Spittle Indierock | Alternative 31 Items

Informations of Death' is a key single from the proto-ebm Florence band Neon, their 1980 official debut with an early duo line-up comprised of Marcello Michelotti and Stefano Gasparinetti. The single is now released on double vinyl, accompanied by 'Oscillator' (a 1979 live performance recorded at the legendary Bananamoon Club in Florence).

For the first time ever this 27 track double album collects all of their singles on Red Rhino and Beggars Banquet/Situation Two. A mandatory compilation that also includes the bonus 7 inch originally appeared on the first ltd version of the 1986 album ‘Paint Your Wagon’ (Paint Your Wagon/More Jipp), an alternative and harder rendition of ‘Beating My Head’ (originally appeared o the Ep ‘This Today’) and ‘Russia’ from the 1984 Ep ‘Hollow Eyes’. Red Lorry Yellow Lorry were one of the most successful independent bands of the 80’s with their dark and often manic rhythms.

First Time ON Vinyl ! Originally released on cassette in the spring of 1984 together with the 5th issue of Tribal Cabaret fanzine - included here in its original format - this is an invaluable document focusing on the obscure side of the 80’s Italian post- punk scene. A composite picture drawn by a bunch of different and often under recorded groups from various Italian regions and cities. All together they contribute to defining a prominently dark yet vivid soundscape based on different approaches and styles. All these aspects are perfectly translated through the b&w art and graphics of the beautiful Tribal Cabaret fanzine. If you want to dive deep into the fringes of the 80’s this is one of the places to start.

First Time ON Vinyl ! Originally released on cassette in the spring of 1985, together with the 8th issue of Komakino fanzine - included here in its original format. Relatively well- known names coexist with bands that lasted only a season. “Still Life” was and remains a half hour of pure abstraction. An intense and precious post-punk overdose!

First Time ON Vinyl ! Originally released on cassette in the winter of 1984, together with the 7th issue of Komakino fanzine - included here in its original format. 8 groups and 14 tracks revealing the whole meaning of the Afterglow operation. Bands who already had record deals and enjoyed some popularity, others that will do so shortly, others that will fade in the mists of that decade. “Afterglow” is a document from an era when small gestures and uncomfortable choices were true stances

Sad Lovers and Giants second album, a brilliant atmospheric post punk record with several elements akin to Joy Division and The Chameleons. We can definitely apply the term’ ethereal’ to these composition, certainly the sound is very oceanic and otherwordly melancholic, typical trademarks of the new wave renaissance. Recorded in 1983 – and released on their own label Midnight Music - Feeding the Flame showcases the original line up at its very best.

“The Missing Boys” is a film born from the need to tell the story of the emergence and affirmation of a forgotten music scene, like much of the youth movement that spread in metropolitan areas as well as in the provinces more than forty years ago, dealing with the same critical issues of everywhere. It’s a story of mostly unknown bands, who from Sardinia, especially from Cagliari and Sassari, interrupt the blissful isolation of an island, only apparently distant from that revolution that ignited wherever there was a stage and a power socket. The birth of a path that began with punk and quickly transformed into a magmatic picture where research, experimentation, sound subversions and slivers of darkness, shape a multifaceted and unique scene in balance between affinities and divergences with its whole surroundings. The examined period between 1979 and 1989 marks a seminal decade, a ten years time-frame linked to an indelible generational transition, like an imaginary journey “from the ants to the clouds”, an invisible thread suspended between those kids and their great dream. This album contains music from a vibrant and uncompromising season, just like all that cannot be recognized as industrial product and maintains an independent spirit. (Davide Catinari)

With the 391 project, Spittle shed light on the most recondite and peculiar realities of the italian underground. The Belpaese illustrated in imaginative regional postcards, with all the legacies of off culture: the do-it yourself ethos and the local gestation of phenomena from across the Channel - above all - such as new wave, post-punk and electronic nouvelle vague. Phenomenal little contributions collected on the periphery of the New World, with future stars of the alternative scene to come and authentic artisans who remained such for life. With the second vinyl volume of 391 we line up some of the highlights of this brave and punctilious roundup.

