COMM 380:  Media Criticism

Rudimentary Peni's second full length album “Cacophony”, released in 1989, is one of the most unique rock albums ever recorded, if it can even be called “rock” music. The band grew out of what is known as the “anarcho-punk” scene, yet still managed to stand apart from other bands in the scene right from the beginning. However, “Cacophony”, with its unique lyrical content based on the work and life of author H.P. Lovecraft, utterly unprecedented vocal style and arrangements, as well as the unpredictable instrumental structures, combined to form an album that not only stands apart from other punk rock music of the time, but virtually all music before or since.

 

Rudimentary Peni formed in London in 1980 and consisted of Grant Matthews on bass,  Nick Blinko on guitar and vocals, and Jon Greville on drums. They were quickly identified with a punk subgenre that was burgeoning at the time known as “anarcho-punk”. This subgenre came out of the revolutionary sound and underground success of the band Crass in the late 70's, a group that inspired “a thousand anarcho-punk bands (to) set sail in their wake” (Glasper 11).

 

This scene was built around bands taking control of their own work, releasing their own records and booking shows, as well as creating a movement that “would make serious headway in the struggle for human and animal rights” (Glasper 8). Although Crass had a specific sound early on that was somewhat comparable to early U.S. hardcore punk, and some anarcho-punk bands emulated their sound, most bands in the scene were “bound together more by their ethics than any unwritten musical doctrine” (Glasper 9). These “ethics” go beyond moral and political tenets and extend to the bands not selling out to corporate entities or altering their music with the goal of attaining commercial success.

 

Rudimentary Peni was considered to be part of this scene initially, although partially due to mere association, considering one of their singles was released on Crass' own record label (Glasper 81). However, even bassist Grant Matthews notes that he does not consider Peni to be an anarcho-punk band, as Blinko and Greville “weren't into the politics at all” (Glasper 9). Having said that, their earliest recordings still fit within a general punk rock sound, being loud, fast, abrasive, and angry, but these recordings still stood apart for their “other worldliness” (Glasper 83).

 

Their second full length album “Cacophony” was both a radical departure from their earlier material as well as a complete departure from anarcho-punk, apart from it being self-released on the band's own record label. The record is ostensibly a concept album about the life and work of famous horror author H.P. Lovecraft. However, one aspect that sets “Cacophony” from a typical concept album with a unified theme and story is that the band makes no attempt to create a clear through line based around Lovecraft's life. Instead, the album might best be described as a lyrical collage of remnants and pieces of his life, references to his novels and short stories, interpretations of his work, and more. The album initially offers little in the way of clarity of purpose other than Lovecraft being a general theme, assuming one already has some knowledge of his work. For example, there's a track entitled “Lovecraft Baby” and another one called “Nightgaunts”, which is a reference to a race of creatures within the Lovecraftian universe. “Horrors in the Museum” references a story ghost written by Lovecraft, and “The Old Man is Not So Terribly Misanthropic” is clearly a reference to the short story “The Terrible Old Man”.

 

However, trying to piece together what the album is trying to say about Lovecraft requires work, and may be futile all together. Often the lyrics are sung or spoken so fast or so low that they are indecipherable. One is forced to read the lyrics to begin to even attempt to decipher the story behind the album. Even with that, the lyrics read more as long form stream of consciousness poetry, with H.P. Lovecraft being the underlying theme. The opening track “Nightgaunts” would appear to be an attempt to describe the creatures that appear in various Lovecraft stories, along with references to those stories. The next track “Horrors in the Museum” references the specific Lovecraft story, but also integrates references to the band itself, as with the lyrics “Peni alienists”, as well as “Chrysler Building not vampire state” being a playful reference to an earlier Rudimentary Peni song.Then there appears to be references to his work being censored in the UK, on account of “puritanical sexuality” and the “UK Censor ship of fools”, the latter being an example of the common kind of pun wordplay that are prevalent in the band's lyrics. The song ends with a rapid fire list of influences on H.P. Lovecraft's work, including Edgar Allen Poe and M.R. James. The third track “The Only Child” references Lovecraft's disturbing childhood, where his mother would sometimes dress him up as a little girl.

 

Already a scant three tracks and six minutes in, the lyrics include references to Lovecraft's childhood upbringing, the censorship of his books, how the band recording the album might well be received similarly to how Lovecraft was received in his time, an attempt to describe creatures within the Lovecraftian universe, and specific references to an individual story. There may even be further references hidden within the dense and unconventional poetry of these initial lyrics. My overall point is that the lyrics do not follow one reality along a time line, like a chronological telling of the major events of Lovecraft's life from birth to death, but instead seem to quickly collide into one another and overlap.Perhaps the best description of the lyrical style I could come up with is “free-associative poetic collage”.

