Crawling Chaos

Little seems to be known about this odd, early ’80s post-punk trio from Northern England, their identities to say the least. That mystery only complicates their indefinable sound. To say this unit resembles an Einstürzende Neubauten-icised, Joy Division-like Ventures does neither EN nor JD justice, but it would at least put your mind’s ear in the same galaxy. Weird, spacey, fuzzy lo-fi guitar and deliberately irritatingly whinging vocals leave you wondering exactly what the hell is going on here. They sound like they had an industrial/surf/space rock sundae for dessert that didn’t agree with their tummies and spewed it all up to become this record. It has been speculated that they were in fact famous musicians who just cut a few barely releasable records for a laugh, so maybe this is just the product of them screwing around in some moments of self-indulgent noisy silliness. With song titles like "Tom’s Bum (there’s)” and "Heavy Luvin’” one wonders. They do bust into some more purposeful sounding moments from time to time, and they prove they have some clue of what makes song structure with their instrumental cover of the Beatles’ "Taste of Honey,” but only hardcore fans of this era of music might consider adding this one to their collection as a point of interest, or at least a way to oust those last few stragglers from your next house party. This is surely the soundtrack to hit the ugly lights to.