In February 2015 Mannequin records in Berlin released a double CD/Vinyl LP official compilation of  the groups work from 1983-1986, covering the albums ‘Laughing Afternoon, ‘Hope’, ‘Preparing for Power’, ‘The Spike’ and ‘Bourbonese Qualk’.

Press Release:

Mannequin Records is proud to present a CD compilation of one of the most important Industrial bands active during the 80’s in the UK. Bourbonese Qualk were an experimental music group from England who where active from 1979 until 2003. Throughout this period they had a number of different line-ups but this album concentrates on the period from 1983 until 1987 with the trio of Simon Crab, Julian Gilbert and Steven Tanza. During this time the group released five albums: ‘Laughing Afternoon’, ‘Hope’, ‘The Spike’, ‘Preparing For Power’ and the self-titled ‘Bourbonese Qualk’ on their own Recloose Organisation and New International Records labels. The group were always obsessively and uncompromisingly focussed on controlling their work – they ran their own record label, recording studio, tour organisation and music venue (the notorious ‘Ambulance Station’) – they refused to integrate into the commercial music racket turning down publishing deals from major labels – stubbornly opting fortotal independence. The group are known for their political activism which was formed in the crucible of the 1980s Britain: The Miner’s Strike, Falklands/Malvinas war, Anti-fascism, Thatcherism, Moneterism, squatting/housing, local government corruption, anti-capitalism, and Anarchism – which was further re-enforced by touring Europe and meeting like-minded groups and organisations. Bourbonese Qualk saw their music as a revolutionary cultural force – a belief that radical musical forms must be part of positive social change. Despite this position, the group avoided dogma, cliché and propaganda, preferring to let their audience come to their own conclusions – their work was often ambiguous and directly critical of cynical power-politics of any color – often irritating members of the traditional ‘organised left’. In 1984 Bourbonese Qualk occupied a large empty building on the Old Kent Road in South London which they turned into a base for their activities and a co-operative for artists,musicians and writers as well as a centre for radical political activism – specifically as a co-ordinating centre for the ‘Stop The City’ anti-capitalist riots of 1984-1986. Most of the recordings on this album were recorded in their studio at the Ambulance Station. The group never record in a ‘proper’ studio (not that they could ever afford to), choosing instead to work with their own extremely basic equipment (at a time when home studios were very unusual – the unique raw sound of these recordings is the result of their choice – which now, ironically, is in vodue due perhaps to the overwhelming obliquity of ‘clean’ audio digital production tools. If Bourbonese Qualk have a legacy, it is that ‘culture’ should be reclaimed, re-defined and owned by the people, wherever they are, however small and not by the state or the market and that ‘culture’ is a vital vehicle for debate and radical change. The fight goes on. (Simon Crab, London, 2014)

Reviews:

Dusted Magazine June 2015

The intensely political Bourbonese Qualk, formed in 1979, was one of the early experimental groups building on the work of pioneers like Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire. During the period documented on this double album Bourbonese Qualk were the trio of Simon Crab, Julian Gilbert and Steven Tanza. Even compared with their contemporaries, BQ were staunchly independent, and did everything themselves: design, recording, and releasing several albums on their own Recloose label, as well as others. This welcome release collects 26 tracks from the British industrial group’s middle years, 1983-1987. Describing Bourbonese Qualk as “industrial” merely situates the music in a milieu — whether the band’s members considered themselves part of the “industrial scene” is hard to say, though the politics were likely in sympathy. They never achieved much notoriety, but neither did many of their compatriots like Club Moral, Het Zweet, and even Attrition. All of these groups appeared on a varietyof cassette and LP compilations, and Bourbonese Qualk themselves released a series of albums. Most of the songs collected here come from their first five albums, starting with their debut,Laughing Afternoon, though some tracks appear to be previously unreleased. I don’t come to this review unbiased: back in the mid-80s I stumbled across the band on compilations, then tracked down their albums. Bourbonese Qualk were always a hard group to categorize, which of course is part of what made them interesting at the time, and makes them interesting still. It would be untrue to say that these songs don’t sound dated — they do, but in a good way. Many are based on simple drum machine rhythms, with the echoing samples and cheap synths of the time, what I think of as the cassette culture sound. Songs like “Blood Orange Bargain Day” and “To Hell With Consequences” could be early Cabaret Voltaire outtakes, with a similar claustrophobic, electronic atmosphere and distorted, sloganeering vocals. Themid-1980s scene briefly birthed an unusual industrial-funk hybrid, and some of the best tracks here showcase that side of Bourbonese Qualk. With other groups like In the Nursery and A Certain Ratio, they brought in grinding or slapped bass and stuttering rhythms on songs like “Erector” and “Gag”, and chorusing guitar over the strong rhythms of “Qualk Street”. While the vocals are often difficult to make out, the band’s political stances come clear at times: see the shouted, chanted names atop the bass and drums in the aptly-titled “Confrontation.” The heavy reliance on solid rhythms makes Bourbonese Qualk’s music still sound vital, whether in the muscular robotic chug of “Sweat It Out” or the unceasing electro-pulse of “Head Stop.” There are pretty pieces as well, such as the keys and woodwinds of “There Is No Night” or “Outcry,” which morphs from a pulsating synth to echoing guitar notes that gently float away. But for the most part, this is tense, dark stuff, with a fair share ofThrobbing Gristle-ish delayed vocal sounds, jittery beats, and experimental voice samples. It’s good to see Bourbonese Qualk get their due; hopefully this set illuminates another dark corner of the UK 1980s musical world and introduces new listeners to a unique, important group. I expect many will find themselves wondering, in surprise, why they’d never heard of this intriguing band. Mason Jones

