Customer Reviews

Mind: Perpetual Intercourse

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

All i can say about this album is that i have been listening to it for the last 13 or so years and I love it as much as the day i first purchased it. I had never heard something so solid raw,enigmatic and fresh from beginning to end all the while finding myself asking "How do they get sounds like that recorded on a cd?".

Forget lotsa hair, headbanging and playing guitars at 200 mph (altho some bands do this very well) the experience this album gives is something that I cannot define. I play this record for friends, many of them death metal fans and i get this creeped out, uneasy initial response and then a sort of reserved and cautious groove as the songs progress. When they see photos from the TDP tour they realise why SP, before Jim Rose were receiving "falling ovations".

This is a serious milestone in music, the analogue beats and sounds are unprecedented. It separates itself from other industrial music as it shy's away from the same bland drum-machine generated 4/4 beats that plagued a great deal of 80's industrial music. The brief use of Gregorian chants in "Dig It" is just an example of the plethora of snippings that Puppy used to create its collage of sound ( an idea Enigma used 5 years later to sell millions of albums) but to do what Skinny Puppy did would require some seriously open-minded masses to sell albums on that scale. When I listen to this album today I can barely, with the exception of a few synth sounds, date the music. In some ways it sounds better than much of today's production - drum sounds especially. I also enjoy the use of Gustav Dore's wonderful etchings as the interior sleeve art melded with SRG's as always brilliant album covers.

This album is kind of like Chinese medicine in the West - It was years ahead of its time and even by todays standards, with all the technological advances, still has a few secrets and advantages that even though when imitated, dissected, or scrutinized and misunderstood, it still stands as a unique and timeless masterpeice. Brap.

I visited a Toronto record store in 1985 & found 2 bands that I'd never heard of--didn't know which LP to get: Cabaret Voltaire or Skinny Puppy. Ten years later I was still listening to Skinny's MIND:The Perpetual Intercourse. Before there was NIN, et al, there were these guys and this recording. This is easily the best
Puppy. The ferocity, horror, sound-bytes, speed, and rythums are superb. Many bands have learned a lot from recording. It has not lost its edge, in fact , it sounds fresher than NIN's 1st release. As the years went on Puppy's later releases were not that polished. Cleanse ,Fold & Manipulate is also quite good.

Well this isn't The Puppy's best release but it has several essential tracks such as "One Time, One Place", "Dig It", "200 years", "Three Blind Mice" and "Chainsaw" which is pretty much one of the freakn coolest SP songs ever! Not as dark or disturbing as their later stuff but with more of a dance vibe. A couple of the songs are a bit weak for Skinny Puppy standards but when the songs are good they tend to be damn good.

Since ordering this album 3 days ago, I have listened to this album 12 times all the way through. Contrary to most reviewers here, I really don't find this album evil, or dark. If you want dark listen to Last Rights, and I don't really think SP was ever evil. They're one of the most moral bands I know. Anyway, this album is very melodic and ethereal, and actually contains one of SP's happiest songs, namely "Love". The way it's put together reminds me of flowing water. Also, the art is excellent. Here's my track by track.

1) One Time One Place (9/10) A good song, but there's nothing about it that really distinguishes it from the others. Kinda sounds like something from their next album, CFM.

2) God's Gift (Maggot) (10/10) VERY cool. The weird slowed down talking adds to the song, and the stuttery, loud sections where he's screaming are awesome.

3) Three Blind Mice (10/10) The synth on this one is very good. Puts you in a trance.

4) Love (10/10) Their best instrumental. Very, VERY well put together. Shows that even industrial artists actually do write songs, rather than just putting sounds together (Scrapyard, anyone?).

5) Stairs and Flowers (11/10) Genious. A funky, cool beat with some weird vocal sounds from Ogre for about 3 minutes, as well as some seemingly random synth notes and noises. Then, all of the sudden, a bubbly synth line begins, and it strangely harmonizes with everything going on. Awesome.

6) Antagonism (10/10) Great synth again, and some memorable lyrics. "Living, yet unaware. Asking do you really care?".

7) 200 Years (9/10) A good instrumental with song awesome samples. "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with everybody in this crazy place!?".

