Main image: “The Fall of Numenor,” an allusion to Atlantis made by J.R.R. Tolkien well after HP Lovecraft did his stuff.


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Gas Chair Clown a.k.a. “The Gas Chair”

Official Website – "the best music this side of tomorrow" - said Margaret Thatcher's ghost to some other cunt's ghost

Last Updated on June 1, 2023

Gas Chair Clown Front - wrongly titled "The Gas Chair"

Gas Chair Clown Front

As mentioned elsewhere, this was released by Factory Records with their mistaken name of “The Gas Chair”.

Gas Chair Clown Rear - wrongly titled "The Gas Chair"

Gas Chair Clown Rear

The band thought they were very clever getting a title as an anagram of the band’s name.

There were several and the plan was for each to be used for a different LP release.

After the first fuck up, we didn’t bother.

Code: FACBN 6


Macabre Royale

      Macabre Royale
The Allegorical Representation of Death

Mainstream Mass Media: The Allegorical Representation of Death

Slowed down and re-effected reworking of the chords and guitar line of a Jeff & Rees creation called Newspapers, sans words.

(original lyrics on lyrics page, discussion here).

Listen to the (2023 reworked version of the) original beginner’s tape like so…

      Original Newspapers Demo

 

n.b. There are two bonus tracks associated with this recording; Painful Death & We All Die in the End (Macabre Git). Also see this emotional post. So the order of creation & change is Newspapers -> Macabre Royale -> We All Die in the End -> Painful Death

This is the 2023 rework.


Creamo Coyl

      Creamo Coyl

E.F.S. Union of “Out of the Blue” and a Nothin’ track.

Obviously a piss take. Started off with Strangely tooting on keyboards the chords to “Out of the Blue” by Roxy Music. Holly said he had one like it so we put the two together.  Afternoon TV full of VO5 and Pantene Pro with micro-vitamins adverts shows this tune to be a premonition.

2023 reworked version


Left Hand Path

      Left Hand Path
Blue pill or Red pill, or are both forgeries?

Blue pill or Red pill, or are both forgeries?

–almost an E.F.S. but what’s being forged?

reworked 2023


Guinness

      Guiness

Definitely an E.F.S.

 

Gary and Jeff’s vocals emanate from an interstellar bar not far from the Arsenal.   We should be getting royalties from Diageo and Nestle for this…. I bet the sales of Guinness and Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles have trebled. Probably.

reworked  2023


Arabesque

      Arabesque
Mizmar being played outside

Mizmar being played outside

Actually an E.F.S.

A Strangely creation. Tune is arpeggiated Adim and Ddim hence Arabian sounding, hence the name. Haircut made up a few words. The rest is a basic punk chord thing along with the bass guitar. Nowt fancy.

The tune was invented on Strangely’s mother’s dining room table while testing the R1 and R2 combination.

R1 & R2, the first and second bits of gear I made

R1 & R2. The mixer was R3.

R1 is the green organ, R2 is the black box of effects that I made (sp, in image)

While experimenting with fuzzed Adim, trying to get Aelonian and Dorian sounds, it ended up Arabic sounding… The original mix has the snare drum alone using the long hallway at The Pits as an echo chamber as mentioned elsewhere, with the other channels using our normal tape echo where appropriate.

After Sex Machine this is the second most listened to track by The Crawling Chaos across all formats.
Reworked 2023



Harry

      Harry
Melodica

Mouth keyboard thing !!!

Harry Secombe’s coming to tea. Holly creation. Woke up after a weird dream thinking that the now deceased portly comic and singer was arriving that day. For tea.
He invented this before he took drugs. It was a much loved and valued addition to the Crawling Chaos repertoire. We made a fortune doing this song again and again a charity collection in the streets of Morpeth. Strangely on vocals and mouth piano thing, Holly on guitar and a couple of others on bucket collection duty.

The entrance is now pitch shifted and it’s airier all round after noise reductions like the rest of the tracks, all FLAC format

Reworked 2023


Disierta Membra

      Disierta Membra

Essentially a jam in the Can style.  Paul on vox humana.  Rees on saxophone.  Overdubbed once …  It means nothing, really, but can be taken as an empty or deserted membrane of group, so nothing. The Crawling Chaos of nothing.

The guts of the track is very like some of our better live jams, very few of which were actually recorded with any decent fidelity unfortunately.  Those that saw and heard one remember them. Sometimes we were really crap, but folks still showed up the next time.  If you missed one like this studio recording, then you missed a real treat!!

This is reworked slightly, mostly noise reduction down to -110dB and presented here in the FLAC format.  Rendering time was 5mins even at 2x speed because of the careful noise reduction and airier feel.  The file size here is 63MB so a fast internet connection is required to play it properly without buffering. (sp)


Canadian Pacific

      Canadian Pacific
Canadian Pacific, record-breaking continent crosser

Canadian Pacific, record-breaking continent crosser

An obvious E.F.S.. This is as ethnic as it gets, Merika.  Aaah ma baabeez gorn and left me…
Doomage inspired creation with Strangely. Doomage & Strangely lyrics (for what they’re worth!) American gloomy country piss-take. Nice and short, fortunately.

For this reworking I’ve had to re-pitch 1.2 semitones downwards to get it to sound “right”, for want of a better word. Jeff’s voice comes into prominence at the proper pitch.  I kept the tempo the same as the original release. There was a fair bit of mains hum, the removal of which cleans up the whole sound because of overtone reduction.  The female voices are sisters Sally & Philippa and possibly Susan.  They were chatting about the recently released film The Life of Brian

Rework 2023


Breaking Down

      Breaking Down
Guitarist down and nearly out

Click me for full story

A Neat. Distinctive. E.F.S.

I’ve dropped the pitch again and along with the noise reduction, the male vocals are much clearer and separated, guitar boominess is reduced and it’s an airier feel to the gloom and doom. It’s at flat level with no effort at crescendo through level control. The most prominent vocals are Gary and baldy Chester which are pretty good at stress & feel though limited in poetic variety…..  The CPU effort at clean-up brought the FLAC rendering time almost to real-time. It’s a 27MB file. It’s worth it. (sp)

Rework 2023



Postscript

The 2023 reworking of this 1981 LP, first released on the Factory Benelux offshoot are now done.  If I get access to better software I may do them again.

 – Martin Rees

Copyright ©1976 , All Rights Reserved by The Crawling Chaos and Strangely Perfect

Occasional Tweets here @crawlingchaosuk

Main image: “The Fall of Numenor,” an allusion to Atlantis made by J.R.R. Tolkien well after HP Lovecraft did his stuff.


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