Malaise Music // Rozz Williams The Lost Recordings

BACKGROUND
This cassette is not a compilation of previously used material as it has sometimes been depicted. Certainly a couple of the tracks first appeared on A Little Hard To Swallow, however most of of the recordings are unique to this release.The tracks contained on 6 would all appear to originate prior to 1987. It has previously been released in 2001 as a limited edition pressing of 100 copies by Rozznet.com, with artwork especially designed by Kevin Graves.

TRACKLISTING
6 consists of 16 untitled tracks of various lengths, 14 of which contain the use of samples. The basic sound on Track 1 had been used previously on the track Un... on the Rise album, and Rozz gives it a further treatment here. Track 6 is the full recording of the final piece on A Little Hard To Swallow. Track 12 is also featured on A Little Hard To Swallow. - it incorporates samples of the child preacher, Marjoe Gortner.

CASSETTE
The original cassette for 6 survives and is in the possession of John Collins. Rozz Williams used a normal TDK cassette tape. He added a white sticker with the number 6 on side A of the cassette.

ARTWORK
The original cassette sleeve for 6 survives and is also in the possession of John Collins. The sleeve features an anatomical study of a human face, neck and shoulders. The blood vessels are shown in red. There are 19 black lines pointing to various areas on the study, each one being numbered in black. This would suggest that the image was taken from some kind of medical journal. Rozz Williams fully filled in the background with a black marker.adding to the striking effect of the image.

The original cassette artwork was in good condition, with only a slight blemish on the right side of the skull. We have corrected the blemish and made the image clearer, also removing the crease lines on the cassette sleeve from the scanned artwork. We have darkened the background even further so that the image stands out perfectly, and also we have added a slight texture finish in homage to the Blood Told In Spine album artwork. We also decided to change the colour of the numbers to silver so that they can clearly be seen. We chose to add the number 6 to the topmost line, as the cassette artwork did not show a number for that particular line. We have also enlarged the number 6 to help identify it as the title of the release.

The next task was to decide on the design for the back cover. We chose to take the right half of the original image only, and desaturated it before reducing its opacity

We again chose to incorporate a barcode to the back cover in keeping with many previous Premature Ejaculation releases. Since the barcodes used by Rozz were purely decorative and served no other purpose, it was our intention to use a replica of the one on the 1989 issue of the Death Cultures cassette.

REVIEWS

6 was as some of you may know originally released by Rozznet as a CDr in a limited edition of 100. It follows the tradition of undated cassettes by Rozz Williams, the date and personnel are also unknown. This is yet another obscure Premature Ejaculation recording that widens their discography even further.

6 follows the same path as the early Premature Ejaculation recordings parts one and two, it consists of 16 untitled tracks. There often are long conversational pieces at times put through the mixer. A friend suggested they sound like religious meetings, these may be field recordings and did Rozz go to religious meetings for source material?

In terms of its quality I would say that this is around 84 – 86 as in part it bares a lot of the techniques that were adopted when Chuck Collison came into the picture. The methods of PE aren’t as structured here as they are on Living Monstrosities or Death Cultures, but they are all there in raw form, certainly on the 1st and 2nd tracks. As an album this is far more cohesive than the earlier recordings, so I will assume 6 is Rozz recording alone. 6 like Rise and Parts One and Two uses conversational recordings; however the treatment of them on this recording certainly focuses more around Loop and repetition techniques.

There are developments in the NoN inspired use of loop which is aggressive and relentless in it’s’ delivery. PE’s use of loop is not at all melodic in any way, just repetitive, aggressive and at times nauseous. It feels as if on 6 Premature Ejaculation try to experiment with aggression in a non-power electronics way, use of noise being fairly minimal here. It is as if Rozz is trying to widen the base palette of what would come on PE recordings? Sometimes sampled sounds are looped over vocal samples, track 12 offers a loop of a slamming sound over a film sample, the samples soundtrack music offering an interesting 3rd sound to the piece.

Overall 6 is an unsettling soundtrack with at times a religious undertone. Formal America seems to be disrupted throughout. The use of repetitive loop as treatment for the recorded conversations both audible and inaudible holds 6 together as a recording. Making the conversations inaudible turns them into a purposely aggravating noise, showing Premature Ejaculation to be pushing one of their favoured methods to extremes. Does the relentless repetition and conversation abuse form aggression in the listener to mix with that of the sound?

Zenon Gradkowski 2011.
www.happiesttapesonearth.org

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