Back in print on color vinyl ! Italia Synthetica 1981-1985 represents the musical mutation that occurred after the post-punk hangover gave way to more frigid emotional shores, in-line with the synth-wave moment that was sweeping Europe and the white cliffs of Albion. This scene flourished in Italy between 1981-1985, and the musicians that came out of it are still revered today (particularly in the US). Robotic rhythms and intuitions that, besides sharing common ground with the electronic movements that had come before, also knew how to fill up the dancefloor. Featuring four previously unreleased tracks by Der Blaue Reiter, along with tracks by Modo, Actor's Studio, and La Maison, as well as the still fresh sounding contributions by true pioneers of the genre Neon and Naif Orchestra. Also features Ein-st-ein, Scortilla, Eurotunes, Oh Oh Art, and 2+2=5 featuring Paolo Mauri. LP includes CD which includes five bonus tracks from the Italia New Wave LP (spittle 031lp). Included CD features Jeunesse D'Ivoire, Fockewulf 190, State Of Art, N.O.I.A., and 2+2=5.

My adventure buddies? The silent, enigmatic Patti, former singer of the mysterious No Suicide, and the young, faithful Chris, a passionate Police fan, we met on the battlefield and he immediately became my brother. For him, learning to play the bass was a way to get close to Sting, in other words, just one step below Paradise. Patti instead played keyboards as an extension of her mysterious and glacial presence, so still and distant that the audience sometimes wondered if she was real. And then there was my fixation for the drum machine, a futuristic device which could transform the drumming sweat into an invisible, yet physical, dreamlike pulsation. A particular combination of characters and a special astral conjunction, that’s what you need to get a nucleus source of sonic emotions, and in some ways this is what we were. You could clearly feel it during the concerts. When at the end of ‘81 My Mercenary God lost their drummer and had to disband, I felt clearly that the music had already changed. Our old 70’s rock ‘n’ roll sound was no longer representative of the day. We were like some sort of yesterday’s newspaper. Thus I Sex was born (later The Sex). According to Freudian thought that sees sexual instinct as the driving force behind every (creative or destructive) human act. And in fact we immediately started creating, destroying, assembling and deconstructing our sound. Suddenly “tomorrow became now”. It was an outburst of creative independence in the form of homemade cassettes put together with makeshift tools, at least until the arrival of the legendary 4 track recorder. I was 19 years old, Chris was only 17. Nothing more than kids after all. Yet we were already veterans, veterans of a lost war. Wise, naive, disillusioned dreamers, everything and the opposite of everything. But, above all, we were totally devoted to our creative delirium up to the point of losing touch with reality, crossing limits, breaking down barriers and almost bordering on madness. Perhaps we were just too involved, especially if in relationship with what we could receive in return. We always spread our energies as if there was no future. We unconsciously felt that we had to live in the moment, now or never, and in retrospect it really was like that, and this is why these songs exist now. Songs created with the intent to tell an inner universe that is, now as then, far from any convention.

1981. I write for the Friulian anarcho-punk fanzine “Nuova Fahrenheit”. That’s the beginning of my short antagonistic season (I had neither the balls nor perhaps the necessary conviction to declare war to the system, and in fact time has proved it). I listen to Discharge and Dead Kennedys, meanwhile I broadcast Disorder and Anti-Pasti on the radio, but also a lot of post-punk, the one that couldn’t find a place on “Nuova Fahrenheit’’ because not apocalyptic enough. 1981 is also when “Why”, the first EP from Discharge, was released, and for me it was like the “Pillars of Hercules”: you can’t go further than that. hyper-fast hardcore and vomited vocals, everything makes that record a cornerstone that redefines the genre. Its sequel, the monumental “Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing”, puts an end to that chapter: when such extreme music becomes “mature” you need to stop and reflect and maybe start looking somewhere else. Just a few months between one record and another in which I extinguish my warlike spirits. I’m looking for solutions that could merge nuclear catastrophes and introspection, blind fury and structured sounds. Unconsciously I was thinking of an already existing album, it’s Italian and I discover it thanks to a review in “Mucchio Selvaggio” magazine. That record is “Challenge”. “Challenge” was released in 1981 on Bootleg, a record label born inside a record store in Pavia with the same name. “Challenge” keeps the original and uncompromising punk attitude alive. 3 groups: No Suicide (from the Udine province), Mercenary God (from Gemona), No Submission (from Treviso), all sick children of the industrious, rich and Christian Democratic north-eastern part of Italy. I read about them in “New Fahrenheit” (a controversial article about local rivalries, common backgrounds and eventually separate roads.) but I don’t know their music. Something tells me that “Challenge” is the record I was looking for, perhaps because of its very powerful cover with no slogans, and a circled “A”. I send the money in a sealed envelope and wait. When the package arrives, I open it, I put the record on the turntable and let the needle go. The first listen is enough to realize that this is a crucial release, a real “challenge”. The challenge is against an indifferent market. The instrument is a sound that is already changing skin. No Suicide, Mercenary God and No Submission have nothing to do with Great Complotto, they are the other face of the northeastern underground. Punk is their background, (read “hardcore” for No Suicide) but for all of them there is a progressive detachment from the original material, including a common attitude towards the caustic sound coming from the harshest side of British wave. A classic example of “work in progress” able to generate great songs like “The Degraded Men” by No Submission (the band that later evolved into Wax Heroes), one of the peaks of Italian post-punk. Mercenary God will give birth to The Sex, while No Suicide with their tight hypnotic hardcore will disbanded soon. It’s 1981 when the rain clouds on the “Challenge” front cover seem to remind us that the wind is going to change soon. 3 bands, 11 songs, an unearthed piece of history 43 years after its first release. Thanks to this reissue, “Challenge” is now back on track. A different disc, today as then. (Luca Frazzi)

