Cardiacs: Classic or Dud?

Yeah, I guess. It still feels like a big deal for our little fan convention, though. It's growing!

Finished listened to the selftitled Sea Nymphs album. Absolutely loved it, maybe even more than Sing To God, so it might be my favorite Cariacs album so far.

One of the most purely lovely things I've heard in quite some time.

The new Sea Nymphs is pretty much just as good! (It's more conventionally song-y, perhaps - the s/t is all mysterious fragments and snatches)

Cosign, all Sea Nymphs is great, including the Mr & Mrs Smith and Mr Drake recordings, love 'em just as much as Cardiacs.

Also, I was listening to some Ligeti Keyboard Works CD the other day and this struck me as very Sea Nymphs/Bill D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OftWu4HPQI

Bill definitely skews less avant-garde than that but there's definitely a reminiscence in the flourishes! Good spot

Bill once mentioned Debussy as an early influence, and you can definitely hear that from Debussy's Tarantelle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bW01NSqOA7M

What is Tim saying at the end of track 2 on Songs For Ships And Irons?

"I'm allowed in here, am I?"

"I'm a loudy here, am I?"

Amused me every time but still couldn't quite make it out.

here's what i can make out

sarah: bill

bill: yes

sarah: have you just had a wash

bill: yes

sarah: you smell lovely

bill: thank...thank you very m-

tim: HELLO, I AM ALLOWED IN HERE AM I

bill/sarah: whoooaaahh

tim: OH DON'T NOB ON YOUR OWN FACE YOU FILTHY DOG

Isnt it just Sarah making the mocking sound?

Extra Special OceanLandWorld is really good but probably my least favorite thing so far. Still to listen to Archives, Mr & Mrs, Spratleys and second Sea Nymphs though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkQSzrQxa4Y

Guy is a monster.

Nice

Very good.

Did you all see this (Gong)? Wait for it...

https://youtu.be/9ke0nLLSWFs

Man, they need a singer.

Wow that dude

That (the T&F cover) is amazing yeah

Some Cardiacs family business streaming live on YouTube right now, Admiral's Hard (Sea Shanty band with some Stars In Battledress and Monsoon Bassoon peeps) plus later on some of Lost Crowns playing 'the songs of Tim Smith'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL9hcWgcsK8

ah nice ty! have put it on, albeit overlaid by the new Kesha album until something actually happens ;)

Maybe this was on the thread years ago but I was searching this site for podcast interviews with fantasy writers and found this
https://kittysneezes.com/painful-threshold-dark-william-d-drake-tells-us-television-organ/

There is, of course, no such thing, It's actually a pretty common analog synth like a Juno or something, wish I could recall the exact name. My band once supported The Sea Nymphs and we asked Bill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4zyJneR_gI

This concert, I was at it.

Finished with Spratleys + those three playing Is This The Life / Leader Of The Starry Skies.

I also happen to have been at the other one you mention but the time span between the two is vertiginous and also this makes me seem like a mental obsessive.

A balmy day at the Falcon IIRC.

I'm hearing that Tim has passed away, I'm crushed, does anyone have any details?

All over Twitter, but can't find the source.

I'm seeing FoaF messages saying similar but nothing concrete.

RIP :(

The great one is gone.

It's in The Mirror now

https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/breaking-tim-smith-dead-frontman-22395892.amp

RIP :'(

RIP Tim

As you've probably noticed from my Facebook feed. Yes, I got (got back into, actually, just never talked about it here) into Cardiacs in a big, big way recently. Yes, I am devastated. My condolences to his family and friends (and you imago, since you actually met him.)

Best thing gone did ever have

what the actual heck? terrible news

Oh crap. I have been listening to and thinking about Cardiacs quite a bit this last couple of weeks, from the earliest four-track Canterbury / Zappa infused Piffol instrumentals Tim and Dominic Luckman recorded as teenagers to the prog pop majesty of STG and marvelling yet again (when not simply in a condition of pure joy) at what a thing they were and are, and at why they are not more widely recognised as one of (I mean, THE, really) greatest bands ever, even though of course I know it is the very definition of not for everyone and wouldn't have it any other way.

Kavus Torabi once said or wrote a thing about how with Tim's songs there was never a single part where he wished Tim had done something different. Such audacious, individual but seemingly effortless composition and not once an error of judgment or anything out of balance. That by itself might be worthy of the highest laudation, but there was more even than that to Cardiacs.

Fucking bummed.

Every time I saw this thread, or heard "Is this the life?" on the radio, I'd think...

(as opposed to any other Cardiacs track, which I'd assume meant it hadn't happened...)

On the one level, it's great he managed to supervise the last album and even give a spirited interview (via adapted keyboard) about it.

On the other, glad he did have enough time and spirit to live etc....

sorry, babbling now I know. I'm out.

you mean the last Sea Nymphs album? doubtful whether his true final message to a world that barely deserves him will ever be heard now

Our consolation is all the other messages he did leave. Play 'em loud

awww rip genius :( I was sooooo obsessed. for years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbBuvhuZO8c

Absolutely devastated, that's all I can really say.

RIP Tim

gutted right now. admittedly I've had some trouble listening to them lately because the whole story with Tim has just been so fucking sad. but I did play StG just last week and had the same reaction I always do, the music is just too good to be true. like "Manhoo", just an unbelievable tune. idk what else to say. this sucks. but its also kind of a relief. I hope he was happy in his final years.

RIP man. Lots of Brighton friends affected right now, very sad.

from one of the obits:

In 2017, Smith described his condition: “Imagine if you were wearing a skintight bodysuit made of fishnet all around you, with electrical pulses going all the time. This is what my body feels like unless I fall asleep.”

jesus, it's all so sad. what a terrible fate. I guess it's a little relief that he's no longer suffering.

Tim was around after a Spratleys Japs reunion gig about three years ago and me and imago blurted out some things about how important his music was, and he managed to give us a thumbs up. I felt guilty in retrospect wondering what kind of effort that might have required, but it still meant a lot, and his being there (and at other such gigs, despite the assumed difficulty) was testament to his unwavering commitment to the Cardiacs universe.

He was truly visionary in the way he stitched songs together (and unstitched them, and sewed them back together again in the wrong order) and in those beautifully lysergic lyrics that dissolve and reform in different interpretations no matter how many hundreds of times you hear them.

I wrote a bit here

https://critterjams.wordpress.com/2020/07/22/the-leader-of-the-starry-skies/

I agree there is something utterly unique about the way he wrote songs. Like geniuses in other fields the more you study him the more you feel like his brain was just wired a different way. He's influenced so many people but nobody can really write the way he does. The only thing that comes close is Magma, or maybe Zappa at his absolute best. You feel like you're listening to pop music from an advanced civilization or something. And I'm still amused that for all his boundless creativity he still decided end the first disc of StG by ripping off Faust, one of the few tunes in existence with that same tilted sensibility

Sad to hear all this. I didn't really know much about the nature of his condition.

It's so fucking weird, after all these years I'm still having conversations about Cardiacs all the time and I'm still foisting various tunes onto friends and colleagues whom I think/hope might be receptive.

Only yesterday I was chatting with a mate about Jon Poole/Bob Leith's pre-Cardiacs band 'Ad Nauseum' who were one of a small tribe that appeared to be beholden to that early Cardiacs sound and how great their record, 4 Little Boys is.