Within the second instalment of a two-part prolonged characteristic on the band Prolapse, to mark the thirtieth anniversary of their superlative debut album, Martin Grey takes an in depth look again at their beginnings and examines most of their recorded output as much as their dissolution in 1999, and what transpired afterwards when the band reformed to play a number of reside reveals once more in 2015.
Leicester: A lot to reply for.
Sure, discover that I truly wrote Leicester – and never Manchester. And sure, additionally discover that I sneakily paraphrased a sure album title from a sure legendary band related to that exact same northern metropolis within the parentheses of the principle article title (extra of that shall be made clear later).
Typically considered the third largest metropolis within the Midlands (by way of complete metropolitan space inhabitants) after Birmingham and Nottingham, Leicester surprisingly has given us fairly a veritable choose’n’mixture of names, in a bewildering array of genres, over time. Not that it ever bangs its drum and blows its trumpet about it lots, not like some cities I may point out….
For starters, it gave us the venerable Engelbert Humperdinck (truly born in Madras, India as Arnold George Dorsey however relocated to UK as a baby along with his household – bizarrely adopting his acquainted stage title from a nineteenth century German classical composer), no-nonsense bassist John Deacon of Queen, veteran 60s folkster Davey Graham, late-60s to early 70s rockers Household, 70s’ rock’n’roll revivalists Showaddywaddy, early 80s put up punkers Yeah Yeah Noh and 2-Tone act The Apollinaires, legendary cult weird-psych eccentrics The Deep Freeze Mice and The Thurston Lava Tube, obscure and elusive sampladelic experimental dance poppers Discordia, genre-straddling indie-poppers Cornershop, late 80s storage punks/greboes Crazyhead and Gaye Bykers On Acid, and latterly Younger Knives and King Energy stadium rockers Kasabian…
However one act which not often if ever was afforded a lot of the identical consideration – besides with the extra accommodating weekly music publications on the time – was Prolapse, a bunch of defiant non-conformists who first obtained collectively while all had been college students on the metropolis’s former Polytechnic (now De Montford College) in 1991. Among the many undergraduate topics studied being English Literature, Archaeology and Physics….something arty most definitely didn’t even get a glance in. It was pure academia.
Shit Indie Disco Music: Nein Danke!
The story – apocryphal or real, it doesn’t actually matter, it’s nonetheless intriguing – goes that three or 4 of the members merely frolicked collectively within the scholar union bar from sheer boredom and disdain for the crap music that was being performed on the common disco (we’ve all been there I suppose!). Chat turned to ingesting and fairly quickly, they went from assembly recurrently on the desk to discovering themselves UNDER the desk, in a way of talking. This, evidently, was the place the concept for the band quickly transpired: the seeds had been sown. They obtained collectively after a number of drinks and started to concoct an unholy racket with no matter devices they might pay money for. A pair had guitars in order that was a begin.
In a matter of months a lot of the personnel had been sought and recruited with a view to forming, within the phrases of one of many members, ‘essentially the most miserable band on the planet with essentially the most miserable title ever making essentially the most miserable music’. And what title did they decide on? The organic time period thus:
PROLAPSE : noun
a displacement of a component or organ of the physique from its regular place, normally downwards or outwards, usually leading to it protruding from an orifice.
Positively a family title within the making that will quickly grace the weekly chart rundown on TOTP we predict….. or is it? However hey – earlier than you begin elevating your eyebrows and sighing, contemplate the context. The truth that the band have a bleakly black sense of self-deprecating humour! Prolapse is a perfect band title – one which absolutely encapsulates the unsightliness and ugliness of a lot of life generally. A phrase that conjures up a sure diploma of revulsion within the faint-hearted. However then, many would select to affiliate it with arses or rectums (significantly the bovine selection). That’s fairly shamelessly punk rock I suppose.
Granted, it’s not as downright crude and puerile as Bum Gravy (Melody Maker band title of the 12 months again in 1989, in case you forgot), however, contemplate this, it’s not that far faraway from Butthole Surfers both, is it? And look how notorious THEY turned!*
(*Having stated that – are you able to think about how totally heavenly it will be to have had Prolapse AND Butthole Surfers taking part in collectively – or co-headlining – on the identical trans-Atlantic invoice? In my wildest and most fanciful goals, I suppose)
Right here Come The Misfits!
