Reviewed by Paul Zickler / LISTENING POST DISCOVERY
Released: 1980 Tattoo Hosts Vision On! Tattoo Hosts Vision On! Genre: Post-Punk New Wavey Electronic Rating: 4.25 out of 5 Highlights: Red Pictures Secrets Cocoon Fantasy Island Shattered, Unspoken Civilized Make-up Dust of Dead Gods This will definitely be the very last record from 1980 that I will review. Let’s hope it’s a good one, or at least not a terrible one. The band is called Tattoo Hosts Vision On! The exclamation point is important, just as it is in the titles of numerous musicals (Oklahoma! Oliver! Hello Dolly! Snoopy! Oh! Calcutta! Etc.). What? We’re on song two already? OK, better pay more attention. Song one, Whirlpool of Noise, was synthy and bouncy. Song two, Red Pictures, is more of a mood. I am enjoying this mood. Almost, dare I say it, ambient. Sax, guitar noodling, extended keyboard chords, synthy horn sounds (but not annoying ones). It goes on like that for 2:46 with no vocals or discernible changes. Cool. Song three, Empty Building, has that repeated synth bass thing everybody who wanted to sound new wavey or post-punk was doing around this time. But there’s more! Halfway through they add that loud, gated snare drum hit that everybody else was doing around this time. The singer sounds very earnest. He mentions suffering and some other stuff. He sings wordless falsetto “woo ooh” parts, kind of proto-emo. It fades out. The bass line has remained on that one note throughout. Consistency! Song four, No Second Home, starts with a very long narrow line on this Internet archive page, indicative of a very slow fade in. Whatever happened to fade ins? Does any musician anywhere still make songs that fade IN and not just OUT? Seemed like a cool idea at the time. This is another mood, although with lyrics, which I could almost hear, but not really. They were mixed very low, beneath the guitars and keyboards. There were no drums. It was like they wanted the singer to sound very far away, maybe in a small hole, or a phone booth. Remember phone booths? Song five has a good beat and you could maybe dance to it. It’s called Secrets. You’d have to do that ’80’s dance where you swing your arms with your elbows bent, alternating one arm, then the other, and kind of wobbling in place. That is actually the only dance I know how to do, so this song would be convenient for me. Halfway through the song, the singer comes in, sounding kind of Gothy. “Whoa-oh-oh” he sings, and then some other words, then “Whoa oh oh oh.” I think “rest assured” were two of the words. It all sounds very dire. Something bad might be happening. Oh wait, the song is over. Whew, we dodged a bullet there, didn’t we? Song 6 is called Cocoon. I don’t think it has anything to do with the Don Ameche movie about old people. I vaguely remember that movie. I think Ronnie Howard directed it. Lil Opie Cunningham. This song has a rhythm track that sounds like the sound is reversed. It kind of resembles a heart beat. It’s not not cool. “Stars do collide, but seldom in these skies.” Again, no drums, just the backwards heartbeat. This one’s all right. There’s a flute solo, but it’s not a real flute. Well, I mean, I don’t think it is. Song 7 has that other really common new wavey post-punk beat and those synthy bell sound chords, plus that whip it sound effect. Well, it also kind of sounds like maybe the brakes on a bus when it stops. There’s a vocoder-ish sounding vocal, but no words. I would call this an instrumental. It’s a mood, but maybe more of a foreboding mood. It’s called To Reason Why, as in “ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do and die.” Is that how that goes? I was just thinking of that the other night. I don’t like that quote. Wow, Song 8 is quite different. It’s noisy. Lots of cool little piano things and noise. The singer tries to sound like Fred Schneider, only English. But that’s just my interpretation. The chorus goes “Fantasy Island, whoa oh. Fantasy Island, whoa oh.” Except imagine an English guy pronouncing it with the emphasis on the middle syllable instead of the first syllable. Is that how they say it in England? There are so many interesting things happening in this song. Neat little sax squonks and synth dribbles. The drums seem to be mostly just a basic 4-4 beat on the tom, followed by whacking the snare a couple of times on the chorus. It reminds me a little of Mother by the Police, only much less scary and creepy. I think they are trying more for scary and quirky? Not sure. OK, I had to pause the album to finish this paragraph. Song 9 is titled Shattered, Unspoken. That comma makes me nervous. It’s another long fade in. Quiet piano that sounds like it was recorded in an attic. It’s a spoken word song: “He sat alone, spitting at the cracks in the ceiling through stained circular teeth. Wrinkled like an abandoned potato in a shoe. He always slept alone, wheezing like a fragile asthmatic in a barn, Waking, and peering into the dark through failing, sleep stuck eyes. He ate alone, food hanging from the crater of his jaw in an obscene old man gesture, Waiting, like a condemned man in a cell. The milkman called on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Milk bottles mounted up outside his door until someone realized it. Stranded like a parachute in a tree, he died alone.” Song 10, Civilized Make-up. Do they mean makeup, like what you put on your face? Or do they mean, the last song was terribly sad, let us make up for it with this slightly more upbeat, yet still gloomy as all get out, second to last song. It has a nifty sounding chorus that goes “Death and destruction, fireworks and gore. It’s something we tried to subdue. Our civilized make-up Is war.” OK, so they definitely are not making up for anything. You know, this is actually a pretty amazing song in a kind of preachy way. Maybe not preachy, maybe just harsh. The guitar sound is fabulous. I might have the words slightly wrong. I just like this song. Oh, there’s another “whoa oh oh oh oh” bit. They like those. I mean, not in a “not another one” way, more in an “OK that’s kind of their trademark thing” way. Song 11 is here to kick your ass. It’s called Dust of Dead Gods. It has kind of a rockabilly beat at first, but with a super cool synth dealy over it, some very low notes on a chorus pedaly guitar, and a dirgey verse with lots of reverb and echo. “I walk and I’m nowhere.” Repeat and fade. Fuck. This is a great song. This is a great album. It’s after midnight and I love this band. Goodnight, Tattoo Hosts. Goodnight, 1980. Vision On!!!
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