The recordings made by This Heat during the band's brief existence (1976-1982) are marked by a startling originality, a flame burning so intensely that it used up all the oxygen in the room and quickly extinguished itself. The trio of Charles Bullen, Charles Hayward, and Gareth Williams made music that was urgent and political and yet esoteric and subterranean; by turns bright and buoyant, then dark, nebulous and scratchy. The music borrowed freely from krautrock, musique concrête, dub, punk and industrial, but never sounded like anything other than This Heat.
Although certainly one of the most highly regarded and influential of the early British post-punk and industrial scene—along with bands like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and 23 Skidoo—This Heat over the years have suffered from the scarcity of good reissues of their work. The elusive These Records imprint would occasionally put Deceit or Repeat back into print in nice digital editions throughout the 1990s, but they would quickly go out of print again, entire runs snatched up by greedy collectors. The original LPs are notoriously impossible to track down, and prohibitively expensive to acquire if found. That's why this beautiful and (mostly) exhaustive six-disc box set Out of Cold Storage—a joint release between These subsidiary This Is and Recommended Records (re-christened ReR Megacorp)—is a godsend for those who have waited years to check out the complete issued works of one of the seminal bands of one of the most fruitful eras of modern music.
Delving into this mammoth box set is not like an archaeological dig, unlike some other groups from the era who haven't aged as well. This Heat sound as relevant today, indeed perhaps more relevant, than they did 30 years ago. Their influence seems to have exploded in the last few years, with the rise of post-punk influenced noise-rock bands toying with techniques such as ramshackle improvisation, drone, repetition, dusty analogue synths and outdated rhythm boxes, tape cut-ups and variable-speed editing, unorthodox vocal harmonies and jarring tempo changes. For anyone interested in exploring the roots and influences of groups such as Black Dice, Animal Collective or Excepter, Out of Cold Storage is the motherlode, collecting both of the band's full-length albums, as well as EPs, John Peel sessions and rare live material. Everything is packaged in digipacks that more or less replicate the original LP sleeves, along with a booklet containing extensive notes and interviews with surviving members and vintage photographs of the band. It's a lot to take in all at once, but for adventurous listeners there is nary a moment of wasted time across all six discs.
This Heat's debut self-titled album (often referred to as Blue and Yellow due to its duochromatic sleeve) still sounds as startling and original today as it must have all those years ago. A song such as "Horizontal Hold" begins in territory far from unfamiliar in the post-punk canon, obtuse upended rhythms and squalls of trebly guitar, tense angularity and a claustrophobic atmosphere of frigidity and angst.
However, the group takes so many bizarre left turns, stopping and starting at totally unexpected intervals; a textural wall of electronic tones that shift and swell with the lead guitar's discombobulated wanderings; sudden unexpected audio dropouts in which the song is reduced just to drums or keyboard. It's thrilling and disorienting music, using the basic building blocks of post-punk in a completely counterintuitive way. "Not Waving" matches trebly electronic drones with sketchy jazz improv, slowly transforming into something that sounds a bit like a Robert Wyatt piece backed by a gamelan orchestra. Extensive use of cassette varispeeds and stacks of delay turn sketchy percussive pieces such as "Water" into proto-industrial nightmare landscapes. "24 Track Loop" is a classic rhythm track, an upended skeletal dance groove treated to a galaxy of dubby studio effects, heavy cocaine-brain metallic flanges, weird phasing and sudden drops into the echo chamber. As awesome as anything done by TG or Cabaret Voltaire around this same time period.
sample:
- 24 Track Loop (Blue and Yellow)
A lot has been written about This Heat's follow-up album, the superlative avant-pop album Deceit, so I will be brief here. Suffice to say that it's one of the best albums of the era or any era, the group making a concerted effort to work within basic song structures, using emotionally-charged lyrics to weave a dark fever dream that feels personal, political, elegiac and revolutionary. There are moments of raging, incendiary anger, and moments of quietly expressive beauty.
Certain moments lay bare the recording process itself, snatches of feedback and jagged cuts. The band's multi-part vocal harmonies are used to stunning effect, the music a heady mix of krautrock-style motorik repetition, detuned guitar, intense beds of discomfiting electronics and shambolic noisemaking. The album is unparalleled in the postpunk canon, in which it has no obvious peer, and I've always found it easier to compare it to all-time classic Can albums such as Tago Mago or Ege Bamyasi. Not that Can ever had lyrics nearly as suggestive or meaningful as those on "S.P.Q.R." or "Cenotaph," among others, expressing not just the angst of their generation, but also of eternal struggles that rage throughout history. There's nothing else to say about it other than that it is easily one of the best albums ever recorded.
sample:
- Makeshift Swahili (Deceit)
The Health and Efficiency EP gets its own disc here, although it consists of only two tracks. The title track was This Heat's attempt at producing something sunny and positive as an antidote to the alarming wave of poisonous nihilism that threatened to choke their social milieu: "Here is a song about the sunshine/dedicated to the sunshine."
