Illusion Of Safety - "Violence And Geography" Tape 1987


"Since 1983 Illusion Of Safety has been the ongoing project of Daniel Burke, working alone or with various collaborators. He has released over 20 recordings on labels such as Soleilmoon, Staalplaat, and Tesco (amongst many others) and played over three hundred concerts in Europe and North America. IOS's work has been called ambient, post-industrial, electro-acoustic, noise, sound collage, improvisation, and power electronics, but Burke is unwilling to limit the band to any given style or method. The sonic character and affective substance of the music will often shift abruptly within each recording and live performance, all to facilitate the listener's direct access to their psyche, emotions, and 'the infinite' so as to address the necessity of balance and the nature of dichotomy."


Interview with Burke from "Spinal Jaundice" Issue 9 (1989)...
 
Who is Illusion of Safety?
I began working with a band called 'Dot Dot Dot' in 1984. They were a progressive rock group and we did a few performances together as Illusion Of Safety. They enjoyed the opportunity to ignore musical structures and do something experimental. Dot Dot Dot broke up, but I continued to work with Thyme Jones and Chris Block (from DDD, also members of Cheer-Accident). I also work with Mitch Enderle (he has a solo tape of industrial grind called “Dead Tech”), Spark Lunch (our disco man), Mark D. Clein (our photographer), and our newest member Jim O’Rourke (later in Sonic Youth). IOS is a revolving membership, I work with whoever is available or appropriate. Many of our pieces are individually oriented or collaborations of 2 or 3 members. Of our releases, “In 70 Countries,” “Fifteen” and the two live tapes are good examples of our ‘group’ work. Thymme, Chris and Jim are the only ‘real’ musicians in the band, but that doesn’t stop the rest of us, we all do soundwork, and I am often the one attempting the more musical structures. I do the funding, booking and most of the graphics and correspondence. Jim O’Rourke has taken over the networking thing, he has a few excellent solo tapes out and he was the founding member of the 'Elvis Messiahs'.

Can you describe the kind of music you perform?
They call it ‘industrial’, so do I, even though I can’t really define that term. It has been described as ‘the soundtrack to nightmares you don’t remember in the morning’. We do power electronics, sound collage, decomposition, ambient emotive fields, information drifts, and totalitarian pseudo-rock.

Even amidst the rough sounds of some of your music, I’ve still noticed a sort of sublime element. Would you consider this an intrinsic factor in your material?
Most of our sounds I would not consider rough, and I’m not sure what you mean by sublime. We attempt to make every piece stand out in some way, whether it’s subtle or in your face.

IOS has done a good deal of collaboration. What are some benefits you think can be achieved from by-mail tape collaborations? Or hindrances?
Working by mail allows time and space for adding elements and offers a chance to work with someone who you don’t live near. I’ve taken far too long to finish the only mail collaboration tape of IOS, with PBK, City Of Worms and John Hudak. Jim O’Rourke is also working on collaboration tapes with PBK, City Of Worms, K. Null, and others.

Do you think experimental music has experienced any homogenization in the past few years?
Most music becomes more homogenous as it gets more popular. But there will always be a wide variety of things happening in the underground.

Is IOS a touring outfit?
Yes we’ve done some traveling. We played in Pittsburgh on August 13, 1988 with Algebra Suicide and Research Defense (two Chicago bands). We did four shows in Colorado in July of 1988. We went back out west to Denver and did three shows in the San Francisco area in June 1989. We also played Milwaukee and Madison, Wisconsin a few times.

What kind of things go into one of your live shows?
Before this year it was us and our equipment. No visual elements, just a serious attempt to manipulate our equipment and produce the kind of sounds we like. Recently we’ve begun using lights/shadows, slides and video. We’ve also gone to strict improvisation over the last year. We used to do interpretations of our pieces, but found that improv is more enjoyable for all concerned. The focus of our performance remains with the kind and quality of sound produced while being able to listen to and react to each other. We have always used tapes, contact mics and synthesizers, but have gotten away from the drum and bass thing (although these will crop up from time to time). Lately we are concentrating on sampling and DX-7 work

Is the live medium an equitable one for you?
I’m not sure what the audience gets out of it, but we enjoy the contact and need to perform at least once every few months.

