VARIOUS - The Bristol Post Punk Explosion Vol. 2 (1979-1986) - LP - Black Vinyl [OCT 11]

LP - Strictly Limited Edition Black Vinyl with sleeve notes by Dave Massey. Only 300 copies pressed in this edition. All tracks remastered by Steve Street, June 2024. 

Bristol is a city that has managed to not only surprise the wider world with its output but has managed to do the same to the citizens of the place. The 1980’s was a decade that personified that aspect to music making out west and the second volume of the Bristol Post-Punk Explosion has managed to capture the vibe to perfection. You even get the guy who went on to produce hits for Sinead O’Connor and Madonna!

In the post-punk cauldron Electric Guitars were boiling up a brew that is no better illustrated than in the album opener, ‘Language Problems.’ Here we have all the ingredients – plenty of off-kilter hair, scatter gun lyrics, stuttering guitars, buoyant scampering bass plunges, colour blind keyboard lines, insistent drums, and a full-on frenetic set of male and female vocal deliveries. This is a hurricane of beautiful noise that is worth getting caught up in.

Former Essential Bop main-man Steve Bush (see more below) made a worthy attempt at hitting the mainstream in his alliance with Christian Clarke in the classy Bush & Clarke duo nucleus set-up so prevalent in the 80’s. Even though the lyrical depth of ‘I’m Satisfied’ goes past the usual content of the pop genre (in its narrowest sense), it is a hit in anyone’s language – no problem. This song echoes the parallel right turn made by former squat Gramsci quoting punksters Scritti Pollitii where all the aspirations and style of the age saw a total transmogrification of then cult acts. B&C did it as brilliantly as Green Garside had, albeit on a smaller budget.

Art Objects ‘Fit of Pique ‘then bring us back to earth with a bump – and with some bruises. The clue is in the title. This is at times brutal, a sonic assault allied to beat poetry from Gerard Langley (later to carry this further with Blue Aeroplanes). Brother John’s quick-fire, spring heel jack drumming holds the chaos together – just. The next track also features two brothers – Jon-Jo and Robin Key. The contributions of the pair to their adopted city’s music cannot be underestimated. Either/Or was a project that was sandwiched between work with Art Objects, their earlier band the Various Artists and a later in the period major label fling with the classy Love Train. ‘I Believe in the Ant’ is a tribute to the groove and blessed with an outward facing examination of what goes on around us and further afield.

TVI’s really are one of the ‘lost’ bands of Bristol. There is astounding footage of them on Vimeo, along with several other acts of the time, on the Bristol Bands Newsreel from 1980. The group included Tim Norfolk, who went on to success with The Insects, and Alan Griffiths of local post-punk bands Apartment and The Escape (more to follow) who went on to work with Tears for Fears.

‘Routine’ was recorded by Griffiths at Cave Studios and shows off the edgy, relentless black and white imagery of singer John Kelly’s words and the band’s shadow play. It is ‘Northern’ in terms of where you might expect music of this intensity to come from. But…this is from Bristol, a tougher environment than outsiders realise.

The sextet of goodies is closed by the full version of ‘Giacometti’ (Wicked Mix) by Scream and Dance, rather more in the mood that might ‘typify’ Bristol. It’s mightily percussive, dubby, carefree, wild in the country and jazzy. Yet again this features the superb drumming of John Langley.

Side two kicks off with The Escape and one of their pinnacle songs ‘Eden.’ This widescreen epic is chock full of drama and was one of a quartet of tracks they were recorded for, of all people, the Peter Powell Show on drive time Radio One! The band would later to sign to Phonogram and mutate into a very different beast, shorn of their claws.

You want pure sound of the drums thunder? That you get from Moskow’s take on the TV classic (The) ‘Man from Uncle,’ live and direct as the agent who shoots them dead. Distant Cousins were Bath’s version of a collection of epic making young men. The emotional disturbance of ‘The Search’ has all the sway and swerve that stays the course. Steve Bush reappears in his Essential Bop moment describing his own song well as ‘Eloquent Sounds.’ There are some resemblances to the archness of the great Magazine and that’s no bad thing. A little of that fairy dust also gets poured on to the jazz-punk-funk explorations of Pete Brandt’s Method in their take a chance on us ‘Positive Thinking.’

The ultimate bonus of this collection is to hear the early days of the phenomenon that would become the renowned producer, Nellee Hooper. His membership of the Mouth collective was given full rein in ‘Ooh Ah Yeah,’ a filmic flurry a la batterie that Quincy Jones or Lalo Schifrin would have been proud to score.

All these tracks are gems of note in their own right – savour the lot!

Bristol Boys Make More Noise!

Tracklist: 

Side A
1. Electric Guitars – Language Problems (Demo) (Electric Guitars 1981) (p) Blue Mountain Music
2. Bush & Clarke – I’m Satisfied (Bush and Clarke 1986) (p) Copyright Control
3. Art Objects – Fit of Pique (Art Objects 1980) (p) Copyright Control
4. Either/OR – I Believe In The Ant (Haarlem 1982 Mix) (Key and Key 1982) (p) Copyright Control
5. TVI’s – Routine (Kelly and Griffiths 1980) (p) Copyright Control
6. Scream & Dance – Giacometti (Wicked Mix) (Scream & Dance 1982) (p) Recreational Music

Side B
1. The Escape – Eden (Griffiths 1982) (p) Copyright Control
2. Moskow – Man From Uncle (Demo) (Moskow 1979) (p) Heartbeat/ Cherry Red Music
3. Distant Cousins – The Search (Distant Cousins 1984) (p) Copyright Control
4. Essential Bop – Eloquent Sounds (Essential Bop 1980) (p) Recreational Music
5. Mouth – Ooh, Ah, Yeah! (Mouth 1981) (p) Recreational Music
6. Pete Brandts Method – Positive Thinking (Brandt 1980) (p) Fried Egg Music

All tracks remastered by Steve Street, June 2024