Brainiac 5 - When Silence Was Sound 1977-1980

  by Adrian Janes

published: 8 / 4 / 2014

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Review

The Brainiac 5 were a Cornish band of the late 1970s that the excitable notes in this compilation’s accompanying booklet are at pains to describe as psychedelic. However I can’t help but feel that these claims are exaggerated. Invocations of Pink Floyd, Love, the Byrds and the Velvet Underground arouse large expectations but help no-one when your opening track is the (very) basic punk of ‘Waiting for the Woman’. For although psychedelia was one strand in their approach, the era of their existence was largely dominated by punk and reggae, and the evidence here suggests that, at best, they tried to find some combination of the three styles with only patchy success. On several tracks, what starts as a nondescript punk number (e.g. ‘Vegetable’, ‘Primal Screaming’) is at least partly salvaged by the guitar work of Charlie Taylor and Richard Booth. Their interplay and solos are in fact the band’s most consistently exciting feature. If the basic songs were stronger and more coherent, this attempt to weld together punk and psychedelic features could have been something special. Unfortunately you usually end up impatiently waiting for the “punk bit” to be over and the guitars to be set free. ‘Woman Inside’, with its stepping reggae rhythm, anguished guitar and Duncan Kerr’s swirling keyboard, is probably the most satisfying track. It slides into a dramatic instrumental interlude of organ and guitars which really does feel like a pushing at boundaries. Taylor’s voice, generally a weak feature of the sound on its own, is supported here by several other singers, and the emotional effect is much stronger. Later on the ballad ‘Time’, with its wistful refrain of “Take me back in time”, is similarly enhanced by some real ‘60’s-sounding harmonies. In their lifetime, the Brainiac 5 only released an EP. ‘When Silence Was Sound’ includes tracks from this, and the mooted album ‘World Inside’ which didn’t get released until 1988. (The failure to get a deal was an important factor in the band’s 1980 break-up.) The handsomely-illustrated booklet will help make it attractive to fans. Not every band can be world-beaters. Even though I don’t find many of these songs particularly engaging, it’s still good to have albums like this around. On one level there’s an historical interest (apart from those involved, how many know of “the Cornish freak-scene of the mid-70s”?) More importantly, there’s a musical interest in the efforts of bands who never rose above the cult level but who still offer elements or particular songs which might have led to greater heights if they could have come up with consistently good material, or simply had better luck.

Track Listing:-

1 Waiting For The Woman
2 Endless River
3 Move Up Trotsky
4 Monkeys & Degenerates
5 Working (7" single version)
6 Feel
7 Power
8 Vegetable
9 Woman Inside
10 Primal Screaming
11 I Tried
12 Pictures Of You
13 Addicted
14 New Dark Ages
15 Time
16 Night Games & Working (live 1980)

Band Links:-

https://twitter.com/thebrainiac5
https://brainiac5.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/TheBrainiac5

Label Links:-

http://reckless.co.uk/