21 years ago Steven Stapleton was invited to swing by BMS Studios inLondon late one night by resident engineer Nicky Rogers. Stapletongathered up friends John Fothergill and Heman Pathak and made somerecordings with a few goals in mind: very long tracks and no vocals -they hated songs. With the eye catching infamous artwork a classic wasborn, pressed in a limited quantity of 500 (probably because thereweren't enough fans or enough money to make more). It was actuallyquite buzzworthy around London and reviews did pop up around town(maybe not the most favorable) but people were interested in the wackcover artwork at least. In retrospect, it's a bunch of sloppy noisemade by three drugged-out naive kids who were frustrated doing boringjobs of making signs for example, bringing a ton of noisy toys into thestudio. Do I hear a Merlin in here? Loads of wanky guitars color thefirst side of the LP while the second side consists of morenon-conventional noisemakers and randomness. The beauty is that theseguys weren't taking themselves nearly as seriously as modernimprovisationalists, there was indeed an element of purity apparent.None of the tracks really end up where they started, and might servethe purpose of being a great soundtrack to a drug-influenced evening.This album provides an excellent reference point, and the newlyreleased repackage has a complete booklet with old photos of theoriginal trio, a restored front and back cover and even a letter froman A&R Rep at Epic Records in NYC asking to hear some more NWWrecords. (Imagine a world with NWW signed to Epic!) Anyhow if thatwasn't enough, the music's been cleaned up from the analogue tapes andthere's a bonus 15+ minute track recorded in September with Tibet andColin Potter. What's a new track doing on an old reissue? In a strangejustification it belongs, as the track consists of Tibet reading thatfamed list of influencors from the original sleeve, over a minimalamount of sound. It's nothing too impressive but mildly amusing andneat to have an archive of (pretty much like the rest of this record).While the new edition is a nice thing to own, if you're not all thatconcerned with new packaging or a new track, this might not be worthyour cashola. On the other hand if you never picked it up, there's nobetter time than the present. Once again I must state that I wouldpersonally like to see 'Insect and Individual Silenced' and 'AutomatingVol. 2' surface on CD before more reissues like this and 'ThunderPerfect Mind' materialize.
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