Double LP
First time on vinyl double disc edition of Severed Heads’ ninth album, first released in 1991. Tom Ellard is a renowned provocateur, with a wealth of output that veers from the transgressive abrasions of industrial to a kind of absurdist, uncanny alternative pop, and it’s to the latter that he mostly clearly identifies on Cuisine (With Piscatorial), a late period synthpop smorgasbord with a barely concealed savage eye and whip smart wit. These are undeniably infectious, almost computer game-like electronic workouts that contain the vivid invention of, say, YMO, but nonetheless also display a withering takedown of the trashy, throw-away tendencies of the (Pop) Culture Industry - in that sense, the title is a dead giveaway. 1991, with the contrasting journeys into acid house and a burgeoning rock revivalism that were defining independent music, might seem a touch late for such forays into EBM/electro/synthpop - must that belonged most obviously to the previous decade - but there’s an obvious affinity here with the dancefloor psychedelia that was infiltrating the likes of Psychic TV’s Towards Thee Infinite Beat or Buried Dreams by Clock DVA, which both came out just the year before. Because it’s Severed Heads, there’s an awful lot going on besides, Ellard’s favouring of Burrough’s like cut-up processes creating the sense of something just that little more skewed towards the alien, the sound of discovering a bar in some off-world future colony - the Star Wars cantina by way of Total Recall, perhaps. Such futurism doesn’t always age well, but Cuisine (With Piscatorial) is so obviously propelled by its own unique life force and absurdist nightmare imaginations, it feels almost impossible to dull its edges. And in short, more compelling evidence of a total one-off mind.
FFO: Psychic TV, Clock DVA, Cabaret Voltaire, YMO
