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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.
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