Is Chicago really the murder capitol of the world?
Yes, Mike. It just so happens to be. 

Are there any groups/individuals that you feel influence your recorded work?
My inspiration to do this came from seeing Throbbing Gristle’s final two performances. Most of the members of IOS listen to industrial music, but our tastes are very diverse. I’ve been listening to Slayer, Madonna, Prince, Metallica and Public Enemy lately, but this influence only shows up in the music collages. I would have to say that The Hafler Trio and Nurse With Wound (having done the most interesting post-industrial soundwork) are big influences. 

What are your thoughts on the alleged CD revolution wiping out albums?
The big money will try, after all they can make more profit on CDs. But our kind of records will be around for some time. Records in the mainstream stores are being replaced by CDs but who cares about that? I don’t own any CDs, so when I can’t get the new Slayer on CD I’ll just have someone record it on cassette for me.

What types of things do you look for in background material?
It should be disturbing, true or funny in some sick way.

You also manage the 'Complacency' mail order label. What all is happening?
We have some new releases on our label. Two split LPs. The first is Eric Lunde/Hands To. Eric used to be in Boy Dirt Car, these days he’s working on his own, and doing some great stuff. On his side, 'Tape Death Cut', he uses his erosion recording process one step further with the use of Mirage sampling, and ends the side with two beat pieces that could be Wax Trax material. Hands To is Colorado’s Jeph Jerman using sampled sounds from actual events to affect the central nervous system. Hands To’s 'Vinhilation' is quite subtle and has a nice contrast to Eric’s side. The other split is IOS (live)/Holeist. The IOS is from three live shows in July, 1989, and is mostly ambient. Holeist is a project I did with Eric Lunde and Jeph Jerman. We worked in shifts with the sampler to create some very effective and abrasive noise. IOS has just released a box set (limited edition of 150) containing two C-47 cassettes and various laminated graphic inserts. Complacency has just released a new tape, Holeist live on one side and Runzelstirn/IOS/Gurgelstock (R.I.G.) on the other. R.I.G. is a collaboration Jim and I did with R&G of Switzerland, lots of abrasive concrete with samples and DX-7. IOS is finishing up a tape of severe noise for 'Nihilistic Records' of the Netherlands, and 10 minutes of new material for a CD of Chicago experimental music coming out on Franz Liebls’ 'Priapismus Software' label in Germany. And finally we are beginning work on a new 8-track studio LP for summer 1990 release.

Cabaret Voltaire - "Methodology '74-'78 Attic Tapes" 3xCD 2003 & Peel Session 6-25-81 (Never Formally Released)

"Cabaret Voltaire were an English industrial pioneer initially composed of Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk, and Chris Watson, naming themselves after a Zurich nightclub that served as a Dada movement center in the early 1900s. Formed in Sheffield in 1973, they experimented widely with sound creation and processing. Some of these early experiments were first documented on the Industrial Records cassette '1974-1976', then later on the triple CD set 'Methodology '74/'78: The Attic Tapes'.

They eventually turned to live performance, often sharing the bill with Joy Division, eventually signing to 'Rough Trade' and achieving a degree of critical and commercial success (mostly via a morphing of their style into melancholy "dance"). Watson left the group in 1981, co-founded 'The Hafler Trio', then became a BBC sound engineer and soloist. Mallinder also recorded as a solo artist in the 1980s, collaborated with Soft Cell in the group 'Love Street', and was also a member of 'Acid Horse' with Al Jourgensen of Ministry. Cabaret Voltaire sporadically continues to this day, with Richard H. Kirk as its sole remaining member."

Bukowski - "70 Minutes In Hell" (Spoken Word) CD 1969/1977/2003

"Henry Charles Bukowski (a.k.a. Heinrich Karl Bukowski, 1920-1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer.

