You’re So Necromantic

It starts with a fat distorted chord followed by some sonar blips. Repeat. Then Daniel Ash starts to vary the chord ominously, vamping like T-Rex set to ‘ominous dirge’. Drums skitter and thump, before the stentorian tones of Peter Murphy reel up from the depths and he goes full old testament prophet on us.

I dare you, to be real
To touch a flickering flame
The pangs of dark delight
Don't cower in night fright

It all goes fierce, atonal and bizarre, like a backstreet Bowie squaring up for a fight at a taxi rank. This isn’t easy listening. This was not what I was expecting.

Welcome to Bauhaus In the Flat Field*. It’s 1980 and dark things were stirring in Nottingham.

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From the cover onwards In The Flat Field is far more abrasive and demanding than I ever thought it would be when purchased, based on a top single and vague memories of them covering ‘Ziggy Stardust’ to sneer at critics calling them Bowie rip-offs.

Their sound cleaves close to Siouxsie & The Banshees at times, the title track with its offhand manner, casual references to ‘Piccadilly whores’ and tribal drumming. ‘A God In An Alcove’ and its dissection of rock stardom and throbbing bassline sounds so post punk to me now, when I first heard it I had no clear reference for it and it bewildered me.

In The Flat Field ignites with ‘Dive’ and its jaundiced view of clubs and clubbing, Bauhaus go for full propulsive skronk to great affect; for all the world sounding like Joy Division on industrial speed. Their take on bouncers amuses me.

Fishnet leatherette
Pussy Galore
Pseudo Sumo wrestler
On the door

Peter Murphy sounds genuinely strung out beyond all hope of return on ‘The Spy In The Cab’, while the band play existential boogie behind him, lighting up the lyrics like occasional flashes of lightning on the horizon. A lick of manic ghostly punk^ powers ‘St. Vitus Dance’ which grooves off its own gravitational pull.

Another fine guitar line from Daniel Ash garlands ‘Stigmata Martyr’, which comes on like a heavier duty ‘Bela Lugosi’s Dead’. This really is crypt disco at its very finest, as groovy as the scratch marks you’ve made on the inside of your coffin lid. In the dark.

The ominous intro to ‘Nerves’ is suddenly sideswiped by a repeated incongruous cha-cha keyboard flourish^^. I’m bored of typing this but it is yet another vocal tour de force from Mr Murphy, the whole rather reminiscent of a Latino vampiro on a drinking binge-o. It all takes ‘nerves like nylon, nerves like steel’. Magnifico freako.

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The more I listen to In The Flat Field, the more I find to love and admire in it; much like myself. The rhythm section really are incredibly good, anchoring all the guitar and vocal darkotechnics. The constant gentle thrumming bass and the precise, measured drums are a reassuring presence for the listener, always granting carriage, allowing a place of refuge, no matter what maelstrom is raging elsewhere. All praise David J and Kevin Haskins.

Also the production work on In the Flat Field is simply way better than should ever be the case for a band self-producing their debut LP. They capture the chaos and allow the precision to shine through simultaneously, which I would imagine is no mean feat. For something gothic and occasionally airy, In The Flat Field manages to still sound earthy and satisfying.

In The Flat Field is an album I do wish I had discovered when I was still young, beautiful and impressionable, rather than as the wizened atrophied shell who writes this. If I had, I believe I would still be finding new things to admire in it, unearthing overgrown gravestones and tracing their flights of forgotten fancy in the subterrain.

You're so necromantic
Venomous and vain
Mixing molotov cocktails
In the subterrain

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Sadly my copy of In The Flat Field is not the copy that my strange ancestor Heteronomous Hades III Jr was inexplicably buried with in Arkham in 1879, on the instructions of his colleague Charles Dexter Ward. My copy is a 2018 reissue on bronze vinyl. It sounds great and most importantly of all there’s a chap on the front cover who’s got his lad out. Word up.

1279 Down (in the crypt).

*yup, the one with the chap on the cover who’s got his lad out.

^the Ramoans?

^^my favourite kind, you can stick your congruous cha-cha keyboard flourishes up your bot-bot.