A concrete jungle soundtrack so soaked in urban ennui you can almost taste the condensation on the icy windows in the warehouses & bedrooms these agents of the city's outer edges were peering out from
Monday 29/04/2024 8.44am + 7.20pm drifting forward & backward slowly through Elephant & Castle on route to work // Nightlands - A Final Image Nocturnal Compilation
A concrete jungle soundtrack so soaked in urban ennui you can almost taste the condensation on the icy windows in the warehouses & bedrooms these agents of the city's outer edges were peering out from. Like all the records I love, I can't quite remember when I first discovered Nightlands - A Final Image Nocturnal Compilation, I am pretty certain it would have entered my mind via the incredible Forced Nostalgia reissue label's first six releases I was following via Boomkat in that distant golden age of electronic music that was 2012, the paths that incredible label took me down led to discovering things like Die or D.I.Y.?, Mutant Sounds and many other probably long gone post-punk 'rarities' blogs (while googling the artists I loved and the ones I needed to know more about and hear the racket of) in search of more preserved in private press 7"/low-fi mp3 ripped post-punk wax, whichever one was the one where I found this one is one that is one lost two the mists of time (and old laptops long ran out of charge) but definitely whichever blog or however this record first found me I am absolutely certain that the title and the cover would have proved as utterly captivating and as irresistible way back then as it does on this morning when I am listening once again sat on the train to work typing and wishing it was later in the day.
Nightlands is a monochrome orange street-light glow guided drift through the later hours outer edges of the late 1980s industrial undergrowth, one that seems to go on forever just like the endless motorway that lays ahead on its sleeve, driving all the never fading weight and excitement that listening back to it now some 13 odd years since I first traversed its darkening roads and gloomy highways as a post-punk/techno hungry 20/21/22 or so year old, still manages to divert my train to work down many new and unknown dark night sky drenched tracks. Saying/typing that, in all the time that has passed since I first listened/travelled it's darkening roads, I've never really checked to see which tracks are by which artists or who even half of them are/were (I do recall when first entering the Nightlands I only really knew of Biting Tongues and Muslimgauze as growing up in Manchester I was immersed in the scraps of information I could find with limited resource to research or really that deep a knowledge about the underground post-punk history of the city) as such the lineup was all names pretty much unknown to me at the time, and the prospect of hours spent on the aforementioned underground-sound internet mp3 blogs combing for information when there were so many new thrilling industrial/electronic/post-punk-inspired records, both old and rediscovered and skilfully compiled mixes being churned out weekly, the time to research just to dispel the secrets hidden inside Nightlands didn't seem worth the afternoons and excitement it would cost.
As such this compilation has always drifted through my head as a sort of nonstop piece of audio, a dreamlike mixtape more than a compilation, a seemingly endless extract of ambience from the long gone 2010s/1987 landscape of hidden (1987) and rediscovered (2010) industrial and post-punk decadence and time-slipping decline. Reflecting back now through the prism of 2024 when everything you'd ever want to listen to is available every and anywhere as long as you have a WiFi connection and YouTube along with many years now of any and everything you'd ever want to score but never imaged but always forever hoped would be reissued (Coil, The Other People Place, even Zoviet:France!) Nightlands still holds an air of secrecy that can capture the imagination and transport myself and possibly if you don't know it yet you the instant I/you/we gaze up at the darkening sky that clouds the album covers photograph on an unconventional stretch of dreary motorway, it's an unknown section of an unknown city that carries down it all the endless emptiness of the motorway Robert drifts along from London to Bristol in Chris Petit's astonishing late 1970s epic post-punk road movie masterpiece Radio On (if you've not seen it and are reading this and enjoying/enduring it I urge you to stop and go and watch Radio On as a matter of utmost urgency!) The romantic post-punks may dream of the Nightlands motorway as an autobahn, but for those who grew up in the pre-gentrification desolate wastelands of the North West (sleeve notes reveal