Pinkie Maclure - Red Tape

After a nice spell of extremely warm and balmy weather here in Glasgow, Sunday has been condensed into a break of that spell and some heavy downpours which in turn have added a lot of ambient sound to the flat by way of rain smashing against the windows and generally not that many people on the street in this sort of weather. So given that — and that it’s seemingly a day for the indoors — I thought I’d put in a Scottish entry here, but also mainly as I listened to this track recently after being introduced to it by some friends at a house party in Glasgow a good number of years ago, before lockdown times. After living in this city for a notable amount of time now, as an immigrant I’ve observed there’s a slightly different musical “vocabulary” and of course cultural uniqueness that’s very different from my time prior to that down in England for close to ten years. I’m aware of this, mainly with conversations I’ve had with friends born and raised in continental EU countries and with myself explaining to them my life in Glasgow, despite being an immigrant myself (for those seeing this as a first time read I’m originally from the west coast of Canada).

The track here is called “Red Tape”, the closing track on the 1986 release Unman by Scottish artist, poet and musician Pinkie Maclure. In a nutshell description, this could be classified as “classic post-punk/industrial” but there’s some unique things going on in this track. It’s a slower tempo track that sees a slamming, gated synthesizer paired up with a plodding drum pattern that has a slight martial vibe to it and then on top of it shards of occasion guitar that sound like abstract sheet metal which then coalesce in the choruses into some rough-around-the-edges power chord action.

The “chorus” of this track sees Maclure belting out the phrase “YOU MAKE LIFE DIFFICULT FOR ME!” which admittedly myself I’ve caught myself singing too while listening to this track. It’s relatable and hits the point hard in terms of conveying conflict and frustration. Overall her vocal stylings on this one are definitely the highlight on this, and throughout the whole album. It’s present, forceful and full of interesting details of how see delivers the lines which makes her stand out — on par with other unique vocalists I can think of from this period, such as Siouxsie Sioux, Lisa Gerrard, Lesley Woods, Anne Clark, etc. but those are just vague points of reference. There’s points on this track — and indeed the album — where she forces her voice into a vibrato whirl, manic laughter or to the point of purposefully testing the endurance of her vocal chords.

This might be just my observation — and likely a slightly uninformed one at that — but there’s also a vocal quality that seems to come from more Celtic roots that inflects vocalists from Ireland and Scotland. I can’t really describe the characteristics here, but perhaps this feeling is a bit of a placebo in my head due to the fact that Maclure is, from what I’ve read, further up north in more rural areas of Scotland. I suppose you just have to listen to come to your own impressions here.

The opening track, “Blue Chevrolet”, is a more upbeat post-punk number where these vocalisations are well demonstrated, flying high over what seems to be a driving drum machine pattern through various effects, a throbbing bass note and detuned guitar schrapnel.

Many of the albums tracks however have an interesting, drone-based musique concrète approach, with Maclure’s more drawn out vocal exercises soaring in a space above sampled sounds, tape/voice loops and sporadic percussion which despite the change in pace still pack the same amount of tension and menace. Key tracks here (included below) in this approach would be “Subliminal Seduction” and “Different World”.

Another recording that came about around this time — a year earlier in fact — is a single with another artist called David Harrow who was an English keyboardist who had worked with the aforementioned Anne Clark as well as Jah Wobble at some point. This release is a bit of a curiousity, with the Side A track, “Bite The Hand That Feeds You”, pairing Maclure’s cover over percussive, oriental-tinged avant garde pop that could be a lost track off Japan‘s final album, Tin Drum (1981). And when one flips to the other side, the music breaks out of its rhythm elements into a more melancholy, reflective piece with what sounds like a subtly blended in string section, providing a nice platform for Maclure’s vocals which have a style that really works for that more “low listening” style of music.

I can’t say I really know much about this artist, but that she would continue releasing music over the years albeit with larger gaps between albums than most artists. This might be due to the fact that Maclure is an artist working in different mediums and not really solely working on music.  Or maybe due to reasons like myself that I find become more prevalent as the years go on — sometimes you just need to live life in order to get the inspiration to be creative. Sometimes those gaps require a larger length of time than others. Maclure is known for doing contemporary stained glass works, which can be explored on her official artist website.

Moving into the decade following the release of Unman, Maclure released This Dirty Life (1989) under the name Pinkie Maclure And The Puritans which to me has more in common with developments in American post-hardcore and noise rock than anything going on in Britain at the time. Maybe there’s some vague vibes akin to The Birthday Party (who were Australians based in the UK for a while) which happened earlier in the decade.

And then from there another album in 1995 called Favourite which shifts the musical style, perhaps taking in more stylistic touchpoints of music of the 1990s, and perhaps going for a more of a darker cabaret feel — possibly pulling more in from German Expressionist and Weimar Republic aesthetics.

In more recent years Maclure has been one half of the Edinburgh-based duo Pumajaw, who are still active and playing shows here and there. This name is one of the numerous alias used by Maclure and muscial partner John Wills. I’m far less familiar with the music of this project and it’s probably case of sitting down and listening to some more of it, but there are tracks that I’ve heard such as “Mask” from their 2011 album Demonmeowmeow that has a tasteful, contemporary “dark electronic” feel that could easily fit in place on a lot of more modern “darkwave” playlists.

In the end it all started with the featured track here, “Red Tape”, and is one I’m happy to share with you all today. And with things like BandCamp offering a platform for more underground musicians you can check out her music on her BandCamp profile, where the Unman album is offered but with only two tracks from that album, including “Red Tape”. Enjoy that rainy sunday.