something of a Way of Life, entre nous. It was as much about overcoming social awkwardness as anything: speed and beer = binge of chattering.
Not Carl though, even when speeding off his tits, he kept his counsel. A Dark Horse, alright.
Dave and his girlfriend Emma (Burnham -sister of Hugo) were, by marked contrast, far from uncommunicative. They were at a stage in their relationship where certain discontents were starting to emerge and -at the Church of Rotor -would need to be discussed, in detail, intensely and in public. The added ingredient was a peculiarly 80’s gestalt of militant feminism and Marxism-lite (G4NG’m style).
It was a volatile brew and become public domain as Shriekback (for, by now, it was they) did some exploratory interviews which sometimes ended up being verbatim transcripts of Dave and Emma arguments (the journalists in question abdicating responsibility, I feel, for making sense out of things). On one occasion a particulary spirited, albeit bafflingly opaque exchange turned up in the left wing Leveller magazine and the journalist stated that -while she was aware that the interview made little logical sense- out of respect for Emma’s gender, she would transcribe it unedited (no phallocentric blue pencils for her!): non sequiturs and all. Bitches be crazy eh? But, ah, good old Speed. None of us were exactly enhancing our creativity on it (however much it felt like we very much were). Plus, in the studio, empirical experimentation conclusively shows that speed (and coke) make you lose your ability to hear the higher frequencies so that you are constantly demanding to hear ‘More Top! On Everything!
All Of the Time!’ The engineer, knowing he’s dealing with crazies by now, obediently winds on the 5k and prays for a merciful release. When you listen back, unimpeded by amphetamines, the result will fairly shred your ears. So that doesn’t work really well, obviously. A not atypical studio moment It was all a bit of a struggle -we were, in hindsight, working out an aesthetic which, unlike formulaic writing involves a lot of wastage. Oh and getting wasted hoho. But still, the combination of Dave’s really quite remarkable drive (the studio time kept coming, gear was shifted around town, business contacts made) and my in-studio willingness to explore was a good, if messy, one. Then, one day, Carl, with studied disinterest, suggested that he might try a vocal.
With no great expectations we listened as this strange word-rich, Bowie-esque voice suddenly took centre stage. We weren’t sure (but then we weren’t sure about much) but it was. When we recorded Tench, there was still plenty of failed experimentation/drug activity/indecision in the studio and it took everything we had to get the -not really full length- album finished (we were doing the time honoured thing untogether bands do of still trying to mix in the cutting room -against the expensive clock, demanding crucial/pointless edits from the increasingly -and understandably- pissed off cutting engineer). ’ Tench’: I named it after the fish that had always delighted me from Brooke Bond’s series of ’ Freshwater Fish’ cards. as a kid. To my morally conflicted attempts to do actual fishing as an adolescent. It was dark green, with little red eyes (cool!) and lived in the slime at the bottom of ponds.
Sleek but bulky: like a BSA motorbike. It was chthonic, mysterious: hiding. A pretty good metaphor for where we were artistically at the time, perhaps, but it was also a genuinely original idea, unconcerned with all the fashionable: ’ jazz is the teacher, funk is the preacher’ spiel that was going around at the time. Or the, increasingly unconvincing, political posturings of many post-punk bands.
And deeply subjective: 'why Tench?’ well.cos they’re great. (and why not?) And they translate into a brilliant graphic: the album sleeve -cheap as chips- is, I humbly submit, a design classic: elegantly simple; the green and the red: the rough textured (reversed) cardboard, the ragged chinagraph font. A certain amount of non-crazy-drug-thought had clearly gone into this. The press response was predictably confused: 'XTC meets G4NG’ should mean herky-jerky agitprop or a bleak industrial take on the Beatles, surely? Not this understated, deeply arty, bottom-heavy and lyrically inscrutable piece of weirdness, edging -with 'here comes my handclap’ -into avant-garde difficulty.
An hilarious flame-war took place in the NME between Dave and Andy Gill (shades of me and Andy Partridge). Dave had accused the G4NG -in one of the recent articles, and in response to the inevitable 'why did you leave?’ question, of lacking ideological commitment. When 'Tench’ came out, of course, Gill retaliated: ’ Dave dares to raise the banner of ideology then releases an album about a fish’ he fumed. The Two Headed, Revisionist Running-Tench that he clearly was.
So Tench was flawed, brief and unsatisfactory as far, as I was concerned, but it was a start. You can see themes emerging which stayed with us (and are still around): the willed simplicity of the one-chord stasis; the primacy of the groove; the sexual obsessiveness; the allusive/obscure lyrics which nevertheless paint a picture. The striving for sonic richness. 'Something is happening here and you don’t care what it is, do you NME?’ could have been the refrain as we failed to set the world alight, but yet we’d set out our stall and, it seemed, bought some time to go.deeper. NOTES.Neil Cassady (according to Tom Wolfe in 'The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test’).little picture cards given away in -honest- packets of tea. More Englishness, vicar? LIVE IN CLUTCH CARGO’S, ST ANDREW’S HALL DETROIT, MAY 21ST 1983 BA: This was the first time we played here but St.
