SEVERED HEADS Clifford Darling, Please Don't Live In The Past (2xLP)

$

27

Severed Heads

Clifford Darling, Please Don't Live In The Past

Format: 2xLP

Record Label: Dark Entries

Condition: New

* Reissue - double album - remastered from the original tapes - originally released in 1985
* Severed Heads are one of the longest surviving bands to emerge from the Australian post-punk independent music scene. They began in Sydney in 1979, incorporating elements of industrial noise-generation, tape cutting & looping and electronic sound synthesis. As the project developed song-structures, vocals were employed in a more-or-less recognizable mutant electro pop style. After many line-up changes featuring Garry Bradbury and psychedelic guitarist Simon Knuckey, Severed Heads was the vehicle for composer Tom Ellard. In 1985 their record label asked them to release a retrospective, so they dragged out bits that they had lying around from 1979 up until 1983. The compilation was titled Clifford Darling, Please Don’t Live In The Past, spread out into a montage over four sides of vinyl. Bradbury and Ellard would fuse each bit and sling it on their new digital recorder, and since they still have the digital recorder, this reissue is made directly from the bits assembled twenty years ago. This compilation includes live recordings, raw demos, unreleased studio recordings and solo pieces from each member of the band during from the first five years. Their early music was characterized by the use of tape loops, noisy arrangements of synthesizers and other dissonant sound sources in the general category of industrial music. After several releases in that vein, Severed Heads began incorporating various popular music tropes, such as a consistent 4/4 rhythm, strong melodic lines, resolving chord arrangements and the occasional vocal. This move was underscored by the incorporation of mimetic devices, such as drum machines and bass synthesizers. The result was a striking hybrid of the avant-garde industrial and pop. All of the songs have been remastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The double album is housed in a jacket featuring brightly colored, distorted, VHS graphics from Stephen Jones' video synthesizer created by a Tom Ellard video piece "Kato Gets The Girl" in 1985, and designed by Eloise Leigh. Each copy includes a fold-out poster with a color video still photo on one side and liner notes and credits on the other. Severed Heads' perverse creativity is still paving the way for powerful, imaginative, and challenging music far and wide.
* Track Listing: Advertisement / Prototype Pop / Exiles Excerpt / A Day In The Country / Elephant Decibels / Power Circles / Alaskan Polar Bear Heater / Umbrella / J. Edgar Hoover / Blame / Meanwhile, Back At Exiles... / Dance / Saturday Night / Man Dat Hip / An American In Paris / Tarzan's Grip / That That Revolves / Special Day / Malt Duck / Never Fall In Love / Nazi Beach Party / A Relic Of The Empire No. 2 / Tiny Fingers / Sidney Quads & The Megascope Space Probe / Play It Again / Carry My Books / Nightsong / Car Ad