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DEATH & BEAUTY FOUNDATION - same

Format: CD
Label & Cat.Number: Somnimage SOMCD0801
Release Year: 2008
Note: early & previously unreleased recordings ("The Darlington Tapes") from 1982 by the project of ANDREW MC. KENZIE (later HAFLER TRIO) and VAL DENHAM ! finally BACK IN STOCK, higher price unavoidable
Price (incl. 19% VAT): €16.00


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Noch bevor 1984 die ersten Aufnahmen von THE HAFLER TRIO das Licht der Welt erblickten, war H30-Mastermind ANDREW MC. KENZIE mit VAL DENHAM aktiv, einem britischen Transvestiten & frühen Industrial-Aktivisten der als Maler(?) & Artworker für TG, PSYCHIC TV, MARC ALMOND oder CYCLOBE tätig war. Die insgesamt 21 Stücke, die mit "Darlington Tapes" betititelt wurden sind hier nun erstmals auf einer CD zu hören - äusserst eigenwillige experimentelle "Songs" mit kruden Stimmverfremdungen und elektronischen Sounds, wie sie - etwas eleganter - z.T. auch auf die erste H30 LP "Bang! An Open Letter" oder die krasseren sprachbasierten NURSE WITH WOUND-Alben gepasst hätten. Auch über 20 Jahre später ist das noch absolut unzugängliche Anti-Musik, die sich nicht mit klassischen Maßstäben "bewerten" lässt, da es kaum Vergleichsmöglichkeiten gibt.

"... present the legendary "Darlington Tapes"recorded in 1982. At last, the sound of Val Denham and Andrew M. McKenzie's long awaited avant garde masterpiece for the bewildered is available after 26 years. Remastered, frightening and beautiful. The strangest album ever recorded. You have been warned." [label info]

" The Death & Beauty Foundation is an odd footnote in the history of The Hafler Trio. It's a project that began sometime in the early '80s presumably in and/or around Newcastle, UK featuring a young Andrew McKenzie (who later went on to found The Hafler Trio) and Val
Denham, a visual artist who has some history with Psychic TV, Marc Almond, and Cyclobe. Only a couple of compilation tracks of the Death
& Beauty Foundation had appeared on Touch cassette compilations, and a tape-only release emerged in 1986; but beyond that, the story to the Death & Beauty Foundation is pretty mysterious. This CD represents the complete 'Darlington Tapes' which the two began in 1982. Instead of the media-savvy collages and psychoacoustic investigations which The Hafler Trio mastered throughout the '80s, the Death & Beauty Foundation penned songs, really weird and fractured songs; but these are nonetheless tunes. A curious falsetto (which we're presuming to belong to Denham) floats in flanging tremolo haze above odd, Spartan electronics, sounding somewhat like "In Heaven" from the Eraserhead soundtrack, but ever more evasive and purposefully meandering. In line with primitive BBC Radiophonic tricknology meets Cabaret Voltaire cut- up methods, tape manipulations guide the bulk of the arrangements to that fluttering voice, with Shadow Ring like splutter across guitar and tin-can percussion on a few tracks. Some of the electronic sounds seem to have reappeared on the h3o album Sea Org; but those recognizable instances are few and far between in this confusing album." [Aquarius Records review]

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