Okay so who had been/are Prolapse…and why are these misfits so goddamned necessary to a few of us?
A broiling cauldron of conflicting and disparate personalities: two guitarists David Jeffreys and Pat Marsden, usually taking part in in full asynchronous types however nonetheless tight sufficient to helm in discernible constructions and melodies; a bass participant Mick Harrison, whose taut, insinuating 4 string assaults prowl and intimidate just like the bastard demon offspring of The Stranglers’ karate god J.J. Burnel; the fiercely polyrhythmic octopus of a drummer Tim Pattison, whose gleeful battery and assault appears like BOTH tub-thumpers from any basic Fall line up throwing one another down the steps; then lastly two wildly contrasting vocalists: Linda Steelyard could also be diminutive, however demure she definitely isn’t – her alternately emotionless, cool, angelic or spiteful retaliatory tones are the proper foil to the unfastened cannon that’s Mick Derrick – a gregarious lanky Glaswegian who merely mouths off at each alternative and blares out regardless of the fuck he likes with out in a lot as any sense of motive or decorum, apart from the truth that he needs to say one thing and say it loud and profoundly and to hell with anyone who stands in his method!
To keep away from additional confusion, we’ll hereby seek advice from the 2 Micks within the band by their geographical origin: thus Mick Derrick is ‘Scottish Mick’ and Mick Harrison is ‘Geordie Mick’ – in a reasonably amusing fashionable reprisal of an previous Dandy caricature (The Jocks and The Geordies) which I keep in mind fondly from my ’70s childhood!
Linda Steelyard remembers with amusement being recruited into the reside stage line-up by the others when the unique plan for her and a pal of hers (to each stand stage again, peeling oranges or making out just like the evil twins in The Shining and stare out the viewers while the band cranked out their standard cacophony) was scuppered as her mate didn’t present up. It was by means of this serendipity – plus the truth that she was at one level an merchandise with Scottish Mick which explains the affiliation – that she finally turned a extra common presence and contribute phrases and spoken/sung vocals that quickly turned the band’s defining signature sound as she and Derrick would commerce insults and even struggle on stage, to the bafflement (and generally alarm) of onlookers witnessing this.
Prolapse usually sound like an accident occurring – by no means thoughts ready to occur! The sheer tumult and turmoil that usually ensues when all six of them are on stage locked into their very own infernal battle zone is basically fairly one thing to behold. It’s a superbly dysfunctional blitzkrieg like no different: and but, paradoxically, due to the formidable rhythm part of Geordie Mick and Octopus Tim, now we have what’s a very exceptional dichotomy of simultaneous self-discipline and dysfunction. Only a few bands can carry this off with such verve and aplomb with out being derided as desperately beginner or consideration searching for for attention-seeking’s sake.
No matter occurs to prevail with Derrick and Steelyard battling it out within the vocal stakes, the ever reliable engine room of the band retains its heads down and continues to knock out a strong fusillade of motorik beats and deft counter rhythms – all of the whereas with the guitars normally sticking to 1 chord (or two in the event that they’re being beneficiant). Relentless, hypnotic, repetition is vital. Even when issues appear to be lurching uncontrolled like a crazed merry-go-round spinning free from its moorings (which is usually) the 2 of them someway handle to rein issues in with consummate ability.
Their influences are manifold…they will sound like a dozen bands at anybody time, from a dozen eras….however most followers and admirers of the sextet would concede that their closest non secular cousins, by way of the stress and turbulence that all the time types the undercarriage to their music, is The Fall. However add to this combine Krautfock / Neu! grooves (which then lend weight to them being usually regarded as a ‘extra violent Stereolab’, with whom they briefly shared a file label, Lissy’s, in 1995), basic post-punk bands like Gang of 4 and PiL (the Wobble-esque bass particularly on their later materials), shambling 80’s indie (suppose a Sarah information tweepop social gathering gatecrashed by a drunk), riot grrrl of the 90s (once more, they as soon as performed as a part of a reside showcase invoice that featured figureheads on the time Huggy Bear, however in all equity the band have by no means related themselves with this specific scene), defiantly weird and angular art-rock, and even the FX-laden ‘shoegaze’ bands of the early 90s….
