The Pioneers Of Noise - The Nihilist Spasm Band :: “No Record”
Photo: Don Vincent
Cosmically corrupt, both Canadian and complicated, The Nihilist Spasm Band, consisting of members John Boyle, John Clement, Bill Exley, Murray Favro, Art Pratten, Greg Curnoe, Hugh McIntyre, and Archie Leitch, first formed in London, Ontario, in 1965 with oscillating observation and optimism to create something universally unique and divinely difficult using various instruments, some handmade, to establish an esoteric outfit that ultimately would give the world of sound and experimentation a run for its money. After locking in a residency at the York Hotel, the band would perform every Monday night in exchange for free drinks to help lubricate the luminous spells they would cast upon their audience members, who would usually head for the hills before relocating to Victoria Tavern and, later, the permanent headquarters they inhabited at the Forest City Gallery, which opened its doors in 1973. The collective riddled with complexity occupied a special place and time in music, just as the movement of psychedelia began its provocatively polarizing sweep across the world, reinventing bands and impacting the anatomical atoms in groups, its personnel, and popular culture. Something to acknowledge during this time was the mere fact that the Beatles’ had just released their monumental classic “Rubber Soul,” the year prior, The Holy Modal Rounders unleashed their debut classic, and other groups like The Doors, The Dead, and the whispering wave of American psychedelia had just begun to wake up and clear the soft sleep from its partial opened eyes.
Photo: Don Vincent
The Nihilist Spasm Band was simply a splendid reaction to the world’s dynamical dysfunction and the exciting essence of being in a band amongst friends, foundational functions in response to political parishing, or the ultimate direction of creative pursuit. The group entertained themselves, liberated their audiences, and, by default, established an esoteric energy that, to this day, continues to influence bands and organizations of freedom-based music, art, politics, and thought around the world. “Spasm Band,” which refers to the group’s undeniable approach to the handmade and manipulated instruments used during their numerous performances and recordings around the world, the band’s magnum opus debut “No Record”, released in 1965 on Allied Record Corporation, was indeed the group’s feverish vocation into the “industry” of recording artists. It was also an extremely rare and exciting moment to capture something eternally existential and lay it down on tape because while a lot of bands pushed the boundaries of artistic expression both on and off the stage, the decade’s radical narrative also highjacked from its youth any opportunities that didn’t conform to the growing genocide of the Vietnam War and the overall outrageous and chaos felt around the world throughout the decade and into the next.
With tracks like “Destroy The Nations,” “The Byron Bog,” and the album’s near-death epilogue “Destroy The Nations Again” all coming together to form this almost holographic hellscape of spiritual suicide, the band transcends time and space courageously, while continuing to ride the sonic seas of change and biblical balance. A time when it was considered lucky if you got out alive or not, the 1960s and early 1970s were both immaculate and utterly unforgiven depending on your involvement in the culture’s chemicals or how far you took your mind and body into the wilderness of wonder. The Nihilist Spasm Band managed to conquer many of these elements and forever solidify themselves in song and stone that, to this day, still breathes an alchemical attitude that has gone on to inspire bands like Negativland, R.E.M, and Sonic Youth, to name a few. Continuing to push the esoteric envelope after half a century of cosmic carnage, the group and its surviving members still play and perform in their home country of Canada, more specifically, London, Ontario, with an age-old philosophy that if “the atmosphere is informal. We play for our own enjoyment, but an audience is welcome.”
