punked



Found this the other day down the local car boot, rubbing shoulders with a load of mediocre drivel, … that lime green Xerox aesthetic getting me all excited…. Thought it was gonna be weirder... but as compilations go, turned out to be a decent slice of mid 80’s punk fallout, released on the Melksham based Sub-hu-mans Bluurg stable... says so on the back in a hand drawn calligraphics… Back then, the town made the top ten for the UK's most violent places to live , even if by today's standards the acts here sound a bit tame…



The pics of the bands on the flip are like little time capsules, bubbles of mid eighties swagger…always love a bit of nostalgia but not in a twee Hovis way. Scooting round the internet for info has been patchy, revealing only a few measly details… still chasing the vapour trails… amazingly enough you can still grab a damaged (ironic hey) copy over on the Subhuman's site for 4 quid…

Tucked in amongst all the aggro punk basslines and spittle… is this New Zealand band called K4, who flying nun apparently failed to sign...



sorta more gothy than the rest, plying a nice spread of spidery chords and boy/girl dynamics... that ‘kiwi animal’ track sounding uncannily like Prolapse... sadly looks like they just dissolved away, soon after supplying these two four-track recordings...



Got me dusting off things I haven't played for donkeys years... started a bit of a punk revival… Sub-humans, Bob Hope To Die and lots of golden oldies… plus some Dutch post-punk I picked up over in a Belgium comic shop a year back, even plundered Bow Wow Wow’s back catalogue… jeez, I thought they were the bees knees back in 82…

On another note, spied this, complete with lyric sheet… the pristine gloss of the contents had me salivating… but the seller was too savvy to part with it for what was left in my pocket...

Comments

Anonymous said…
K4 morphed into a stunning group called Paradox and THEN faded away. There are a few things by Paradox who extended the goth/industrial vibe. Amazing to see (ahh memories etc. etc.). Flying Nun failed to sign anything interesting at that time (in my opinion) - quite a decent batch of industrial/goth happening at that time, certainly in the Auckland scene. Strangely I don't have that album though it looks very familiar. Bluurg may be getting an order...
Cloudboy said…
thanks Ian i'll have to hunt some paradox down...