His writing was influenced by the social, cultural, and economic ambiance of his home city of Los Angeles. His work addressed the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. He wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories, and six novels, eventually publishing over 60 books. The F.B.I. kept a file on him as a result of his column 'Notes of a Dirty Old Man' in the LA underground newspaper 'Open City'.

In 1986 'Time' called Bukowski a 'laureate of American lowlife'. Regarding his enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote: 'the secret of Bukowski's appeal is that he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero'.

Since his death from Leukemia in 1994, he has been the subject of a number of critical articles and books about his life and writings, despite his work having received little attention from academics in America during his lifetime. In contrast, he enjoyed extraordinary fame in Europe, especially in Germany, the place of his birth." 

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3tangq4ya9fx01n/Bukowski_-_70_Minutes_In_Hell.zip/file

Capricorni Pneumatici - Self Titled & "Al Azif" Cassettes 1987


"Italian ambient, ritual and concrete music. Their name comes from Aleister Crowley's book
'Liber A'Ash Vel Capricorni Pneumatici (Sub Figura CCCLXX)'. The two persons involved in
the project were only known under the pseudonyms of 'Pazuzu' and 'Soda Caustica'."

"Your music is very good, truthfully, I like it better than any that has been
sent me by various groups. Both tapes are excellent." --Z'ev, November 1988

The Choice Is Mine Volume 1 Compilation Tape 1988

First in a short series of tape comps by translator, distributor of N.D./S.O.B. split flexis, and future P.E.F.E. honcho Izumi Kubo. This thing claps cheeks, with a high tensile strength of material and studio quality from the bands (except Nausea) where it should have been a vinyl release (the sequels are just as deserving). Sharp rip, H.D. scan, I made my choice, you make yours...


 

Abbildungen Variete - Self Titled Cassette 1983

"Abbildungen Variete (Variety Of Pictures) hailed from Slovenia's second largest city of Maribor in the northeastern part of the country. Little is known about them, they existed between 1982-1987 (close to the actual 'Neue Slowenische Kunst' movement pushed by Laibach), and the members were Marko Ornik, Igor Zupe, Goran Majcen, Leonard Rubins, and Branko Mirt. Besides their eponymous cassette release in '83, and a compilation LP appearance in '84 [Comp LP's existence is unverified. -S], there are no other recorded documents of the group. The self-titled cassette came out in November of 1983 in an edition of 230 copies, and for the most part is a live recording with a couple of studio tracks thrown in.

When compared to the rest of industrial scene back then, Abbildungen Variete was a rare bird, and defining them is certainly not an easy task. They had a strong smack of ritual-music, which is also present with 'Laibach' and 'Strukturne Ptice', and played a vital role in early 'Autopsia'. The pool of bands we could draw parallels to would be from that milieu: Last Few Days, Ain Soph, maybe even Het Zweet. Sound-wise it's quite diverse, a bit of sinister tribal drumming with frantic clamor, a bit of solemn ceremonial chanting and a bit of ominous funeral dirges for the banishing of the dead."
 --(Edited From An) Author Unknown

Last Few Days - '83-'86 (Split Tour Tape With Laibach, "So The Last..." Tape, "Pure Spirit And Saliva" LP)

 

"To many the band Last Few Days is a complete mystery, simply some group who toured [and collaborated] with Laibach then promptly disappeared soon afterwards. This is not particularly surprising for a band that consciously left little mark during their existence, deliberately avoiding wide release of their material, and keeping a limit on live performances.

Most people attending their concerts had very little idea who they were, simply being enticed by the ambiguous posters and general mystery. The concerts themselves lasted all night (with a mixture of music and movies), often going to 7 in the morning. They made heavy use of megaphones, guitars played with broken bottles, unrelenting and brutal drums, delivering harsh and bewildering but occasionally rhythmic apocalyptic music.

