2007-09-19

the 39 clocks. rehearsal room recordings 1979.

in 1980 the first 39 clocks single of course was the spearhead of the northwestgerman psycho beat movement: a neuroblasting antimental definition of "punk" completely disobeying "punk-rock" and taking in sky saxon, the velvet illusion, kim fowley, john cale, james williamson and the swamp rats instead. the well-funded audience instantly ignored this infernal and menacing pandaemonium and sucked "new wave" instead. time has shown the wiser...

the roots of the 39 clocks as a post-fluxus angst driven schwitters unit reach back until 1975, though memory tends to become indistinct. jürgen gleue and christian henjes both rendered a very inspiring and influential alternative civilian service at a state psychiatric hospital in lower saxony and started performing (probably) as "the killing rats" to introduce their concept of "art minus idiots" to the hannover old school avantgarde. more bewildering myth and rumour can be found in a long essay martin fuchs provides on information overload (the three pictures i am using were skyjacked from his page; please ignore the lycos pop-up or use a more intelligent browser).

before they baptized their vanguard squad "the 39 clocks" in late 1979 they gathered together in a rehearsal room to incubate embryonic versions of what was to become the prototype version of psycho beat later to be found on their way too few records and started here being built to overpower unprepared audiences. you can hear fifty minutes of sheer noise and raw power, though more often than not the voice gets lost in the wall of sound. no fun.

attending the house were jürgen gleue (bass, guitars, vocals), christian henjes (guitars, keyboards, vocals), emilio winschetti (aka the hidden gentleman on korg ms-20) and a rhythm machine (not until the following year replaced by the more steady mad hi-hatter rüdiger klose). the sound quality is objectionable, to say the least. a changing experience.

the 39 clocks - a rehearsal room situation 1979
mp3 / 224 kbps / 82 mb

to find more 39 clocks music please use the appropriate tag in the navigation on the right and of course re-visit brotbeutel and dorfdisco braunsfeld (off for a lot of reasons!) for digital transformations of all their records and some more noise by friends, relatives and even clones of the 39 clocks (including the cocoon, exit out, kastrierte philosophen and more). and: kraut mask replica provides you with a completely different german version of this text. have fun.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Many thanks for enabling me to discover this great rocking combo.
They are the shite. I have hopped over to brotbeutal and got more but dorfdisco braunsfeld appears to be invite only now which is a crying shame. Any idea how I can get an invite? You can, um, er, get hold of me metaphorically on richard.mason@oxfordshire.gov.uk

"The visitors of this here weblog are of course presupposed to know and to understand the contextual connections crosslinking the lonesome stardust cowboy, nurse with wound, rocket from the tombs, paul rutherford, cosey fanni tutti, the swamp rats, the portsmouth sinfonia, blind billy childish, christian vander, ae, aeki, henriette and dagmar, mark and lee perry, jeanne lee, the jam and the kinks, hawkwind, of course, derek bailey, blixa baargeld and bix beiderbecke. in come the fuzztones."

I would have to go along with that.
Very nicely put. Though I would advise the addition of pip proud, hugh davies, jack starr and the swell maps to that list, to name but 4. If you are looking for ideas of stuff to post you could do substantially worse than to consider posting multiple vols of the prae-kraut pandemonium series.
You know it make no sense. Cheers.