This Heat – Amsterdam 1982

Tape, live in Amsterdam, 30th April 1982

And finally (for now), this excellent quality but sadly short tape from a show in Amsterdam, sometime in the spring of 1982. Or rather, as our correspondent Karel confrms, on April 30th of that year – thanks, friend. No reason why the band shouldn’t be tight, of course, but their cohesiveness on these last shows is remarkable even by their standards. Oh to have been there.

And a special thanks from both Thorsten and Stef to those nameless heroes who taped these shows, and also Mr C from whose copious library of Grateful Dead and Zappa boots we managed to pluck all four tapes back in the day. Of course, now we’re wondering what else he had in there when he was selling up that we should have grabbed for posterity. Ah well.

01. Green Fingers
02. SPQR
03. Makeshift Swahili
04. Twilight Furniture
05. [Unknown]
06. Music Like Escaping Gas
07. A New Kind of Water

Link

To close, here are links to the other three live shows we ripped from our tape box, and because we love you so, to the various other This Heat shows that are out there. All hail the original posters. All hail the mighty This Heat.

This Heat – LSE, London, 30 June 1978
This Heat – Scala, Cinema, London, 20 Dec 1979
This Heat – Krefeld, Germany, 1980
This Heat – Boat Club, Nottingham, 19 May 1981
This Heat – Hamburg, Germany, 8 April 1982
This Heat – Rheims, France, 22 May 1982
This Heat – SPQR—The Last Live Show 1982

This Heat – Hamburg, April 1982

Tape, live in Hamburg, Germany on 8th April, 1982

Here’s another prized relic from the Friendsound archives, the mighty This Heat live in Germany at the start of their last year together. Sounds like an audience recording but pretty decent sound, especially once they get going.

The real reason to go crazy about this one is the presence of two new pieces of music showcasing a tight new guitar-led style. The download we have of a show in Rheims a month after this names the first of these tracks as ‘Aerial Photography’ but that (and this) is nothing like the piece of that name on the official 80/81 album so that’s probably wrong. The other track, well, we’ve not heard that one anywhere else. Bonus marks, as well, for the rendition of ‘Music Like Escaping Gas’ without any escaping gas – who knew it had so many lyrics.

But a big boo, again, for tape dubbers who run out of room. All hail your valiant efforts, but surely C120s weren’t so thin on the ground. I mean, what’s that, four second of ‘Health & Efficiency’ this time? Pah. Still, we take what we can get, twenty-eight years after the event… Ripped as one track, at 320.

01. Green Fingers
02. SPGR
03. (Unknown)
04. Makeshift Swahili
05. Twilight Furniture
06. (Unknown)
07. Music Like Escaping Gas
08. A New Kind of Water
09. Cenotaph
10. Health & Efficiency (fragment)

Link | Previously: Nottingham May 1981, London LSE 1978

Peril

CD, Dr Jim’s/Survival, 1993

So how’s this for a leftfield coming together of talents – Tony (The Necks) Buck, Otomo Yoshihide, Michael Sheridan (of early Friendsound post Dumb & the Ugly) and guest Kato Hideki of Ground Zero? Such is Peril, a powerfully driven amalgam of scrape and velocity, with a fair smearing of sampler abuse and clanky machine noises too. All good, all good. Second album Multiverse was only released in Hong Kong but is now available for download on iTunes, but this debut is the real deal.

01. Kiken (0:44)
02. Exchange Rate (4:36)
03. Gold (7:00)
04. Peril (2:26)
05. Lurch (4:28)
06. Accidently Hoddle St. (4:07)
07. Rotor Syndrome (4:46)
08. 50 – 144 (1:47)
09. Free-Rock (3:27)
10. Left of Centre (6:10)
11. [Untitled Bonus Track] (1:36)

Link | Discogs

Bruce Gilbert – Instant Shed Vol.1

7″, Sub Pop, 1995

Bruce Gilbert was always the ornery one in Wire. Older, less of a straightforward musician, far more the artist. Here’s a sneaky little DJ tool from the period between Wire Mk.II and Mk.III, when if memory serves he played support slots as DJ Beekeeper from inside a garden shed. Nice packaging – sealed inside a foil sachet like a pop-tart or a sachet of noodle flavourings.

Play both sides at once for maximum dancefloor bemusement. There was a second volume on Ash which came as two one-sided discs… but we don’t have that. Anyone wanna post it?

And really – Sub Pop? WTF?

A. Bi-Yo-Yo (4:54)
B. BYO (sachet) (4:53)

Link | Discogs

Japan Bashing vols.1-3

It’s strange to look back and realise that even as late as 1990, the new Japanese experimental rock music was a rarity in the West. Fuelled by the desperately tantalising reviews of discs on Alchemy, PSF and Bron in the pages of Forced Expsure magazine, noiseheads were drooling at the thought of this brain melting psych racket finally making its way beyond Japan’s borders. So praise was duly given to the fine people of Public Bath Records, creators of these three seminal EPs of new Japanese rock racketry. These days, as the saying goes, nobody knows if it really happened.

Japan Bashing Volume 1, 7″, Public Bath, 1990

A1. Boredoms – Discow Moscow
A2. UFO or Die – Space Disco
B1. Omoide-Hatoba – Linear Motor Jet Shop
B2. Hanadensha – Future Deadlock

Link | Discogs

Japan Bashing Volume 2, 7″, Public Bath, 1990

A. Subvert Blaze – Butterfly (Away Mix)
B1. Playmate – Upside Down
B2. Playmate – Life is Never Too Short

Link | Discogs

Japan Bashing Volume 3, 2×7″, Public Bath, 1991

A. Hijokaidan – Theme of the Taste of Wild West
B. Solmania – Highdrophobia Part 2
C. Hanatarash – Galaxy Boost & Hanataradelic Planet Dub (Sore Diamond Remix)
D. Masonna – Hot Licks From a Cunning Linguist

Link | Discogs