Oh! The Fall John Peel Sessions box set! OH! you guys.

Disc 2
15.09.81: Deer Park – Look Know – Winter – Who Makes The Nazis?
23.03.83: Smile – Garden – Hexen Definitive Strife Knot – Eat Y’self Fitter
03.01.84: Pat Trip Dispenser – 2 x 4 – Words Of Expectation – CREEP

Disc 3
03.06.85: Cruiser’s Creek – Couldn’t Get Ahead – Spoilt Victorian Child – Gut Of The Quantifier
07.10.85: LA – The Man Whose Head Expanded – What You Need – Faust Banana
09.07.86: Hot Aftershave Bop – ROD – Gross Chapel GB Grenadiers – US 80’s-90’s
09.05.87: Athlete Cured – Australians In Europe – Twister – Guest Informant

Disc 4
31.10.88: Deadbeat Descendant – Cab It Up – Squid Lord – Kurious Oranj
01.01.90: Chicago Now – Black Monk Theme – Hilary – Whizz Bang
23.03.91: The War Against Intelligence – Idiot Joy Showland – A Lot Of Wind – The Mixer

Disc 5
15.02.92: Free Range – Kimble – Immortality – Return
13.03.93: Ladybird (Green Grass) – Strychnine – Service – Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room
05.12.94: M5 – Behind The Counter – Reckoning – Hey! Student
17.12.94: Glam Racket Star – Jingle Bell Rock – Hark The Herald Angels Sing – Numb At The Lodge
22.12.95: He Pep! – Oleano – Chilinist – The City Never Sleeps
18.08.96: DIY Meat – Spinetrak – Spencer – Beatle Bones N Smokin’ Stones

Disc 6
03.03.98: Calendar – Touch Sensitive – Masquerade – Jungle Rock
04.11.98: Bound Soul One – Antidotes – Shake Off – This Perfect Day
13.03.03: Theme From Sparta FC – Contraflow – Groovin’ With Mr Bloe - Green Eyed Loco Man – Mere Pseud Mag Ed
12.08.04: Job Search - Clasp Hands – Blindness – What About Us – Wrong Place, Right Time > I Can Hear The Grass Grow

Unclear but will probably be imported. This is coming out on Sanctuary, who have been getting the Castle remasters over here when not releasing it themselves, and getting it over here cheaply enough (the Hex Enducation Hour reissue I picked up at Amoeba was only $16 -- and a double disc at that).

I'll be reviewing this for the Seattle Weekly and frankly I can't wait!

I am really looking forward to hearing sessions 12-17 and 21-24 for the first time.

i remember this as if it were yesterday. wow. i must buy this.

This BBC box is pure gold!

I am hoping against hope this is a Coasters cover.

i remember this as if it were yesterday. wow. i must buy this."

I remember the two 1978 sessions as if they were yesterday.

What happened yesterday unfortunately is rather less clear.

I confidently predict that this presence or absence of this set from any individual's collection is going to rapidly become recognised as a one of the crucial defining indicators of that individual's hip quotient.

Yeah, I don't agree. It's certainly a cooler thing than the umpteenth Fall live album, but it's still peripheral to the albums proper.

I'm not sure quite what you're disagreeing with: that it should happen or that it will happen.

Fwiw I'm certainly not suggesting that I think that it should happen - but (provided it remains reasonably available) I'm convinced this box set will end up eclipsing every one of the individual albums proper as the "must own" Fall title.

1. Extricate
2. The wonderful and Frightening
3. This nations saving grace
4. The one with Glam Racket and Free Range and that...
5. other
6. other

But, yeah.

4. The one with Glam Racket and Free Range and that...

That's two, actually -- Code: Selfish and The Infotainment Scan.

xpost

it is awesome

I cannot wait for this, the "Sparta FC" on here is defintive, like a lot of the vers of these songs

The "I can hear the grass grow" session was on that MES documentary on BBC4. no doubt to be repeated soon on BBC2...

Fall Street parties in April.

Not arguing so much as questioning how much I'd play the thing given that I have most of the tracks already on the albums proper.

bastard.

i must buy this.

god, it looked topp.

Would this qualify for the real album chart?

well, i say "we". i mean my friend. but we're working out some kind of joint-ownership deal because he doesn't like the fall as much.

fuck me ragged!

Suffice to say JEALOUS -- but I hope to get my copy next week, possibly next weekend. :-)

hah! the second i posted that, i did think ... oops.

WTF? Where do you work that this is just sitting around, forgotten?

the world's daftest newspaper office, it seems. i genuinely can't believe it. it's not even as if it was with other CDs ... it had been shoved in the book cupboard with a load of audio books. someone obviously got sent it, didn't have a clue what it was, and shoved it away.

either that or there's a mystical music fairy hovering about the place and i can expect to find the boo radleys best-of in the gents' in a couple of months' time.

*shrugs*. *smiles*.

daryl easlea's sleevenotes - despite the odd typo - are fantastic. very warm and touching about peel (as you'd hope); fantastically enthusiastic about the music (ditto).

this is a public health warning. never, ever try to MP3 six discs of fall peel sessions while hungover on a saturday morning. at least, not unless you know the titles are on CDDB.

which they will be once i work out how the fuck i managed to mis-label half of the third disc and ... oh, don't ask. ooh, me head.

the fall box is now sitting on my desk on top of the johnny cash box-set. you see two such mighty compendiums of genius sitting together and you think, yeh, give me music like that and i can beat the world.

Yay! I'm off to Europe in July 2005 once again

Rah, etc.

Futures and Pasts!

Due May 2005 (?) from Voiceprint, a series of 5 Live From The Vaults archive live recordings - Oldham 1978, Retford 1979, Los Angeles 1979, Glasgow 1981 & Hof [Germany] 1981. Hof is a double CD, the others are all single disc.

Due late May 2005 from Ozit Records, Live At Deeply Vale - live from the People's Free Festival 28 July 1978.

Due 13 June 2005 (put back from 16 May to avoid clash with Peel box set): Sanctuary reissues of Room To Live and Perverted By Language. Bonus tracks are to be announced; Perverted By Language will be a double CD.

Future releases from Sanctuary - In A Hole, then the reissues series will start on the Permanent albums The Infotainment Scan and Middle Class Revolt. All due second half of 2005. Also for late 2005 is pencilled in Bootleg Box Set, Volume 2, containing all the Voiceprint Live 2 finger salute CDs.

The Deeply Vale info is as far as the website knows:

The Fall Live at Deeply Vale (July 28, 1978) CD will be released on Ozit records at the end of May (May 30?). Yes, Ozit realizes that the front cover shows the 1979 Deeply Vale lineup; the photos they have from '78 aren't good enough for the front, although there will be one or two in the booklet.

Stay tuned for a special offer on this CD. It'll be available for "slightly" less than the normal price through a link from the Fall News, and the CD booklet will be signed by author Mick Middles.

I believe the track listing is Repetition / Psycho Mafia / Rebellious Jukebox / Frightened / Steppin' Out / Like to Blow / Mess of My / Mother-Sister / Industrial Estate / It's the New Thing / Futures and Pasts / Music Scene

I'm a touch surprised at the In a Hole reissue, in that the two disc rerelease on Voiceprint a couple of years back was near-perfect -- mastered from vinyl but actually done right, great liner notes, slew of wonderful bonus tracks etc. But such is the weird world of Fall reissues, but I figure I'll skip that one unless there's a noticeable sound difference.

Also nice to see that the Sanctuary series will in fact continue, skipping over the Beggars and Fontana years admittedly.

hmph!

There's a promo set on e-bay, currently £15 or thereabouts.

this is totally, totally great! and the sun is shining! what a day!

http://www2.hmv.co.uk/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=281;1;-1;-1&sku=376690

Anyone know if this price applies to bricks and mortar HMVs?

I suppose I could take something back to make it cheaper.

If I wanted to.

Goddamn. I've been listening to this all morning, trying to think of something to write about it.. all I can come up with is .. GodDAMN!

"HIT EM ON THE HEAD!!! WITH A 2 BY FOUR!!!"

Only because I've spent a few hundred dollars on their pre-BB catalog over the past decade.

Anyhow, I hope to find a way to procure this BBC box soon!

a) when i told london energy my real meter reading (rather than the one they made up for me) my last bill went down from 46 to 23 pounds.
b) it frees up about 5 pounds worth of space on all those tapes i've made over the years.

there, easy. oh, wait, payday today...

pity this is almost exactly 6 months to late...

finding it so so hard to fault - i think the only things that leave me cold are the extended 10min or so versions of tracks like hip priest and words of expectation - but that's just personal preference and i bet it's just because i have had so much of it to take in, and i'll eventually come round.

every household should have one.

So, Saturday we spent driving down to the lookout with Amber (7) and Alice (5) singing "NO! (because I'm not old enough)" with gusto, and having to wait until "Top of the Pops" had finished when we got there...

But anyway, I digress.

Has there been any decent reviews of this set in the 'press'? Yeah, NME gave it a "this is excellent" type brief writeup, but hey that's not nearly enough. I presume the Mojos/Uncuts' reviews are forthcoming, but come on....

http://www.uncut.co.uk/music/the_fall/reviews/8577
http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/entertainment/music/albumreviews/s/155/155565_the_fall__the_complete_peel_sessions_sanctuary_.html

My copy's in the mail, I wear a bib for the drool.

I had ordered my copy through The Ideal Copy but just got a note saying this...

We are experiencing a bit of trouble getting this product. It turns
out that it was manufactured and released in the UK last week - but
that Sanctuary didn't manufacture nearly enough to cover the demand.
To make matters worse - they are having trouble manufacturing more
and don't expect to have them available again until May 23rd - I've
included a copy of the email our supplier received from Sanctuary
below. On top of this - Sanctuary has now scheduled a US release of
this title - it's expected to come out on June 7th.

So basically, do what I'm doing (and what TIC is kindly giving me the option to do), hold off or cancel the import orders and wait a bit.

The last box set to make the chart (I think) was the Jam one, which made top ten. Not that That is important really, but this would have sold as much if they'd shipped it as such...

Anyway, I'm back on the box.. "hhot... Aftershave boppp"

Groovin with Mr. Bloe..

Mark: Chewbacca
El: Chewca

.. Makes me think of Pirini Sclarosa every time.

Meanwhile, "Whizz Bang!! Butterflies for brainzzz"

OK, hold your thoughts, I've hit a dud track!

Yup.

"The City never sleeps at night". OK, granted it has no Mark E on it, and is given to the band and the girl backing vocalist steps up, but its a bad karaoke version of a (presumably) good track.

But, I have just heared "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" which sounds exactly like you think. And is fant.

So, Yep, I'm still on this. Just as well I'm not reviewing this for a magazine/newspaper. Mind you did anyone else that reviewed it listen to it all? That's a tall order.

Rice + Beans + water = FAll Peel Sessions Box Set!

Now transferred to my car but discs 4-6 are going to have to wait until I've finished the (really rather lovely so far) new Eels album.

Particularly looking forward to the last track on disc 5....

Um, it's alright. It won't change yer allegiance. Bit of a knock off, but yeah.

Actually, for all the slagging "Jungle Rock" gets in the book and from MES previously, I like it a fair bit.

I heared a snatch of "I can hear the grass grow" on the BBC4 docu, so I'm very looking forward to that.

And it's bloody great. Sanctuary have done a great job with the packaging; nice sturdy master-box, unlike say, what they did with the Lonnie Donegan 1955-67 set.

Have only listened to the first disc thus far, but it's striking, and I finally get to hear "No Xmas for John Quays", "New Puritans" and "Lie Dream of a Casino Soul", which do not disappoint!

I'm hoping, but non too confidently, that they include a passage of Peel speaking right at the end of CD6, after the last session; what a great, poignant touch that would be...

i'll do that, tim. thanks!

Hex is the consensus as the best (my favorite is Slates), but they are indeed rough sailing for neophytes. A few of the live records are quite good; most are not.

50,000 and the Peel box have 18 songs in common, but they're all different versions, sometimes very different.

