In 2005 we recorded Science & Magick which combines the music of Cornelius Cardew with my own lyric because while I loved the music, the text (We Sing For The Future) was utterly absurd. For the album The Workshop in 2012 we decided to record another Cardew work but this time with his own text because it was even more absurd than We Sing For The Future, a sanguine appreciation of a world living under Marxist Leninist principles, God help us. Yes, free khaki uniforms and shaved heads for the workers, state sponsored cultural events unified by mediocrity and rectification camps for anyone whose perception of reality differs from the Party line.
I first heard a rendition of this spoken by prose writer and poet Frank Key on his regular programme Hooting Yard On The Air, broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM. Many of his broadcasts are available as podcasts – go to resonancefm.com and follow the links to Hooting Yard On The Air if you’re interested. He also has at least 6 books currently in print, all of which we can thoroughly recommend. Inspired by the sound of Frank and his wife banging the table in accordance with the score, Fritz, Colin and I went further and arranged planks of wood on the studio floor together with a bag of nails, each of us with our own hammer, then yelled the text as we hammered our nails, presumably in strict Marxist Leninist fashion. We then repeated this process as an overdub...then repeated it again...and again...until we created the sound of a veritable workers choir bashing buggery out of our wood, nails and hammers. Daft I call it.
Andy Martin (vocals, hammer, nails, wood),
Fabian Fritze (vocals, hammer, nails, wood) and
Colin Murrell (vocals, hammer, nails, wood)
Text & Music – Cornelius Cardew. Arrangement – Andy Martin after Frank Key.
If you have enjoyed this track we recommend you check out these works by UNIT on this site
A Study Of Alkaline Metals
Barbara's Bridge
Another Faded Fragment
The Quasar
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes
A Normal Child
Donations to our finances can be made ([email protected]) if you wish to support our future work.
In 2016 we released our 30th album (Fast – Clean – Cheap) and with it an era passed. We realised it is neither necessary nor desirable to continue to issue our work on compact discs. The process is expensive and time consuming (pressing CDs, printing booklets and tray cards, buying jiffy bags, going to the post office – it’s so 1990s) so now Band Camp exists, an avenue is presented by which we can release our work to the public directly. Our projects will be obtainable from this address:
unit-united.bandcamp.com.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The paypal address for our Band Camp and Lulu sites is now [email protected].
In addition there are currently 12 books available. These are proper books in print, not fake, ersatz ‘books’ you see advertised on the internet these days as ‘e-books’. They can be purchased from lulu.com. Type ‘Andy Martin – Grange Hill’ to locate them.
[email protected]
