P A R A D O X   L O S T

In the late 70s and early 80s, music was at its most inventive and creative stage. In a rare moment of expression, the musicians rebelled against the commercial music industry in defiance of the pre-packaged nursery-rhyme pop formula. New music emerged from arty experimentalism to dark gothic drones. It didn't matter as long as it was original.

This is the story of 4 different stages of music undertaken by the music bands I was in. Looking back, it becomes evident that these directions were strong reflections of the new music of the time. In the end, we were not commercially successful but, no matter, we are proud of our music. Please read, listen and enjoy! : 

Steve Brooker basically played 2-string basslines on his guitar while I would play arpeggiated guitar chord variations. From our widely differing styles would emerge a unique complex hypnotic swirl. It sounded a little menacing at times but it also had a strange allure.

Later, Steve added his inimitable style of singing and I added the Dr.Rhythm drum-machine to the set-up. I remember that we could consistently churn out 2 or 3 songs per jam session. We were quite productive and, we'd like to think, highly original too.

We did several concerts! Of the smaller ones, there was one awful warm-up gig for some senior citizens (echo feedback problem) but the audience enjoyed themselves anyway (they were dancing in the aisles, eaughh!). Thankfully, we redeemed ourselves the next night with a full concert in front of our home university crowd. There was also a further gig at the Polytechnic of Central London on 24/Feb/1982.

The next big concert for us was at The City University's Finsbury Hall on 14/May/1982. By then, some of our audience actually knew our songs and would sing along. Steve was a great front man and would interact with the audience with his actions and dancing. I'll always remember the audience going wild and exploding to "Tube-Train Mirror", our most popular song. It was a great feeling!

The Immortal Ghosts repertoire is represented here from two recording sources:-

- Tube-Train Mirror and The Image were recorded at City University's Music School studio (as a project recording by a music-student&#133 who played sax).

- Rat Race, Smile In The Dark, Meaning Of Words, Darkened Ones and A Mirage are taken from the City University's May'82 concert.

Unfortunately, two songs The Vehicle & I'm So Sorry are not available.

We broke off for the summer 1982 and only got together again in Sept. By sheer coincidence, we had both bought the same SH-101 synthesizers. We had started to become more involved in electronic music. Messing about with synthesizers yielded two more songs; Sleeping Flowers and Reasons For Treasons (both versions are test recordings).

Using synthesizers brought about a change in methodology. It changed the way in which we wrote music. No more quick exchange of ideas and fast song-writing. It was not a bad change either. It was just different! But beneath the beeps of the synth, we could feel that there was a musical power worth investigating. We embraced the change and invited Steve Morgan to join us as bassist. 

In those 3 days, we jammed, wrote, tested, arranged and recorded our music. It's amazing how fast we could convert our ideas into 7 songs and finish their arrangements. Little Steve (Morgan) was quite the budding audio engineer (actually he studied electronic engineering). As soon as a song idea was ready, Little Steve and I would do the synth music and drum-machine programming, set-up the sound and record it almost straight away. We'd do all this, while Big Steve would pen together the lyrics. It was hectic and sleepless... but we had a really great time!

This recording session not only formalised our backing-tape repertoire but it also made evident our performance roles in the band. Atop the backing tape, Little Steve was to play bass and I was to play guitar... but Big Steve (Brooker) decided to drop playing guitar and concentrate fully on vocals. This was the start of a new relationship where Little Steve and I would heavily compose music (with Big Steve mainly doing the lyrics). I didn't realise it then but the Immortal Ghosts was gone forever (such is the price of change).

Thankfully, the backing-tape also served as a convenient source for practice... and we practised a lot... and, on 14/Dec/1982, Bruit Du Soir played The City University's Finsbury Hall. It was quite a big concert and it went down very well with the crowd.

Sometime later, we changed our band-name to "Autant" (vague band-names are courtesy of S.Morgan), added one more song All Our Memories to our live-set, and, on 3/Mar/1983, played The City University's Bar Lounge. I remember that it was a really packed gig and all went well.

The Bruit Du Soir / Autant repertoire is represented here from various sources:-

- How many Times Have I and Forest Lines were recorded at The City Uni's Music School studio (using borrowed down-time!?!).

- Gloss On Gloss was recorded in the The City University "spare-room" using a portastudio.

- Too Much To Me, How Can I Feel You?, I Wondered and Believe In Me are taken from the backing-tape (with guitar added) and hence have no vocals.