Nearly done, you guys.

and i'm by no means a fall die-hard; more a keen casual fan. but on a purely objective level, a selected body of work like this is just fucking awe-inspiring.

Plus, having it as the "CD de jour" for drives to and from work eases the task somewhat!

The task being driving to work, not listening to the Fall, which is not a task but a pleasure. But you knew that, right?

hmm, i'm guessing these are still in print ...

If the forthcoming (September!) LP sounds anything like this I've already got my album of the year.

Awww. What a fucking good thing.

My wife has spent the last 11 years being forced to listen to the greatest band in the history of the world, even she was excited at this.

I now have over 80 cds of The fall, even all the dodgy compilations but this is...breathtaking. I have about half the sessions on tape but the joy of hearing them like this is difficult to put into words really, I won't even try...

http://www.believermag.com/issues/200506/article_wolk.php

I have not had enough time with this box yet, but two highlights thus far the stadium rock version of Australians In Europe and 2004's absolutely wonderful Blindness, proof that they can still do....whatever it is they do.

True/False ?

they're the fucking FALL. look upon their works, ye mateys, and tremble.

What's the cheapest you have seen it for sale? I'm just curious.

That's a great price!

http://www.seattleweekly.com/graphics/features/0536/050907_music_fall.jpg

Is it just me, or does the cover picture (not the commentary text, the cover pic itself) of "50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong" in the back of the booklet (page 41 or 42, I think) say something subtly different?

It is one of the greatest products ever, yes.

And I should be shot for not having bought this already.

it is here

i am scared

Just dive in would be my advice.

disc 1 is pretty close to being my favorite Fall "album." so kick-ass

No need to fear - unless it's overwhelming pleasure that you're afraid of! Also, keep in mind you may not like it all at first, but with repeated listens your favorites will shift. I especially love the few times they revisited older tracks and gave them something of a new spin (cf "The Man Whose Head Expanded").

i'm not THAT scared! i will start at the beginning.

open the box, open the box, open the God damn box

Go on. Liveblog every song :)

Futures And Pasts - such a clean, optimistic guitar tone! For about three seconds it's gonna be a blissful pop song, maybe female-sung, youthful and dynamic. Then a weirdly dinky keyboard and a chorus of yammering Smiths. It's still a blissful pop-song, mind. Just one whose youth and whose dynamic are slightly more oblique than you'd expect.

Mother-Sister - I love this! Great little tune. The chorus is a Fall special, the first moment thus far that MES really leaps out and begins to pulverise one's cerebral caus...cortex. Nicely sloppy tempo-change too. Darkness begins to permeate. Atonal shriek. This is fucking classic material. Atonal howl.

Rebellious Jukebox - Nice wonky bassline, absolutely no idea what the percussion's doing here but it sounds like it's being played under quicksand by morons. I mean that in the best possible sense. Descending vocal hook is the killer. Guitarist on verge of collapse, as he should be.

Industrial Estate - An exhortation, then a rave-up. These are the most 'punk' I've ever heard MES' vocals. Possibly deliberate. It doesn't suit him quite as much as his usual hectoring denouncement. Leaves promptly.

More when I'm not dying of tired.

New Puritan still sounds like the most extraordinary thing I have ever heard

The improvement in sound/performance between the late 80's/early 90's tracks and their album counterparts is huge. perfect example Chicago Now which sounds flat and a bit dull on the album but wonderful on the Peel Sessions,

the 'perverted by language' era session is maybe my favorite fall recording of all time

The improvement in sound/performance between the late 80's/early 90's tracks and their album counterparts is huge.

Agreed! In fact, it caused me to reevaluate the quality of their 90s work entirely, which I had previously dismissed. MES really knew which tracks were the best to highlight for Peelie.

Put Away - Crisper already than the first session. He sounds youthful and there is a dinky keyboard. Little in the way of darkness manifesting itself. A major-key hum seems to hang in the air. I find myself more drawn to the keyboard. This isn't prime Fall. Towards the end the guitar picks up and does a few noteworthy things. I don't think MES had full control at this point. I've finished my review and there's still a minute left. I predict...dinkiness.

Mess Of My - Like this already. Rowdy mash of bad chords. What we want. MES sounding a little more threatening. Entire song loping sideways. Slips into weird semi-gothic groove. Everything is better planned this time out. "I probably work for a record company!" He's really going here. Modestly righteous.

No Xmas For John Quays - A faster extension, this is some vicious party of a track. "You could say he was into nicotine and acid." Again the keys are doing what they should. MES screeches. "Why is it so?" Story unfolds. Christmas is a theme. This is some brutal holiday. Bass change-up in last 15 seconds is awesome!

Like To Blow - Evidently The Fall are still punk rock. Maybe they always have been. Keyboards still dinky. Better than Put Away because the guitars are doing dark, grimy things, and because the keyboard pulse is menacing rather than benign. And because it's a tiny bit after the beat, like a radar pulse.

I had a dream once that "Put Away" was a single for Jimmy Saville in the sixties, on the old Columbia label.

One listen to the lyrics would prove that this would have been awes.

Container Drivers - Band is clearly more confident. Step forward in drumming is especially noticeable. MES is more in control, both of the band and his delivery. He sounds like a merry torturer here. This is superb, the first time so far in the sessions that I've felt I'm falling with the band, into the vacuum-tunnel of MES' vision.

Jawbone & The Air-Rifle - Awesome, much better than the album-version. Vocals are clearer, and the lyrics, of course, stand out. Not that I can still make out more than about 50% of them. "ADVERTISEMENTS TURN INTO CARNIVORES!" OK, this final verse is like some high-point of lyric-writing. Great performance, need I add.

New Puritan - OK, now MES is the Priest. NOW he speaks and we quail. And oh that bassline. I'm turning this louder. "THIS I HAVE SEEN." Holy fuck this is possibly the most violently terrifying vocal performance I've heard from a British person. How old was he when he spoke these words? About my age, actually. Shout-outs to the guitars seem irrelevant but they're worthwhile. A keyboard pulse, ugly, develops into a spew. Guitars into a thicket. To have been in this band.

New Face In Hell - How do you follow up New Puritan? With an almost ornate, albeit still slightly dinky keyboard line! Major chords, happiness, a song that slyly undercuts (and yet justifies) its title. The band can still smile. And after you've been sucked into space and back, so can you. Smile, dammit. SMILE! Fine, keep quivering on the floor.

http://popup.lala.com/popup/432627062644029058

Middle Mass - Starts out even more promisingly than the last session! This is...unspeakably amazing. It's like the entrance music for Satan. It's like the song that invents Shellac, but with scarier and less precise production. It's frighteningly linear, and it is something that can barely be fought. It only chooses to have respite because MES knows the cruelty of respite. Go on, believe that those jaunty major chords towards the end are there to please. I dare you.

Lie Dream Of A Casino Soul - Keyboards are an alarm. Vocals are punk but by now MES has worked out his relationship to punk and so he doesn't sound like he's trying too hard, or doing anything other than what is natural. Is that a demented sax solo? NOTHING SURPRISES ME

Hip Priest - OK, now this I am stoked for, because the album version is one of the great documents of recorded sound. Drums are as mystical as they ought to be. MES' falsetto sounds sly and jokey in isolation, as if he's holding something behind his back. Lots of space in this recording and a nice hint of feedback. Feels a little more improvisational. It's going to erupt, I know. Drums are huge, and they're still lying in wait. Two guitar chords into the first explosion are perfect...then a BASS RUMBLE. Mostly unaccompanied. This band knows what it's fucking doing. This is so loose and experimental and gripping. It feels like the knight and Death playing chess in The Seventh Seal except with the knight as the guitar and Death as MES. And Bergman as the rhythm section. This is the moment I realise...that it is not going to erupt. It is erupting, constantly. It doesn't appear to be moving even until it's smothered you. Until the weird distorted mesh-on-mesh effect late in the sixth minute. By which point you are bound in the spider's web and being slowly poisoned. High-pitched screams which are plinks from the strangler. This is the antimatter to New Puritan's charging train. The charging void. The charging anti-train. No survivors.

C'n'C Hassle Schmuck - You follow Hip Priest up because you have to, and you follow it up with something similarly alien. Swirls into a different tempo without much warning, and the guitar, instead of exploring a colourful path to death or genius or whatever Hip Priest explores, remains in the same foul place. MES sounds like he's having fun, at least. They're a fun band. Gather, kiddies, and carouse.

Gonna take a well-earned break now.

Thanks for doing this! Its inspired me to pull out the box and finally load it on to my iPod!

They're all first-listens, so my feelings, usually those of astonishment, are fully genuine, and fully fresh. Sessions 3 and 4 are eerily similar in their
barnstorming-opener-followed-by-long-3rd-track-that-actually-threatens-to-damage-your-mind way.

I was thinking to myself "He's not going to be able to contain his "Hip Priest" review to three lines"

yup.

*relistens to New Puritan with headphones off this time, thus preventing death*

Oh ye 90s compare...
LP vers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJSCLVtnouo
Peel vers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2Mx534urnw

Absolutely. And oh yes, that Peel version of Hip Priest is some inchoate primal brilliance.

Looking forward to the next session reviews, which is my favourite:

Session 5 - 26 August 1981 - produced by Dale Griffin
"Deer Park"
"Look, Know"
"Winter"
"Who Makes The Nazis?"

ask and ye shall receive

Deer Park - This time the keyboards are an oppressive layer of sheet-metal. MES is being satirical and snarky, I think. (You ask: when is he not? Well, especially so here.) The guitarist appears to have been given free license to play what he wants, as long as it's in that one chord. Bass plays the melody. Drums suddenly become more pounding in the last minute. Decent intro, I expect it to pick up now.

Look, Know - Again, the bass is prominent. So far this session hasn't been so much my thing, for some reason. "I don't give a shit what I look like" - ok, in the second verse this is picking up. Hahaha, BUM NOTE (seemingly) on bass into chorus! That's actually kicked the track into gear, like how Polonius' forgetting of his lines in Act Two Scene One of Hamlet launches the play properly. Yeah, the guitar squalls make sense now. And fuck there's a perfect li'l solo! Haha!

Winter - This has begun promisingly, like a slightly more straightforward Hip Priest. Love the buzzing noise that develops. "He looked like the victim of a pogrom!" Slyly this has become brilliant and there's another guitar solo, just a subtler one. Keyboards being deployed superbly. I've fallen in again. MES SINGS! "TAKE THIS MEDALLION!" Bass suddenly foregrounds, guitar goes off-kilter. Bass plays a FUNKY BREAKDOWN for NO REASON. God, I love this band. Bass then appears to go out of tune. Keyboard still makes surreal merry. This is approximately 5334714x better than the album version. Weird, heavy, ecstatic and slightly wrong. OH SHIT - buzzy keyboard solo in final movement just killed me. THE FALL KNOW BEAUTY. CRAP THE BASS AT THE END I DON'T EVEN

Who Makes The Nazis? - Hahahaha this is so badly-played, it's genius. It's like MES is playing the guitar himself! Maybe he is. Because there's another guitar now and it's playing the air-raid siren noise that music should make when The Fall are about to pounce on it. Need I mention the drums? "LONGHORN BREED." Now that guitar again on its own, joined after exactly the right number of bars by the drums. And then...what the fuck is happening in the right channel above my ear? What chaos? What hell?

Who Makes the Nazis with the plastic guitar is my favorite Peel track.

Next one up is my favourite Fall recording ...

Next one up is the one I'm looking forward to the most out of all of them. Am savouring the minutes before I stick it on.

I'm listening to the next session now, in anticipation.

Smile - Christ, the echo on the guitars! The slurred drums! MES lost in the vortex of musical fury arising from beneath him! You can barely distinguish the chords after a short time. Then the bass begins to explore. What I sense here is a terrifying pound, guitars as meat-cleavers. MES isn't shrieking or going catatonic, like on the album version. He's controlled, self-possessed, trying to keep it together as the roar intensifies. One-way ticket to the abyss, this one. No let-up.

