a blog without qualities IV: New Fast Automatic Daffodils, the conclusion

Last we discussed this fine, fine collective from Manchester, we left off at their 1992 LP Body Exit Mind (and some relevant extra material). The story didn't end with that record, however, though as far as Americans were concerned it did.

The New FADs had one more LP left in them, a stunner, that never saw release in the USA. Which frankly doesn't surprise me, since it seems that for every 1 copy purchased (and kept) by an American punter, another 20 made it to the used bins (I kept mine!). Way to go, American label Elektra!

So it was that 1994's Love It All never saw North American release, and it's a shame as it's a far better record than Body Exit Mind. Taking the band's unique blend of choppy, stuttery funk and pseudo-Madchester rhythm stylings to a logical conclusion, Love It All makes good on the promise hinted at, but never attained, in their 1992 material (bar a song or two).

Andy Spearpoint's lyrics are as sardonically brilliant as ever, though that hardly needs to be said as it's long been one of this band's touchpoints. Check out the prescience of the lyric to "Kill My Instincts" - while remembering this was written in 1994:

You can switch him on and then switch him off,
He's like a flame-proof moth with his eye on the main chance.
Rising sap and if girls think crap then the boys think great...
As you pull another teenage combo in out of the limbo
You know how to kill my instincts.
Don't let the credits roll - back to the intro,
Go back to the intro.
A week or two, we'll call you.
You know how to kill my instincts.
A week or two, it would be easy.
You know how to kill my instincts.
A little... A bit of...

I think I've tracked down all the relevant extra material this time as well. B-sides "Aches and Pains" and "Mad Pop" are as good as any single track on the record ("Aches and Pains" especially); one wonders why they were relegated to CD single extra tracks. One rarity I was able to source is their "remix" - more a cover than a remix - of Consolidated's "This Is Fascism" from a 1996 various artists CD full of "This Is Fascism" remixes. It uses elements of the original Consolidated track but New FADs singer Andy Spearpoint lays down his own vocal track, as well as what sounds like additional New FADs instrumentation.

So let's roll with it, lossless FLAC as this record is pretty hard to find online (and long out of print).

NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS
Love It All (expanded)
1994, Play It Again Sam Records

01 These Foolish Things
02 Life Is An Accident
03 Left Right
04 Every Once In A While
05 Why Waste Your Love
06 Monday It Is
07 Saxophone
08 What I Feel
09 PSV
10 Kill My Instincts
11 Souvenir

errata:

12 Every Once In A While (Fuzzy Logic remix)
13 Aches And Pains
14 PSV (VPL remix)
15 Mad Pop
16 Bass Drum (Hugo Nicholson mix)
17 Lions (live at the Melkweg, Amsterdam 29 November 1992)
18 This Is Fascism

sources:
1-11 Love It All, BIAS 285 CD
12-13 "Life Is An Accident" BIAS 249 CD 1
14-15 "Life Is An Accident" BIAS 249 CD 2
16-17 "These Foolish Things / Every Once In A While" BIAS 269 CD
18 "This Is Fascism" various artists remix CD MC Projects PROCD 14

Lossless FLAC here!

enjoy...

a blog without qualities III: New Fast Automatic Daffodils III

To date the PoIT has featured the New Fast Automatic Daffodils twice: here and here. Must be an amazing band to get three featured entries, right? Absolutely.



Today we feature the collected (mostly) output surrounding (and including) this mostly-unclassifiable band's second LP Body Exit Mind, released in 1992. This time the New FADs retreated to Brussels and recorded with producer Craig Leon, and emerged with a much more involved, dense, abstract and energetic collection of songs than the debut record.

Featuring perhaps the catchiest New FADs track known to mankind in "Stockholm" ("where our travels take us further north, where there's fish in the sea and food on the shelves"), this LP bristles with oddly-scathing social commentary and ruminations on the state of society (how's that for indie rock lyrical analysis?).

Whatever. I just love lyrics that ask the listener to consider the plight of the Stasi and their ilk, the secret police forces suddenly finding themselves without work after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe - and how the allure of the almighty dollar rides roughshod over the basic needs of society. Take the track "American Money":

He was sick and tired of always being the odd one out,
in a place where the mean street cars were littered with fallout
of the American Money, coupled with native misgivings,
of the future of cities, where he was inclined to agree with.

