ROCK – MARK MORDUE
THESE days Severed Heads are getting down to a little “boogie-oogie-oogie” as Tom Ellard likes to call it. The release of their sixth album, ‘Bad Mood Guy’, hardens the dance direction suggested by their past few releases into a punishing rhythmic view of pop. It has been shattered, splattered and reshaped Head wise.
Ellard is largely the musical half of Severed Heads, while Stephen Jones is the group’s video maker. On stage their collaboration with each other, and a variety of outsiders, manifests itself in crunching dance music with electronic scribblings and sweeping ambient soundtracks, while a “home-brew videosynthesiser” pulses images and patterns across a screen.
Starting life in Sydney in 1979 as an extreme experimental entity, they’ve moved with the times through all manner of creative and line-up changes. Ellard has been the constant central factor, with Jones joining him in 1982 to cement a unique partnership.
Ellard, though, is “sick of people asking, ‘How many people are there in the band?’ It’s not a band! It’s a thingy”. Gifted with a rapid intelligence and an eccentric wit, what Ellard is describing is Severed Heads micro-corporate identity; a marriage of music and business that embraces other contributors like DJ Robert Racic and manager Andrew Penhallow under the same broad umbrella.
It’s a similar notion to that espoused by Heaven 17, a group that Severed Heads mirror tactically, if only a little musically. More obvious influences and reference points would be people like Cabaret Voltaire, Kraftwerk, Yello, Throbbing Gristle, Tuxedomoon and The Residents. All of which means Severed Heads are seeking to walk the tightrope between pioneering inventiveness and commercial acceptance.
They see what they do as the most contemporary form of “folk music” theme tracks for the technoculture of todav. Popularising it, though, has not proved so easy or obvious a relationship. Early Severed Heads in particular could be viewed as just plain irritating, kindergarten avant-garde mannerisms for diehard fans. Ellard recognises the criticism as having some validity.
“I admit the latest record is genre-fied. I admit it totally. One side is almost all made up of 12-inch singles.” Behind this admission, however, there’s a greater worry about Severed Heads’ character than the need for a variety of tone. In a popular culture already overstimulated, already enervated by speed, noise and a multitude of distractive signals, how much are Severed Heads risking a passive reflection of it in the images and music they produce? How much is it playing around and how much is it being pulled under?
“How can you work within something and yet be outside it?” responds Ellard. “And we truly say we are using some kind of metalanguage about what we do. Are we aware of where we are? Yeah, I think so. The reason why we are putting so much emphasis on in-house production, doing it all ourselves, is so that we can learn how the system works. From the compositional to the marketing stage, I can say I’ve been a part of it.
“So you’ve got to be aware from the start. Aware of whether you’re controlling it. or it’s controlling you. It’s like if there’s only one big newspaper selling you ‘the truth’. Do you set up a Fanzine in opposition, or do you join the staff of the newspaper, write there and start deviating?
“I think the fanzine solution is ineffectual. I don’t think pressing 500 copies of a record with your idea of reality on it, and sticking it out, is effective. I know, because I’ve done it. I’ve been there. I’ve bashed my head against the wall.
“And now here I am. I’m being distributed by CBS Records. We’re operating like Wa Wa Nee! Having tried a more idealistic approach – the fanzine one – I’ve joined the staff of the newspaper. It’s the only place to be.
WHERE AND WHEN: The Severed Heads can be seen at Melbourne University tonight and tomorrow at 9 pm.