Description
Presented as a comprehensive approach to recondition the early years of ClockDVA, the set surveys a gathering of energies onto tape at Adi Newton’s Sheffield studio, documenting the R&D that underlined ClockDVA’s alchemical formulations of alien synths and possessed vocals. All of the material was previously issued on tape only and has remained the preserve of collectors ever since, who know these recordings contain the seeds of some of industrial music’s greatest work.
All recorded by Adi Newton on various tape loops, EMS synthi, electric violin and devices, with some assistance from Steven Turner (bass, treatments), D Tyme (guitar, treatments) and Simon Mark Elliot-Kemp (synths), the 4 discs are littered with glimpses of the band’s prescient, primal-futurist genius that would come into full effect on ‘White Souls in Black Suits’, their debut for Throbbing Girstle’s Industrial Records, that would force them into wider view of the nascent industrial network, and beyond the Sheffield scene they shared with the likes of Martyn Ware and Phil Oakley – Adi Newton’s former bandmates in The Future.
From rawest drones to pulsing atonality and deeply eerie sci-fi styles that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Radiophonic release, the music is stark but sensuous, laced with a darkside northern appeal that could be attributed to the state of its bleak socio-economics – power cuts, cold war threats, Thatcher, Peter Sutcliffe – and which patently resonated with listeners across the world, leading ClockDVA to be ranked in the pantheon of post-punk/industrial musick’s most uncompromising and definitive groups.
