From their formation in Kingston upon Thames in 1977, their first single (as Cardiac Arrest) in 1979, through several different incarnations and ten self-released studio albums, Cardiacs persisted against the evident distaste of the mainstream music press, carving out their own unique space as one of the most cultish of UK underground bands. Tim Smith’s blending of progressive and punk elements (amongst many other genres and flavours) may have been perceived as a cardinal sin by some, but it also defined their uniqueness against a sea of less original bands and caught the attention of more famous artists who have since claimed them as an inspiration. Despite their forced retirement in 2008 due to Tim Smith’s illness, the cult of Cardiacs continued to grow, with renditions of their tunes by other bands and individuals (some by precociously youthful musical talents such as this) a regular occurrence. Writing Smith’s obituary in The Guardian in 2020, Rhodri Marsden summed up his legacy nicely by calling Smith “a one-man subculture who inspired total devotion”. In 2024, four years after Smith’s death, Cardiacs returned as a live force to be reckoned with. Now in January 2025, the first book on the band, a deluxe coffee-table tome from Melodic Virtue, has arrived and the final, posthumous album, LSD, is finally finished and planned for release later in the year.
Breaking band tradition somewhat by being ‘outsourced’ to an individual outside of their own label, Melodic Virtue’s book nevertheless has the official stamp of approval. Sharron Fortnam at ABC offered the following statement:
“It was an unusual move for The Alphabet Business Concern to allow someone from ‘the outside’ access to the archive but, having seen Aaron’s previous work for The Residents [and also Butthole Surfers], we knew the book would be artistically impressive. The opportunity to collaborate in this way seemed like a fitting summation of what has gone before and it’s good to see things from someone else’s perspective, sometimes, too. Having said that, I’m not sure we expected it to be quite so good! It’s a work of art. Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to about it has mentioned their emotional response to it, so we know we did something right. It’s not just the incredible things that people say in it but the candid photos capturing the moment and the times. I think it’s a wonderful thing. Now we can look to the future of Cardiacs.”
According to Tim’s brother and Cardiacs’ co-founder Jim Smith, the book came about via interest inspired through Rob Crow [Pinback, Thingy, Heavy Vegetable] who pre-pandemic had begun work on a film about the band: “Rob came over with Aaron [Tanner of Melodic Virtue] when they scanned all the photographs. I had the final say, as the final buffer for stuff I didn’t want to be in it. They were doing a pretty deep dig.” As well as documenting a comprehensive photographic history of the band, through their earliest incarnation to their final radio session with Marc Riley the night before Tim’s collapse in late June 2008, the book features testimonials from past band members, close friends and musician fans as diverse as Mike Patton, J.G. Thirlwell, Max Tundra, Amon Tobin and Dan Mongrain of Voivod. Napalm Death’s Shane Embury aptly wrote the introduction and I personally had the honour of my own contribution being used as the closing text, summing up several articles, including Smith’s obituary, I had written for the Quietus. Jim Smith told me: “It was nice to see Mike Patton. Nice to see Billy Gould, the Faith No More bassist. Always lovely to see Shane. I thought the bit that Tiny [Woods from Ultrasound] was really nice. I’m blown away by anyone who’s in there really.”
The book also comes with a single. According to Smith: “It’s got ‘Faster Than Snakes With a Ball and a Chain’, and a really early recording of ‘Dead Mice’, which was going to be on the original EP, A Bus for a Bus… We recorded it at the same time. It’s kind of first and last. Because Snakes with a Ball and a Chain was supposed to be on Guns. It spans the aeons. Someone had to.”
As well as being highly regarded for his distinctive bass playing, Smith penned the majority of Cardiacs ‘Yousletters’, direct communications with fans back in the days of photocopied zines considerably before the onset of the internet. He says: “I wrote most of them back in those days. I didn’t get involved with them once Tim was ill, ‘cause I was more busy looking after Tim and going to see him than I was doing anything else. I kind of shifted the band out of my life then.” Since his Tim Smith’s passing, however, Jim Smith has taken on a central role, working on completing the unfinished album LSD and touring as part of the Sing To Tim shows, celebrating his brother’s musical legacy.
He tells me: “I’ve become my own nemesis. My own taskmaster. [Finishing LSD has] been a true labour of love. People were saying to me, when’s it coming out? You’ve only got a bit of singing or a bit of mixing to do? But it wasn’t. Tim had done practically zero vocals for it. I think there’s three tracks that he’d done guide vocals for and so we had to make the best of that. But first of all, we had to rebuild the studio completely, because it had been sitting there for fifteen years, going to pot and nothing was working. I had to strip all of that out, bin the desk, get a new desk in, wire it all up. Then we started on it. It’s been two years of work so far. Pretty constant. It’s mixed. It needs mastering. It sounds really good to be honest. It’s kind of floating somewhere between Sing to God and Guns, with lots of call backs to Little Man and a House in there as well. It has elements of all of the stuff that we’ve done altogether really.” Speaking of the extensive work that went into the forthcoming album, Smith says: “This is a real out of the ashes. I’m really, really proud of it.”
He adds that the recent tour: “was great fun. It was really good to get back doing that.” There are plans to tour LSD too but those are complicated: “Because everyone’s busy. Kavus’ day job now is Gong and they seem to be constantly playing. I do want to do live stuff but I’m not scheduling anything as yet until as and when I can speak to everyone. It’s gonna’ be really hard to nail people down to do it.”
Cardiacs: A Big Book And A Band And The Whole World Window is published by Melodic Virtue