Andrew’s Hall would become a regular Shriek US tourstop in the years to come. A lovely wooden hall (with anterooms) decorated, as I recall, with the ensignia and ceremonial trappings (flags etc) of the St. Andrew’s Detroit Scottish Benevolent Society. We used their special thrones backstage once for an impromptu theatrical masque of dubious Benevolence(Hey, he’s my saint too and I have special Blaspheming Rights).
CM Well, this certainly starts out as a groove thing with Sexthinkone, the drums and percussion pulling you in despite the rather willful discordancy around and about. The mighty Tommy Winstone did the sound on this tour: most of the time, obviously, we didn’t get to hear what it sounded like Out Front, but I must say the general consensus was that - whatever else was going on - the drums were always HUGE. Sway sounds fantastic - great keyboards, and what a groove!
Sinuous and confident, letting the wide-eyed paranoia of the lyrics unspool nicely. I’m aware this may sound like shameless self-indulgence, but hey, there’s some distance here: I’m listening to this, having never heard it before, some 32 years after the fact, so I think I can claim some ‘audience’ objectivity for this. Oh bollocks, who am I kidding? It’s great, think what you like.
This elastic space expands for Brink of Collapse lovely textures here, too: I’m pretty chuffed with the violining guitars, all seals and whales winding around the keys and vocals. I think it was on this tour that someone sent us a lovingly transcribed score of the whole Care album - part of a thesis of some sort? - in which quite a few guitar parts had been written as keyboards and vice versa; listening to the interplay here, i can see how that happened. (As a footnote, I’ve always been somewhat ashamed that that big bundle of work got lost, so we never got to send any acknowledgement, as far as I know. It didn’t stand much chance, to be honest, dropped as it was into a van full of crazies charging around America for a couple of months, but anywayif anyone finds it, send it over.) The mania starts to kick in with Grapes Into Lettuce, one of a few rowdy live things that never got the full studio recording treatment (or not one that survived, anyway), others being White Out and Big Sharp Teeth.
Maybe we should look at those I really liked bashing ‘em out. Considerable was never recorded either (outside of live sets and radio sessions). I really like this too - although this isn’t the best or clearest version, it has a satisfying, clanking, robotic iron-man stomp and a resonant build. Playing this live for me was always a sort of ecstatic penance - my guitar part was a single but awkwardly-fingered chord held painfully throughout but with greater rhythmic complexity as the song progressed. Noisy self-flagellation, with an added Hail Mary for the disorienting, woozy, overwound chorus effect it was going through (the onboard one on the Carlsbro combo I had at the time, tech fans). In Mothloop, preposterously, I’m singing “I wish I could go faster” - really?? This starts off at a pretty insane pace and then seems to get, er, insanerer (although, as Mart’s drumming, it probably doesn’t. Although we may have forcibly injected him with something.
Some sort of deranged speedfunk, or maybe just a bad trip in a fairground. “We’re running rings around the space and the time” - yeah, well, kinda I sort of thought I played bass on Kind Of Fascination live: oh well, another false memory, as that sounds rather like me hacking around finding a guitar part in the mayhem. Otherwise, this is a rare example of a Barry/Carl dual vocal, with both of us singing most of it an octave apart - pretty much Squeeze, really.
Should do it more often: it’s cool for cats. So maybe it’s Despite Dense Weed where I play bass? And Dave plays drums, yes?
But if we’re doing that, and Barry’s singing, where’s all that guitary noise coming from? (BA -me actually, entirely unencumbered by any technical facility whatsoever, but I can’t be stopped: everyone’s busy). CM: As always, this is a dense and evocative thing of feral sprawl and range. At the start of our live incarnation part of the manifesto stated that we weren’t going to adopt the theatrical convention of ‘the encore’ - you know, the bit where the band finishes ‘the set’ but obviously haven’t played The Hits you came for (and paid to see), so everyone really knows that they’re going to come back on and do them, as long as it hasn’t been a complete disaster and there’s at least a respectable spattering of applause. Clearly some committee or another re-wrote that,however, because here we are coming back with My Spine (Is The Bassline). It’s pretty good - well, there’s not a whole lot to go wrong, really, so it usually is.
Something goes a bit weird at about 4 mins in - the vocals disappear and the sound becomes very muffled - but on the whole Spine is reliably cock-up proof and grooves like your Mum, sucker. Then there’s Lined Up. I honestly have no recollection of playing this - aside from some generally ill-fated attempts to play it using backing tracks a year or so later, I thought we’d just held up our hands and said ‘sorry, great record, but can’t be doing it live’. Apparently not. We’re usefully informed that Pedro’s playing drums, then off we go.
