"Emotionally Charged Electronica" & The Ineffable Sadness of Woops

catalog

Well-known member
but those other two are good. i like the one where they've shoehorned the bambatta sample in. there used to be loads of this warpy music going around, lofi electronica, laptop shit. good to hear it again
 
probably the label that crossed over best from indie to electronica was 555 recordings. i thought they were the best label in the world at that time. released a load of lo-fi punk bands and a few lo-fi electronic indie kids like the following. it's easily as good as the autechre records of that period (1999) in my book.


Do you have their "you gotta get more alive" compilation? I still think about some of the tracks on there most days.
 
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woops

is not like other people
51. Schrasj - Tower

Do you have their compilation? I still think about some of the tracks on there most days.

hello hmg wasn't expecting to see you here. never had that one but i will confidently add it as a sub-list to my list. schrasj had a particularly good 7" out i seem to recall. i wasn't expecting to find it on youtube but here it is!

 

woops

is not like other people
52. Fugu - F30

Discovered on the b-side of a Stereolab split 7" - indie label buying at its finest. I got their album too but it was boring compared to this.

 

woops

is not like other people
50. Creeping Jenny - Living in a Girl's Adventure Tale

Still digging around in the late 90s scene, there's been some interest in Pram here so have a listen to this one. The backing track is particularly good even if you can't get past her voice. This may be even less Dissensus than any of the other music I have posted.


Uploaded to Youtube by me for the cause
 

woops

is not like other people
53. Stereolab - Iron Man

Funny to think Stereolab tried to go drum & bass for at least a couple of tracks! After releasing Designer above and what have you. They hadn't gone too far in that direction though when they did this one. The influence is there though and the avant garde noises were more fun than any of the actual drum & bass I hear. And so I get closer to the continuum.

 

woops

is not like other people
This is the one where they went a bit too far - the rest of that LP is sublimely wicked though and one of the best ones around

 
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woops

is not like other people
54. Wauvenfold - Residual

By 2001/2 I would buy this kind of thing anywhere I could find it but most of the Warp/Rephlex/Mu stuff sounded too straight / techno for me. Needs to be more cut up and melodic please. This was released on the same label as Bloc Party, Peter Bjorn and John and Kaiser Chiefs!! Don't worry I'm not going to post any of that rubbish.

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
My girlfriend used to go out with some guy from The Fall (I think there have been a few of them over the years) and knock about with Mark and others for a year or so... it's really interesting to hear what she says about the way he got the best out of them and made them invent stuff they simply couldn't on their own even if he wasn't playing the instrument himself. Every one of them (including her ex) just instantly disappeared into mediocrity the second they left. There is a bit in his book where he says (in fact talking about her ex) that Mark was kinda leading him through the songs and suggesting changes and so on and making it sound as he wanted but the dumb cunt (or words to that effect) would be certain he had written it himself when really the ideas had all come from MES - in fact he claimed that the guy thought he'd written I Wanna Be Your Dog himself when they covered it... might just be more of his self-mythologising, who knows.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Forgot about Tiger but I used to really like them. I saw a record of theirs for sale in a charity shop or something a few months ago and I bought it and it still sounded good to me.
 

woops

is not like other people
he got the best out of them and made them invent stuff they simply couldn't on their own

He's interesting like that isn't he, if you read Julian Cope's memoirs Head-On and Repossessed which are well worth it anyway, he describes Mark E Smith as the main motivating figure, "the reason anyone did anything" or something like that, the prime mover of that little era
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Yeah that's exactly what Liza said. She was saying about her boyfriend leaving and forming a new band with all these guys who were in the Manchester scene and had all been in The Fall or other bands that had done stuff or almost made it or whatever... a promising line-up on paper I guess, but when she went to watch their rehearsals she realisd that there no spark, nothing at all... without MES or someone similar they were completely flat.
 

woops

is not like other people
also funny stories about Morrissey writing fan letters to Mark E Smith and even naming the Smiths after him(?!) and the guy from Echo and the Bunnymen starting out as a Fall roadie, then taking the piss out of MES when E&the B were big
 

catalog

Well-known member
i read that julian cope double book years ago, it's what made me go and buy the modern dance by pere ubu, which i love. very amusing book.

but i also went a bought a teardrop explodes album and thought it was total chod!
 

Leo

Well-known member
but i also went a bought a teardrop explodes album and thought it was total chod!

hearsay! "Kilimanjaro" is one of the best post-punk/new wave/whatev albums ever, literally eight amazing classic singles out of 11 tracks.
 

catalog

Well-known member
Just didn't gel with me at all, none of those scouse bands from that time did, but I remember thinking teardrop explodes was particularly bad. Like the worst combo of bright and whimsical, with his singing voice going thru different registers for no reason. Perhaps you like it for all good reasons, but to me it's like it reminded me of thespy duffers from school. Sort of why I also never really liked the smiths.

Good writer tho!
 

woops

is not like other people
Just didn't gel with me at all, none of those scouse bands from that time did, but I remember thinking teardrop explodes was particularly bad. Like the worst combo of bright and whimsical, with his singing voice going thru different registers for no reason. Perhaps you like it for all good reasons, but to me it's like it reminded me of thespy duffers from school. Sort of why I also never really liked the smiths.

Good writer tho!

I agree they're shit almost embarrassing to listen to but I still like him: those memoirs are very funny and he's obviously quite a driven eccentric, the enthusiasm in his Krautrock book is more contagious than any other music writing I've ever read, and I saw him at Glastonbury or Reading and I could see why he was a good performer, even great perhaps, despite his rubbish records. Leaping around and shaking hands with the front row of the crowd and what have you.

I saw trip-hop drum'n'bass people Lamb at the same or similar festival (digression) and they were incredible too, although I couldn't care less about their records. Andy whatever his name is was on one, jumping around as if possessed, talking to the crowd like it was the best moment of his life, brought out a string quartet part way through, then brought out a horn section on top of that. It didn't occur to me until quite recently that he must have been pilled up to fuck
 

catalog

Well-known member
in that first couple of books, i remember that theres a photo of his wedding day and he insisted on cutting the cake on his own. what a weirdo. but yeah, heard from mages that his book about stone circles is really good as well.
 
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