- Jess Harvell, Pitchfork
The strikingly original combination of articulacies and lateralities that made up This Heat have dated exceedingly well. A combination of two art-rock musicians in Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward along with one "non"- musician in Gareth Williams playing a decidedly original take on what punk might entail: a revolutionary blending of machines, politics, the voice and the body, and time and space.
Kind of a darker, scratchier sibling to their (relative) contemporaries Kraftwerk, showing a different possible road forward for electronic music in the post-punk environment; a more analogue machine music, cheaper, dourer, resolutely pessimistic, tied deeply into a decidedly Arte Povera approach, playful like a cat playing with a mouse...
Tonight Avant Gardening take a dip into the cold storage cabinet of This Heat, featuring rare demos and live bootlegs.
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Playlist:
1. This Heat, 'Testcard 'from This Heat (1978)
2. This Heat, 'Horizontal Hold' from This Heat (1978)
3. This Heat, 'Not Waving' from This Heat (1978)
4. This Heat, '24 Track Loop' from This Heat (1978)
5. This Heat, 'Music Like Escaping Gas' from This Heat (1978)
6. This Heat, 'Health And Efficiency' from Health and Efficiency EP (1979)
7. This Heat, 'Paper Hats' from Deceit (1981)
8. This Heat, 'S.P.Q.R.' from Deceit (1981)
9. This Heat, 'Shrink Wrap' from Deceit (1981)
10. This Heat, 'Radio Prague' from Deceit (1981)
11. This Heat, 'Independence' from Deceit (1981)
12. This Heat, 'A New Kind of Water' from Deceit (1981)
13. This Heat, 'The Fall of Saigon' from Made Available (rel 1996)
14. This Heat, 'Rimp Romp Ramp' from Made Available (rel 1996)
15. This Heat, 'Makeshift Swahili' from Made Available (rel 1996)
16. This Heat, 'Sitting' from Made Available (rel 1996)
17. This Heat, 'Twilight Furniture', rec live in London, June 30, 1978, from bootleg
18. This Heat, untitled live track, rec live in London, June 30, 1978, from bootleg
19. This Heat, untitled live track known as 'Unreleased Title' rec 1980 from Cold Storage bootleg (1984)
20. This Heat, 'Repeat' from Repeat (rel 1993)
21. This Heat, 'Graphic/Varispeed' from Repeat (rel 1993)
22. Gareth Williams and Mary Currie, 'Breakfast Stroke' from Flaming Tunes (1985)
23. Gareth Williams and Mary Currie, 'Raindrops From Heaven' from Flaming Tunes (1985)
24. This Heat, 'Nivelles' from Nivelles (rel 2006)
25. This Heat with Mario Boyer Diekuuroh, excerpts from Untitled (aka Tago Mago tape split with Albert Marcoeur, rec 77-78, rel 1982)
26. This Heat, 'Sleep' from Deceit (1981)
27. This Heat, 'Testcard' (2) from This Heat (1978)