They’re additionally – for me – a welcome and far wanted antidote to the turgid, retrogressive and depressingly conservative mediocrity of the entire lad-rock / Britpop wave that was making such a large splash on the radio and the charts round 1994-1995. Killing The Bland certainly… They stood defiantly aside from the rabble, a refreshing panacea to the hackneyed neo-patriotism and jingoistic flag-waving wannabes who out of the blue thought that to be present and up to date you needed to regress by about 40 years as a substitute (and to hell with being unique and modern)….Oh, and in addition to hold about basking within the glow of the shit-eating grin emanating from the sanctimonious Cliff Richard of politics that was Tony Blair throughout the really cringeworthy ‘Cool Britannia’ fad of 1997.
For Prolapse, conventions and guidelines are there particularly to be damaged. Conform to what others anticipate of them and play the sport? Fall (arf!) over themselves to look on the hole superficial charade that’s TOTP with their new single? They’d reasonably die! However as a substitute of taking part in good, they correctly decide to plough their very own furrow of semi-improvised stream of consciousness psycho-babble concerning virtually something that takes one’s fancy (Mick), or nasty, retributory phrases of existential despair, betrayal, struggling, disintegrating relationships and loss of life (Linda). What’s to not like about that?
Prolapse pictured in 1994.
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY:
Crate : Songs For Ella EP (1993)
Pull Via’ Barker EP (1994)
Their first releases had been on Cherry Pink Data and each produced in an deliberately lo-fi method by legendary punk singer and author/broadcaster/raconteur John Robb. Each showcased the band’s attribute knack for creating pummelling slabs of kraut-punk however nonetheless pulling in reverse instructions all on the identical time to the purpose the place the stress simply explodes….. Many tracks intentionally begin at a slower tempo after which rapidly improve in tempo, making a backdrop for the neurotic squabbling of the 2 vocalists: Steelyard’s musings and recriminations are countered by Scottish Mick’s belligerent rantings – coming throughout reasonably like a post-punk Rab C Nesbitt. (Psychotic Now from Crate is as aptly titled because it comes). The actual fact the band already sounded possessed of actual hearth and function right here boded nicely for his or her subsequent recordings.
Certainly, such was the volatility of the songs right here, with virtually every part tearing alongside at full tilt, I used to be reminded of a (reasonably amusing) anecdote John Robb associated to me once I pressed him about what it was like when he produced the band within the studio (Peter Hook’s Suite 16 in Rochdale). He advised me that a number of the members of the band – he didn’t reveal which although – had been usually arguing with each other about every part and something, and sooner or later this even spilled over into real drunken argybargy the place punches had been being thrown! Dwelling the depth of the music for positive!
Hear right here:
Doorstop Rhythmic Bloc EP (1994)
Pointless Walks To Dismal Locations LP (1994)
A taster for his or her first full size LP correct Pointless Walks To Dismal Locations, which adopted on the tail finish of 1994 (see full thirtieth anniversary reappraisal assessment of the album right here:), the title monitor of the Doorstop Rhythmic Bloc EP is available in two variants: a radio customary edit (not that it ever obtained any airplay on the radio besides John Peel who in fact had good grace to provide Prolapse the airwave publicity they merited) and the entire model which featured on the mum or dad album.
It’s their most rapid quantity to date, extra restrained compared to every part on the earlier two EPs, constructed principally round a sustained insistent one chord jam, and it’s virtually a pop track by their requirements. However simply while you suppose it sounds kinda candy with Linda’s repeated ‘get your personal / now to get your personal…’ chorus, Mick barges in along with his standard non sequiturs… ‘ALL ABOARD THE ARK ROYAL!’ – he bellows just like the human foghorn that he’s so proud to be.
Issues revert to kind on the frantically clattering Pile Tent – the drums and bass strike up a hyperactive St Vitus Dance of kinds while Mick and Linda commerce their insults throughout the clangorous wall of noise.
