Code: Foetus 3

Gygno

Holly created guitar and bass. Bass was played by Doomage on this, Holly guitar. The rinkity-dinkity synth and plain distorted organ solo were added by Strangely with words and the original singing from Haircut. But we got fed up with his singing so Strangely did it, better. Certainly on this one. Gary invented the fantastic drums instantly. It’s a very precise piece with thrashing guitars mixed well back from the starting noise and stuff. Strangely uses the proximity effect on the microphone and stressed sibilance on the tape-echoed vocal. Doomage set the bass guitar sound up brilliantly and the drums come through nicely, especially the toms.

Urbane Encounter

Doomage riff inspired. Strangely orchestrated.
Nightmare in Eldon Square Shopping Centre. Played at virtually every gig. Took 3 years to record properly…Laziness I guess.

Wee Jimmy (Part II)

Strangely made. Re-jigged for daftness.
EFS kind of piece. Fairgrounds and Tom & Jerry are in this as well as classical diminished descents. Jim from Derrim let us down with his tape deck. So he got a daft tune named after him.

Worms

Originally created as a jam Doomage guitar jam voiced over round his mum’s place by Strangely who didn’t have any instruments or gear at the time. Developed and recorded at the Pits using special one-hit super-stereo echo on the drum toms as an experiment. I can smell the worms coming, Hah!

The Katrina Syndrome

Friends

Created by Strangely with extra clangy Crawling Chaos additions. Originally derived as a cross between “”Baby You’re so Repulsive” by “Crime” and “Andy Warhol” by David Bowie. Samples to compare are here.

Jhonn’s Angel

Doomage invention.
The vocals can be approached in many ways. This is one way.

The Vulva Boatman

Fraüline Le Moîne

D.S.S.

Skaill

Neat jam played twice, one at 2x speed. Stopwatch timed to finish concurrently. PLAY LOUD.

From an atmospheric and powerful jam between Doomage and Strangely.
It was so good that the only addition needed was itself speeded up two times. It was copied onto another tape and then the fast one started at the correct time to finish concurrently with the slow (normal) one using a stopwatch. EQ and volumes were adjusted to suit the feel and pace. The piece sounded sea-like and Orkadian or Skerry-ish tied to the sound of ages. We pulled the right-sounding title from an atlas of the Orkneys, which is here. It’s quite close to Skara Brae.

I’ve turned the bass up even more here. It’s almost impossible to get it to sound like the PA in the room otherwise.

Code: FOETUS 0001

What’s Your Noise

Fuel For The Blonde Ethiopian

Taste Of Honey

A fairly straight rendition of a classic. Loads of 7th’s.

Mummy’s Tummy

Doomage creation with Mackie vocals. I don’t think we ever did it live.
Fast flanged vocals, fuzz bass, large depth VCA’d keyboards. Pretty daft. More a vehicle for Mackie to relieve himself of some bizarre fantasy.

Valium B

School hymn reworked - why not?

Paul sung. The rest is normal Crawling Chaos fiddling. We did have plans to do a few more as a package to upset the “Songs of Praise” mob.

Ashen

Ashen fay-ace!

Basic structure was a Doomage invention, worked up by the other band members.. Single note keyboards on top with bass & drums. Unusual musical phrasing. Haircut words. The words in Ashen are based on Haircut and Holly’s observation of the bartender in a pub in Backworth called “The Deuchars“. The barman had really greasy, lank straight hair that clacked when he bent over to collect empty glasses. The Deuchars pops up in a few places. We never did get the Dyke Neuk fitted in anywhere. Anyway, it’s too posh now.

Ashen was in the set for quite a few years.

Tom’s Bum (There’s)

Stinging Gnats

Doomage inspired. The essence was to have each instrument do a closely related, simple and repeating phrase, each on a different time signature but in the same key. Every so often the music is in phase and true harmony. This is broken up with a standard block chord middle eight prompted by Gazza on drums so each “verse” is of indeterminate length, done on the nod.

This was in the set for years.

Heavy Lovin’

E.F.S. -which nobody can deny, which nobody can deny.

Heavy metal piss-take. Includes all the usual crap like riffs, solos, namings. A key part of the sound was Strangely’s use of a long hallway at “The Pits” with a cheap guitar amp at one end and a mike at the other. This was the Echo Chamber. Strangely gave it a go after reading how studios did echo in the old days.

The live feed was fed through the amp and re-injected into the mix from the mike. Then this was continuously varied to get a live feel of the audience moving around and the PA mixer guy constantly battling against feedback. It is exactly what gigs sounded like at the “Mayfair”, Newcastle in the 70’s. They’re still doing it now in the pubs round here. Anth played on this and thought it was real.

The Mongolian Steak Bar

Strangely created. Comes from the verse intro of the Rod Stewart song, “If You Think I’m Sexy” mated to a few key Rachmaninov key changes. Fizz guitar works but Holly’s bass doesn’t. I just don’t think it should be a bass guitar, that’s all. Will redo bass part with a breathy bass saxophone and low bass keyboard rumbles.

When this tune was named, the name seemed pretty wacky. Since then there has been a Mongolian Restaurant down on the quayside in Newcastle for some years. However, at the time of recording, you went down “The Side” to the Quayside at night in pairs at least and there were only the “Crown Posada” and my auntie’s pub, the “Newcastle Arms” right under the Tyne Bridge. The back alleys were really dodgy. Now they are trendy housing developments. You should see it…

Voedoux

Joint creation of Doomage and Strangely. Each had virtually the same effects. Importantly, a VCA/VCF with separate input and output for the internal LFO VCO. Also, a VCA fuzz box so that an input voltage would modulate the degree and tonality of fuzz.Each persons VCO LFO output was connected to the other’s VCA/ VCA-fuzz input.
Then the VCO speeds were set to be close but not exact so that long period beat frequencies were initiated. The input sensitivities were turned right up to amplify internal noise. Then the outputs were sent through the mix with lots of cross-echo for each heavily panned source and a bit of extra bass to get a better thump noise…It is a helluva good rythmn. The plan was to do loads more like this. Percussion and screeches/shrieks were added on top to add a bit more atmosphere. The name is a pseudy rendition of Voodoo, pronounced the same.

Tell Me Why

East Of West Allotment

Suck

One More Peso

Crawling Chaos & Foetus Products Personnel, Helpers & Liggers, including those on Parallel Projects and Others Mentioned in the Text.

* Nothin’ - Nothin’

** TEK - Thee Earnest Kakas