 

This lyrical style stands diametrically opposed to most pop and rock song lyrics that are clear both sonically and thematically. One gets the feeling that in order to fully explore the lyrics would require a massive research project in order to connect the dots on every reference to Lovecraft stories, his life, the band, and maybe even other topics. However, I think that exercise would prove at least partially futile, as perhaps the band was more interested in creating a Lovecraftian world in musical form, one that is best experienced than closely analyzed.

 

The music is just as original as the lyrics. It rarely stays within one form for more than thirty seconds or so, and comes across as an accompaniment to a long, ever shifting poem. The most unique characteristic of the music is that lead singer Nick Blinko's vocals are consistently strange and constantly changing and, as stated earlier, usually difficult to understand.The effect is akin to how schizophrenics describe hearing multiple voices in their head. Listening to the album, it should not surprise that Blinko would later find himself “in the throes of mental illness” (Glasper 86). As a teenager, he even worked as an orderly in an insane asylum (Glasper 84). The differing vocal styles and sounds are almost too numerous to mention.

 

The most prevalent vocal style is the more standard punk rock shouting, similar to their earlier recordings.  There are very deep monotone passages that are somewhat reminiscent of certain gothic rock bands, as in the track “Crazed Couplet”, but ends with what sounds like several eulogies spoken at once in relatively normal tone of voices. The beginning of “Arkham Hearse” begins with slithering vocal sounds that are reminiscent of Lovecraft's descriptions of certain creatures in his stories, and Blinko carries this slithering into his singing, which sounds like a scared man describing something with a slithering overtaking his voice, as if he is turning into a monster.

 

“Imps of the Perverse” begins with a critic's slamming of Lovecraft's work at the time, shouted in an over-the-top theatrical voice that sounds like a hammy actor portraying a villain in an old British horror movie. There are thirty tracks in total on the album, and most of them contain several unique vocals styles, often seemingly competing with one another in pseudo-schizophrenic fashion. The changing vocals also seem to correspond to different characters and even monsters.

 

There are traces of the band's earlier instrumental style during the album. For example, their song “1/4 Dead” has a the haunting bass line that begins the song and carries through as the lead instrument. This is unusual for rock music, as usually the guitar or lyrics take the lead and the drums and bass work together in the background.There are several tracks on “Cacophony” that are similar to this, like “The Only Child” and “Beyond the Tanarian Hills”. Interestingly, Blinko's vocals on “Beyond the Tanarian Hills” mimic the bass line, which is even more unusual in rock music. However, during the track “Sonia”, the guitar and vocals follow each other to form the backbone of the song, while the drums and bass are both operating separately.

 

Instrumentally and otherwise, the drums are usually the most consistently normal thing about the album, but the vocals, bass, and guitar work together and off each other in unique ways, while many sections of the album still have recognizable punk rock beats. However, the instruments also devolve into free form noise during a few points as accompanimentt to a spoken word section, as in the second half of “Musick in Diabola”.  

 

Even with traces of the band's earlier recordings, Rudimentary Peni's “Cacophony” is a rock album unlike any other before or since. It manages the mean feat of being totally unique lyrically, vocally, and instrumentally, as any one of those innovations would cause an album to stand out in the often rigid world of punk rock music. In fact, to point out all of the ways the album differs from a typical punk rock album would prove an exhaustive exercise. In that light, the album is best viewed as something that is not only wholly unique from what other bands were recording in the punk rock scene that the band began in, but also as an album that defies any categorization or aesthetic standards that are typically imposed on rock music.

 

Works cited

Glasper, Ian. The Day the Country Died. London: Cherry Red Books. 2006. Book.

 

Joshi, S.T. H.P. Lovecraft. Mercer Island: Starmont House. 1982. Book.

 

Joshi, S.T., Schultz, David E. An H.P. Lovecraft Encyclopedia. Westport: Greenwood Press. 2001. Book.

 

Lovecraft, H.P. The Dreams in the Witch House and Other Weird Stories. New York: Penguin Books. 2004. Book.

 

Rudimentary Peni. Death Church. Corpus Christi, 1983. CD.

 

Rudimentary Peni. The EP's of RP. Corpus Christi, 1987. CD.

 

Rudimentary Peni. Cacophony. Outer Himalayan Records, 1989. CD.