The 1981 Listening Post - Cardiacs - Toy World

 Cardiacs - Toy World

#668

1981 Housekeeping

Cardiacs

Toy World

Genre: Psychotic Post Rock

4 out of 5

Highlights:

Icky Qualms

A Big Noise in a Toy World

This thing plays like a bullet train of psychosis. Sadly it’s a cassette transfer of stuff that was probably poorly recorded to begin with but you can really get the idea. 

This band comes across as improvisational, punk, with jazz influences but also discordant ideas that coalesce into a coagulant of post-punk cacophony that really works. 

It does get a bit monotonous toward the end but I liked it enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST_kAc6IP_Y

The 1980 Listening Post - Cardiac Arrests - The Obvious Identity

 Cardiac Arrests - The Obvious Identity

#267

Cardiac Arrests (aka The Cardiacs)

The Obvious Identity

Genre: Fucking weird, man. 

3.75 out of 5

Highlights:

Visiting Hours 

Pip as Uncle Dick but Peter Spoilt it

A merry-go-round of weirdness by a band that ultimately made their own label to distribute their music because who the hell would put this out? Well, maybe Ralph Records but these guys are British and in 1980 I’m willing to bet it was a challenge to get this self-produced cassette to San Francisco. Or out of their cars. 

From Wikipedia: "An anonymous member of the band has been quoted as commenting that "the recordings were so shit it wouldn’t matter if they were copied onto washing-up sponges." About 1000 cassettes were produced.”

And it sounds like it. 

But that doesn’t detract from the fact that it sounds like a band who’s hero was the Child Snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

They show actual playing prowess all over this thing, especially on “Cameras” and “Bite 3/a”. 

Much like The Cardiacs later work, it’s got moments of sublime brilliance amidst a bakery of weird. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lnzpr5R8iok

The 1984 Listening Post - The Cardiacs - The Seaside

The Cardiacs - The Seaside

#17

January 1984

The Cardiacs

The Seaside

4.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Jibber and Twitch

A Wooden Fish on Wheels

Ice a Spot and a Dot on the Dog

This band created it’s own record label to release their own music. I guess they were ahead of their time that way. 

What in the fresh hell is this? How have I not heard this before? This is a punk-ska carnival by insane people who have never met a time signature they couldn’t fuck with.

If the Residents were a ska band they would sound like this. If Yes was really jacked on something and woke up one day, forced at gun point to join the original Adam and the Ants to record Dirk Wears White Sox, mutinied against Adam (hey, who didn’t?) and turned all his music into ska, that’s this album.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-seaside/336769969