It appears that most of our “fantasy label compilation” posts have received literally no hits at all, so this exercise in talking to ourselves out-does even our usual posts for pointlessness supreme. That hasn’t made it any less enjoyable to re-listen to all these records though, nor (of course) will it deflect us from carrying on REGARDLESS. In yer face, popularity.
We’ve written warm words before on our debt to 555 Recordings of Leeds, then Philly, then Flagstaff, the label that effortlessly blended laid-back quiet-fi gems with chaotic glitch, punky guitar blasts with chilled-out electronica; yet perhaps only when re-listening to dozens of their releases for the purposes of this exercise did we really appreciate the impressive depth of the 555 catalogue. In terms of trying to narrow the field down to 20+ favourite artists, this proved even harder than the Factory primer, and a reminder of how easily 555 helped to feel the gaping hole left in the post-Sarah wilderness: we remember at one point comparing Shinkansen fairly unfavourably with 555, and feeling (then as now) quite guilty about doing so, but from this distance one can’t but help feel we were right.
No apologies for the fact that many of the tracks we’ve chosen are taken from 555’s various stellar compilation albums. It was always a particular joy to listen to their eclectic roster in a way that actively forced you to change genre every few minutes. (We’ve tried to recreate that sensation a little here). “These Are Testing Times”, “You Gotta Get More Alive”, “Knowing We Was Right From Da Start”, “555CD55” (yep, 55 songs by 55 bands) and the remix comp “Chihuahuas and Chinese Noodles” (another great thing about 555 was that they recognised the transformative power of the remix, and embraced it fully) are five of the finest label compilations ever; but there were other, such as the considerably great more recent K7-only compilation, “Your Cassette Pet”.
Um, we should probably explain the title. We very nearly christened this one “Bitterness Is The New Tenderness” (a lyric from one of Kyoko’s songs for the label which characterised some, if not all, of the music on it) but in the end went with something a little more positive. The way that Stewart recounts it is that when he went to see McCarthy as a mere stripling, Malcolm Eden signed Stewart’s copy of “Frans Hals” with the legend “Stay hopeful”, and that strikes us as an equally decent motto for 555 and, indeed, for life in general. By happy coincidence we should also take this opportunity to recommend “Vote Malcolm Eden”, by A New Line (Related), the latest nom de plume of one Andrew Johnson (ex- Hood, Famous Boyfriend) who has of course himself appeared on a few 555 releases: whilst sounding not the slightest bit like McCarthy, it’s definitely worth a hearing or ten.
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1. Boyracer “Sarah and Sarah”
It’s right to start with Boyracer, at the heart of 555 as so much else, and although we seriously toyed with “Wingtips”, the punchy and sassy opener to their later “Flickering B&W” album, we ended up going with this kick-off track from their 2003 ‘comeback’ outing “To Get A Better Hold You’ve Got To Loosen Yr Grip” (not least because it helped free up another minute or so on the track times). “Sarah and Sarah” is prime Racer; 70 tangled seconds of feverish, fervent, febrile emotion, urged along by unforgiving guitars. It perfectly bridged the gap between the band’s first and second heydays (it could have fitted smartly enough on their “Racer 100” EP) and helps to explain why, around this time, we felt it necessary to christen the band “prefects of the punk-pop perfect”.
2. Empress "Skills Unknown"
Whereas, by way of contrast…
Making slow music that *works* is incredibly hard, we think. Or, to put it more accurately, making slow music for people like us - who have the attention span of a sieve and find sedate strums & lazy atmospherics extremely boring and far too ‘easy’ – is incredibly hard. Yet 555 showcased a number of combos who perfected the art. Empress were one, and we’ll come on to others later.
The original Empress line-up was also one of Boyracer’s ‘90s line-ups, but you could simply never guess that from the otherworldly, plangent Empress sound: putting Nicola Hodgkinson’s vocal to the fore, Empress were high tea on the verandah compared to Boyracer’s fizzy lager in the basement. The mysterious “Skills Unknown”, from their second single, epitomises their soft-as-snow - yet slightly sinister - gossamer sound.