The three main members of L.F.D. were Daniel Landin, Si Joyce, and Keir Wahid. They were regularly helped out by Fritz Haaman who also performed with Laibach during the joint tour, and occasionally by Sam Mills, both members of 23 Skidoo. L.F.D. returned as a pop outfit in 1990, with a core of Keir and Si: "We started listening to Radio One, and just got more into regular music after years of extremism. We had been playing to 300 people, and didn't feel like we'd achieved much. When we did this thing in Eastern Europe, we sometimes played to 3,000 people, and that felt more real."
--Edited From Melody Maker 1-27-90

Mighty Sphincter - '84-'86 (Debut 7", "Ghost Walking" 2xEP, "The New Manson Family" LP)


“Mighty Sphincter has always been a band of lies,
that’s what you get when you create music for the criminally insane."
--Greg Hynes (Drums)

Flux Of Pink Indians - 1980 Demo & Live 10-24-81



No Class Interview 1982...

"We began by asking the band if music is a way of life for them.
 No, it’s not. We play in a band to say things that we wanna say and cos we enjoy music.

You’ve never done a radio session for John Peel have you?
We’ve never been asked to do one. There’s no point is there really? If he asked us directly maybe we’d consider it. I think the only advantage of doing one is that you almost force yourself upon people, don’t you? But I wouldn’t like to do a Peel session cos they’re too dictatorial, you have to use their producers, you have to use their engineers, you have to have it done in two days…I wouldn’t want to do one.

We then asked if they were in the Musicians’ Union.
No, fuck off. Don’t belong to any organisation. They’re a farce. They’re trying to ban synth music. I can see why they’re banning it but I just don’t agree. I think the whole philosophy of what we’ve said is that we didn’t agree with any oppression and telling people what to do. You have to be musicians anyway, don’ t you? They wouldn’t have us. They tried to say that if you used a session musician on a record you have to pay ’em £45 an hour, or something. That’s stupid cos if we wanted to use a session musician there’s no way we could afford to pay someone that amount of money. It’s the same with all big trade unions movements, you can join if you agree with what they do, but the trouble with these people is they statrt affiliating themselves, you have to be Musicians Against Abortion, which they’ve started to do, Musicians for the Falklands (laughter). 

How much influence did Elvis Presley have on your music?
Did he, personally? Indirectly he has, rock’n’roll and all that shit. I quite like him, funny enough. I got that Sun album before they stuck strings and crap on, which is a bloody good album. No, he hasn’t influenced us, anyway.  In a way he has cos you got bored with Elvis Presley so you went off and did something else. I don’t think you have any one influence. I listen to hundreds of different sorts of music and there’s special bits of each type of music I like. I try and put together the bits I like, so I suppose you’ve got thousands of influences. Then you’ve got other external influences. If you’re singing something angry you tend to fucking play angrily. No, he wasn’t a direct influence.

So, would you say your music’s aggressive?
I would say so. 

What do you base your aggression on?
Well, because if you feel very strongly that it’s wrong to eat three million animals a year; it’s very difficult to put that in a song and make it feel pleasant. It’s not a very pleasant subject. War’s not a very pleasant subject. If you feel angry about it, it comes across as being angry. There’s other things like the poem on the (Neu Smell) record. Live it ends up being angry, but in the record it’s not, is it? There’s different ways of putting things across. I think it’s very dangerous to say ‘Oh, we don’t agree with this so we’ve got to thrash it out’ cos that doesn’t half limit who you’re getting through to, like we’re very aware that it’s not good to confine yourself to one movement or one section of people. Punk really isn’t a fashion. All that it started off as was a rejection, mainly a music business rejection, if you were to be honest, like £3.50 gigs and all that sort of shit, and other bands came along and took i6t a stage further and made punk into a protest movement that as rejecting what they thought was wrong. I don’t think you have to thrash. It’s not all thrash is it? A lot of it is, some of it isn’t.

