Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel

Love > Gash

Haven't heard "Love" yet but there is no denying the classic-ness of "Hammer Falls."

whenever Offed comes in on this thread, i always feel guilty for having ignored my Foetus collection for so long. must be a hormonal thing, as i only ever enjoy Jims groove when i am pissed off, which has to be said, is a very rare situation these days.
though i can listen to Nail what ever mood i am in.
oh, and i far prefer Slung on Gash.

Much as I bang on about Foetus, I only have 3 of his albums, namely the last two and Nail (courtesy of JJ). All are very good, but I definitely need to explore further.

That said, I can't imagine anything else of his being better than "Kreibabe". Tenser, fiercer, and more emotionally wrought than most plays, the song unfolds like twisted opera, for a genuinely (as opposed to Lloyd-Webber circus-freak) disturbed mind to find reason within its own depravity, racking up the wrongness and the paranoia by increments throughout its 13-minute runtime. Show-stopping. Stunning. Most unbelievable of all, catchy!

is it too late to trade in my mind

LJ I swear I'm gonna send you Hole if you haven't heard it yet.

I found a promo vinyl copy of the Null EP on the East Coast abandoned under a record rack for a mere six bucks. Never heard it, or any of the Sony stuff in fact. It's pretty damn good! Now I have copied Gash and Love from the radio station and plan on doing a little catching up with Mr. Thirlwell in 2008.

Hole? To my eternal shame, I only have 'Nail', 'Flow' and 'Love' thus far. If you're feeling any seasonal charity, I'd be very grateful!

HUMAN HEIFFER FOR A FILLET VEAL!
HUGH HEFNER AND A HUMAN MEAL!
SOMEONE'S MAKING ME A HUMAN MEAL!

dude, get HOLE immediately.

or else I'm gonna cook you a stew you'll choke on!

I wish someone would write a book about his lyrics - I finally found out that "the snot-green sea, the scrotum-tightening sea" is from James Joyce's 'Ulysses' quite recently, for instance

Louis, your ILX mail address doesn't work?

Hmm. papi3rm4ch3alamph1b1an at hotmail dot com (de-googleproofed, of course) is probably the best one to get in touch with.

not just hole - but Wiseblood aswell sir, and what no Thaw!
natually, i can help you if required sir ..

Well, it is Christmas! Just the time for spinning JT's delightful carols to human depravity.

MAAAANDELAAAAAYYYYYEEEEEEEE

newest remix album is ?? so far as to how i feel about it

speaking of which, is mr thirlwell remixing much of anybody these days? i still have the CD5 with his RHCP remix on it, and some other stuff lying about, but it seems like its been years.

not heard the new remix album, but i loved DAMP, the internet only release. the packaging was perfectly foetus-esque and very high quality, as was the music (off cuts/remixes from the Love-era).
in fact i have listened to that more than Love, actually.
as for remixes ?
well, he's more into the serious art stuff now isn't he ? shows with orchestras and such.
i doubt labels are going to be offering him $$ for remixes these days.
having said that i know he owes a remix to DJ Food, so you never know !

Oh yes:

http://www.williamsstreet.com/kernel/imageload?table=cat_images;ttl2=15;key1=297096_f_EN_;key2=297096_f_EN;key3=297096_f;key4=-100_f_EN;key5=-100_f

is this a website only release ?
that cover is truly fantastic.
fuck you hirst and your diamond skull.

"-This item cannot be shipped outside the U.S.A. and Canada."

bastards. bastards. bastards.

Amazon (US, anyway) has only the LP listed. Give it time, I'm sure they'll stock the CD as well.

Just read the notes/promo piece from Jackson Publick and was struck by the fact that Quilombo, the album that he says got him to hire Thirlwell in the first place, and indeed all the other Steroid Maximus material aside from the last album is long out of print and impossible to find. Not only that, Flow (which is all over the Venture Bros. pilot, "Cirrhosis of the Heart" especially) is out of print and insanely expensive, despite being only a few years old, while its goddamn remix album is still available and easy to find. WTF, Blue Note?

excuse me Thirsty Ear

eh all you jazz labels look alike

lol i got Flow off Amazon about a year and a half ago for like 8 quid

i am concentrating very hard to make your head explode right now

(is it working)

yeah, i am actually wondering to myself "is it too late to trade in my mind"

Seriously though, that is fantastic luck- I've been looking for a copy for ages and did a little dance when I found out CDUniverse had it in stock. Then I waited over a month for it to come in, emailed CDUniverse and told them I never got the package, they said "oh sorry about that we'll send it right out," and another month later cancelled my entire order and gave me a refund, which leads me to believe that not only did they never have the Foetus in stock, they didn't have the rest of my order either. They've shafted me on another CD, too, and haven't even replied, much less given a refund.

