PANIXPHERE – Gods and Zeros (ATE) – Just because I’m typing doesn’t mean I have something to say. Another thing to think about and not enough time for any of it and remember to say please and thank you. There’s a new Panixphere album, no really, they’ve only gone and done it at long (long) last. Happy days are here again and of course we have something to say, there’s lots (and lots) of history here, some of it very (very) personal. We’re having flashbacks to that time standing on the Astoria steps trying to persuade people to still come in even though those Sea Nymphs have cancelled at the last minute and there’s some legendary band no one has ever heard of standing in and replacing them. We’d hired the place, we needed people to come in, it was always a battle just to survive, those who did come in witnessed something special, those who didn’t are still kicking themselves. Enough of that, as legendary as Panixphere were back there, this is about the here and now. Actually they have always had a bit of a Here and Now flavour, that early Ringiacs thing and there go those cats and dogs and….
He got good cat, he got good dog; now that is how to start things, that instant cat dog thing that’s been lodged in our heads for years (and years), what was Tim singing?! Yes! a Standout live, Pandy, It makes you feel instantly at home (after all you do live here!). Pass the dog biscuits, what are they on about? Here we are again, far from the same old stories and the maddening crowd, them and us, us and them and right now the sun does actually shine every day! (If you reading this next year, then right now it hasn’t rained in Hackney or this part of England for at least 43 days now, actually if it goes on like this we might not be here next year!).
Oh this is good! Tick in the box and oh, okay then, there is a lot of history here, no time for that though, the new Panixphere album Gods & Zeros just came out. It does rather sound like Ring, that is a good thing, that is a (big) compliment, Ring were rather good, Ring were and still are one of our favourites, Ring were Bic’s band, they were part of that Cardiacs family back in the early/mid 80s, well no, Ring were their own (brilliant) thing. From the same fertile fields as Cardiacs, those South of England playgrounds where little men lived in houses and went off and things and Bic (sometimes we call him Christian Hayes) did eventually become a Cardiac, in fact all three current members of Panixphere (Bic, Jon Poole, Bob Leith on drums) have been at one time or another part of Cardiacs, Bob still is (no one really leaves Cardiacs as Bill Drake once pointed out).
Oh there’s so much history, before they were in Cardiacs, Bob and Jon, no, let’s not start telling the complicated story today. there aren’t enough hours left (we did say this the other day when the first taste of this new album landed) and we could write a book about it all but right now, right here, here’s the frantic feast that is the new Panixphere album, out on Bic’s label ATE. They’ve broken the silence at last (and don’t you want to sing about marine boys or some fish having teeth or whatever it was as you get to take all this in at last?). We’d hoped there might be an album at some point, we never really expected it though, even though they did keep saying, actually this, after all this time, 42 years, is their debut album….
Panixphere were around first in the 80s, they came back for a short sharp bout of glorious chaos in the 90s with Tim Smith on a Rickenbacker bass he had borrowed from someone or other without telling him (they mostly played gigs on Organ bills, if you were there that night at the Astoria then you know, there’s probably some bits about it here, by that time Bic was in Levitation). Anyway, Ring were brilliant, Panixphere were the punkier letting off of steam side of things although they were in reality a lot (lot) more than just letting off steam. And here, fast forward to wherever we are now and Bic, Bob and Jon have made the album (and have some dates coming up with Spratleys). Things are sounding lean, precise, focused, clever and raw in all the right ways, sounding like they’re ready to go off and things once more, sounding properly right and we can now all swim…
Sounding properly right indeed, The vital thing here is that Gods and Zeros has all the (urgent) magic and heads above the water of Ring days, of early Cardiacs days, it is all here, the sound is just right, some of it will be familiar, that punky ska-flavoured thing, a riff or two that will ring a bell, there goes Perfic, which did eventually make it onto that glorious Cardiacs album Sing To God as Angleworm Angel. It is all here, all that magic and that sense that there might be a clown with a pie somewhere behind you (Panixphere and Ring did once have a professional clown called Flat Hat on drums, it was dangerous to be in the same room or festival field as him or Stompy and his clown friends, Ring gigs were like going to the circus). Some of this is gloriously familiar, some of it not so familiar and nothing ever repeated ad nauseam, no repeating something so often that it becomes too familiar, this is fresh (did we say we first encountered Jon and Bob way before they were Cardiacs, backwhen they handed us a demo of their band Ad Nauseum – told you there was a lot of history) Jo Spratley is on here by the way, and Chris from Map and things, they’ve all got good cat, they’ve all got good dog, the cookie crumbles well.
A catalogue of doggie treats and cans of worms (for the early bird?) Will you stick or twitch? Some of it is verging on hardcore punk both in terms of sound and attitude, it is the sound of a hundred squat gigs and free festivals, of Pullens and Stonehenge and Meanwhile Gardens, and here we are again, them and us and us and them and it is rather remarkable that they’ve managed to nail it so so well here a quarter of the way through the next century (already), oh it does feel good, welcome to the future, you can’t help but smile, happy days indeed are here again, their innocence (and some of ours) still intact and we never could quite comprehend and Fiery Flames and oh yes, it is all here, all those good things that were Ring and Cardiacs and shovel all the dirt in all the holes and all the cracks. This will raise all the roofs everywhere, this will touch all the skylights and no red herrings. Nothing can be stamped out completely and let nothing be said, what a clever box of tricks, in one ear and never to leave by the other. Knock knock knock, ticking of the clock, some of this has been stuck in our heads for years!