Formed in 1984, Limbo stands as one of the true Italian electro-dark-wave cult bands. Originally released in 1986 by Spittle Records, this was the band’s first effort. A powerful sound object based on gothic-post-industrial elements

Deeply inspired by Aleister Crowley’s esoteric thinking , Thelema are regarded as one of the crucial 80’s post-punk acts from Italy. Orignally released in 1986 Tantra was the band’s debut album, a unique chemistry between occultism, acid guitars and pagan rhythms.

Ltd re-issue on white vinyl ! C'est disco is the first studio album by the Italian band Rats. It was released in 1981 by Italian Records and is a record strongly inspired by the wave and dark scene of that period. In 2014 the record was reissued in a vinyl version with the addition of a bonus CD featuring the complete album plus the song Tattoo, initially discarded from the album's tracklist and included in a compilation. The band's line-up featured vocalist Claudia Lloyd on vocals, and on guitar the only member present in the more famous version active in the late '80s and '90s, Wilko Zanni, who in the next album would take Claudia Lloyd's place on vocals.

Finally available the 2nd – unreleased – album by iconic Italian post-punk outfit. Born in 1979 as Sextons, in 1980 they became Rats and in 1981 they published their classic debut ’C'est Disco’. Set to release in 1982 on cult label Italian Records, the record didn’t make it due to several diatribes with the company itself. Here’s your chance to taste this precious moment in Italian wave revolution.

Inspired by a weird mixture between Aldous Huxley's visionary work and some biblical myths, Eyeless in Gaza, (formed in 1980) are one of the most original and creative bands emerging from the early 80's British post-punk scene. An intimate duo line up featuring Martyn Bates - vocals, guitar, organ, and Peter Becker - drums, bass, synth. "Caught in Flux" originally released in 1981 on Cherry Red and reissued here in its original format LP + 12" is their second album. The result of a one-take studio session with no overdubs. A perfectly balanced combination of various elements arising from post-punk, art rock, ambient music, and psychedelia. This was an important step towards a form of music where all these influences were organically integrated into a highly purified sound experience.

Milan, 1979, only two years had passed since the explosion of punk but it seemed like ten years had passed, 1977 had inexorably changed the destiny of a generation of musicians. Milan in those years felt a bit like Manchester, a city in black and white, with monuments grayed by smog, busy and still far from becoming the “Milan to drink” of the mid-80s. The music scene was totally disconnected from the rest of the Italian underground, the bands were born and imploded within a few months. The inputs that arrived thanks to the English weekly New Musical Express and some Italian fanzines were essential to know what happened across the channel almost in real time. The concerts at the 2001 Odyssey, a club where almost all the really important post-punk bands performed, were fundamental to understand and feel part of something that resembled a revolution, a movement that in those years produced little in terms of discography but that today, after almost forty years, we reveal the absolute uniqueness of the proposals of the protagonists of that Milanese season. Sharp guitars, primordial drum machines, synthesizers bought at a high price and 4 tracks cassette recorders were the tools used to affirm their belonging to a creative movement that developed simultaneously throughout Europe.

Possibly one of the weirdest experiment in the post-punk realm, Vibing Up the Senile Man (Part One) is the second studio album by English anti-heroes Alternative TV, released in March 1979 on small indie label Deptford Fun City. Forget about the influential 1978 debut - The Image Has Cracked – frontman Mark Perry is literally leaving the planet in this effort. ‘There are free jazz influences; I'd got into the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra ..) I'd moved into this house with an amazing music room – pianos, clarinets, you name it – and we'd always be picking up stuff from junk shops.’ The description set the pace for a unique performance, not only the afro-american heritage , traces of the Canterbury school are almost evident as the early experiment of the BBC Radiophonic workshop. Is it safe to consider Vibing up The Senile Man on the same time-line as Robert Wyatt ‘The End Of An Ear’ and Throbbing Gristle ’20 Jazz Funk Greats’ (Genesis P-Orridge is on board on two tracks, playing assorted percussion) ? Judge by yourself and don’t be scared.

