Julian Cope Album by Album by Single by EP by Pseudonym Thread

I dared not look at this thread for fear it would bring back a flood of memories, both real and imagined.

It did.

 

I didn't get it at the time, but I did get a signed copy of this a few years ago. I really like it too - it's a bit extreme for your average punter, but I think it's a shame that it's so limited.
I'm reading up on Norse Myths & Legends at the moment. Unfortunately a lot of what we know has passed through the filter of Christian monks who wrote it down to preserve it, but the core of it is preserved.
I love the 18 charms of. Odin which uses the synth motif from The Great Dominions (btw, did you know that Wednesday, named after Odin is Woden's day, and Thursday is Thor's day, Friday is Freye's day?), and on the Road To Yggdrasilbury Cope really manages to capture the spirit of a prehistoric Europeana marching on a pilgrimage to Silbury Hill. Thighpaulsandra contributes a nice uplifting synth.
A lovely item, but not guaranteed top 10 material...

 

The last track on this cd is a recording of interesting American poet and Cope hero Vachel Lindsay reading his own poem "I Want To Go Wandering". He is famous for the preacher-like force and character of his poetry readings, and Julian seems to be attempting that style on Ode To Wan and the 2003 collaboration with SunnO))) My Wall, and there is also a S/T tribute song to Lindsay on the brilliant but frustratingly hard to find 2009 album Black Sheep At The BBC which is real freakout and has Cope intoning Breath Of Odin style and chanting "Calllling up the Visionary Host to bring us Vachel Lindsay" over the top of Lindsay reciting his poem The Congo. I can't find it on YouTube, but they have him reading The Congo in his trademark style:




5th December 1931 – The Suicide of Vachel Lindsay

 

Time for one more before Christmas, then we can start the new year with Brain Donor:


AMBIENT METAL (2001)

Yggdrasil / Like a Mother****er / The Neolithic Goddess / Whole Lotta Loki / Yggdrasil 2 / Eckstasis – Beyond Rome / The Death of the Motherculture at Mona Mam Gymru The Wailing Shamanic Fury of the Hoeurs and Druids and the Coming of the Romans

Credited to L.A.M.F.

 

Ambient definition:
adjective
1. of or relating to the immediate surroundings
the ambient temperature was 15°C
2. creating a relaxing atmosphere
ambient music
Ambient definition and meaning | Collins English Dictionary

Ambient Metal definition:
1. Like, for example, when you ride your Harley Davidson at top speed into the engine of a Jumbo Jet as it is about to take off.

 

I skipped Discover Odin because it's buried in a cupboard that I don't want to dog through right now. Played LAMF a couple times through. Ambient Metal indeed! The absence of drums is a brave idea, as the beat is what truly gives metal it's heaviness. Yet what remains is the rudiments of every teenage guitar hero, churning out riffs and solos, playing through tiny amps cranked to 11, hunched over on the edge of their beds in the corner of the basement. This minimal album captures what others have recorded in demo form, but weren't confident enough to release without massive overdubs and studio polish.

I like the album, and bought it along with Too Freud soon after that one came out. The version on "Like a Mother****er" though drum/wordless is brilliant. Cope's "dumb" bass chugging along with Doggen's egoless solo.

I still can't hear what parts of the songs used those samples listed in the liners, especially the Rallizes sample, which you'd think would be easy to hear.

 

I haven't read the sleevenotes, but I was going to mention that the album sounds like a pot-pourri of Sabbath, Cream, Zeppelin and Les Rallizes. It's really Brain Donor 1 without Kevlar.
I love the intro - the nuclear air raid siren of the Yggdrasil which is remade as Raising Power on the live disc of Too Freud. It's a bit of a mystery to me which came first, because Too Freud covers studio tracks from 1999 to 2002 and the live part is from the Cornucopea Festival 200o. LAMF was released in 2001.
You're right to highlight the plodding bass on Like A MF, though really I miss the vocal too much to appreciate that version.
I really like Whole Lotta Loki. It's indulgent but fantastic. The whole album just sticks a big grin on your face.

 

This is the best scan I could find, if you can't read the text in the lower corner, it's says:

"Whole Lotta Loki" contains a sample of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love"

"Death of the Motherculture" contains a sample of Sir Lord Baltimore's "Pumped Up"

"Yggdrassil 1 & 2" contains a sample of Les Rallizes Denudes' "The Last One"

See if you can hear them, I've never been to tell what part they are contained in.

