How Not To Run A Record Label Part 3
2015 - January to June
Kill Pretty ended in late 2014. They hit their zenith, and biggest crowd, supporting The Fall at Manchester Cathedral in May of that year. Mike Leigh who had re-united with Mark E. Smith after 33 years sprained his ankle packing his kit away after the gig. I spent the whole gig at the merch table at the back - a table filled with T-Shirts depicting the cover of an album that would never be released. To add insult to injury the relatively large amount of money we made from selling CDs was taxed by the cathedral jobsworth. Ian gave me £10 for my evenings “work” it just about covered the taxi fare home. Sometime later a particularly fraught meeting in the band room at the Kings Arms before a gig left me feeling I couldn’t cope with the unnecessary drama any longer. There’s a raft of history in the industry about bands falling apart for seemingly ridiculously stupid reasons - mostly ego. After a failed attempt to agree on the process of how to get their third album released via John Robb and Louder Than War I told Ian I was relinquishing my role as band “manager”. I wanted to concentrate on the label. A lot of the first few months of 2015 were spent dealing with consequences of that split.
On a more positive note Alana Richards was introduced to me at one of our events at the Crescent. She said she had some music she wanted to put out. E-mails were exchanged. What arrived was breathtakingly good and highly individual. A very rare type of music which makes you feel more aware and more alive after each listen. With sparse musical accompaniment and a voice capable of both great power and fragility, Welsh born solo artist Alana pursued an ethereal folk rock sound of her own making. Based in Manchester she planned a further EP and album due to be released in 2015. This excellent first outing failed to sell many units. Her stage name was Alana Bondi.
The first release from Ion-Morph (the artist formerly known as KP2) followed. As with our debut release in 2014 we also started 2015 with a collaboration between Ion and Space Museum. The subject matter concerns the harrowing tale of The Wilson family, and, on Don't Make Gods Of Men the obsession of some fans with dead rock stars. The words and sounds were put together over a couple of days in early January 2015 and signal what is going to be a busy year for Ion-Morph. The Wilsons would appear in several guises in future years, it remains one of my favourite pieces that Ian and I have created, I doubt if I could replicate the music again. At the time Modal Roberts described it as one of our finest releases.
Modal had introduced us to Phil Mill who in turn introduced us to Zophocles a Colchester based artist, who blended generated, found and sampled sounds. He often used the live environment as a platform for exploring the boundaries of performances, he played at a number of venues in East Anglia, having released 3 full-length records in 2014. Previous and later releases by Zophocles are available at zophocles.bandcamp.com. Fascinating material which failed to catch on - extreme electronica which pushes at aural boundaries - nobody could accuse us of not having an eclectic release programme. This was our only release with this artist - it only sold one copy.
The previously mentioned Dave Bromwich aka Fall Fan Dave was producing a great deal of music at the time which was actively championed by some of the DJs on Salford City Radio. With Ian’s approval he compiled an album of covers of Hamsters songs. In his liner notes Ian said “Fall Fan Dave is a true artist , everything he does he fills with his own spirit , his art is at once naive and knowing , childlike but sage , he is a modernist , not tied to any of the conventions that trap other artists , he is a classicist in his appreciation of a good song , he is Fall Fan Dave , not a pale imitation of anything and anyone.” Indeed his re-invention of original Hamster material was remarkably good. The version of Maggots for example transforms the song into something completely new. Sadly hardly anyone else agreed and it only sold two copies.
The end of the January saw another release from Ian and myself - for some reason it was both credited to both House Mouse and Space Museum and Ion-Morph & Space Museum, Ian was playing with a series of different nom-de-plumes at the time. These two songs about the human races inhumanity to fellow men and women were put together during the early weeks of January as part of an extremely productive writing period. By this time my fingers had completely given in to arthritis and the guitar and keyboards were abandoned for Ableton managed via the lap-top. The standard chord progression of Strawberry Fields was counterpointed with Ian’s exposure of terrible working conditions - listening back now clearly the Pet Shop Boys were an influence. When Cactus Curtain was played on the radio the DJ complimented my excellent guitar playing - it was all samples! Ian is in fine form vocally and lyrically on the track. Ennio Morricone influenced of course.
Ian was delivering material at a rate of knots. In hindsight we should have released a lot of this material as a single album - it could have had more impact. It was so easy to put things out on Bandcamp that once something was recorded, agreed on and finalised it was launched in a matter of minutes - a very Nick Lowe approach. The Moss Brothers returned with a new single in February concerning “Trawling the world to see disasters and war zones , the modern adventurers holiday choice. We are not impressed , as a young John Lydon put it back in 1977 ' cheap holidays in other peoples misery'“. A pop tune with added weirdness which brings back some of the spirit of Hamsters.
