Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Surplus Stock-Holland In Not,LP,1980,Germany


Surplus Stock were a Deutsch,Dusseldorf based, product led by synth player Robert Giddens, who had previously been D.A.F.'s producer. They also had a small connection to the Fall, who are thanked in the liner notes of their "Spiv" 7" "for their help and inspiration." A great gloomy minimal synth LP with experimental/avant rock touches.Typical early electronic NDW with much Residents influences.
get it here

6 comments:

  1. yeah, they sound very English influenced. If you would have not told me that they were from Dusseldorf, I would have probably thought that they were from somewhere in England. It's a good production but I noticed that good productions seem to be typical of the NDW bands that were in the Dusseldorf scene or D.A.F related.

    does anybody have the tracklisting for this album, I don't know what order the songs go in?

    cheers
    steve

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  2. found the tracklist plus another photo of the cover & record at
    http://www.rotturadelcambio.com/L001/001443.htm


    Tracks:

    A1 - Trick Cyclist Cometh
    A2 - Tarzan’s Takeaway
    A3 - Stress
    A4 - Sequencer 1 - Notstrom
    A5 - Rhyme Dictates
    A6 - Song For Nine To Five
    B1 - Detante
    B2 - Sequencer 2 - Slide Guitar
    B3 - Anecdote
    B4 - Sequencer 3 - Telephone
    B5 - Metall Macht Krank
    B6 - Take It
    B7 - B/M/E

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  3. Surplus Stock was (for this album) Robert Giddens, Phil Renshaw, Robert Clarke and Josef Schenk. Robert Giddens did not live in Düsseldorf, but in a small town in Germany's north, Quakenbrück. But he is English, from Rochdale. He had not been a musical producer to DAF, but had given them his hard-earned money and managed them. DAF recorded their first single in Rochdale. Before that, Giddens had written about German bands for the English music mag Zig Zag. Surplus Stock's best track may be "Let's Kill Each Other" from the German compilation "Fix Planet". Maybe they are the inventors of the term "Minimal" for this kind of music, as they called it like that even in 1979, when their 7" Spiv came out.

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  4. hi - i am said bob giddens. i am still living in quakenbrueck, a small village in northern germany and most of the information here is correct. i produced the first DAF recordings in the UK. most of these recordings never were released, although i seem to remember a Fast Records sampler with the band version of "ich und ich" also "kebab träume" was released on a Mute single. These were the days when DAF were a 5-piece, living in a basement apartment in Earls Court, bewildering the London Gig Scene, playing with the Fall, Scitti Politti and the Pop Group.

    Surplus Stock was my band. We were on the edge and went from Electronic minimal music to a band that was playing "Fake Jazz". Signed with Rough Trade made some records, made no money, broke up and moved on. I then had the band Cliff Barnes and the Fear of Winning, The Illegal Artists and i now make bicycles for a living. My son Mike is carrying on the musical heritage with his band the Virgin Tongues, who are well worth a listen - they are based in Berlin - and look a lot more like pop stars thn we ever did....

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  5. Where can I get a hard copy of this?

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  6. Surplus Stock were hip. I heared them in Bavarian Radio

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