 

So according to that, Kevlar is on there. It's Brain Donor then isn't it? I do have this cd, but I didn't know they had samples on it.
I can't hear anything I recognise from other sources though.

 

The Kevlar contribution seems to be "concussion" in the form of the bass drum part on Motherculture. Apparently there was a live show from 2001, not featuring Cope but Christophe F. and The Boy Fried. From an old Drudion:

"Track 3 of the LP, which is played by Christophe F. and his Universal Panzies cohort the Boy Fried. The version of L.A.M.F. which played support at the Newcastle Opera House [April 19, 2001] was this last configuration playing their long piece “The Neolithic Goddess.”

 

Does anybody know if the 1992 remix of "World Shut Your Mouth" has appeared anywhere else other than on the single that was released to promote Floored Genius? I've been searching for that remix and am wondering if I'll need to track down a copy of that single or if the remix might be available on some other compilation or various artists release someplace.

 

I’m away from everything at the moment, but I believe it’s only on the single. The version of WSYM that appears on compilations is almost always the album mix, even though there were three (barely) different ‘single mixes’ released: the original single version, an edit of the Trouble Funk mix, and the 1992 remix. The original single edit did make it to a handful of various artist compilations, and I found it on iTunes recently.

 

Thanks. I have the original single mix, which sounds very similar to the album version, just edited. Maybe a slight remix too. It's the 1992 single remix (by Alan Moulder) that I can't seem to find anywhere.

 

According to SDE, Island are putting out a few vinyl rereleases of Cope stuff. Supposed to be faithful to the original packaging with a Laser etching on Jehovahkill (hopefully back to the original mastering rather than the Deluxe cd loud version), but wait...where's Uptight on Peggy Suicide? Surely some mistake?
Back to the drawing board if they've left it off, and I for one am not really surprised these days - the record biz just don't seem to know what's right and what's wrong any more.
Oh well - at least it shows they still think there are Julian fans out there.

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/julian-cope-vinyl-reissues/#more-137157

 

Er...anyone spotted this? It's not up on the Environmental Studies website yet.
Environmental Studies - Coming soon
Limited to 500 White vinyl.
Dope Feat Julian Cope - The Dee Dee Ramone Story / Environmental Studies from Piccadilly Records

 

Thanks for the tip. I have the cassette, but it will be nice to have the album on a less annoying format!

And talking about annoying, if Island just issues the CD version of Saint Julian on vinyl, what’s the point?

 

Would you say that these are his four most commercially viable LPs after The Teardrops? Maybe that's their reasoning. I've got all of these on vinyl except St Julian, but old copies are easy to come by for el cheapo prices, so unless they're just hoping to sell them in supermarkets I don't see the point, except for Peggy/Jehovahkill, which are fairly hard to get in good condition.
I hope they do a good job on those and they haven't really left off Uptight.
The Dope LP looks good though - the cassette has such extreme levels of hiss it's hard to make out what's going on during the quiet bits.

 

I think they’re his commercial high point in terms of actual sales and profile, but I’m one of those fools who doesn’t understand why World Shut Your Mouth (the album) couldn’t have been a worldwide number one.

 

Totally with you there - it is an amazing LP - one of his best - (Kolly Kibber's birthday should have been the single imo!) but he had all that hoopla at the time of St Julian/MNU.

Does someone else own WSYM and Fried now? It used to be Mercury/Phonogram.

 

Okay, we are on the brink of Brain Donor territory, and given the level of discussion for a lot of these recent releases and side projects, I'm tempted to just do one or two big posts to cover their entire discography, unless anybody has a major objection to that and would prefer to work through them release by release?

 

It's only a handful of us who seem to even tolerate his post Peggy output, so one Brain Donor post wouldn't ruffle any feathers.

 

One it is (actually two, because all the images won't fit in a single post):

BRAIN DONOR


She Saw Me Coming / Shaman U.F.O. 7” & CD (2001)

A-side appears on Love Peace & F**k.
B-side appears on Brain Donor compilation.


Get Off Your Pretty Face / Who Will Entertain Your *****? 7” & CD (2001)

A-side appears on Love Peace & F**k.