Garden - Already one of the better Fall songs, here the very length indicates monstrosity. The guitar-line's been embellished with a major-chord, as if to throw me off the scent. Instead feels like some sort of Eastern incantation, like a Velvet Underground song that's found a proper drummer. No offence, Mo! Ha, I was kidding! No, I was! Honest. OK, the drum pulse during the first guitar breakdown...you can keep ya fancy NYC whackers, this is Rock Almighty, this is Lore. This is the fourth consecutive Peel Session with an elongated musical dissertation on precisely what makes music a force to be reckoned with, except there's two more after this one! Another breakdown, then a retreat. Briefly. Bass crushes home like justice. "JACOB'S LADDER - WAR ZONE!" This session is if anything even more composed than the previous ones. I say that, and "He's here! At last! He's here!" brings the panic. Then a weird snake effect. Then a broken organ. Then a Jew on a motorbike.

Hexen Definitive - Strife Knot - This is all minor-chord, all sadness. Glue pastes band to floor of recording room. Love how the chord changes for the chorus only once, stays at that chord until the energy is spent, and then returns to the initial pattern. Strange tooth-picking percussion. Guitar as church bell, tolling for the song it plays. Things go awry and the bass fades into view, distorted, like a surfacing Kraken. Song has mutated. Earth corrupts into fear. Guitar plays ballad for its own tortured strings, like plucked wire on a pig-farm. Call and response with evil of bass. Run. Run from this fucking song, but don't hide, it'll find you. After the religious contention of the previous track, this is the unbidden visitation of putrescence that we craved. And the guitar, finally, vomits at the sight of itself.

Eat Y'Self Fitter - One of my favourites, this was always the funniest and oddly one of the catchiest Fall songs. Here's to a romp! A fearsome, righteous romp! Oh god the response vocals are so quiet, hehehe! It's like MES is king and queen, and the VASSALS can cry from beneath the BATTLEMENTS. Need I add, the drums are insanely enormous. They dwarf even the guitar-line. Oh god those drums! Tribal primal horror excavation mechanism fury. The random blurts of noise accompanying "UP THE STAIRS MISTER" are a treat. Drums seem to stall, then power back in with more snare. They're all getting their cues slightly wrong and it's awesome. This is ineffable. Oh, is Mr Weird Organ trying to jump the party again? HE IS INVITED. Song impossibly becomes even more of a rave, just before the 'centimetre square' bit. Then rides roughshod over the carcass of YOUR EARS, DEAR LISTENER.

Glad you pointed out, inter alia, the slightly altered 'he's here! I saw him! I swear!' lines. I think the crucial addition is 'he's back!' For some reason this always produces a little nick extra of panic and fear.

Listening to the session version of Smile the other day as well and was struck how much the sounds seem to slide around compared to the album version. It feels stranger, loosed from structural bonds.

In case it wasn't clear, Hexen Definitive was my favourite. It's been a good run for third tracks.

Have we ever discussed which tracks beat their LP counterparts? That Youtube example above really shows how much more muscular and focused is the Peel version of "Ladybird". Not all of them are, though - the Peel version of "Hey Student" is disappointing.

even with the lyric changed to "As you masturbate to your Shawn Ryder face?"

I think there was a thread on the Peel sessions somewhere, but I'm not at my computer so I can't search.

Generally I'd say they're better, some much better - Squid Lord and Blindness to take two. I must admit I love the session Hey! Student - not least that wail at the end! tho the album version is great in its locomotive force as well.

OK, that's a week's rest.

Off you go again!

Yes, please.

no sleep for the wicked

Pat Trip Dispenser - Awesome mumbled backing vocals and off-key bassline in the chorus, and amazing post-chorus Marc Ribot-style guitar breakdown! Shit! And then it builds marvellously back into the verse. And you can hear Brix. This band is fucking on FIRE. It's as riveting as any of the openers so far. Guitar work is simply brilliant. MES rant 2/3 of way through is excellent. Oh god, this is the crazed POP MUSIC that The Fall hadn't really in all earnest made so far. I'm not exaggerating - this is WELL inside the top 10 of Peel Sessions songs I've heard so far. HAHA there's SUCH an awesome (piano?) drone over the last bit!! THIS IS FUCKING PHENOMENAL.

2x4 - Rockabilly! They play it well. Not quite the somersaulting blast of wrong-headed bizarreness that is the opener. Sometimes a repetitive bassline is transcendent for The Fall; not quite so here. Can't fault the performance. Gets better towards the end when the guitars and drums are allowed to explore a bit.

Words Of Expectation - You said it. 9 minutes long, 3rd track in the session, I'm expecting greatness. OK. A promising bass thunder. Distant radio recordings. MES phoned in from his own dingy basement. Crisp drums. Portentous, hanging, and enter MES for real. With one of the most righteous opening lines he's ever uttered. As the chattering goes on beneath. And the guitar chimes like a damaged thing and a female voice from a badly-manipulated tape rambles. Elements are gathering. It's a faintly major-key-tinged train into something horrendous, and we've only just begun. I don't need to say that it's gripping as all hell. It's also somehow completely different from all the other Peel Sessions monsters. Then, 4 minutes in, a sudden build, and the guitars become thumbtacks. Bass lurches. OMG THE KING CRIMSON LINE HAHAHAHAHA!! Don't think you've really got your Fripp on to be honest but nice image. MES has wrestled control of this song away from his bandmates, which is why I think it's not quite as good as the other long-form ones (maybe except Garden); he's the undisputed star, with his "HALIFAX...COPTER". It's not a double-helix dropping into some inferno. Until the 8-minute mark, which has thankfully just come and put the rest of the band into a spin-dryer. That's more like it. There IS something pretty hypnotic about the bassline; I'd say on balance it works nicely, although more as an MES vehicle than a Fall one. The best bit was the first half with the recorded voices.

C.R.E.E.P. - OK, if PTD was crazed pop music, this isn't even crazed. Energetic yes, but not imbued with terrifying gnostic vision. It's pretty catchy, I guess. 'Catchy' isn't ENOUGH, though! I want my Fall catchy AND fearsome! Or at least catchy and violently unorthodox. I'm griping unnecessarily; this really is quite the tune.

*listens to Pat Trip Dispenser again, because it was NEXT-LEVEL*

2x4 and CREEP better served as LP version imo, I love Pat Trip but am not as familiar with this version, such a great song. Words Of Expectation - another classic mostly-unreleased tune (Kimble CD EP from '94 or so and nowhere else I think, same version) that shows up in a lot of live recordings from the era, some of which are great (Rotterdam 83).

Speaking of which, does anyone have a high quality live gig from the 84/85 era they can share? Apparently we won't be getting one with the upcoming deluxe reissues of "The Wonderful And Frightening World" and "This Nations Saving Grace".

Cruiser's Creek - Haha, he can't pronounce 'excerpt'. Silly Mark. And then, yeah, that riff. OMG! Blast of keys/guitars when it enters the chorus is guaranteed to wake a few people up. This was never my favourite Fall at all, although it is for a surprisingly large number of people. This is a good if not game-changing performance. Guitar/keys blast aside, which just shook me up again. Oh what there's 3 and a half minutes left?! How are they gonna spend it? I think I'll grab a mini-doze, see if they feel like waking me up again. Of course they do. MES' vocals becoming more strained each time is nice. OK, I'll say it: this is something of a dirge, and not in a good way. Needs to be half as long and twice as evil. Now stop. STOP. Dammit. OK, blast me again first why dontcha.

Couldn't Get Ahead - MORE LIKE IT. This is somewhat classic. And guess what? It's half as long as Cruiser's Creek! And about...five times as evil! This is a truly stirring, blockbusting performance, harmonica buried in the noise-mash of the chorus the highlight. So good it's given its own weird solo. This chorus is the HELLMUZIK that The Fall make at their best. The tune is and always has been great. No complaints, only praise.

Spoilt Victorian Child - Promising. But it's kinda lost me. Suffers from same syndrome as Cruiser's Creek, I fear. OK, there's a nice bit now, with a suspenseful build over thundering toms and pregnant guitars. Then it goes back to the original pattern, which is boring. How the FUCK did this win the TNSG poll? I cry fix. But then I'm a menk who would've voted Paintwork so don't listen to me. Crap there's two minutes left! You should have ended! Oh it's the suspense bit again. Fall Peel Session Eight: officially the worst yet. By a long way. And that's WITH a super li'l 2nd track. END NOW PLEASE. Oh, the last 30 seconds are quite good. Why couldn't the whole song be like this?

Gut Of The Quantifier - Big drums, MES with purpose, surely this will be good. And here we go. Gah, this doesn't have much going for it except for the bassline. It's just not an inspiring performance. I've heard the second TNSG session is a vast improvement over this; it'd better be. It's too busy and clinical with its repetition. It's like a sort of mushy compromise between pop and Fall, rather than the thrilling merge we saw in Pat Trip Dispenser. I guess Couldn't Get Ahead was a fine piece that forged something pretty righteous.

Speaking of which, does anyone have a high quality live gig from the 84/85 era they can share?

yeah, but only one, WOMAD from June 85. I'll msg you, it's in flac.

and o yes Gut Of The Quantifier on proper LP version is all time top ten for me.

"Words of Expectation" my favorite thing in the box.

thirded re Gut.

L.A. - Loving the tannoy intro! YES! THIS PLAYING! Already this session is better than 8. Dual guitars with purpose and bass you can chew on. And Brix having some kind of Krautgasm. And some lovely atonal shimmer. This is propulsive AND building. When all the guitars start playing the same thing and MES starts repeating 'L' and 'A' it gets intense. Now where? I'm eager to find out. Guitars go up the scale as Brix intones! It's all taut and chaotic at once. Then MES comes back in as Brix says "This is MY happening!" and it's all confluence of excellent things. Thumbs up. Oh and there's time for another go-round! With a FADE-OUT! Ladies and gentlemen, TECHNOLOGY.

The Man Whose Head Expanded - Haha, this is a weird interpretation of the keyboard riff. And now - HEAVY! Much heavier than the original. This one always had fine lyrics and they're delivered well. Breaks down into a sort of langorous pop midsection. If this breaks back to the original motif then it'll seem a bit formulaic. Well, it does, but there's a mental tannoy "Over! Over! Over!" in the background so it's forgiven, plus the guitars are being ruinous. Oscillating synths in the background are the bomb, and the song appears to be speeding roughly to a conclusion with everything going haywire. Overall, pretty excellent.

What You Need - This one's clearly the 'gritty' one of the set. Sheets of synth punctuate an industrial thud of nagging guitar and deep drums. Then a low and fiery bassline enters. This is mesmerising and has lost me in a GOOD way. The drum becomes a pulse, then a hi-hat, as guitars chug, and it's all very psychedelic. I don't know what the alchemy is this time, and I like that fact. I think the bass is getting steadily louder but this may be a mirage. Menacing and YES THE DRUM INTRO! With the tribal chanting and the handclaps! And MES lowing beneath. Brilliant, linear slice of Fall madness.

Faust Banana - I'm a big fan of DKTR. Faustus so this ought to deliver. And a fade-IN this time! Multiplicity of voices. The chorus was always the star in this song and it's done well. Hmm, maybe this song isn't as awesome as I remember. It's no Gross Chapel or Riddler. Or maybe the recorded version, woodblocks and all, is better. (Well, it is.) But this isn't bad at all! It's more drawling, more shambling. Oh wait, it DOES have a woodblock! Haha! Nice. And it's using it to slowly drag us into the quicksand. Marvellous. This has actually become really, really good in the last two minutes. Maybe the two versions are equivalent. Maybe this one's pulling ahead! Shit, this is a good final movement. The woodblock here might be even better-deployed! Awesome.

written last night while internet was down. gut of the quantifier is much better served by LP version obv

Next Session contains the single TRACK I've most been looking forward to, namely Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers. Words can't express my love for that song, and I am crackling with anticipation. It's getting put off until I'm fully psyched.

Having spent a long time only having heard the LP version of 2x4, that session version gets me every time - the way it blows through the wall at the end and keeps on going. Kind of a water mark as well, when they really started getting some snap, crackle and pop - it really f'ing moves. 'There's a new fiend on the loose, it's a fear of the obtuse' - damn straight.

