Cardiacs: Classic or Dud?

Stars in Battledress, maybe?

Yeah but they're 'the obvious', lol

hence why an Affiliated poll on top of the Cardiacs one would be awesome - there's a whole family of this music, quite unlike anything else

I should just ask James Larcombe, there's merely a whip between Bill's Solo material and some Sea Nymphs

If only he still posted here eh?

Just sent him a msg, will report back.

Yeah but they're 'the obvious', lol

maybe to you! it seems like outside of Cardiacs circles nobody has a clue about them! (sees thread title)

Hey Frogbs do you like (the band) Levitation?

Okay, James is gonna ask Tim & Bill next time he see's them, so I'll keep you posted.

don't know em

O sweet, nice work :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46PBmilni0w

sounds good but I'm interested in that piano in the background and this YouTube is too lo-fi to make it out. very cool tune though!

I've reached the point of Cardiacsness whereby I can listen to The Obvious Identity or Toy World and feel exactly the same joy as I do listening to any of the properly-recorded stuff. Some of those songs are as good as anything.

A Balloon For Bertie's Party is...I'll come to weeping if I try to describe it. The outro, just Tim and a guitar, is one of the most staggering, spine-chillingly beautiful things I'll ever hear. It's a collective dream of England, too lovely for death. 7:20 is where I can't handle it any more.

Hooray! I ordered 13 Cardiacs albums from their site and got them in the mail today.

On the receipt letter was "Wow! You're a hungry boy!", but maybe that's on all the receipt letters?

I got Sing To God a couple of years ago (I paid around 100 pounds for both parts and don't regret it) and I was very happy to discover recently that their own site has their albums for non-crazy prices.

Congratulations!

Sing to God is probably one of the only albums made worth paying £100 for, but still, ouch. I managed to find StG in a second-hand record shop a few years ago and paid a couple of quid, I think. The owner obviously didn't know what he was sitting on and barely hid his sneer when he looked at the cover.

It's been good to get er, physical copies of their discography over the last 18 months or so, including Tim Smith's solo album which I sometimes thought I'd never hear.

Finished listening to On Land And In The Sea. It's wonderful, especially the Last track. It never seems like there's as many as 13 tracks when I'm listening. I wish there was a bit more of Sarah's vocals, does she sing more on the other albums?

Not really. Think that album was the most vocals she ever did. But there's Sea Nymphs/Mr & Ms Smith and Mr Drake material where she does a lot more.

Sorry, just recalled that she sings a fair bit on Guns including lead on Wind and Rain is Cold.

Would love to find out what she's up to now, hear her perspectives on the days on the road or whatever. More and more i appreciate her role in the band. Apart from being awesome on stage, her sax playing grounded them in the semi-classical/prog tradition - there's nothing jazzy or rock about what she's doing. It's all accents, harmonies and a bit of dissonant noise now and again. Her leaving, along with the switch of drummers was the most defining change in the band's direction and sound. More than even William D Drake I think.

http://www.salisburyartscentre.co.uk/whats-on/Event.aspx?EventID=1343

guns vinyl reissue out. seems to part of a ongoing plan to reissue all of their albums.

https://prog.teamrock.com/features/2015-07-18/the-10-best-cardiacs-songs-as-chosen-by-mike-vennart

decent choices, really like that there's two off The Obvious Identity!

Just catching on to Cardiacs, what a singular band. Consistently very entertaining as well, but can imagine finding them grating in the wrong mood.

give it a few months, there'll be moods where anything that isn't them is grating

I've listened to A Little Man and a House... Sing to God next?

you've listened to their weakest album (obviously it's still great)

uhhhh I'd recommend proceeding chronologically from there, On Land And In The Sea then Heaven Born And Ever Bright, toughen yourself up THEN unleash the God

Or fuck it, listen to Sing To God, it's what I did first and it ensured that I'd love them forever almost immediately

Sing To God was my first, then On Land And In The Sea, and right now A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window.

I love Sing to God, but I confess that I frequently find Tim Smith obnoxious in a way to Frank Zappa. Not that he seems sarcastic, but he always seems particularly in your face and obnoxious about it. Listening to Cardiacs sometimes strikes me as being very similar to having a conversation with Lyndon Johnson when he wants something from you, the way he would tower over other people and grab them by the lapels, the way he would pee with the door open and talk loudly about "Jumbo". Lyndon Johnson was a great man but he wasn't very likable.

