BASKETBALLS bouncing, babies screaming on the television, the sound of fists hitting boxers’
faces,” the roguish voice breaks into a laugh. These words crackling across the line from late-night Australia sound strangely obscene in the hum- drum of early afternoon England. Just what is this anyway? Some profane list of favourite things?
Actually Tom Ellard is listing some of the sounds utilised for percussive effect on his band Severed Heads’ remarkable new LP ‘Since The Accident.
“Most of it is a collection of horrendous noises battling it out in a cesspit,” he giggles with relish. Despite nursing the odd sadistic intent towards the listener, though, it’s a work that’s light in heart if not in weight.
Yes- Severed Heads can be fun! Like The Residents or Holger Hiller, they approach music with a
crazed magpie humour and a well-honed sense of the ridiculous. The result is a span from the trash electro pop/horror of ‘Dead Eyes Opened’ (the absurdly affecting single), through the manic repetition of ‘Houses Still Standing’ to the unsettling exercise in noise mongering of “Golden Boy’,
They’ve certainly paid attention to the lessons of Throbbing Gristle although they’ve applied their
conclusions in directions of their own.
“You can’t really be in this genre,” Tom continues, “without being post-Throbbing Gristle in a way. But what distinguishes us obviously is our humour-we’re just enjoying ourselves too much to get involved in all that ‘Is the world as sad as it seems’ stuff.”
Driven by a burning passion for noise and fuelled by a continuous input of import electronic LPs (TG, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra etc.) Severed Heads, comprising Tom and a variety of associates, have released four LPs in four years. Now, thanks to Dave Kitson’s Red Flame label, the most recent one featuring Paul Deering and Stephen Jones as second and third Severed Heads becomes the first to be granted British release. Apparently more accessible than the first three ‘Since The Accident’ still provides more than the occasional shock to the ordered system, meshing tape loops and found sounds with unexpected melodies and the odd (and I mean odd) unashamedly psychedelic guitar line.
“Yeah Simon is quite strange really,” Tom agrees, “I mean his favourite band is AC/DC which is pretty odd to start with – it provides quite an interesting conflict with the rest of the band, which I think comes out in the sound. He’s not actually a full member of the band mind you, we borrow him every now and again from a band called Wet Taxis who are a sort of psychedelic bunch.
In the midst of an Australian electronic tradition that consists of either hippy hangovers or English
influenced, keyboard orientated synth-pop bands, Severed Heads are very much the outsiders. They think of themselves as sound experimentalists rather than a conventional synth band.
The experiments on ‘Since The Accident’ include a mischievous cut-up of the Pope’s message to Australia which has His Holiness repeating the bizarre mantra “Brassiere in Rome”, and, on ‘Epilepsy ’82’, the reading of a medical lecture over the daftest backing since The Residents and Renaldo and the Loaf. Then. of course, there’s the single ‘Dead Eyes Opened’ with a bizarre snippet from a murder story set against an absurd pop background.
“That voice was Edgar Lusgarten,” Tom explains, “this guy that used to do a justice programme on the BBC in the late ’50s. The sound of it was really amazing, though, every word he said had this dagger like clarity to it, it’s really one of the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard. The fact that he was talking about severed heads was a bonus.
So listen Tom, what exactly are Severed Heads?
“Oh, I suppose we’re a bit like Stockhausen on 45.”