It’s a fashion now.
It’s a fashion to a lot of people, but you’d be surprised the number of people it isn’t a fashion to.  The only reason it’s become a fashion is cos the big businessmen saw that there was something there to exploit and they exploited it. If they can sell it they will sell it. You only have to look at MacDonalds. They package shit and sell it, and people eat it. That Philips advert on television, you know where they say Firrips, or something, and pretend to be Japanese. Philips’ sales have gone up about two thirds since that and everybody is absolutely staggered and it’s because they bought some crappy advert. Walls did that thing with their sausages: an advertising campaign where she only served up one sausage. It was an outrage, obscene, so they had to give you two sausages. They ran that campaign for a few months and sausage sales doubled. All these, I should think it’s mainly housewives – I know it’s a sexist thing to have said – were afraid that their husbands or families would be outraged if they served one sausage. It really is a joke.

Talking of consumerism, is your logo a marketable product?
No. It’s become one, but that’s nothing to do with us. I don’t give a shit now. I did when it first happened and T-Shirts and badges were being sold. We had thought of maybe prosecuting. We did go down and complain a few times. It’s not our fault that people buy t-shirts for £3.50 or badges for 40p. The responsibility lies with people who buy it. We made a statement on the new record saying I can appreciate why people do it because they feel so strongly about the things that we say that they wanna – in their own way – show that they support the message and feel a part of it. I respect that but it seems a pity that you have to wear a Flux Of Pink Indians t-hirt or badge. You should go out and do your own thing. Like we’ve said, a ban’s fuck all really. It’s just one way of saying something. There’s lots of other people who go and protest outside Boots cos they don’t like animals in make-up, or going to sabotage hunts cost hey don’t like hunts. I quite like it when loads of people come to our gigs and people write to you and say that you’re really great and what you’re doing is really good. That isn’t really how it should be. They should think ‘Fucking hell, that’s good, I’ll go off and do my own.’ The only way that things that we say will ever come about is if people stop following and go and do their own thing. Punk bands like Crass and The Damned, they’re a fucking farce. The whole thing is really. Not the bands, the movement is. You shouldn’t have leaders. I think it’s absurd that either us or Conflict, or Crass, or Poison Girls that are trying to put across an individual message become leaders. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m as guilty as everyone else cos I tend to follow things.

Everyone does.
Only cos they’ve been conditioned to follow. With the first single we said about vegetarianism, saying eating meat’s wrong. You only have to do something really simple like that, break one thing of the conditioning, and if people accept that eating meat’s wrong they may stop eating meat. It was wrong to have chosen one thing like that, but it works because people stop eating meat and they think ‘Fucking hell, well if that’s wrong, maybe something else is wrong, maybe all these bombs hanging over us is wrong or fucking putting people in prison is wrong, or rape’s wrong, kicking people in the head isn’t funny or masculine.’ I think it does work.

How do you judge if it works?
The only way that I can judge is the people you actually meet. On a very superficial level, I’ve met people who used to eat meat and they don’t now eat meat. People who use to relish all the shit on television, all the violence, who used to think rape was funny and that women really wanted to be fucked, that that was what they wanted. On a very superficial level, I’ve met people that I know what we’ve done’s worked. Even if we’ve only changed one person, and I know for sure that we’ve changed one person, then it was all worthwhile, cos that one person will then go away and confront people who are eating meat and sat ‘What the fuck are you doing? That was killed for you.’ That’s all we’ve done. We’ve said we think it’s wrong. We can exist. We don’t eat meat. We don’t go fucking following blindly a football team and kicking everybody else in the head. We won’t go off and fight in the Falklands. Maybe people will look at us and say ‘Maybe they’re right, I’ll think about it.’

But people blindly follow the band.
I don’t think they do blindly follow.

People might just be attracted to the aggressive music and not the message it carries.
The responsibility for that lies with us and we’re aware of it. That’s why on the (Strive To Survive) record we’ve done things that a thrash punk band shouldn’t have done. There’s some very slow stuff on the record. We did a poem on the first single, which a punk band shouldn’t have done. We did it cos it was very important to us to get across to people. On the first single we had that big broadsheet inside with all the information written. We tried that, that way one way of getting across. With the next record we’ve done it more visual. Hopefully when somebody picks up our record and it’s got all these pages inside, all these pictures, they’ll think ‘Fuck it, maybe it is a bit more than the music.’ They ought to. With Neu Smell I think it failed on various levels as people have asked us – some people, not many – what Tube Disasters meant, which we went to great length to try and explain inside the single. I think with the new record we’ve cleared up any misunderstandings on Neu Smell. It should be very clear to people what it is we’re into, or what it is we’re trying to present.

