Beggars Archive

Download re-issues

Beggars Archive release four albums on 3 May as downloads

SCALA – To You In Alpha

Initially a one-off project involving most of Seefeel plus Mark Van Hoen (aka Locust), Scala gradually took on the feel of a major operation with the apparent dissolution of Seefeel during 1997. At the outset, the group involved vocalist Sarah Peacock, percussionist Justin Fletcher, and bassist Daren Seymour of Seefeel with Van Hoen in the producer’s chair. Scala released an EP and a full-length album during 1996 -1997 while Mark Clifford – Seefeel’s nominal frontman and the only member not involved in the new project – worked on his own Disjecta project. More indebted to noise and trip-hop than the looped sound-wash Seefeel had been known for, the quartet also focused on a somewhat tighter song structure and emphasized Peacock’s vocals. In early 1996, Scala released the Lips & Heaven EP, followed the next year by the debut full-length Beauty Nowhere, on Britain’s Touch Records. Though Seefeel had released their third record Ch-Vox in late 1996, it was their last. Scala returned with two additional albums, released almost simultaneously in 1998: To You in Alpha and Compass Heart. – John Bush / All Music

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JACK – Pioneer Soundtracks (Expanded Edition)

The band was formed in Cardiff in 1992 by singer-songwriter Anthony Reynolds and guitarist Matthew Scott. The pair moved to London in 1993, where they recruited Richard Adderley (guitar), Audrey Morse (violin), Patrick Pulzer (drums), Colin Williams (bass) and George Wright (keyboards).
They signed to Too Pure in 1995, with their first release for the label being the limited-edition “Kid Stardust” single, released in November that year. Their debut album, Pioneer Soundtracks, was released in June 1996. Produced by Peter Walsh, the album garnered excellent reviews, but despite considerable touring both in the United Kingdom and Europe, the four initial singles drawn from the album, “Kid Stardust” (a tribute to Charles Bukowski), “Wintercomessummer”, “White Jazz”, and “Biography Of A First Son”, failed to pick up any serious airplay and as a result sales were modest. The album was reissued in a belated ‘Tenth Anniversary Edition’ on the Spinney label in March 2007, with an additional CD of alternative versions, B-sides and live tracks.

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Chrome was an experimental rock group founded in San Francisco, California in 1976 by Damon Edge and Helios Creed.
One of the original forefathers in the industrial boom of the 1980s, Chrome’s amalgam of distorted guitars and vocals, samples from TV, and a raw punk aesthetic (inspired by the Stooges) became much more popular in the early ’90s than it ever was while the band was around in the ’70s and ’80s.

CHROME – Blood On The Moon

First released on the Beggars imprint ‘Don’t Fall Off The Mountain’ in 1981, this was one of two albums recorded for the label.
With the Stench brothers on board as the rhythm section, Chrome veered towards creating more ‘regular’ rock music, if only conceptually. While still never playing live, it’s easy to imagine many of the songs on Blood kicking out the jams live, especially since in the punk/new wave-crazy scenes of the times they would have cut a truly unique path. No matter how near to three-chord catchiness some of the numbers get, something about them always sounds just off enough. Edge maintains his usual mix of electronic weirdness – at this point he had the knack for never making his keyboards sound cheap or or cheesy, a good talent – while Creed is all over the place as usual, his seemingly effortless but always fantastic soloing ripping through the songs. “Perfumed Metal” is one fantastic example of many, with both his strong rhythm crunch and his freeform work turning everything into one powercharged feedback frenzy. Another winner is the massive solo halfway through “The Strangers” – only a few seconds long, but better than most songs in their entirety. Meanwhile, Edge feeds his voice through effects processors and keeps on the strange lyrical path – thus, from “Inner Vacume,” this couplet: “Buildings built like beaches/Dripping off the land.” It’s not all aliens from Mars or anything – often it seems to just be about the strange people down the street or a bad dream – but Chrome do have a way of making it all sound like something not quite of this planet, musically and lyrically. The Stench duo do a more than fine job for their part, keeping everything almost danceable on their end on a number of songs, otherwise creating staccato, jerky rhythms and deep space when needed. Wrapping up with the nicely fried instrumental title track, Blood is another proper Chrome keeper. – Ned Raggett – All Music

CHROME – 3rd From The Sun

The Edge/Creed/Stench line-up still holds sway on this release, which was in fact the original band’s final proper album excluding a variety of compilations and collections of unreleased material. Given how good this line-up was, the fact that they never properly toured outside two dates – one in San Francisco and the other, bizarrely, in Italy – is all the more regrettable. Continuing the blend of straight-up rock crunch and crumbling weirdness that made the Chrome name, 3rd is both just accessible and just gone enough. Opening track “Firebomb” sets the stage well – Edge sings in deep basso profundo mode, the Stench brothers keep the beat going, and Creed unleashes more incredible, strong soloing to go with his crisp rhythm work. It’s another shoulda-been new wave classic that would still seem out of place amongst its fellows. From there it’s another trip into the not-quite-right – “Armageddon” is especially strong, an eight-minute slow burn towards doom overly appropriate downbeat rhythms. Creed once again shines with his heavily-treated fretwork; when towards the end he tracks two separate solos playing off each other, things really go to town. Another spooky highlight of his work is “Off the Line,” where more upfront death dirges are alternated with buried, creepy effects in the background. Creed gets in some vocal fun as well – at least, assuming it is him given the constant production treatments – on “Heart Beat,” his distorted words sneaking around the crisp beat and wheezing keyboards as well as the usual addition of feedback crunch. The title track was suitably freaked out and heavy enough for Prong to cover it years later on its Beg to Differ album. Though Hendrix’s “Third Stone From the Sun” may seem an obvious source of inspiration, the distorted vocals and steady beats come much more from Chrome’s collective brain. – Ned Raggett / All Music

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