Simon Crab has returned, after some years, with his latest excellent effort, Invisible Cities, on the Leeds, UK-based Space Ritual label (review for it can be located here). Much, if not all of the album was produced under covid lockdown, a virus Crab himself contracted and survived. Lucky for us, as the world would be poorer without his new work.
For the unaware, Crab is known for founding his two-decades long, multi-incarnation band, Bourbonese Qualk, in the late 70’s, in which he was always the hub. Bourbonese Qualk could be considered part of the UK ‘industrial scene’ of the 1980’s, but such reductions would be doing the music a disservice. Perhaps BQ could be better characterized as ‘power electronics ethno-new-no-wave-industrial strength-electro-acid-gabber-techno-post-rock-neo-jazz-theater, and even that just seems to skim the surface. After several albums that spanned decades, BQ ceased with the untimely passing of guitarist, Miles Miles through suicide in 2002. The final BQ album, On Uncertainty (Klangalerie, 2001), foreshadows the music Crab would make as a solo artist, a blend of pure electro-synthesis and acoustic ethno-folk-instrumental merged into near orchestral cyborg creations. While Crab has collaborated as SunSeaStar on Fjaerland (not on label, 2007) with Andy Wilson in an electro-improvised experimental effort, his following releases After America (Fathom, 2015) and Demand Full Automation (Klangalerie, 2015) are all exquisitely crafted electro-instrumental works that probably belong at home on the likes of the ECM rather than underground music labels. But then, it may take some time for the world to catch up with Crab’s artistry. Invisible Cities is more a continuation of the stylistic modus operandi and all three albums may be considered companion works.
Crab’s distinct sound could be attributed to his composition process; the electronics, for instance, are all virtual and the two main tools of choice are the opensource
Crab spoke with me, remotely, about Invisible Cities from his home studio in Hastings, London, UK. “Most of my stuff and titles are not particularly relevant to any track or anything, it’s just a kind of mode of thought at that particular time. I suppose if you want to apply a meaning to it… invisible communities, the future of urbanization, following up from automation. Urbanization will be less of a feature. The need for big conglomerations of cities will go away, eventually-once we abolish work, comrade. A city as a new form of community, not based on buildings but other networks.”
“…once we abolish work, comrade…” is in reference to the prior album, Demand Full Automation, named after the book, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (Verso, 2016) by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams. The book puts forth the idea that in the advent of automation, humans will no longer need to do manual labor and a post-work Utopia is feasible.
Indeed, track titles on Invisible Cities are rife with references, some Crab explains, whereas on others he declares, “no comment”. So on “Edgelands” Crab explains, “Edgelands is fringe parts of urban landscapes that are not really looked at or visited. The bits of nature that grow in industrial parks and shopping malls and the fringes of shopping malls A kind of new kind urban organic landscape that occurs that no one really looks at, documents and goes to. I find quite interesting. There is an interesting aesthetic there which does have to do with transport, cars and urbanization, cities and so on. It’s a massive landscape that has more are than the grand canyon or rocky mountains, but is invisible in our lives.”
One of the first things I notice about the album is speech, in Russian, on opening track, “Headless Day” by spoken word artist, Ksenia Sadovski. Given the current political climate with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems timely, Simon Crab: “It wasn’t done on purpose. It was mastered and recorded before the war started. But obviously previous to the war the conflict was building. That wasn’t an intentional statement but now that it has happened it is important to say that most Russians are not in favor of the war. They probably have a different view to events than we have but they are in general not in favor of Putin or the war but they have no mechanism for stopping it.”
I noticed that there are no translations for the text on “Headless Day”, SC: “That (“Headless Day”) is a translation from the Russian, that is Ksenia Sadovski’s lyrics. You would have to read the whole thing to know what it means. I don’t want to put too much focus on the words and did not want to add lyrics. It’s not something I’ve done before. It’s good to make people work a bit.
The urban motif continues on, “Stack Interchange”, SC: “Motorways…a stack interchange is a particular type of junction where two motorways collide as it were and it makes a nice pattern. As I get older, I hate cars more and more to a point where it has almost become an obsessive passion. But I suppose it is (also) like the organic digital conflict or confusion. A stack interchange is made for cars. It’s designed to allow cars to efficiently change direction on the motorway. But if you look at it from an aerial point of view it has a nice, organic pattern. There’s a conflict between the aesthetic of it and the functional nastiness. Cars literally destroy cities, visually, aesthetically and healthwise as well as all the kind of fossil fuels destruction that’s going on. They have multiple impacts on our lives.”
