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Slab! were a totally obscure indie band from the late 80's, who nobody I know has ever heard of...
“Mars On Ice” Slab! [with the exclamation mark] released a debut 3 track 12” - “Mars On Ice” in 1986. With a funky bassline, feedback solo, Tibetan chanting and a brass section, the title track didn’t sound like anything else John Peel was playing on his indie wing-ding. I still think it is one of the most impressive debut singles I have ever heard, with a pre X-Files creepy lyric promising that *they* “left an imprint in his blood, the chance of further meeting”. “Parallax Avenue” Before its release I knew the track “Parallax Avenue”, the second Slab! single. It had been recorded for a Radio One Peel Session - but the released version saw the band’s line-up expand to an eight-piece, and the production values expand to include more found tapes and samples. And still they had a brass section. Think about it, it is 1987, and a tiny band with no money have decided to use samplers for things like snatches of vocal, found sounds and industrial musique concrete. And still employed a brass section. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is doing Rick Astley and Sonia. It is like The Polyphonic Spree 20 years before their time. Slab! played live, equipped with expensive brass section, at the ICA in London, but I couldn’t go. A recording of that night, with them playing “Parallax Avenue” later appeared on an EMI compilation release of unsigned bands called “Sign on the Dotted Line”. The album also featured a track by another then unknown band by the name of The Wonder Stuff. “Smoke Rings” Slab!’s third single, “Smoke Rings”, a love song for nuclear missiles from the point of view the military, was a disaster. Later, when I met Stephen Dray, Slab!’s singer, he said that it had been led on by the record company asking for a ‘hit single’ - and it was the first time that Slab! had released an edited 7” single to accompany the 12” release. Mind you he also said that he thought the vocals on their debut single “Mars On Ice” sounded like they had been recorded in a toilet, and it is one of my favourite records ever, so what does he know?  “Descension” What a shock when I bought Slab!’s first album, “Descension”. I clearly remember it - I was in my bedroom, in my parent’s house, and had bought the 12” vinyl album home from London’s West End - it was early evening, but I closed the curtains, turned out the lights, put the needle to the record and...and the band had shed the brass section, the drummer, and the tunes, to produce an album of sampled noise, improvised noise, other noise, and noise. Seriously it was a total shock. There were improvised drums from guest Lou Ciccotelli (later to be a permanent member), and tracks I recognised from Peel Sessions turned into detuned guitar sample-laden noise-fests. And I loved it. The track ‘Dolores’ subsequently featured on an Ink Records compilation LP called “Ashes And Diamonds”. The great lost Peel Session album / cassette - sort of One of the possessions I have lost over the ravages of time and moving house is a previously precious Sony HF-60 audio cassette on which I faithfully recorded Slab!’s Peel Sessions. I have utterly lost it. And it is unlikely the BBC will ever release them - I just can’t see the commercial proposition. I guess this may be the only mention ever of Slab! on the BBCi site - and that tape had an unreleased (to my knowledge) track “Mining Town In Lotus Land”, and a version of “Undriven Snow” featuring the full line-up. “People Pie” After their debut album Slab! then released a 12” with a re-recorded version of “People Pie” as the a-side. The track painted a nightmare vision of a world where human’s were condemned to an entertainment circus, and the animals were all eating people pie. Slowly. And enjoying it. The rent gets paid before the baby gets fed. “Sanity Allergy” On the 7th November 1988 Slab! released a second album - “Sanity Allergy”. There was a more ‘metal’ feel to the music, and less of the sampling or improvised noise, in part because Lou Ciccotelli and Scott Kiehl had been recruited wholesale as a new rhythm section, from Chicago band “The F**king B*$tards”. I don’t know what they sounded like, but I can guess  According to the press release issued by Ink Records “This ready-made American rhythm section has had a profound effect on Slab!, both emphasising the hard edge the band found on ‘People Pie’ and allowing more scope for diversity”. Which I guess was PR speak for the fact that they sounded *again* like a totally different band. “Deaths Head Soup” The final flurry of the band was 1989’s Cameo ‘Word Up - Sucker DJ’ sampling anti-Thatcher rant of knuckle down and eat your “Death’s Head Soup”. With a sole writing credit to Stephen Dray I have no idea whether it was a solo record or not, but it certainly was a long way from “Mars On Ice”... And to my shame I have not been able to find out about what happened to the majority of the members of the band..... (Lou Ciccotelli subsequently played with Godflesh and Laika) Ink released a CD compilation in 1991 called “Ship Of Fools”. I only got a copy because when I worked at Reckless Records in Islington in the late 90’s I found one by chance in a box of unwanted CD’s destined to be thrown out. And no, it wasn’t me, but yes, Nick Hornby did apparently base High Fidelity on the shop, and when the movie premiered in the UK they did hold the party in the Upper Street branch. As I say, I met the singer Stephen Dray at a couple of their gigs, and they are a band who have no sort of profile or status these days. And I think that is such a shame, because I genuinely think they were doing something different to everyone else at the time, and something that would now be seen as a cross-genre-mashing achievement - this was a band that used industrial noise, samples, a brass section, metal riffs and funky bass guitar. With no budget or publicity. And to my seemingly eternal frustration, every discography I have ever seen quotes the existence of a mini-LP called “Music From The Iron Lung” on Ink Records, catalogue number MINK25. I believe it just has the six tracks from the first two 12” singles. But in 15 years I have never seen a copy. And I still want it.... >> links discography: http://www.godflesh.com/related/slab.html... review of 'music from the iron lung' - tantalisingly mentioning the bonus track "big mac" - & 'descension': http://www2.pair.com/nlw/back/wavegoth/slab.htm...
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