8) Dig It (10/10) This song deserved its fame. Perfect.

9) Burnt With Water (8/10) EXTREMELY WEIRD. Some strange cymbals with Ogre randomly yelling 'Behavior!'. It would've been a great experiment if it was a bit shorter.

Bonus tracks:

10) Chainsaw (9/10) A somewhat unmemorable typical-for-this-time-period SP song with a cool bass line. I love the pitch bended opera voice.

11) Addiction (First Dose) (8/10) Very minimalistic, they cut out over half the background sound and keyboards from the CFM version, but its somehow likeable anyway. You can also hear the vocals much better, which are in general very quiet on CFM.

12) Stairs and Flowers (Too Far Gone) (9/10) Like the original without my favorite synth part. I like some of the new synth stuff they added, though.

13) Deep Down Trauma Hounds (8/10) See Addiction (first dose).

Overall, this is a great album, exactly what I was looking for when I ordered it. It's one of SP essential albums along with Last Rights, Process, Too Dark Park and VIVIsect VI. It's a lot more synth focused than any others from this time in their career. I havent heard Bites, but CFM was pretty much based on percussion and being creepy. I like this MUCH better than that though.

In 1986, the third major Skinny Puppy recording arrived with major label backing (Capitol/EMI). What it contained pretty much cemented Kevin Ogilvie (Ogre) and Kevin Crompton (cEvin Key) as two of the foremost musical artists during the mid-eighties. It also heralded Dwayne Goettel's blessed arrival as Puppy's third official member. Anyone hoping for an club-friendly sequel to Bites would be disappointed however.

"One Time One Place" begins with a rather spare beat and surprisingly unmelodious chanting. Some hyperactive pounding and Ogre's screaming intrudes suddenly, then the song mellows again. "One Time...." swings back and forth between sad contemplation and bitter rage. The emotional vacillation remains consistent throughout the rest of the album. And for the first time in Puppy's career, we actually hear some recognizable, albeit squealing and discordant, guitar. What is going on here? In early songs, Ogre delivered his odd poems with a deliberately catchy military cadence/melody, but now there is no recognizable pop rhythm. This is not a dance song! 'Mind...' is a giant stylistic leap from its '85 predecessor Bites.

"God's Gift (Maggot)" is a personal favorite, and still rocks live shows (as of 2005 anyway). It begins slowly, building with tension that is every bit as eerie and grim as "One Time ..." but begins to hook you about halfway through. Again, this song eschews the dance beats and focuses on creating tension... then releasing it at precisely the best moment. It's an incredible composition. "Three Blind Mice" is gloomy, not a bit catchy, overladen with sounds, screams and chants. It's also brilliant: even the Cure could never make despair sound so visceral or interesting.

"Love" remixes the original Bites song only slightly, if at all, but I still enjoy it here. Hmm: "Stairs and Flowers." This is first truly challenging "instrumental" of the band's early output. It's a downright crazy mixture of drums, bizarre samples and unintelligible gibbering. For me it alternates between being compelling and unlistenable (recently leaning more towards the compelling side). To fully appreciate this presentation of fractured sanity, give it your full attention in a dark room with headphones on. Don't even consider playing this for your friends at a party. It'll either just disrupt the mood, or absolutely disturb everyone present. Ogre's stream of conscience musings takes center stage on "Antagonism," another mind-broken assemblage of screams and incoherent spoken word poetry that'll either thrill you or completely turn you off. "200 Years" finally provides a somewhat typical beat rhythm, punctuated by alarmed and confused voices, "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with Everyone in this CRAZY PLACE?" (trivia: the samples are from a hilariously grim 1960 Twilight Zone episode called "Elegy").

"Dig It" is a milestone. Arguably Skinny Puppy's most famous and brilliant song, nothing I've heard sounds like it. The programmed drumming and quick metal-guitar punctuations in this song (along with the experimental work of post punk bands like Killing Joke and Big Black) pretty much informed 90's Industrial rock, and yet even today stands alone. Ogre's inimitable melodic cadence neatly fills the spaces between layers of distorted screams, growls, more "Elegy" samples, Gregorian monks, and synth harmonies. Aside from its future implications, "Dig It" is probably one of the most definitive examples of the unique Skinny Puppy sound... something most younger people wouldn't believe was recorded during the mid-eighties.

