Reupload - Foreheads in a Fishtank - I Want To Masturbate At Castle Donnington

Label: Stuf Records
Year of Release: 1991

I was, and remain, completely unaware of what it was that actually drove Southend band Foreheads in a Fishtank through the early nineties. Despite managing to get themselves signed to Some Bizarre shortly after this single was issued, there can be fewer bands in the UK who were greeted with more confusion or bewilderment at the time.

Formed in the late eighties as a slightly rockist band (who one local man insists sounded rather like early Genesis) they gradually turned their attention to skewed, wobbly bass riffs, industrial rhythms, and perverse sloganeering. "I Want To Masturbate at Castle Donnington" is probably one of the better examples of their work, combining looped eastern wailing with threatening vocals, which are then frequently punctuated by "Psycho" referencing instrumental effects. It's actually not at all funny, despite the title, and sounds more like the work of obsessive stalkers who would give Barry George a run for his money. If somebody followed you down the street playing this on a ghetto blaster whilst singing "Give me pleasure" along with it, you'd run as hard as you could.

The B-side "Happy Shopper" was the A-side of their previous single, which was withdrawn after the cut-price food chain objected to its content. A prolonged, jerky rant against domestic bliss, the singer Jeff regularly screams "Who bought these tea bags?" in fury, whilst the verses are punctuated with the line "She grabs a plastic fish fork and she buggers me". There's a certain Stump-iness to the rhythm section on this track, but both sides remind me much, much more of Australian pranksters TISM. FIAFT could easily have been their Home Counties brothers.

Their debut album "Buttocks" was a very samey affair, but not unworthy - John Peel loved it, and offered them two sessions, and it certainly had its fans elsewhere too. For the most part, though, nobody knew quite how to deal with the band. They were mentioned in the same breath as The Swell Maps and Stump in reviews, but their crudeness combined with art-school song structures alienated the frat-boy audience just as much as it did the intelligent fringe crowd. Fans of both bands were not known for their love of vulgarity.

It's probably also worth mentioning as a footnote that the band had some peculiar and unorthodox ways of getting press attention without hiring a Press Officer or even being signed to a label. They once got into Kings Reach Towers and plastered their posters all over the walls of the NME's toilets - one review the magazine subsequently published largely consisted of a request asking them to come back and clean up. They also sent out packets of lard to music critics (which melted all over their records, causing a lot of anger and resentment), and on one occasion publicised a bunch of gigs in the NME's gig guide in places that didn't even exist (which were published completely unchecked). It may have got them press, but one has to wonder how much long-term ill feeling it all generated. One thing's for sure, though, they livened up Southend at a point in time where there really wasn't a hell of a lot going on there... I certainly enjoyed having my own set of renegades-about-town for a while.

(This entry was originally uploaded in August 2008, and somewhat unexpectedly got an enthusiastic response from many readers. Rather more worryingly, one of the band got in touch to correct me on the Genesis critique a friend of mine (who actually drummed in a band with me) originally raised with these pointed words: "Let me make this clear. Foreheads in a Fishtank were an anti establishment band ten years before the invention of the Internet. They had nothing to do with ‘Genesis’ though they may have agreed with ‘keep those mowing blades sharp’

In the late eighties some bands experimented with deconstruction of ‘melody’ into noise. Site: ‘My Bloody Valentine’. Which is why we hated soft bellied ‘NME’. Foreheads were clearly a part of the ‘Melody Maker scene’.

We sort to connect those sounds with down to earth lyrics. Those of day-to-day pointlessness and banality.

We looked to create three to four minute pop songs de-constructed from Melody into ‘NOISE’.

So we had more in common with ABBA than Genesis.

We hated all forms commerciality. And had the last laugh at the commercial record industry by finally understanding the inevitable pointless destruction of everything and the universe.

Everything is fleeting and passing. We choose to make a large wall of sound before our own inevitable death."

Glad we've finally managed to clear that one up, then.)

(FIAFT's material is shortly to be remastered and reissued, and the band have requested that any downloads should be removed from this site.)

Foreheads in a Fishtank - Stripper

Label: Newt

Year of Release: 1994

Somehow the release of this album managed to totally pass me by at the time, and it wasn't until I saw it a few weeks ago selling for one English pound in a second hand store that I realised it even existed. It's not a bad surprise, nor a bad way to plug gaps in one's record collection, but it certainly speaks volumes about the status of Foreheads in a Fishtank at the time of its release.

