The Most Important Absurdist Space Rock Album Released This Year
Why the new British Murder Boys album is the most essential release of 2024 so far.
A busy week at In Strict Tempo Towers this week - work is gearing up for the summer, even if the weather isn’t.
But this week sees something I’m really excited about - namely the first proper album from British Murder Boys in over two decades of their existence. So I’m going to write a bit about that, and why it’s the most important album released this year.
Firstly some brief background - British Murder Boys first appeared as the name of a joint Surgeon & Regis EP back in 2001. This featured two tracks (one from each of them), and gave us a bit of an insight as to where their heads were at at the time. It came out on Regis’ Downwards label.
Shortly after the duo combined for the BMB project proper - Learn Your Lesson was released on Surgeon’s Counterbalance in 2004, although they’d already been playing under the name for a few years. It was around this time that I first saw them play live, I can’t remember exactly where, but it was an incendiary experience that was 100 times more intense than anything I’d seen in a nightclub before.
Four more 12”s followed, split between Downwards and Counterbalance, each one utterly essential and unlike anything anyone in techno was doing at the time. Learn Your Lesson could have been a Chris Morris track in another life, and probably heavily influenced the music ‘Jones’ creates in Nathan Barley. Rule By Law is the sound of authority, never has a song title been more apt. A similar trick, is played on Don’t Give Way To Fear - the two untitled tacks confront you and take you to the edge of where you feel comfortable. Father Loves Us is completely sinister, the sound of being electrocuted in a giant MRI scanner if it was anything. You get the picture here, sonically it borrowed as much from Coil as it did from Detroit.
Two years later that run of 12”s was over, although the duo continued to play live for a few more years after that. They quietly disbanded, apparently in an argument over whether Surgeon was subliminally adding flute sounds to the records - which still hasn’t been proven. Fittingly the last release featured a track called Hate Is Such A Strong Word which featured a sample of cult leader Jim Jones ranting.
A brief resurgence came between 2012/15 when a new 12” landed on Liberation Technologies, followed by a concert in Tokyo, recorded onto 12”. This was followed by a retrospective CD/DVD box set collecting those earlier singles and the aforementioned Tokyo concert on DVD. The liner notes for this box were written by none other than Kiran Sande of Blackest Ever Black.
If there was ever an act that *should* have released on Blackest it was probably BMB. Musically, they’d have fitted right in, and the aesthetic worked with that of BEB too. There was also that end-of-the-pier spirit about the whole project that would have suited Blackest too. Surgeon described them as “Britain’s best-loved absurdist space rock duo”, and despite the aggression and seriousness of their live output there was an slight camp-ness to their efforts. It was serious business, but it could laugh about the whole thing too.
The last we heard from the boys was in 2019, a 30 minute cassette of new material that featured a cover of Lou Reed’s Real Good Time Together (foreshadowing Regis & Anni Hogan’s peerless cover of Temporary Thing a year later) and a fifty minute live CD titled Fire In The Still Air. Since then Surgeon has continued his improvisations with the modular synth set-up and Regis has put out a number of releases via Downwards, slowly making it the one of the most essential electronic labels in the UK.
So now they’re back - Active Agents & House Boys their new album. Can something be a debut album almost quarter-century into an acts existence? Maybe more artists should wait 20+ years before putting out an album - it would save us from a load of shite.
Nine tracks. Each as relentless as the last. It can be hard to write about techno without just describing the sounds it makes, but there’s something else here - that sinister undercurrent running through the whole project, as if their synthesisers and drum machines have become possessed by some malevolent spirit. The highlight for me is Killer I Said and It’s In The Heart. This Heat’s studios were dubbed Cold Storage - this sounds like it was recorded in a full commercial refrigerator, animal carcasses swinging by the chains. I could write more on this, but I’ll let the music do the talking. Even if you’re not that into techno, give it a listen - that’s all I can say.
