Flux Uncarved Block

Flux – Uncarved Block. I haven’t played this for years, but by the sound of it, I played it a lot. It’s a strange collaboration between anarcho punks Flux of Pink Indians and On U Sound producer Adrian Sherwood. As such, it sounds like nothing I had heard at the time. It’s mix of industrial style rock, studio trickery, angry lyrics, and a dreamy take on The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff.

It came out in 1986 at a time of a lot of despair – peak Thatcherism, high unemployment, City deregulation resulting in a minority earning shed loads while everybody else was on pre-minimum wage minimum wage. There’s a lot of disillusion in the lyrics here – same children playing revolution in the park, same old ideas stumbling about in the dark – like a band and a movement that felt they’d tried and failed, so let’s move on.

The music itself is anything but tired. It’s vital, hard edged, driven, and weirdly soulful. It sounded futuristic at the time, although the studio techniques are actually quite clunky now. However, it marked a huge step away from the abrasive and primitive guitar and drums sound Flux of Pink Indian previously had, to something more thoughtful and cut up based. Fellow travellers Crass did something similar with Ten Notes on a Summer’s Day, their sign off record, and had been playing with cut up techniques visually and aurally since their inception – Reality Asylum was an eye opener for me. I’ve got that somewhere.

Again, I have to pay homage to my Welsh mate Andy for putting me on to this lot. He had the album and dragged me along to what I think was their only gig playing this material at the time. It was at ULU in London and saw a pretty large line up onstage playing and bashing pieces of metal. It sounded absolutely amazing.

The sleeve on this one folds out in the manner of Emerson Lake and Palmer’s Brain Salad Surgery – not a comparison Flux would have relished at the time I suspect. Strangely though, former progster Ray Shulman of Gentle Giant was a player and arranger on the album, which further goes to show how the band were intent on not sticking to preconceived notions of what was appropriate.

As sleeve art it’s an elegant piece. Rather like Peter Saville’s design for Blue Monday, I suspect that it must have eaten up any cash that the record made – not that it would have been much. Despite being on the newly hip One Little Indian label through which Bjork’s Sugarcubes were emerging, it was a bit of a cottage industry.

Andy and me actually interviewed somebody from the band/record label at their South London house back in the eighties. It was for a fanzine that we produced while at university. I can’t remember much about it, apart from the fact that the guy was very polite and earnestly answered our rather naïve questions on the future of anarchism in the UK. Strange times.

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