Love Words of Expectation obviously, it really lopes along, amazing bass and guitar playing. Also thoroughly recommend the live version on the re-issued Room to Live. I quite like CREEP as well, prefer it to the single possibly, a little explosive savage music box.

Persevere with Spoilt Victorian Child, jaggedy pop, with those sudden moments of dirge-like delerium, dropping out, brilliant vocals.

What You Need (especially) and Faust Banana just incredible - one sparse, taut, every varying repetition w' brilliant commandments over the top, the other deranged Mittel Europ renaissance carnival stomp - 'sparse gartens in vinter' and 'fruits exotic' indeed.

Gross Chapel... (crosses self)

Hahaha, now I'm truly psyched! Well, more or less. Yeah, I didn't quite realise where Faust Banana was going, but the end put the whole thing in context - it may WELL be better than the eventual version. Really REALLY wish there'd been a Peel Session of Riddler! but you can't have it all.

2x4 did get better towards the end, yeah. I think it got simultaneously more tuneful and more intense. Just as I was having my doubts it emerged as a super li'l pop song.

That version of "Man Whose Head Expanded" is colossal. They almost never looked back in Peel sessions but that was a great call, and as much as I love the studio version I pull up the Peel take when I want to hear it. You'll find a few other re-visitations towards the end of the box that are equally wonderful.

Couple of things - here's the Peel Sessions poll, for added commentary and reference fun.

And also - I was just bumbling around the Fall website:

In 1980 The Fall released Fiery Jack (January), Totales Turns (May),
How I Wrote Elastic Man (July), Totally Wired (September) and
Grotesque (November).

I mean I knew this, but, wow, just... wow.

I have trouble writing a sentence some days. Including today. Dreadfully hungover.

Spoilt Victorian Child is one of my fave Fall songs, pls to relisten.

Been tearing through this box for the last 4-5 days, just moved on to disc 6. Weak start to this one. Really looking forward to seeing acoleuthic continue.

via lj

Hot Aftershave Bop - Awesome little wistful riff to open! And then we plunge into the garage body of the song - a second guitar is doing lovely seagull-slide things in the background. The bass is exploratory and the mix is lush. I really, really like this already. Chord-change! He loves somebody a lot, and the melody has bent sinister. This song is like a cupped handful of mercury sloshing around in a pleasant and slightly poisonous way. MES even screams. His hands shake and we end on an almighty garage rave-up. Super.

R.O.D. - Galloping drums, whispers. Promising. Then - oh shit it's the 1980's!! That keyboard tone! Finally, The Fall have stepped out of the inexplicably ancient. But they've taken their guitarist with them. And now the keyboard betrays a garish organ tone, which is only a good thing. Song uses tension deliciously, pulls back when threatening to explode. This is beautiful. This is MUCH better than the album version. I'd say so far this is one of the 2 or 3 best sessions, actually. But then I always loved Bend Sinister. I always thought that album had the right mix, the right sound, the right songwriting ideas, even if it didn't pull off the album itself as staggeringly as some others. This drones and rocks on like a sad thing in the grips of illness. Guitar begins to sound a *bit* like The Cure. Again, this is not an unwelcome development. And now the lead guitar lapses from notes to chords and it's sweet as. All is ending gauzily, hazily, perfectly...

Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers - OK, this is the one. One of the greatest songs ever written by man. And it's started excellently, stereo panning effects fitted as standard, MES spoken intro backgrounded and menacing. Guitar enters! And it's curter, brighter somehow than the album version. A little more garage. The lead guitar is crazed with the same poetry that informed previous Peel Sessions monsters. MES is quiet. This is a song which demands that he be quiet. He can't overcome this mood his band's instruments are creating. The drums create such forward momentum. This song, while moody and slinky, is really fucking driving too. This is a slightly faster, more vicious version of the hypnotic original, but it loses barely any of that song's qualities while adding a few of its own. Guitars mirror each other, then back to the riff of riffs. Where did they come up with that riff from? I think it might be perfect. Lead guitar is trying hard not to lose it. This is not a song to lose it entirely in. It is a song about a riff and intimations therefrom. And all of a sudden it's completely enveloped me. It holds on, then gracefully retreats. Its point has been made articulately. A fever-dream heatstroke nightmare of a song. And then MES howls the final words. Out of key.

US 80s-90s - More roly-poly than the album version, more...slinky! This 10th session has a real fucking groove, a liquid constitution. The bass especially has been poured into my ears, brutally poured. Iron slag but fluid. The artificial-sounding drumbeats are a lovely touch, especially as this appears to be a comment on rap production. There's even record static in the background! The bassline, in its fluidity, has an upbeat funk. Counteracting this are the guitars, droning (and fairly liquid themselves) but harsh enough to coat everything in lysergic bile. Need I add, but this sounds huge. And MES, while he's been calm in this session, is as authoritative as he's been. Lead guitar begins to scratch and spit towards the end, as if to remind us that it can. And that it really likes it. In fact, the ending is a sort of surreal tech-vision-groove-battle. Breathtaking fucking session.

Oh thanks!

this is one of my favourite sessions too. i like the way they distilled the essence of whatever lp they had out at the time and made it better

More, please!

yeah!

Did our kid get banned again?

Can't believe I just referred to lj as "our kid", sorry everyone.

He self-banned so as to get on with some uni work, I believe.

Yeah I heard he was doing this David Blaine-ish stunt where he is like living for six months (possibly frozen in ice? possibly in a cage over the Medway? possibly just in his pants? I dunno) and during that time he's not posting to ILX. People keep baiting him by posting stuff about the Fall etc but through the power of mind alone he is managing to hold out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/03/entertainment_living_with_david_blaine/img/1.jpg

Hey Louis have you heard the new Cardiacs record?

Truly, lj is like a modern day Jesus, suspended in a perspex box for our prog rock related sins.

apparently, 20 mins....

FROM A FACEBOOK WALL:

The Fall - Peel Session 11 ReviewShare
Today at 11:25am

Athlete Cured - Heavy bassline, ever so slightly distorted, drum flourish. Call and response MES. Weird and wonderful, panned helicopter beats. Dark fire from guitars. This is not the poppy post-Bend Sinister burbling I expected, this is monstrous and mashsome. It sounds like some techno beast is trying to free itself from prostrate bondage as a troupe of performing witches growl in laughter. This is really quite minimal as far as song-structure goes, even by Fall standards, and of course it works beautifully. When the helicopter beat malfunctions, the effect is supreme. Multitracked vocal layers give the song a druggy sheen, as MES' unhinged necessaries are buried, put back into the soil they came from.

Australians In Europe - Holy hell, so catchy! And there's a subtle chord-change. This IS the poppy post-Bend Sinister burbling and it's AWESOME. And wow, that vocal echo thing! Playing with content AND form here. I'd not expected something quite so righteously joyful! It's still heavy; the bass and drums ensure that. But it's also a romp, a blast, perhaps the blinding chords of the Ketamine Sun shining onto our damned forms. I can't quite explain how bizarre this song's alchemy is. OH SHIT! The power-chord middle section!!! What's happened to The Fall?! This is completely insane! And then the guitar builds beneath, the bass changes, and MES comes back in...it's maybe one of my favourite 5 Fall moments so far? Hahahahaha, this band NEVER fails to amaze me. WOW. This has rapidly become one of the best pop songs I've ever had the privilege to hear. And there's still over a minute left!!! It's all going a bit Complicated Game. I ain't complaining. FUCK. I have no more rational argument about this. Why isn't it automatically mentioned every time the Peel Sessions are brought up? Beautiful solo during the fade-out too. YES

Twister - How to follow that up? With a REALLY MENACING AVANT-GARDE BASS DRONE and then some austere 4th-interval (I think) keys! Which suddenly hammer down amid building beats, manic strumming, catatonic Brix and -silence-...reset. Dual guitar this time. I don't know what the drums are doing. No longer are The Fall trying to take your head off. They're charming it from your shoulders. And as straight-up linear as Athlete Cured had been, this is ALL OVER THE FREAKING PLACE, losing nothing by comparison, clearly the work of the same band in the same place. The jarring effect of those keys+those tribal builds is phenomenal. This is pop Fall fed through Hexen vortex. Brix taunts and is taunted. Spirals into careen. Delirium. The most delirious session.

Guest Informant - Starts with muffled MES, echoed drums. Then he yelps a mantra, perhaps the clearest he's been in this session. But the keyboards soon return, and they're inspired. This chorus is great; I can really feel the songwriting in this session. I can sense it being worked out, worked towards, an instance of truth as hell marries heaven somewhere along the decline of England. No wonder the dude set Jerusalem to music around this period. He set it to The Fall. Here is another hymn to the damned nation, perhaps more straightforward than the other session tracks, but still guttural, still mysterious. The box-set blurb claimed this was one of the best sessions. I didn't believe it. Hell I do now. And look, there's a really fucked-up guitar solo, as if to confound me further. Slips s'ways out of time. Chaos. Chaos! As if that's the only way this song could have ended.

Australians in Europe might be the single greatest Peel sessions moment ...

The whole sci-fi narrative of Twister is ace.

build a tunnel, cross Britannia

IT FALLS TO ME ONCE AGAIN...

The Fall - Peel Session 12 ReviewShare
Today at 2:03pm

Deadbeat Descendant - The opening riff is disarmingly simple, and after a couple of run-throughs plunges us into a complex, urgent pattern of pop-punk, complete with moody keys/what sounds like a vibraphone. The riff then returns, but contextualised by the unerringly heavy drums it sounds nothing like itself. This is what's known as a 'low-key vamp', maybe, and it's pretty good. The alchemy from the previous session is still there.

Cab It Up - Again, the 'simple riff into confusion' trick, except this time OMD's Enola Gay has leapt into the fray in the form of a vibrakeyboard refrain. It works rather nicely. The guitar is nicely splayed, even though there's less of an instinct to really integrate the pop into what makes The Fall tick. Less exposition than rendition. Having said that, the atonal guitar-blast-during-Enola-Gay bit after two and a half minutes is sublime. I think this one will reward relistens. There's subtlety, if not mindsplitting fury in fear or in pop. It also sounds maybe a tiny bit too professional? Perhaps 'calculated' is what I'm searching for. Closing trawl is again excellent, though, so my reservations are few. MES gives a good performance.

Squid Lord - Haha, for the third time! There's definitely formula at work here. The depth of sound, the slightly blurred sophistication, is appealing, and this one's certainly a bit more arch than the first two. Grand marching keys, less guitar exploration, drama generated by the drawl of it all. Again, there's plenty of subtlety, as the high whistling keys effect mounts behind MES, and the drums briefly drop out to relaunch the unfolding reportage. This feels like a giant news story, as reported from MES' armchair.

Kurious Oranj - Slight alteration to the formula this time. Or not, if horn-driven garage reggae was what you expected. This is certainly poppy, certainly intriguing, and yes, drawling. Although the offbeat guitar-strum that develops is slyly one of the more open concessions to musical form that the Peel Sessions have thus far revealed. There's even a heroic rotary organ in there somewhere. Suddenly, the rhythm goes out of whack, wordless babbling, thenthe synthesised horns begin a kuriously strident reattempt at nailing that reggae vibe. It's very listenable, even catchy, and manages to be lucid in its unexpectedness. One can sense what is being tried here, which isn't necessarily a good thing, but at least it is not a disaster in a bad way. It's not a disaster at all. Will I count that against this song? Probably not. Closing section meanders briefly until MES remembers who his band are and throws in a final, open-ended chord-change by means of punctuation.

This is like when you found out that Blaine had taken a pee bottle with him in the box. Good job of staying off the internets LJ ;)

(Also good posts!)

It's only fair that he do this.

nb: The "best" version of Guest Informant is on the "Backdrop" bootleg--Totally storming.

Enjoying this - consider these ones v lyrically strong too:

Squid Lord - comedy Lovecraft - In the Squid Hospital, his head will be in a draught, a geriatric germ-well

KO - Stuyvesant smoking, made the Jews go to school, sent missionary girls to arab states, spat on the Belgians, built the world as you know it (all systems you traverse), made Hitler laugh in pain, they were anti-Semitic, anti-Gaelic, hey shit man you name it, they were against it.

