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Baker's Dozen

Significant Involuntary Memories: Paul Allen Of Anthroprophh's 13 Top LPs
John Doran , January 6th, 2015 12:08

Following last year's mighty Outside The Circle album and the news that Anthroprophh will be playing this year's Desertfest, the band's leader and former Heads man Paul Allen (the hirsute gentleman on the right below) cherrypicks 13 albums from his hefty collection

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Musique Concret - Bringing Up Baby

I first discovered this record via the late Barry 'Wolf' Bradburn, a good friend, who was a mix between a 'jitter' and hippy I guess. I used to hang out at his place when I was on the dole back in the early to mid-90s. He was also on the dole and in fact never had a job in all the years I knew him, although he did say he auditioned for a role in The Young Sherlock Holmes, but I didn't really believe him.

He had been given this LP by some local head without its sleeve. Barry called it the 'green LP' due to the colour of the vinyl (it's blue really). The fact it was sleeveless added to the mystery. The only information was on the label, one distorted elongated photo on each side and the name of the album with titles and the name United Dairies. I was unaware of any of the Nurse With Wound stuff at this time so had no clue to what this record was, why it was and where it was.

In an altered state it was placed onto the turntable and when the strange burbling and out of control sound of 'Organorgan' played for a few minutes I could take no more and told him to turn it off. It just freaked me out. The other side had a few minor parts I could grasp onto like the glissando guitar of 'Incidents In Rural Places Part 1' but later in 'Part 3' the creepy tape sound of children singing in a school choir and church bells just scared me. Years later with the help of the internet I finally tracked a copy down and found out a little about the musicians involved. It was only a little though as the men who created this only stuck around for five minutes before disappearing completely. Rather like Unexplained's EVP flexi [The Unexplained - Mysteries Of Mind Space & Time Magazine gave away a flexi-disc with issue one in 1981, which was a 1971 recording of so-called electronic voice phenomenon] I can listen to this now without being spooked out. It still has a genuine creepiness about it though and it is a great experimental LP.