Ian was working hard behind the scenes compiling a spoken word album trilogy. The next release was a preview of sorts of that project. Each new patch release on Ableton inspired new material. I was slowly drifting more into realms of electronica which seemed more effective in supporting Ian’s vocal exhortations - no need for verse-chorus structures, the opportunity to spread out more. I was going through my Tangerine Dream back catalogue at the time (the early 70s Virgin releases) so that seeped through, I was also exploring the percussion options in the software and learning new ways of manipulating Ian’s vocals, a huge but worthwhile learning curve.
March brought a new release by Ian and Johann Kloos the rocky “My Dark Passenger”. Johann’s production on this one demonstrates effectively his song-writing expertise delivering Ian’s exploration of mental illness in perfect package. Around this time visual artist Todd Rempling was doing the bulk of our cover design. Who was this mysterious figure that no-one had ever met? It was believed he lived somewhere in Eccles, and had a rather schizophrenic existence as the co-owner of a record label.
Back to Moff Skellington for the next release - oddly it says on the sparse liner notes that this was the third in our new series from Andy but it comes second in the Bandcamp listing. The cover is adorned with the fruits of Andy’s other endeavours as a visual artist - his art is as unique as his music. This collection is a perfect marriage of his influences. I often think the spirit of “Trout Mask Replica” is captured by the Moff releases without directly taking music cues from that seminal release. I know Pere Ubu is also a favourite artist of his. With Ian and Andy I was blessed to be working with two masters of word play both unique in their own ways - check out The Dronfield Project herein - verbal art with aspects of surrealism . The variety on this release is marvellous.
Around this time a couple of weeks were lost to the irritations of a kidney stone which would come back to bother me later. Ian and I met in the cafe at Morrisons in Eccles to map out the way ahead, We created a completely fictitious band for the next release - I mean it’s obvious its us two but we hid the work behind a band name which reflected what were going through at the time - a difficult transition to the next phase. I’m proud of this release and the use of Duschamps Urinal on the cover reflects our desire to implement change. Time to change the status quo.
A number of bands from Chorley, a town in Lancashire, had come across my radar whilst at the radio station. The newest of these ventures from Jason Hurley was Electric Cheese. He had been the bass player with Taser Puppets (who were featured on the Salford Streets compilation) but broke away and formed the band in 2014. A band worth seeing live which has had a number of line-up changes between then and now - this debut EP is packed with excellent tunes - a sort of blues tinged Lancastrian vibe going on - Jason writes great songs and cheese jokes abound.
Post Positronik phase one Jeff Black had adopted the name Captain Black (for those of you who are not old enough to remember or who do not watch the current re-runs on TV the main villain in Gerry Andersons Captain Scarlet series). Jeff had assembled an album of great tunes of mostly electro-pop which we were pleased to share with the world.
Ian and Johann had got back together for another set of songs A four track EP emerged with space dog Laika taking the leading role. A revised version of the previous track My Dark Passenger was included. Their remake of My Favourite Things is a hoot on Sunshine and Abba which is a political diatribe on haves and have nots packed with musical jokes and reflections on nostalgia. Clever stuff. Chocolate Poppies is an all too short Brechtian comment on the use of battle fields as a tourist destination.
The aforementioned triple album set of spoken word followed. Called “Anything’s Permitted At Any Given Time” the words consisted of mostly a variety of lyrics from the Kill Pretty era with some other material included - some of which had never been released. Ian wanted to record a series of “segments” of him performing his words for the first volume. The overall brief for me for the background sounds was fairly open, there would be some dub, some jazz. some noise and some electronica but I was pretty much left to my own devices. Knowing some of the originally recorded songs very well I had to disassociate myself from what I expected to hear when those lyrics were uttered. The immense Propshaft became Segment Five, a version had been laid down in Liverpool for the third Kill Pretty album, and was created from a very specific manifesto from Ian about found sounds coupled with John Adams like serialism. The words are an autobiographical reminiscence of Ian’s musical history. All proceeds from this release went to support the emerging FC United of Manchester team. Support that was subsequently withdrawn following changes in the ownership and management of that venture.
Volume Two moved back to more conventional individual pieces rather than groups of lyrics. We were producing these tracks at an alarming rate - my love of jazz and dub came through here but with repetition and more serial-ism used. The power of Ian’s words are brought to the fore in this environment. Rock/Punk music can often distract from lyrics this was aimed to make the words the main focus. All proceeds from this one went towards Emmaus, and then subsequently Shelter.