- All Our Memories was recorded at my flat in Porchester Square during a rehearsal (just as we finished writing the song).

With the approach of summer 1983, my studies at The City University had finished and I was going to start work later that year. We weren't sure if we'd be able to continue with the band... or even keep in touch. Although we never formally disbanded, the realities of life outside university just kept us apart too long. 

Little Steve and I did two noise-based songs : Shooting Gallery and Submarine which are interesting experiments into ambient/ asynchronous music. I was concentrating on ethereal sweeps and resonant pings on the SH-101 synth but Steve was happily messing randomly. It wasn't happening so we decided that we'd record them immediately after visiting the local pub (ahem). Fortunately, it worked! BTW, the "kaboom" at the end of Shooting Gallery is the spring-reverb falling off the table & hitting the floor.

All the time I've known Little Steve, he was always very good at coming over to visit me. Nearly always, it'd be to record some of his songs or sometimes just with a few rough ideas. And I was always more than glad to play guitar or make weird drum-patterns!

In 1984, Steve Morgan decided to do a re-production of our old song, Gloss On Gloss. This Gloss On Gloss 2 version was recorded at his flat in Duckett Street and I recall doing the guitars at 3:00am. The whole song ended up as pretty damn cool actually... thanks to Little Steve's production skills!

It was almost a whole year before we played again. On 1/May/1985, Little Steve came over for a whole day's jam session. In our playing, we both felt a new and different musical connection. Perhaps it was just angst... or maybe because we hadn't played for so long.

Anyway, there are two extracts from the jam session and I've named them "Breaking Away" and "Messin' About" (where Messin' About is actually 2 song ideas joined together).

I'd like to think of them as marking a new direction for our music. In a sense, these songs also represent the closing chapter of an era that started with the Immortal Ghosts. 

When I first met Jason Kelly, he had long dreadlocks. He did chop it off soon after but this was just the kind of guy that he was. Jason had the looks and attitude of a band's front-man. He played guitar too. Together, Jason and I got on with the job of making our "demo" tape.

By November 1985, I had finished recording all the background instruments on cassette 4-track. I was then using a Roland TR-707 drum-machine with a Yamaha CX-5 computer synth. Jason then wrote the lyrics and melody.

Jason and I spent many afternoons at my apartment recording the vocals. We didn't have sound-proofing and so we were affected by the outside traffic noises. By the end of February 1986, we had finished final mixing! The "demo" was ready. We had made the right noises.

After pushing the demo-tape here and there, a contact in the music industry finally managed to get us a concert at the London Hippodrome. And, we were told, the recording industry's representatives would attend to hear us play.

A gig at the London Hippodrome was quite a big thing so I re-recorded the music at a friend's studio to make a backing-tape. The plan for the concert was that Jason would sing and I would play guitar so the backing-tape had the music of all the other instruments. Simple!

Unfortunately, the Hippodrome concert would prove to be a disaster for us. Everything was fine during sound-check and rehersal. I remember us being in great spirits and very excited just moments before our stage appearance (it was using a through-the-floor hydraulic lift). The crowd cheered... I signalled to the sound-man to play the tape... I got ready to play. Then we heard this strange muffled sound which we vaguely recognised as our music. Something had gone terribly wrong! Without being able to hear our backing-tape, we just can't play live. The sound-man stopped the tape, rewound it and re-played it again... still muffled! Rewind and play the tape again but to no avail.

Still on stage live, Jason got angry and made comments to the audience about Hippodrome's competence. The hydraulic lift started to take us back below stage... and that wasn't the only thing that was sinking!

Later, I went up to the sound-area to check on the backing-tape reel. It had been threaded in upside-down which is why the sound was unintelligible. Obviously, after sound-check, someone had over-rewound the reel and didn't thread the tape in correctly.

We had to redeem ourselves and a pub-gig was quickly organised. This time it went well. It wasn't very packed but the crowd enjoyed themselves and had a good time. That night, Jason and I played perfectly. While people were patting us on the back and congratulating us, a certain sadness came over us... This is how the Hippodrome gig should have been!

A month later in October 1986, time had run out for me. I left England to go home to Malaysia where a normal working career awaited me.

The Pulse-8 repertoire is represented here from two recording sources:-

- Behind The Smile, It Haunts Me, Hand On Heart, Long Run, What I'm Needing and Summer Again are from the final "demo" recorded at my flat in Pembroke Road.

- Somebody Somewhere is a test recording at my flat of the song in uncompleted stage.