Out - Tough Enough

I had planned to offer up the Sunfeast/Craving 12" by Play Dead offshoot M.A.D., but it turned up just last month on the Ad Nauseum blog; if you like Play Dead or the Danse Society then you shouldn't be without M.A.D. I don't know how I missed that blog before, but there is a lot of good music there. So, moving on to my next 12", here is "Tough Enough" by Out (1984). "Tough Enough" is one of the songs from the Illuminated catalog mixed into the Heavy Duty Breaks megamix LP; this 12" has the vocal mix on the A-side (6:36) and a dub version on the B-side (7:06). It's not as good as the only other track I know of by Out ("Business As Usual" on the Breaking the Back of Love comp), but it's a serviceable bit of midtempo 80s UK electrofunk. And for crate diggers there are plenty of useable drum breaks and synth and bass fills. Once again I have no idea who the band members are besides the songwriting credits of A. Sharkey and P. Butcher. My Lethal Poor post was wildly successful in drawing two of the three band members out of the woodwork; can lightning strike again? Please leave any info on this band in the comments. Download the vinyl rip here or here. (Sorry about the high levels and clipping on the A-side, my soundcard can't attenuate the phono preamp input enough on some of these hot 12" mixes. Guess I shouldn't have cheaped out and bought a preamp without an output volume control.)

Lethal Poor - Trancefloor

This is the first of several posts that will feature just a single rather than a full album (because I have a bunch of singles that I've put off listening to while I've been ripping albums). In most cases the bands I'll be posting never did release a full album, or if they did they didn't include the single in question. While the next posts will be short on quantity, I have some very high-quality rips lined up.

The first is the sole recording by UK band Lethal Poor, from 1985. The two tracks, "Trancefloor" and "Honour", are both in the "gothic funk" style I love so much. Fans of 23 Skidoo, 400 Blows, A Certain Ratio, or The Men should find this right up their alley. The song credits are to "North, Winter, Musker", and I have ascertained that Musker is keyboardist David Musker (now a patent agent), but I don't know who North and Winter are. Please leave a note in the comments section if you know more. Regardless of their identity, this is one ill slab of vinyl; get the rip here or here.

Youth & Ben Watkins - The Empty Quarter

As referenced in my previous post, here is the first collaborative album by Martin "Youth" Glover and Ben "Juno Reactor" Watkins, The Empty Quarter. Released in 1983, it is an all-instrumental affair, and a more abstract album than their next one, Delirium, as befits its status as a soundtrack (for the play Street Captives by Jonathan Moore). It does have some of the more "foreground" musical elements that would play a greater part on Delirium, though. "Incompressible Megalasaurians" highlight's Youth's funk bass playing (which was also a staple of Brilliant's sound at the time), and "Repulsion" sounds more than a little like a Goblin soundtrack piece. Playing cello on the album is Adam Peters, who would subsequently team up with Watkins as The Flowerpot Men (later Sunsonic); "Three Go Down To Brighton" sounds like an early draft of the Flowerpots' B-side track "UG". Full performance credits are:

Youth: bass, percussion, keyboard
Ben Watkins: keyboards, drums, guitars
Adam Peters: cello
Kate St. John: oboe
Steve Irwin: percussion

Get it here or here.

The Empty Quarter - Delirium

This was almost a "someone beat me to it" post; Rho-Xs did indeed post it last June, but his download link has expired, so I can offer up my own rip, inferior though it probably is. Youth (ex-Killing Joke, represented on this blog so far by his recordings with Brilliant) and Ben Watkins (Juno Reactor) first teamed up to record an album called The Empty Quarter (soon here) in 1983 as the official soundtrack from the play Street Captives by Jonathan Moore. For their second collaboration, 1986's Delirium, they adopted The Empty Quarter as their band name. Like their first album it's all instrumental, but with a greater focus on rhythms. The beats run from tribal to industrial to gothic funk a la Brilliant (unsurprisingly) with several guest musicians filling out the sound. The full performing credits are:

Ben Watkins: keyboards, guitars, programming
Youth: keyboards, bass programming
Dave Heath: flute
Kate St. John: oboe, sax
Jake Le Mesurier: percussion, drums
Chris Bell: drums
'Mainframe'-John and Murray: Greengate programming
'Ranking Seymour': voice
Guy 'Thumb' Pratt: bass

This is one of several "techno-worldbeat" albums that came out in the late 80s/early 90s that in my opinion are classics. More albums in that category that other bloggers have posted are:

Anne Dudley and Jaz Coleman: Songs from the Victorious City
Eric Random and the Bedlamites: Ishmael
Saqqara Dogs: Thirst and World Crunch

But the point of this post is The Empty Quarter's Delirium: get it here or here.

