One of the most extraordinary and in-depth pieces of music journalism, the “Wild Planet” series of articles was written by Dave Henderson and published in the UK weekly music newspaper “Sounds” in May 1983 and periodically for the next 2 years. Charting in great detail the rise of an independent sector (it was much wider… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited

Philippe Fichot of the French industrial/electronic band Die Form runs the label Bain Total, which is still active after 38 years, with some 67 releases over the years. The first Bain Total release was the joint Die Form/Eva Johanna Reichstag single “Zoophilic Lolita” in 1977.     The latest Bain Total release is the Die Form/Musique Concrète… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Bain Total

  Attrition are one of the groups featured in ‘Wild Planet’ that need little introduction. Active from 1980 to this very day, Martin Bowes, as the ever-present member & founder of Attrition, has built up a substantial canon of work, and now actively produces and masters others’ work at his studio, The Cage. Attrition’s back… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Attrition

Ok, a whole art movement to cover in a blog…I don’t think so. I’m sure there are endless texts on the internet about the Futurists and the Art of Noises, and I couldn’t do it justice. So, let’s see what the archive has that might be of interest… The earliest piece is this from the… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Art of Noises, The

Not a group or artist this time, but a tape/magazine label run by Vittore Baroni, the Italian cultural activist, mail artist and music critic, who in 1979 founded the first mail art assembling publication/artist’s magazine in Italy Arte Postale! and was among the first to write about industrial music and the new experimental frontiers. Area Condizionata released… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Area Condizionata

Well, that wasn’t much to go on in pre-internet days, was it? Needless to say, I’d never heard Anode before I started searching t’internet. Turns out Anode, or Anode Productions, is the work of a chap called Robert Carlberg, who was born in Seattle, Washington in 1954. He has been actively creating soundscapes since 1972,… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Anode

Anima, which began life as Anima-Sound, were a wife-husband duo of Limpe Fuchs (1936-) and Paul Fuchs (1941-) with support from Freidrich Gulda and Johan Anton Rettenbacher. Part of the burgeoning West German experimental scene which appeared in the late 1960s, their work lay in the area of improvisation and free jazz. They particularly focused… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Anima

Amok was one of the pseudonyms used by Enrico Piva, a prolific soundscape artist from Rezzato, Brescia Italy, and under this moniker was active between 1981 and 1985 during which time 6 cassette albums were released. This piece is from the last of these. Enrico also recorded under the pseudonyms of Edo, Fehlera, L’Oeil a… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Amok

Trying to cover the expanse of this freeform experimental group would be a daunting task for a whole website, let alone one paragraph! Even to try and do justice to AMM here would be impossible, so best read their Wikipedia entry for the full story. Surely one of the longest surviving groups, starting in 1965,… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – AMM

Yet another very obscure artist, recording only one known track, that I haven’t been able to track down. Nigel Ayers confirms on his website that he is an old friend who now lives in the USA and performs as ‘Big Bad Bollocks’. This biography appears on Discogs: “Johnny Alien began his discography with a release… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Johnny Alien

Probably one of the most obscure artists featured in “Wild Planet”, I confess to never having heard them until researching this piece. After Dinner’s recorded output is minimal; 2 albums, a live cassette and a 7″ single over a period from 1982 to 1989. They appear to have toured in Europe in both 1987 and… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – After Dinner

Kicking off, we have 50 words on Abwarts, the German post-punk group who actually hailed from Hamburg, not Berlin. The connection with Berlin’s “Die Geniale Dilletanten”, which encompassed Einsturzende Neubauten, Die Todliche Doris and others, was the dual membership of Abwarts and E.N. by FM Einheit and, later, Marc Chung. Forming in Hamburg in 1979,… Read more: Wild Planet Revisited – Abwarts