TANK: Bedtime For Rio (LP, Earworm WORM 56, 2000)

Tank were producing Krautrock-tinged post-rock music waaaay before it became the hip music du jour, so them releasing this album on Earworm – a label that released a lot of that kinda stuff waaaay before it became more sellable – was something of a perfect match. I remember being very excited about this album’s release, and also the preceding 12″ released a year or two previous to it. I’d got hold of a tape by Tank a couple of years before those records emerged, which was released by Diesel Combustible, a micro-label run by a friendly chap from France with whom I used to correspond. I was a major fan of that tape, and it helped ease me deeper into the strange world of repetitive/Krautrock/post-music with its combinations of throbbing melodic circles and otherwordly atmospheres.

Colour me surprised; Tank still seem to be active – with a Myspace page and everything. That’s an ‘aha!’ moment for me and an opportunity to add some more items to my ‘buy these records at some point’ list. That list has recently been re-introduced in physical form, as this morning I remembered a small book containing notes on stuff I’d come across that need further investigation. The book is once again in operation.

And cor, Diesel Combustible were still going until recently, it seems! That’s impressive to see: most of the little labels from that 1990s mail-based underground time, mine included, ceased to be a long time ago.

SPACEMEN 3: Walking With Jesus (7″, Earworm EGS01, 2003)

I was going to say how this record was part of the short-lived ‘Earworm Gold’ series, launched after the demise of the Earworm label proper, but a bit of internet research points out to me that the series was made up in fact of a whole ten releases, all of which I own. My memory surprises me at times in its sheer ineptitude and unhelpfulness.

Great sleeve on this one, it’s printed two colour on nice rough card, and houses some spectacularly coloured vinyl – clear gold, with flecks and blurs of yellow and black within. Nothing less, of course, would suit the mighty Spacemen 3, who the keener amongst you will notice actually split up many years before the release of this record. What we have here, then, is demos, unreleased things, completist fodder. And there are a lot of Spacemen 3 completists out there, believe you me. (Speaking of which, anybody who’d like to offer me a copy of their ‘Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To’ compilation, get in touch…)

I never tire of listening to the woozy, druggy sounds of Spacemen 3. I wasn’t quite there at the time – I got into them in around 1990 or so. But even in the context of a musical lineage that they obviously slot into with grown-up hindsight (the blues, garage punk, psychedelia) they must have sounded pretty far out there in the shiny pop climate of the mid 1980s. Not that they were ever pop, you understand, but things were simpler back then. There just weren’t as many bands around. Going off tangent, I’ve met Sonic Boom a couple of times over the past years, and he’s either a drug-damaged psychic explorer of a man, or a bit rude. I’m inclined to think the latter, but listening to his records encourages me to forgive him his strange, shifty ways.

ELECTRIC SOUND OF JOY: Play Away (7″, Earworm WORM 9, 1997)

Ah, Earworm – great label. They always seemed to be about the detail and the quality. Interesting bands and music, always packaged with an eye on keeping things fresh and worthy of a collector’s interest. This single, for example, has the simplest of covers, but it’s printed on pleasingly rough brown paper and contains an insert on the same stock, with typography that looks genuinely like it was constructed using old Letraset packs. (This matters in this modern age when a page of type can be instantaneously banged out by computer). There’s another insert in here as well where the exact contact details (at the time) of Earworm boss Dom, and Electric Sound Of Joy’s Paul can be found – actual home addresses along with telephone numbers. Do people still give away this amount of information about themselves these days, when everything can be immediately circulated and distributed across the world?

I once saw Electric Sound Of Joy supporting Godspeed You Black Emperor! in the late ’90s, in some picturesque theatre in London that I forget the name of. That was a great show. ESOJ were sublime, GYBE! (such was the positioning of that exclamation mark back then) were mind-blowing. What’s more, I found myself standing next to Prolapse’s Linda Steelyard for the latter’s set, who asked me who the opening band were. It was a real meeting of minds; the conversation was something like this:

LS: ‘Do you know who that first band were?’
SM: ‘They’re called Electric Sound Of Joy. They were good weren’t they? Are you in Prolapse?’
LS: ‘Yes’.
SM: ‘Cool, I like your band.’

Good times. Standing on the other side of me was where-is-he-now Irish comedian Sean Hughes. Crazy!