So at gigs you do get people who take the lyrical subject matter seriously, who’re not just into the music?
You get people who write and ask. You get a fair number of people just who write and ask when the next record’s coming out, can they have a badge. But you get a hell of a lot of people who say ‘Why don’t you eat meat, you shitheads. Eating meat isn’t wrong.’ And you write back to them and explain more fully why it’s wrong, why something else is wrong. We quoted a piece out of The Bible on the last record in connection with the meat eating. That upset a lot of people who agreed with what we were saying, but they were torn between their religious beliefs and...It’s not up to me to say to them God’s a farce, religion’s a farce. All we did was I wrote back and gave them several other quotes showing that there was conflicting statements within The Bible. It’s up to them to decide whether it’s right. It just makes them think, that’s the important thing. You’re conditioned just to accept. If anything, the main thing we do is get people to question that acceptance. It works on varying levels. Some people might just come to the gig, jump up and down and have a real good time and then fuck off and lay into an old woman on the way home, but a hell of a lot of people do think about it and talk to you about it after gigs and start their own bands. A measure of the punk success is the bloody fanzines, isn’t it? You don’t find millions of heavy metal fanzines. All the heavy metal fanzines tend to show heavy metal bands thrusting their fucking crotches out and bloody sexist poses, standing over women and baring their muscles. They never deal with real life issues, them bastards.

Getting back to religion, we asked them if it has affected their music.
I wouldn’t say it’s affected the music.

So why did you mention it on the Neu Smell sleeve?
One of the first things if you’re a vegetarian and you’re saying eating meat’s wrong, one of the commonest replies is that it says in The Bible you can eat it. I got so tired with that sort of response from people that I looked through The Bible and chose one quote that says you shouldn’t eat meat, and people come back to me and say ‘Fuck it, it says here you can eat meat.’ That’s the whole thing, it contradicts itself and it’s so unclear that it’s just a joke that it’s been held up as some meter of authority. I think it’s really sick, I’m almost ashamed of it to have put out a vegetarian record when two of the musicians on it weren’t vegetarian, which is a joke. After we’d done it we felt so bad that we really fucking hassled the other two and said we really can’t go on saying this when we’re not all vegetarians. We either drop it or we fucking go. We talked about it, we decided we wanted to keep it, so we decided that they’d have to leave the band.

Lastly, what does Flux Of Pink Indians mean?
A gathering of white skinned Indian sympathizers. It came about because the members who were in Flux originally felt strongly about the Indians over in America, the way they were being treated.

The End."

Merzbow - "Mechanization Takes Command" Tape 1983, "Batztoutai With Memorial Gadgets" 2xLP 1986, Collaboration With S•Core Tape 1987, "Crocidura Dsi Nezumi" Tape 1988, "Batztoutai With Material Gadgets De-Composed Works 1985-1986" 2xCD 1993, Split 7" With Smell & Quim 1996, Live CBGB's Collaboration With Alec Empire CD 1998 [And You Get A Few Scans Too!]

 
"Merzbow began as the duo of Masami Akita and Kiyoshi Mizutani, who met in high school. Their earliest music was made with tape loops and creatively recorded percussion and metal. These early methods also included what Akita referred to as 'material action', in which they would heavily amplify small sounds so as to distort them. 'Batztoutai With Memorial Gadgets' was their first LP released outside of Japan. They also started touring abroad with the help of various collaborators. First, Merzbow performed in the USSR in 1988, then toured the USA in 1990, Korea in 1991, and Europe in 1989 and 1992. During the European tour in Sept/Oct 1989, Akita could only bring simple and portable gear, this led to the harsh noise style he became best known for. Kiyoshi Mizutani left Merzbow after the 1989 European tour and continues to pursue a solo career."

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