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Through the Ages, Live (Evil - Vile - Veil!) (2005) "An exclusive tape of
live gubbins from this underground mad genius with a bunch of mad tunes to
warm you through your twilight years". "I regret never
having managed to see Howl in the Typewriter live - I wish I had,
at least once . . . it would have been a great opportunity to walk out of
an event in righteous indignation" |
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Friendship's Death (2004) "Just thought I'd
write to let you know I've listened to your latest CD more times than any
other I've heard. Particularly like tracks 1,2,3 & 8. The last one is
a bit episodic and gets a bit Orbitally towards the end but it has had a
fair ol hammering and is danceable(!). Bit melodic for you though . .
. nice one" |
Greatest Hits (of someone else) (2003) " . . .he comes up with a
storming version of Rockaway Beach, and a Twist and Shout slowed down
to a laborious snail's pace. Also, there's a medley of Devo numbers (from
their Jocko Homo period) which gets full marks in all subjects. The
uncanny resemblance of Stan's voice to that of Mark Mothersbaugh is enough
to suggest that this is the man to call if anyone out there has ideas
about a Devo tribute band. Moving on, the most weirdly inspired number
here is the piece based solely upon Chas & Dave samples - some from
songs by the duo I don't even recognise - respect due! All this and God
Save The Queen too, and not the Sex Pistols take either. What the
hell is going on in this man's head? |
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Voltmeter Abacus (2002) Four live, one-take recordings with
no overdubs or post-production. |
| Grand Theft Audio
(2002)
"It's great to
be able to tell all you fun seekers out there that you should go out and
buy this piece of plastic because if you like any of the following - Nurse
With Wound, Negativland, Future Sound of London, The Orb, Cosmonauts hail
Satan and (as the press release says) 'very probably a million and seven
other bands' - you will like this. twenty-four tracks all with their own
symbol so as to confuse the fuck out of people who sit around pub tables
discussing this sort of crap because Mr Howl couldn't be arsed to make up
names for 'em . . . but that's the mallest gripe you'r going to get
because this is sample heaven with dodgy bits thrown in for all those who
like any of the above. If I was going to be extremely uncharitable I could
say that this is an easy way to make music, but having tried it myself I
now know differently. And where the hell did he get half those samples? My
favourite is 'the gun is good, the penis is evil' (spoken in a deadly
sotto voce alien god like stylee) which comes in late on track
twenty-three (the pointy gloved finger track) but there's lots more you
should seek out. Maybe invite some friends round and play spot the sample
over a glass of sherry and some finger sandwiches." "Howl [has] been at it for years through the
medium of cassettes, and the odd flexidisc. And now a CD. In many ways,
Stan’s work highlights exactly what is wrong with the CDR glut that has
all but killed the similarly independent, but otherwise quite different
home cassette boom of years gone by. People just have more money now . . .
The fact is that many people start, or at least started, recording music
on cassette because that was what was available and affordable, and
there’s nothing which stimulates invention and innovation so much as
having only a minimum of equipment which barely works, because you can’t
afford to repair or replace it . . . Today it seems these CDR kids just
don’t have the background of struggle which allows them to truly develop
and focus their art. One flick of a credit card and the stuff comes out of
its box, is wired up and next day - wow - another teeth grindingly tedious
CDR of formless pointless looped laptop wank that the world doesn’t
need. Howl, on the other hand, have covered the groundwork, coaxed noises
from fizzling bundles of wires and, over the years, become intimately
familiar with the ropes. Of course, having been at it a while, Stan has
actually accumulated some half-decent equipment as well as an
understanding of how to use it with a modicum of inspiration. So here at
last is a CD (and a proper CD mind) from one of those ‘cassette bands’
everyone seems to get so sniffy about. As basic concepts go, vaguely
techno-inspired instrumentals laden with sampled snippets of dialogue may
not be what you’d call revolutionary, but this hardly matters when
it’s done with such originality and a finely developed sense of the
bizarre. I mention techno only as the nearest available point of
reference, there’s only about two or three tracks which you might dance
to if you really felt so inclined. Elegantly understated tunes and
superbly orchestrated samples, or other effects, carry the music here. At
times it is uplifting, at others positively haunting (track 17, for
example, which displays the most moving use of mains hum I’ve ever
heard), in turn both scary and funny, even irritating in the case of one
track which sounds like tinny music from a computer game you’d find in a
chip shop about ten years ago. Sampled dialogue, particularly from film
soundtrack (I’ve spotted bits of The Thing, Blade Runner,
and even Zardoz) can be one fuck of a cliche in the wrong hands,
which it usually is, but here it takes on the quality of a Max Ernst
collage, creating a whole separate universe with its own laws and logic .