Let’s be frank: it doesn’t groove. There’s some interesting stuff going on in the keyboard and guitar departments and we’re running for the finish line at this point, but it’s a tad laboured. So there we are - or, in the notes above, there was I, 23 years old, selling Shriekback to Detroit. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
That question from Graham Brown: Could somebody please tell the story of the Crash Baptists? On the one hand I seems it’s a Dave Allen and Rick Boston project, on the other hand it seems to be a Carl Marsh, Lu Edmonds and Emma Burnham project (with a very rare looking recording according to Discogs). Would love to hear the background and well, that tape if it still exists. Well, Graham, the short answer is that The Crash Baptists was indeed the name of a project Lu Edmonds and I kicked off after I stepped off the Shriekback bus, having wrapped Oil & Gold and completed some British and European dates to promote it, and Emma Burnham did indeed sing on some demos we recorded at the time.
However, Lu then got invited to join PiL and, that being an offer he couldn’t sensibly refuse, that was the end of it. Some time later, Dave was looking for a band name for a new project of his own - I guess the Rick Boston one you mention - and asked if he could use The Crash Baptists, as it was better than anything he was coming up with at the time, so I handed it over. Throwback Thursday finds us posting a 14-year-old interview. Some time ago, we were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in contact with Barry Andrews via the Internet.
He further astonished us by agreeing to an Interview! So, with an abundance of fan input, we put together a “small collection” of the most pertinent questions and fairly alarmed him with a Lengthy Interrogation. Undaunted, Mr. Andrews expressed himself as he most usually does: with eloquence and not a small amount of wit.
Shriek Questions The Band. How did you meet Dave Allen, Carl Marsh, and Martyn Barker? How did the band come together?
Errr, met Dave thru Sara Lee –(Bassist w. League of Gentlemen –Leeds connection) He rang me on leaving Go4, Carl wrote him a letter (ever the literary one) and I brought Mart in when we needed a proper drummer –I knew him from Clare Hirst, the sax –player who I was going out with and who played in The Emotional Spies w. ( I think that’s right??). Did Shriekback try to create an image with your music and visuals? If so, were you successful? Sure we tried, I think we had our moments. Were you surprised with the positive response to last year’s album, “Naked Apes and Pond Life”?
Very much so. I’d disowned the whole project and was off bashing bits of metal (rather than other band members). Had it not been for Lu and Martyn it would never have come out. The fact that it was sonically the least user-friendly of all our work made it doubly suprising that it was getting good reviews (the old ‘fuck em if they can’t take a joke’ ethic again I guess). Is that what got you to thinking of the possibility of a new Shriekback project sometime in the future? There’s rumour that both Carl and Dave are involved with the new Shriek project. Would you care to comment?
Dave was in London with a big expense account to abuse, so the Shrieks (class of 85) duly obliged. It was a heady mixture of lurid cocktails, free money and that ineluctable chemistry of 4 old pervs with something still to prove. It looks very likely that we will do Another One. What are the Seven Pillars of Shriekback? They were a series of principles by which we intended to focus our, at the time, dissipated and addled energies in order to create a rock band.
Have totally forgotten what they were, though. Tell us about the Shriek logo. Whose idea was it and does it have a particular meaning. It was Al Macdowell’s design –our sympatico Art Person (last seen being head of production design on the Fight Club film –howabouthat?). I think it was to do with cyclical energy (otherwise known as going round in circles –hmm, be careful what you visualise).
Do you still have contact with Sarah and Wendy? What are they doing these days?
Oh yes, very much so. Seeing them this Friday, actually. Wendy’s a homeopathic practitioner (with 2 kids) about to Move to The Country. And Sarah manages recording engineers and producers. Are you enthusiastic about the resurgence of Shriekback’s popularity? Now there’s a leading question, with a certain ambiguity.
I certainly like the idea of making some more music both with, and without, the Chaps. A Shriek-Renaissance would be handy.
Is it happening? You tell me I don’t get out much. Shriek Works. Why do so many Shriek songs resonate with a subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) spiritual energy, both sacred and profane? Aww, get outta here. Like Jah Wobble (whom God Preserve) said: ‘You either make music to see God, or to make money, and if it’s making money then you end up like a million other people all trying to get lucky with a beat.’ That’s not exactly relevant really though, is it?
I love the idea of touching people in That Place. That’s the main idea, of course. Looking back on the albums the Shrieks have made, do you have a personal favourite and, if so, why? Do you have any favourite Shriekback songs? Any you dislike? Care, because we really had no idea what we were doing but we couldn’t help doing it. It was discovering a place where we / I could legitimately and comfortably express ourselves.
