City Slab Horror

Severed Heads | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 1, 1991)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Nettwerk Records
• ASIN: B000005DB6
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #408,300 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Spastic Crunch

2. Spitoon Thud

3. 4WD

4. Ayoompteyempt

5. The Bladders of a One Thousand Bedouin

6. Now, an Explosive New Movie

7. Guests

8. We Have to Bless the House

9. Cyflea, Rated R

10. Goodbye Tonsils

11. Voices of the Dead

12. Umbrella

13. Power Circles

14. The Ant Can See Legs

15. I Stand on My Head

16. Acme Instant Dehydrated Boulder Kit

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars TAPE-LOOP MASTERMINDS, choice electronic "pop" weirdness, January 24, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: City Slab Horror (Audio CD)

(Don't Be Afraid of their Name/Title!!) Recorded 1983 - 1984: Severed Heads (Garry Royall Bradbury, Paul von Deering, Thomas Temple Ellard) were piecing together exquisite collages of beats, angelic choirs, analog synths, guitar, and TAPES TAPES TAPES of utter craziness, rhythm and humor. Sometimes melodic/hypnotic and beat-oriented, sometimes blissful tape-loop trance, sometimes jittery and intense, and often all those to some degree at once. I still am blown away by this album (and "Since the Accident" (1982 - 1983) if you can find it). When I listen to it today, despite its somewhat "primitive" methods/instrumentation, I still find it RICH with sound and dense and WARM and ALIVE. You can almost picture 3 guys up to their necks in magnetic tape and odd-looking equipment. They never get mentioned as being anybody's influence but Skinny Puppy definitely dug them (Ellard provided tapes on at least one Puppy EP), and Jack Dangers (Meat Beat Manifesto) has sampled them and built entire tracks on Heads' rhythms. Their later work (especially after "Bad Mood Guy" (1987) -- tapework nearly disappears in favor of computer/synth/drum machine) can be hit and miss though there's great stuff on "Come Visit the Big Bigot" and even "Bad Mood Guy." (a couple of more recent albums, "Rotund for Success" and "Cuisine" (1991) are somewhat prettier pop and apparently out of print) More than anything, this early stuff is CREATIVE as all hell and definitely a precursor to the current wave of "intelligent dance music." If you're a lover of creative electronically oriented music (or just music, period), you should hear some of these albums, at least ground yourself in a nice bit of history. These guys really helped open up my brain in terms of appreciating musical/SONIC complexity. I LOVE MUSIC. I listen to EVERY sort of music I can (the entire range/history of jazz and classical and rock, country, blues, bluegrass, and folk traditions from all over the world) and "City Slab Horror" and "Since the Accident" will always rank as favorites.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Old but still good, January 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: City Slab Horror (Audio CD)

The technology's primitive by early-21st century standards, but its heart's in the right place. This is perhaps the first Severed Heads album that showed that you could make an album that was both pop and experimental at the same time; tracks such as '4WD' are still beautiful nearly twenty years later, even if the recordings now sound faded and lo-tech. Recommended.

5.0 out of 5 stars Songs to annoy your friends with, February 6, 2003

By 

Simon Booth (UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: City Slab Horror (Audio CD)

Classic early Severed Heads tunes built out of strange noises and loops... mind bending, and guaranteed to traumatise any nearby listeners whose ears are only accustomed to a diet of
"radio friendly".