Smith at some kind of lyrical zenith - a goddam pop song about The House of Orange forchrissakes.

Seriously, you can't quit now, man. As incentive, when you're done I'll upload the Complete Non-Peel Sessions. ;-)

That's godda be worth it!

ah GO ON THEN

yay

KO - Stuyvesant smoking, made the Jews go to school, sent missionary girls to arab states, spat on the Belgians, built the world as you know it (all systems you traverse), made Hitler laugh in pain, they were anti-Semitic, anti-Gaelic, hey shit man you name it, they were against it.

Smith at some kind of lyrical zenith - a goddam pop song about The House of Orange forchrissakes.

Have sad suspicion that KO led me to write doctorate on culture of the 1690s. & yes unbelievable lyrical brilliance.

Chicago Now - Dinky keys! Menacing bassline, jaunty but slightly wronged guitar-line. Momentary call and response. Mixture of light and dark such as this band has grown skilled at over years of rock. Faintly unreal chords in chorus - the sort of chords you'd expect from bagpipes. It's back. It's a slow kill. Scrap that, it's a tempo HIKE. As we spiralled beyond the point of no return into black ink, pop thrusts even the keel. This is deep, foul, graceful. Somehow the orchestra hits are the foulest of all - lessons have perhaps been learned from Foetus? Air on a damned string. TEMPO HIKE. Disorientation. Arch and confused all at once. Rewards close listening. Completely fucked. Superb.

Black Monk Theme - Luminous Fall! Vibrato ethereal goddamn LUMINOUS Fall! Again the chords have a sliding quality, a noble slipping. Violin madness but not like early Ultravox; this violin is subjugated. Organ is lovely. This session, so far: a lovely, imprisoned experience of triumph as seen from the POV of soon-to-be-discarded weaponry. Defeat shining through the translucent skeleton of victory. Spoken in MES' tongue and his bandmates' brawling ballerinas.

Hilary - This sounds more positive, almost like a love-song, and it has Brix's backing sighs, but there must be something awry. It's too elegant. Maybe it's exactly as elegant as it has to be. Maybe this session is about Elegance, and this third chapter is about an attempt to find pure elegance and not pervert it, for once. The songs have all had elegance, but successively with less violence. It's a musical project. Or a test. An experiment which is reaching its tipping-point as soon as this song ends.

Whizz Bang - Again, the violin, playing elegy! Piano and guitars weeping for a lost friend; THIS is even MORE elegant! Tragedy is more elegant than appraisal. The chorus is even beautiful, with no askance glance nor eyebrow cocked. Satan has gotten behind this band. The experiment is complete, and The Fall have achieved a state of unironic beauty. It's not their best song, or their crowning moment, but it does define a purge of sorts, and underlines that the act can examine itself.

"Whizz Bang" was never broadcast (well, certainly not at the time) and was never recorded until it was reworked as "Butterflies 4 brains" much later.

Indeed, I've always heard an early echo of The Monks' Shut Up in there as well ('Got a reason to laugh, got a reason to cry/got black cloud aura') but possibly imagining things.

Not actually one of my favourite sessions this - but I do like doomy synth stabs in Chicago, Now!

xxp: pretty sure Brix was out of the band at that point. back vox prob Marcia Schofield

It wasn't my favourite session at all and felt as I say like a sort of self-examination, but I liked the first two tracks a LOT, and thought that Whizz Bang had something really sweet going for it too. Chicago Now especially is great. Wondering what my favourite tracks so far have been...Australians In Europe, Gross Chapel, Hexen Definitive, Winter and a couple of others are definitely in with a shout...

oops :/

Haha oh wait Hip Priest obv, also Middle Mass

the insane thing is when Brix comes BACK in the band!

and Pat-Trip Dispenser, maybe ROD. That covers 'em all I think

I've got The Light User Syndrome which has Brix AND Nagle *head explodes*

I mean, it can't not be awesome, with them both there. I may be the world's biggest Julia Nagle fan, though, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Things kinda come to a head with the Chiselers single

^^^can't wait for the Peel Session of that...hope you can practically hear them fighting

2 weeks later?

WHAT BETTER TIME OF DAY TO LISTEN TO THE FALL

The War Against Intelligence - Fall in sardonic pop mode for a few seconds, and then drops inexplicably yet beautifully into frazzled drug-rock territory. Then repeats. Except this time the drug-rock has a sort of bagpipe violin. God I love indistinct noises. Something about a blot on the English landscape and then that wailing noise, which is probably a violin, and is now persisting into the verses, which in turn appear more driving and desperate than they'd first seemed. Background mud. Bloops.

Idiot Joy Showland - Faster, more 'basic' Fall here. I don't have a lot to say about this one. It's not bad. The bassline works nicely against the block chords in the verses. The chorus contains the line 'who the fuck are you sneering at' which is a little petulant by MES' standards, not that I'm one to quibble. The massive bass is the runaway star of this one. But even it's pretty meek by Fall bass standards, really.

A Lot Of Wind - Promising start, oh drones and tribal drummer deprived of one arm! Violinist! Atonal guitar splashes! One of those intangibly mystical basslines! 'You talk a lot about wind!' Now let's expand into something violently unpleasant, please. Violin winds like snare about song's rotten core. Aura deepens. Pop-phase Fall gettin' their hexen thang on. More! More! Guitars respond. Like a bird fighting a wind-tunnel, as the blast is slowly steepened. Soon the bird shall give in and find itself pinned to the wire mesh. Buffeted. The shock reaches goth-guitar mania. The spell passes.

The Mixer - Again with the violin in a starring role. The only track in this session which doesn't feature it (or feature it so imaginatively) is the throwaway, I'd wager (this song has far too pretty a tune to join it). Special mention to the drumming in this one, which is spry and yet completely 80's-inflected. The sort of beat the Pet Shop Boys would have jumped at. Consequently this feels like it should be a single, with a video. Top Of The Pops appearances. Remix by Robin Guthrie. Perhaps it's still too oblique and Kraut for that. And features too much background tannoy MES. Which I love, incidentally. Violin suddenly becomes much clearer in the last minute, like a gulp of fresh peach. And then a fade-out, because this band is not above such things.

I love the single double drumbeat in Lot of Wind that occurs just towards the end. They did this in The Quartet of Doc Shanley as well. Never ceases to delight.

Free Range - Oh yeah!!! Already a kick-ass number, this has been given DESCENDING ELECTRONIC BLEEPS to basically turn the intro into something wondrous. They seem to be a fixture in the rest of the song too. Need I add, the fuzzed-out guitar is a beautiful touch - this always was their grunge number. As well as one of their better rave-ups. We get some positively Coxon-esque guitar squalls, and yes, more background tannoy (which seems to be a regular feature of this Fall phase - indicative of a dark beast below that haunts indistinctly with garbled miscommunication).

Kimble - Caledonian air on a broken synth! Reggae! Well, that's a nice little jackknife. Make me believe this is more than a little genre exercise, guys. The field-recording plus broken synth refrain popping up every so often is this song's hook, and its salvation. Not that I see myself returning to this one much - the chassis is too pristine. Then in the last thirty seconds, everything retreats, and suddenly we have a much more interesting -

Immortality - What fresh synth-bass hell is this? We'd best be in for a big ol' vamp. It's got that quality a few Fall songs have, of conveying vast and fearsome things with the length of its swaggering bassy stride. Ideally flanged slightly. Played on one note. The actual bass is quite reserved; the synth is doing all the damage. MES' vocals are fitting on nicely - it's a slurred one. OK, I ended up losing a bit of interest, but the bass got better - my imagination?

Return - Atonal blasts of evil! The way that Fall songs ingratiate themselves with the listener is worthy of a snappily punctuated soundbite in 90% of cases. Dithyrambic buzzsynth rite. No sentence over four. Loving this cruel synth. Loving this cruel synth. Loving this cruel synth. Loving this cruel synth. Well-deployed jangle. Back to the exorcism. Loving this cruel synth. Letter to Brix? Loving this cruel singer. Loving this cruel synth. Loving this cruel cruel

Ladybird (Green Grass) - Oh good lord, this one has a great fucking tune! And the guttural percussion is a sweet touch which has crept up on me. It's like the concept of snappy, cut and shut songwriting has kidnapped our MES and battered him about the head and neck until he has conceded to its whim. The drumming and of course the whining vocals of protest at this situation are the only signs of struggle. Maybe there's a weird electronic whizz or two. That's just the probe. The truth-telling probe. DO NOT LIE, MARK EDWARD SMITH. DO NOT LIE. IT WILL COST YOU. DO NOT LIE.

Strychnine - OK, I'm guessing this session was culled from the height of their early-90's rave period. Begins beautifully with unearthly burbles strangling a piano. Then we have a snappy, too-bright pub-bombing of a song. Guitars made from chain-link fences. Yelps of a man intent on producing this wrong. It sounds wrong. It's absolutely supreme. Not much more to say except that this is some of the best 'clean' guitar I've heard on a Fall song. Whistling death.

Service - More piano, this time syncopated and sombre, as the skittering rave-drums form a premonition of Levitate. That album shed all 80's vestiges; this song retains them in synth-sound and guitar-sheen. Something polite about MES' vocals on this one too. It's going to be too long, I think. Bass needs to decide whether it is pop hook or funeral bell. It isn't really either. Maybe it's both.

Paranoia Man In Cheap Shit Room - BENDY MOAN OF SAD GUITAR. OH FUCK YEAH! Opening salvo is pretty much exactly what I wanted to hear. It's desperate, poisonous, brash, bold and SYNTH STABS because this song is fucking JJ Leigh in the shower. I don't mean it's fucking her. I mean it IS her. Bates represented by the effects-shattered dignity-bereft guitars. Mental disintegration on a stupid synth. Loopy calculations of a death-ticker. Swoons back into the guitar refrain and integrates. Produce that shit! Flip it! Reverse it! Dicking around with the idea of demise! MES, you flaming demon, you sound afraid! Synth stabs like the church organ now! Guitars suddenly threnodic! All is massing into real FUCKING tears!

Kimble is top ten Fall material for me. Beautiful - glass shards, smashed crockery, drunken piano, the clockwork music box theme from Sinster Waltz, the way it falls apart, winds itself up with Hanley's bass, brief moments where it comes together, it's just so loose. Smith's dry sinister delivery perfect over the glittering sound.

And that Infotainment Scan material is great too - Ladybird Green Grass continuing the hidden Brechtian theme of this period (Shift Work, Code:Selfish and The Infotainment Scan) 'Before the grub, comes the moralist'. Good example of a compassionate Fall song as well.

Service one of my favourites, contemplative, great for a clear Autumn day.

Strychnine is a great Sonics cover and Paranoia Man in Cheap Sh*t Room is one of those ones (see also 50-Year-Old Man) where Smith seems to take a version of himself, what he would have been without The Fall/art perhaps, and writes a song round it. Love that song. Yep, great session.

M5 - Rollicking bass with damaged whining of synth and a neat chord-change. I never thought I could love this phase of the Fall to this extent but they never lost it, not ever. It's not even a particularly brilliant song, or a brilliant performance, but somehow it conveys a brilliant band.

Behind The Counter - Sounds like it's about to remind me that The Fall do rockabilly. Oh wait no, actually - it's a song I've heard before - a sunny song. I don't really feel the need to justify any feelings about this song. I'd rather just listen to it. It's nothing special again, but it's intensely comforting. Deliberate choice of words. Spoken-word segment of surrogate dad. Is it any wonder MES is childless? He has all of us to care for. Synth imposition followed by hysterically distorted bass. Ah man, they've still got it. Bears repeating. In case you'd even considered forgetting this, you will be nudged.

Reckoning - The synth is pretty and again the dominant factor. It's ever so slightly corny. But that's ok. This isn't by any means a blinding session, but it's a highly reassuring one. The sound of a band playing well within itself, not needing to go big. Ornate.

