WOEBOT

Here's one for all the Graphic Designers out there. What these records share is that they're at the perimeter of the fringes of Post-Punk, although I suppose any band that cuts an entire LPs worth of material makes some kind of deliberate mark on posterity. However they fall into two camps which are demarcated with crystalline clarity by the record's cover art.

The Red Crayola: Micro-chips & Fish (1979)
Glaxo Babies: Nine Months to the Disco (1980)
The Lemon Kittens: The Big Dentist (1981)

These three could be crudely described as belonging to the hippy-end of Post-Punk. Red Crayola's Mayo Thompson is somewhat like Kim Fowley, a character who seems to transcend geography and history. He/They started off with 1966's "The Parable of Arable Land", signed to International Artists, the same label as The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. The Glaxo Babies, hairy Bristolian Pop Group-a-likes. The Lemon Kittens, perhaps owing to Karl Blake's Prog-inflected Jazz roots also have a shabby, unfocussed quality which makes me think they're closet hippies.

But look at the sleeves, you wouldn't have to listen to the records to guess. Danielle Dax's very amateur drawing of a shrine, the pig-Pollock splurge of "Nine Months to the Disco", Mayo's scruffy theory-heavy collage of postcards. I mean, they're all charming period-pieces but/and delightfully inept, pritt-sticked together on the table in the squat's kitchen. And this motif of the square "frame" on all their covers, s'like deconstruction innit, like a picture frame innit.

Bernard Szajner: Brute Reason (1983)
Paul Haig: Big Blue World (1984)
Eric Random: Time-Splice (1982)
Spherical Objects: Further Ellipses (1980)

Then look at this lot. Again, very peripheral, but kind of cool to boot. They're all resolutely "embracing the future", or at the least their immediate present. The Szajner is quite excellent, his best, tart cold-wave. Howard Devoto does the vocals but he doesn't sound so irritatingly mannered like he does on the Magazine records. Paul Haig, the Josef K guy solo on Disques de Crepuscule, is obliquely chasing the Human League's tail- I reckon they thought this could have been a hit, but b'jesus it's awful. Eric Random's "Time-Splice" must be one of the last attempts at the time to embrace PIL's legacy- to empty out the music rather than inflect it with New Wave Pop. There's a pre-echo of Acid House to the disc, the shots of the band on the rear even look like they're fresh from their own warehouse party. Spherical Object's "Further Ellipses", even though it hails from 1980, like the music of the Diagram Brothers is at that uncomfortable juncture at which Post-Punk bleeds into Indie. Next stop That Petrol Emotion and The Membranes. Notable for the disastrously bad vocals of Steve Solamar. Not hairy, "disciplined", not hippies.

The sleeves are like a parody of Factory's, but where Peter Saville made materials really count for Joy Division, the creamy almost fluffy hard-card of "Closer", the slickly micro-corrugation of the cover of "Unknown Pleasures"- whoever did these sleeves was definitely after the same look for cheap and we all know what Saville's sleeves cost Tony Wilson! But with just the poised font, a cropped photo (two video-stills here, tres moderne), flat colour and nothing else to back it up? It's certainly Minimal lads.