the photography, concept & design originated in Leeds) will recognise these as the long, sharp scratches that carve out the outer edges of most North West inner city's, these are the city edge threads that bound myself and many others tight within the cold concrete radius of the metropolis I grew up trapped within. Back when I very first discovered this record I used to listen to a random industrial musick blog download of crackly vinyl ripped mp3s of Nightlands throughout the winter months while working for the Finders Keepers reissue label in Lower Ormond Street just off the road from the old BBC building on Oxford Road in Manchester city centre, our own spiral scratch of motorway the Mancunian Way was forever set in the stonecircle that ran alongside the Lower Ormond Street converted mill building record label office and artist studio windows, as such whenever I looked up from my desk/laptop in those dark cold months the Nightlands soundtrack and my view became an extension of the albums deeply atmospheric front and back sleeve photography. For a long while I used to dream the Nightlands compilation as the road leading towards Robert Rental & Thomas Leer's The Bridge (due to the artwork more than the audio) the pair of these records with their atmospheric yet enigmatic album titles, startling sleeve photography and artists that I knew little to nothing about were true transmissions from another grey world, sort of like finding the most exciting looking otherworldly science fiction paperbacks with the greatest/maddest covers that had been lost and found in the back of dusty second hand book and charity shops, these records (Nightlands more than most) seemed to be places that held a mirror up to the edgy excitement night landscape of the mid 2000s Manchester that I was charging around in at the time (forever dodging the nocturnal dangers of council officials, other flyer and poster crews and the night after night standard violent late night lunatics looking to kick peoples heads in, often till early hours of the morning a few nights a week with a rucksack full of posters and flyers for clubs and promoters I worked for), Nightlands brought into our orbit the distant North East of Manchester landscape that was Leeds, a place over the horizons foggy hills and very much at that time a place that seemed so far away it would never be reachable, while The Bridge (I wrongly assumed) was somewhere up North in Scotland (only in recent years did I discover via an excellent Horse Hospital exhibition that The Bridge on the cover was in fact the Albert Bridge that's West when heading North, East when heading South of Battersea when I pass it once or twice a week on travels to and from work or back from late nights swanning around town having all sorts of fun!). Much like the early-era Blackest Ever Black mixes from this time and the much much later/more recent era's 80s Underground Cassette Culture 2LPs from Contort Yourself and the present day independent powerhouse Industrial Coast's curated and always brilliant offerings of new exciting underground artists from across different times/worlds/scenes, these compilations are ripe with discoveries that move in the same realms as Nightlands, curated for long form/late night listening and after hours artist discovery (artists like the Contort Yourself vol 1 comps East End Butchers and Nocturnal Emissions which bridges the gap to that North West noise drenched Evil Roger archival tape from Industrial Coast and it's killer Nocturnal Emissions and Salford Electronics versions especially!). Like these labels compilations, Nightlands offers a raft to sail through the murky waters of the post-punk grimescapes, each artist a name you possibly didn't know but were undoubtedly destined to cross paths with again - Bourbonese Qualk turned up on my radar and record player a fear years ago via an excellent Mannequin Records compilation, while a few Manc pals, some still around and some since past away, would tell of interactions in the 90s with Muslimgauze. Human Flesh would return to my listening habits via a truly excellent and now seemingly deleted from anywhere where it was available first ever Blackest Ever Black NTS show (open deck session sometime in 2012, if anyone has this recording as an mp3, the one with the Flaming Tunes demos, Tropic Of Cancer, Bronze Age, Rufige Kru x Source Direct, Marc & The Mambas, Indifferent Dance Centre, Cleaners From Venus, Felt etc etc please please please! send it to me!!) while the great spirit of Blackest Ever Black would really spark my deep dive into the dark water of Nightlands & Final Image (the label that released Nightlands) key group O Yuki Conjugate via a brilliant event in North London's New River Studios during the Low Company years.