This type of vocal interaction between the 2 is curiously paying homage to a extra demonic Sugarcubes – the place Björk’s breathless, rapturous exhortations are duly shot down by the unbearable co-‘singer’ Einar Orn belching about not liking fucking lobsters (not copulating lobsters, you perceive, oh, by no means thoughts…). However issues do get very surreal nonetheless – that is Prolapse keep in mind, not soddin’ Sleeper – when the phrases proceed as stream of consciousness interjections from each Mick and Linda – the place one makes an attempt to outsmart the opposite with essentially the most indirect and profound couplets they will give you completely apropos of nothing.
And therein lies the appeal of this juxtaposition of the 2 contrasting voices: most of what they’re singing about might be improvised anyway. Certainly Mick freely admits to creating up the phrases on the spot, usually when performing reside (their ability at making these impromptu asides will be traced again to the truth that each have additionally had turns performing in theatre up to now).
Hear right here:
TCR 7″ single (1995)
Backsaturday LP (1995)
When House Invaders Have been Huge 7″ (1995)
Flexed (1996)
It’s price noting that every of Prolapse’s 4 full size albums throughout their preliminary temporary tenure had been launched on a distinct label. Backsaturday got here out on Lissy’s Data, while the one which preceded it, the comparatively sprightly twisted anti-pop of TCR, was on yet one more: Love Prepare. A second single launched the identical 12 months comprised an additional new monitor When House Invaders Have been Huge – a Peel Session recording – coupled with a double AA facet of a Gang Of 4 cowl Love Like Anthrax. This was issued on former label Cherry Pink Data.
Second album Backsaturday, nonetheless, is Prolapse at their most experimental and opaquely impenetrable. It defied straightforward pigeonholing (regardless of clear nods to Nurse With Wound and Faust on a number of of the numbers) and its operating size too fell halfway between that of a full album and a mini-album: simply shy of 38 minutes. Nonetheless, quarter-hour of that complete operating time is taken up with the stupendous opening monitor Flex which is solely astonishing in its sheer execution and sense of dynamism: starting very quietly and slowly with a tentative guitar determine earlier than progressively accelerating in tempo and rising in quantity and depth because the bass and drums and noise kick in : then it’s a dizzying and cruel NEU-rotic rampage crammed with Steelyard coos and Derrick in full throttle rant mode, which leaves you gasping for breath.
Some tracks are extra cryptic and ambient, while others are unrelentingly visceral and confrontational, dominated by the fiercely belligerent drums and growling bass interaction with Mick and Linda as soon as once more exchanging righteous verbal crossfire – like on the gnarled and disquieting Each Evening I Am Mentally Crucified (7000 Occasions). Many of the extra avant-garde tracks clock in at simply two minutes or much less, while two others – Framen Fr. Cesar and the very Metallic Field-sounding Zen Nun Deb – are stranger, weightier and extra ponderous, stretching past 6 to eight minutes apiece (hear out for the bizarre disembodied recorder which pipes up on the previous). It’s by far essentially the most uncompromising that Prolapse have ever sounded. Their subsequent few choices although would see some gentle and color – and dare I say even accessibility – emerge from the suffocating and overly claustrophobic noisescapes on present right here, however not earlier than the album’s lead monitor Flex was remixed and issued as a extra (ahem) ‘club-friendly’ 12″ single the next 12 months, titled Flexed.
Hear right here:
Killing The Bland EP (1997)
Autocade EP (1997)
The Italian Flag LP (1997)
By this level Prolapse had honed their order-out-of-chaos-and-back-again to such some extent of refinement that, having signed to Radar Data, there was now severe discuss of getting them onto the radio…..unthinkable as it will appear. In any case, solely Peel had the knowledge and good judgement to play their information on his night present, who else would?
The primary of the 2 new singles that will path the following album, Killing The Bland, might not have set heads and hearts fluttering with playlist programmers, nevertheless it was nonetheless much more rapid than something on Backsaturday. It’s a breakneck rampage by means of standard territory – with flailing drums, terse guitars and even classic burbling synths, with Mick and Linda’s parallel full-throttle monologues current and proper, however there’s even a refrain right here that Mick belts out with one thing akin to ardour that was unprecedented in any earlier providing.