Having been dropped by Some Bizarre, they found themselves on the Peterborough-based Newt Records, who dropped this into the world. To be frank, it's possibly their noisiest and most cluttered sounding album - each and every track is a cacophony of distorted samples, harsh vocals, dischordant electronics and twittering sounds. Where cassette tape manufacturers may have attempted to avoid "wow" and "flutter", FIAFT appear to have embraced it as if it were another instrument. Parts of "Stripper" sound like a series of the grimiest early nineties techno records being fed through a broken tape machine which is in the process of being stomped on by an enraged engineer.

Amidst the melee, the single (and final track here) "Mr Whippy (Take More Drugs)" seems like the calm after the storm, a breath of fresh air, some oxygen finally being let into a musty room. And this despite the fact they're shouting "TAKE MORE... TAKE MORE... TAKE MORE DRUGS!" at regular intervals.

Apparently the band signed off the sleeve art for this record believing it to be a 'rough sketch', then felt enormously dismayed when it became the final product. And on such a ludicrous Spinal Tap note, their career appears to have ended, although not before they released one white label under the name of "FIAFT" in a (failed) attempt to break the club market. If anyone has a copy of this particular slab of vinyl, please do get in touch.

Tracklisting:

1. Bond

2. Cajun (Pure Sex)

3. Rum

4. Cool

5. Stripper

6. Burroughs (Death Sucker)

7. Glory

8. Bloater

9. Onions

10. King

11. Dave

12. Mr. Whippy (Take More Drugs)

(This album is shortly to be remastered and reissued, and the band have requested that any downloads should be removed from this site.)

Foreheads in a Fishtank - Buttocks

Label: Stuf
Year of Release: 1992

When I uploaded Foreheads in a Fishtank's absurd and largely overlooked single "I Want to Masturbate at Castle Donnington", I really wasn't quite expecting the flurry of interest which emerged. You can read the original entry plus the subsequent comments here. One of the great things about keeping this blog is how unexpected some of the fanaticism for certain bands is. You can upload some really obscure cult sixties single which is much loved in clubs everywhere and get one nod of thanks, and then you upload a noisy, dischordant, awkward and nasty bunch of mothers like FIAFT who were famed during their careers for playing to two men and a dog in just about every provincial town, and suddenly its like a love-in. I'm really glad that some of these bands managed to gain some sort of cult status and that people have affectionate memories of them, but where were we all when they really needed us, eh?

In a sense, I perhaps shouldn't have been surprised by the response. The band cracked John Peel's Festive Fifty, always a sign of an act with a healthy following of people with a keen ear for the unique and beserk moments in music. On top of that, they signed to Some Bizarre not long after this self-issued album, and went on to receive mixed reviews for the follow up "Yeah Baby Wow", which nonetheless attracted some Radio One evening play.

I've just finished freshly listening to this (their debut album) whilst converting it to MP3 for the first time in at least ten years, and one thing that leaps out about it is the motorway pile-up of ideas in each track. Basslines wobble like the bingo wings of old ladies, the drums appear to be looping for a rival Manchester band at times, whilst guitars distort, clatter and clutter up the mix and the vocalist screeches slogans like a stuck and wounded parrot. "She blows smoke from her nose and says IT CURES KIPPERS DOESN'T IT?!" he seethes at one point, bafflingly and seemingly apropos of nothing. On top of all this, samples creep in relatively unobtrusively and in a way that doesn't once smack of gimmickry which, for an early nineties indie band, was a fairly serious achievement. Lest we forget, the likes of Pop Will Eat Itself frequently used samplers in the aggravating manner over-excited toddlers might press the audio buttons on interactive museum exhibits.

Nonetheless, the album isn't without flaws. The way each track seems to end suddenly and without any obvious conclusion gets irritating over a whole listen, as if their collective imaginations on this debut didn't quite extend to outros. Also, whilst the sheer aural assault has its definite charms, like four musicians from entirely different genres trying to cover Captain Beefheart out-takes, across 45 minutes its relentless noise and awkwardness starts to jangle on the nerves, particularly when the mid-LP sag of "Brains" and "Hospital" arrives. Those who are prepared to listen all the way through will discover a delight in the form of "Luxurious", though, the nine-and-a-half minute end epic which almost sounds as sorrowful as it is downright sadistic and aggressive. It gradually segues into a morose ambient outro (so they could write them sometimes, then) with distorted samples burbling away underneath, which is simultaneously depressing and tranquil in a way I can't begin to articulate. Its too cheap sounding for me to make a case for it pre-empting Boards of Canada, who would doubtless laugh at its roughness and simplicity, but the mood created is disquieting in a very similar way.