Millions of unemployed policemen, all over the eastern world
will lose their powers of persuasion, and it seems such a waste,
and no amount of retraining in the socially-useful will make up
for that killer instinct new nations value so greatly.

And I want to thank you, I want to thank you, for letting me be yourself again.
There's few things you can't buy without American Money here.
Just give me one good reason, please give me one good reason, why I shouldn't be myself again.
There's some things you can't buy without American Money here.
It shits on your dreams daily, barely makes up for the handouts.

So there you go. At least this LP won't shit on your dreams - rather, while I've owned this since release in 1992, it's only recently I've discovered the allure of this record and it's among my all-time favorites. Nevermind the brief between-song pastiches (though I'm particularly enamored of the pseudo-shoegaze "What Kind Of Hell Is This?", I wish they'd actually developed it into a full-on song!), the tracks themselves are flawless.

Tacked onto the end of the LP proper are the various B-sides (and, in "Stockholm"'s case, the single remix) released in association with this record's singles and EPs. From the Bong EP we have "Head On" and "Beautiful", and from the "Stockholm" CD single the aformentioned "Stockholm" remix and the B-side "Cannes" I would have loved to have included the tracks from the limited-edition "Stockholm" 10" vinyl single, demo versions of "Stockholm" / "It's Not What You Know" and the B-side "Hexagon Spring", but the version I've been able to source on the internets is too heavily noise-reduced and not good enough-sounding for my persnickety ears. So dear readers, if you have this 10" or can locate a nice, clean, unadulterated transfer, please let me know!


NEW FAST AUTOMATIC DAFFODILS
Body Exit Mind - and collateral material



01 Bong
02 It's Not What You Know
03 Stockholm
04 I Take You To Sleep
05 Bruises
06 How Much Longer Must We Tolerate Mass Culture?
07 Kyphos
08 Teenage Combo
09 Beatlemania
10 What Kind Of Hell Is This?
11 American Money
12 Missing Parts Of Famous People
13 Patchwork Lives
14 Music
15 Exit Body, Exit Mind

- - end LP tracklisting here - -

16 Head On
17 Beautiful
18 Stockholm (radio mix)
19 Cannes

Two RAR files for your pleasure!

Part I / Part II

enjoy!

***** NEWS FLASH *****

In researching this post I've come across some potentially fantastic news - it appears the New FADs may be reforming! Nothing on the mentioned Facebook page since Andy's post mentioned in the link, but hope springs eternal! After all, I could get a real job if I tried, but what's the point...

a blog without qualities II: New Fast Automatic Daffodils II

One of the most popular features on the blog so far was my original post about those mad Mancunians New Fast Automatic Daffodils. Drawing comments from not one, but TWO musicians whose bands supported the New FADS on tour at one point or another, it's obvious this band has been sadly ignored by history.

I can't fix that but what I can do is post more out-of-print material for everyone.



Oddly enough one of the most-hyped American releases by this combo was their Peel Sessions release on Dutch East India Trading - home of Homestead Records, Giant Records, Rockville Records, and numerous other tiny indies that fell off the map when the home label Dutch East ceased trading around 2000.

While various bands' American versions of their Peel Session releases, through Dutch East India Trading, often featured different cover art then the UK variants, the New FADS' American cover art for this record is about the worst I've ever seen on a commercial release. No wonder it didn't sell.

Original UK version:



Nothing terribly bad, it looks like Strange Fruit commissioned the Happy Mondays' designers Central Station Design to design it.

On the other hand.......... Original US version:



My eyes! they burn! Really bad design - did they have the front office receptionist do this in 2 minutes as the product was going to manufacture?

Anyhow - the large image at the beginning of the post is your humble blogger's reappraisal of the Peel Sessions design. At the very least it looks good and in line with the rest of the band's releases of this period.

So without further ado......



01 Purple Haze
02 A Man Without Qualities II
03 Jaggerbog
04 Big II (Instrumental)
05 Get Better
06 Part Four
07 A Man Without Qualities I

1-4 recorded 19 Dec. 1989, broadcast 9 Jan 1990
5-7 recorded 11 Nov. 1990, broadcast 24 Nov. 1990

One ZIP file for you -- CLICK HERE.