Drifting backwards (fittingly as its night time and I am now sitting backwards on a slow train home from work) I imagine this compilation found me via the ley line connections of the forever exemplary Forced Nostalgia record label series of Final Image (for reference Final Image is the label that compiled/released Nightlands) and related reissues, from the haunted theatre soundtracks of John Avery (what could be more post-punk Nightlands than a cold (always has to be winter let's be honest!) and empty small town hall on a mid-80s Sheffield night, amateur experimental theatre and icy piano notes dripping from the ceiling like icicles) to The Decoration Of The Duma Continues by Pump (the Pump track Falling From Grace is the second greatest record ever made after Tropic Of Cancer's The Dull Age, go and if it's up find it on Bandcamp and and if you can buy it and message the artist/label whoever it's listed from to say how much of a brilliant piece of music it truly is!) while the not related but equally life affirming recordings from Vazz & La Bambola Del Dr Caligari rediscovered by Forced Nostalgia while not Nightlands artists did offer similar and further nocturnal missions and excited and supplied me with DJ'able tracks that joined the dots between the Friday Night Finders Keepers B-Music gigs I used to play with all round wonderful friend and endlessly inspiring Folklore Tapes artists/visionary David Orphan, while also connecting those Finders Keepers reissue worlds of discovery and mystery and the new districts that were spiraling out of and into the Lower Ormond Street office, from Demdike Stare, Paper Dollhouse, Anworth Kirk, David Orphan, Justin Velor, Magpahi & N.Racker's Supernatural Lancashire & the North West Nightlands compilation electronics that still to this day (and even in my current home hundreds of miles away in the South West) many nights later still give me a proper buzz of excitement and adventure under the soon to swallow us all darkening sky. The track titles of Nightlands only added to the allure and mystery that cloaked the record sleeve 'The Moors', 'Another Journey', 'Zone' all seemed to be telling segments of a journey and like the very best albums/mixtapes/compilations the record really does take you on a true journey into the unknown.
Inside the Nightlands you can find encounters with those operating on the outer edges, traversing the labyrinths of the endless unknown out there, after dark. From Martin Hannett turning his microphone away from the Strawberry Studio lift and pointing it out towards the wasteland of Offerton during the 2am deadening silence of the post studio time recording Joy Division's Insight, to John Avery hidden away in the coldness of the Park Hill flats in mid 1980s Sheffield post watching a Cabs gig and sitting alone and inspired quietly drifting through the empty hours with only his icy piano tones for company, there's Robert Rental drifting across the Albert Bridge in the middle of the night heading home head a buzz of ideas from recording with Thomas Leer, while Bourbonese Qualk are a short way away downriver haunting the streets around Big Ben. From Paper Dollhouse's after hours East London where the sky looks different to the West where Robert and Ingrid sat in silence with the Radio On, gazing out through a window in the Grosvenor Hotel, looking up at that same sky under which Pump are reciting after hours poetry and slow drift drones while snow falls on the valleys and plains and smoke rises from K.S. Eden's distant fires, giving an orange street light glow to the darkening Edgeley evening where hidden away in one of many terrace housed lined streets along The Caretaker quietly builds his stairway to the stars. Drifting across to the other side of the motorway, Muslimgauze sits hidden away in his North Manchester bedroom up late endlessly building rhythms that are not a million miles away in sound or geography from Biting Tongues who like many others inside former yacht warehouses in the city centre were dubbing together the transmissions of a post-industrial city's nighttime soundtrack, the sounds of a Factory that was on the urban edge of being converted into the Newbuild beat of acid house, themselves like others hidden in one of the city centres many empty factory's (and one very particular former yacht warehouse!). All of these and more hide away within the roads and transmissions that emerge while the sky darkens and we journey onwards within an endless river of cars silently drifting outward from the Nightlands cover’s stretch of road photograph, up and along the Mancunian Way past Lower Ormond Street, over The Bridge and out towards 1978 Leeds, arriving at the endless stretch of motorway ahead that begins it's journeys end on the Final Image, the photograph on the back of the Nightlands record sleeve.