The past is... Thankfully staying there.
May. 21st, 2003 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezWent looking for something else. Found these from when I was... Significantly stranger.
Woke up this morning, wished I hadn't. Steve-bloody-Wright (WRONG!)
spouting vomit out my radio had made a rancid pool by the wall. I
ignored it. Should I throw the radio out the window? No. The bloody
rent's due, and I'm 3K in a hole on account of being a trusting sort of
bastard. Memo to Turner - don't trust any fucker again ever, they're all
out to screw you blind. Heaved the covers off the bed. I nearly joined
in the heaving as the backwash from last night's milk of amnesia rolled
over me like waves of festering gibbon-sperm. Resolved to give up
alcohol 'til the evening. I don't remember how I got to work. Something
to do with some fast-disintegrating silver, mud and rust-coloured
cackwagon. Joy Division were on the cassette-machine, which seemed
appropriate.
Work. Abandon all hope of anything, basically. Seven fucking hours of
this shit? I should slit my wrists - it would only take a short while
and be far less painful. On the other hand I could concentrate on
getting to the bottom of a nasty pointer-problem that only seems to
happen on site. Or I could make coffee and stare out the window a while.
So I stare out the window 'til the phone rings - it's my 'manager' who's
in Scotland with some of my code. The brave wee fool, everyone knows
that it bites like a pack of psychotic rats on bad speed.
'Your program,' he whinges in that annoying Gloucester accent that makes
you sound like some fuckwit yokel, 'dies with an assert().'
'Of course it does. You're using it wrong.' You can't slam the phone
down properly with a BT Octara system. This is a major design fault as
far as I'm concerned. Still, I tried.
Lunch. (Do you know how fucking much I *hate* Neighbours? No, neither do
I? There must be a limit, but I have yet to find it.)
Work II - The return of boredom.
Someone interesting rings up for a change. Unluckily for him, the
manky-pointer problem is palmed off. [And fixed. Cheers, Rich. >B-)]
Meanwhile, more bloody users ring up with more bloody stupid questions.
What I want to know is, where do all the stupid people come from? Why
are they *all* using Epinet? Can they be taken out and shot? If so, can
I do the shooting? Can I use some weapon that emits a constant stream of
ball-bearings so it rips through them like a sandblaster into warm
butter? I guess you could tape the screams, mix in a techno beat and
call it 'Enigma III - you're going home in a recycled binliner'.
Home. [Better days will never be. Better days will never be.]
Maybe I'll feel better after a bath. Maybe not. Maybe the act of
wallowing in my own filth will just remind me how horrible people can be
when you scratch the surface of their manufactured little lives.
Out. With Carmen. I am barely able to express myself.
Three more days 'till the weekend. Two-three weekends 'til the end of
the month. Ten more months 'til I'm a year older. This isn't a life,
it's a life-sentence.
... And ...
Are Hostile Implant, Carter the unstoppable goth-machine? Or are they
Cabaret Voltaire force-fed speed and Neff records?
Neither - Hostile Implant are another pair of malcontents who thought
that pop stars were a bunch of talentless bastards, and that thay could
do a damn sight better. So we did.
John Hawkes-Reed. 25 at the time of writing, is currently attempting
not to work with computers ever again. When not haunting various public
houses, he writes silly bloody cassette inserts in the third person.
Things he is actively into (maan) - drinking, sleeping, most things
seriously over-specified (this includes musclecars, PA systems,
computers, pharmaceuticals, kites and books. In short, if an object's
power goes beyond 'adequate safety margin' into areas called 'dangerous
round corners' or 'for fuck's sake don't turn the wick up' then he's
already bought, stolen, crashed or dropped it.)
His musical tastes are for most things hardcore, be that thrash or
techno. 'There's always been a dance element to my record-collection'
His goth-friends don't understand the Kraftwerk and 808-State records,
the ravers don't like the Sisters and Big Black, but that's their own
small-minded problem.
He is usually described as 'That fucking drunken weirdo over there with
the black jeans and posey trainers'
Here we go again. This is the bit of paper stuffed inside the cassette
box to make it difficult to get the tape in and out. This is my version
of the collected good bits of Hostile Implant. Great lumps of history
have been left out to die in the wilderness. Among them, the early
experimental period, the throwing money at the problem stage and the
great Sue cockup. If you don't like it, then fuck you.