"Buttocks" hasn't particularly aged much, but then that's possibly because there aren't that many equivalent acts out there to compare FIAFT to in the first place. The fascination with sampling and oddly funky rhythms does datestamp this effort slightly, but whilst the likes of Jesus Jones and EMF were attempting something life-affirming and youthful with wild samples and beserko guitar riffs around this time, FIAFT were like their parallel universe comedown cousins. Whilst the former parties were youthful and pretty, FIAFT were like the pictures in their attics, with peculiar burns and bruises on their bodies, painful sexual diseases, a singer in trauma about the foulness of the decadence, and a drum machine which refused to consider anything too frantic. The sexual demands in "Luxurious" sound like men on their last legs in a desert begging for water, rather than making it sound in any way like a desirable state of affairs.

I'm not massively surprised that the majority of the British public gave them the elbow, but whilst its tempting to think of the band as a joke, ridiculous song titles and all, I'd be more inclined to regard them as overlooked artrockers with an unhealthy interest in the crude, the cheap and the revolting. This album isn't for everyone, then, but it should definitely be given a bit of time by anyone with a pair of patient ears.

Tracklisting:
1. British Telecom Suck
2. I Want to Masturbate at Castle Donnington
3. She Loves You Yeah
4. Happy Shopper
5. Sex and Drugs and
6. Trantula La
7. Brains
8. Hospital
9. Sylvester's Mother
10. Luxurious

(This album is shortly to be remastered and reissued, and the band have requested that any downloads to it should be removed from this site.)

Foreheads in a Fishtank - I Want to Masturbate at Castle Donnington

Label: Stuf Records
Year of Release: 1991

I was, and remain, completely unaware of what it was that actually drove Southend band Foreheads in a Fishtank through the early nineties. Despite managing to get themselves signed to Some Bizarre shortly after this single was issued, there can be fewer bands in the UK who were greeted with more confusion or bewilderment at the time.

Formed in the late eighties as a slightly rockist band (who one local man insists sounded rather like early Genesis) they gradually turned their attention to skewed, wobbly bass riffs, industrial rhythms, and perverse sloganeering. "I Want To Masturbate at Castle Donnington" is probably one of the better examples of their work, combining looped eastern wailing with threatening vocals, which are then frequently punctuated by "Psycho" referencing instrumental effects. It's actually not at all funny, despite the title, and sounds more like the work of obsessive stalkers who would give Barry George a run for his money. If somebody followed you down the street playing this on a ghetto blaster whilst singing "Give me pleasure" along with it, you'd run as hard as you could.

The B-side "Happy Shopper" was the A-side of their previous single, which was withdrawn after the cut-price food chain objected to its content. A prolonged, jerky rant against domestic bliss, the singer Jeff regularly screams "Who bought these tea bags?" in fury, whilst the verses are punctuated with the line "She grabs a plastic fish fork and she buggers me". There's a certain Stump-iness to the rhythm section on this track, but both sides remind me much, much more of Australian pranksters TISM. FIAFT could easily have been their Home Counties brothers.

Their debut album "Buttocks" was a very samey affair, but not unworthy - John Peel loved it, and offered them two sessions, and it certainly had its fans elsewhere too (if enough people respond positively to this post, I may even upload it). For the most part, though, nobody knew quite how to deal with the band. They were mentioned in the same breath as The Swell Maps and Stump in reviews, but their crudeness combined with art-school song structures alienated the frat-boy audience just as much as it did the intelligent fringe crowd. Fans of both bands were not known for their love of vulgarity.

It's probably also worth mentioning as a footnote that the band had some peculiar and unorthodox ways of getting press attention without hiring a Press Officer or even being signed to a label. They once got into Kings Reach Towers and plastered their posters all over the walls of the NME's toilets - one review the magazine subsequently published largely consisted of a request asking them to come back and clean up. They also sent out packets of lard to music critics (which melted all over their records, causing a lot of anger and resentment), and on one occasion publicised a bunch of gigs in the NME's gig guide in places that didn't even exist (which were published completely unchecked). It may have got them press, but one has to wonder how much long-term ill feeling it all generated. One thing's for sure, though, they livened up Southend at a point in time where there really wasn't a hell of a lot going on there... I certainly enjoyed having my own set of renegades-about-town for a while.

(FIAFT's material is shortly to be remastered and reissued, and the band have requested that any downloads should be removed from this site.)