2003 - A selection of songs from the 7" singles on Company Records


 

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In April 2003 the three man line up of the NoMen set to work recording some DIY electro song from Company records. Thomas Leer's 'Private Plane' had always been a NoMen favourite as was the other side 'International' but Robert Rental's "Paralysis & ACC" was hard work to listen to but always intriguing!
Billy's deadpan vocals set the tone for both of the Thomas Leer songs... Thomas heard them and approved! The band had a problem working out what to do with the Robert Rental songs. Allan NoMan recorded something vaguely similar to 'ACC' and let the voice on his iMac take the lead vocal! For 'Paralysis' the NoMen just went crazy. You can hear the original record playing in the background as Allan lays down a dub bassline over it. [it wasn't long enough, so we played the single twice.] There might be a vocal added somewhere but it was mixed out in favour of samples from Russian classical music and snippets from the 'Worlds Best Synthesiser Hits on CD' which Allan had hidden away in his shameful record collection. An off station transistor radio is used for the burbling synth effects. The whole thing was chopped up and pasted together in a Pro-Tools frenzy but ended up sounding quite organic! This is the first time the full 9 minutes have been made available...

Maybe at some point the NoMen will return to cover tracks from the Leer/Rental album 'The Bridge," one of the unsung masterpieces of the early electro-punk days and an album that sounds fresher nowadays than when it was originally released in 1979.