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Review: 'VARIOUS ARTISTS'
'13 O'Clock Volume One'   

-  Label: 'PPNW records'
-  Genre: 'Eighties' -  Release Date: '13th March 2015'

Our Rating:
This is an old school compilation, available as a limited edition of 500 copies on CD only from Atlanta-based PPNW Records. It's aiming to be like the sort of compilations labels like R.O.I.R. and Giorno Poetry Systems or Rough trade put out back in the day which made you want to find out more about bands you've never heard of and/or that you buy for the rare track from a band you are already a fan of. If it came with a magazine, then it would be much like Abstract was back in the early 80's.

Most of this music dates back to the 1980's but still sounds fresh and modern. The opener No More Hollow Doors is by Crash Course In Science who I've never heard of but they sound like a real cool electro-punk band. They're a bit like Metronomy but this lot I think sound cooler than that and recorded the tune in 1981.

Meteoright By Futurisk keeps us in the electro-punk ball park and moves things along nicely. It's like a more electronic A Certain General with a cool synth goth edge to it . My Name Is The Same by Los Microwaves is live and a bit more lo-fi but very cool with it and the repeated chorus works really nicely.

The previously unreleased live version of Our Daughters Wedding's Pressure Beat has some great weird synths sounds coming in and out throughout it. This reminds me of Add N to X only this was recorded long before that group were formed and with vocals that are a bit Pete Murphy only not as goth.

Das Ding's Sad But True actually sounds a lot like something you'd expect from D.A.F. or Das Damen: all minimal beats and exploratory minimal keyboards and murmured vocals. It's a touch disturbing, but it might grow on you after a few listens.

It's really cool to hear the demo version of B Movie's Trash & Mystery: a song I hadn't heard in a couple of decades and it makes me want to dig out the other stuff of theirs I have. The fact it's guitar and synth-based makes it a bit of a change in direction as you always need on a good compilation and the low fi trashy aesthetic works well.

The demo of TV21's Through Different Eyes takes me back to the Batcave where I used to hear the original and also to The Cage in the Great Gear Market in the Kings Road that used to sell loads of their 12" singles back in the early 80's. This sounds like it has less bass than the proper version but I haven't played it to compare.

Always happy the hear Atlantis by Metal Urbain off the classic Les Hommes Morts Sont Dangereux that I bought in another Kings Road record shop. This was also part of the band's Peel Session. Classic early French Punk with cheap synths and heaps of attitude. If you've never heard them before it might come as a shock but it's totally brilliant.

Nervous Genders' previously unreleased Mommy's Chest is as out there as it gets. It's like R.Stevie Moore with even less of a budget with doomed arcade game keyboards. It's probably only for the band's fans.

Hurtling Moons Of Barsoom by Red Asphalt is edgy, doomed electronica like it's from some Dystopian future somewhat different to the one we are living in but not by that much.T They twist Kraftwerk's sounds into something else pretty cool.

I don't remember the last time I heard Agent Orange by Ski Patrol which featured synth from Jaz Coleman. I had serious issues with any band he was involved in back then, always preferring the side projects that Youth was involved in like Brilliant. But listening now and without youthful prejudice it sounds great and the lyrics about chemical weapons seem rather current with what's happening in the Middle East. Damn, it's cool.

The album finishes with an unreleased track from 1979 by The Units, East V West which is pretty incredible as it really sounds like modern electronica. They are one of those bands who I've only ever got on compilations like this one so it's really cool to add another track to the 2 or 3 others I already have of theirs. Some great weird pulsing sounds in with the primitive beat box noises. A great closing track to a really cool and worth finding compilation album. I look forward to hearing Volume 2 in the series.

Find a copy at PPNW Records online
  author: simonovitch

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VARIOUS ARTISTS - 13 O'Clock Volume One