Hey! Student - More of a violent one, this. Nicely spewed guitar. I think I've had a bit of a surfeit of this sort of thing? Actually, this isn't bad at all - it's a very linear, synth-deprived, hellish trawl through a song that wasn't designed to suffer this much but is now tasting some harsh realities of life. Hey - like the titular character! Hey! Hey hey! As if to back this up, everything begins to chime and there's a background squeal. MES is taunting us! Us young men. You can tell, because his voice goes manic and he blurts. And YELLS!

This is all stuff from their most 'forgotten'/overlooked phase, and I am enjoying it, really I am. Apart from Strychnine and Paranoia Man, not much so far in the very top bracket, but there hasn't been much at all below 'good'. Consistent and biding their time. I'm sure Kimble and Service will grow on me - they have good raw ingredients and plenty of mystery.

One more for today I think.

Not their most amazing session, although I do like this particular version of Behind the Counter. I actually find it pretty wintry - those wheezing keyboards. But I also like the 'always underrated, you never can encapsulate us' bit at the beginning and the spiel in the middle which ends '... and transport you to a town that doesn't exist.'

The changing way the keys and guitars interlock is great (see an awful lot of their supposedly repetitive songs - there's often not two sections the same, Two Face for instance, or My Ex-Classmates Kids).

Do like Hey! Student as well, very different from the locomotive like album version, but just as good.

One more, one more! Is that the Christmas one? I think it must be.

Glam Racket - Star - Handclaps and pop-guitar fuzz - a statement of populism! Enough chord-changes to justify the love of millions who wouldn't usually love The Fall. Although god, those vocals and lyrics are a little confrontational. Ooh, that Brix, she's going IN! If it's her. It is, isn't it? She came back to the band? Yeah, this is the session that by all rights should have Bonkers In Phoenix on it. Now I'm going to sulk about that. And then, I had to PAUSE a session for the FIRST TIME during this whole project because I suddenly developed loads of things to say in the last 10 seconds of the song. A: HOLY FUCK YOU AMAZING BASTARD MES you just fucking THREW IN the distorted vocal samples from the BIP intro JUST AS I TYPED THAT. But I only typed it so that I might be able to follow it up with 'but it really doesn't matter because this is AWESOME', which it is. It's got an absolutely killer tune, a great dual-vocalist set-up and a quite fucking marvellous performance. However, silence assails me. RESUME

Jingle Bell Rock - That is a really distorted, evil jingle bell! I love you MES. Somehow the concept is validated by the jingle bell being a terrible sample. And the song enshrined by being just over a minute of GREAT MUSIC. Oh shi-

Hark The Herald Angels Sing - Haha, and now they're reminding me they used to be classified as punk! Sex Pistols meets Christmas Carol. AAAAAAGH OMG BRIX WTF AAAAAAGH awesome! This is SUCH cheeky material! Such a fucking cheeky, impudent, playful session! God, I need to get hold of Cerebral Caustic if it's all like this. Hahaha, I am REALLY loving this session. For reasons I haven't loved the other sessions. The guitar isn't atonal, the drums aren't murderous, and the bass is positively fluid! But the attitude...the attitude is stone-dead ridiculous.

Numb At The Lodge - I just love the fact that MES got Brix back in the band either to completely fuck around with her voice, or to get her to completely fuck around with the rest of us with her voice. Like some kind of post-nuptial trolling. They actually sound more brilliantly in league than they did while married. Vocally, at least. The disconnect between her exaggeratedly tuneful warbling and his invigorated, aggressive ranting, newly sharpened, is that of a pair of great comedians. The song itself is super, sly, and this is a marvellous, essential session.

XD

*puts on Bonkers In Phoenix which is probably one of the 20 best things recorded in the history of music*

I think this was about the time when on their Christmas Eve gig in Germany, they all got in a huddle on stage then came out of it and threw rose petals on the audience.

Numb at the Lodge, specifically the session version rather than Feelin Numb, is an incredible pop song, just incredible, so hooky. Again, top ten material. Not sure nowadays that I don't prefer the sparse 12" version of Glam Racket, or Mark Goodier session version, but still, I remember hearing this session after a friend had taped it for me and it blew my mind.

This session was the blast of seasonal cheer I think we all needed tbh - it's probably top 3 so far. Well, definitely top 5.

I gather sessions 22 and 24 are the stone-dead corkers remaining? Not that I will prejudge.

(you have little idea how tempted I've been to skip to Session 22 or the Peel Session 'Blindness')

(Session 22 because of your write-up on the poll thread, I must add!)

The Fall throwing rose-petals at the crowd is indescribably awesome, which is probably why they did it

Sidebar: the original "Hey! Student," then "Hey Fascist". MES has a long memory.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zltaTC1iY2A

xpost - I'd say so yes, although I'm not sure how widely my opinion of 22 is shared - personally I think it's timeless. The last three sessions are all pretty good fwiw.

really, really wish they'd done a) a proper Levitate session and b) an Unutterable session

b) is the single biggest oversight in their career, actually

Two Librans
W.B. (or Sons Of Temperance, or Serum, or Way Round)
Ketamine Sun
Dr Buck's Letter

ty

actually swap Ketamine Sun and Dr Buck's Letter in that order - it's usually the third track what is the extended avant-nightmare, and the fourth a tuneful rave-up

That five-year gap was very odd. Peel mentioned something about it, saying there were certain differences, without really elaborating, but that it had been silly not to have them in the studio for that long. They were always great for either increasing the expectation for the album (without actually spoiling any of the album versions, because they were usually so different) or providing a delightful development of the album. Made a big difference.

Which ones? Hmmm, probably WB, a strangely amazing, 10 minute version of Hot Runes or something, a slightly disappointing Two Librans (but with great extra lyrics) and a cover of Ball of Confusion. (<---one that Hanley always said he wanted to cover, so it wd be typical Smith perversity to do it once he'd left.) I could see them doing a stunning session version of Midwatch as well.

Hahaha, I actually typed Midwatch 1953 instead of Dr Buck's Letter then decided I wouldn't get away with it

(Midwatch really is among my Fall favourites, as I hope you realise! OK, it can go into Fantasy Unutterable Session)

Yep, I'm a big fan of that as well. Pretty certain it was linked with this Glowboys film.

I haven't seen it, but there's a bit on youtube -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghh2vlPU2Tk

He Pep! - Starts with that awesome electronic drawl that lets you know Ms Nagle is about. Snaky glorious bass (Hanley's last session?) and some blasts of scuzzy guitar. Stops starts, semi-ska beat, electronic benzine, growling together like a terrible nebula, and then Brix, screeching as MES rants amiably beneath a torrent of incongruous chaotic brilliance. The Light User Syndrome had too many members, but this was probably a good thing. There are so many musicians in there, fighting for dominion. Great guitar. Scanlon's last session too? Overpowering sheen of barely-audible keyboard fog-throttle. Drums don't know but they feel. OK, this is fucking amazing.

Oleano - Massive bass again. Harmonic-strummed metallic guitar. Then that one-note peal this song is better known for. Delay. The other guitar comes in late a couple of times. Everything exists to build tension. Organ sounds. Not really anything like the original; much, much better in fact. INSANE SCREAM FROM BRIX as the bass launches into messy overdrive. The destroyers circle a stricken submarine and prepare to launch the final charge. All is sonar and despair. In a final moment of clarity, guitars burst through the night, and then stop.

Chilinist - Dirty guitars! Really dirty guitars. In truth this session was only ever going to be amazing and I am surprised at myself for not realising this earlier. It has the largest number of great Fall musicians on it of all the sessions. It has almost all the *great* members full stop! Rouses itself with those swaggering keyboards and with Brix taking rant duties for once. The guitars get more and more ferocious, it seems. After a while it stops, and then starts again but without keyboards. Then the keyboards come back. This is possibly going on too long while doing too little? Certainly not as compelling as the two before it. Oh, but now the weird quiet bit. Which is abandoned quickly for the garage-rock mainframe to return. Not their finest but it's got a lot of Brix, if you like Brix!

The City Never Sleeps - Huge keys this time, on some horn preset, but with a pop beat and EVEN MORE Brix! She's actually singing properly on this one too. The keys discover a string preset. It's all very basic, also restless. The Fall really do sound like a 90's tweepop band here. Sort of. It's good, better than the last one, although given the first two songs this session really hasn't attacked like I hoped it would. I guess that's what too many cooks do - they prevent intensity being retained for too long. What intensity it was, though.

First two songs definitely kill on this session. I really like the whole 'I think like you do, I act like you do, I thought I was you' mirror vox on Chisellers as well. One of my best mates is inordinately fond of the Nancy Sinatra cover so I tend to have a sneaking fondness for it as well.

Next one was Hanley's last iirc.

As well as well. But yes, the opening part to U Pep was usually called 'Tunnel' live, and was put on the front of the Chisellers on the album. The 'cold dark winter on the 17th of December (September?)' bit was also put on the end of the album version, He Pep. Difficult to know whether I prefer Brix's scream on Oleano or Smith's coughing/vomiting/laughing attack on the album.

I remember when this came out, it was a wet and dark part of the year, and the session totally fit my mood. Loved it at the time, first two songs still rate highly.

D.I.Y. Meat - Three really REALLY encouraging chords! Then Karl Burns with one of his best-ever intros and YES that bass! The madness has returned and we can hear feedback, guitars on fire, crazy drumming, MES buried and having to fight, which is where he attacks best from - the crypt. Even a manic laugh. But the star is Burns, mostly. Well, the whole thing's righteous. Maybe not QUITE as good as He Pep! but it doesn't have to be; it's got the sound. It's got the vibe. Opening Peel Session tracks, they set the vibe.

Spinetrak - The guitars are so vicious I'm beginning to wonder if Scanlon's on this one too. Loud and mean. Sounding vaguely out-of-control and all the better for it. The better moments of the Light User Syndrome-era sessions, it seems, are notable for their use of bass to anchor some of The Fall's more visceral careening. Bass is kept very, very simple, rest is allowed to crash about a-drunken. The song itself is OK, not The Fall's best.

Spencer - If this is the song that winds up on Levitate as Spencer Must Die, then it's barely recognisable. Squelchy synths, bass lope, Burns again unleashed, fucking animal on drums. But in slow-motion. It's a mess, this one, but inevitably I like it. Has slightly mystical, incantational qualities to it as well, which again were mined brilliantly on Levitate. Ah, and there's the bassline. Yeah, it's the same song, sort of. Nascent, no less obscure. Great! Guitar touches in extended outro are an added bonus.

Beatle Bones 'N' Smokin' Stones - begins with very silly MES yelping but as it's a cover I guess this has to be silly. Oh gosh it's very silly indeed! Until the drums come in, then it's distinctly un-silly garage-rock. Again, not the best session, and the highs don't quite reach those of He Pep! and Oleano - I'd give the MVP award to Spencer for being really weird and compelling, although Burns' performance in D.I.Y. Meat is genuinely superb. This song? It's kinda going past. Still a minute left! What can they conjure? A big heavy 60's-style psych outro, by the looks of it. Certainly that's what the mantra-like bass and Byrds-inflected guitar seem to think.

Er, Hanley's last one the next one... Get it right, GR. Not a huge fan of this session tbh. Shd listen to it again.

Calendar - Finally, the Levitate-era session, an album which remains an all-time favourite of mine despite, um, everything. Nagle sounds jovial on keys, bass is a bit subdued, but the Era Of Electronic Madness is in so this doesn't matter much; the bass-tone is clean but there's scuzz in this apparatus. Not really much or any lead guitar. Oh, there's some except it's being tortured at knifepoint by a surrealist. Levitate wasn't a good time for conventional guitarists. Hints of a genius new-wave break for about two seconds in there, silenced. Nagle goes catatonic. Pretty good. YEEEAS.

Touch Sensitive - Everyone slags off this version. It's a bit slower and bassier than the Marshall Suite version; if it had appeared on Levitate I still think it'd have banged. The chorus is in a minor-key, it seems! They changed that one, at least, when they had a guitarist who dared show his head above the parapet. Ah, NOW it's a bit more major. This version's more Cramps, more rockabilly, more sinuous. The other version's more pop, more likely to be used in a commercial. And while this one won't set the blood racing, it'll groove into your mind with a seamless grunt. It's quite ominous! Maybe this song shouldn't be ominous. Ah, who cares.

