A Year of Music

Severed Head’s last album with significant distribution in North America was 1991’s Cuisine (with Piscatorial), and their last album to be released at all in the United States was Gigapus, which was released by tiny indie Decibel all the way back in 1995. Severed Heads didn’t disappear, though, “they” – Severed Heads has been Tom Ellard alone for quite a while now – just moved on, without looking back to see if we were keeping up.

Back around the turn of the millennium, you could download low-bitrate MP3s for their entire catalog from sevcom.com. You could buy their albums as shareware, although the purchase interface was clunky. Then, once the rights to their recordings had reverted to them, Sevcom started selling CD-Rs of their albums, but still offered streaming audio for the curious or chintzy. Now, digital distribution has finally caught up with Tom Ellard, and you can buy a large chunk of their catalog through iTunes, most of it as “iTunes Plus” DRM-free AAC files. Or you can buy them as MP3s straight off sevcom.com and get, as a free bonus, Tom Ellard’s demented liner notes included as PDFs.

I highly recommend you do so, because there are few experimental pop musicians at the level of Severed Heads, and even their oldest, most primitive material still sounds pretty fresh. Also, I’m sure Tom Ellard could use the money. I’ve always thought of Severed Heads as being like Wire: both are artists who outgrew their original style (in Severed Heads’ case, tape-loop based experimental industrial), developed an ear for sickly-sweet melodies that play on in your head for days, write stream-of-consciousness lyrics that have no relationship with reality, and are driven by irascible eccentrics.

Severed Heads have released 9 albums since they last had a distribution deal in North America. Well, actually, that’s not quite right: they’ve put out 4 standalone albums, a couple remix collections, a side project (Coklacoma, a purposefully awkward electro-pop project which doesn’t do much for me), and one continually mutating, versioned release, Op.

The Op releases are intended to be sketchier and looser than the “full” albums. In reality, they’re also punchier and contain more of the loopiness and elusive melodies that have kept me a dedicated fan of Tom Ellard all this time. My favorite is Op 2.0, both for “Symptom Symphony 2.0”, with its Autechre Lite breakbeat (turnabout is fair play, and anyone who thinks Autechre doesn’t owe a huge debt to Severed Heads needs to hear more Severed Heads) and nonsensical lyrics, and the “Hank” half of “Pinagoal / Hank”, which is a disorienting, almost melodic looping blurt. It also features “Kern That Bembo Tighter 2.0”, which is about the nerdiest type-related title I’ve ever seen. They all have their moments, though, and Op 3 is free.

While you’re over there, grab Gashing the Old Mae West / Kato Gets the Girl (which is also free), and then buy some stuff. I recommend Come Visit the Big Bigot or Viva Heads!, but all of it is worth hearing.