Finding a Voice, all that. The end of a hard, messy road of adolescent angst and it was Going To Be Alright after all. Still does sound like that to me, as it goes. SONGS:.
Evaporation because it was the first time I got the underwater, Lee Perry, ‘it’s dark but don’t be afraid’ thing to happen. Nice ‘tune’ (meaning melody). Black Light Trap because it’s so.Large. Lots going on. Architectural vibe. Big creaky Gormenghast thing with disco. Sounds like Shriekback and absolutely noone else.
This Big Hush - A big scary fantastic Love affair in the snows of 85 and everything impossibly vivid. Well that’s what I was doing.
Add your own recollections, of course. DISLIKED:.
Get Down Tonight (what were we thinking of? Oh yeah, making money, that’s right). Mercy Dash the single (the intoxication of trying to sound like someone else - don’t do it, kids, especially not with machines that you don’t understand.) Still, that’s it, not bad over 8 albums, is it?. What songs were made into videos?
Nemesis, Get Down Tonight, Lined Up. Any hope of a video compilation? Speaking of videos, who conceptualised the ‘Nemesis’ video?
Probably not, who could possibly have the ‘masters’? And they were all dodgy apart from Nemesis.
I did all the ‘conceptualising’, Al McDowell did the visualising, Tony VandenEnde (the ostensible director) made it happen. Projects. There is word of a new compilation album of obscure and unreleased material coming out sometime in March entitled “Aberrations 81-4”. In what countries will this be available? Is there anything further you would care to offer to your listeners regarding this album?
The territories are down to who wants it –where we can get licensing deals. The States will be covered by Nail Records, we think It will be available from Mauve Records mail order if all else fails. It’s an interesting car-boot sale of weirdness, 9 never before released songs also remixes, live bits etc. Copious sleeve-notes by Marsh and I.
We’re going to include ‘Naked Apes’ in the package, so it’s cracking good value for anyone who never got the latter. Will we ever see the BBC recordings released? Hope so, we’re looking into the Legalities (not the name of a soul band). Michael Mann used the Shrieks’ music extensively in ‘Miami Vice’ and in the movie ‘Manhunter’. Did you ever meet him and do you foresee any future collaborations?
Shame: I especially liked it when they were chasing the Miami coke-baron round the harbour in speed-boats, white 80’s trousers flapping and Shrieks are singing some weirdshit in Sanskrit (Running on the Rocks). Obviously made sense to Mike.
Personal Questions Music. Tell us about your Illuminati project. Doomed doomed, emotionally overwrought Guitar driven rock, Humungous female vocal, ravishing melodies. Me trying to be ‘non-ironic’ and ‘not weird’.
Don’t fight your nature, that’s what I learnt. Still have the album in the can. Maybe release it someday.
Shriekback Jam Science Rarely Develops 2
What music do you listen to? What do you think of today’s pop music scene?
ANDREWS PLAYLIST 2001. Beethoven ‘Creatures of Prometheus’. Planxty (Irish trad) ‘The Woman I loved so well’ ‘After the Break’.
Nick Cave ‘The Boatman’s Song’ ‘Murder Ballads’. Arvo Part 'Cantus for Benjamin Britten’ 'Festina Lente’. John Cooper Clarke ‘Snap Crackle and Bop’. Slade ‘Greatest Hits’.
Underworld ‘Everything Everything’. Mouse on Mars ‘niun niggung’.
Will we ever see a collection of your solo work? Dunno, it’s nearly all only on cassette so it would be a hissy kind of a thang.
Will we see anymore from The Caretakers, the Refugees, or some other project yet to come to light? Caretakers are Bruce Mcrae and Carlo Asciutti, both of whom are complicated men to get hold of. Bruce is in Canada and Carlo’s in East Dulwich – which might as well be Canada. Come on guys, the World needs you sigh, what can you do with ‘em?. What prompted the song ‘Win a Night out with a Well-Known Paranoiac’ The Adolescent angst of which I spoke and my snotty scruffy persona, (at 22-23) & resistance to authority which wound up all the right people sufficiently to support a – that’s right - paranoid world view. I liked the idea of a spoken song like Patti Smith’s 'Piss Factory’. It’s funnier though-especially the bit about the 'Underwater Toilet.’ History.
When did you develop an interest in music? The parent’s collection of 78’s on the wind-up record player (fuck-I’m old) me alone in the attic playing ‘Shifting Whispering Sands’ and 'Indian Love call’. The rest is history. Most of what we’ve heard about your departure from XTC has been from sources in relation to that band. In fact, in the liner notes of the recent XTC box set, Andy Partridge laments your leaving the band. To balance things out, would you like to let your side be heard?