. . Is this plunderphonics or something? I
don’t know. Actually, I don’t care. It’s a cracking album and I
haven’t stopped playing it since it popped through my letterbox two
months ago. Howl In The Typewriter have done what few have managed -
released a CD which is as good as a cassette." "A tapestry of hope and
confusion." "This album is presented as
three mini-albums on one CD, having suitable sections of silence in the correct places, to remind you
to turn it off if you're not ready for more . . . what a considerate touch! On more than
one occasion I found myself imagining I was listening to cassette recordings, and once got
so involved that I actually left my chair to intervene in the recording process, it all
having started to go horribly wrong. The packaging is truly beautiful, and if a little
enigmatic, well, it's what we've come to expect. I'm prepared to state that this was the
happiest 67 minutes I've ever spent in my life - and that includes taking into
consideration those eight minutes behind the bike sheds with Tracey Posser in 1973." |
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Forays
(Mystical, Imaginary, Dreamlike, Illusory) (2001)
"The
claim so often made of this or that artist as ‘defying categorisation’ is a devalued currency through overuse, but I still
think Howl In The Typewriter is one of the few to whom it genuinely
applies. Howl is too chirpy to be industrial; too dark and abstract to be
pop; too eclectic, enthusiastic, and too reluctant to suck its cheeks in
for the ‘serious’ avant-garde. It is ironic that in these times where
crap and noise and hiss has become an aesthetic in itself - Stan
‘Howl’ Batcow whose adherence to the DIY ethic is borne of necessity
rather than marketing strategy - languishes in undeserved obscurity. By
Forays I take this to mean experiments, although as one of the most
consistent HITT collections I’ve heard, it seems to be almost begging
for an independent film to soundtrack. Eleven numbers of which only one is
really a song as such, fleeting comparisons are drawn with Severed
Heads,
John Carpenter, and even Public Enemy. But Stan has a quite distinctive
language of favoured
sounds and these are enough to make it pretty clear that such influences
are probably in the ear of the beholder. As always there’s a fair
helping of old Roland boxes: TB303 (the acid house fave) and - I’m
guessing TR606 drum machine (you’ll recognise it when you hear it), and
hearing these again, still used with invention, and still
sounding fucking great, I’m beginning to suspect it won’t be long
before they’re eulogised
in the same way as the Hammond organ. Likewise there’s the odd bit of
oozing squeaky synth
recalling times when everything sounded like Harold Faltemeyer, although I
suspect this is no Les Rhythms Digitales style ironic appropriation - Stan
probably just likes the sound. And
it works. Although we get plenty of samplers at work, HITT manages to defy
expectations, so you don’t end up thinking ‘that’s the sub-Kraftwerk
number, that’s the Minnie Ripperton number’ and so on. My only
criticism is that some places sag under the weight of their own
complexity. Yo-Yo bangs like a shithouse door in a gale, but would
bang more without the slightly muddy spoken bit over the top. Still, its
great to hear music that positively leaps out of the stereo like this
without bringing a whole suitcase full of agendas and knowingly raised
eyebrows." - War Arrow, The Sound Projector, 2002 "Elevator
is great - I love the 'childlike' tune to it - the beat doesn't pummel or
punish you, it's just kind of 'there' in a nice subdued way. The Inside
is excellent as well - I love that kind of 'childlike' / 'circus' feel on
the melodies for both these tracks. I don't mean 'childlike' as in simple
two-note jobs, I mean the quality of the tune is like a nursery rhyme. [Howl]
should get a job doing music for kids' TV. Weevils is fabulous too,
and no beat. Motorbeat I find interesting - lots of good textures
and sounds." |
Beware The Edible Fruit – Assimilate That Lion with Stream Angel (1998) "Two
thematically related pieces by artists working at least partially with
each other’s source material. Stream Angel’s side is pretty darn
basic, consisting of snippets of dialogue and snippets of music from phone
calls, taped conversation, television, and so on - no layering, just an
overworked pause button. For all that, it’s fairly engrossing . . .
Here, like a Bash Street Kid with attention deficit syndrome, we ramble
between a speak and spell machine discussing the appeal of ladies’
bosoms, a traditional Japanese interpretation of The Laughing
Policeman’, and just about everything else, ever. Oh - and Oliver Hardy
saying ‘hard boiled eggs and nuts’, which gets top marks, obviously.