The voice recordings were coming thick and fast and there was a desire to conclude things as soon as possible so the impetus would not be lost. So we had started off with something vaguely electronic, wandered through jazz and dub, this last set was a chance to continue some of that but also perhaps be more experimental. Kill Pretty and Hamsters lyrics that had never seen the light of day were included with material that had seen release on their In 80 Days and Dark Heart albums. I was exhausted after we finished this. All proceeds from this one went to the annual Strummercamp Festival a wonderful endeavour that promotes grass roots music as well as bringing back to the fore heroes of the 80s and beyond.
So where to go after Kill Pretty? Well, adopting a well known trope Ian said “Let’s Get The Band Back Together”. The band in this instance being Hamsters. Ian was joined by original bassist John Rowlinson together with Damien Hughes and Nigel Blinston from another of Ian’s bands Sicknurse. In the original phase of Hamsters they never managed to release a single - it was time to remedy that. This tribute to the man who inspired Bowie to create Ziggy Stardust proved beyond doubt that Hamsters were back. Laid down at 6dB by Ding this was a celebration of the ethos of punk. Here’s the band live at the late lamented Crescent with a few familiar faces in the audience.
Described by Moff as 'an Eddodi mini-opera' Under The Cobweb Sea is a continuous piece which might be described as "Eddodiprog". It was a format Moff hoped to explore more as it gave him the chance to be more diffuse in his writing style. This was the last of our releases of Moff's newest recordings and as we awaited his newer work we planned to release some of his back catalogue during the rest of the year. Here is Andy with the debut performance of the piece at the Shangri-La event in Prestwich.
Time for another release from Ian and Dave - I said at the time “In an increasingly post-rational world where cyber attacks are the norm, where fratricide is too often witnessed, where the very life is sucked from the marrow of existence by those who would batter us into their world view, and, where the dull cocktail party ennui of the misanthropes and pseudo-intellectuals dumbs down even the most benign of conversational endeavour how refreshing to have Messrs Morph and Aznavour to tear the artifice of polarisation apart”. It was recorded in Bury in pre-Spring 2015.
After the head long rush of producing three albums of spoken word March 2015 gave us a chance for some reflection and a more measured pace of writing and composing. Doing just one tune a day instead of several dozen was a relief. This proved to be a productive period and the variety of material on here demonstrated that working a bit slower on things does genuinely result in positive outcomes. The usual IM issues were here on display, avant garde film directors who rail against the mainstream, hospitals. social care and, logically, obsession. House Mouse was back for this one.
May - Originally released in 2014 via Uterus Cottage (UC23) next up was the first in our releases of the Moff Skellington back catalogue.
It was inevitable that Ian and Modal would get together to produce something. Electro-pop and jangling guitars with an insistent rhythm backed another soap-opera special from Mr Moss - great word play from Ian, great music from Modal. Modal contributed a menacing dubby/jazzy “b-side” to compliment it. Great stuff, a pity more people did not hear it.
It was time for something new from me - the bloody - quite literally - kidney stone was playing up again and this four track ep was an exercise in distraction. I had an idea of mixing electronica with post-rock sounds/drones - vaguely Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Tortoise were in the back of my mind nagging away at me. More fresh Ableton patches/synths offered the chance to explore new areas. The constant process of learning on this very complex software allows for experimentation. In hindsight i’m very pleased with this one but it probably would have benefited from a producer advising me to reign things in a little.
Another single from myself and Ian was next. Squares & Straights came from an instrumental idea called "Neupunk" , this inspired the thinking behind the lyric which tries to capture the feeling of chasing something fresh and rejecting the orthodox as Messers Rother and Dinger did so thrillingly. Trapped concerns the conditioning that is imposed upon us and that we impose upon ourselves , behavioural codes we live by that make us unhappy , unfulfilled and guilty of squandering our potential to be better.
Hard The Transition wouldn’t go away, they kept mithering us to release their rerecorded back catalogue. Vocalist/Lyricist Lash Pedicure said of this release - "I'm too funky is an imagining of the thoughts running through the mind of ' soul brother no 1' as his long standing backing band ' The Famous Flames' mutinied, and what were presumed to be key personnel deserted him. Of course JB simply recruited a new hungry band who he authored the ' new super funk ' of his 70s heyday with. Big Cheese is about the stench of something rotting." In context Ian Moss is a big James Brown fan.
