Ascension

Recently become obsessed with tracking down a track I only half heard and fully expect to be mythical.




I say obsessed but I guess a typical thoughtform might be:

****ONE STAFF DOWN, TWO? CHRIST. YOU THINK B'S OKAY STILL, AT SCHOOL I MEAN? MAYBE GO FOR A FOG WALK TONIGHT, TAKE THE NEW TORCH. MARKING TO DO THOUGH. MAYBE DO IT THROUGH THE NIGHT, CRACK ON TIL DAWN. THAT TRACK. MY EYE FEELS LIKE AN ALIEN, SOME KINDA MOSQUITO BIT THE PUPIL, POND SKATER. THAT TRACK, I WONDER IF IT'S ON GEMM? WIFE IS ILL AGAIN, MAYBE ALLERGIC TO ME. WONDER IF I'LL STOP FUCKING ABOUT WITH THE REAL TIME EFFECTS ON ABLETON LIVE 5 AND ACTUALLY WRITE SOMETHING THAT DOESN'T SOUND BESHROOMED? NOT REALLY SURE ABOUT THAT MUSHROOM STEG PASTIE, LOOKED KINDA CLINGING. MY FINGER IS GETTING SHORTER, I SWEAR. THAT OR MY WRISTS ARE CREEPING UP AGAIN. WHO WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO GET NITS? THAT TRACK*****

which probably doesn't qualify.




...it was aurally glimpsed under the heavy sedation of nastily spiked (i.e. with water) beer and Martinis on the last day of College, sometime at the end of the 80s in Studios nightclub, Yeovil (formerly Ye Olde String O' Ears, formerly The Mutton Chop) during one of those mystical afternoons when the clubs in Yeovil would throw open their doors to marauding, sun-bleached students from Yeovil College...

...I'm disengaging, limb by limb from a women three tims longer than me, when I catch a flash of redeyes and redhair across the dancefloor - just P doing his usual spazzathon - and with that flash I catch a look as we both hear what's playing...

it's a version of Tainted Love, very slow, very slurred (though the drinks don't help fidelity) which we both think must be the Coil version which we've not yet heard (my 12" is not yet on order from The Acorn Record Hole) and which we're both, as old Soft Cell fans (him being the Sex Dwarf), incredibly excited by... so excited that neither of us can move towards the DJ booth to club the DJ and steal the record, we're just blinking and letting the smile spread over our faces and off through the dancefloor where it bumps off various Day-Release students who like Bunce or Bean from The Fantastic Mister Fox...

it can't be Coil, not here, not in Yeovil, not at three in the afternoon...

But it seems like it must be, even though the voice sounds like a woman, because the electronic squeals in the background, sending Northern Soul off into the arctic wastes, are obviously the Coil boys, both of us can tell Stephen Thrower's clarinet from miles away...

...the track seems to go on forever, the place is going crazy and none of these people even know how momentous this moment is; they'll be going equally mental when Hi Ho Silver Lining comes on, they'll be spitting blood for Careless Whisper gropes...

They don't understand what all this means...this paradigm shift in a club where you had to have Chinos on just to get in...

Anyway, I rediscovered this latest obsession (i obsess with a tiresome lack of discipline, more whining that stalking, really) after rediscovering this track in the Idiot's Guide tape vaults:

Hermemeutic Er Err - Ascension

It's a cover of the Coil track Ascension (from The Angelic Conversation album) by Weston-Super-Mare band Hermemeutic Er Err who, as far as I know consist of producer (i.e. guy wiv a 'puter) Mark Lawrenson (no relation to the footie pundit and Liverpool hero) and vocalist Androcles Walsh.

Weird thing is, they've reinvented the track in such a way that it sounds exactly like the original, even down to the Judi Dench vocals (which, according to the liner notes is actually Androcles's voice, put through various oscillators and blenders so that he sounds exactly like Judi Dench).

As far as i know, Hermemeutic Er Err have only released one CDR so far but I'm expecting great things from them when they support Irr.App.(Ext) on their latest tour. A split CDR with The Stoned Masons is to follow in the Spring.

But back to the Tainted Love version that never is:

It
Wasn't
Coil

When my 12" finally came and I played the Coil record I was disappointed as hell. This wasn't what I heard, nowhere near. This was a sludge elegy to Aids victims; powerful in it's appropriation of lyrical themes, alchemical even but hardly the ballistic, ugly-beautiful, crunked-up, electroid anthemn I'd heard before.

Nothing like the track I heard in Studios. A track I've halfheard only once and which has remained a Holy Grail, a must have, a need badly in Panini Sticker terms.

Does anyone have any idea what it might have been?

While you think, here's Muslimgauze.

Muslimgauze - Indian Summer of Benazir Bhutto