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4LP BOX/DVD
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VOD 109LP
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2013 release. The members of seminal Melbourne-based improvising experimental group Laughing Hands and its alter ego The Invisible College were Paul Schütze, Gordon Harvey, Ian Russell, and Paul Widdicombe. Their spectrally shaded instrumental post-punk-by-way-of-post-industrial constructs were effectively post-rock before the genre existed. The group continued in several permutations until disbanding in 1982. They released two LPs (Ledge (1980) and Dog Photos (1981)) and one cassette (E E: (The Welder's Bible) (1981)) on their own Adhesive label, as well as two cassettes on the Australian tape label Rash (Decisions) (Nights (1982) and The Luxery of Horns (1982, credited to The Invisible College)). This set includes the contents of all three cassettes, as well as a DVD. While the esoteric Eno-by-way-of-Dome post-punk instrumental constructs doled out across their two LPs are some of the most mesmerizing examples of this sort, their work on the tape-only releases finds them exploring a decidedly more shrouded, nocturnal, and formally abstract dimension of their universe. The two tapes issued under their heading as well as the material they issued under the pseudonym The Invisible College tease out certain territories only hinted at on the vinyl releases. Nights comprises two side-long pieces. Side A's mesmerizing title-track is filled with spectral synth shadings, distant metallic clatter, and pained wails, while the B-side's "Infinite Summer" unfurls a protracted stream of stutter pulse across a vast terrain of preternatural and phantasmagoric incident. The material on E E, divided into subsections titled Vibrate, Scatter, Picture, and Splinter, spans the gap between Night's atmospheric abstractions and The Invisible College's more forcefully driving and art rock-ish confections, each section highlighting a facet of their cumulative praxis. Vibrate foregrounds the rhythmically forceful dimension of their aesthetic as heard on the Invisible College material, Scatter proposes a more fractured and hermetic attack that carries a whiff of Can's ethnological forgeries, Splinter explores the more nocturnal and mechanistic side of their nature, and Picture sets its sights on the cosmos with pore-penetrating widescreen tracts of alternately shearing and suspended krautrock-ish acid sound-scaping that is perhaps the epiphanic peak of their whole discography.
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