Apart from 2 or 3 anthologies, I own all 100+ Fall releases. I generally prefer their more recent work, but this is an absolute gem - not just of the Fall, but of (barely) post punk. (AMG is almost right: the gigs were Dec. 11/12 80, but released in 1982, as Live in London on Chaos Tapes. "The Legendary Chaos Tape" was printed on the sleeve.) It's worth noting that 2004 re-release on Castle added 3 more tracks...but for many people, these 14 will be plenty. :-) Less than sparkling recording actually adds to the charm, but the blazing performance comes through loud and clear. If you like the samples, you'll LOVE this high-energy joint. Classic.
Massive Fall fan as I am, I'd somehow never heard At Acklham hall (aka the Legendary Chaos tapes). Considering it was taken from a cassette its reasonably sharp, but more than that, the performances are brilliant - a lineup of the band that was among their best - and great extemporised versions of songs like Spectre v. Rector - makes this up their with 27 Points, Totales Turns and one or two bootlegs as a great Fall live album.
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five… more »
Maybe it's a coincidence that three fabulous and endlessly eclectic DJ mix-CDs - John Peel's FabricLive 07, 2 Many DJ's As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2, and DJ /rupture's Minesweeper Suite - all came out in 2002. But it sure didn't feel that way at the time. Of course, eclectic DJ mixes were nothing new; they'd been a standard from at least 1995, when Coldcut released 70 Minutes of Madness. But 2002 was a… more »
Roughly 75 people have been members of the Fall over the last three decades or so, but only one of them has been in every lineup: inimitable vocalist/lyricist/ranter Mark E. Smith, whose singular and monomaniacal vision drives the band. Smith's a bristling, hyperliterate, deeply eccentric presence, with a thick Manchester accent and a permanent scowl directed at a world that can't keep up with him; he's also got an ear for a riff like nobody's… more »
Imagine this scenario. You're in a club somewhere in Germany, watching the crudest, funniest garage-rock band you've ever seen. They're wearing monastic robes and nooses around their necks; they've shaved their heads into tonsures. One of them is playing a banjo, with which the PA system is ill-equipped to deal. The drummer's technique is pleasingly caveman-like. The guitar player is blitzing the crowd with feedback. The singer is gibbering like a lunatic, screaming "DO YOU… more »
A resurrection of a cassette-only live release on the Chaos label back in 1980, this artifact features the Fall in an Acklam Hall, London, gig. The D.I.Y. aesthetic of the Fall has somehow spawned many a release mastered from old vinyl and cassette (bad quality just part of the package, you see) and this is no exception — the opening minutes are very dodgy indeed, full of tape hiss and dropouts. The performance is vintage Fall, with Mark E. Smith’s frequent trips into a high-pitched scream to emphasize a point (“An Older Lover,” “Container Drivers,” and “Pay Your Rates”) and finishing with two of their scariest songs, “Spectre Versus Rector” and “Impression of J. Temperance.” Call it past glories covered with a patina of analog distortion. – Ted Mills
