One of the drawbacks with recommending Paul Schütze’s music lately has been a lack of availability, with most of his CDs being out of print. That changes this month with his back catalogue returning via iTunes sporting a range of impressive new artwork (above) created by Mr Schütze himself.

Schütze’s electronic music stood out for me in the mid-Nineties for a number of reasons: firstly, and most obviously, it wasn’t always tied to the rigid metronomic pulse which governed the rest of the dance world. There were 4/4 beats at times—and he even had an album on Belgian dance label Apollo under the anagrammatical pseudonym Uzect Plausch—but his music was equally subject to unusual time-signatures with chiming timbres borrowed from gamelan orchestras.

Those timbres and their attendant tropical atmospheres were a second point of distinction. Like Jon Hassell, to whom he pays homage on Stateless (1997), there’s an acknowledgement of non-Western music without any falling into pastiche. This realises one aspect of Hassell’s Fourth World concept, whereby a meeting of the First World and the Third World creates an exclusive temporary zone that nonetheless can’t exist without the contribution of either party.

A third distinction would require a detailing of Schütze’s notable collaborators—Bill Laswell and Raoul Björkenheim among them—and his inventive track titles, many of which sound like Surrealist paintings. But describing music is always a poor thing compared to experiencing it. If you want a place to start, I’d recommend New Maps of Hell II: The Rapture of Metals (1993; reissued 1996) or Abysmal Evenings (1996), two constant favourites.

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• The art of Josiah McElheny
• The Garden of Instruments

Less well-known is what I presume must be the first outing for Crowley’s voice on this rare undated single from the mid-Seventies. Along with the cassette tapes I discussed earlier, this was another item turned up during a recent clearout of household junk. I’ve yet to see a detailed description of the origin of these Crowley recordings. I have the first CD pressing and haven’t looked at later editions so can’t say whether those contain more information about what are supposed to be wax cylinder recordings copied to acetates. The first complete collection of these was a vinyl release produced by David Tibet in a limited edition in 1986. I was among those that ordered a copy.

The Marabo single features two of the same recordings, of course, albeit in slightly poorer quality. (And I love the way it has a removable centre, as though it might well end up in a jukebox.) One feature of the continual reissuing of the recordings is that sound quality has improved over the years. The versions of The Pentagram and La Gitana on YouTube sound better than the ones on my CD. The occult resonance of Crowley’s voice (which always reminds me of Winston Churchill) have inevitably made it a popular sampling source. In the pre-sampling era 23 Skidoo and Psychic TV (both with David Tibet) used loops of the Enochian Calls. Bill Laswell later took to using samples on his ambient releases and the most recent CD version includes an entire disc of ambience with Crowley’s voice subjected to digital processing.

The sleeve art was by Steffi Grant, occultist wife of occultist Kenneth Grant, and it’s possible the pair sing backing vocals on the less-than-compelling B-side, a soft rock number entitled Scarlet Woman by Chakra. The song is credited to “Ponton/Ayers/Grant/Magee” so even if one or other of the Grants didn’t sing they helped with the lyrics. It should be noted that Mrs Grant’s artwork is often better than these illustrations and does much to enliven her husband’s volumes of occult philosophy. Some of their work was also featured in the seven-volume encyclopedia, Man, Myth and Magic, which featured Kenneth among the staff of consultants.

Before anyone asks: no, the single isn’t for sale. I’ve sold a lot of old vinyl over the past few years but I’m keeping this particular item. I know a couple of unreleased recordings by Chakra exist; if anyone has further information about the group, please leave a comment.

Update: Jok posted a link which resolves the mystery. It was indeed Kenneth Grant on backing vocals.

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• Old music and old technology
• The Man We Want to Hang by Kenneth Anger
• The art of Cameron, 1922–1995
• Austin Osman Spare

I spent much of the summer of 1983 playing games on a very primitive ZX Spectrum computer while listening to the first couple of Street Sounds Electro compilations. Those mix albums were among the best releases that year and remain highly sought after, seeing as they’ve never been reissued on CD.

The musical reputation of the compilations has overshadowed the sleeve design which was very distinctive for the time and undoubtedly a factor in their success. The vertical ELECTRO type was inspired by Neville Brody’s design for The Face which had turned the magazine’s title through ninety degrees the year before. Also very Brodyish was the use of photocopier-processed graphics and narrow typography although it should be pointed out that Brody hand-drew nearly all his headlines which left his imitators searching through type catalogues for approximations. The sleeve designs are credited to “Red Ranch for Carver’s” about whom I can find no information whatever. Things came full-circle when The Face ran a feature on the electro scene in 1984 giving Brody the opportunity to do a cover with his own variant on the sleeve layouts.

Essential Electro 9-album box, HBOX 1 (1984).

One of the big attractions of these albums for me was the new directions they were opening up for electronic music. Outside the mainstream pop world electronica in the early Eighties meant either the polite fare of Tangerine Dream or the dreary sludge of minor industrial acts such as Portion Control. Cabaret Voltaire were still vital for a while and their thundering Crackdown single (with sleeve design by Neville Brody) was remixed for its 12-inch incarnation by electro producer John Robie. But nothing matched the excitement of a bunch of NYC kids lifting Kraftwerk riffs and playing in a very unselfconscious manner with new and relatively cheap equipment, especially the Roland TR-808 drum machine which provides the backbone for many of these recordings.

Crucial Electro, ELCST 999 (1984).

