Recent events at London’s Ritzy Cinema have been well publicised. You probably heard that on 16th July, staff members were forced to go on strike for the eleventh time in an effort to convince their employers, Picturehouse, that they are worth a living wage. The strike drew support from a number of people, including director Ken Loach, Monty Python’s Terry Jones and founder-member of pioneering industrial band Nocturnal Emissions: Nigel Ayers.
For Ayers, seeing the Ritzy as the backdrop for the plight of the many at the hands of the few is no new spectacle. On June 9th, 1983, as Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives enjoyed a second General Election win amid a social landscape of mass unemployment and a recessionary economy, Ayers was in this very location – with the rest of the Noccies – blasting out the most curious of musical cacophonies.
It was their first show to be recorded and made available publically, titled rather aptly: Chaos. 31 years later it is available as an official digital download from the group’s Bandcamp page for the first time too – Ayers’ show of solidarity to the striking Ritzyites.
In 1983 Nocturnal Emissions were embarking on an era of fevered invention, experimentation and de/reconstruction, initially most notable on Drowning in a Sea of Bliss which featured industrial noise as if realized in the mind of Hieronymus Bosch on the A-side, making way for near-danceable electronic beats on the flip.
Despite the diversity contained on the band’s studio releases of the time, one might not expect their live outings to throw as much into the mix – of course on Chaos, they pretty much do. A backbone of hard industrial and techno beats permeates the recording, embellished by Ayers’ trademark repeato-hollering. “Bad evening… I said BAD EVENING,” he shouts before the rhythms fall and those in attendance are faced with assorted footage of vivisection, Vietnam and female genital mutilation. “Smash with love, smash with love, smash with LOVE,” he screams later above the clatter, these words summing up neatly a key Emissions theme: the place of the human in a context which is beyond humane.
The record is a lo-fi affair and there’s plenty of live NE material of much better definition available from later in their career. But with the wider political context of the night, I imagine Larry Peterson scrabbling for his tape recorder at the last minute in an almost Alan Lomax fashion – capturing a folk moment, as much for the social heartache felt by the young British left at the time, as for the show.
But there are certainly moments which wholly transcend the background feeling and the frailties in the technology. ‘Smash with Love’ leads into some fantastic metallic vocal samples which reverberate around beautifully. Big synths arrive, before the subtle military samples, looping horn and drone of ‘State Terror’. ‘Bite Them Back’ is an epitomic industrial party moment before the ambient cool-down of ‘Cute Toy Beagle’ drifts away a little too quickly followed by crowd noise and a snippet of election coverage on TV.
Chaos is a great document, an altogether anarchic post-punk assemblage captured as purely and realistically as possible. The left-wing Ritzy and tumultuous political moment are integral to its value, but for me, this album is the best example of Nocturnal Emissions at their most politically engaged – a sort of London Calling for industrial people, and a fascinating glimpse of these fevered experimenters on the verge of the absolute unknown.
