DRILL YOUR OWN HOLE
Motorvate
Call Me a Liar
All Hung Up
Zen Express
World War 7 Blues
Git Down (Shake your Thang)
After Suck There's Blow
So Far Out
Drive in Salvation
T.V. Cabbage
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Gaye Bykers on Acid
Drill Your Own Hole
1987, Virgin Records
By Stu
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"There Never Was Such A Tale Of Woe..."
After a fruitless search thru the tunnels and timewarps of the net* I drew a blank on any biographical detail on these garbage patch dolls of apocalyptic dustcloud grebo rock. Preachers of frazzled, frayed and flanged wah-wah wasted sonic whirlwinds, reading from their own Book of Revelation and tearing the pages up as they read them, all I gleaned really is that the makers of these murky masterpieces apparently emerged from somewhere in Leicester. Let's say they started around '84 /'85, as early records seem to be from just after then and they were ingenious enuff to get a deal almost straight away, I reckon. So this is a total exercise in the music speaking for itself, yes? And isn't that what it should all be about, really? So let's dig out some old para boots and motorvate thru this slipstream.
The Bykers were one of a slew of bands from around this pre-Seattle grunge time, tho the madness certainly coalesced in early grungers like Tad too, and of course there was Ministry around at that time, just poised waiting to unleash 'The Land of Rape and Honey' on us. But alongside greasy gurus like Zodiac Mindwarp, Crazyhead, Creaming Jesus, even Voice of the Beehive, Pop Will Eat Itself and perhaps early Wonderstuff, the Bykers existed in some sort of UK grebo scene, a word that seems to have all but disappeared now...we used to get called it all the time at school in the early 90's, but sadly gone! Shame! But this was proper grime, sacred sludge. A friend of the time, Dan Fearnet, used to absolutely revere the Bykers. I remember him sitting in his room a wee bit stoned, serenely soaking it all up, and slowly declaring something along the lines of 'Every second is a masterwork.'
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That assessment is a bit extreme to me, but really
not too far off. 'Drill Your Own Hole' kicks off, aptly, with 'Motorvate',
a resounding staccato deathknell of a tune, all inverted Jim Morrison
shamanistic messages ('Your future's uncertain and your end is just as
near'), a psychfried, rousing call to arms from the heart of the subterranean
pollution zone to get off your spesh drinking asses. Musically, the whole
album seems to be a soundtrack to a chemical spill in a lab in a horror
movie, that unleashes some evil force against our rag tag heroic Bykers.
Or a nuclear meltdown, the tunes conjuring to minds fevered with Cold
War nightmares images of fire walls sweeping all before them, buildings
toppling, people melting etc. Scewiff guitars slither in and out all over
the place like a car skidding on an oil patch, sticky and glutinous but
just as the bassing on the Violent Femmes first album makes that particular
record stand alone then, so does the ridiculously inventive and unique
guitarwork graffitoed all over this set.
Amidst the barren dystopian soundscapes, our Mad
Max style urban commandos and desperadoes retained a certain humanness,
which was rare for industrial style music. 'All Hung Up', and it's almost
companion piece - and album highlight - 'So Far Out', are high speed crashes,
fuelled on a desperate anger and emotion, both spewed out with the smoke
of a hundred burning nuclear reactors. They detail, apparently, the downward
spiral nightmare of either a mentally ill / depressed person, or someone
with some type of substance problem ("Well there's too much unhappiness
and all around is such a mess / Don't waste your time watching days go
by....think aloud to chase the blues away"), the fallout from being
around them ("Don't take me down cos I've been there already....day
becomes the night, for the sake of love you've got to fight, don't sit
around and watch the sky turn black"), and the inevitable conclusion:
"So I lost my soul/ I wound up playing Rock'n'Roll - Don't waste
my time watching days go by". As wild and erratic as the mish mash
of samples, shards of angular, spirally, cobwebby guitar lines, and peaks
and troughs in the songs may seem, I always come away with the feeling
that these were very creative chaps, and that every single mutation in
the mix is in there for a reason. The grebo Brian Wilson's anyone? And
the little samples between songs all add to the claustrophobic, stifling
Armageddon, almost like you're flicking channels on some futuristic TV,
or tuning a radio in trying to receive a message from the underworld of
post-holocaust survivors that the rulers of the new world order keep scrambling,
necessitating you to keep retuning.
The salivating rabid funk of 'Drive In Salvation' and 'Git Down (Shake Your Thang)' show that these badlands bravehearts could drill some ass shaking grooves into their pit too for the indie disco. Both tracks, as well, and moreso 'After Suck There's Blow' (see below), show their pure inventiveness, suck everything in from everywhere, put it into their ever simmering cauldron of cacophony, eyes bulging madly, and await the scintillating catastrophe.
I also have the compilation 'G.B.O.A.' which as it's on the ever helpful Receiver Records, doesn't have any sleevenotes, but it seems to be a collection of stuff and even tho it doesn't really bite me like the mutant reptilian slither of the 'Drill...' album and similar stuff, the sampladelic frenzy of tracks like
'Killer Teens in New Orleans' and 'S.P.A.C.E.' point the way that GBOA frontman Mary Mary followed in Apollo 440, rapping a la Beastie Boys over gruesome dub reggae bass, spatterings of metal and space rock guitar, and the odd burst into breakbeats. Well, of course the Bykers stuff had nicked bits and samples all over the place, but these tracks have also been mutated by the emerging acid house scene, the Bykers merely adding their own spin onto it, but listening to 'After Suck...' recorded, what, in 1986, full of whistles and tribal funky basslines they were far, far ahead of the times. Okay so there's the mechanical thwump of Ministry and underground industrial gonzoid shit in there too, but whatever these succulently slimy urchins took from there, they add a whole swamp full of other bilge for us to try to wade thru.
But what the 'G.B.O.A.' album has on it is the awesome 'Don't Be Human Eric - Let's Be Frank' and 'Everything's Groovy Baby'. The former, even though titular-ly it could have had them lumped in with the kind of stereotypical 80's indie bands like Half Man Half Biscuit, along with their 'John Wayne's A Fag' and 'What Happened To Malcolm', is a liquid, visceral, oil coloured, tongue in cheek addressing of schizophrenia, guitars swirling around the wah wah wasteland perfectly documenting the split personality, using the pedal to sweep from screeching, scratching knife catching the plate treble before descending into the depths, the vocals wrapped in otherworldly echo.
If you've not come across these vagabonds of the 80's urban waste, then indulge in some sonic sermonizing. Not sure exactly what about, but the riches in there far outweigh any poverty of ideas, melodies, sounds and songs.
-Stu Gibson
UK
PRESSING OF DRILL YOUR OWN HOLE
WITH NO HOLE.