"Burnt With Water" closed the original LP perfectly with disturbing samples, (televangelist sound bites and lines from The Exorcist) and a militant marching beat. 'Mind...' is dark but energetic original and ideologically vague. It is also one of Skinny Puppy's best works in my opinion.

The cd version (released in '88) contains additional tracks from the Chainsaw EP: "Chainsaw," "Addiction" and a remix of "Stairs and Flowers," plus "Deep Down Trauma Hounds." "Chainsaw" is quite good, while "Addiction" and "Deep Down..." are minimalist versions of songs that would be granted album release the following year. These additional tracks are great in their own right, but in my opinion detract from the compositional unity of 'Mind...' in its original form. Still, 5 stars for this, one of their greatest recordings.

I travel quite a bit, and am usually far away from my CD collection (which, at last count, was somewhere around 4,000 and growing). That said, when I can only take 48 CDs with me at any given time, I tend to choose them with the utmost care and attention to what mood I might be in whilst away. This CD has gone everywhere I've gone since I bought it three years ago. Granted, I came late to it, despite being an SP fan for several years (I started liking them just as the catalogue went out of print). Nevertheless, it's still one of those CDs I cannot keep away from, and never want to, either.

If ever I needed a testimony to the brilliance of mid-period SP, this CD proves me right every time. With a range of emotions--from screaming rage to eerie love song (gasp!)--cEvin and co. run the gamut here. I'm a huge fan of heavy percussion and strong basslines, so with "One Time One Place", I'm instantly snagged. I can't escape. I try to come up for air, but I get pulled back down again with the fury of "God's Gift". By "Three Blind Mice", I'm in a trance, and I don't want to be disturbed. But that's the way Mind... works. It starts off fairly upbeat, and gradually slows down until the heartbeat of "Love". And then... it wallops you a good one on the head with "Stairs and Flowers", which will have even the biggest doubter in eurythmics. And then it starts speeding up. By the time "200 Years" is being graced by the laser reader, even grandmothers are toe-tapping.

I've hooked many a new SP fan with this CD, especially with the EP inclusions in the end (the "Stairs and Flowers" remix catches 'em everytime).

I'm not a dedicated rivethead, and I haven't quite developed a taste for industrial music beyond it so-called mainstream. But I know what I like... And I know what I want with me when I need some melody coupled with madness, rage, and chaos in my life: I need Mind.

i got this album some time ago and i must say that this is my favorite SP album. Many claim that Too Dark Park and Last Rites were the best, but IMHO Mind:, ViVisectVi and Bites are the 3 best Sp albums.

this i quite a good release, i didnt like it at first, but then i heard addiction, and chainsaw, and i was like woah, we have a winner on our hands. now, the whole album has this vibe to it, with powerfull beats, and subtle synth parts that make a big impact. this album is also has the "skinny puppy classic" dig it, ... well, this album is great, thats all i can say, just give it time, and it will grow on you, and might i say there are 2 experimental songs that are quite good, 200 years has a kick arse drum beat, and the remix of stairs and flowers is muuch better than the origonal(spell check) so, there you are, ad you cant really say that any of their albums is bad, its a experiment, so its about the evolution of it all, and either you like it, or its just there.

My introduction to Skinny Puppy was this amazing album...and nearly 15 years later it still blisters with furious anger and cataclysmic despair. For sheer, unfocused nihilism trapped within a glossy, techno sheen, Mind; The Perpetual Intercourse is the ultimate early example. Dense thickets of sound are perforated by machine beats and audio collage, dance rhythms are interspersed with corrosive guitar lines and death rattles....you get the picture. The highlight of this album (for me) and still a favorite after thousands of listenings is the masterpiece "Dig It". Ogre's mechanized vocals over the jerky loop of effects and the toxic guitar riff are the essence of industrial, and must be felt in your solar plexus for the whole experience to jell. You owe yourself this much.

I smoked some grass, put this on & thought I had bugs crawling all over me ! These are some groovy and hip toons.