It’s unusual for me to dedicate the main section of the newsletter to an album review (this will be the first time I’ve done so) but it’s not often Britains best-loved absurdist space rock duo deliver a new album.
All The Saints Have Been Hung
Floating Points - Del Oro [Ninja Tune]
In another world Floating Points would be as big as Fred Again… He’s probably the biggest breakout from that 00’s UK electronic scene and a pretty big draw at festivals and such, but mainstream chart success has eluded him so far. This is pretty nice, floaty dance track. He’s definitely made better tunes in the past, but this is probably only a catchy vocal sample away from going Top 40. There would have been a time I’d have considered a new Floating Points track as utterly essential, but the release of these two over the past few weeks have totally passed me by.
Normil Hawaiians - Empires Into Sands [Upset The Rhythm]
If you thought BMB’s 5 year break between records was long, spare a thought for fans of Normil Hawaiians. This album is their first recorded material in 40 years. Formed in the ashes of punk in the late 70’s, they played around London putting out three albums of arty post-punk before disappearing into the New Age Travelling scene after some pretty nasty of police brutality. They return now, with this album of which opening track features vocals from displaced people in Eastern Europe and Syria sharing their experiences. As openers go, it’s a pretty moving intro. Second track Ghosts of Ballochry features what sounds like a religious chant crossed with a football song - after all, isn’t football a religion to many? The Scottish poet Rodney Relax provides the vocals on this, and it’s absolutely stunning - I’m reminded a little of the Edwin Morgan piece at the end of Idlewild’s The Remote Part.
Death Is Not The End - All Bad Boy and All Good Girl [Death Is Not The End]
This came out on tape a while back, but now gets a vinyl release. In the style of his Bristol Pirates and Pure Wicked Tune compilations this is a document of the street soul parties happening in Manchester between 88 & 96 - a far cry from the typical New Order/Roses/Mondays/Oasis narrative we typically think of when talking about Manchester music at this time. Shout out to Death Is Not The End for shining a light on this criminally overlooked, yet equally important (especially for the City’s minority population) scene. Not on digital yet, but I’ve put up a bit of the Pure Wicked Tune release so you get the idea. Boomkat will sort you out with the vinyl.
Richie Culver - Hostile Environments [Self-Released]
Artist Richie Culver’s move into music over the past year or so has been a joy to discover. These dark, ambient pieces with spoken words, the highlight of which is Slow Car - describing listening to Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car in a slow car. Culver says he’s busy making music at the moment and I’m looking forward to hearing a lot more from him and his Quiet Husband alias.
Falty DL - In The Wake of Wolves [CPU]
Falty DL goes all IDM on his latest album out via Sheffield’s CPU. No-one does this style of music better than CPU, who’ve been solidly putting out album after album of great IDM/Electro for 10 or so years now. There’s not many producers who can turn their hands to this stuff as successfully as Falty DL, I urge you to dig into his back catalogue if you’re looking for something interesting to listen to.
Charli XCX - brat [Atlantic]
Including this for no other reason than to say the biggest DJ gig I ever played was to a tent full of a thousand teenagers before a 15-year-old Charli XCX played at a festival in Essex. I think I played Standing In The Way of Control three times, and it’s probably the highlight of my ‘DJ career’ so far (sorry to anyone that’s ever asked me to DJ for them, but it’s not topping this). Before that my biggest gig was probably the time I put on a ‘going away’ party for my mate Alan and some other friends in the Royal George on Charing Cross Road. It was meant to be a private affair for 50 or so people, but by midnight there was a queue out the door and hundreds of people no one knew inside. I lost the £500 quid deposit I had to pay as the place got absolutely trashed, but it was a good night so that’s all that matters.
Anyway, thanks as always for reading and subscribing. If you enjoyed it please tell a friend! If you was at a wicked party at the Royal George in December 2005 that you weren’t invited to please PayPal me £50! Until next week.