Wobble/Stump
This song is probably the subject of more mythology than any of the
rest. A good thing, I feel. This version is very old, but is easily
the best. The pukka-studio one we recorded is shite. The Very Things
used bits out of the same film for 'Information'... 'Wobble' is now
married and living in Cheltenham, I couldn't give a shit about
'Stump'. Yeah, I really did get William Gibson to write Wobble/Stump
in the front of Mona Lisa Overdrive at a signing session.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program, tapes
Wow hearts walk a close edit 12
I'd forgotten how good this is... Or rather, I remember it being
derivative and not going anywhere. The world moves on, however, and
people have forgotten the Cult and think about Spacemen 3 instead.
This is very much a demo version.
JHR : Bass, drum program, computer
JM : Guitar, vox
1/5/89
This one is dj's fault. He found a 'Time' article which named the
seventy-odd Americans who were shot and killed on that day. I'd
completely forgotten that we'd got round to recording it. I stand
behind the music and the motivation for recording it.
JHR : Bass, digital delay twiddling
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program
XI (Eleven)
I like to think this stands the test of time. Maybe we should have
written more songs about football and girls, but then again maybe
not. You could probably work out when we wrote this from the
information about who was managing Cheltenham town and who Jon was
lusting after that month. If you were into that sort of thing. Have
I ever lusted after someone? Yes, but I've never done something as
naff as write a song about it.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox
Can't remember who programmed the SpecDrum. May well have been JHR.
CIA
Have you ever wondered what would happen if the CIA really did get
around to putting LSD in the water supply? So did we... Much of the
lyrics come from the Christmas 1987 TV Times. William Burroughs in
the area... Actually, that's bollocks. Jon had come up with the
first verse before we got around to writing the music, I came up
with the second once we had a tune sussed. It was the third verse
and chorus that were dug out the magazine.
JHR : Bass, drum program
JM : Guitar, vox
Definitely a whatever
Shoegazers? Ha! Been there, done that. I guess we must have both
been at the mind-altering chemicals before writing this, but I don't
remember. What I do remember is that this was the second time we
played it. A quick run-through and then straight onto tape. Genius.
Or a shite Cocteaus/Atmosphere rip-off. Jon added the synths much
later. Last week, in point of fact.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, synths
Fungus
Last time I wrote about this I said that the track had been lying
around for some time, but the lyrics were shite and I'd gone mental
with a sampler while bored and drunk. What I didn't mention was that
I thought Jon considered it to be bollocks. I was wrong. I think
it's a pity we never got round to thrashing out some proper lyrics,
on the other hand the Lydon bits work quite well.
JHR : Bass, sampler
JM : Guitar, drum program
Shout
A Depeche Mode cover-version, of all things... Although only it's
mother (Vince Clarke, I guess) would recognise it.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program
The uncle of John is not afraid of the spears
Categorize this and stay fashionable. The only thing we ever
recorded 'properly' that isn't complete bollocks. Yup, the noise in
the background is my uncle, at half-speed.
JHR : Bass, sampler
JM : Guitar, drum program, synths
Allergic reaction
Easily my favourite. Loud Goth noise. Probably the point in time
where I finally mastered the art of getting a seriously loud noise
in and out of the portastudio without anything breaking. Is this
typical of our output? No, that's probably CIA. Pity.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program
Eat lead
You'd think that this and 1/5/89 both sprang from my Big Black
fixation of that time. Wrong. Eat lead is Jon's. The swearing
therein is entirely appropriate.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program
Eat lead (Other version)
Ever get old? We went and did this for a laugh. What can I say -
most of it is out of time, all of it is better than anything else
ever. I guess the bad news is that two people died to make this
recording happen, which is not to say that Steve and Withy laid down
their lives or anything, but we couldn't have got there from here
otherwise. Hey, shit happens - deal with it. We did.
JHR : Bass, tech, loops
JM : Guitar, vox
Trainspotting coroner - Everything apart from 'the uncle of...' recorded
on a TEAC MiniStudio at various locations in and around Cheltenham. 'The
uncle of...' was recorded on 16-track in Leamington Spa. It seemed like
a good idea at the time.
Kit used - Ibanez Firebird guitar, Fender special edition Jazz bass,
No-name jazz-bass clone, Roland TR-505 drum-machine, Casio CZ-101 synth,
Bel BD-80 sampler/delay, Alesis MidiVerb, assorted effects pedals,
bodges, stimulants and inspired cockups.
Thanks to no-one in particular 'cos most people thought we were
bollocks, but the sometime believers have been Sue, Bob, Jon and John.
Martyn never wanted the embarassment of knowing how bad we were, but was
horribly surprised by the competence of CIA.