‘Tiny Mix Tapes’ July 2015

Bourbonese Qualk were so elusive even labeling them with the shape-shifting ‘industrial’ tag seems a mistake. Yet that’s what history has done, so despite the post-punk overtones, avant garde flashes, experimental synth buzzes, awkward quasi-funk, cold/darkwave accents and noisy nuisance, BQ’s spot in the Dewey Decimal system of modern music is secure. That shouldn’t discourage you from delving into 1983-1987 because the material therein has had an outsized influence on that which followed. Modern underground darlings German Army (covered last column) wet their beaks in the Qualk trough, as did older acts like Disco Inferno, Atari Teenage Riot and the electronic musicians of the late ’90s in general. And yet that still only covers a small swath of what Bourbonese Qualk accomplished from 1983-1987 (just imagine trying to compile their entire output; that’s the stuff of insanity). And what are we supposed to do with coy instrumental “There is No Night,” floating in a koi pond of panflutes? Or “God With Us,” a modern-sounding collision of samples, clumsy half-rhythms and disturbing tones (reminiscent of Houston’s Indian Jewelry in advance)? Don’t even get me started on “Blood Orange Bargain Day”; just know that if you’re ever in the cockpit of an airplane in your dreams, you have a song to wake up to. Does the preceding sound like the work of a strictly adherent ‘industrial’ act? I didn’t think so; drop the labels, folks.

‘Sentireascoltare’ Italy. March 2015

The Bourbonese Qualk were a real cult band of anarchist matrix, an experimental group which staged a music "industrial" primitive that went from a grinding funk to electro-noise-collage, recording lo-fi with very few means to pioneering works 'interior of occupied houses, in pure spirit DIY underground. Thanks to an excellent compilation made February 23, 2015 by the label Mannequin Records, we take this opportunity to talk about this group, perhaps not known as it deserves outside the circle of fans of the genre. What we have in your hands is an excellent collection, edited and supervised by the same Simon Crab (who also designed the graphics of the work, together with Alessandro Adriani); work comes out on CD (500 copies in digipak) and double-LP (500 copies in black vinyl 160-grams) and contains the best work deiBourbonese Qualk from 1983 until 1987. The most interesting period of the English band. The Bourbonese Qualk bornin 1979 in Great Betagna, in Southport, by a collective of non-musicians, squatters and anarchists. The group, since 1980, is dedicated to the industrial music forms of experimental mold, also using drum machines and synthesizers, on the heels of groups like Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle and Severed Heads. From 1983 until 1987 the band is mainly formed by Simon Crab, Steven Tanza and Julian Gilbert. In 1987 Tanza and Gilbert move away from the group (Tanza devotes to her The State project) and leave only Crab in conducting Bourbonese Qualk, assisted by Miles Miles musician. After Miles's death in 2002 the group broke up for good. Since 1984 the group members occupy a building in Old Kent Road in south London that will become their study and their home. The band has always kept away from major record labels, consider - rightly - the enemy of a certain kind of radical alternative to mainstream thinking music.The anarchist and radical approach to music was very close to Crass (for inspiration) and the commitment against neo-liberal policies of Margaret Thatcher, alongside the British workers, was comparable to that of Test Dept, another key UK industrial group, with which iBourbonese Qualk shared a passion for political struggle. Like many other British bands of the eighties, even the Bourbonese Qualk, they were adverse British Labour establishment, which often did not understand their provocations. The band carefully avoided falling into dogmas, cliches and trite propaganda, transferring its revolutionary spirit not empty slogans, but in innovation and musical experimentation itself. Just listen to songs like Dream Decade or Head Stop to understand how the band had retained the lessons of the best Cabaret Voltaire Mix-Up, reinterpreting it with originality and doing glimpse seminal future glows, widely exploited andrediscovered "ritually" for years to come. There are also tribal noise parts episodes that show free improvisation with ambient drifts (God With Us) or recalling in some ways the industrial artist colleagues Test Dept, as is done in the Deadbeat Erector and metal. Oriental music and proto-electro-synth wave merge, creating interesting experiments psychogeographical (Suburb City). A track comeReturn to Order remains, even after decades, one of the gems of the British group, a song that stirs in the sign of the Clock Dva more dark wave and funk, with a sax creepy that gradually grafted on a hypnotic rhythm industrial dub. Pogroms, taken from The Spike of 1985, is emblematic of the influence and timeliness of the group: the listener will recognize immediately that the song The Walker in Blast and Bottle (2013) of Raime opens with the beginning of the sample piece of Bourbonese Qualk. It stipulates that debt "symbolic" that in this wayalloy a certain type of electronic experimentation eighties with that of today, thus closing the circle. What's more, it supports the output of a compilation 12 ", always out for Mannequin containing Lies, one of the best songs deiBourbonese Qualk, remixed by techno industrial key to the occasion by Ancient Methods, one of the most interesting electronic reality contemporary, proof of certain roots and traditions in musical innovation that reverberate with urgency through time and technique. perfect soundtrack of urban decay, including nightmares and dystopian libertarian dreams, now as then, the Bourbonese Qualk show us, by a never forgotten past, the spirit and the possible forms of future resistance. March 19, 2015