Masquerade - Atmospheric, slightly clumsily-played Nagle intro...then fuck me acid house! Hahahaha! This is even more technofied than the original! "This is new...fresh"...sounds like some sort of ironic comment on 90's dance? Sincere? What's even meant any more. It's less focused and intrinsically kinetic than the original, but it's a really, really odd beast. Could do with being a bit faster. Or shorter? Ah, the bass drops back for a bit. But then returns exactly as before. Three minutes left. Three minutes! Three minutes in which I could lament the fact they never did a Peel session of 4 1/2 Inch. Or fucking fucking Hurricane Edward. Or Ol' motherchristing Gang. Or Levitate itself. Or Ten Houses Of Eve. But hey - this is sorta getting better as it goes on. Not enough to make up for the fact that The Fall recorded an album of absolute genius and then refused to play any of the brainblowers in session. Oh man, to hear Hurricane Edward done in a Peel Session. Bass drops out, keys take over, is oddly arresting. This should have been shorter, weirder.

Jungle Rock - I'm apprehensive because catchy as it is, it's pretty much a one-chord unchanging drawl made by its electronic textures and its brevity on Levitate, and here it's six and a half minutes long. Nagle's keys are pretty awesome in this one, so I'm not worried yet. Bass could be more prominent. Ah wait, there's some mentalist guitar too! Somewhere in there. Again, maybe, it's been slowed down to make it more...tantric? Guitar sounds detuned but not menacing. It sounds bewildered, as if MES has blindfolded it and then told it to try and escape from the studio. Ah, that's more like it. The guitar thrashes around for air, aid, anything. It's strangled by MES' dogged vocals and Nagle's revenant shriek. I'd rate this above Masquerade, in that it's not really a missed opportunity but quite an effective reading of one of Levitate's lesser tracks. They're kinda making the most of this one! Weird choice but it's insistent, bizarre and authentically freaked-out. Really not the worst session, although if listened to without patience or understanding it could be construed as such. I can sense the bacchanale, so I'm in favour.

OK, now for *the one*

Bound Soul One - Whooaaaa, what's happening? Really tinny drums and guitar, really rich and powerful echoed MES vocals; utterly disorientating. Garage ballad gone through a bad grinder and lad gallant begged blood but glad bagged his gall-bladder. Nagle's given a bit of licence to go wild on keys, and there's a really pretty background melody breaking through the percussive vortex, leading to a section of music I cannot rationally explain but only enjoy. I think there's every single nervous response I can have to art trying to be elicited here. The song has no choice but to fade away and leave me wondering, delirious. Wow.

Antidotes - LOVE the original, am so stoked for this. MES yowl, guitar played childlike tantrum...not the smashing chord-certainty but something echoey, percussive, bled from a gutter. There's banging, violence, fever. This is music from the edge of heart-attack. MES seems to sense this and yells for his life. In the background hover dark forces, as the percussion begins to rip itself apart in fifteen different directions and things oh my god it's overwhelming WHAT EVEN IS THIS it is not music it is not anything SAVE ME drums save me but the violence the warfare is waged on by THIS IS AN UNBELIEVABLE REIMAGINING critical faculty itself is ripped to shreds I wasn't expecting this I wasn't expecting anything like this but this is incalculably more impressively mind-damagingly infinite than what I had been expecting and now I'm full stream but this stream is only the stream of molten brain-bits taken apart by music that is barely of this earth. And then, it all pulls away to reveal the Stygian undersoundworld which Smith's mind is calling from. He yowls. In pain? Or in knowledge?

Shake-Off - Yikes, I'm beginning to understand this drill. He sounds fucking poisonous. I feel fucking poisoned. Death-rattle guitars everywhere. I don't know how this was made, why this was made, whether this was made almost. It sounds like a cantilever bridge engineered to fall down when you're right in the middle of it, looking down, thinking that maybe these keyboards are too much for your pitiful

This Perfect Day - Alien, scuzzy, garage-drawl, fearless. Yes, correct, this session is SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY. It's called me from some grotesque area and it doesn't give a fuck about music. It's not music, it's poetic expression of the arts of sound. Mesh-made mad and mind-muddle mead, mode. Glugged down with a kick in the fucking pants in store, always. I know there will be one here. I gird my loins and - it kicks.

jesus frickin' christ

'Antidotes' is in the PS Top Five, no questions asked

'Bound Soul One' is really not far behind

And yeah, the first two songs of the first LUS session are *great* as well.

I might as well get the last two over and done with...

...but not before

LAMENT FOR LOST UNUTTERABLE SESSION

Unutterable
Fucking best The Fall album
And no Peel Session

Theme From Sparta FC - Kicks in after one descending riff, and sounds a damn sight more conventional, beefy and rock-tastic than Session 22. Admittedly not as flat-out mind-exploding but hey this isn't a mind-exploder, it's an aggressive pop-song about football and it features a woman MES is still married to and making music with now in 2010. So there's stability, there's future. There's a Mark Lamarr reference, which is cheeky and not apocalyptic. The background vocals work really well in this version, and the organ-drone even better. God, I really like the keys in this one. It's a really bright and volatile reading of a kickass song. I wouldn't kick it off my stereo.

Contraflow - I like the original, mostly for its breakneck energy, and this one seems slightly slower, more self-contained. Maybe that's a fake-out, though? Maybe it'll leap at my throat NOW? Not quite but it's getting growlier. Someone else gets a go at the vocals at one point, which is a nice touch. Then after the interlude, the drums seem to come back stronger, which may be an illusion or may be an intentional act. Not a necessary version, but not a bad one either. Then we get 20 seconds of Krautrock at the end, as a sorta treat. And a silly comedy ending!

Groovin' With Mr Bloe - Green-Eyed Loco Man - A nice, bass-driven ditty to kick off, with some great fucked-up vocal effects and, again, silly performances to entertain us. A good tune, too. And then...HAHA that's an AWESOME way to go into Green-Eyed Loco Man! The way this great big dollop of overdriven guitar just lumbers into the fray like a wrestler absolutely intent on clotheslining everyone else in the ring. It's again a sorta slo-mo reading of the song, but it has grace. And the way the guitars go a bit bonkers in the second chorus is pleasurable. Really lush guitars! Maybe the guitars are the reason someone voted for this session in that Peel Sessions poll. It's certainly imposing, if not especially jawdropping.

Mere Pseud Mag. Ed. - The Fall plays...The Fall! Given the number of Hex Enduction bandmembers in this Fall, I'd legitimately describe this as a cover. And it's a pretty good one, all gnarly and atonal and stop-start and virulent. And it mounts like prime Fall. The choral vocals towards the end are like some sort of glorious arrhythmic punchline to the performance, which is genuinely quite something. Definitely the best from this session. Very, very nice indeed. Old Fall hasn't been disgraced, not that The Fall ever disgraces itself truly.

...and...

...you are about to chronicle 4 of the finest Fall performances of the last 20 years...

Clasp Hands - Starts nice and perky, like the first Peel Session really. Then, it pauses and comes back even jauntier, a sort of theme-song vibe. Canyons and shootouts, it's the Midwest. American music. There's a reflective bit. Actually the reflective bit is my favourite bit so far, and it looks like developing. "I was reflected" - it's in the lyrics too. Then after that little pause for succour, it's back roistering. Briefly. Maybe this one doesn't really have a narrative; it's more of a showcase for a tight and reasonably confident band under harness. Or at least this song's purpose is to show the reins before galloping into the wild. Yes, I have seen which track is next. I'm expecting something of a ride. As far as this song is concerned, it's hit a nice build-up section, which has now been supplanted by surprisingly and gratifyingly dirty bass. Which is detuning itself out of existence amid electronic buzz. I like this track. It's an intro but it works and it has set my neurons to 'ready and willing'.

Blindness - Here we go. There's that beat which is one of the best beats ever. And there's...shit, there's a FIERCE droning BASS guitar! Right in my ears. And then...he speaks. Things howl and scream in the background. There's a pervasive air of electricity coursing through everything, the studio, John Peel, everything. There's noise. There's light. There's respite. There are some fucking fabulous lyrics. Then it all kicks back in and that bass is having wild dirty sex with the mixing-board again. Then a bit with syncopated strumming of chords. Whereupon all sorts of din shoots about beneath. It's one of MES' better latter-day vocal performances, and it's given a very different dynamic to the album version by the sheer drone, the unblinking fluorescent glare of it all. Then the final roundelay is a summation of all of its strengths. Am enthused.

What About Us? - A sea of guitars is always promising. This already sounds like classic Fall, at least classic Peel Session fare. Is his voice being fed through a thingy? Ooh I do hope so. It's coming together very forcefully. And again, Smith sounds very convinced, very inspired in his utterances. Even the backing vocals work. This has a real synergy to it; it manages to signify changes in momentum without really changing much but through sheer weight of sound. Again, the guitars are enormous, and they have both a crispness and a bite to them. Then in the last 90 seconds the bass powers through and decimates opposing warriors. Not the best Fall song, but given deluxe treatment. The end is mighty!

Wrong Place, Right Time - I Can Hear The Grass Grow - Cowbell! And it's a poppy, cheeky li'l Fall fuckabout to start off with. Sly, sense of humour, all that stuff. Minimal, taunting slightly in its promise of more. Drums with the lazy lope of a drug-taker. Then someone leaves a steam-valve open and things begin to spill in. Odd things. Noisy things which can't dissuade the players, yet. They play on. They are being gassed. Slowly they stop playing their instruments and start to drop dead. Then they turn into zombies and start playing their instruments again. Long Live The Fall! And now they're back to life as garage-rock-loving popstars, knocking out a classic number without losing that synergy, all backing vocals and bass grime. And, bizarrely, some sentimental wah-wah pedal. Then a thunderous middle-eight. It's a great tune and a great way for the band to parade out, one by one, playing the rock and roll MES was born to. But not before we've heard that middle-eight again! And now we parade out, but not without some errantly-recorded cymbal-hits reminding us precisely what The Fall is capable of...

...aaaaaand...

Job Search - MAD KEYS CHUGGING GUITARS OUT OF RHYTHM YES YES YES GOOD THIS IS L'ESPRIT DU LEVITATE but no really it is! Except very, VERY reflective. There's a lot of air, space in this one. The guitars may sound like steam-trains but the electro bleep has the quality of making everything seem light-headed and pensive. It's not headspinning, chock-full, death-inducing. It's gently disconnected, psychedelic. It's also very, very, very, very good. I actually prefer it as a piece to any of the Session 24 tracks proper. Really! It's much more my thing. Actually, if anything it sounds Unutterable-era. Small recompense for the biggest Peel Session omission. It has that Unutterable composure, that oddball surety mixed in amongst the rapid-fire rock discovery. It also has some of the best sounds I've heard on any Peel Session track. Superb, very superb. Unsettling but comforting. The last blast of a band and a man which used those two qualities in a violent but utterly understandable way to make us fall in love.

And recorded for John Peel's b'day iirc

It's fucking superb, like, way more than I was expecting. Everything I wanted from a short-form PS track.

Right, now I have to order the Sessions in terms of preference don't I? Maybe I'll pick a top 10 songs first.

My favorite Sessions:

--The one for Hex
--The one for Perverted
--The one for Middle Class Revolt
--The one for/before Heads Roll

The only one I've had to pick two songs for my potential Top 10 from is the (first) Hex session (Middle Mass and Hip Priest)

but now I am strongly considering two from the Bend Sinister session

Oh yeah shit the Bend session is another great one...