Well, as I’ve said probably more times than I should – I always regarded XTC as a stepping stone –we came from the the same town, were all working class pissheads and were all talented, it was never really a meeting of minds. Thus, as soon as we had some breathing space from touring and getting a deal it was obvious that this combination had run it’s course. You don’t need a degree in Workplace Dynamics to see that both an Andrews and a Partridge is one egomaniac only-child too many. For me that was – as they say in Swindon – ‘it and all about it’. It was great fun for a while though.
And loads of shagging. Many articles and XTC book passages indicate that you’ve seemingly resented the intellectual labels attributed to you and, later, Shriekback.
Have your feelings changed on this issue or do you still wish to stress the physical aspect of your music? I don’t know why you say this. Anyone who calls me an intellectual will have me purring on the floor and buying them drinks. Oh, you probably mean that ‘what do your lyrics mean?’ type thing.
It’s really that what I’ve always tried to do with music – specifically SONGS- which are a brilliant art-form and still nowhere near exhausted - is create new places - funny little aquariums where the rules of the outside world no longer apply. Bear in mind that this is not sheet music it’s recorded music so all sorts of subtleties and inflections are possible – the ambient sound in the room, the slapback echo all have different things to say (ambient sound says ‘fly on the wall documentary,’ slap-back can mean Elvis or, add a few repeats and it’s Nuremberg). What I mean is that Songs are perceived sonically, primarily - then we add the strata of meaning. But, as with all good art-forms the most fun is in the grey areas. Where the Delicious Frissons of Ambiguity live. So when you can’t quite hear what Strummer’s singing on Janie Jones, you hallucinate your own visions into the gap between what you can understand and what you can’t.
As one does as a child listening to the grown ups talk. It’s an interesting place to be. When I finally saw those lyrics written down the song was over for me. Not that they were bad lyrics, just that they were only what they were, no longer all the things they might possibly be. So the lyrics are one part of this tense interdependent little biosphere. Another example: Marvin Gaye’s ‘Grapevine’ –it’s dark, the bass and congas sound jungly (like a Rousseau jungle in purples) the song’s about jealousy - there are loads of different ways of saying ‘people are saying that you’re seeing someone else’ but he picks vines – big strangly creepy things with round sweet purple grapes on them and the jungly groove and the sweet sad voice and the minor key all support each other – organically, you’d have to say - the medium and the message all beautifully shmershed together. The lyrics as written don’t tell you any of this, like the sheet music doesn’t tell you how sexy that bass line is.
The experience is to be had in front of a speaker and that’s it. SO - even if you use words like ‘parthenogenesis’ and ‘historesis’ you’re still playing the same game.
I used ‘parthenogenesis’ mainly because it sounded good and almost rhymed with Nemesis. The meaning was secondary (but relevant). So if you were to apply the ‘Grapevine’ treatment to that chorus - my intention was to get a laugh - or at least an internal smirk - from the big-almost football crowd-chorus, the long ungainly scientific word, the huge daft power chords, and everything within this barmy context of ‘let’s examine the nature of morality’ – like some philosophy professor who went to Vietnam and listened to a lot of Gary Glitter. Still makes me laugh. Another way to see it is like you ‘get’ a joke, which, if you want, you can explain, and you can even analyse why it’s funny. But the point of the joke is really only in the ‘getting’ of it. If you don’t experience that then all the rest is pointless.
Thus, when people make a big deal of 'explaining the lyrics’, it very often (experience has shown) means that they never really ‘got’ the idea of the song. It’s turned into some gnarly little Eng. Blimey, value-for-money-question. The Individual.
We know that you are a consummate musician, that you’ve dabbled in filmmaking, and that you’re also an artist, having studied 3-D design. It would seem that you’re quite the Renaissance man. Is that a fair description? How would you describe yourself? Naah, the trouble with doing lots of things is that you meet lots of people who only do one thing and are therefore extremely good at them. Bad comparisons are inevitable.
‘Jack of all trades’ says it. Still, it seems to be my nature to apply a similar aesthetic to lots of different things and this is as close to a mission statement as I can get: ‘try everything, make up as many things as possible; remember to take notes.’. There have also been many comments from folks who’ve met you that you exude an otherworldly air. Would you care to address that?
I have been known to drift, somewhat. We’ve heard many stories from fans whom have attended Shriek concerts and, afterwards, were thrilled to find you dancing, drinking, and generally making merry with them after the show. Why are you so prone to mingle with the fans when artists, including other members of the band, don’t generally engage in such activity? Human fucking Beings, man. What else is there?.
In what other projects are you currently involved? The ongoing exegesis of Parc Stic (a metaphysical theme park) and amassing material for a solo album. And keeping an eye on Finn (the lad) who’s starting his own musical career (which is spooky). Being the primary lyricist for Shriekback, it’s obvious you have a gift with words. Do you write prose as well or have you considered doing so? Saving that for when I’m Really old and can’t do anything else.