It gets better. Now.
Woke up this morning, wished I hadn't. Steve-bloody-Wright (WRONG!)
spouting vomit out my radio had made a rancid pool by the wall. I
ignored it. Should I throw the radio out the window? No. The bloody
rent's due, and I'm 3K in a hole on account of being a trusting sort of
bastard. Memo to Turner - don't trust any fucker again ever, they're all
out to screw you blind. Heaved the covers off the bed. I nearly joined
in the heaving as the backwash from last night's milk of amnesia rolled
over me like waves of festering gibbon-sperm. Resolved to give up
alcohol 'til the evening. I don't remember how I got to work. Something
to do with some fast-disintegrating silver, mud and rust-coloured
cackwagon. Joy Division were on the cassette-machine, which seemed
appropriate.
Work. Abandon all hope of anything, basically. Seven fucking hours of
this shit? I should slit my wrists - it would only take a short while
and be far less painful. On the other hand I could concentrate on
getting to the bottom of a nasty pointer-problem that only seems to
happen on site. Or I could make coffee and stare out the window a while.
So I stare out the window 'til the phone rings - it's my 'manager' who's
in Scotland with some of my code. The brave wee fool, everyone knows
that it bites like a pack of psychotic rats on bad speed.
'Your program,' he whinges in that annoying Gloucester accent that makes
you sound like some fuckwit yokel, 'dies with an assert().'
'Of course it does. You're using it wrong.' You can't slam the phone
down properly with a BT Octara system. This is a major design fault as
far as I'm concerned. Still, I tried.
Lunch. (Do you know how fucking much I *hate* Neighbours? No, neither do
I? There must be a limit, but I have yet to find it.)
Work II - The return of boredom.
Someone interesting rings up for a change. Unluckily for him, the
manky-pointer problem is palmed off. [And fixed. Cheers, Rich. >B-)]
Meanwhile, more bloody users ring up with more bloody stupid questions.
What I want to know is, where do all the stupid people come from? Why
are they *all* using Epinet? Can they be taken out and shot? If so, can
I do the shooting? Can I use some weapon that emits a constant stream of
ball-bearings so it rips through them like a sandblaster into warm
butter? I guess you could tape the screams, mix in a techno beat and
call it 'Enigma III - you're going home in a recycled binliner'.
Home. [Better days will never be. Better days will never be.]
Maybe I'll feel better after a bath. Maybe not. Maybe the act of
wallowing in my own filth will just remind me how horrible people can be
when you scratch the surface of their manufactured little lives.
Out. With Carmen. I am barely able to express myself.
Three more days 'till the weekend. Two-three weekends 'til the end of
the month. Ten more months 'til I'm a year older. This isn't a life,
it's a life-sentence.
... And ...
Are Hostile Implant, Carter the unstoppable goth-machine? Or are they
Cabaret Voltaire force-fed speed and Neff records?
Neither - Hostile Implant are another pair of malcontents who thought
that pop stars were a bunch of talentless bastards, and that thay could
do a damn sight better. So we did.
John Hawkes-Reed. 25 at the time of writing, is currently attempting
not to work with computers ever again. When not haunting various public
houses, he writes silly bloody cassette inserts in the third person.
Things he is actively into (maan) - drinking, sleeping, most things
seriously over-specified (this includes musclecars, PA systems,
computers, pharmaceuticals, kites and books. In short, if an object's
power goes beyond 'adequate safety margin' into areas called 'dangerous
round corners' or 'for fuck's sake don't turn the wick up' then he's
already bought, stolen, crashed or dropped it.)
His musical tastes are for most things hardcore, be that thrash or
techno. 'There's always been a dance element to my record-collection'
His goth-friends don't understand the Kraftwerk and 808-State records,
the ravers don't like the Sisters and Big Black, but that's their own
small-minded problem.
He is usually described as 'That fucking drunken weirdo over there with
the black jeans and posey trainers'
Here we go again. This is the bit of paper stuffed inside the cassette
box to make it difficult to get the tape in and out. This is my version
of the collected good bits of Hostile Implant. Great lumps of history
have been left out to die in the wilderness. Among them, the early
experimental period, the throwing money at the problem stage and the
great Sue cockup. If you don't like it, then fuck you.