3. Lunchbox “Letter From Overend”
And so we move to the first contribution from 555’s extensive US-based stable. “Letter From Overend” is that relatively rare thing on 555, a glorious out-and-out summery pop song (pretty much), which pounds along with guitars and brass and a kind of harmonic, throwback interlude in the middle which sounds delicious, a little likethe Saturday People or something. It should have been an A-side, but instead it’s the proud opener to their 7-track mini-LP “Summer’s Over”, with the only 555 sleeve that uses London Transport font. (Obscure cover version fans should also seek out Lunchbox’s gloriously chiming version of the Flatmates’ “You’re Gonna Cry”, on Mobstar’s “Hopping On The West Coast” compilation).
Stop press: apparently Lunchbox have just reformed, with an LP on the way!
4. Hood “As Evening Changed The Day (Hood Remix)”
Hood. Obviously, and forever.
The first ever release on 555 was a seven track 7” by team Hood, in black and white paper sleeve, called “Lee Faust’s Million Piece Orchestra”. It opened with the 40 seconds of scrawny, lo-fi nervous tension they christened “Biochemistry Revision Can Wait”. This was clearly a band after my own heart, but much as we loved that first 45 (which also contained our comp tape fave “Dismissed Army Brought Us Knives”), it was *rough*. Incidentally, Record Collector tells us there were 1,000 copies, which nowadays would seem like a big pressing…
By the time of this track though, a remix for the “You Gotta Get More Alive” compilation of the B-side of their “Filmed Initiative” 7” on Happy-Go-Lucky, Hood had embarked on the journey that would, eventually, make them the best band in the world (almost instantaneously on reaching that peak, they of course went and split up). This is a blissful, echo-splintered instrumental jewel from the “Spofforth Hill galacticos”, as we later dubbed them (pun intended).
5. Bit Shifter “The Connector Conspiracy”
This is ‘chiptune’, apparently: playful instrumental 8-bit melodies spread improbably over a full album of glowing neon post-Atari mayhem called, inevitably, “Life’s A Bit Shifter”. This, at 3 minutes just about the longest track on it, is light, airy and somehow makes complete sense: a little like the equally free-spirited Printed Circuit (q.v), just transplanted to somewhat less versatile technology.
6. Cheap Red “The Hurt On Her”
Cheap Red are Jen + Stew (again) plus Akina + Arland (Kanda) and “The Hurt On Her”, with its urgent strings and message of tough love, may be the finest moment from Cheap Red’s sole, self-titled long-player, one that sadly failed to perturb the scorers. We had a dalliance with including theDJ Downfall’s excellent Giallo version here, which combined the full lyric with a bolted-on Europop reboot (the album came value-added with a remix CD featuring several of the usual suspects) but in order to fit on all the other songs here, we’ve stuck with the original, and its ever-perceptive, razor-sharp words (“if you push the point, I’ll tell you / she needed more than you were capable of…”)
7. Other People’s Children “Delete Control”
Oh my. Talk about slept-on. Australia got plenty of look-ins to the 555 roster, via the likes oft he Cannanes, Fog & Ocean, Huon (of whom more…) and the “Empress Hotel” compilation, but OPC (aka Nicole Lowrey and Jason Sweeney) launched themselves to the toppermost boughs of the tree with “Delete. Control. Escape”, a collection of some of their finer moments on a frankly to-die-for CD. “Delete Control” itself is just one of half-a-dozen tracks that are stunningly nr-perfect, as strong even as the best moments of Sweeney’s Simpatico project. The songs here, largely eschewing the guitars that provided the undertow to Simpatico’s brittle if always electro-tinged indiepop, play off tales of human weakness against machine-curated soundscapes as well as anyone has managed these last few decades.
8. The Bright Lights “Marissa’s Song”
The Bright Lights were a true force of nature. They obviously listened to Boyracer’s fightingly fleeting, desperately romantic, helter-skelter high-tempo pop songs and thought “hmmm… we’ll try that, but even faster, and even rougher”. What this means is that the songs on their LPs “The Bright Lights” and “Drunker Than You Since ‘002” sound at constant risk of collapsing in on themselves: they combine brilliant melodies and raucous NOISE with complete frailty (try “The Edge Of Indifference”, which we nearly picked). But we’ve selected this excellent tune in part for memories of what it represented: the first track on their first release, it started in raw mono and even when it flicked into stereo, the roughness was striking (and is still very effective).
