The band’s third and final John Peel Session differs from the first two by being an ISDN transmission. As Garry states in the second Ramblings of a Madman zine, having to create new mixes of tracks in the Maida Vale studio “resulted in something inferior to the original since we’d have to mix four complex tracks in half a day,” so it was decided to play from the studio instead. “John and producer were gamely up for our suggestion.” Of course, they had played the Peel show via ISDN the previous year, albeit under the helm of Steve Lamacq. Again, it being a Peel Session, finding a bootleg of the transmission has never been hard.
The show begins with a bed of previously unheard environment, laters of whooshing sounds and playful string instruments. Over this, Garry encourages John Peel to speak, and ask him questions. Peel is strangely quiet, merely joking that the whole show has been pre-recorded and the band are in the back room watching telly. This pushes Garry to ask John questions, leading to this wonderful interaction:
“Are you nervous about playing Tribal Gathering, John?”
“Certainly am.”
“What are you going to play?”
“‘Down Down’ by Status Quo.”
Garry’s laugher at the response ends the interview, and the transmission begins, with ‘Exchanged’, in its live incarnation under the name ‘Tudor Oak’. Funky guitar lines and organ samples mix with breakbeats and what could be scratching samples. This really is the start of the sessions that would culminate in The Isness five years later. It’s still dark, heavy going, almost aggressive in its beats, but the psychedelic influence is very much present.
“London calling… The Shining Path. Hey, are we set up for this next one or am I going to have to keep playing this noise?”
A very unusual moment with Garry treating the transmission like a traditional gig. After this brief burst of sound, we get ‘The Shining Path’, the track developed from ‘Sendoro Luminoso’, previously heard on the Mixing It transmission six weeks previously. In the intervening time the track had developed into a very different beast, with a faster tempo and a distorted lead melody. Although lacking the Ian Astbury lyrics, it still feels individual enough from ‘Sendoro’ to be its own piece, and is one fans are still eager to get on a From the Archives releases. Eventually closing on reversed guitar, the piece crossfades into ‘Trying to Make Impermanent Things Permanent’. Here we’re fully in Isness territory, the track eventually being released in edited form as an Amorphous Androgynous track in late 2002, and being a very early working version of ‘The Mello Hippo Disco Show’. This full eight minute track is as good an approximation as anything of the mix of electronics and psychedelia the band were beginning to create, with Garry’s vocals, saxophone lines, bluesy guitar, mellotron loop and organ solo all mixing with drum n bass beats and synth sweeps. A brief environment of bleeps, phone dials and spoken words closes the track, and in comes a live version of ‘Private Psyche and Inner Life’, under its working title ‘Thinking About Thinking About Thinking’, another track with a groovy breakbeat. This leads into the unreleased track ‘How to be a Genuine Fake’, a more ambient track built around vocals, tremolo guitar and drum rolls, undoubtedly sampled from the second-hand records Brian and Garry had begun to buy from markets at the time.
Washes of environments appear from the final track, leading into the outro and a second attempted interview, Garry telling a story of listening to the Peel Show under the bedclothes as a kid. Peel says he hopes people will come on his show 15 years later saying they were listening to this show when they were kids. They respond with samples of laughter and movie dialogue, Peel laughing “You could go on doing this all night, couldn’t you?” The show finally closes with a “good night”. “In 10, 15 years time, people won’t be making records at all, they’ll be doing something like that.” Sadly, Peel’s prediction didn’t quite come true, but he was keen for them to come back. As Garry wrote in the Ramblings story: “We always had an open offer to play another session but unfortunately his untimely death ended that dream. RIP Mr. Peel.”
Tracklist
00:00 Transmission intro and interview
01:47 Exchanged
08:18 The Shining Path
12:29 Trying to Make Impermanent Things Permanent
21:02 Private Psyche and Inner Life
27:27 How to be a Genuine Fake
30:25 Outro and interview
33:54 Transmission end
Fractional Difference 