"Cue hallucinotronic spypunk soundtrack..."
Grant Morrison

"The original sound was always meant to be almost the film soundtrack to the story. It wasn't meant to be entertainment as such. It was meant to be information, dialogue and questions. A huge question mark all the time - is this okay, what does this mean, what does it mean about people, why are people so cruel and/or stupid, why is so much apparently meaningless, what is meaningful and what's funny and occasionally a dirty joke, or something more surreal and absurd, but a constant questioning."
Genesis P'Orridge

The end of the 90's saw a number of unique, brave new bands with their own unique sound bite the dust across the UK. Peaking at a point when the press were still pushing the retro, nationalistic corpse of BritPoP , and most of the British promoters were pushing for equally long dead revivals, [remember new-mod? The new wave of new wave? Remember when Oasis were on Channel Five every other minute?] ,these loosely affiliated collection of bands, DJs and artists maintained a low profile by pooling resources and carrying on regardless.

Acts such as The Compsey Tribunal, Stray Dog City, MeMePleX Prime, Magnetic North Pole, and Nubia, continue to release material through their own self established labels (Most notably TAR and Magnetic North Pole Sound Lab] but the sense of comradeship once afforded by this mysterious scene has been and gone. Now it's more than just a game.

Cop-show bass, spy-theme keyboards, John Barry guitar twangs, product as propaganda, polo necks, Bond-bad-guy haircuts, cocktails…

Fueled by obsessions with everything from crime and computers, to sciences fact and fiction, style over fashion, Information and disinformation. Sub - version. Escape; The Compsey Tribunal, Broadcast, Asian Dub Foundation, Damage Manual, Nubia and Odeama [sic]. These people are returning to a seam of cinematic, psychedelic, anarchic, and inventive music that has continued to run right through the history of popular culture. It's a buried history. And all the more intriguing for it.

For SpyPunk on more familiar territory see Massive Attack's Mezzanine, and Scorn's more recent 'trip-hop with the lights off' taking Public Image's Metal Box into the Hollywood budget of 90's digital recording: see the return of a heady cocktail of Psychedelic, Cinematic, Anarchic, Groovy, Disturbed Anthems: Senser, Asian Dub Foundation. Not to be confused with the quasi-politicized Papa Roaches of the current 'new metal' revival [someone's been out to the graveyard with a shovel again] - that sense of unfocused hatred: the fine line between 'subverting the system from the inside' and simply 'playing the game'.

In the Zeros, it almost seems as if music is no longer the place for new ideas. It's been abused and reduced to such an extent that up and coming art-techies-posers-thinkers-doers are turning to other forms of expression, destruction and time wasting.

Part of the power of this music derives from the friction between contrasting elements: friction (live/electronic elements; memes (influences) / new adventures). Music with a cinematic palette. The silver screen glitters in the grain of the atomized guitars, in newbreaks and liquid bass. Not to be confused with Robbie 'cynical fat bastard' Williams' Bond impersonation, or the latest retro loungecore revival.

There is a thread-line that runs right through from the likes of Massive Attack and Tricky, to Public Image and Magazine getting into dirty dub and funk with a punk sensibility, and a penchant for suitably gangster-esque pinstripe suits.

In 1990 Scorn transformed themselves from purveyors of studio-thrash-dirge to the proto trip hop later touched on by Massive and Tricky et all... Both Massive and Scorn were perhaps surprisingly inspired by Pil, who's 1983 album The Flowers of Romance features at least two tracks (Banging the Door and Track 8) that read like audio blue prints for Trip Hop - slowed down hip hop beats, heavy on the bass, clanking guitar sounds, dub-inspired studio experimentation. And that sense of tension...

It's still early days for the likes of the likes of Camps and MeMePleX Prime [a name lifted straight out of the pages of Grant Morrison's Invisibles series]. Releases are planned, but all 'propaganda' will be kept strictly 'in-house' as far as they are concerned: the people involved have no intention of having their culture snatched from their hands [although with the likes of Broadcast and Magnetophone being snatched up by major indi-labels like Warp and 4AD the chances are slim].

And the thread of Punk stretches on still in the Zeros, with comix guru Grant Morrison and his fantastic Invisibles touching on all the right hot-spots: subversion, magick, music, drugs, guns, psychedelic spy-sensibilities, even transforming himself into a kind of fetishized Bond-henchman for the Zero's [the shaven head, the leather reefer, the polo-necks].

The Invisibles is almost like a fabulously subversive propaganda, thinly disguised as a graphic work - mixing healthy doses of Anarchy, fashion and anti-fashion, punk and dance culture (the future Buddha turns out to be none other than an E'd up dance-punker from liverpool), magick, sex, conspiracy theory, and sciences fact and fiction. And he has the ability to make all of this cool/uncool stuff work!

Beneath all of the Active Bland, things have always been cooking away beneath the surface. Spy-Punk is a phrase first coined by Grant Morrison, author of the ultra cool, subversive comic book The Invisibles.

Morrison takes every conspiracy theory you ever/never heard and mixes them all up with a healthy dose of style, politics, and cutting edge scientific theory (liquid information, time travel, multiverse theory). So good it brings tears to my eyes!

The Invisibles is a fabulously rich cocktail of 60's TV Spy Series, Sciences fact and fiction, disinformation, punk, Situationism, irony, humour, psychedelic and the 70's New Wave fiction of Anarcho-Hippy Michael Moorcock.

Moorcock also deserves a special mention for his pioneering use of parody, irony, political and scientific theory. Of particular interest are his Cornelius Chronicles, a series of books concerning a certain Jerry Cornelius - assassin, anarchist, rock star, time-traveller, messiah, who throughout the series continued to die or disappear, frequently reappearing as a woman, a man of many cultures and races, and a scrawny teen dreaming of rock stardom.

In Cornelius, Moorcock succeeded in discussing issues of stereotype, prejudice, sexism, politics and time, whilst continuing to parody the likes of 007 as the sexist, outdated, flippant upper class fool James Bond really is. Morrison picks up on a number of Moorcock's themes, even going so far as to pay homage to Cornelius in the form of anarchic messiah Gideon Stargrave...

More recently, Morrison's work has been lifted wholesale by films like The Matrix and even Fight Club - whilst riddling these new, experimental areas with the same old sardonic attitude to death, sexuality, and guns... see what America did to Doctor Who, or even The Avengers).

Spy-punk top 5

Reward - The Teardrop Explodes
Sums it all up: sounds like the theme to a New Wave Avengers, anthemic horns coupled with a new-wave beat, a sinewy bass, a hint of psychedelic. Classic.

Anvil Vapre EP - Autechre
The EP that spawned a thousand dirty beats! Icy, minimal-complex, Anvil Vapre is a joyous fusion factory that sounds like Throbbing Gristle doing breakbeats - brilliantly. Cinematic, crazed and cool makes for the perfect spy - punk sound!

The Order Of Death - Public Image Limited
Taken from the 'This is What You Want' album, this cinematic, sinewy track was originally produced by Pil as part of the soundtrack to the film Corrupt (alias Cop Killer), in which Pil mainman John Lydon plays, believe it or not, a deranged punk assassin who goes around knifing corrupt cops!

Feet Like Fins - [Otherness EP] The Cocteau Twins
Well worth a mention for their fabulous fusion of psychedelic, punk and melody. Massively atmospheric.

Spy Versus Spy - Odeama
UK based trio, renowned for their scary, cinematic, stripped down grooves and brooding, deep-space transmissions than this unexpectedly pumping pop-punk anthem. A kind of Sci-fi new wave that harks back to the likes of early Joy Division.

rollo@escapeart.co.uk

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