Funeral Danceparty

A Celebration Of iDEATH

Genre: INDUSTRIAL / WAVE / ELECTRO

2LP + 7"

Boomkat Product Review:

**2LP + 7" with liner notes insert. All music previously unreleased on vinyl** 'A Celebration of iDeath' documents the diffuse and very rare early work of Newcastle's Philip and Richard Rupenus, who would later helm legendary noise unit, The New Blockaders. Formed in 1979 under the blackly amusing Funeral Danceparty banner; in 1980 they released a trio of tapes in editions of roughly 100 copies each - 'The Curiosity Shop', 'Qwertyuiop', 'The Attractions of Fixed Interest' - and played a handful of shows, including notable performances at the Morpeth YMCA and Newcastle's 13th century Morden Tower, plus a controversial (successful) one at the Spectro arts festival alongside the likes of Evan Parker and Derek Bailey which prompted audience members to walk out. Now thanks to V-O-D, there's some hard evidence of those near-mythical releases and shows, originally distributed thru the nascent tape network. Compared with what we know of later The New Blockaders, starting with their 1984 Coil collaboration, later titled 'The Mad Melancholy Tenant', this stuff is much less "noisy", more a work of cut-up black magick, chasing the Dada dragon thru a perplexing matrix of tape loops, found sounds, and creaking instruments laced with possessed voices and lurching between eerie pop to spitting machine rhythms, poetic monologues and half-heard folk melody/dirges. In a similar vein to fellow Northumbrians Zoviet*France, Richard and Phillip Rupenus make a deftly far flung and eldritch racket; real sonic outpost business. Highly recommended.

2LP + 7" (3)