A1 Tyrone Brunson—The Smurf
A2 Warp 9—Light Years Away
A3 Warp 9—Nunk (New Wave Funk)
A4 Man Parrish—Hip Hop, Be Bop (Don’t Stop)
A5 Herbie Hancock—Rockit
B1 Twilight 22—Electric Kingdom
B2 Cybotron—Clear
B3 Hashim—Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)
B4 Captain Rock—Return Of Captain Rock
B5 Time Zone—Wild Style

Although this came later in the series it’s probably the best single collection. Lots of classic tracks with John “Jellybean” Benitez’s Warp 9, Man Parrish, 43 year-old Herbie Hancock (assisted by Bill Laswell and DST) showing he could still rock with the kids, Cybotron aka Juan Atkins riffing on Kraftwerk, Hashim’s great Al-Naafiysh (one of my all-time favourites) and Afrika Bambaataa’s Time Zone. Crucial indeed.

Electro 1, ELCST 01 (1983).

A1 The Packman—I’m The Packman (Eat Everything I Can)
A2 Newcleus—Jam On Revenge (The Wikki-Wikki Song)
A3 West Street Mob—Break Dancin’—Electric Boogie
A4 C-Bank—Get Wet
B1 K-9 Corp—Dog Talk
B2 G. Force—Feel The Force
B3 Project Future—Ray-Gun-Omics
B4 Captain Rock—Return Of Captain Rock

“As seen on TV”, Electro 1 was dominated by breaks and raps and which means it sounds more conventionally hip hop than some of its neighbours. The Newcleus track was a real gem, however, a very infectious chipmunk-voiced rap whose Wikki-Wikki subtitle refers to the sound of record scratching, still a big deal in 1983.

Electro 2, ELCST 02 (1983).

A1 The B-Boys—Two, Three, Break
A2 The B-Boys—Cuttin’ Herbie
A3 Xena—On The Upside
A4 Hashim—Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)
B1 Rammellzee Vs K-Rob—Beat Bop
B2 Two Sisters—B-Boys Beware (Club Mix)
B3 Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel—White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)

Along with Crucial Electro, the other high point of the series. This starts out in a very minimal manner with two tracks of simple break stuff (Cuttin’ Herbie is a scratch mix of Rockit) then explodes into colour with Xena’s anthem and Hashim’s Al-Naafiysh. Beat Bop is a slow Message-style rap which undergoes another explosion as Two Sisters burst into a tremendous girl-power rap. Al-Naafiysh remains for me the definitive TR-808 track but B-Boys Beware gives it a run for its money.

Electro 3, ELCST 03 (1984).

A1 Divine Sounds—Dollar Bill
A2 Imperial Brothers—We Come To Rock
A3 Newcleus—Jam On It
B1 Boogie Boys—Zodiac
B2 Pumpkin—King Of The Beat
B3 Davy DMX—One For The Treble (Fresh)
B4 Fresh 3—MC’s Fresh

This for me was the last good collection (although side two was rather weak) including the welcome return of Newcleus. The series continued up to #10 in 1985 but #4 lacked the magic of the earlier editions and the expediency of limited resources moved my attention elsewhere. Much of electro’s original momentum was lost by the mid-Eighties as the rap quotient gradually went mainstream and artists outside the scene such as New Order began co-opting the producers. Some artists stayed with the underground, however, Juan Atkins in particular moving electro forward into Detroit Techno. It’s (very) arguable that much of the music you’ve been hearing over the past twenty years can be traced back to these few singles. And if you want some equally spurious contemporary relevance, Xeni Jardin insists that Newcleus’s “wikki-wikki” refrain is the Wikipedia theme tune.

Nearly everything here has been reissued on compilation CDs although those collections lack the juxtaposition you get from the Street Sounds mixes. Try to hear the original vinyl if you can.

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Shinro Ohtake is always on the attack. Whether it’s against misguided art education, against the cold treatment and economic constraints Japan puts on anyone who could dare to live differently, against the contemporary art establishment that can’t be bothered to even disguise its own incomprehension—his fight as an artist continues. Ohtake is prodigious, original, and a trouble-maker—in the sense that the work of the artist is always to create difference.

William Burroughs

Two disparate things had me looking for Shinro Ohtake’s work this week: I’ve been doing a short interview about album cover design (more about that at a later date) in which I mentioned his collage for the cover of Seven Souls by Material (1989), then an editorial in the latest Wire describes his current retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

The Material cover is one I picked as a favourite design. It’s difficult trying to pin-point why I think this works so well without it being at all illustrational. (I’m guessing, but it’s likely that Bill Laswell picked it out of one of Ohtake’s collage books, rather than it being specially commissioned.) It may be the collage aspect that works here. The album features readings by William Burroughs set to music and for me is the best of all the Burroughs recordings (Dead City Radio being a close second). Burroughs’ work, of course, involved literary collage via his own cut-up process, and the musical content can also be seen as a collage in the way it mixes different styles and musicians—Simon Shaheen, Shankar, Rammellzee, Foday Musa Suso, Fahiem Dandan and samples of the famous Brian Jones recordings of the Jajouka pipers. It’s a shame that when the CD was reissued in 1997 (in a superior mastering, it should be noted), the original artwork was largely junked in favour of a lot of muddy Photoshop work from the usually excellent Russell Mills. I’ve a huge respect for Mills but this treatment was a serious mistake.

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