The Elim Church Sessions

Regular readers will already know about the boiling mass that is the lost Yeovil ur-band King Mong, a tireless (sometimes tiresome) corruption of early electronica, krautrock and psych-frazzles played on vintage synths, self-generating machine taxes, glass pipes, CAT echoplexes, unplugged gitars and amorphous egg species.

King Mong played half a gig before dissolving in a sea of retribution, Social Service hassle and hastily prepared Health and Safety initiatives (COSH was taken rather literally by all concerned).

By the time the, er, Mission Was Terminated, one member had succumbed to an unfortunate bout of 24hr Autism, another had lost an eyebrow, the percussionist had developed tennis elbow (though it is rumoured this was as a result of playing tennis) and the lead singer, a 6'plus Down's Syndrome Savant with a mohican and a good attitude had returned to a life of draughts, penny-pinching and smiling at strangers.

Needless to say, there are very few existing recordings of this seminal band but a recently discovered remix of some of their earliest (i.e. only) recordings - tentatively titled the Elim Church Sessions - has brought to light some of the chaos and beauty of King Mong during that blissful 19minutes at Yeovil College Battle of the Bands sometime at the back end of the 1980s.

King Mong - The Elim Sessions (Stained by falling stationery)
a rapidshare ogg vorbis file

Non-musical members of King Mong later went on to form various lysergic/dyslexic bands, most of which have now disappeared. It is extremely unlikely that the splinter group IX Tab(ulations) - the ulations was apparently silent - will ever be heard by people with ears, while The Ungrateful Living, a short-boned Neil Young and Paul Simon covers band played only a handful of gigs in the Somerset marshes before the inevitable descent into parasitism and chemical attack. Of the rest, only The Goats ever managed to release an album - the much maligned "Don't Let Jesus Control Your Soul" (pickwick records, through Vital) - though Opium Pipe Dream, the scat project of founding King Kong member S.P. Frost, did release a limited edition single "Reckonings" on Staalplaat in the early 90s.

Track 'em down if you can.

One original member of King Mong (plus an occasional session musician known at the time only as Marimba) has gone on to more or less success as one-third of Magik Markers and, for the purposes of completion/time-line sanctity etc, here's a track by them:
Magik Markers - Fuck You

courtesy of magikmarkers.com

As S.P. Frost used to say: "if it 'aint broke, break it but if it is broke, leave it alone and call an electrician."