Originally released in 2013 our next release was a stripped down affair due to the failure of various key bits of recording apparatus at Moff HQ. The 12th solo album in the Skellington canon is more “Eddodi” than usual and Moff allows his particular perspective on the universe free rein. I do feel he further demonstrates his unique qualities on this one. A good part of the 14 tracks reflected to some degree, in a para-autobiographical fashion, on Andy’s extant illness. The slightly scary “Hydrothermal Vents” – full of off kilter rhythms and strange echoings – talks of palpitations and succulent mould clovers. “Fetch The Doctor” mines Residents territory – in a Skellington style – with tales of household accidents, and “Lamentation For A Piss Bottle” reflects on the problems of micturition for those confined to a hospital bed. When Andy performed the title track at Prestwich’s Carlton club the audience were captivated as Moff, in Stewart Lee style, pushed the repetition to the limit.
Another release with Ian and Dave followed. Imagine being Barry Wom imagining being Ringo Starr , only to find he was in a Rutles tribute act called Oasis. Bad Apple is the bite into diseased fruit that appears perfect on the outside but leaves you retching in disgust. Loop provides a Martinesque soundscape to add period charm. Dancing Bear concerns itself with choices , with good people, with bad people , they're out there , the latter often masquerading as the former , be wary of letting them yank your chain!
And so to June. Things get slightly out of kilter in the Bandcamp listings here. The Junta was a project by John “Monty” Montague who I first met when I interviewed him with fellow Pearl Divers Carl Lingard and Mike Leigh for my radio show. That interview ended up with Monty becoming a fellow DJ at Salford City Radio. We did release a debut albums worth of material by The Junta called Art Of Glass but that got pulled so it could be revisited . So the first Junta release in the listings is an EP recorded during April to May 2015 and inspired by John’s love of Marvel films and the tv spin-off Agents of Shield.
“Passage Of Time records and sends ion Morph his music, within the hour he has been answered with a lyric , vocalised for him to add to the mix , it is a spontaneous dialogue , honest and unconsidered , intuition is allowed free reign , there are no discussions , there are no added parts , no thoughts of sweetening the pill to appeal to the casual listener , the music is readied for release as soon as possible , the whole process has been conducted with honesty , here we present you something pure and untainted by commercial consideration , we hope you find the taste refreshing.”
Notes about the music - Fish - The Theme from Callan, John Barry, Giorgio Moroder, Sweeps and Pads; Twisting - More sweeps and pads with ethereal piano, Tortoise, Arpeggiators; M25 - Steve Reich, Buzzing lower register synths, motorik rhythms obviously;Jimmy Ig - Imagine The Stooges playing in a disco I said. More Giorgio with a nod towards Studio 54.
So there we were, working backwards through the Moff Skellington catalogue , with artefact number 20 from that hot bed of creativity known as Uterus Cottage. Mr Skellington is in fine form again with his usual collection of sideways-on looks at the world. The great man advised me by analogue communication methods that he considered this to be a 4/4 percussive “dance-o-tronic” selection of pieces. In the most part the description is correct – we have fourteen slices of pure Eddodi varying from up tempo and bouncy to slowish and ambient. The use of non-traditional instrumentation is perhaps more evident than in the previous releases. Moff reflects a more avant-garde approach musically whilst sounding a tad more accessible in terms of the words (I use the word “tad” with a degree of trepidation if you have not heard his other work). My immediate thoughts revolved around comparisons with Talking Heads, The Residents and the previously mentioned Pere Ubu given the other worldly nature of some of the material. The use of spoken word was also perhaps more apparent than in the more recent releases . This was uniquely English (as it usually is) and steadfastly northern but in terms of subject matter – which varies from bags of compost, shadowy figures that inhabit moorlands, and a dead person that follows their killer around – it inhabits a range of different places in your mind’s eye.
One of the stand-out tracks from the recent Hydra EP from the Junta was the mesmerising Agent Coulson. The Junta invited a number of like-minded electronic music gurus to put their stamp on the track and this resulted in a remix EP with contributions from Captain Black, Night Operations (aka Mike Powell), and three from me as Passage of Time, Space Museum, and a new pseudonym U-Bob. Pure electronica heaven.
Thirty one releases in six months was perhaps a little too much but the impact of the Kill Pretty break-up and the addition of new artists generated a lot of material. We were still fairly inward looking and somewhat geographically constrained to mostly northern England. The next six months would to some degree consolidate that approach but there were some changes coming due to the intervention of a chap called Davey Hammond………
TO BE CONTINUED