It’s like some fascinating glimpse into the mind of an English Buddy
Bradley as it collapses - or perhaps explodes - in a random scatterburst
of conspiracy theories, puerile gags and daytime television. Assimilate That Lion is a little more coherent,
being held together by wandering twittering loops and some layering of the
sound, although the snippets of dialogue are a little less visual, a
little more abstract, rendering it as a sort of Zen response to Beware The
Edible Fruit. I’m not even sure if you’d call this music, and in fact,
I don’t really care. Despite its flaws - which can only really be
considered flaws if you expected something else - it holds your attention
for the full sixty minutes and survives repeated listening without the
novelty waning. This is a good example of something else that the mighty
cassette still has in its favour. If this was on CD, there might have been
the temptation to jazz it up a little, wipe its nose and make it put on a
clean shirt, which could have easily resulted in something more readily
accessible, but much less interesting. As it stands, you get the pure
undiluted stuff, dodgy edits and all." |
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7 X 7 (1998) (with special guests - yesmeansno;
andy boot; thee shrinkwrapped genious, crayola summer & edith spon; "Liked
the first track - elements of the Residents and Throbbing Gristle doing a
Spam 69 cover version . . . listened to the rest of side one and can't
'dig' it - it all sounds a bit too 'bleak' for me . . . side two, Yes!
Yes! This is the best so far. I love it when (it all) stretches out and
goes all psychedelic Balinese - great pantomime delirium bash . . .
doesn't seem to relate to the backing tape . . .nice 'drummy' noises
though. I really like the concept and the unusual process." |
Memories of Nothing (1995) "This little package is absolutely
essential for the collections of serious students of underground culture . . .
The cassette is one track per side, around 8/9 minutes each, and every one
of this strictly limited edition is individually mixed rom the masters, so
no two copies are identical! Side 1 is Blend, a quirky
Cardiacesque collage of noises and twee tunes, with many weird bits and
samples coming and going. Cut-ups and tape loops, lots of hiss and din, eclectic and . . .
fresh and totally unique. Curiouser and curiouser. Side 2 is G-Rave-y
Train,
a decent little dance groove given the HitT treatment. The book's a great read,
a history of HitT, press clippings, colour photos, Stan's very strange
sense
of humour, interviews with the man himself . . . all in all, very funny, a must. (you can't live without
it!)" "The picture which emerges of
Howl's
twenty year involvement in the world of weird tapes and music . . . is of a unique and
undiscovered genius . . . he does whatever he feels is most appropriate (or even
inappropriate) at the time, whether this be poetry, stories, heartbreaking pop music,
wails of howling noise, or brussel sprout donation. Howl in the Typewriter defies easy
categorisation and saps like us usually regard such eclecticism as a sign of
inconsistency. Let's face it, even the most out-there taboo smashers tend to stick to a
formula . . . this is a pretty humbling experience." "Memories of Nothing
is wonderful. I love rock biographies, and can easily read a book on any
artist, even if I never listen to their music. The whole layout - cover,
inserts, sticky photos etc. is exceptionally unique, as is the idea of the
'one-off' cassette. What comes across very strongly is . . . attempting to
do things differently - 'against the grain' as it were, and I very much
appreciate that in art. Reading the book brings a joy to my heart that
there are other people out there who are challenging the 'norms' and
formulas. It's very well written, too!" |
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The Not Unpleasant Smell of Horse (1995) "I Am The Horse
could have been a huge hit in the 1970's - it has a great 'quality' to it
(& very catchy too!) Every time I listen to it I have visions of Top
of the Pops in the 70's and some archetypal cheeky Jack-the-lad,
always grinning, shoulder-length hair, stripy shirt 70's dude doing the
singing. |
The Book of Ptath (1993) "There's some fantastic
wee fragments of ditties here, betraying an ear finely tuned to the rigours
of melody, harmony, chord progression, and all that sort of thing . . . this
really does sound like a partially completed film score. Much of it is
visually evocative . . . oddly, perhaps the tape's only failing is the
inevitable result of its success - being a soundtrack album of sorts, it
sometimes comes across as being a little jumpy . . . but as criticisms go,
the fact that I've been fooled into treating this like a soundtrack rather
than simply as a tape of music, must say a lot about its ample charms." "There's certainly a
wealth of different styles, textures and 'feels' to the various tracks -
diverse or eclectic as they say. One track even sounds like the spitting
image of Tangerine Dream! It's hard to follow which track's which, but I
think my favourites are The Book of Death and The Ring of Power.