VA - Breaking the Back of Love (1985)

The Breaking the Back of Love various-artists compilation was released by Saderal in 1985, featuring the kind of Gothic funk acts that Illuminated was known for. In fact, some of the acts were even on Illuminated, and had been featured on the previous year's Illuminated megamix, Heavy Duty Breaks, an excerpt of which appears here as "Heavy Duty Brakes." Here we also have The Leather Nun's notorious fisting song, "F.F.A.," retitled as "F.F. America." But there are also some little-known gems here: Colour Me Pop's "Beat Me Till I'm Blue" chugs along nicely with some bongos and a lead bass, and Out's "Business As Usual" builds on a catchy synth hook for a song that could have been an alternative club hit if the stars had aligned right. The cover model is Lilly A.K. (I think), who has two songs on here. "Passionate Strangers" is a soaring, fast-tempo number that reminds me of another forgotten classic, "Life's Illusion" by Ice the Falling Rain (coming here soon), and "Take Me Now," with Youth, sounds like Food-era Brilliant (no surprise there). Who was Lilly A.K.? Whatever happened to her? She sings two songs on here, she sang some backing vocals on an Edward Ka-Spel album, and other than that I've turned up nothing. If you have any further information on her, please let me know in the comments. The full track listing is:

A1 400 Blows Pressure
A2 Lilly A.K. and Youth Take Me Now
A3 Portion Control Raise The Pulse
A4 Out Business As Usual
A5 Colour Me Pop Beat Me Till I'm Blue
A6 The Leather Nun F.F. America
B1 Lilly A.K. Passionate Strangers
B2 Sex Gang Children Into The Abyss
B3 Colour Me Pop Go
B4 Heavy Duty Brakes Heavy Duty Brakes
B5 Dormannu Degenerate

I've added two bonus songs, stragglers by bands already on the album : "Tough Enough" by Out (from a 12" single) and "The Girl Who Shares My Shirts" by Colour Me Pop (the A-side whose B-side is "Beat Me Till I'm Blue"). Get it all here or here.

Heavy Duty Breaks (Illuminated megamix, 1984)

Here's an album that Illuminated Records put out in 1984 that is comprised of a 15-minute label roster megamix on each side: the songs segue from one to the next without dropping the beat (with continuity provided by a beatbox). Each clip is a teaser for the full-length version. Illluminated had an impressive lineup of "gothic funk" bands; here are the songs included in the two side-long mixes:

Side 1
400 Blows: Pressure
23 Skidoo: F.U.G.I.
Out: Tough Enough
Dormannu: The Dread
Zazou: M'pasi Ya Pamba
400 Blows: Grove Jumping
23 Skidoo: Coup
400 Blows: Declaration of Intent

Side 2
Executive Slacks: Our Lady
Data: Blow
Portion Control: Raise the pulse
Data: Blow
Portion Control: Go-Talk
Power to Dream: Faith Healer
Tara Butler: Up against the wall
Power to Dream: Faith Healer
Sex Gang: Dieche

Get it here or here.

Brilliant: indie label singles and LP tracks

Here are a bunch of tracks from Brilliant, Youth/Martin Glover's band between his first and second stint with Killing Joke. They started out as a ten-piece with a biting gothic funk sound; by the time they were signed to WEA (by Bill Drummond, soon to be half of the KLF) they were down to a three-piece: Youth, singer June Montana, and guitarist Jimi Cauty (soon to be the other half of the KLF). Their sound had also been whittled down to rather generic synth-funk, a rather pale imitation of Colour Box. Their disastrous album for WEA was produced by dance schlockmeisters Stock Aitken Waterman; talk about a long way down! But the early singles remain as some of the best beat-oriented gothic music of the time. Included here are:

That's What Good Friends Are For (the first single plus B-side, Push)
Colours (two mixes)
Scream Like an Angel (from The Whip LP)
Coming Up for the Downstroke (from the Bat Cave Young Limbs and Numb Hymns LP)
Soul Murder (two mixes plus B-side, The Growler)
Subtle Manoevres (from the Imminent One Food Records sampler LP)
Wait For It (two mixes plus B-side, Cut Price) (I know this is not technically an indie release, as it's after WEA took a stake in Food Ltd., but so what)

13 tracks, mp3@128, cover art in ID3 tags.


Get it here.