Popular Mechanics - Insect Culture (1987)

Following on nicely from Popofoni last Friday, here's another insane cult item that was sparked by a TV show.  In this case, it was a BBC series aired in December 1985 called Comrades, about life in the new glasnost Soviet Union, specifically an episode called All That Jazz.  The star of the episode was avant-garde pianist Sergey Kuryokhin (1954-1996), who captured the imagination of viewer Colin Fallows, a young academic (now Professor, still at Liverpool John Moores University) who had just produced a Dada compilation in the UK, and then Pete Fulwell, who'd released the record.

The two Englishmen contacted Kuryokhin, who had already begun working with tape-collage composers Igor Verichev and Valery Alakhov, aka The New Composers.  Along with saxophonist Igor Butman, and spurred on by the encouragement of Fallows & Fulwell, the collective worked under the name Popular Mechanics to produce a jazz/electronics/tape collage album.  They plundered popular Russian radio, film and theatre for a mindbending 45-minute aural soup that was titled Insect Culture, appropriate to the image of marching ants that Fallows found for the LP label.

Insect Culture was released in 1987 on Fulwell's ARK label, and thanks to a Russian CD reissue in the late 90s, here it is, complete with an unreleased promo 12" remix entitled, in further Dada homage, The Blue Blouse.  The whole thing is a treat to listen to in its ever-shifting variety, as varispeeded tape loops of the sound sources blend with Kuryokhin's synths and Butman's sax solos.  Anyone who loves Faust, early Zappa, early Residents, etc etc knows what to do - grab this immediately.  Everyone else - grab this immediately.  It's a classic.

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