Walking into work 4 hours late clutching a bottle of champagne
Active Agents & Houseboys, Wednesday night early finishes to the working week & Summer drifts the journey home //
Having still been deep in the depths of a treasure trove of mixtape MP3s I thought lost but since surfaced and sent my way by top pal Owen Kiernan who is the writer behind the next level In Strict Tempo Substack who has written a brilliant piece on this album on Friday that you must read, I've had the ley lines of Midlands industrial dawn drawn out in front of me on two records this week, though decades apart both records sound drenched in the same Black country canal water that runs through the veins of this most industrial city.
The tunes are of course the return/never really went away 2x12'' transmission from long-time hero’s of all things electronic (toasters, techno etc) Surgeon and Regis aka the British Murder Boys. The foreshadower who I won't ramble on about too much but wanted to mention as the connection was sparked in my mind this week when listening to one of the mixtapes and having a 'what the.... is this!!' moment (much the same as when first hearing BMB) is by the Welsh via Birmingham signed one hit wonder/miss The Janet & Johns who released one excellent single on the Midlands founded comically named label Vindaloo (run by Robert Lloyd of The Nightingales). The Janet & John's debut only single is in comparison to the spiced indie of the Vindaloo catalogue that reached the middle mass a cold foil tub of last night's take away left to keep cold outside a condensation streaked window when the fridge has broken (again much like the way British Murder Boys early 00's techno 12"s sounded like the darker ages of the 1970/80s/90s to the minimal, sleek sound millenium sound it was the absolute opposite soundtrack of). One single, never an album and as a fan a lifetime of endlessly going back to and over in hopes that more music or similar sounding records will somehow appear is a journey I'm about to take with The Janet & Johns. The parallels between the frostbite minimalist drum beats, raw yet cold to touch and covered in a thick slab of very dense, yet stern lesson learning vocals that somehow foreshadows yet predicts this live right now and very much made for the moment brand new, bobby-dazzler British Murder Boys album that follows already a lifetime journey of endlessly going back to and over in hopes that more music or similar sounding records will somehow appear, forever searching for something as hard hitting and exciting as this very best selektion of renegade downward soundwave stare 'n stab techno.
My buzz this week for this album stems from a long long fan-history of BMB that goes back to me and my sadly passed on best pal being stood in Piccadilly Records in Manchester as teenagers working out how we could afford to get into Sequence at The Attic (circa year can't remember) to see DMX Krew, Luke Vibert and possibly Bitstream? And the headliners who were unknown to us but were named as the British Murder Boys - Surgeon & Regis. I'm pretty sure we'd already seen Regis at Locked the regular monthly ecstatic night of ecstasy that was our local techno haunt (amazing night shout out to all who put it on and went to it) yet I do remember strongly us both wondering who BMB were as we'd never hear of them and our acid and IDM soaked minds couldn't get over why Luke Vibert or DMX Krew who we in our youthful arrogance knew the records of and as such were confused as to why our minimal knowledge base didn't justify these acts as headliners (little did we know electronic music hadn't started with our discovery of Aphex Twin, but had been going on for many decades before we'd joined the journey). Fast forward and sometime later we watched the electronic beats mini documentary on British Murder Boys and our minds were blown, strangely we didn't dive into the influences they talked about (that was much later/more now) but we were desperate to hear the sounds they were smashing together there and then in the immediate past, yet as all the tunes were on wax we were unable to hear them as we lived on an ever rotating and forever becoming lost pile of pirate DL CDRs, a selection of that we would always have in our parka pockets when on MCR nightlands adventures ready and waiting for the wherever we end up after party soundsystem. Fast forward in my mind but no idea if it was a few years and my next encounter with BMB was on the Scion remix 12" in Eastern Bloc in Manchester whenever it came out, incredibly hard as nails yet slinky smooth and with all the crunch and flavor of a crunchy bar deep fried in frosty jacks, and a properly great Sleeparchive remix on the flip movingin killer minimalist dub techno mode. On reflection, could this 12" be the pre-pre-Elephant Island x Tresor x Hard Wax beginning that matched these artists at some point and really kicked off the Sandwell District beginning?). A short while later I stumbled across a copy of the All The Saints... 