Who or what would you say is your greatest influence? Alex Harvey, Lee Perry, Patti Smith, the Constructed World (not a band either). The dance that you and the Sids perform to ‘The Reptiles and I’ in the ‘Jungle of the Senses’ concert video exhibits a variety of Kung Fu movements. That, combined with the fact that you’ve been spotted many times wearing Tabi, lead us to ask if you’re a Martial Artist as well. If so, what form or forms have you studied? Mark Raudva – who plays on ‘Naked Apes’ - is a qualified Tai Chi teacher and would piss himself if he read that. I studied with him for about six months and gave up.
I did Aikido for about three weeks – way too upsetting. What do you think of the world today? Oh the easy ones at the end eh? Final Thoughts.
What would you like see happen at Shriekback.com? The hub of a new Renaissance, a centre for Excellence, a source of psychic nourishment and high quality. Is there anything you’d like to say to the fans of both you and Shriekback? ‘Hold fast to that which gives the deepest jollies.’ 7 February, 2001 Help us make more memories by purchasing our new album, along with our burgeoning catalogue, all available. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter at the website, and. Happy Throwback Thursday! Today, we’re going back to 2001, when Dave Allen fielded questions from the fans.
1) How did you get into music? By deciding that my options were limited to a bleak and dull existence in a small working class town in the North of England or clamoring for greater glory on the heady stages of the rock world pounding the living daylights out of bass guitar. Somehow the latter seemed more fun. 2) What were your first bands like? I cut my chops playing in a jazz band playing standards.
The band was called Bob Dawbarn’s Elastic Band due to the flexibility of the line-up at any given performance. 3) Who were your early influences? Bob Marley, Jaco Pastorius. 4) Did you sing any songs with the Gang Of Four? Yes, on “He’d Send in the Army” immortalized on celluloid in the movie “Urgh! A Movie War.” 5) How did you meet Sara Lee?
Was it she who introduced you to Barry Andrews? I met Sara in Leeds, Gang of Four’s home base. I met Barry when I went to see a League of Gentlemen show in Leeds and I believe Robert Fripp and Barry came back to the Gang of Four homestead to drink heavily and to discuss Fripp’s participation in orgies when he played Leeds with King Crimson.
Fripp spent the whole night hitting on my girlfriend but I have to admit she spent the whole night wandering around soaking wet wrapped in a towel so who could blame him? 6) How did you meet Carl Marsh and Martyn Barker? Carl responded to an article he read in the music press about my leaving the G of 4. He came to visit me at my place in Brixton, London. We hit it off and the rest as they say is history. Martyn came along later.
Barry had spotted him playing in a band somewhere in London and decided that he was the powerhouse drummer that mighty Shrieks had been looking for without really knowing it. 7) Explain the meaning of the original name ‘Shriekback Concentrate.’ Er, why?? 8) How did you feel about using drum machines and tape loops as half the rhythm section in the early days? It was thrilling, especially seeing the twenty foot long tape loops making their way around various mike stands and other smooth implements in the studio.
Commandeered by the mighty Captain Caple of course. 9) How did you approach the 'Experimental Art’ feel of the early live shows? It sometimes seemed like you really had to hold the music together. The early shows seemed to be more about proving that the Shriekback space ship could hover. When we realized that the joystick actually operated the craft we left this dimension for greater glories elsewhere.
10) What were your favorite songs to perform live? All of 'em 11) Any favorite all-time Shriek songs, or a favorite album? Hubris, Evaporation, Fish Below the Ice all stand out. Care was my fave album. 12) What are your least favorite Shriek songs? I believe White Out still bugs the fuck out of me but I don’t know why.
13) What other arts do you work in? Underwater Masturbatory Techniques and journalism. 14) What musician(s), living or dead, would you love to work with? I wouldn’t mind whacking the bass to some of those Radiohead grooves right now. 15) Could we talk about what happened with 'Go Bang’? I wasn’t there. 16) What led you to form World Domination Records?
See answer to 13. The failure of UMT to provide the food on the table for my new family pushed me toward forming a label to indulge my particular tastes in music. 17) Why is World Dom on hold for now? Because it too failed to put the food on the table. Bad, bad label. 18) Ever been any talk on getting Gang Of Four back together?
What would the music be like, 20+ years later? 19) How has having a family changed your role in the music industry? Well, it makes you look long and hard at the pros and cons of touring, especially long tours that mean you don’t get to hang out with your family for long periods of time.
That doesn’t seem to be very healthy for relationships although having said that I feel confident that my relationship with my family is robust enough to weather a storm or two. I just have to refrain from bringing home the sex dwarves every other weekend. As for the music industry I have a strange relationship with that right now. It is a very old fashioned model that is refusing to budge and remains bloody-minded in the face of a technological juggernaut. I believe the musicians’ role today is to concentrate on live performance, harnessing the organic, pulsing beats and then distributing them virally over the Internet. Let’s fuck with the model as in this instance it’s not a matter of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” as I believe the fissures have begun to appear and it might not take much to push it over the edge. By the way, did I mention I own a Rottweiler?