Not all track references on the album refers to urbanization, some are touchstones to Crab’s own personal history such as on “Kubat-Dreieck”, SC: “When I lived in Berlin many years ago, 1985 maybe, I was very involved in the anarcho scene there and there was a big chunk of land which was supposedly owned by East Germany by the Berlin wall. Because of the topography of the landscape, they built the wall behind it, including that land, like a triangle of land, so “dreieck” is a triangle (in German). So in theory, German police could not go on it, even though it was on the West side of the wall. So there was a chap called Kubat who was killed during the May Day riots in Berlin and to commemorate that, we squatted that triangle of land. So it’s a big chunk of land and build this wooden town on it and that went on for about a year and then the police tried to evict every now and then and we fought off. They they announced they were finally going to destroy it. Anarcho punks came from all over occupied it for the final battle. Sure enough the cops showed up with military, big armored cars and tanks and attacked this wooden village which had been re-enforced with walls and towers and catapults. There was a big battle and we were forced further and further back and basically closest to the wall in a kind of triangle and we were literally cornered. We had the choice of being arrested and beaten by the cops or jumping over the wall into the East. And that’s what we did. We walked across the mine fields and got arrested by the East German cops and spent the night in an East German prison where they gave us beer and cigarettes and nice food. And then they were most amused by the whole thing and the next day they very apologetically said, “sorry but we got to give you back to the West German police” so they drove us back over the check point, I forget which one it was and the West German cops were there waiting for us. It had all been pre-arranged the whole thing and they put us into vans and beat us up. Then they let us go because there was no real law that said you couldn’t go across the wall into the East. So they couldn’t do anything. They did not have any protocols that covered such unusual events. I liked the East German cops, they were quite nice.”
That anecdote segues into “No Further Action”, Crab laughs, SC: “It’s when you get arrested by the cops in England and they drag you through all the courts and if they don’t have enough evidence they send you a letter that says ‘no further action’.” Likely this relates to Crab’s involvement in civil riot as an lifelong anarchist activist.
Things take a morbid turn when I ask him about “Kodokushi”, SC: “That’s Japanese for wanting to kill yourself in a nice, countryside environment. A kind of feeling. That is also a 12-inch by the way.” Though if you do look up the word, some define it as the urban problem of expired elderly whose remains are not discovered until much later.
Perhaps one of the more striking details from the new album is the artwork. Whereas earlier albums are typographically driven, Invisible Cities looks decidedly organic like the artwork of Sy Twombly. But that is not the case for Crab. SC: “It’s me collaborating with a drawing robot that I made. It’s using generative coding I wrote to drive the robot. It’s a pen drawing robot. What I wanted to do was each cover differently so there are slight variations and different elements coming in. But that’s obviously not really practical. So I just ended up doing one version of it. I’m looking at doing a collectors edition of 20 which are one-off. Me in collaboration drawing with the robot sleeves drawn directly to a sleeve. That confusion between digital and organic is a theme in the music as much as the graphic. It’s something I find interesting. Then it’s the debate about what is electronic and what is folk music what is acoustic music.”
I mention to Crab about how his albums seem like continuations since On Uncertainty, SC: “I try not to make a continuation, but a clean break from something else. I don’t try that hard. I always think it’s different. I suppose if you put them all side by side they all sound the same. Because of me doing it for so long that at the end, with your way of working, I suppose it’s what makes paintings look like they are done by a particular artist. You kind of develop your own tone of voice, your own handwriting. Whether you like it or not.”
Puzzling, for this writer, are the time gaps between albums. Crab explains, “There’s no formal methodology. I don’t set out to make an album at all. I never did. Even when I was doing Bourbonese Qualk stuff, you just kind of accumulate stuff and at some point someone says they would like to release an album and then you go back and look at what you’ve been doing in the last couple of years and stick it together in some kind of coherent form. There’s not really a process. Most of it is done in my own inimitable way.”
Apart from Ksenia Sadovski, other artists also guest on Invisible Cities, SC: “Yeah, Fritz Catlin is on the bongos. He’s the chap, the drummer on 23 Skidoo. One of the originals and he is the one I did the Big Daddy album with. (Big Daddy is due in January.) Also Dave J. Smith did some percussion who is in a prog rock band Crabladder, Guapo, Miasma & The Carousel Of Headless Horses, The Amal Gamal Ensemble, The Stargazer’s Assistant. It turns out he also worked with Current 93, much to my embarrassment, and some other Coil spin off bands, which, if I’d known, I would not have used them.”
Was he agreeable to work with?
SC: “Oh yeah, lovely to work with.”
Simon Crab is working on other albums, including a dub techno one called Big Daddy due for release in early 2024. Meanwhile, we have the excellent Invisible Cities bound to satisfy electronic and acoustic music fans alike.
Chain D.L.K.: Pick up copies of Invisible Cities at:
Simon Crab: “Space Ritual Music.”
Visit Simon Crab on the web:
https://simoncrab.com/
https://simoncrab.bandcamp.com/
https://120years.net/wordpress/