“Most of these songs were written circa 1984 in the fledgling line up of Panixphere but were never recorded. Perfic and More Money Than God were penned in 1993 by Jon Poole and Tim Smith respectively. Perfic went on to feature on the Cardiacs album Sing To God under the title Angleworm Angel along with two other Jon Poole compositions debuted by Panixphere that year: Bell Stinks & Bell Clinks. More Money Than God appears here for the first time… So now you know! It took another 25 years before the inspiration and determination to make this album arrived. Who knows why or from where such sudden and perplexing impulses arise? It is beyond reason… but in July 2019 the bones of these songs were laid down swiftly with a plan to put out an album in 2020. Ha ha ha!”
The wait was worth it, we’re grinning like alligators, so will you (actually that’s our main memory of those 90s gigs at places like the Monarch, the New Cross Venue, that Astoria gig, the chaotic Organ New Years party at the Marquee, I just great big smiles on everyone’s faces, band and manic audience, it was such a good period of time and everyone’s hair was down, especially a then long haired Mr Smith who just seemed to be loving just going for it and threashing about.
The wait was worth it, up for every kind of strife. Back there, there were all these great bands and we just couldn’t understand why ne one was writing about them. Things like this is why we started this damn life-eating Organ thing and it maybe why we still do it? This is what mattered and still matters. Brilliant album, they got it just right, what a clever box of tricks that we no longer have to just carry in our heads. (sw)
Previously….
And from our past, Part Seven of that Ten slices of Cardiacs/Organ history and a bit of Panixphere (read the whole piece via this link) – An Organ piece in three parts. Part three, ten of the many moments spent working with Cardiacs…
7: Panixphere at the Astoria – Now this one was an unexpected turn up for the books. Somewhere along the line we’d been roped into working with The Enid by their then new manager who promptly decided the Enid were way too much of a nightmare to work with and completely dumped them on us (turns out he was right, they were way too much of a nightmare but that’s another set of stories that might make the much threatened book one day!) Tim was a fan of the Enid, I think it was mutual although Robert John Godfrey never really talked much about anything besides his own music and his (understandable) need to get it out there. Tim came to most of those Enid gigs we put on and Mr Godfrey seemed to like him being there, a mutual admiration thing. Somewhere a plan for The Enid to headline the Astoria was hatched, we all knew at that point The Enid couldn’t fill the Astoria, that they had alienated a lot of their core following a couple of years before by dropping the The, calling thenselves Enid and going all acid house in a rather uncompromisingly extreme way! It was proving rather difficult to entice those (sometimes openly hostile) fans to return and to convince them the real Enid were back. Sea Nymphs were asked to support at the Astoria and I guess we all hoped that a good chunk of Cardiacs following would come along to see the Nymphs in a relatively big venue and through a big PA and help fill up said venue a little bit. It was an Enid/Sea Nymphs double headline really. And then on the day of the gig, crash bang, a phone call, Tim on the line, “hello feller, watchya, us Nymphs can’t play tonight but hang on, don’t panic we’ve got something special, we’ve got another band, we’ve been practising all night, can we still play, watd’ya say feller?”
Panixphere were by then a long lost semi legendary did-they-really-ever-exist sort of band and no one was quite sure if they had actually ever seen them or not. A band put (back) together by Bic and Tim, more Bic’s thing if we have it right? Was Little Hickey, a Cardiacs roadie for a bit as well as a Ring member, was he the original Panixphere bass player? If I remember it right it was very fast versions of Cardiacs and Ring songs they played that night as well as original Panixphere songs about dogs and cats and things and was there maybe Foetus cover in there? It was almost sonic violence fired at both the Enid fans there for some classically pastoral prog rock and those who had arrived for the delicate sounds of Sea Nymphs that evening. Tim on (Jim’s) bass, Bic on guitar, was Jon Poole in the band that night? I do remember Levitation Drummer Dave Francolini took Flat Hat’s place on the drum stool and they played a stupidly loud fast set that might have included Ring’s Some Fish Have Teeth, a version of XTC’s Cross Wires, an outrageous To Go off And Things – I did tape it, the tape is still here somewhere. Brilliant gig (I got to see the whole of that one)
Panixphere went on to play a number of times for us, including that legendary gig with Huge Baby and Map at the Monarch (was that the greatest gig ever in the entire history of all gigs ever?). I think they played a couple of times at the Monarch actually, and a gig at the Powerhaus over in Islington, as well as a chaotic gig at the Charing Cross Marquee that was an Organ New Years party on something like December 30th of whatever year it was. A gig where the PA broke during the soundcheck and, unable to fix it, in the end two thirds of the bill got moved to the tiny Pizza parlour behind the Marquee! Dub War were support, Angel Interceptor (later to become Angel Cage, Captain Scarlet’s lawyer didn’t like the original name) were supposed to open but time and space didn’t allow them to play in the tiny pizza place that was at the time something to do with the Marquee. Dub War were Benji’s pre Skindred band (did we put Dub War on with Cardiacs as well? At the Powerhaus? I can’t recall now? Maybe it was it a Dub War and Angel Interceptor show with Tim doing the sound for it? Whatever it was, those Panixphere gigs were seriously manic punk rock affairs, they were Tim and Bic just letting loose, they were fun! It all got a bit too wild in the end, the last time we ever put them on was at the Venue in New Cross with InAura (who might have still been called Poloroid at that point, it might have been before Mr Polaroid’s lawyers called up, it happened a number of times with lawyers and band names!), that gig really did end in proper broken chaos that time and that was the last time that version of Panixphere ever played (did we see Bic has just got them together again, this time with Jon Poole and Bob Leith?)
So anyway, Sea Nymphs for some reason couldn’t play that gig with the Enid at the Astoria that night, Bill was ill or something like that and so Panixphere stepped in and no one knew who they were and we spent all afternoon trying to intercept as many Sea Nymphs fans outside as we could to let them know who Panixphere were and to please not take a refund but to please please come in instead (some did, some didn’t) and well, the Enid following just never knew what hit them that night, none of us did really!
THE ORGAN 