Brilliant second album from the wholly original cult Sheffield post punk band. Released in 1983 on Red Flame ‘One Afternoon In A Hot Air Balloon’ is an adventure on its own. Artery somehow replaced the somber post-punk of the debut with a stream of melancholic pop paeans influenced by british folk and certain ballroom dances, with a spectral keyboard sound worth killing for. The secret weapon - when compared to the rest of their discography - is largely explained by the presence of keyboard player and (by now) main composer Christopher Hendrick. The band was in fact reduced to a trio with former members Mark Gouldthorpe (guitar) and Garry Wilson (drums) now supported by the singular effort of Hendrick (also on bass and xylophone). At the same time Garry Wilson was playing in an early incarnation of Pulp. Despite the early Joy Division influence - which the band firmly dismissed – Artery is moving forward into the so-called new romantic era. A vaudeville scenario light years ahead from the streets and the aggro-culture, a way to some pleasant and revealing experience.

Firenze Sogna' is literally a journey of musical itineraries from the legendary Tuscany chief town between the mid-70s and the early eighties, curated by Giampiero Bigazzi, Bruno Casini and Ernesto De Pascale. Influential post-punk act and electronic producers all teamed up with local legends depicting almost 20 years of a constant evolution. It is not simply the Italian way to rock’n’roll, hereby three generations of artists facing the banks of Arno river forged a memorable artistic season. Stalwart ok kosmische psychedelia Sensation’s Fix altogether with EBM forerunners Neon, astonishing etno-world travelers Zeit (the Italian answer to late Popol Vuh ?) and electro pioneer Alexander Robotnick , no wave heroes Rinf and rock in opposition alumni Bella Band (Cramps Records). 23 tracks split between two lps, a revelation of sort.

Originally released 23 years ago on CD , "Troppo lontano e altre storie" is finally reissued on LP for the first time. 13 remastered tracks produced between 1986 and 1994 by the Italian seminal Hardcore Punk band. Here you can find in detail, the complete versions of three tracks recorded live in Lubeck (D) during the 1986 European tour and previously issued on 7". Four songs from a series of acoustic sessions recorded in 1988 and previously issued on singles and compilations. Four songs produced with Stefano Giaccone and Lalli from "La diserzione degli animali del circo", the 1989 Kina / Howth Castle 12". A song from the Kina / Act 1990, split single, and finally the 1994 recordings featuring Marco Brunet on guitar and vocals. In the original 1996 liner notes, Kina wrote: All these recordings have been published on records that will never be reissued again. Hopefully you will be pleased to find them all together in this collection. Now, if we compare the first and last piece, we'll find a big difference in terms of sound and playing quality. It's still us though, luckily we grew up and we've changed too, and we're so proud and happy of our past and present. Always yours Sergio, Alberto, Gianpiero, Marco, Stefano and Lalli.

Obsessions' is clearly a cult single of the era and one of their personal highlights. The band recorded the 4 track live in April 1982 and then reprocessed the take at Kindergarten Studio. The twelve inch was then released on the highly influential indie label Materiali Sonori. Neon is still considered as a legend of the Italian new-wave scene, one of the leading figure of the Florence underground movement that spread between the late '70s and the early' 80s.

The scottish musician, born in 1953 in Port Glasgow, is one of the most eclectic artist of the so-called minimal wave scene. Alongside german singer Claudia Brücken (vocalist of the hit-makers Propaganda) he formed Act a short-lived synthpop group signed to ZTT Records in the late eighties. Licensed by Cherry Red in 1982, the double album ‘Contradictions’ is the third effort in Leer high and rising career. After the seminal debut on Industrial Records with Robert Rental – The Bridge (1979) – Leer ventured on a solo career with the brave synth wave of ‘Letter From America’ and his personal masterpiece ‘Contradictions’. The latter is such an enigmatic piece of work, with alien melodies as in the case of the ‘Soul Gypsy’ infectious white funk. The whole album was recorded in his living room at home onto 4-track using borrowed equipment ( Korg synth, Ult-sound drum computer & guitars ) from his friend Morgan Fisher. Featuring Leer’s haunting, uncertain vocal – recorded quietly, so as not to wake his girlfriend in their bedsit! – crooning over a minimal bass pulse and discreet whines and washes of primitive Wasp synthesiser, it retains its peculiar lo-fi magic four decades on.

