Stakker Humanoid

I first heard Stakker Humanoid in a field by a fire next to a Victorian Folly in the middle of the night on a nastily handpainted (spray would've been irresponsible) Rural Blaster somewhere at the edge of Yeovil (maybe Alan Partridge had suggested we went there, I can't remember). I heard a lot of music that way. Back then, it wasn't all that clear whether or not we were listening it Humanoid by Stakker or Stakker by Humanoid or both. It didn't matter because even at the time it seemed like something new was in the air, something alien this way comes.

I never got the Chicago House thing, still don't get it. Too much humanity, too warm by half. We'd all assimilated the Chip E and Marshall Jefferson and Steve 'Silk' Hurley and, while a zeitgeist was clearly there to be made, it seemed even at the time too transitional, as if this was only the first step into dragging the human soul* out of music and forcing people to dance to robots. Those records never felt fully formed. Liking things like S-Express were a bigger step for me but even they seemed resolutely disco , which in turn seemed human all too human. Beat Dis and Pump Up The Volume had gripped me more, but even there the focus was on the samples, on the human voices interjecting and takin control over the robots. Even the inevitable trainspotting that acccompanied those records was evidence of human contact - in my mind's eye I could see those little fellahs putting the needle on the record and clapping like billy-o when the words fit the beats.

Humanoid wasn't human at all and everything else seemed like a step too small.

You have to remember that I'm of the generation who, at one terrible unconscious level, were utterly disappointed when there didn't end up being a Nuclear War. All that childhood emotional energy wasted and not even the sniff of an anecdote to tell the grandkids over the Werthers Originals. No energy expenditure over rising house prices; we wanted total war. The Robots taking over was about all we could look forward to be scared about.

The cowbelling at the start wouldn't have caused any concern to the people around the fire; they'd all have one or two Electro albums (probably tapes, actually) from the days when Yeovil town centre was covered in stolen bits of kitchen floor and the beginnings of headspin induced male pattern baldness**. But then the machines take over and the little backwards noises start and everything builds and builds until it's all electricity, complete with fake whistles and fake dog barking, as if the machines are taunting humankind by imagining their future dancing to this kind of stuff in fields full of wet dreadlocks, dogs on strings and bare-chested young men trying out for the sheep trials (i.e. every West Country Rave ever and, er, stuff at Shoreditch).

Pretty soon, they'll take over. Autechre and the Artificial Intelligence brigade (no surprises about the choice of name there then, and no surprise that it didn't really catch on either; we've all seen Terminator) are just around the corner, tiny metal wings rubbing together in glee, giving off some awful Iron stench. I still can't listen to Autechre without thinking of Francis Bacon and I think I have Humanoid to thank for that.

Is it any wonder that the FSOL boys gradually wound their way back to humanity via their recent AA albums (the abbreviation says it all; the (1)2-step plan - "My name is Brian Dougans and I am a roboteer... I have let them in and now I have to let them out again")?

Stakker Humanoid - Humanoid



A Yousendit bio-podulating spermGODdoddin




*why did anyone think this was a 'bad' idea? Pretty soon, souless became a byword for electronica - and let in the likes of Jimi Tenor - but that's always what I liked about it. Have I missed something?

**incidentally, in non-Loki life I was recently shocked at how much lino actually costs - such a flagrant abuse of high quality vinyl flooring is a better predictor of the Bust after the Boom in the mid to late 80s than anything The State We're In comes up with... way more bling than those knock-off gold ropes that the Piddy's wrestle with now...