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SEVERED HEADS - Clifford Darling please don't live in the Past

Format: do-LP Label & Cat.Number: Dark Entries DE-105 Release Year: 2015 Note: re-issue of this album from 1985 collecting earlier material by this pretty unique "industrial pop" group from Sydney, Australia; with inlay Price (incl. 19% VAT): €28.00 More Info "Severed Heads are one of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, incorporating elements of ‘industrial’ noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis. As the project developed song-structures and vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style. After many line-up changes featuring Garry Bradbury and psychedelic guitarist Simon Knuckey, Severed Heads was the vehicle for composer Tom Ellard. In 1985 their record label asked them to release a retrospective, so they dragged out bits that we had lying around from 1979 up til 1983. The compilation was titled “Clifford Darling Please Don’t Live In The Past”, spread out into a montage over four sides of vinyl. Bradbury and Ellard would fuss each bit and sling it on their new digital recorder, and since they still have the digital recorder, this reissue is made directly from the bits assembled twenty years ago. This compilation includes live recordings, raw demos, unreleased studio recordings and solo pieces from each member of the band during from the first five years. Their early music was characterized by the use of tape loops, noisy arrangements of synthesizers and other dissonant sound sources in the general category of industrial music. After several releases in that vein, Severed Heads began incorporating various popular music tropes, such as a consistent 4/4 rhythm, strong melodic lines, resolving chord arrangements and the occasional vocal. This move was underscored by the incorporation of mimetic devices, such as drum machines and bass synthesizers. The result was a striking hybrid of the avant-garde industrial and pop. All songs are remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. Housed in a jacket featuring brightly colored, distorted, VHS graphics output by Stephen Jones’ video synthesizer created by Tom Ellard video piece “Kato Gets The Girl” in 1985, designed by Eloise Leigh. Each copy includes a fold-out poster with a color video still photo on one side and liner notes and credits on the other. 30 years later Severed Heads’ perverse creativity is still paving the way for powerful imaginative challenging music far and wide." [label info] www.darkentriesrecords.com In 1985, Severed Heads were commissioned to collect a retrospective of their (then) six years in existence. Instead of the standard 'best of' anthology, Tom Ellard and Co. took the opportunity to create a sprawling collage of a whole slew of material never heard before, with cutting room edits, tape loop assemblages, live tracks, and numerous experiments that never found their way onto any of their albums. That approach is emblematic of the subversive manner in which Severed Heads produces and contextualizes their heavily mediated electronics, tracks that boisterously flaunt new wave pop structures butted against chunks of machined voltage-control noise and volatile industrial rhythm. On this release, more than pretty much anywhere else in Severed Heads catalog, do comparisons to Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle make the most sense. (Aquarius Rec)