20) When did you get into tattoos? Or when did tattoos get into me? Circa 1984/85 I believe. 21) What did you think of Naked Apes & Pond Life? What do you think of Simon Edwards’ work?
I’ve not spent enough time with this album but I remember thinking on first listening to it how good it sounded sonically. 22) Do you see a rise in Shriekback’s popularity? How about your other bands? Are you suggesting that our popularity plummeted somewhere along the way? 23) What have you been doing since World Dom shut down? I refer you to question 13. 24) Are you looking forward to working with Shriekback again?
Yes I am, who’s asking? 25) How, if at all, will your role in the band change? Are you going to sing? Enough with the questioning already!
26) Will Shriekback tour again? Would you consider using any Elastic Purejoy material in the live shows? See above 27) Would you ever want to live in England again?
Part time, yes. I’m digging the Northwest USA right now.
28) Are you working on any music now? 29) What music do you listen to? Ok, you asked for it - in no particular order - Boards of Canada, Radiohead, Tricky, Bjork, Plaid, St Germain, Nils Petter Molvaer, Julien Lourau, Esbjorn Svensson Trio, Thievery Corporation, Mogwai, Gorillaz, tons of Drum 'n’ Bass, mucho jazz, Emmylou Harris, trip hop for days, Tracker, Tool, Moby, Massive Attack, East Flatbush Project, Dj Krush, Z-Trip, This Heat, At the Drive-in - I could go on 30) THE FACT BASS: Could you give us a little history on it? Where is it now? In Q-Burns Abstract Message’s studio in Orlando, Florida and soon to be on its way via UPS to my home in the woods in Oregon. 31) What would you like to see happen at Shriekback.com?
I have one word for you - MOULA! 32) On a new Chameleons UK album breaking a 15 year silence, there is an indication that “Dave Allen”, same producer of their '86 album Strange Times, has been used again. Is this you, and if so, can you tell us a little about it?
33) What about the vibrating tree? Can you tell us anything about this device? 34) (from Barry A.) Why are you such a big toss? Ahem, something to do with my shoe size perhaps?? 28 June, 2001. Jam Science is Shriekback’s third studio album (after Tench and Care and before Oil and Gold).
It’s unusual in that it is comprised of all Carl Marsh tunes (apart from Hubris) and for having no real drums on it (Martyn Barker was a hired gun at this stage and was confined to live performance duties). So it’s a kind of Yang to Big Night Music’s entirely non-sequenced Yin, if you will. It was a conscious attempt to do something dancy and commercial (Yeah, yeah, God has a right old chortle when you make plans) which we started with Y Records, exhausting their budget and and recommencing once we’d signed to Arista. Y released an unmixed, half finished version of it, no doubt to try and claw some more dosh back, which we were not best pleased by but loftily ignored, concentrating on finishing the actual album properly.
Which we went on to do. The extras included here are the two which only came out on the bootleg (Pressure and International), Nerve -the B-side to Hand on my Heart- and two demos which never made it to either album (Carrying Cameras and Big Sharp Teeth). Also, there are 3 remixes of Hand on my Heart by Groucho Smykle and Adrian Sherwood. The companion album included in this package is a live recording made at Hatfield Poytechnic on October 23rd 1984 (I think on the Rolling Stones Mobile).
The band is: Barry, Carl, Dave, Mart and Lu Edmonds on guitar and keys. (Barry Andrews) Jam Science: some scenes behind the scenes also some technical stuff for them as cares and introducing the Digital Rasta: We started recording with Ian Caple at Regents Park studios -which was also, interestingly, the HQ of Gary Glitter’s management/fan club. They let us use their office to have our lunch in and we noticed a few, particularly hysterical, hate-letters pinned to the notice board. ‘Dear Mr Glitter-Pouff’ one began, going on to ennumerate the abominations which said Glitter-Pouff had allegedly committed.
It just seemed ridiculous at the time. Prejudice or Observation one may wonder, with hindsight. What we really could have done with, to make our sleek, pulsing disco record, of course, was a sequencer: that mechanically accurate, computer driven tool that transcended human frailty; that spoke of a perfectable world. However, these were expensive and difficult to work in those days so Ian developed a workaround: I would play a sustained chord which Ian would 'gate’ (ie let through via a volume sensitive filter) using as a trigger the drum machine’s hi-hat which was typically playing 16 notes a bar.
Thus the sustained chord would be chopped into a 'duggaduggadugga’ sound sort of similar to the production of, say, Giogio Moroder (think: 'I Feel Love’ or 'Mighty Real’). All Clever Stuff, eh?