The B-sides on this EP are fascinating of their breadth of sonic experimentation, most notable of them being Worry Of Enamel: a queasy, unsettling blizzard of distant bleached out violin drones and disquieting clipped guitar atmosphere which is each menacing and foreboding….while the decidedly odd Snappy Horse sounds virtually like a Mediaeval folks tune performed on what appears like ukulele and mandolin.
Autocade, the second single, was – and stays – the band’s most divisive second. It’s a shameless easy guitar-driven indie pop track of which there isn’t a equal in the remainder of the Prolapse canon. An entire anomaly (and in Scottish Mick’s eyes, an entire aberration – he loathed it and had nothing to do with it, strolling off stage at any time when they carried out it reside: to today he regards it as a lame nadir within the band’s whole recorded profession.), it options simply Linda singing and it’s certainly a really – whisper it – business sounding tune which is consciously geared in direction of radio play. Maybe this was the band’s sole concession to that dreaded beast known as ‘compromise’. And it paid off – it was their largest ‘indie hit’ and in addition made a fleeting look within the (very) decrease reaches of the correct UK singles prime 100.
However even right here, as soon as once more the B-sides salvaged [artistic] victory from the jaws of defeat in a way of talking. Autocade additionally featured as a radically completely different and defiantly fucked up experimental noise remix (hear beneath) subtitled Didactic Feral Management, the place, over some muffled and disembodied digital loops, Linda’s candy vocal is unceremoniously gatecrashed by a deafening roar of pure speaker-shredding static virtually as if some digitally processed Godzilla had burst in by means of the partitions and made mincemeat out of everybody. It remembers the confrontational avant garde manglings of Faust and Stephen Stapleton (Nurse With Wound). In contrast to Mick although, I believe Autocade is a good monitor regardless, and it’s good that the band can pull one thing like this off regardless of themselves.
Hear right here:
The 13 tracks that comprise their third – most excessive profile – album The Italian Flag, issued in September 1997, are among the many finest that the band have ever launched. It’s a constantly sturdy set which touches on all the bases they’ve made so distinctively their very own since their debut. It’s their most fully-formed and consummate providing, an eclectic tour de drive, and to today, a lot of their most ardent followers cite it as their undisputed masterpiece. Produced by Donald Ross Skinner – finest identified for his affiliation with Julian Cope – this may increasingly arguably be Prolapse’s most interesting hour.
One other satisfyingly wonderful thing about The Italian Flag is that, in addition to essentially the most strong set of songs on supply right here, there at the moment are lyrics offered so you possibly can truly MAKE OUT WHAT MICK IS RANTING ABOUT. Much more cleverly, the CD booklet has each respective units of lyrics by Linda and Mick cut up throughout separate halves (or on separate inside sleeves within the case of the two x vinyl album) in order that they successfully make out like yin and yang….
The opening triumvirate of Slash/Indirect, Deanshanger and Cacophony No. A are flawless and seamless, within the method through which all of them cross-fade into each other, thus reinforcing that great sense of continuity. In truth all through the album numerous the tracks do an analogous factor, which is testimony to how completely the entire thing is sequenced.
Each Mick and Linda are on type right here: the previous rambling on in his inimitable caustic and unrelenting method smashing the ornaments, kicking over all of the statues and stomping over all of the freshly laid cement with glee as Linda tries to get a phrase in edgeways (‘you’ll by no means perceive me’ she retains singing earlier than Mick shoots her down with extra of his hyperfast unintelligible babble).
Against this, the next Deanshanger (it’s the title of a village in Northamptonhire for individuals who are curious) has some hilarious Mick diatribes specializing in his utter hatred of the Eighties (‘the music was crap/ the claise was crap/the hair was crap/besides one…’ ‘…Gdansk was crap/Warsaw was crap/Solidarity was crap/ Aw ae it was crap!’). And, as if to ram the purpose residence, he promptly pulls off one thing completely sudden and does a neat activate the bagpipes too. Brilliantly off the wall bonkers.