-----

Tracks 1 through 4 display clearly why the New FADS were once labeled "The Fastest Men In Pop" or some such nonsense - they are blistering! "Big II" is almost a new track entirely, albeit based on "Big" itself. I can't imagine how spectacular the musical bed of "Big II" would sound combined with Andy Spearpoint's vocals on "Big" itself.

-----------------------------

On another note, I must mention that the "Big" CD single tracks as included in the previous New FADS download here were incomplete and/or not sourced from the proper release ("Big" itself from a compilation, for example).

Here be the entirety of the actual UK Big CD single (Playtime Records, Amuse 7CD) for you - the full Instrumental variant (similar to "Big II" from Peely), Baka and of course the full-length "Big" in itself.



Get it! (one ZIP file)

01 Big
02 Big (Baka)
03 Big (instrumental)

a blog without qualities: New Fast Automatic Daffodils

Today we're taking a slight detour from the producers/5 songs memes I've been developing on the blog. Instead, per request, let's explore one of the lesser-known acts that came about during the "Madchester" era of Manchester music 1988-1992, New Fast Automatic Daffodils.



While not a Madchester act per se, the New FADs benefitted exposure-wise from coming out of Manchester during this hotbed of musical activity. Bereft of baggy, yet funky and scratchy, the New FADs took The Fall, Wire, dub and indie and created their own unique thing, topped off with stream-of-consciousness "vocals" from actor Andy Spearpoint.

It's funny... Most bands it's fairly easy to describe their sound, but with the New FADs, I'm skint. So you'll just have to hear for yourself below.

The internets are fairly bereft of New FADs discussion, but here is an (inactive) fansite that has a bit more info on the band.

I saw the New FADs in 1991 in Chicago at the Metro, opening for Neds Atomic Dustbin and Urge Overkill (yes, an oddball pairing, we left after the New FADs played...), as well as at an instore performance at Chicago's Reckless Records the same afternoon. Great, great live band, very tight, and I had a chance to chat with them all at the instore - as you'd imagine, they're "nice people to do business with" and were very cool indeed.

Today's selection, split into two RAR files (www.rarsoft.com), features their collected works from 1989 thru 1991. They went on to record two more LPs after this era, but IMHO this is their best.

NewFADs_89-91_Collected.part1.rar
NewFADs_89-91_Collected.part2.rar
(you'll have to download both files to extract, it's one archive split into two files)

What's missing? The Peel Sessions EP, which I'm saving for a future entry.
(edit: Future entry posted.)

----------------------------------

LIONS (single)



(Debut single, 1989 Playtime Records AMUSE 04T)

01 Lions (extra track on Music Is Shit 3" CD)
02 Fate Don't Fail Me Now
03 Your Dreams My Nightmares
(tracks 2 and 3 are the b-sides taken from vinyl)


HOME



(Compilation CD, 1989 Sheer Joy SHEER CD001)

04 Jaggerbog


MUSIC IS SHIT EP



(1989 Playtime Records AMUSE 06CD)

05 Beam Me Up
06 A Man Without Qualities
07 Music Is Shit


BIG (single)



(1990 Playtime Records AMUSE 07CD)

08 Big (original single version)
09 Big (edit)
10 Big (baka)


FISHES EYES (single)



(1990 Play It Again Sam Records BIAS 162CD)

11 Fishes Eyes (original single recording, different from the album version)
12 Fishes Eyes (underwater) (mixed by Slow Bongo Floyd)
13 White


PIGEONHOLE (debut LP)



(1990 Play It Again Sam Records BIAS 185CD)

14 Get Better
15 Fishes Eyes
16 (interlude)
17 Working For Him
18 Part 4
19 Big
20 You Were Lying When You Said You Loved Me
21 Amplifier
22 Reprise
23 Partial
24 Penguins
25 (untitled outtro)


GET BETTER (single)



(1991 Play It Again Sam Records BIAS 193CD)

26 Get Better (single version)
27 Pigeonhole
28 I Found Myself In Another Room
29 Get Better (Version 1)


ALL OVER MY FACE (single)



(1991 Play It Again Sam Records BIAS 199CD)

30 All Over My Face
31 All Over My Face (Split Decision mix)
32 All Over My Face (Off The Road)
33 Why The Hard Man Fail

-------------------------

Hope you enjoy it all!