LOVE PEACE & F**K (2001)

Side One: She Saw Me Coming / Get Off Your Pretty Face / Pagan Dawn
Side Two: Odin’s Gift to His Mother: a) Theme from ‘Speed Kills’; b) Shamanic 4 a.m.; c) Consecrate the ****er; d) Huntstabber’s Ball / Lughnasad
Side Three: U-Know! / You Take the Credit / Hairy Music
Side Four: She’s Gotta Have It

CD slightly rearranges track order, making ‘Lughnasad’ the penultimate track.


My Pagan Ass / Like a Motherf**ker 7” (2003)

Both sides appear on Too Freud to Rock ‘n’ Roll.


TOO FREUD TO ROCK ‘N’ ROLL, TOO JUNG TO DIE (2003)

Studio Disc: Schizadelic K.O. / My Pagan Ass / Like a Mother****er / The Two Towers / White Van / Love, Peace & **** / Get Back On It / Messages
Live Disc: Raising Power / She Saw Me Coming / Brain Donor / Get Off Your Pretty Face / Atomic Punk / U-Know! / Whole Lotta Loki / Gimme Space / Odin’s Gift to His Mother

Live disc recorded at Cornucopea, 2000.

 

DRAIN’D BONER (2006)

Side One: Pa Doden’s Trae (Father Death’s Tree) / Nagasaki Mushroom / Where Do We Take U?
Side Two: Metsamor (First Place of Metal) / Just About Now


WASTED FUZZ EXCESSIVE (2009)

Spoken Invocation: The Mead of Fimbulthul – Gates of Skaggerak / Death Becomes You / Dyslexia Rules K.O. / Emerging – Shadow of My Corpse / Frankenstein / Fokkinger Slag – The Hanging


BRAIN DONOR (2005)

American compilation of tracks from the first two albums (and one b-side).


Discogs also lists a live release called Thekla from 2007, but as it's a CD-R of an audience recording that I don't recall ever being offered through Head Heritage, I'm more than a bit dubious about its official stature. Any ideas?

 

I've tried to get into these records a number of times, but my reaction has always been the same: why am I listening to a B- Stooges pastiche when I could be listening to Fun House? I never even bothered to get Wasted Fuzz Excessive (which I'm sure people will now tell me is the band's masterpiece and is nothing like their other albums!)

 

I'm the exact opposite. Hearing LP&F was a revelation for me, and 100% it would be a desert island disc. I've probably stated this several times, but I didn't get into Cope via the Teardrops, and so anything older than Peggy doesn't really churn my choda. But adding the genius of Tony Foster/Doggen and Kevin Bales/Kevlar is exactly what Cope needed to do to kick off the millennium. Is it inspired by bands of old? Of course, and yet like Paul Tingen said of Miles Davis' music, you need to "include AND transcend your influences". Cope achieved a level 15 mage with this album. And if he had only unleashed the My Pagan Ass/LAMF 7", he would have still doubled the contemporary efforts of Sonic's Rendezvous Band.

The Too Freud collection is only second place in my book as it's just too damn hard to follow up that debut. Clearly some was recorded along with LP&F, and hearing the infamous Cornucopea show was very impressive, though Cope's version of events in that tons of people walked out halfway through was not due to the music, as I read on HH it was due to the lateness of the show and the last train home forced people to abandon what they probably were enjoying.

Drain'd Boner is another take on their power trio formula, but it is the bass and drums that shine here, drawing up those Grand Funk red album influences, and pummeling them to near death. It's not as fun as LPF, but it's damn solid.

Wasted Fuzz Excessive is not their best, but has some good tracks. The doom metal influences took over the driving, and I do recall how this one was delayed for a couple years because Cope thought it wasn't good enough to compare with the rest of the current underground metal (Ramesses, Khanate, Pentagram). I would agree, and the completely unnecessary horns on the last track didn't help matters.

Thekla was indeed an official bootleg, I bought mine from HH, but it is an audience recording and a CDR at that. But it is a great listen, and I do recall there being another audience tape of the complete show which contained a couple of Dark Orgasm songs which was truly a Brain Donor album that got draped in Mellotron (which wasn't a bad thing, I love DO as well).

So we're on opposite sides of taste when it comes to BD, but thanks Summer for keeping the thread going past your own personal preferences.