…and following on from the previous post, here’s a recently provided scan from Holly of a (now defunct) Sounds magazine (four star!) review of the vinyl LP, Waqqaz, by Crawling Chaos, back in June 1986, when I was in France.
Quoting Dave Henderson;
THE CRAWLING CHAOS ‘Waqqaz’ (Foetus Products F4) ****
AND CHAOS came back again. Former Factory workers ex-eccentrics from the wild North East, The Crawling Chaos are still alive, being driven barmy by the ineptitude of their drum machine and turning in classic songs.
It’s a bumpy unpredictable road between the simple worlds of Der Plan, Throbbing Gristle, the Dr Who theme and the primal Factory sound, but all and sundry were fed into the Chaos cut price computer. The result coughs and splutters with a truly odd musical catarrh.
Of course, in this case, the worst possible thing for me, is being on the same page as a Genesis review…
I’ve just found a website that scans all Smash Hits magazines and puts them online in their entirety! Digging through, I found this review notice of the original release of Sex Machine back in 1980… Red Starr (sic) states: …is Crawling Chaos, whose “Sex Machine” is quite the fastest single I’ve heard in a while. ...
I’ve put a live version on the Crawling Chaos site of Yoni Suchon. This is quite a powerful sound with some small differences to the version on the Waqqaz release. It’s just Jeff & me pinning back everyone’s lugholes to the back wall. It seemed to have quite a favourable reception – well it would,...
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No fuss.
My old friend Jeff recently died.
Waqqaz
The track now playing was one of the last pieces we did together. It’s Jeff’s creation and is one of my favourite Crawling Chaos tracks. This is a pre-Waqqaz version from a cassette that has travelled round France, been in various glove compartments and cupboard floors.
I’ve taken it straight from cassette and it’s encoded at the maximum bitrate for MP3 files in Reaper for your enjoyment. I’ve just used a noise gate set at -20dB and a bit of compression to follow in this extract. For me, the mix is better than the final vinyl one despite the 12kHz frequency cut-off.
It’s Jeff at his finest.
Jeff(R), Rees(L)
I remember him sitting cross-legged on the floor at Bebside for about a fortnight getting the various harmonies planned out. My input was minimal and I just did a few block keyboard chords as instructed, to bulk out the end as well as the mixing on the guitars and the drums set-up.
The real work was within the complex interlocking guitar parts, of which there are at least six, all played by Jeff. The only words I could think of came to me in a dream.
E.ver Y.oung, E.ver S.pecial
Purple Flower
I ensured that they were on the penultimate bounce so that they couldn’t be removed. I didn’t know why, at the time, I thought of them (apart from the corniness) or why I strove to ensure their longevity. I instantly knew though, that this was Jeff’s finest work, for me, and I’ve listened many times to it since, mainly this cassette tape version.
But now, I know that one’s karma transcends space and time and that one can affect one’s karma in the distant past.
Currently, I am heavily affected by EYES, believe it or not. I have chanted to change my karma both now, in the future, and in the past, and the benefits are immense.
So now I know why I woke up with those words in my head 25 springs ago.
It was so that I could write this piece about my old friend Jeff, and remember him and all the joint experiences that we had together since we were 14.
I’ve put a live version on the Crawling Chaos site of Yoni Suchon. This is quite a powerful sound with some small differences to the version on the Waqqaz release. It’s just Jeff & me pinning back everyone’s lugholes to the back wall. It seemed to have quite a favourable reception – well it would,...
Daft innit. I think it’s great. It only appears to be in the install, which takes ages and is in the menus for a bit. The actual game doesn’t appear to have it although thematically the in-game music is similar. The chords are very like I Predict a Riot, but slower – big jumps with...
Yay. I’ve spotted another batch of file-sharing websites recently. Like the cash-cop-out neep-heeds at Pirate Bay (see news item “Cash for Pirate Bay file-sharers” on their cash sell-out - ha,ha, so much for freedom of speech; the real motive has now panned out), these sites don’t host files, they just tell people where to go, give them the keys, and help them open the doors….
Anyway, for avid fans of Crawling Chaos, http://fenopy.com has pots of stuff. The links go through to http://www.directdownloadpass.com, amongst others. Any one used to my ramblings on internet fraud will not be surprised to find that the owners of these domains have been hidden – one by US-based namecheap.com and the other by a Singapore outfit called Katz Global Domain Name Trust.
As with all this stuff, the user (ironically) pays to get stuff for free…… (Yes I know – you work it out)
I noticed a 187Mb download as an ISO of the track Gygno. This means a very high bitrate and good quality. Presumably they have access to the master tape? Or are they very good at cleaning up vinyl? Or pumping information out of the low quality MP3 on the Crawling Chaos website?
The question is, is that it takes time to transpose all this stuff. So how much is their time worth when they ‘give’ our music away for nothing?
I know why I’m doing this – do they know why they’re doing it?
Such was the comment made in the Guardian by paul lester as part of a review of a band called The Northwestern. This is a FYI quote: It’s not often that one truly great band breaks up and another, equally good but different one forms in their wake with some or all of the same...
Decent people everywhere will be appalled to learn that the charity Mencap recently sponsored an award at the first ever ERSA Employability Awards. ERSA are the trade body who were formed in 2005 to lie on behalf of the money … Continue reading → […]
The Civil Service Rank and File Network have called a rally outside the PCS conference this week to demand action from the union on the vicious benefit sanctioning regime. Benefit sanctions are set to become a huge issue for public … Continue reading → […]
…and following on from the previous post, here’s a recently provided scan from Holly of a (now defunct) Sounds magazine (four star!) review of the vinyl LP, Waqqaz, by Crawling Chaos, back in June 1986, when I was in France.