12" in a basement techno section of a second hand record shop and it truly was a pivotal, life affirming moment as this 12"s would reshape my and my pals ideas of 'dance' music, moving us on from the acidic IDM of our Rephlex interests into darker waters with a hugely pressured intensity. Rushing home clutching it close thinking wow I've finally got a way to list to a proper British Murder Boys record (this was pre-proper internet so if it wasn't on a CD that had been ripped you were just never gonna hear it, hence why the mystique and lure of these Surgeon and Regis records were such highly valued prizes to search for in racks of acidic IDM, Wire magazine recommended dubstep, waterlogged dub techno and breakbeat mechanics) All the Saints Have Been Hung bled into our listening habits and ideas of how exciting, intense and properly mind blowing techno could be. This resulted in me and my BMB fanatic pal devising a club night where we'd ram hard as nails BMB, techstep jungle and coiled breakbeat dubstep out of a system and into the ears of anyone daft enough to turn up (the event never happened in the end, but we did end up going to a pals party to DJ and MC with a pure BMB live influence after having seem them somewhere, an instant lights off from a pal prepped over by the switch, me pushing the tunes into the red with Screw The Roses track with the dogs barking into as much British Murder Boys as we had plus Blawan, HATE Soundsystem, MPIA3 acid and my pal barking Surgeon and Regis track titles over the wax via a knackered and distorted to the max pair of headphones he used as a mic. The night ended with one of us falling down some stairs, and the other falling asleep with his head on a radiator (thankfully not on that hot!) and then meeting up the next day and watching live sets of our other West Midlands other hero Stewart Lee all day while sprawled across two sofas in his ma's gaff and more hung (over) than the saints that carried the record tite that led to all this madness.
I found and felt and still do feel that British murder Boys records really carry the intensive future shock rush of the jungle and dubstep and techno that blew my mind as a teenager and then again when discovering Coil in my early 20s (another pivotal moment that altered my very existence and understanding of the world) gave me, new worlds of excitement influence and endless adventure ahead that just doesn't sound like anything you've ever come across. Yet also carried a side to it that endlessly intrigued us still to this day it's hard to describe but compared to everything else around it just feels/felt different. Having closely followed both artists journeys from those hazy adolescence daze through the Blackest Ever Black via Sandwell District era's, from working as a buyer maxing my budgets buying stock from Veto and ReadyMade, to the Concrete Fence and the dub(step)-techno curve of Trade, CUB & O/V/R and a million countless endless never ending nights out in the nightlands wastelands of under the arches Oxford Street MCR to Canning Town, Russell Square LDN and Berlin (I am 90% sure I can hear myself shouting with proper excitement at one point on the live BMB CD from a few years back as we were there with pals at Atonal for my 30th) to dreaming of attending gigs gone past - that one with AFX, Mark Stewart + Maffia, Whitehouse whenever it was, I would of been waaaay to young and broke to ever of made it to London from the North West but how could it of not been next level!! - there's a lot to love with this new BMB LP, It unfolds with all the mystery and intrigue of a great spy thriller or Philip Martin’s lost in the mid 1970s Birmingham pulp TV show Gangsters if it's soundtrack was to be remade and cut to wax. The tracks grind to a halt from galloping lurches forward into crawling dubbed to death bounces that call to mind the legendary dub dynamics of fellow Birmingham legends Steel Pulse, pure panic mode strobes to dynamic gymnastic drum work. Over the years I've heard and played endless tunes from these two out and about, and when we used to DJ badly in bars and basement clubs for various low attended nights we would always drop Learn Your Lesson to liven things up when it got particularly flat (never worked to liven things up, but we loved it) to being stood next techno lunatic bro's literally getting starkers they are so off there head listening to the pulverising beats (once at FOLD some bloke completely starkers next to us mid set he was so off his head/buzzed on the BMB tunes) and darkest of all staggering towards a pal who was throwing up repeatedly in the corner of a dark and dingy, packed basement club while Execution Ground by Regs battered the speakers and the strobe blinded the myself and the departed.