Here is the unmissable sound document from one of Italy's earliest Eighties underground fanzines! Back in the day, Rockgarage was the fruit of the work of a bunch of young music enthusiasts from the Venice area. All already active in the local free radios scene, tired of life's monotony and willing to put all their energy and creativity into a different project. A new sound magazine based on quality content and high musical profile. A total of six issues were published between 1982 and 1984 along with three 7"s and one LP. A stunning work which after forty years still stands as one the best self-made productions on the Italian music scene of the time. All of the Rockgarage musical output is in this significant collection. A fat double album featuring famous, obscure and yet legendary "Italian Wave" bands such as Diaframma, Frigidaire Tango, Degada Saf, Plasticost, Death in Venice, Funkwagen, Detonazione, 2+2=5, Modern Model, Wops, Ruins, Premesuzette, Pyramids and Go Karts. A wide eclectic sound mosaic based on Electro-Post-Punk-Jazz-Funk elements. Experience this dynamic and passionate period through the energetic pulse of Italian New-Wave!!!

“Photographs as Memories” was the British cult band Eyeless in Gaza’s debut album. A truly kaleidoscopic picture dominated by Martyn Bates’s highly expressive vocals and Pete Becker’s peculiar analog synth lines in a jungle of electric guitars, plastic organs, soprano saxophones, percussion, violin, stylophone and tapes. An album which comes as a vivid snapshot from the very dawn of the 80’s.

Five years after the release of volume 1 of the collection “Collected Tape Experiments 1980-1984”, further sound experiments by this incredible Milanese duo re-emerge, never sufficiently valued and who in a few years managed to create hundreds of tracks, synthesizing different influences such as Throbbing Gristle, Residents, Kraftwerk and the arty extremisms of the “No New York” scene.

The compilation that started it all ! In October a series of bands have been recorded at the Vortex Club for a proposed live album along the lines of the first ‘Live At the Roxy Wc2’ record. The record featured the Maniacs, Suspects, Wasps, Neo, Art Attacks, Bernie Torme and Mean Street who were all regular players at the Vortex and Roxy. Released in 1977 - right after the punk-rock breakdown - the compilation made way for a revolutionary statement supporting the newborn counterculture.

Matita Emostatica' is the re-issue of a sought after compilation connecting the most underrated outsider artists of the Milan scene, in the early eighties. The amazing artwork is the creation of influential designer and photographer Roberto Masotti, a very well known figure in the avantgarde and jazz realm (he made astonishing portraits for the likes of Anthony Braxton, Art Ensemble Of Chicago, Carla Bley, etc.)
The compilation was produced in 1981 by Al Aprile and released by Materiali Sonori. Among the 10 artists you can find future journalists, unstoppable record collectors, renowned photographers and influential underground persona ... just scroll down the album and read the names of Monofonic Orchestra, Angelo Vaggi, Baker Street Band, Al Aprile, Roberto Masotti and many others. The result was quite unbelievable, ranging from small cosmic opus to avantgarde symphonies and asymmetrical etno-world jams. In the end ‘Matita Emostatica’ was quite in line with the efforts coming from the rest of Europe and the other side of the ocean, so to speak the compilation wouldn’t be out of place in the Ralph or Crammed Discs catalogue. A postcard from a country that is no more.

Formed in Sheffield in 1978 and originally known as just "The", Artery is a band that saw several changes in the line-up throughout the '80s. Supported by John Peel and often compared to Joy Division their music incorporates various fundamental elements of the British post-punk aesthetic. Originally released in 1982 on Red Flame records, "Oceans" was Artery's debut mini-LP including some absolute gems such as "into the Garden" and "Afterwards" infectious anthemic tracks of the post-punk era.

One of the most treasured French minimal wave records is back on vinyl (and first time on CD!)
Comix, a duo of guitarist/composer André Demay and DJ/singer Natan Hercberg, are a one album project. Their first single “Touche Pas Mon Sexe”, recorded in 1979, has been refused by several record companies, but duo finally found home on French branch of Virgin. They released two singles and one full length LP in 1981, and appeared on “BIPPP: French Synth-Wave 1979/85” compilation a few decades later. The music was composed by André with a legendary Roland TR-808 (Marvin Gaye, Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaataa used the same drum machine for their hits at the same time). Natan wrote the lyrics, filling comic speech bubbles. Their production was somewhat different to mainstream “nouvelle vague” artists: much more positive and ironic than their chart mates. However, Comix didn’t have much success with their songs in 80s, but was rediscovered in 21st century with the strong interest in original minimal wave/coldwave artists. Here they are again, young and bold, as nearly 40 years ago.