(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Terminal Cheesecake were one of the most original groups of the British neo-psychedelic scene of the 1990s.
Formed in London by Gary Boniface (bass, vocals) and Russell Smith (guitar, former member of A R Kane), they debuted with the EP Bladdersack (Wiiija, 1988), which in a sense heralded the arrival of a new generation of British musicians building upon the foundations of industrial music, punk-rock, and neo-psychedelia.
The album Johnny Town Mouse (Wiiija, 1989) transcended all those genres by embracing the boldest experimentation (Mustard Gas, Terminal Headfuck) while also reconnecting with acid-rock (Car First).
Released almost as an afterthought, V.C.L. (Wiiija, 1989) is an infinitely less provocative album, torn between the pounding thrash of Dead Fish and Shit Pump and the cosmic acid-rock of Ceiling On Fire Eggs and Sex Bomb.
Angels In Pigtails (Pathological, 1991) is perhaps their symphony in which their three main sources of inspiration are most evident: Chrome (the grotesque dance of Chrome and the tank-like hard-rock of Hello Skinny, both covered in ultra-distorted riffs); the Pop Group (first the incandescent saraband of Unhealing Wound, complete with Neanderthal vocals, and then the disjointed drums and primitive scream of Blow Hound); and Karlheinz Stockhausen (the electronic and vocal games of Pony Girl, the radio interference and muezzin samples of Turkish Glass). If the work often indulges in somewhat puerile self-indulgence (the lengthy Track 9), the whole nevertheless retains its own amateurish charm.
More than collections of songs, these are suites in multiple movements alternating the melodic and gritty songs of rock'n'roll with the disintegrated and noisy harmonies of the industrialists, the titanic distortions of the drug gurus with the guitar jams of the 1960s. In the end, the Cheesecake seem more disciples of Chrome than of garage-rock or Pink Floyd.
Pearlesque Kings Of The Jewhose (World Serpent, 1992) instead marked a sudden conversion to dub, with a sound built around an obsessively (and psychedelically) subsonic bass. The band intensified its gruesome tones with hardcore guitars and asylum-like samples, but now groove dominates. Satan Is Real and Coils are the main numbers.
Russell Smith left the group after this album and joined Skullflower. He was replaced by John Jobaggy (future member of Ice).
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Terminal Cheesecake's subversive policy was continued on the EP
Gateau Despace (Jackass, 1993), on an even more hallucinated tone
(Herbal Alien Flavour).
The method is perhaps becoming excessive on the album
King Of All Spaceheads (Jackass, 1994).
The hypnotic mantra of King Of All Spaceheads, the
emphatic tribal dance of Budmeister, the
10-minute dub nightmare God's Turban,
are mere repetitions of simple musical ideas.
The space-rock jam of Ginge Le Geezer (led by a panzer hard-rock riff),
the 10-minute percussive orgy a` la
Crash Worship Steady Draw
(with dub and African overtones),
and the off-key world-music of Tibetan Liftoff (drenched in dub reverbs,
monastic cantillation and festive pipes),
are far more varied.
The masterpiece of the album is the pounding, lysergic vortex of
Verbal Space Flight, the track that best exploits the iteration-based
approach and the one that elicit the densest, most oppressing atmosphere.
The band leaves the most experimental pieces for the ending.
In The St John's Ambulance Tent is a collage of noise.
The Last Temptation of St Leary is an exoteric mass whose rhythm picks
up speed until it becomes a mad voodoobilly.
There were enough ideas on this album to spawn a whole series of
post-psychedelic albums. Unfortunately, the band decided that enough had been
said and it wasn't worth saying any more.
Boniface shifted his attention to the multi-racial group
Bud Alzir (Hansome, 1995), which explores the psycological qualities of
dub and techno.
Terminal Cheesecake still released:
Dandelion Sauce of the Ancients
(2016),
Le Sacre du Lievre
(2019),
Udon Noodle
(2019).