I'm going to have to choose 10 from 13 by the looks of it, or I'll just do a top 13

there's only one other session I've had to pick two from, and that's session 22 (Bound Soul One and Antidotes)

OK, tentative top 14:

1) AUSTRALIANS IN EUROPE (like, duh. words cannot summarise the joy this song imparts unto me)
2) Hip Priest (was an EXTREMELY close battle for second but this is...unreal music)
3) New Puritan (in which a dude my age lays down the law. like, THE LAW. and the law is laid down. and it is the law.)
4) Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers (the original is so, so good that this cannot help but be great. but it wears its inevitable greatness with such perfect style)
5) Antidotes (because earlier tonight I nearly fell out of my own head. and because the bit halfway through is the best thing ever)
6) Paranoia Man In Cheap Sh*t Room (is vibrantly terrifying, is garishly earthy, is shiny black)
7) Bound Soul One (starts odd, starts confusing. everything is slightly wrong. then it gets wronger. then it gets beautiful)
8) Job Search (because there's nothing like signing off with a cracker)
9) Chicago Now (I just gave this another listen and yeah it really is that good. The Fall go spy-movie. someone gets hurt)
10) Middle Mass (the first 2/3 are The Fall's Welcome To The Inferno, the last 1/3 is 'just kidding, son')
11) Pat Trip Dispenser (yeah ok it's really good, not much more to add)
12) He Pep! (collision of everything that is great about The Fall)
13) Winter (a gorgeous take on an already super song)
14) Hexen Definitive - Strife Knot (horrifying in the best possible way)

Hmm, now I am thinking Pat Trip Dispenser should be at 14 and the last 3 moved up a place

yeah

Did you really wait almost 5 months to finish listening to it all?

yes I genuinely did! every time a track from later came up on shuffle I had to skip it. Tonight really is the first night I've heard the last 6 sessions

1) AUSTRALIANS IN EUROPE (like, duh. words cannot summarise the joy this song imparts unto me)
2) Hip Priest (was an EXTREMELY close battle for second but this is...unreal music)
3) New Puritan (in which a dude my age lays down the law. like, THE LAW. and the law is laid down. and it is the law.)
4) Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers (the original is so, so good that this cannot help but be great. but it wears its inevitable greatness with such perfect style)
5) Antidotes (because earlier tonight I nearly fell out of my own head. and because the bit halfway through is the best thing ever)
6) Paranoia Man In Cheap Sh*t Room (is vibrantly terrifying, is garishly earthy, is shiny black)
7) Bound Soul One (starts odd, starts confusing. everything is slightly wrong. then it gets wronger. then it gets beautiful)
8) Job Search (because there's nothing like signing off with a cracker)
9) Chicago Now (I just gave this another listen and yeah it really is that good. The Fall go spy-movie. someone gets hurt)
10) Middle Mass (the first 2/3 are The Fall's Welcome To The Inferno, the last 1/3 is 'just kidding, son')
11) He Pep! (collision of everything that is great about The Fall)
12) Winter (a gorgeous take on an already super song)
13) Hexen Definitive - Strife Knot (horrifying in the best possible way)

^^^makes a lovely, lovely CD-R-length playlist

hang on lemme re-order this out of qualitative and into playlistable order

actually that order kinda works tbh

playlist order:

1) Middle Mass
2) New Puritan
3) Paranoia Man In Cheap Sh*t Room
4) Gross Chapel - British Grenadiers
5) Hip Priest
6) Antidotes
7) Job Search
8) He Pep!
9) Chicago Now
10) Winter
11) Bound Soul One
12) Hexen Definitive - Strife Knot
13) Australians In Europe

Ok, now you must bundle up all your reviews and post it on The Fall forum for effusive praise!

God that forum's a bit intimidatingly huge/obsessive! Maybe tomorrow I'll just turn up and splurge them all.

It is, but it's friendly: They were quite complimentary about my "Paranoia man in a cheap shit fake lapland" from a few years ago.

3/4s of the way through that. and i doubt any of them would've been in my top, er, 13. but then i'd've missed out british grenadiers, which would've been a shame.

maybe I should have thrown Jingle Bell Rock in there

GC - BG is I honestly believe the best song to introduce people to The Fall with

it's also one of the greatest songs ever written

The version on the album's got an absolute howler where someone comes in too early and keeps on playing trying to get back in time with the rest of the band - bass maybe? This all from memory, haven't heard that album in years.

Yeah, there's a big error on the album, sounds like a bit of weird syncopation more than a massive mistake, though. Peel Session might be even better than the album version.

Still baffled as to how Koogs could be left cold-ish by at the very least New Puritan and Hip Priest

It's definitely a mistake! Some people just don't like the Fall.

Yeah I know it'sa mistake but they somehow make it work for them.

Also, Koogs didn't say he didn't like The Fall, just that these songs aren't his idea of a good Fall Peel Session

More like MES wouldn't let them re-record it, "That'll do ya bunch of fuckin' wankers, who do you think we are, fuckin' Yes?"

have just noticed that my mp3 cdr, lovingly ripped from the box at home, contains a howler of a typo in Strife Knot id3 tags...

> Still baffled as to how Koogs could be left cold-ish by at the very least New Puritan and Hip Priest

both a touch early for me, i think. first thing i bought was Bend Sinister and ended up with the previous 2 and the next 6 or 7 (with the odd gap). that's my era.

oh, btw, have people noticed the frank skinner is using No Bulbs as theme music? he did a great interview with MES a few years ago, so i guess he's a fan. wonder what he thinks of brix and her gok wan support slot...

that said, i just bought that step forward years comp and it's great. second dark age popped up on the walk home last night...

Well if that's your era you should probably give the PS version of 'Australians In Europe' a spin. 'Extraordinary' barely begins to cover it.

A whole load of biz people are Fall fans. I'm always amazed how many people revel in MES' very peculiar style of English mania.

It's like being in the Masons, it's private...

I think Skinner is a late-life convert. iirc he went Fall crazy somewhere between 5 and 10 years ago, talking about how this was the band he'd been waiting to hear all his life.

Huh. Skinner also going to become president of the Samuel Johnson Society. Good for him.

Just listened to the "New Puritan" demo from "Totale's Turn" followed by the Peel version. Thank f*ck it got a studio recording, turning it from a nice curiosity into a monstrosity. Followed by the epic "New Face In Hell" it's an amazing one-two Peel punch.

If you could distill the Fall down into one moment that would be their essence, it has to be New Puritan on the Peel Session. Its 30 years old and its still terrifying and brutal and alien and unforgiving. And wonderful.
Wotcher mean what's it mean?

^^^this is probably quite a good shout

yup

am thinking I underrated Blindness on first listen - second is pretty sensational

glad with my top-13 choices, though. maybe in a few weeks Job Search and He Pep will shuffle discreetly off

The City Never Sleeps - Huge keys this time, on some horn preset, but with a pop beat and EVEN MORE Brix! She's actually singing properly on this one too.

It's Lucy Rimmer singing on this!

Nice thread though - I've been listening to this box a bit recently. LJ - I think you must be the only person in the world who likes the Fall version of This Perfect Day.

Don't agree there, Dr C. Firstly that session version rocks, really raw and garagey - it just sounds mentally, rattlingly pissed off. Secondly the single version of it, with Smith's voice sweeping between artifically tuned at a high pitch to a low one, is great. Difficult to find, sadly.

Haven't heard the single. Weren't the Fall at a really low point when that JPS was recorded? I think it was round about the time of the US Tour fight and Nagle assault.

Blindness is monumental.

Yes, it's partly the timing of that session that makes it interesting. At the time it seemed, or certainly I felt, as if the future of The Fall was very much in doubt (perhaps this was foolish thinking in retrospect, but I remember doing a lot of head-shaking when people asked me if I thought they'd come back). There had been the spoken word record, and three gigs (of sorts) with a fill-in drummer and Julia Nagle (plus Mike Clarke as lion tamer), neither of which portended much, despite being excellent.

The session came out of nowhere really and what surprised about it was the sheer energy and violence of it. I've done this elsewhere, but in fine, it's one of my favourite Fall sessions, not least because of its unexpectedness.

Blindness wd be in a top ten Peel sessions recordings, no doubt.

It's just such a foul, alien, fuck-off piece of music. So I side with it. 'Antidotes' and 'Bound Soul One' are staggering, unclean ordeals. 'Blindness' is one of the few tracks I could have given more credit to.

Actually wait, I really liked it in my review! Fine.

Just had another listen to that session. I agree that it's pretty unexpected & not really very much like any other Fall (or any anything), but I still don't like it. MES's legendary hatred of musicians maybe made him think that he could do without them entirely around this time. The only interesting thing is the vocal-heavy mix and that sounds like it's just to hide the lack of any useful guitar to drive things along. This just feels like Repetition, Repetition, Repetition to no effect - without either the spooky, spidery groove of Hip-Priest, WMTN or A Figure Walks (say) or the tension of say Blindness, it doesn't work.

Maybe Shake-off is passable. This Perfect Day is an atrocity.

This Perfect Day - Alien, scuzzy, garage-drawl, fearless. Yes, correct, this session is SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY. It's called me from some grotesque area and it doesn't give a fuck about music. It's not music, it's poetic expression of the arts of sound. Mesh-made mad and mind-muddle mead, mode. Glugged down with a kick in the fucking pants in store, always. I know there will be one here. I gird my loins and - it kicks.

^^^is there anything about this that suggest this isn't an atrocity?

Anyway, the first two tracks off that session are the ones I really go for.

xp. True.

poetic-ah! expression-ah! Mind Muddle Mad-ah!

MES should sing your review.

There was only one song that reduced me to a helpless pile of word-association stream-of-consciousness blabbing

(ha, and that was Antidotes off that session)

Amazon have the MP3 version for £2.99 just now.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Complete-Peel-Sessions-1978-2004/dp/B00DX7Z3N6/ref=pd_ts_zgc_dmusic_digital_music_album_display_on_website_2?ie=UTF8&s=dmusic&pf_rd_p=420631547&pf_rd_s=right-4&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=77197031&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_r=0NRY6M7XCSXY1NTM96H8

That's almost worth getting even if you have the box already!

Well that's a no brainer then.

This is my favorite ILM thread ever. And such a damn shame the lads don't record any radio sessions anymore, for anyone.

Yeah, they recorded an extra track as a prezzie for John Peel on their last ever Peel Session (as it turned out)

There was a small amount of 'other' BBC sessions (Kid Jensen or Mike Read or Janice Long or maybe Andy Kershaw), they probably should get compiled some place..

I don't suppose the links work, but here's a list of them (comments section has dates and corrections)

http://symphonyofghosts.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/fall-live-on-wireless-non-peel-radio.html

Discovered I had a £1 download credit on Amazon I didn't know about so I got this for £1.99.

http://www.visi.com/fall/news/pics/2013-08-28_No1inthecharts.jpg

Which translates into #97 on the big chart.

Really? Hey Yeah!

Mind you, it does remind me when "Relationship and the Briefcases" got to number one in the Vitaminic "Alt/Lo-Fi" chart, because that week I bought two copies, one for me and one for the other guitarist on it.

ARE THERE ANY WHISPERS THAT THIS MIGHT COME OUT ON LP? HOW IS ONE SUPPOSED TO GET IT WITH NOTHING BUT A RECORD PLAYER? ITS NOT FAIR! PLEASE DO SOMETHING SOMEBODY

OK, check the album chart today, this could be one of them if there are some in there...

24.09.80: Container Drivers – Jawbone And The Air Rifle – New Puritan – New Face In Hell

This is quite some radio session. Didn't realize, or had forgotten, that "Jawbone" dated from the "Grotesque" era.

OK, check the album chart today, this could be one of them if there are some in there...

This could be one of what if there are which in where?

there could be some fall lps in the new album chart (published in about an hour)

and if there are some in there then one of that some in there could be the peel session box.

that seems... wildly unlikely

though tbf there are three copies from 3rd-party sellers on Amazon. If someone pays the £732 asking price that counts as 2000 sales, right?

Nothing in album or single chart that I can see

(And downloads count now, don't forget)

Ah well

(And downloads count now, don't forget)

Which e-tailers have it for download? I only tried Amazon, iTunes/Apple, 7digital and Boomkat, but I thought that should have been a representative sample

Oh, I didn't mean the peel box specifically, was just pointing out that you don't need to buy CDs for something to chart.

(In fact, don't streams also count now?)

No idea where this stuff is available. Maybe the obvious interest will mean that improves.

I'm guessing that if Discogs/second-hand sales were chart eligible, there'd be a few in this week.