I hear lots of Casio sampler on (the album) - am I right?" |
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Dog-turd in Shrewsbury (1991) "Stan is kind of hard to pin down
musically, but I'm beginning to see a sort of pattern. I've always been a fan of the
one-man band. There's a certain type of individual whose creative excellence goes
stratospheric when unhindered by other folks . . . I'm talking about those authors of a
song so big that it just nails you down within the space of an opening bar, filling your
field of vision and eclipsing anything else for the space of a few minutes. Eno,
The The,
Nine Inch Nails, Foetus, Severed Heads . . . pure joyous pop doesn't have to be musically
conservative or monotonous, or thick-as-shite! Howl in the Typewriter, as I now realise,
definitely ranks as highly as any of those mentioned above. Don't be put off by the
curiously uninviting title, this is an astonishingly fine use of two and a half hours of
anybody's time." "[Life and its
Reflection] - if this
doesn't scare the balls off you then nothing will 'cause it really shit the life out of
me. Stan must have a lot of balls doing this live, it's about life being a slow
strangulation process and how we're born into the world to be part of a cruel machine, to
be force fed false morals and values when all along we've been given the death sentence
from birth. Not for the squeamish." "Dog-turd in
Shrewsbury is wonderfool / WonderBra / WonderBread. There's buckets of
invisible glue there - the quality of it as an overall 'thing' transcends
any 'problems' in the material itself. Not that there's anything
significantly 'wrong' with the material other than some of the sound
quality could be better. No, I just mean 'The Sum is Greater Than the
Total of its Parts' - it's something I would gladly show / play /
demonstrate to people and say 'This is a Classic Underground Project'.
There's tons of great material there - how lovely to hear Water Yr.
Plants again - I would say that it's my favourite Howl in the
Typewriter track ever. I used to have it on a compilation . . . but,
whatever happened to that tape, goodness only knows. The third guitar to
appear has such an amazing sound (after the scratchy reggae guitar and the
jangly guitar) - that watery sound is pure bliss to these ears. I've heard
Snakefinger get equivalent noises to that. |
Bedrooms and Knobsticks (1987) "Various echoed effects heroically
adding strange, even surreal aspects to this . . . a full local group sound with a
post-punk, post-New Wave feel. They have a fairly mellow sound and a catchy song here,
which with decent studio production might clean up into an indie hit . . . these people
have a chunky charm and an old Style attitude." |
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The Very Worst of Howl in the Typewriter (1989) "The only real problem that I can
discern is that some of this sounds like it was rendered before Mr Batcow saw the folly of
recording his ditties inside a diving bell 500 metres below sea level, with the
portastudio bolted onto the outside of the structure. Stan Batcow seems to have his own
distinctive musical language, particularly on numbers like the hopelessly catchy
Close -
one of those rare examples of something that can be described as 'chirpy' and 'good'. The
occasionally muddy quality kind of marks it out as being strictly for the hardcore fan . .
. this offal tastes better than the finest banquet you'll get at many other overrated
musical tables." |
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Going down the Cat and Trifle (1987) "Mainly home studio songs built around
guitar, bass and drum machine, with the odd bit of synth here and there. Were the
recording even worse, with a dustbin lid drum kit and a few blues standards chucked in,
doubtlessly it would've been hailed as a lo-fi classic by now . . . the realisation dawns
that the Batcow has a nose for some serious tunes, hooks, riffs and all those other things
that serve to negate the relevance of a lavish production sound. It's musically inventive
without going too haywire, well-played, nicely timed, not too loud, you can hear the words
etcetera etcetera. It's enough to make me wonder what some of this would sound like
re-recorded for a fancy-pants studio produced CD, and enough to induce a
certain disillusionment with a cassette scene that seems almost exclusively dominated by
shit-dull badly recorded improvisation, or folks disappearing up their own laptops in the
name of random squeaky noises. A little more eclecticism would be nice, and a little less
fear at the prospect of producing something that someone somewhere might actually enjoy.
Perhaps a few more of you lot would benefit from a quick stroll down the Cat &
Trifle." |
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It ain’t no Sin to take off your Skin and Dance around in your Bones (1986) |
Worlds Tour - LIVE on Saturn and Jupiter (1985) "Even
as far back as ’83 when Howl In the Typewriter released Planets Tour -
Live On Saturn and Venus and the sound was little more than a post
Cabaret Voltaire electro-whine over a drumbox with minimal noise
manipulation, you’d still get a song like Heeby Jeeby Insect Wriggle,
where the bass just starts thundering away like that Chris Squire solo in
the Yessongs version of The Fish, and you get jostled out of your
noise-on-a-cheap-c60 slumber and start nodding and swaying, to the
consternation of your fellow commuters." |
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Would you Believe? There’s a Happening! (1986) "Doesn't come close to capturing the
[live] event, but it is deadly enough to leave you with the impression that you missed
something very dangerous indeed, just what did happen is left lingering in the minds of
the demented few." "How
Stan gets away with it I'm not quite sure . . . 30 minutes of total noise
left the crowd staring in disbelief . . . is this art or is it bullshit?
Who cares, it's good fun anyway and the smoke bomb was perfect. He even
managed to set off the fire alarms in the upstairs room" |
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Hate and Mutilation (1987)
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Love and Degradation (1992) "Love
is a spiral insana - stunning! Hypnotic - psychedelic - 'out-there'. Hard
music to give your attention to - at some points, it's just 'there'. Great
to hear Incredible Shrinking Man on Euphonium. |
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