Man that got off-topic really quickly. So, um, in summation I like Foetus and CDUniverse can choke on a big ol' kielbasa.

its past midnight.
i have listened to melodic indie pop all day to realign my head for weekend festival.
so why is it, before i go to sleep i now have an urge to listen to Nail on headphones.
LOUD.

because its a great great record, and i used to do the same thing to go to sleep when in college. its weirdly soothing despite being kind of bombastic, and the rise and fall is so enveloping that it is hard to resist

soothing and cleansing.
the big intense finale is just the most amazing end to an album.
Anything! has just kicked in and now i remember why i still have all the cds within reaching distance from the stereo.

just remembered .. doesn't the vinyl of Nail have a locked groove with the end vocal chant ?
also, the reissued remastered edition.
worthy of extra $$ given that i have the original cd.
is there that big a difference ?

I just bought Limb, a recent collection of all super early 80s stuff, lots of Steve Reichian experiments, piano pieces, Severed Heads-esque tape manipulation. Some beautiful and awesome stuff.

i keep meaning to get this. do you know if the version of "sick minutes" is different to the 12" version?

ooh a foetus thread bump! 'finely honed machine' has been on my current ipod shuffle roster and is a most energising 9-minute trip into the dark heart of JGT

I don't know the vinyl bg...the version of Sick Minutes on Limb is 8 minutes long, while it's 2 minutes on Sink.

Looks like it may be the same...from http://www.foetus.org/ under Limb there's a ton of historical info about each track.

Sick Minutes was originally recorded in 1982 at Lavender Sound, an eight track studio in South London where I recorded my first two albums, DEAF and ACHE, with Harlan Cockburn engineering. It's working title was "Six Minutes", as I conceived it as two three minute sections, but I was very ill the day that I was recording it and it got re-christened "Sick Minutes". The percussion is toy wooden marimbas, aerosol cans played with small mallets, prepared piano. You can also detect a tin whistle. I later took it to Wave studios in Hoxton Square where I revamped it and added the vocal loops which pushed it well beyond six minutes.
The revamping session happened when I was recording the Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel album HOLE. I had created a lot of vocal tape loops by multi tracking my voice on 24 track. We then mixed these on to 1/4" tape in major and minor chords. We stretched the tape loop then I would "play" the tape machine as an instrument, pitching it with varispeed , and re-record that back onto the 24 track. I would mark the varispeed knob with a grease pencil to indicate the key notes that worked with the key of the song. Then those tape loop performances were submixed and bounced into an arrangement. This is the same method I used for creating the voices on "I'll Meet You In Poland Baby", like a mellotron without the mellotron.
The phrase "unmutual" that is sung at the end comes from an episode of the TV show The Prisoner, where Number Six is branded unmutual for being uncooperative. I seem to remember a part where the villagers converge on him chanting this. This piece also features acoustic guitars at the end, in one of the only times I have ever used them. It was released as the b-side of a limited edition twelve inch under the name Foetus Uber Frisco.

I have to say, I've always enjoyed what I've heard of his but never fully explored his catalog, I've gotten to know him a bit in NYC over the years, running into him every now and again, the last time at the Fairway supermarket in Brooklyn where he was confused because he misplaced his cart! (I think somebody else took it) but this has been a revelation to me. I randomly put on Primordial Industry which I had off a downloaded rip from the original NWW compilation and assumed it was a different Foetus, but when I looked it up and realized it was the same, I had to buy Limb.

thanks dan. "hole" was my foetus entry point and for years i thought it was the greatest album of all time, but now it's "deaf", "ache" and the early singles i listen to the most, so i really need to get this.

ordered.

ok. i know ysi is a no no but this is long out of print and it's a lo fi mp3, so.....

"kid hate kid"

genius.

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/712507604/587e3a44d33854437d81538080e67fb6

you know he played synth on the pragVEC! Lp before leaving London for NY? Their drummer Nick Cash was also in The Lines but Thirwell didn't seem to remember them when I asked.

Oh btw rife is available on emusic. Trying to resist the urge to burn all my foetus stuff and make a mint on amazon. One of the Marc almond singles is starting at $40!

Today is the first of september......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmO5N5TVwpc

nice. there was a cringe worthy interview on resonance fm this evening with jg thirwell. he seems like a cool a guy who's heavily into music but the interviewer was a complete dick. he even mispronounced einsturzende neubauten

I've been trying to find a podcast of this but cannot. Can you explain further?

(I mean, it just aired today and it's expecting to much that the host has uploaded a podcast and some website maintainer has put it up.)

too much

Feet are smellin' (Foetus Melon)

Today is the first of september......
― stirmonster

Meant to revive this yesterday then forgot all about it. Giving it a wee listen now.

http://www.last.fm/music/Foetus/_/I%27ll+Meet+You+in+Poland+Baby

Three years running this has had a "TODAY IS THE FIRST OF SEPTEMBER!" shout.

has Sink ever been remastered? I have an early Wax Trax and a later Thirsty Ear and now I see there is a 2007 Some Bizarre reissue, but no notes about remastering from the original 1989 version.