The sound that you can hear on 'Hand on My Heart’, 'Achtung and others which sounds like a particularly visceral synth is in fact a Senheiser vocoder (as used by Herbie Hancock, famously): a big beast of a thing which we had to hire in. It made it possibly to mutate the sound of my synth (the Roland JP8)with a mic -quite often deep-throating it to get that 'internal’ sound. Disgusting but fun. When we mixed, we were encouraged to work with Island’s (oh yeah, we’d signed to Island in the US, by now) own house engineer Paul Groucho Smykle who had just produced a Black Uhuru album.
This seemed like a good omen and Groucho was an interesting guy. He liked nicknames in a reggae-ish way (those boys love their nicknames: 'General’ this, 'Prince’ that, 'Sticky’, 'Scientist’ etc) Groucho had multiple ones -he was also the Digital Rasta- and he lost no time in re-christening us: Dave was 'Space Otter’ (he had a designer semi-caped super-hero garment and slicked down hair which resembled the streamlined aquatic beast). I was 'Family Man’ after Viv came down the studio with our very tiny Finn. Carl was 'Field Marshall’ (Marsh -seen?) Groucho also turned us on to many great patois-ish locutions which we greatly relished`; eg.
'Reasonings’ 'I was outside reasoning with Steven Stanley’ (having a chat, not trying to talk him down off a ledge). Groucho had a compressor across the whole mix which he would apply at the very last minute to beef things up. It had a small mushroom cloud drawn in chinagraph next to it and, when he hit the button, he would say: 'man a drop nuclear 'pon it’. Italian food, also according to Groucho, 'dropped 'douff’’ and he intuited, from her voice alone, that one of our backing singers had 'Murderaas Top Section.’ He enjoyed dancing, he said, especially 'close quaarter rubbage’. So it was a good laugh apart from the actual mixing which was incredibly horrible. We had made ourselves a problem by recording like a weird messy band -imagine!- (whole tracks with formless, improv’d noises all the way through: standard Shriek operating procedure by now) while needing to produce a tight, precise result.
This meant there was no way you could mix a track in one go -there were simply too many decisions to be made in every small segment to remember them all, so we mixed 4 bars, usually, at a time, down onto ¼’’ tape which Groucho then edited onto the preceding 4 bars. However there was no way to tell in advance whether the bits would all add up to a coherent 'narrative’ song-wise. Often it sounded wrong and artificial and you’d have to go back to the multi-track and do it again. It was a long, grim process which always took from around midday to at least 7.00 am next day and stopped being fun about midnight. We were doing what everybody does now in Logic or Cubase in a tiny fraction of the time and at considerably less expense. There’s a philosophy, don’t mean a lot to me, the value of anything is how much it hurts.’ In the words of the Field Maarshall. Jam Science is, of course, no-one’s idea of a dance record but I think we came up with something much more interesting than we would have achieved if we’d been better technicians.
Jam Science, I reckon, is a sort of mistaken memory of 80’s nightclub music. Maybe it’s the soundtrack to the alienated, jittery walk home on your own or the moment when the lights come up and you can see everything all too well. At any rate, it has a glazed vision to it which is of it’s time but, like a lot of our records, I think, illuminates a world entirely it’s own. I don’t remember too much about the Hatfield gig but it’s probably worth mentioning that we were working at the time on the premise that live performance and making records were two very different modes. The Who was our role model: tightly produced, poppy recordings; big sprawling energy bombs going off on stage. You must, of course, judge for yourself. The only thing I do remember clearly was that we dismembered our Tour Bunny onstage that night: a nasty looking beast with a monstrous erection.
And about time too. (Barry Andrews).
Expanded their ambitions with the aptly named, adding more and more layers of rhythm, melody, and noise to their established sound. At times, the ten compositions here threaten to collapse under their own weight - but they never do. In fact, this album is a minor masterpiece, with enough surface appeal to grab the ear immediately, and enough depth to reward scrutiny over the long term. Clearly, a lot of work went into. The arrangements are worked out in microscopic detail and the production, by the band with dub producer Paul 'Groucho' Smykle, is extremely sophisticated - maybe excessively so; at times it feels like too much science, not enough jam.
Shriekback Jam Science
But the record's strengths carry it through: swooping, dangerous basslines from; complex, elliptical keyboard parts from; and deft Linn drum programming, mostly. A shift in sonic emphasis results in Marsh's guitar being either buried in the mix or eliminated altogether, but he continues to develop as a vocalist and lyricist. The album boasts some of the first songs with identifiable subject matter: 'Hand on My Heart' is a thoughful consideration of the relationship between mind and body, and 'Midnight Maps' is a chilling portrait of emotional fascism. Andrews chips in with an ethereal vocal on the lovely, haunting album closer, 'Hubris.'