Igloo Magazine USA. March 2015

This aural document (remastered by the Dutch musician Rude 66) is well worth picking up by BQ fans as well as adherents of quintessential industrial music of the era or anyone looking for some good old noisy 80’s art music a la Coil or Throbbing Gristle. Bourbonese Qualk were as difficult as their name suggests: abrasive, uncompromising, highly conceptual and devoted to specific ideals. As one of the early original industrial bands from the UK emerging in the tumultuous wasteland of Thatcher’s England, BQ would influence many other bands to follow. They were politically active as a musical entity as well as a theatre group. Their music was harsh and often unbearable though it got more listenable and accessible as they shed members until there was just Simon Crab. But it’s aged well especially as a document of late 20th century England. Overall it’s suffused with a defiantly lo-fi quality. Their songs vary from abrasive funk to tape collages to all out noise. Despite the more electronicedge to the later music the earlier tracks have a life of their own, clearly from the early 80’s industrial goulash but unique as well. While they have their roots firmly in the industrial ethos several songs break into beautiful even pleasant sounding territory. “To Hell With The Consequences,” “Gag” and “Shutdown” are highly reminiscent of Mix-Up era Cabaret Voltaire, sounding as if it were recorded on a crisp wrapper found on the floor. Alternately, “Qualk Street” sounds crisp and clean with a snaking delayed drum kit and simple guitar chords (not unlike Red Snapper) but ends in a sizzling tape loop. “Invocation” drives along with kludgy bass and tribal drums in a pseudo-Arabic groove under the murky, echoing lyrics of singer Tristan Stanza. “Head Stop” might easily be confused for an early Test Department track with the pulsating synth bass and drum machine. “Black Madonna” breaks the run of noise completely with Spanish guitar and a ghostly chorus before morphing into more tribaldrums and screaming, echoing vocals. “Suburb City” begins as synth pop but slowly devolves into middle-eastern violin playing over 8th note arpeggios from a burbling synthesizer while voices chant on in strange, unknown tongues. “Pogrom” opens with an 808 beat that sounds as if it were played through tinfoil speakers as a bass grumbles out a rough framework with the drums under more sephardic violin work. “Deadbeat” drones on with metallic drums and a driving, single-note baseline while feedback guitars slither over the surface like a snake across an oil slick puddle. “Return To Order” has a kind of fragile beauty to it, with strummed guitars, soprano saxophone and New Order style bass accompanying snarled vocals and background drones. “Outcry” starts out sounding as if it will grow into yet another menacing piece but becomes surprisingly beautiful and almost conventional with guitar, bass and drums plus saxophone playing a gentle groove almost like watching a sunset from councilestate tower blocks. This aural document (remastered by the Dutch musician Rude 66) is well worth picking up by BQ fans as well as adherents of quintessential industrial music of the era or anyone looking for some good old noisy 80’s art music a la Coil or Throbbing Gristle.

Tracks:

God With Us Blood Orange Bargain Day To Hell With The Consequences Qualk Street Erector Invocation Head Stop Black Madonna Gag Shutdown Suburb City Pogrom Deadbeat Return To Order Outcry Confrontation Soft City Born Left Hearted Backlash Insurrection This Is The Enemy Workover * CD esclusive track