Here we are, its 1977, and a B side to Eno's single Kings Lead Hat, providing an really interesting curio from Eno's extensive back catalogue. Its an early instance of the use of 'found verbal conversational sound' in his work. At a time when he was bored with the timbre and limitations of his own singing voice, and began exploring using 'found' sources as a way to create a different type of vocal presence. An idea further expanded upon in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with David Byrne in 1981. Holgar Czukay's seminal album, also built around edited short wave radio recordings of found voices - Movies - was not released until 1979. Though in 1977 it was already in its long gestation phase, an idea still in the process of being worked out.
Found verbal conversational extracts were on the brink of having their moment in popular music. Other ideas such as scratching and sampling would also emerge into the mainstream over the next five years or so. Though 'found sound', was not in itself new, The Beatles had used it, and it had been around in contemporary music and avant garde circles for literally decades, since the widespread availability of tape recorders. Then a new tool to colour soundscapes with. The arrival of the first widely available home computers in 1977 would eventually bring a whole new way of composing music into being. One that took this idea of 'found' musical sources onto an entirely new level.
But here we have R.A F. a three minute music sound collage utilising edited fragments of recordings made of the left wing militant The Red Army Faction, a splinter group off the Baader-Meinhof Group. They were reportedly directly responsible for 34 deaths, but even more if one accounts for those collaterally damaged. The recordings used here were made during the kidnap of the banker Hanns Martin Schleyer, held prisoner and ransom money demanded. They would eventually murder him.
Snatch, were Patti Palladin and Judy Nylon, who moved to London in 1974 to be a part of the London punk scene. Their music had a punk stroppiness and was edgy, like Lydia Lunch crossed with Lou Reed, generally documenting aspects of urban low life. Here they are the muttering voices 'do you think anyone's worried about you?'and the final defiant salute of 'No Sacrifice!.
The music is layered with numerous Enoesque sound treatments of instruments, all wack a wack dub looped bass, a discordant jangly guitar sound that goes in and out throughout the track like a drone. Plus an incredibly hard as concrete drum sound, really cutting,with the flattest of punches to its snare. Previously heard on Bowie's Low, made in collaboration with Eno, and released the same year as this. Together this conjures a very urban and hostile soundscape into which the German words of the R.A.F. menacingly crackles and weaves. A whole world away from the lyrical word play and musical mischief of Eno on Seven Deadly Finns, three years previous.
R.A.F. - a perfect pop record? Well, no, but certainly one of Eno's finest moments and a brilliantly complex reflection of its time.
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