Tag: 1985

Severed Heads – City Slab Horror, 1985

I try to focus on records that appeal to a wide range of people and are super listenable, on-repeat records. This is an exception. Severed Heads was (for the most part) the brainchild of Tom Ellard, and their early recordings are experiments in tape looping, distorted synth, and proto-techno drum machine backbones. The results are way ahead of their time, a body of work that belongs in the same sentence as Throbbing Gristle, Coil, and the Art of Noise. In addition to being musical pioneers, Severed Heads boasts a collection of bitingly clever song titles (“Hello Donald, Merry Xmas,” “Mambo Fist Miasma,” “Larry I’m Just An Average Girl,” “Now, An Explosive New Movie,” etc.) and a daunting collection of psychotic video work, largely thanks to Stephen Jones, who developed the analog video synthesizers that he used to make music videos and manipulate live footage of Severed Heads performances. (Hard to know where to start with these, but here are a few favorites.)

City Slab Horror features plenty of tape looping, but Ellard’s growing taste for pop structures and more cohesive rhythms make the record more song-centric and less noisy, though dissonance and gritty textures still run rampant. Standouts are “Ayoompteyempt” and the luminous classic “We Have Come to Bless the House,” though the record as a whole functions as a tunneling trip through a cynical morbid fascination. Buried in frenzy are moments of sublime joy (“Guests”), though I can confidently say that I’m happy to be a tourist and not a permanent resident in the deranged world of Severed Heads.

Note: This version includes additional tracks from a 1989 reprint on Canadian label Nettwerk, which are advertised as “tracks from Blubberknife,” though in actuality only “Umbrella” is taken from Blubberknife, with the rest pulled from the 1985 Goodbye Tonsils 12″ and the 1985 double LP, Clifford Darling, Please Don’t Live In The Past. I chose to share this version rather than the original release because it includes the monstrous “Acme Instant Dehydrated Boulder Kit.”

Λένα Πλάτωνος – Γκάλοπ, 1985


Greek musician Lena Platonos (Λένα Πλάτωνος) has an impressive discography ranging from dark electronic rabbitholes to post punky pop to the straight-up bizarro theatrical. She’s an electronic music pioneer (and an aesthetic genius, having designed the cover above), so it’s really exciting that Dark Entries has recently reissued her second solo record, Gallop (Γκάλοπ), which she wrote, performed, and produced. Gallop is an exercise in dark minimalism, consisting mostly of analog synths, a Roland TR-808 drum machine, and her voice, speaking and singing her own surreal poetry. It’s Greek to me, but I’m told that “lyrics deal with heartbreak, dreams, desires, and astutely predict the way that computers and technology would infiltrate our society in the years to come.” (A word to the ASMR-wise: listening to her softly-spoken voice in headphones might trigger some particularly tingly feelings.) Alternating between spiky techno beats and long stretches of unpunctuated dreamy synth sprawl, Gallop is a haunting and very progressive record. Enjoy!