Plunder the Tombs: Bone Orchard – Jack (Jungle Records, 1984)

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Bone Orchard – Jack (Jungle Records, 1984)

Exploding out of Brighton, the five piece Bone Orchard were one of the many early Goth outfits owing a massive debt to the musical legacy left behind by the Birthday Party.

The Jack LP however, represents something quite different from their releases before (Stuffed to the Gills EP - Jungle Records, 1983) or since (Penthouse Poultry - Vax Records, 1985). The Birthday Party influence is still obviously there, but in this case it takes a back seat. The extra instrumentation of strings, piano and saxophone makes Jack something quite exceptional and much more musically sophisticated and subtle than the group’s usual psycho-billy adventures; “Jack”, “Marianne” and “Five Days in the Neighbourhood” all writhing pieces steeped in ambient lounge-like jazz influences, although what kind of lounge would play such things exists only in our nightmares and perhaps in the imagination of David Lynch.

A work of grotesque beauty - Jack 7" (Jungle Records, 1984)

Jack remains an astonishingly forgotten cornerstone in what would eventually become known as Dark Cabaret.

Somewhere, there exists a parallel universe where Goth continued in this sort of experimentation instead of succumbing to rock excess. Unfortunately, it wasn’t this one. Nevermind, we can always revel in nostalgia – after all, as the song “Tongue” would observe; “there’s nothing like talking with the dead to cheer you up”.

Track Listing:

1. Jack

2. Lynched

3. Marianne

4. Touched

5. Five Days in the Neigbourhood

6. Girl with a Gun

7. Tongue

8. Scarlett Ropes

Terrifying both vocally and visually - Chrissy McGee

Line Up: Chrissy McGee (vocals), Mark Horse (guitar), Troy Tyro (guitar), Paul Hendrickson (bass), Ben Tisdall (drums), session musicians on piano, violin, cello & saxophone.

http://www.myspace.com/fatsterminal

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A Welcome and Introduction

Plunder the Tombs was started back in 2010 by way of looking back on a musical past that I felt in sore need of curation.

It was a strange and sad time when what passed for “Goth” in clubs seemed a pale imitator of what once was, following first a decade of cookie-cutter Sisters of the Nephilim clone bands and then another decade of industrial dance being palmed off to younger audiences as a type of faux goth. When on rare occasion DJs in “Goth” clubs did finally become brave enough to play something like Bauhaus it was not untypical to have the dance floor clear, and it became obvious that the memory, meaning and legacy of much that had gone before had been lost.

It’s probably safe to say that the boundaries of what was “Goth” were never clearly defined. An absolute blessing for those bands on the original scene before it had a name pinned to the donkey, but an outright curse for those who came later and found rules had been imposed to dictate that which was and that which was not acceptable. Worse still was to come in the 90s from a lazy and unquestioning media who simply assumed that anything that wore black and make up was by definition “Goth”, thus allowing all manner of pretenders licence, and maximising confusion as to what the term actually referred to.

This has gone on for way too long and its time is at an end. Neo Post-Punk bands now proliferate across Europe, old long dead Goth bands rise from their crypts in the UK, and new deathrock bands are breeding like rabbits up the west coast of America. It is time to reclaim our scene back from metal bands and ravers in disguise.

While the Plunder the Tombs of old focused on what had gone before, there are now far too many exciting new things to ignore. We roar back to life in a reboot, covering past , present and things yet to come.

Let us plunder the tombs….