I don't know about that. Smith's music is incredibly full-on but strikes me (and pretty much every other paid-up member of the Cardiacs foaming-at-the-mouth evangelist club maybe) as being very genuine - the music *has* to be that way as it's Tim Smith's pure musical expression, and not aggressively weird or obnoxious. Imago posted a better way of putting all that in Cardiacsy prog-pop etc thread. Zappa was smug and condescending in a way Time Smith's never been and as much as I recognise his talent I don't like him or his music, but that's by the by.

I suppose I just love how overwhelming and busy Cardiacs were but I realise not everyone enjoys that. It's not as if they didn't have their more mellow or dynamic songs though - have you heard anything from the Guns album Rushomancy?

I don't get that vibe from him either.

Just realised that I never posted James' answer to the question of Bill's classical influences from upthread...

"asked Bill about composers and so on, there was no one particular that he could identify as an influence on the Nymphs stuff - he said Tim's stuff was obviously an influence through the years with Cardiacs, but several of his songs on the Mr & Mrs album were written before he joined the band, so they came from somewhere else...

As I thought he listened to (and played) a lot of classical repertoire at school - their music lessons sounded quite civilised, they used to sit round discussing records in the teacher's study with a dry sherry.

He's always been a big Bach fan. Liszt, Poulenc and Debussy were mentioned.

He did say that a lot of people he knew were heavily into the English composers like Britten when he was growing up, but that he never really "got on board" with that movement
and he hadn't heard Satie until much later.

So there you go!"

but i never bought the line that zappa's music was inauthentic. the problem with the "illinois enema bandit", to name the most heinous of zappa's musical sins, isn't that it's pandering. it's that it's not. "authenticity" isn't the question, it's more about whether you present yourself in an overbearing manner. some people (and i include myself in this category) are simply naturally overbearing.

Always surprised me that Zappa said he didn't really want to sing or have lyrics, that he did it to please fans.

Really enjoyed A Little Man And A House And The Whole World Window. "Is This The Life" reminds me of Pixies - Bossanova, which is a great thing.

Just catching on to Cardiacs, what a singular band. Consistently very entertaining as well, but can imagine finding them grating in the wrong mood.

― the joke should be over once the kid is eaten. (chap), Sunday, July 19, 2015 10:54 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

give it a few months, there'll be moods where anything that isn't them is grating

― gawker's psychotic monkeys (imago)

Yeah this hasn't happened yet, I think I might be one of the rare people who is a little bit on the fence over Cardiacs. I can certainly appreciate their ability and imagination, but can also see why people are massively put off by their shrill relentlessness. FOr every jaw-dropping musical passage there's another section where I want them all to seriously chill out and stop yelling.

Reading some of their contemporary reviews is quite odd and funny, a lot of afaict baseless accusations leveled at them. Definitely some kind of strange music press vendetta against them at the time.

https://soundcloud.com/mary-abc/cardiacs-dinner-time

idgi- is this different from the version on The Seaside?

Nah, but it was left off the CD reissue as you know so someone stuck it up for anyone who didn't get a recording of the full cassette version and missed it, I guess.

ah. I didn't really realise the CD has less tracks. I have the (reissued) cassette which I used to play a lot but now don't think about that album very much.

Sound quality is good though! Better than the cassette.

someone stuck it up for anyone who didn't get a recording of the full cassette version and missed it, I guess

That someone being the same person(s) responsible for the official online shop, apparently.

Nurses next, please?

It's been put up because they're reissuing a brand new master of The Seaside with the missing tracks reinstated. CD, vinyl and some kind of box set thing with replica YOUsletters and such-like.

The fact that this is the first Cardiacs stuff to ever be properly remastered is quite a big deal, really. I hope this leads to them eventually redoing all the horrible CD mastering that plagued the 90s reissues.

a well-mixed version of Heaven Born & Ever Bright would be amazing

Even though the Soundcloud version sounded good, there was still dropouts and image shifts, wonder if they're going to sort that out

Isn't HBAEB the only CD that was redone when Alphabet reissued it in '95? It's certainly a brash mix but the original CD isn't overly loud at all.

I guessed something was happening with The Seaside, it's been out of the shop for a while. Sounds good, from a cassette source I guess.

neither version sound very good to me - lots and lots of midrange/treble