Album reviews from old friends!

1. Malcolm Brown


PUNCHCARD SEX from INCENSE IN THE MIDDLE FRIDGE OF BIRTH by 5XOD

"Punchcard Sex" was first released on "The DadaComputer" in 1981 on MAP Tapes. My copy comes from Quick Stab Music Products 1981. 5X0D released a new version of "Punchcard Sex" in 2009 on their CD "Incense In The Middle Fridge Of Birth". I received an early copy. This is my mini review.

Listening to Punchcard Sex from Incense In The Middle Fridge Of Birth is like walking back into a room you left in 1981 where you had forgotten to switch the tape deck off. It has jammed, the tape deck jam noise is repeating, that's how it begins.

We settle in to newer sounds and it's a pleasant ride, a lo fi whack beat is hammering with a sense of isolation. I then heard the first vocal sample from the 1981 "Punchcard Sex" within this new context, a voice that has made that journey through time from 1981 to breath in the 2009 version of "Punchcard Sex". My heart froze.

I was sad and angry and elated and in love. A sound reached out through time and gently kissed my junk. I have waited 28 years to hear this and it was like hearing an electronic "Tutti Frutti" in the 21st century for the first time.

It's hard to explain why it moves me so much. I guess part of it is that so few of us heard or f**kin cared or f**kin recognised "Punchcard Sex" in 1981 for what it was. To hear "Punchcard Sex" reanimated after almost 30 years is a beautiful and truly moving experience.

5XOD made music back in the early 1980's because, they just had to, that is what they do. They have been making electronic music ever since because genuinely, they just have to.

The WASP synthesizer was one of the first truly affordable synths and Rob of 5XOD had one. In a dark damp basement on the Cheltenham Road in Bristol in 1980 he used to spit on the touch sensitive keyboard of the WASP to form a chord. The saliva would be dragged across the black and yellow keyboard to form a chord. How beautiful is that? Making electronic chords out of mucous.
That's how it is with 5XOD - they make us feel BEAUTIFUL out of spit.

I found myself 2 weeks after receiving INCENCE stripped naked to the waist pumped on whisky, alone in my flat - a deranged cyber Bukowski figure dancing to "PUNCHCARD SEX" feeling it was the greatest piece of music in my lifetime and at that moment it was, and is, and at times, still is.
My eyes were wide open, like listening to "The Bridge" by Thomas Leer and Robert Rental age 16 in a council housing scheme in Lanarkshire Scotland or listening to Cabaret Voltaire's "MIX UP" age 16 for the first time. The point I am trying to make is that it meant something, it genuinely mattered. These are not financially motivated recordings, which is remarkable in this gleaming smiling cesspit of Generation-X-FACTOR.

Incense is not complete like "Dadacomputer", there is almost too much information at times. For me personally less would have been more in this case. However there is something here that 5XOD also had on "Dadacomputer", and on many other outings on tape in the early 80's, that is really valid and worthwhile exploring.

Get with the programs. Explore true wealth of mind.

Malcolm James Brown
January 2011


2. Andre De Koning.

5X0D, what does it mean?

Somehow I rolled into the 'indie cassette scene' of the early 80's where you would record tapes with your own music (or 'sounds' in my case) and swap them with other people. The trick was to get a nice variety of 'correspondents' so you would get a nice variety of tapes back. Among my favorite correspondents were Rob Lawrence and Mark Phillips (aka MAP) from Cardiff/Bristol, as their tapes had a constant quality (i.e. they often had good tunes unlike some of the 'industrial noise' tapes that I got from other people). After some time they joined forces as 5ive Times Of Dust (aka 5XOD) and made even better tapes.

Eventually, life happened and I lost touch.

And then some twenty plus years later, while perusing the interwebs, I face that acronym again: 5XOD. It turns out the guys split up at the end of the eighties. But the good thing about split-ups is that you can come back together: they did a few years ago. In fact they picked up where they left off by taking old recordings and 'reworking' and remixing them. I got in touch with Rob who was so kind as to send me their 'come back' cd: Incense in the Middle Fridge of Birth.


The fact that I'm not so up to speed on electronic music is not really important as an obvious influence like YMO (like on the track 'You've got to Love the Nature') is not new either. It also helped that some of the tracks are reworkings of tracks that I already knew. Anyway, tracks like 'Fluffy Bomb' and 'Mass Collider' are instantly recognizable as 5XOD and great in their own right. One of the smart moves is sometimes using an electronic voice - the virtual girl singer Miku - which comes as a blessing after some of the more 'industrial' tracks.
On the whole I quite like it. It also made me (while typing up this blog item) pay a bit more attention to their my|---| site: there is even newer 'Dust Music Product' available: mOVING tHROUGH tWISTED fORMS.

To explain the title of this posting: after all these years I was wondering if 5XOD meant more than just four words and googled out that it probably does - 'The Soft Machine' by William S. Burroughs contains the answer.

Andre De Koning
April 2011