WET TAXIS-TAXIDERMY, TAPE, 1980, AUSTRALIA

Whoah...get back, Jack! Lookie what an anonymous Mutant Sounds fan just decided to gift us all with! Yes, this really is the first Wet Taxis tape, one of the most storied and, 'til now, completely vanished early artifacts of the Aussie post punk/post industrial/post everything cultural uprising of the late 70's/early 80's. Why so storied? Because this 50 copy tape features some of the earliest Severed Heads-related material extant, being the original home for future band member Garry Bradbury, working here alongside brothers Tim and Simon Knuckey (the latter of whom played guest guitar on several Severed Heads cuts) and with a guest turn from Severed Heads founder Tom Ellard. The Taxis started life under the moniker Sydney Quads and apparently issued a hand painted artist record ala Milan Kniszac during their brief existence before altering their moniker to Wet Taxis. These folks would have several notable cuts featured on legendary Terse Tapes comps like Mysterious Kitchens and One Stop Shopping circa this period (both featured elsewhere on MS), though they'd latterly gain much more renown as a garage psych outfit some years down the road under the guidance of one Louis Tillet. Taxidermy though is another story entirely, being comprised of a rudely spliced grab bag of live and studio tracks, sound bites and noise. Australia's underground of this era was host to several virulent strains of post punk/synth punk sturm und drang and Wet Taxis' cantankerous early racket places Taxidermy in parity with crucial work by the likes of Primitive Calculators and The Slugfuckers. When the post punk clatter is to the fore, this also calls to mind some of the more baleful exemplars of UK post punk like Metabolist or or the pre-Whitehouse tactics of Come, while the more electronically oriented passages vary between blearily blooping cassette culture claustrophobia ala the Storm Bugs and others that clearly presage the queasily distressed avant electropop churn of early Severed Heads circa Earbitten and Clean. Crucial stuff!

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