BEYOND THE IMPLODE 3 - BRITISH AIRWAYS 0

1993. The lucky few were on Bulletin Boards, a couple of diehards still clung onto their Prestel access. For the rest of us, procedures went something like this:

a) John Peel plays four tracks from a 'new Finnish label', which happen to blow you away enough that you record the lot onto a battered C90 in one go. One group's called Circle - yeah, whatever. But it's the two first groups that, in one fell swoop, seem to make the measly few records you've accumulated so far in your young life sound completely redundant.

b) Peel reads out the address of the label, which happens to be called Bad Vugum. It's based in some Finnish outpost called Oulu. After rewinding and replaying the details a few times, you suss out that the really great tracks were by a band called Coica (?) and The Vacuum Cleaners. So you scribble down the Bad Vugum PO Box address.

c) Sorry, no Googling for 'Bad Vugum'! Websites haven't been invented yet (and, when they have, you have to use some pile of shit search engine called 'Dogpile', that works on the premise that if you type in "Martha and the Vandellas" it'll return 18,024 results solely based on the words "and the"). Instead, it's a trip to the post office and a 10-minute queue for an International Reply Coupon.

d) Return home with IRC. You scribble down your address details and ask how you can possibly obtain records by the aforementioned bands. This isn't particularly easy - there's not enough room to scribble "the one that sounds like a Russian rave cabaret in a cave".

e) Then it's back down the post office. Your mentally ill mother decides that this would be really a good opportunity for you to pick up her thyroid tablets, and shoves a repeat prescription in your hand.

f) After a 15-minute queue, mainly caused by a deaf pensioner and a sullen teenage pervert in a shellsuit (trying to secure a copy of "Tit Spunk Explosion" between the "Radio Times" and "Practical Varnishing"), you weigh your flimsy IRC on a scale. The weight of the biro ink and the cost of postage to the esoteric netherworld of Suomi amounts to 98p. The counter staff toss your missive into a sack marked "GREASY FOREIGN MUCK". You then spend 10 minutes waiting for a deaf pensioner to fuck off out of the chemist's, and pick up a small brown bottle of pills from a woman with a beard.

g) And then - nothing. The days tumble past like plucked angels. Luton becomes a seaboard of damp, missed opportunities. The wind batters the leafless trees and the houses like a child poking an injured cat with a sharp twig. London might as well be on the moon. You pick up your monthly child allowance of £10, peeled from your parents' social security / pension (rent deducted, as always). "Well, if you can't be bothered to find a Saturday job!" your mother gnashes.

h) Nothing. The IRC's obviously been ground, underheel, into a stagnant puddle outside the PO depot.

i) Then - four weeks later - a reply! A catalogue of Bad Vugum releases, every single one hyped to death:

"NOISY AND RECKLESS, UNLIKE ANYTHING YOU HAVE EVER HEARD...EXCEPT MAYBE IF YOU COULD COMBINE EARLY HALF JAPANESE AND VINTAGE FALL ON ACID...SPEED FOLK FROM HELL?.. DEFORMED THRASH METAL WITH A TWIST...LIKE A SAWED OFF SHOTGUN IN YOUR FACE...LIKE THE BASTARD SONS OF SPACEMEN 3 AND SWANS AFTER HAVING BEEN HIT ON THE HEAD WITH A HAMMER...DIRTBOWLIN' GUITAR CONTUSION...POISED TO EXPLODE INTO A BOWL OF RAZORS AND SHIT...ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSE PORNO SOUNDTRACK MUSIC?...LIKE A VERY SLOW SUICIDE...MORE PROOF OF THE CURRENT SCANDINAVIAN SUPERIORITY IN THE SCUZZ-SNUFF DOMAIN...LIKE A NIGHTMARISH HARDCORE RADIO SKETCH...COME ACROSS LIKE ROLLINS BAND THRASHING IT OUT WITH THE BIRTHDAY PARTY...EXPLAIN WHY RAPEMAN, JESUS LIZARD AND BIG BLACK ALWAYS SOUNDED KIND OF CANDY-ASS...THE HARDEST AND NOISIEST JAZZ SKRONK"

Turns out that band is called KEUHKOT - but, shit! They've got two 7"s out on the label, John Peel didn't specify which one when he played the track and the titles are in Finnish anyway. And you can't afford two of them, as well as the Vacuum Cleaners one ("ABSOLUTELY COMPULSORY FOR HARD MACHINE-NOISE FREAKS"), at the sum of £1.75 and £1 air postage per disc. Just guess. That one. Might be the right one.

j) Bad Vugum take CASH ONLY, so go down the post office with £5.50 in an envelope and queue for 20 minutes while a single mum kicks off about her gas bill and an old bloke in a car coat fumbles with an IRC addressed to "LATEX ANGEL PUBLISHING" in Holland. Pay £1.23 for postage, walk home, death drives a Lada down the dying autumn light.

k) The Scandi cunts have ripped me off.

l) That ragga 12" Peel played is fucking incredible! I have to track down a copy.

m) The PO knew there was cash inside and ripped it open.

n) Gigs in London, then terminal boredom.

o) A package arrives...

Seriously, that's what it was like! And YOU left that eBay seller negative feedback cos the item arrived SIX DAYS after ordering it! Maybe I've only kept hold of the Vacuum Cleaners' Cactus and Keuhkot's Latistaa totuudenetsinnan sanahelinaski EPs as a reminder of the struggle. Though it's probably also because they're two of the most out-there things I possess.



I don't know what they were putting in the water in Oulu back then...you probably need someone like Kid Shirt to review these properly. Actually, playing these back 16 years on, words still fail me. I mean, I COULD tell you that Jihad Express by Vacuum Cleaners sounds like the Russian Winter Palace on fire, with a load of merry go round horses crashing into a bank of overloading Korgs, and some hoarse dalek voice growling what might be "WE MUST WREAK TERROR"...or that Side 1 of the Keuhkot platter (is it worth reproducing the titles?) sounds like Serbian skinhead football hooligans playing in some Constructivist cabaret folk-jazz troupe - as interpreted by Steve Albini producing a DIY voodoo gabba outfit tribute to God Is My Co-Pilot, with a scathing orc on vox and...ah, fuck it, it's hopeless.

The Keuhkot record's the better of the two, completely wild, even if valuable vinyl's wasted by a couple of pointless tracks, like a loop of someone sneezing. Side 2 starts off like an electro peasant funeral in a dungeon, before bursting into a wild chase through some dark, murder-rife 1970s East European cartoon woodlands...nah, I still can't pinpoint it...I mean I COULD tell you all this, but the simple version's that I haven't heard anything like these before or since.

By the way, ingesting drugs or alcohol prior to playing doesn't make it any easier.

Who were these nutters? I haven't really heard anything else on the Bad Vugum label, except the Dumbstriking Incidents comp LP, which is mostly disposable save for, again, the contributions by Keuhkot and Vacuum Cleaners (I picked this up on CD, years later, for about 3 quid in MVE - I guess the bands never really left the underground). It's a shame because, glancing at the tattered catalogue insert, I'm intrigued by the sound of the (then) forthcoming Bad Vugum release "MIESKUORO HUUTAJAT 7" EP - A 30-members strong male choir shouting their own carefully-constructed, rhythmically complex versions (no melodic similarities left) of various Finnish patriotic songs, workers' songs and children's ditties".

I guess life can get a bit depressing in the North of Finland. It certainly was in Luton, at times. But who'd have guessed that Oulu harboured the black beating heart of Mutoid Motown viking berserker disco?

30 minutes of this stuff and I would end up going mental and throwing myself under the nearest train, though.