While incrementally adding to various fragmented drafts of writings in these here pages — that happens when the moment strikes me — for this track of the day here the thoughts and feelings for this one sort of just came to me today — again. It’s something that happens to me everytime I hear this track and it does more so than many other tracks that I listen to.
This would be one called “We Have Come To Bless This House” from side B of the album City Slab Horror, released by the Australian, experimental electronic group Severed Heads in 1985. First off, it’s a standout track on the album — not only due to its intoxicating quality and that it sounds noticeably different than most of the rest of the tracks on the album, but also due to the fact that it’s quite a dance-oriented, yet cruising in the slow lane with a tempo that’s certainly below 100 BPM — a chugger indeed.
It’s also a track that easily conjures up an image of a field at 5:00 am with a massive sound system within it and full of a bunch of blissed out ravers coming into the final hours of an all night party.
Starting with a thudding drum machine pattern and a bubbly-sequenced, square wave-leaning bass synth pattern, further layers of analogue synth sequences and pads start to slowly layer themselves onto the track’s one repeated riff. Then — using sound design techniques that Severed Heads were getting known and a reputation for in the latter half of the 80s — a final layer of manipulated vocal samples completes the mix with this sample seeming to from a chant from a world far away. It’s like feeling hazed out on some strange, oceanside landscape — looking from high up on a sunny day.
And that’s definitely where my feelings and images that are created in daydreams sort of come with this. I somehow tie in this track with images of a late afternoon or early evening after a hot sunny day in the urban skyline of Vancouver with the sun starting to display with a more dramatic flair as it starts it’s descent down over the western horizon — and of course a lot of memories from over the years of things that happened in that landscape when I was living there.
It’s a track that although I had heard it sometime in the late 1990s when I was really starting to unearth darker, experimental electronic music from the decade before, I only really started to really give more attention to it in the last two years of my time in Vancouver. It was a time that a lot was changing creatively, socially and personally for me that would arc into some weird journey that saw me come out the other side after I had moved halfway across the world to London (yes — that far, not just to London, Ontario).
There are definitely other songs that have wormed their way into my life at some point or another that conjure up just as strong albeit noticeably different feelings, as each song has it own story with me so to speak. But yeah, this one — definitely a particular set of feelings and thought train of memories percolate into my brain when listening to.
On a lighter note it’s the type of track that not only has its credit from the experimental, underground scene at the time, but also one that at the same time you can pop into the stereo of a convertable that’s cruising along some rugged coastline on a hot August day. Connected to other artists working with the same technology and themes at the time — most noticeably with fellow Skinny Puppy from my hometown, Vancouver BC— Severed Heads often could pull out some lighter and airy pop-leaning tracks from the sea of more “electronic industrial” tracks that they had put out around this time.
A lot of City Slab Horror is more sample-based percussion and tamed rhythmic noise but it also has its more melodic moments. Along with “We Have Come To Bless This House” is a track like “4WD” — and even that track uses some more avant garde production and sound design techniques.
Other tracks by the band from this mid-1980s time period that also fit into this sweet spot in their overall sound — at least for me — would include “Halo” from the EP Stretcher and “Petrol”, the title frack of the 12″ it was released on, both coming out in 1985. You can hear those two in the videos below, along with “4WD” although I’m pretty sure the first two utilize visual graphics added to the audio by fans of the band, rather than the band themselves.
That mention is made here because Severed Heads were — and still were, until they disbanded somewhat recently — a very forward-thinking band in terms of its use of technology, and not only with their sound but with video as well. They were known to be a very early example of bands working with video synthesizers and I guess in a way applying their approach to treating sound as well to video. I guess could say they were artists that we definitely interested in the medium of multi-media.
This interest in video was used not only in promo (music) videos for the band, but also in live performances as visuals as per the second clip of “We Have Blessed This House” at the bottom below.
Severed Heads never reached as much of an audience as some of their peers would — perhaps it was being far away down under in Australia, or their name evoking imagery of death and gore — or just that their sound never really completely fit in one genre of electronic music and times those genres it might fit into being contradictory. There’s a lot of articles on their history however, for those who might want to get more of the full story, such as this one here.
With Severed Heads breaking up ago a couple of years ago for what is likely their last stint of activity (they had been going for around forty years by that point), I suppose I was lucky to catch them live when I did — that being right after I had moved up to Glasgow in the middle of 2016. They were playing a more off-the-radar warehouse venue on the north side of the city centre called The Glue Factory, which wasn’t really around as a live music or club venue for that long.
The show was put on by club promoters So Low I think, which in turn had the involvement of one half of the musical institution here in Glasgow known as Optimo — the late Keith McIvor who sadly passed away this past year. I know it affected many folks who used to go to Optimo‘s weekly (and on a Sunday — every week. You don’t get that anymore these days) from when it started in the late 1990s to when it completed its first run in 2010. Some friends of mine were close to him — heck, I even met some people I’m friends with now at that Severed Heads show now almost ten years ago now.
But yeah — that ties it all up! Looking back on writing this, the style of writing is noticeably a different flavour than others I’ve written here. Perhaps it’s those weird, sunny feelings put out into words further up? It could also be that I’m returning back to visit Vancouver in the near future and a lot of thoughts from those times are ramping up ahead of that trip. But more simply it’s because this one is more memory-driven for me, yeah — that’s it.