Homunculus Equinox

Last Updated on June 1, 2023

Code: FOETUS 0001

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What’s Your Noise

The track is based on a piece of 2x sped up tape, probably the drum track for a Danger in Paradise track, but maybe we just got Gary to bash out a simple rhythm for 4 mins, knowing that it’s be sped up.  Gary and another added Hi-hat to make it sound disjointed. Jeff’s guitars are there as effects and it’s him thumping away on the bass guitar. It’s Strangely adding the bits of saxophone from the corridor towards the last bounce-over along with more effects from Jeff.

We had so many noises that Paul’s vocals on a bounce-over gave the track its name because we all were adding so much stuff that we couldn’t keep up with who was doing what at one point….

This is a 2023 reworking.

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Fuel For The Blonde Ethiopian

A Holly creation from Nothin’, called (I Got) Loofahs originally.

The 442 was a red “United” bus that ran from Ashington to North Shields.

Re-recorded by Nothin’ in 1983 on the EP, Sinews Are A Girls Best Friend by The Blonde Etheopian (sic) on Foetus Products.

Watch out for the double tracked vocals doing early aaaaarghhhh!’s

Reworked in 2023 (sp)

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Taste Of Honey

A fairly straight rendition of the classic,  (loads of 7th’s!), sandwiched between two parts of a jam (Gary & Rees with Jeff on mixing) in which parts of it remind me of The Terminator which came out 3 years later. Full score here.

It’s a really nice fade in starting at 1:54 after the deathly creepy intro…

n.b. Brad Fiedel used a synthesiser, a midi drum machine and a violinist.

Our intro (and fade out) was created  on my (sp) home made keyboard and effects and a newfangled synth drum, hit with a stick.

Reworked 2023 for the FLAC format

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Mummy’s Tummy

Doomage creation with Mackie vocals. I don’t think we ever did it live.
Fast flanged vocals, fuzz bass using a fuzz box I’d (sp) just made from a 741 op-amp and 2 pnp diodes and stuck in a metal Golden Virginia Tobacco tin with a PP9 battery, large depth VCA’d keyboards.  The first thing I tested the fuzz box on was the bass guitar so that’s why it features in the track. It wasn’t used again as it had no flexibility.  It’s Eddie Fenn on drums and Jeff on the bass guitar.

Pretty daft. More a vehicle for Mackie & CJ to relieve themselves of some bizarre fantasy after reading Elsie Anokuru’s (Jeff’s GF at the time) graphic midwifery manuals. CJ did the words. I’ve had a rework and it’s in flac, 2023.

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Valium B

School hymn reworked – why not?
Paul sung. The rest is normal Crawling Chaos fiddling. This is John Bunyan’s (1684) and Ralph Vaughn Williams’s (1906) work- and now Crawling Chaos’ (1981)…   We did have plans to do a few more as a package to upset the “Songs of Praise” mob.

Reworked in 2023.

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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“ (which is now flats).

The barman had really greasy, lank straight hair that audibly clacked when he bent over to collect empty glasses.

Clack! Clack!

The Deuchars pops up in a few Crawling Chaos places. (Photo from https://www.monkchester.co.uk/backworth.htm)

We never did get the Dyke Neuk fitted in anywhere.

Ashen was in the set for quite a few years.

This is the rework from 2023.

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Tom’s Bum (There’s)

Great track from Holly. No vocals needed. There was a drop-out at around 28s in the original which I’ve (sp) fixed.  On the original cassette issue we set this track to run almost immediately in the next, Stinging Gnats, for best effect. Press the next track for the same feel  as the 1981 original.

2023 reworking.

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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.

2023 reworking. I find the bass guitar very boomy and have tried to reduce it. E string probs.

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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 whole point of doing it was to recreate the sound of walking into an auditorium as the mixer guy struggles with the balance – all seventies gigs were like this.

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. (A few I recall going to, the better ones at least, with Jeff and Keith Wear were Bauhaus, Iggy Pop & Queen.)

The crap keyboard solo is by me (sp) that I had to invent on the fly as I was doing the mixing.  It is a one take wonder of crapness.

They’re still doing it now in the pubs round here. Anth played on this and thought it was real.

This is the 2023 rework where I’ve (sp)  made it sound like the bands that used to play at the Central Club, Ashington,  in the early seventies. Bands like the Tygers of Pantang, mebbees even Whitesnake, played there, all being a Led Zep – Black Sabbath cross.

I’m pretty sure that Gary could still play the drums on this even though he’s dead.

With so much better noise reduction now, I’ve had to add Gaussian noise for the entry into the auditorium at the beginning to make it sound a bit more realistic than a few of Chaos clapping in the hallway.

 

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The Mongolian Steak Bar

Strangely creation.  2023 reworked. The bass guitar has the “wrong” notes at the start but curiously, they kinda work.  The rework has highlighted to me (SP) how Gary’s drums are following the acoustic guitar played by Jeff, amazingly. The rework and FLAC format here brings out the closeness to me.  In the middle eights I’ve emphasised my keyboards with EQ sweeping at 0.1154Hz for two mid bands.  It makes it interesting to my ears without overload. The format also makes the crackle in the fizz guitar  disappear which was an artefact of the MP3 format previously used when hardly anyone had broadband.  This streams pretty well.

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…

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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.

In essence, apart from the added clangs and screams of our girlfriends at the time, the sound sources are the resistors and 741 op-amps (which are quite noisy devices) in our gear.
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 rhythm. Delia Derbyshire would’ve appreciated this.  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.

Reworked 2023

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Tell Me Why

Essentially a studio jam.
Reworked 2023

 

 

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East Of West Allotment

The title is (obviously) a play on the duff film, Krakatoa: East of Java – duff because the Krakatoa is west of Java which amused Jeff and me when we were at school together.

West Allotment is on the maps too.

reworked 2023 – fixed the fluff up into the second half (sp).

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Suck

An afternoon jam.  Nice.  That’s one for avant-garde jazz fans.

Reworked 2023 – this rendered at 3.5x speed to FLAC. Thank gawd I didn’t hafta render in real time and hear it again. (sp)

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One More Peso

There was some resistance to doing this one at first.  Another E.F.S. It’s essentially an amalgam of spaghetti and other westerns with the emphasis being on the title sequence of Fistful of Dollars, the vocals from Few Dollars More, a melody based on High Chaparral and the over-the-top sound effects of Blazing Saddles.

Re-worked 2023 – I got rid of a lot of noise which brings out the quiet parts, also the duff clonks and clicks