Cacophony No. A – extra accessible by comparability – has an alternating cease/begin/ quiet/loud association with Mick intoning his unusual disjointed story of battle fatigue, however when Linda’s vocals weigh in concurrently the intermittent cathartic launch of guitars – sweetly trilling traces like ‘you make me really feel abused’ and ‘by no means perceive your lies’ – issues even bring to mind Blondie circa Parallel Traces (not a nasty factor on this case).
Elsewhere, I Hate The Clicking Man adopts a masterful deployment of pressure and launch: alternately increase a way of anticipation by way of a slower tempo earlier than the floodgates open and the monitor quickens once more. Subsequent up is the second of the album’s killer triptychs: Return Of Footwear, which is essentially the most paying homage to Stereolab on right here (however then it’s simply this one quantity whose guitar remembers the distinctive two observe riff of the latter’s Jenny Ondioline), adopted by the existential nightmare A Day At Loss of life Seaside which opens with distorted wind-lashed fairground sounds. Unusually that is the one different monitor on right here (aside from Autocade) which options simply Linda on vocals – Mick is totally absent – nevertheless it’s fairly the antithesis of that different pop tune.
This monitor then cross-fades into the mesmerising, trance-like calm of Bruxelles: it’s a prolonged phrase affiliation poem of kinds the place Mick and Linda commerce single random phrases spoken alternately virtually as if in a hypnagogic state…..they repeat the sequence of phrases again and again, however the phrases are inconsistently distributed between them – Linda uttering 21 while Mick solely 14…. so every time Mick hits his 14th phrase, Linda remains to be reeling her fifteenth by which level Mick is again to his first phrase once more – they usually develop into mismatched at any time when their respective cycles meet once more. It’s a curious and really very unusual piece, however there’s a real serenity to proceedings right here by means of complete distinction to the tumultuous, usually frenzied, din that has preceded it to date.
Simply because the listener thinks that the album goes to finish on this comparatively low-key observe, the band cost defiantly again into life once more, all weapons blazing, with the extreme valedictory barrage of Visa For Violet And Van, after which as that lastly recedes into the space, you get this awkward pregnant silence……just for it to be adopted by the downright weird, repetitious and virtually nightmarish neo-folk chant of Three Picket Heads (which sounds utterly improvised), that serves as a suitably surreal footnote to shut out and spherical off this impressively constant album.
That stated, The Italian Flag appears like no person else both. It’s absolutely the pinnacle of greatness and a file which, 27 years on, has nonetheless not misplaced any of its efficiency and wayward brilliance.
Hear right here:
Fob.Com 7″ & CD single (1999)
Ghosts Of Lifeless Aeroplanes LP (1999)
Leaping labels once more (this time for Cooking Vinyl), Prolapse difficulty what seems to to be their final recordings simply because the previous decade is beginning to fade into the sundown. Preceded by the one Fob.Com, the fourth album continues the extra achieved and stronger preparations discovered on predecessor The Italian Flag. A lot of that is right down to the producer of the final album, Donald Ross Skinner, now successfully the seventh member of the band, and along with his knowledgeable studio prowess, the brand new songs that comprise this album sound rather more centered, ditching utterly the unbridled chaos and cacophony of the previous.
Even the lyrics are extra intelligible this time round as a result of you possibly can truly make out what each Mick and Linda are singing/saying without having to resort to the phrases printed (to be honest solely The Italian Flag ever gave us the posh of a written perception into precisely what was sung/ranted/shouted/yelled on the album). However for those who suppose this implies Prolapse have develop into extra accessible on this file, then suppose once more. Ghosts Of Lifeless Aeroplanes is an altogether way more indirect and cryptic beast.
It’s not rapid on first hear – there aren’t any accessible songs (or something remotely approaching a pop monitor) on right here: as a substitute there’s a uniformity of temper and execution on a lot of the songs right here, accentuated by the comparatively clear and dry manufacturing that pervades all through. The extra typical sounding and uptempo Fob.Com clearly comes closest, provided that it was the only real single in any case. However even right here the manufacturing tips renders Linda’s vocal fragmented prefer it’s being sung by means of a Leslie speaker and the occasional jagged bursts of sheet steel guitars do their utmost finest to overpower every part else.
