Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Revision

I've had a request from M. Anonymous of Anonymoville, Nonameland, Planet Namenverlassen in the Galaxy Sans Moniker. It goes like this:

Anonymous said...
Dear Sir,please could you be so kind as to provide a potted history of the band 'angel tech'?Thank you.


So of course I'm only too keen to oblige.

ANGEL TECH ON THE MOON 1995 - 2006
The second in a series so incredibly dull, you'll find yourself wanting to shove an anglepoise lamp up your own urinary tract just to relieve the brain-battering tedium of it all. Seriously. I mean it. Skip this whole post if you don't fancy ending up in A&E, explaining to the bewildered consultant why there's bits of lightbulb and retractable spring wodged up into your gall bladder.

1.
Doug Bott and Tim Atack first met whilst composing the music to a cycle of medieval mystery plays. They spent some time searching for a sackbut but ended up with bupkiss. On their travels they met Neil Johnson busking Billy Bragg songs, "Her husband was one of those blokes / The type that laughs at his own jokes." They formed a band, what with being interested in odd pop music like Seefeel, Stina, Bjork, The Cure and that. Tim's ex-girlfriend insulted his newly designed keyboard noises, and in a string of slurred vitriol he vaguely heard the words "angel... tech..." obviously meant to berate what she perceived as some sort of hippy shit. Years later the group discovered that there is in fact a book called "angel tech" and, yes, it's full of some serious San Francisco-school hippy shit and no, we do not endorse it in any way.

Revision Notes: Section One
Sackbut
Bupkiss
Busking
Blokes
Jokes
Seefeel
Keyboard
Hippy

2.
angel tech were invited to Freiburg, Germany, in order to be composers in residence at an environmental conference. They met a mad German called Wangler (later Melchior) and returned to Freiburg to record songs on the railway track outside his studio, and be stung by wasps. They went into the black forest to collect mushrooms and found a high wooden chair in a clearing with no apparent function. Tim thought he could maybe climb to the top in order to make some sort of Faustian pact, but he waited for twenty minutes and nothing happened. Back in Bristol, angel tech did shows where they borrowed TVs from EVERYONE THEY KNEW and plugged them in to each other using signal splitters so that the images slowly degraded across the length of the stage, nothing but static on some of the screens. It looked like an Eastern European branch of Tandy's up on that motherfucker.

Revision Notes: Section Two
Hippies
Germans
Wasps
Mushrooms
Faustus
Faustus
Faustus
Bupkiss
Motherfucker

3.
angel tech began to develop a taste for unusual production methods and the deliberate pushing to extremes of any technology they could get their grubby mitts on. This led to a work ethic best described as "protracted," and Doug, on several occasions, wondering about SHAVING HIS FUCKING HEAD AND GOING TO LIVE IN A HUT IN THE FUCKING ANDES. A soundtrack was composed to a silent film (Metropolis.) A manager was employed with a moustache like the kaiser (but no matching helmet, despite our best efforts.) A recording contract was signed. In a fit of excitement, Doug broke his arm skateboarding, at which point he officially became TOO OLD TO SKATE TM. National and international tours were undertaken. Gigs were played to an audience of two men and a dog... but that's normal and OK... in those sorts of situations you're only really in trouble if the dog walks out. In the famous Realworld recording studio angel tech met some famous people whilst recording an album which is not yet at all famous in the slightest bit. Whilst discussing vegetarianism Kylie Minogue put her hand on Neil's thigh and kept it there for some considerable time. As a result of this, you can quite happily run Neil through with a scimitar (or similar) any time you like, he will die a happy man.

Revision Notes: Section Three
Protracted
Andes
Metropolis
Helmet
Dog
Studio
Kylie
Thigh
Scimitar

4.
People often wonder what happened to us after our recording contract ended. Truth of the matter is, we went to the moon. It's typical of angel tech to go to the moon in order to make a minidisc recording of the "atmosphere," only to find that the moon doesn't have one. Picture the scene...

Neil: Oh. Shit.
Tim: We came all this way, and never thought to check whether sound travels in a vacuum?
Doug: Sound doesn't travel in a vacuum.
Tim: That's what I'm saying.
Neil: Well, we know that now.
Doug: That's what I'm trying to say. Sound doesn't travel in a vacuum.
(Pause.)
Doug: Look, switch the minidisc onto record anyway. We've come all this way. We might as well just switch it on and see if we can get something.
Tim: Seriously, all we're going to be able to record is the inside of this... fucking... pod.
Neil: Oh SHIT.
Doug: What?
Neil: Nothing. Nothing.
Doug: No. Tell us. What?
Neil: I've run out of rizlas.

Revision Notes: Section Four
No
Rizlas
In
Space


5.
angel tech composed and performed theatre soundtracks, doing a show which involved running across a room one hundred times and sweating a lot. Whilst touring in Singapore, Neil vomited his entire body out of every available hole in his body and was taken to a hospital where everyone was impressed with his circular vomiting technique. Doug and his wife looked under a cabbage in the cabbage patch and found Milo (current age 2.5) Tim tried to teach Milo to say "Vagabond" every time Neil walked into the room. Neil tried to teach Milo to say "Weirdo" every time Tim walked into the room. But enough of this, what did we, as adults, learn? Well... we learned how to drag sounds through a computer backwards. Films were made using our music. I started this Blog just over a year ago. For further information go to the first post on this Blog, and work your way... up.

Revision Notes: Section 5
Runaround
Dodgy Mushroom Sandwich Esplanade Mall 26/10/03
Cabbage Patch
Patchbay
Logic Pro
Ableton Live
Reason 2.5
Boring Boring Blog

And as for the future? Well, as I'm sure you'll have picked up from this journal, what we're doing right now is building up strength in our pectoral fins so that we can eventually haul ourselves out of the water and onto the rich, dark mud of the primordial swamp. We intend to be crawling on land by March 2006, and by September we hope to be breathing oxygen.

The End.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

a point of clarification - the origin of AngelTech was in fact the result of Neil going travelling in search of a band (his previous bass player not being able to tell his MBV from his GNR (uurrrgghhh)). At the end of his westbound M4 pilgrimage, he found 2 long-haired hippies in a SACK, BUT he let them out to be in his band. i'm sure that you, reader, can therefore see how this obvious confusion arose.

7:25 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Actually, I've heard different. I've heard that Angel Tech were originally 'the Angel Tech Tabernacle Choir of New Jersey' but in 1972 they were in a plane crash which killed 31 of their number leaving just Neil Tim & Doug on a mountainside, forced to survive by feasting on the remains of their choirmates (& choirmaster. & pilots and stewardesses. & some gin & tonics left in the drinks trolley.)

It's true. I heard this from a very respectable source, down the pub. Last night.

3:33 AM  

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