Purist techno people will find much to like (yet undoubtedly some will sneer, Downwards has never really been a traditional techno label has it) while post-punk hungry past it yet forever searching out that niteklub techno/goth sound will be concerned for the absolute ravenous techno speaking to them nature of the tunes, yet isn't that what's always makes Downwards such a brilliant label? Always different, always the same as John Peel said about The Fall, while the Downwards Youth series way back when threw us curveballs of incredible darkside goth and stark Mute/Some Bizzare inspired death-drone alongside classic slabs and cuts from hard to find Female, Surgeon and Regis 12"s. Active Agents and House Boys cuts through the endless production line industrial of not quite getting what it's all about harder than harder Hard Wax techno (a lot of which I love the sound of when I check the clips regularly btw!) and spikes its punch with some never expected slower tracks ala the Rule By Law tape. What I'm trying to say is it's a sick techno album that goes above and beyond the Whitehouse via Basic Channel into built on sand crumbling building destruction of the early plates. When they returned (again anyone in the boomerang of electronic music who ever makes a record seems to be described as 'returning') they carry more feedback and dials up the fuzz box even harder than Vindaloo Records did in it's hay day, Regis on the mic spitting more fire into the still air than dragon down the Roman Road in 2002, cosmic and psychedelic, decedent and bananas, funny and forceful it's quite possibly the most complete vision of either artists work to date, Surgeon's wormhole modular experiments and interests in mind expanding electronics from dubstep as we should always remember not many if any techno DJs were playing Ital Tek or Rustie in sets alongside AFX, Scorn, Substance when Surgeon was, rough as sandpaper street-level techno, Trade occult industrial and all it's influences, from Force+Form, Scorn and Mego ambience to channelling vocals in a way that carries all the deranged youthal focus of a million one single hit/mss (The Janet & Johns!) brilliant post-punk groups and greasers that peppered Sandwell District mixes and photocopied 12" single inserts and carried into the mixtapes and the sardonic humour of Blackest Ever Black.
Yet for all of the above nonsensical non-edited nonsense, it's at its core what Surgeon & Regis have here is what they have always done best, made some properly killer techno trax that will have you buzzin' sat on the train on the way to work or in your living or bedroom, diving into our living room shelves after writing this and finishing with something I imagine was hugely poignant and deeply meaningful, I span through the the might as well be labelled 'SURGEON + REGIS' shelf in our living room and from Manbait to Force + Form, At The Refectory, Ugandan Methods, Sandra Electronics, Body Request, Midnight Club Tracks, Crash Recoil, Screw The Roses, Reality Or Nothing, Six Six Seconds, Whose Bad Hands Are These, Blood Witness it's clear that with Active Agents & Houseboys everything I've ever loved from these two is all here in this record and still has the power to stun, shock, smash up my and probably your mind and that for me is the key here, it's a killer techno record with vocals thats been made in times when killer techno is less easy than ever to access outside of online clips, YouTube and Soho spins to see dropped off via transit vans full of low quality wax, cut and chopped out every weekend, and as such our active agents here have as they have always done best continue to subvert the genre they are closest aligned to, Active Agents and House Boys, is as Regis said...killer! killer techno tunes for living room house crews, Iggy Pop and anyone into this stuff who doesn't go out to clubs anymore, and can you blame them? With records this good on the turntable it's increasingly tempting to do the same, after all endless nights out listening techno in 2024 isn't going to bring you something as good as this, but then this isn't really club music is it, it's a serving of finest West Midlands engineered gigantic slabs of hypnotic sound, and all the better for it as let's be honest and if you are reading this and thinking wow a British Murder Boys techno LP in 2024 maybe nightclubbing is getting... good again? all I'd say is if you are like me, stay inside, turn this up to 11 and batter your speakers, as 21 years into this is by far the superior option, best stay in and listen to BMB and we will all have a real good time together as I'm by now sure you like me, like them wouldn't want to be a member of any club that would have us.
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