WHO#19 – Biting Tongues – Clear Your Screens

CD (edition of 250) / DL
Buy on Bandcamp

WHO#19 – Biting Tongues – Clear Your Screens (Reverse)

1: First Use All The Gs (Moon Landing)
2: Evening State (ICA)
3: Iyahbhoone (Plan K)
4: The Reflector (Shunt Vaults 2)
5: Denture Beach (Moon Landing)
6: Glorious Stranger (Moon Landing)
7: Heart Disease (Shunt Vaults 1)
8: Where the Birdlands (Moon Landing)
9: Unhook That Boy (Islington Mill)
10: Everywhere but Here (ICA)
11: Aair Care (Islington Mill)
12: When It Breaks on You (Islington Mill)

Biting Tongues were:

Ken Hollings: celebrated author, academic and broadcaster #exorcist #cut_up_oracle

Graham Massey: electronic music pioneer, 808 State, music producer and broadcaster #pre_and_post_guitar_landscapes #weird_woodwind #shit_trumpet

Colin Seddon: band leader and music educator #biblical_bass lines #lord_of_the_trichord

Howard Walmsley: film director/producer #muscular_beef_sax #transistor_organ_fist

Eddie Sherwood: music educator and band leader #reverse-wired-bespoke_voodoo_drumming

All songs written by Hollings, Massey, Seddon, Sherwood and Walmsley. Tapes remixed and produced by Graham Massey. Compiled by Ken Hollings. In memory of Barry Seddon, 1938 – 2019. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu at Schwebung Mastering, June 2019. “Clear Your Screens” features Biting Tongues in performance at: ICA, London, 29 May 2003; Islington Mill, Salford, 23 February 2007; Shunt Vaults 1, London, 19 November 2008; Shunt Vaults 2, London, 20 November 2008; The Moon Landing, Salford, 19 July 2009; Plan K, Brussels, 12 December 2009.

“Clear Your Screens” is a series of battle re-enactments from Manchester’s least celebrated post-punk group Biting Tongues. Their tritone tribalism, mixed with intense language flow and layers of tape concrète, was perhaps a bit too much for the early 1980s when they released records with New Hormones, Factory and Beggars Banquet.

Always an astonishing experience live, the classic early line-up returned to the stage near the start of the 21st century with the musical and performance experience accumulated over another twenty years working apart. Applying modern digital mixing techniques ten years later to these live recordings reveals the rare blood chemistry of a team of specialists who have only grown more passionate over time.

Surely a worthy part the 20th century musical canon even if they have handed in their homework late.