Wobble/Stump
This song is probably the subject of more mythology than any of the
rest. A good thing, I feel. This version is very old, but is easily
the best. The pukka-studio one we recorded is shite. The Very Things
used bits out of the same film for 'Information'... 'Wobble' is now
married and living in Cheltenham, I couldn't give a shit about
'Stump'. Yeah, I really did get William Gibson to write Wobble/Stump
in the front of Mona Lisa Overdrive at a signing session.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program, tapes
Wow hearts walk a close edit 12
I'd forgotten how good this is... Or rather, I remember it being
derivative and not going anywhere. The world moves on, however, and
people have forgotten the Cult and think about Spacemen 3 instead.
This is very much a demo version.
JHR : Bass, drum program, computer
JM : Guitar, vox
1/5/89
This one is dj's fault. He found a 'Time' article which named the
seventy-odd Americans who were shot and killed on that day. I'd
completely forgotten that we'd got round to recording it. I stand
behind the music and the motivation for recording it.
JHR : Bass, digital delay twiddling
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program
XI (Eleven)
I like to think this stands the test of time. Maybe we should have
written more songs about football and girls, but then again maybe
not. You could probably work out when we wrote this from the
information about who was managing Cheltenham town and who Jon was
lusting after that month. If you were into that sort of thing. Have
I ever lusted after someone? Yes, but I've never done something as
naff as write a song about it.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox
Can't remember who programmed the SpecDrum. May well have been JHR.
CIA
Have you ever wondered what would happen if the CIA really did get
around to putting LSD in the water supply? So did we... Much of the
lyrics come from the Christmas 1987 TV Times. William Burroughs in
the area... Actually, that's bollocks. Jon had come up with the
first verse before we got around to writing the music, I came up
with the second once we had a tune sussed. It was the third verse
and chorus that were dug out the magazine.
JHR : Bass, drum program
JM : Guitar, vox
Definitely a whatever
Shoegazers? Ha! Been there, done that. I guess we must have both
been at the mind-altering chemicals before writing this, but I don't
remember. What I do remember is that this was the second time we
played it. A quick run-through and then straight onto tape. Genius.
Or a shite Cocteaus/Atmosphere rip-off. Jon added the synths much
later. Last week, in point of fact.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, synths
Fungus
Last time I wrote about this I said that the track had been lying
around for some time, but the lyrics were shite and I'd gone mental
with a sampler while bored and drunk. What I didn't mention was that
I thought Jon considered it to be bollocks. I was wrong. I think
it's a pity we never got round to thrashing out some proper lyrics,
on the other hand the Lydon bits work quite well.
JHR : Bass, sampler
JM : Guitar, drum program
Shout
A Depeche Mode cover-version, of all things... Although only it's
mother (Vince Clarke, I guess) would recognise it.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program
The uncle of John is not afraid of the spears
Categorize this and stay fashionable. The only thing we ever
recorded 'properly' that isn't complete bollocks. Yup, the noise in
the background is my uncle, at half-speed.
JHR : Bass, sampler
JM : Guitar, drum program, synths
Allergic reaction
Easily my favourite. Loud Goth noise. Probably the point in time
where I finally mastered the art of getting a seriously loud noise
in and out of the portastudio without anything breaking. Is this
typical of our output? No, that's probably CIA. Pity.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program
Eat lead
You'd think that this and 1/5/89 both sprang from my Big Black
fixation of that time. Wrong. Eat lead is Jon's. The swearing
therein is entirely appropriate.
JHR : Bass
JM : Guitar, vox, drum program
Eat lead (Other version)
Ever get old? We went and did this for a laugh. What can I say -
most of it is out of time, all of it is better than anything else
ever. I guess the bad news is that two people died to make this
recording happen, which is not to say that Steve and Withy laid down
their lives or anything, but we couldn't have got there from here
otherwise. Hey, shit happens - deal with it. We did.
JHR : Bass, tech, loops
JM : Guitar, vox
Trainspotting coroner - Everything apart from 'the uncle of...' recorded
on a TEAC MiniStudio at various locations in and around Cheltenham. 'The
uncle of...' was recorded on 16-track in Leamington Spa. It seemed like
a good idea at the time.
Kit used - Ibanez Firebird guitar, Fender special edition Jazz bass,
No-name jazz-bass clone, Roland TR-505 drum-machine, Casio CZ-101 synth,
Bel BD-80 sampler/delay, Alesis MidiVerb, assorted effects pedals,
bodges, stimulants and inspired cockups.
Thanks to no-one in particular 'cos most people thought we were
bollocks, but the sometime believers have been Sue, Bob, Jon and John.
Martyn never wanted the embarassment of knowing how bad we were, but was
horribly surprised by the competence of CIA.
It gets better. Now.
