Ennui / Impulse

prag VEC: Bits / Wolf / Existential / Cigarettes Spec Records (1978) 'There is no future, 'cause you're in a fiction' Accomplished and confident, occasionally strident, prag VEC released two singles, and recorded three sessions for John Peel. Their name is a conflation of Pragmatic and Vector,  too complex for Ingsoc but  very  Philip K. Dick. Beneath their paint spattered punk facade, Bits and Wolf have a quirky Canterbury poly-rhythm going on, an almost progressive rock-ist interest in complex time signatures and interesting chords involving lots of fingers. These short, sweet, swervy blasts are agit-prop nursery rhymes played by supply teachers high on sexual politics, radical economics and arts centre poetry.   Existential is the pick of the bunch, a sultry slow burner punctuated by angry, intellectual sounding French language narration and a series of wild, jagged guitar solos. It's tremendous, Stereolab plus steroids.  Fina...

File Under Pop: Heathrow / Corrugate / Heathrow 5LB Rough Trade Records RT0011 (1979) Everybody has a record in them. It may not be a double album, it may not be any good, but it's there, waiting to be pulled out. The post punk era facilitated many such extractions, from eager and energetic boys and girls who spent a couple of hours and a few quid in a cheap local studio and committed the results to black plastic for future generations to blog about.  File Under Pop (full irony to be revealed) released a solitary 45, a three track effort where two of the tracks were recorded live at London Heathrow Airport. These tracks are not musical in any conventional sense, consisting of nothing but snatches of ambience, tinny tannoy announcements, overheard conversations and a series of unnerving inorganic noises including at least one electronic arcade game and what sounds like a witch being electrocuted. They are  jarring, badly recorded and compressed to hell, and sound li...