9. Printed Circuit “untitled”
We’ll tread carefully because this unlisted bonus track on Claire Broadley’s “Acrobotics” EP does rather reek of, how can we put this… copyright infringement. It’s a clandestine Brikolage remix of “Chevron”, freely sampling a certain esteemed UK MC (well, esteemed by us and a few of our vintage; he was hardly a household name) over Printed Circuit’s ever-engaging cut and paste robotics. Or, as we put it at the time,“a sweet bootleg in which a ragga narcissist faces the wrath of ms broadley's full armoury of circuitry.”
Bootleg or not, this is completely brilliant and if they’d ever been able to afford to clear the samples and employ a few pluggers we’d like to think this could have been 555’s smash hit single, the Top of the Pops moment which every great label really deserves. Claire notes darkly on her website that“many copies were destroyed (against my wishes)”, which of course would have reduced any fantasy of chartdom still further.
10. Hulaboy “Quirk Pop Sloganeer”
Hulaboy = Eric (Hula Hoop) + Stewart (Boyracer). As a duo, they’re wrongly overlooked, as proven by recent releases like “Fuck You, We Love Us”.
“Quirk Pop Sloganeer” comes from their “Olympic Krush On The Hulaboy” set, and we think it’s as good as anything they’ve ever done (yup, right up there with that LP’s opener “When Owls Cry”, or the fabulous “The English Mindset” from their split LP with the now-prized Tunabunny). It tells the tale of how Stewart and an unnamed rival from a fellow small town band – whose paths crossed early on, in gigs in local dives - have navigated their largely off-the-radar musical careers, and it carefully alternates bitterness and real pathos. Our best guess was always that the song might be about Pete Dale: we’re happy to be corrected, but we did spot that the montage on 555’s “Wetherbeat Scene” CD proves that Boyracer shared a bill with Razorblade Smile many years ago...
11. Steward “The Last Wasps Of Summer (Downpour remix)”
12. Downpour “How The West Was Wrong”
Stewart Anderson’s solo, electro-tinged venture Steward was a fixture of those halcyon early years of 555, before Boyracer were re-formed/exhumed, and he created plenty to savour in that guise (not least an excellent LP of remixes for Blackbean & Placenta called “I Was The Only Boy On The Netball Team”). His wonderful “The Last Wasps Of Summer” 7” single was sadly released on Orgasm Records of France, meaning we can’t include it here, but luckily this remix, the B-side to it, also appeared on 555 as part of the “Goodbye To Everything You Love” CD; as well as gracing the track list of “Chinese Noodles”.
Stewart Anderson’s solo, electro-tinged venture Steward was a fixture of those halcyon early years of 555, before Boyracer were re-formed/exhumed, and he created plenty to savour in that guise (not least an excellent LP of remixes for Blackbean & Placenta called “I Was The Only Boy On The Netball Team”). His wonderful “The Last Wasps Of Summer” 7” single was sadly released on Orgasm Records of France, meaning we can’t include it here, but luckily this remix, the B-side to it, also appeared on 555 as part of the “Goodbye To Everything You Love” CD; as well as gracing the track list of “Chinese Noodles”.
Whereas the A-side was carefully-paced, an assured mix of crisp electronic beats, weaved guitar, angst-filled vocals and brooding feedback, the Downpour version is an all-out assault, starting softly but soon exploding into mad-skillz D&B-style chaos like nobody’s business. This is all the more remarkable when one considers how understated was Downpour’s own, excellent bright pink vinyl 4-track 7” for the label, “Don’t Go Breaking My Art”. Or, indeed, how minimal is Downpour’s ambient gem “How The West Was Wrong”, laid-back horizontal atmospherics that couldn’t be further from the Scythian fury that envelops his remix of “Last Wasps” (oh, and we’d actually forgotten until recently, but mention now should you need any further excuse to seek out his stuff, that Downpour was none other than Chris Adams, of Hood and later Bracken).
13. Kyoko “P.E.T.S”
“Kyoko continue to seep almost unnoticed out of speakers…”
Andrew Jarrett’s Kyoko landed on planet 555 with their album “Co-incidental music”, as quietly stunning as their other releases, and “P.E.T.S” was the furthest they came from their shell – “gangly, late night… the sugargliders lounging at 33 rpm…” - although there are terrific songs elsewhere on the LP, not least “Boats”, “Reality Dawns On A Second Rate Sit-com Actor” and “Better Days! Coming Now!” You should also really try to delve within their mysterious, but wonderful “t.a.m.s”, a contribution to “You Gotta Get More Alive”.
