Friday, 4 February, 1983 – Totentanz, Basel, Switzerland

1. Words of Expectation
2. Room to Live
3. Middle Mass
4. Tempo House
5. Kicker Conspiracy
6. And This Day
7. Hexen Definitive
8. Strife Knot
9. Ludd Gang
10. The Man Whose Head Expanded
11. Pilsner Trail
12. Mere Pseud Mag Ed
13. Garden

NOTES

80 minutes

A very clear audience capture. Mark is a little low in the mix and there is a little bit of audience chatter but generally this a good one.

The 1983 spring tour was almost like the Krypton Factor course for the concert goer – long and demanding with several obstacles to get over. Mark had stripped the sound down and with the departure of Riley there is little keyboard to speak off here. The length of the first six numbers in the concert attest to the need for the audience to embrace perhaps the most stark sound in the groups career. That the first, third and fifth of these numbers clock in around the nine minute mark and that all three are built around circular repetition at its most extreme proves the bands schema had met one of its more extreme limits at this point in time.

The drums dominate, not surprising really given the instrumentation – Scanlon reduced to a mere cypher during “Tempo”, for example, with Hanley’s bass a rattlng, growling thing edging its way in over the percussion.

What comes out of this line-up is the true structure of the songs. “Kicker” exemplifies this with its long jaunty intro morphing into martial marching music. “And this day” without keyboards is a merciless beast of a thing – the aural equivalent of being hit over the head with something very large, heavy and wet.

I think it’s indicative that the music that this group actually wrote as a five piece – best suits its particular method.

The closing “Garden” in its third outing is simply magnificent – a brooding restrained thing full of tension and then ultimate release.

This one is a bit of a challenge – the sheer weight of the longer and more unforgiving stuff in the set make it a hard listen at times, however patience is rewarded as the realisation hits you that you and your now dead neighbour have been tricked into this as part of government’s plan for the mind control of the nation.