It's a beautifully dense rock song, possibly the most straightforward song This Heat ever recorded, though it doesn't lack the band's usual propensity for sudden left-turns into strange and disorienting territories, odd field recordings over chugging and repetitive beats. The B-side is "Graphic/Varispeed," which on the original LP contained a note that it could be played at any desired RPM: 16, 33, 45 or 78. Unfortunately, the limitations of the CD format necessitate that it appear at only one speed, in this case 45 RPM. It's a fascinating bit of thickly suggestive subterranean drone, dusty and analog as hell, sputtering and shifting speed at irregular intervals, sounding like the wet dream of modern droners such as Beequeen or The Hafler Trio. Made Available collects both of the band's Peel sessions, combining fantastically possessed renditions of tracks from the debut album with an amazing one-off heavy prog number ("Rimp Romp Ramp") and a handful of puzzling avant-jazz sketches that never really go anywhere, but I'd happily take This Heat's toss-offs over most band's finest hours.
sample:
- Health and Efficiency (Health and Efficiency)
Repeat is another favorite of mine, a collection of three lengthy tracks, two of which are variants of previous This Heat tracks. The title track is an extended variation on "24 Track Loop" that qualifies as a completely separate track, as the way it unfolds is in stark contrast to the version on Blue and Yellow, though it utilizes much of the same sound material. Add expert remixers to the list of This Heat's accomplishments.
The version of "Graphic/Varispeed" included here doesn't seem to change much from the Health and Efficiency EP, though perhaps it plays a bit slower (33 RPM?), which accounts for its extended length. The real gem here is "Metal," a 23-minute mind-melter of clattery industrial percussion that sounds at times like 23 Skidoo's The Culling is Coming or early Einsturzende Neubauten filtered through the sensibility of Indonesian gamelan, Harry Partch, Z'ev and Alan Splet's sound design for David Lynch's Eraserhead. Its tangible arrhythmia journeys through blasted-out furnace factories filled with rusted oil drums, metal pipes, shaman's rain sticks and trance-inducing tape loops and overlays. Repeat is certainly one of This Heat's more challenging works, but no less rewarding. The box set is named after Cold Storage, the abandoned industrial refridgeration unit in which the band recorded the bulk of their material, and its hard not to feel the oppressive frigidity and stark emptiness of this setting on recordings such as this.
sample:
- Metal (Repeat)
Finally there is the rare, unreleased live material, entitled Live 80/81, collected from performances at various European venues during the last tour of the proper trio of Charles, Charles and Gareth. The recording quality is less than ideal, sounding downright muddy most of the way through, with an overload of treble, frequent tinniness and other nagging problems.
Still, one can certainly hear what amazing shows these must have been, with the band performing tight and well-rehearsed versions of tracks from both albums and the EP. Unfortunately, the sound quality on this CD is little better than that on some of the more widely-distributed live This Heat bootlegs that have popped up over the years, which isn't saying much. I'm far from a "quality queen," but at least a little bit of range and fidelity is necessary to fully enjoy a live recording, and these qualities are in short supply on this CD. The liner notes of the disc threaten: "Further CDs from other stages in This Heat's music to follow, including collaborations, improvisations and site-specific work as well as other live CDs." One can only hope that subsequent material will be of slightly better quality, though I (and I imagine others, too) will eagerly buy it and listen no matter what shape its in.
It's hard for me to believe that there weren't enough studio outtakes or alternate takes or mixes to include at least a disc's worth of unreleased material, but that's just as well. What is here is exactly what is promised; all of the music ever released by This Heat, plus more. The packaging is fantastic; true fans will be overjoyed, and those wanting to check the band out for the first time could do worse than just take the plunge and get it all in one fell swoop. This is the most vital, energetic, dizzylingly creative music ever produced under the vague rubric of "post-punk," more than worth its weight in gold.
samples:
- 24 Track Loop (Blue and Yellow)
- Makeshift Swahili (Deceit)
- Health and Efficiency (Health and Efficiency)
- Rimp Romp Ramp (Made Available)
- Metal (Repeat)
- Aerial Photography (Live 80/81)
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