MOST CERTAINLY it's difficult to remain awake when listening to this tortuously bad LP. Indeed the thought of sitting through all four sides and playing constant attention proved such an awful prospect that the thing spent two whole weeks hidden in a dank, dark corner, rather like one of the great Mr Herbert's rats waiting to spring...only it didn't spring at all.

There seem to be hundreds of milions of these - ahem! - Wild Planet-type outfits. Sounds' very own Dave Henderson would appear to be their hero ('twas he who compiled this record) and, presumably inspired by his regular eight-page Wild Planet (Wild???), pull-outs, they will insist on persistently retiring to their snug little cubby-holes, where (Aaargh!!!) out come the tape recorders! Like, wow! Creativity, man...

In Nottingham, Metamorphosis pull up a few cushions, begin banging things, blow on a horn, and pluck boringly at a bass guitar. In Chiswick, Coil (ever so strangely, Coil is just one person!) again plucks boringly at a bass guitar, whispers atmospherically into his reel-to-reel and then makes a really unusual kind of tinkly sound. He continues this for several hours. In Manchester, the weirdly named Muslimgauze sing strangely over a boring drum-machine and an equally boring keyboard phrase and then, then they make a tinkly sound. In York, some boring bastard called David Jackman puts the kettle on, heats it to boiling, takes a five minute nap and then pops his new tape (of the whistling kettle) in the oven. 'Great', he muses afterwards, 'when you put tapes in the oven, they come out sounding, like really interesting'. Down in Sussex, MFH make a deep rumbling noise. Northwards, and in Coventry, Attrition sing tunelessly over the usual sullen, er, noise, while (off we go again) in Essex some stupid tiresome git-called Paul Kelday makes whispering sounds and yet more tinkles are created. Great stuff. In South East London Bourbonese Qualk (who wears a mask!) dozes of after few screams and whisteling sounds while in Leeds, Sirius-B do more or less the same, only they take longer about it.

Finaly, whilst somewhere in Bongor, New 7th Music bang on a biscuit tin, Bushido (from Whitstable) perhaps in some strange kind of spiritual unity are producing a noise akin to that of bath water going down the plug-hole, only far, far weider. Weider still, there are less awful people on this album - some are even vaguely listenable (curiously, these tend to be 'name' acts like SPK, Portion Control, Nurse With Wound and Legendary Pink Dots) in a sickly, stomach-turningly dreary kind of way. But in the 'twillight zone' they choose to inhabit, being 'less awful' amounts to nothing less than a complete sell-out. Somewhere in York, boring bastard David Jackman is smiling, because nobody understands his music...David thinks he's a real weird kinda guy, but his friends just wish he'd go away. It's quite sad, really.

© SOUNDS 1983

Digital assistance and credit: Simon Dell <simon@stroppy.demon.co.uk>