The reasonably creepy opener Essence Of Cessna is insidious in its masterful deployment of understated however eerie atmospherics (backwards guitars and alien swooping noises) and Linda’s hushed, childlike narrative – backed by her personal disembodied cooing – offsetting Mick’s equally restrained brogue recounting his personal. As ever, one voice sits on the left channel and the opposite on the proper…..however they seem to have swapped locations this time. In the meantime, the bass and drums are insistent – the previous as soon as once more greater than a little bit Wobble-esque circa Metallic Field.
Linda’s reflective musings present some type of respite, sonically talking, on the calmer and extra downtempo Adiabatic (solely augmented with Mick’s rancorous outbursts at any time when the becalmed sections happen), however Mick then takes full centre stage for Cylinders V12 Beats Cylinders 8, proffering his standard misanthropic put-downs at an unseen and unidentified adversary whom he repeatedly refers to as ‘a septic tank of a person’. Linda is solely content material to ahhh wordless backing harmonies as he continues his venomous diatribe for a lot of the following 5 minutes or so.
The deep PiL bass sounds resurface on the juddering, throbbing subterranean pulse of After After – which buzzes and drills its method into your cranial synapses with Linda’s massively amplified whispers accompanied by all method of disparate and otherworldy space-craft noises creating a way of unease, earlier than a return to the hyper-frenetic super-fast punk rampage of previous Prolapse (for one track solely) in Authorities of Spain – which is solely one other showcase for Mick to spew his more and more hysterical invective apropos of nothing, saving his most demented and deranged screaming to declare ‘The Authorities of Spain is all evil!’ – his rising pitch veering utterly off the dimensions, leaving hardly any house for Linda to get even her phrases in edgeways.
However then possibly that’s the complete level of their compulsively fascinating double act in a nutshell. And that’s additionally the entire idiosyncratic appeal of the fairly singularly distinctive entity that was Prolapse.
Hear right here:
After the deluge got here the drought.
Prolapse merely fizzled out (with no nice dramas, no acrimony) and quietly known as it a day quickly after this album and went their separate methods taking on number of completely different tasks. Scottish Mick went again to being an archaeology researcher however shifting to Oslo, Norway, while one of many guitarists (Pat) relocated to Denmark and pursued just about the identical. One other (David) headed Stateside to proceed educating in an artwork school, Linda took up a full time journalism profession with the Leicester Mercury newspaper, while the others Octopus Tim and Geordie Mick continued with taking part in music in different incarnations and guises.
However, regardless of being all separated and having day jobs, lots of the former Prolapse members nonetheless harboured that ever-irrepressible itch to proceed making sporadic recordings and collaborate with different musicians. Some even reunited underneath new names: Mick Harrison and Linda Steelyard briefly attached underneath a challenge known as Ears Go Fff! Mick Derrick and Pat Marsden, regardless of each being in their very own Scandinavian enclaves, someway created new noises underneath the title Cha Cha 2000**. Busiest of all was drummer Tim Pattison: he’d be holding the fort on the stool and elsewhere with varied esoteric names: MJ Hibbert & The Validators, The Fabians (visitor solely), Ludd Gang, The Council, and extra. The one one lacking musically in motion was Dave Jeffreys.
**Taking their title after a reside album by a late-80s challenge that includes Klaus Dinger from Neu! (now curiously known as La! Neu?), Cha Cha 2000 didn’t truly file a lot, however their kooky and half-reverential / half-ironic ACOUSTIC one-off cowl model of Autobahn by Kraftwerk was fairly impressed: it was launched to nice acclaim and enthusiastically reviewed by the music weeklies, even making the indie chart prime 20 …. and but it was all augmented and assisted by MJ Hibbert of all folks.