14. Famous Boyfriend “We’re All Pretty Much Failures”
Oh, we werevery obsessed with FB awhile, marvelling as they “mutated from perfect post-Brighter indie (“We’re All Pretty Much Failures”) through basic skewed Steward-by-numbers (“The Last Drink Makes Me”) to their instrumental reincarnation as the Remote Viewer (witness the breakbeat-with-a-heart of “We Do What We Can”).”
Nor could you fault anyone able to release an LP called “Making Love All Night Wrong” (unfathomably limited to 120 copies), even if it was their first, self-titled album that leapt closest to our heart and prompted us to perhaps our most accurate assessment of their ouevre:
“the famous boyfriend wrote songs about being sorry for oneself, messing up relationships and opportunities, often through saying the wrong things and drinking too much of the right things....”
Anyway, “We’re All Pretty Much Failures” was the first time we heard them and much as they went on to be more sculpted and more refined, it remains as cherishably raw to this day.
15. Figurine “Connections”
Similar to, but indisputably better than, a hundred American combos that later made it “big” – and probably damned by being ahead of their time – Figurine dealt in cleverly-constructed electronic pop, topped off with aloof vocals yet somehow harking back to the ‘80s heyday of synthpop just as much as sounding like a platform to an intrigue-filled future. The “Discards” EP saw them reassembling cast-off beats by Isan, Rechenzentrum etc into new tunes, one of which is this charming ode to a lover so behind the times that (s)he’s still on a dial-up connection.
16. Mytty Archer “Grudge Like A Gun”
Our memory is that Mytty Archer’s long player “If I Had A Shovel” was passed over by labels who ought to have known better, meaning that in the end that this strong, confident, melodic album snuck out on 555. In a different time, this song in particular could have been a real indie hit: Jen Turrell’s soft vocals cross a spacey landscape of bass and background distortion, singing a song of quiet regret which memorably blossoms, just the once, into a Breeders-esque wall of sound before seductively swirling back into its original form.
17. Jean Bach “Furuftuta's Theme (Melodie Und Schlag Mix by Accelera Deck)”
18. Accelera Deck “Untitled (Remote Viewer remix)”
19. The Remote Viewer “All Of The Wckwc Want To Be Abstract (Third Eye Foundation remix)”
Sit back, rock back a glass of your off-licence’s most expensive bottle of wine and enjoy a chilled yet rewarding quarter of an hour as the baton changes hands, with Accelera Deck remixing Jean Bach, the Remote Viewer doing the honours for Accelera Deck and Third Eye Foundation erm, ‘obliging’ the Remote Viewer…
Sit back, rock back a glass of your off-licence’s most expensive bottle of wine and enjoy a chilled yet rewarding quarter of an hour as the baton changes hands, with Accelera Deck remixing Jean Bach, the Remote Viewer doing the honours for Accelera Deck and Third Eye Foundation erm, ‘obliging’ the Remote Viewer…
We have a couple of records at home by one Sascha Schierloh, aka Jean Bach. One is an unassumingly-clad 7” EP, “Jean Sans Le Playback”, obtained from Selectadisc in our younger days; the other an extraordinary, hour-long 20-track creation, “Smugglers Downloading Genoveva DMS Tapes”. Sometimes, it seemed like every act signed to 555 were a subgenre in themselves: with Jean, it could feel like every single track invented a new subgenre. The album, in particular, is a mostly brilliant if occasionally enervating construct which pools caustic IDM with, samples, mellowness, dancebeats, grinding noise, glitch and the kitchen sink. In doing so it yields several moments of near-genius, and we’d particularly commend the run of songs that starts with the gnawing, nagging, ironically-named centrepiece “Hitmix (Zeit Fur Zartichleit)”, as RMXd by Taciturne, and then spans the poptoned optimism of “We Won’t Contribute (Vermeintlicher UFO-Spuk Zerrüttelt Die Gemeinde)”, the relaxed beckon of “Falling Into Atmosphere (Tante Extra Markt Mix)“ and the instant, half-minute, “Colder Than Ice”.
But *as well* as those two fine records there was also this Accelera Deck remix from “Chinese Noodles”, the absolutely elegant “Furuftuta's Theme (Melodie Und Schlag Mix)” and while “Theme” is very far from the neo-industrial chaos of his shoutier moments, it’s a rather beautiful composition. Which seems entirely appropriate: he is a J. Bach, after all.
