The Nihilist Spasm Band - 1984

This cassette contains seven segments from our regular monday night performances at the Forest City Gallery in London Ontario. These recordings were all made on a Sony TC 131 cassette deck using either CR02 or normal bias tape. Various mikes were used in different numbers and combinations. As you will hear, the sound quality is uneven. We use a variety of hand-built and modified stock instruments. They change constantly. We also use a variety of compressors, equalizers, ring modulators, wah wahs and foot controls. We use two, unpadded, 71 cm. bass drums and a deep double snare marching drum. We have amplified a small drum by using a bass loudspeaker as a microphone and one of our cymbals is a large steel saucer. We used some hand made pick ups, including one made by Murray Favro from the seal of Art Pratten's refrigerator door.

March 20, the first number on this cassette, was a significant event for the band, where we acheived a sustained, changing, rhythmic propulsion that we had been working toward intuitively for the last couple of years. Recently we have begun to achieve the same momentum without drums. That is hinted at on Oct. 16. John Boyle, John Clement and Bill Exley are unable to attend a lot of the monday nights and that is why they are not on several numbers. Public performances of the whole band have not been very well recorded recently and have not been included on this tape. Sept. 10 indicates how dense our sound is when the whole band plays. We are always loud.