Recent stirrings…
For greater than 15 years, it appeared that the chance of this risky union of six fairly distinct personalities reassembling once more for any additional musical endeavours touched on negligible. Then out of the blue in 2015 they obtained a name… from Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai….to play with them because the latter had been doing a number of reveals to mark their very own twentieth anniversary. Braithwaite was an enormous fan of Prolapse’s loopy, compulsively cacophonous racket and was all too wanting to see the band regroup even when only for a few reveals.
Unusually sufficient, the re-grouped Prolapse had little hassle easing themselves again into a number of reside performances and shortly it was sufficient to contemplate possibly recording some new noises at a later juncture. However not earlier than they determined to embark on a brief ‘reunion’ tour of some UK venues….one in all which was the legendary Manchester Roadhouse (the place I final noticed them in 1997/1998 – and the venue which, together with the equally sadly missed Boardwalk throughout city, I ended up catching by far essentially the most reside gigs between them – one thing like 67 in complete – throughout the interval from 1988 to 2015).
Nonetheless, by this level I used to be hardly on social media as such (I nonetheless detest it to today actually) and I used to be totally disconsolate to find that they’d already performed their low-key Manchester date there on the identical evening I used to be truly within the metropolis, having simply returned from internet hosting an acoustic music occasion happening ON A TRAIN from Glossop Labour Membership again to Manchester Piccadilly (these had been month-to-month folks trains which I helped run and compere for 15 years between 2005 and 2020). If I had identified Prolapse had been taking part in I might have made a straight beeline to the venue – coronary heart in mouth and drooling deliriously in anticipation – with out hesitation. And the worst factor was: regardless of being again in Manchester round 10.15pm that very same evening, and discover myself standing lower than 200 metres from the hallowed venue’s door, I as a substitute caught the bus again residence southwards down the A6 to Stockport.
Aaaaghhh, I suppose that’s the type of canny shit and dangerous timing you need to put up with while you’re a rabid Prolapse fan, sigh…..
Revisit Prolapse reside at their 2015 Manchester Roadhouse gig in full right here (thank fuck for YouTube, once more!):
Additional future exercise
Prolapse continued to sporadically get again collectively for additional occasional reside escapades for the following few years and even after the dual debacle that was the Covid Pandemic and the Brexit Breakdown (woeful, soul destroying shit fests each of them), curiosity within the band amongst their trustworthy following was nonetheless buoyant. Two welcome releases each containing beforehand unavailable Peel Periods had been issued in lovely double 7-inch vinyl units by Treasured Recordings (so fascinating that even yours really hasn’t managed to get copies of both as a result of their supreme shortage, harrumph!), and some extra reside gigs had been loved in 2022.
There’s nonetheless discuss of latest Prolapse materials as soon as the band are capable of reassemble in a studio to see how issues transpire….certainly two new songs had been already premiered at a number of additional reside gigs which befell in late September this 12 months, to all those that had been fortunate sufficient to witness them (that will evidently not be me then) – together with the humungous, gushing assessment of their Con Membership, Lewes date, the report of which will be discovered right here.
All of us at the moment are a fuck of lots older, wiser and greyer… and possibly a bit extra cynical, world-weary, punch-drunk and saggier across the edges too, however the gloriously magnificent discordant racket that Prolapse have been blessing us with ever since 1994 will all the time be one thing that defies and transcends not simply altering fads and traits, however, heck, gravity too. Probably the most unbelievable and charming bands ever for my part, reside and on file – they are surely distinctive, and that’s why my adoration for them won’t ever die!
Prolapse can be discovered on bandcamp. What the fuck are you ready for? Search, click on and DEVOUR!
all phrases by Martin Grey
different articles and evaluations will be discovered right here:
Acknowledgements:
Group footage taken from Wikipedia’s entry on the band.
A particular shout to the Brighton and HoveNews for the incredible and pleasant write up of Prolapse’s current present in Lewes – god I want I may have been there!
And naturally invaluable gratitude to You Tubers missbarbell and Norm Waz who so graciously shared their footage of the 2015 Manchester Roadhouse gig I so desperately wished that I used to be at that fateful Thursday evening!
We’ve a small favour to ask. Subscribe to Louder Than Battle and assist maintain the flame of impartial music burning. Click on the button beneath to see the extras you get!
