I’m putting these two snippets together, as they are both to do with Real To Real Cacophony. One advert from a copy of the NME dated Feb 9th, 1980, with two glowing reviews from David McCullough and Ian Cranna (spelled incorrectly in the ad) – as well as a dedicated (and horribly scathing!) review from Paul Du Noyer in the NME, dated November 24th, 1979.
Mr Du Noyer…I’ve got to hand it to you, you didn’t sugar-coat things! But you also had enough self-awareness to take in that maybe you did lack some heart not to get any emotion from R2R. It isn’t all doodling and pretentiousness! Yes! It was dystopian in its outlook…but, fuck me! How many other 20 year olds were making music like that? It’s a travelogue precursor to Empires And Dance. Glorious in its objective to be so left field, so far removed from Life In A Day as to almost come from a different band just NINE MONTHS later. Listen to Citizen, just for starters. Fans take the piss out of Veldt…but I adore it. Genuinely! It has an exotic air to it. It’s an aural jungle…with a humidity and a sweat. Factory – seriously, man? You get NOTHING from Factory? You don’t know what it’s saying? Fuck! It’s a fucking Lawry painting as a song, you fuck! JESUS! He probably never “got” art, either, this guy. He says SM’s music expresses no emotion…yet he sounds like a fucking automaton! Scar…IT’S JG BALLARD, bellend! Sorry…people who don’t get their early stuff just endlessly get on my wick. Especially pricks like this bloke, accusing them of being overly clever-clever and up their own arse, when he’s just too much of a blinkered automaton not to see it. Dick.
Sorry. Rant over. Anyway. Enjoy. Lol