Rudie Can’t Fail
This month’s victim found preserved in rock obscuria’s alkaline peat bog: an electronic detonation of exultation and disgust.
Add N To (X) Add Insult To Injury MUTE 2000
When Mute label head Daniel Miller signed south London synth deviants Add N To (X) in 1997, they slid neatly into the discography next to releases by Throbbing Gristle, The Normal and D.A.F. “Add N To (X) seemed to be out in their own world,” says Miller. “It was very freeform, anarchic, raw analogue electronics, which was very unfashionable at that time.” What did he think when he heard their album Add Insult To Injury? “Glam.” Glam’s one word for it. Formed in London’s Camberwell in 1994, with inspirations including the satisfying wrongnesses of outsider art and the theories of Buckminster Fuller and Kurt Schwitters, their spirited mistreatments of Moogs, Korgs and mellotrons were immediately striking. When they began work on their fourth LP in early 2000, their urge to unnerve was undimmed: member Steve Claydon describes the programme as, “to provide an alternative model and catalyse something aggressive, sensitive, gross and fragile… we just poured ourselves into our own vivid electronic meat grinder.” Initially, they’d planned to record it in Chicago with Steve Albini; instead, sessions were split over two locations. Founder member Barry 7 would work at Loon Wire studios in Sheffield with producer and arranger Dean Honer; the latter would also join Claydon and “trouble-maker and soothsayer” Ann Shenton at the sleepy Villa Noailles in Provence, where Man Ray filmed in the ’20s. Says Shenton, “Barry had a huge set-up in Sheffield: tonnes of synths in a studio, so we were happy for him to join us later in France. He was sort of hopping between the two places. Schizoid, but very Add N To (X).” Cranking up synths and live drums, they recorded direct to DAT. “Sometimes chaos ruled,” says Shenton of the French sessions. “We had lobsters walking on synths and it was all quite surreal in this modernist villa. The gardens were laid out like the bow of a ship, crawling with geckos and scorpions.” Honer’s recollections are more practical. “I wouldn’t say the sessions were chaotic. Barry had just moved up to Sheffield and we recorded live drums and other bits in his house and did the mixing and extra synths at my Sheffield studio. We kind of made it up as we went along. A lot of the synths were in need of a service, so a short sharp punch to the chassis would be the first thing to try if a machine – or person – was misbehaving.” Analogue synth-rock filth rich in novelty threat, crackpot energy and strange gravity resulted. Songs could be uncomfortably conceptualised: glam hooligan mantra Monster Bobby was a vision of future football crowd control, depicting a giant flying robot with the head of Bobby Moore. The languid B.P. Perino, says Shenton, is “a love song about a fly who impregnates me and I lay his eggs, even though he ultimately dies.” Mute’s belief in the band’s glam potential, meanwhile, was expressed by suggestive single Plug Me In. Its rude video was filmed by Jonny Trunk and featured two models and a comic, juddering dildo-gun called the ‘amazing fuck machine’, in a rundown hotel in Hay-on-Wye. “We originally wanted to do something like the classic sped-up sex scene in A Clockwork Orange,” says Trunk. “I’d got the ‘amazing fuck machine’ made by a sculptor friend in Bristol. I suppose the band were after a bit of controversy, and they got some.” Claydon, though, asserts they were not simply obsessed with sex. “I think it was a vehicle to address a larger group of concerns. Animism and animated machines. Synths as emotional beings. Our collaboration with the analogue kit questioned the nature of authorship; it was a reciprocal endeavour. Personally I was not bothered about exposing sexual taboos, although we did possess a number of massive organs.” The LP came out, with scratch and
sniff panels on the cover scented with the smell of grass, as used by anglers to flavour bait. Even so, the world remained unmoved. 2002’s Loud Like Nature made good on threats to move in an agrarian direction, but when Shenton left during tour rehearsals, the end was nigh. Honer remains impressed, though.
“The live shows were often amazing, anarchic and primal, the antithesis of the tedious head-nod laptop bands that proliferate now,” he says. “It was often the battle with the instruments and each other, that gave them an edge. They
were ahead of their time.” Shenton hopes we may yet hear more from this singuar group. “I hope to record with Steve and Barry again,” she says. “Maybe they’ll collaborate on something with me for my new project, My Stinking Cosmos.”
“WE JUST POURED OURSELVES INTO OUR OWN VIVID ELECTRONIC MEAT GRINDER.” Steve Claydon