Accelera Deck was Chris Jeely, and 555 licensed his “Conviction & Crack” LP, turning it from a CD-r into vinyl, as well as showing off some guest AD tracks on label samplers. His “untitled” gets a sleek from the get-go, gently repetitive spin cycle from post-Famous Boyfriend electronic venturers the Remote Viewer.
As to the Remote Viewer’s own composition, “Wckwc” apparently stands for “West Coast Kids With Computers”, but we enjoyed this song for well over a decade without knowing that, which made its title at the time nearly as intriguing as the sounds within. The Remote Viewer weren’t always at their best in their early, 555 days (we’d still maintain that there are only a couple of truly top-drawer tracks on their eponymous first album) but this layered electronic gem, suffused with acoustic guitar, was much more like it, and a hint – thanks in part to the oh-so capable hands of Matt Elliott in his Third Eye Foundation guise - at the glories they would later ease to on albums for City Centre Offices et al.
20. Halkyn “Norway”
Ah, the mysterious Halkyn,“honey-scented welsh minimalists” who “shone a flickery flame for bedroom acoustic angst, post-homework no doubt” and delivered up two wonderful 7” EPs, five years apart, of nervy, sleepy shyness which went almost entirely unappreciated by the population of this globe: this number led off their first 45, “Behind The Snow”, whilst the later 10-tracker “Winterhill”, was“a spindly, echoey, ssshhh-fi ten-track delight - albeit so subtle at times as to be almost invisible”. “Norway” is one of Chris Coyle’s more ‘formed’ songs, but still impossibly delicate, incredibly beautiful. His exclusive contribution to one of the 555 comps – “I Tried So Hard, But I Was Already Mistaken” – is another 24-carat tearjerker.
21. Father “Now I’ve Changed My Minder (Hood remix)"
There were relatively few noisy guitar bands on 555: p’raps only Boyracer, the Bright Lights and early local signing Father, who made an eccentric and impressively shouty racket on songs like “Dancing Major”. This remix combines playful Hood junglistics with Father’s urgent, trebly guitar essence, and is a *must* for playing to all your mates from the “that’s not music, that’s just noise” camp who keep trying to tell you that Ellie Goulding, or some such nonsense, is now where you should be at.
22. Huon “Hung Up Over Night”
Mellow, slow-burning, beauteous title track by Melburnian musical mafia members Andrew Withycombe, David Nichols and Mia Schoen. Much of the album is loose, experimental and intimate, with low bass, deep voice, indie-rock stylings overlaid by moments of electronic whimsy; the brilliant “C86” is a particularly poignant record of time spent living in London bedsit land. But “Hung Up Over Night” the song is more focused than the bulk of the LP, a carefully-crafted mid-to slow paced popsong acrostic which dovetails Mia’s extra vocal with a lilting beat and some beautiful, subtle brass.
23. Saucer “untitled” [LP track 5]
As we revealed here, Saucer’s music gradually revealed its greatness to us over a long period, so it seems fully appropriate that we should close with this perfect example of how the gift of 555 still keeps giving.
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Ok, ok. Not everything issued on 555 was beyond reproach: it’s a long time since the Joan of Ass 10” has strayed anywhere near our turntable, for example. However, the hit-rate was still shockingly good, with so many other things we’d have *loved* to shoehorn in to this compilation had space allowed…Joshua Treble, the mysterious Error- Cancel.BOTS (“Chinese Noodles”, track ten: we still have no clue who or what that was), Kid 606’s “Temptation”, the Cannanes helping out Steward and wowing us with “Hey! Leopard”, slinky-sounding French duo Transbeauce, Amber#2 (who we managed to describe as “a Belgian REM, except good”), the punkish garage rock of Tricia Yates Fanclub and the (Nervous) Rex, arch madster 6955, Clohydris Diepholz (a Jean Bach prototype of some kind), Fingernail, Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers, Cex, Kanda, Peel favourites New Bad Things, huge swathes of 555CD55 (the Lucksmiths, Seaworthy, Caravanette)… the list stretches on, from the lanes of Wetherby to the Arizona sands.
So. Stewart - and your many compadres, your true friends who were golden - we salute your legacy.
