Bark Psychosis - Hallucinations at the edge of the night

Every day and every night streets leave their mark on my skin/ This city breaks you down/ Reach inside, it’s upside down/ I can’t find any way out.

("Fingerspit")

The story of Bark Psychosis is one of great promise and ambition, anxious waiting and nervous breakdowns, unexpected comebacks and long silences; it bears the face of the Night & the City, of the Street and of the bodies that carry its marks. It's driven by chameleon-like changes, small vindications and newly found balances. Pushed by the pendulum of Chance, it swings between dream & nightmare, taking on the shape of a profoundly human story, even before being an artistic one.

When Graham Sutton and his friend John Ling, still beardless schoolboys, gave birth to Bark Psychosis on a grey day in the greyest city in Europe, they surely couldn't imagine the strange fate awaiting them. So bizarre as to turn a handful of singles and an album into fundamental pieces of the varied mosaic that would prefigure the new (way of conceiving) rock after new wave. At the same time, so thankless as to turn the band's extreme ambition into its own personal strategy for implosion.

Bark can boast a series of unquestionable firsts, the most ambiguous of which is surely having inspired Mr. Simon Reynolds (in his review of Hex that appeared in "Mojo" in March 1994) to coin the most overused label of the last decade: that "post-rock" which, in all likelihood, the esteemed English journalist would never have put in writing had he foreseen the (mis)use many scribbling colleagues would make of it, on the hunt for the next phenomenon to sell after grunge. One could even speculate on the side effects such a pigeonholing operation had on a generation of young musicians, who set out with admirable intentions and largely ended up synthesizing "in vitro" depressions, no less intangible than the fake rebelliousness generally associated with a certain rearguard rock. At the centre of our small (great) story, as intricate as a classic noir film, are Bark Psychosis themselves, and it's with them that we start over, resetting the clock to the final months of 1987.

Graham and John are two teenagers drawn to the noise then fashionable (in the underground) of Sonic Youth, Big Black and Napalm Death, whose ungainly moves they try to imitate in the basements of Brighton, an East London suburb, until Sutton senses – amid the ever more exasperated turmoil of the city – the sound of silence and its possible applications to the elastic fabric of rock. A large part of it is revealed, a few years in advance, by two albums and a band that will run through Bark's body from end to end: "Laughing Stock" and "Spirit Of Eden", credited to Talk Talk, which, besides sounding like the most alien object imaginable in late-80s rock, mark the commercial suicide (and the liberation of a repressed Self) of pop star Mark Hollis.

Sutton hasn't even turned sixteen yet when he finds himself recording the first composition credited to Bark Psychosis, shortly after meeting, at a tube stop, the record man of the moment, in this case one Nick Allport of Cheree Records, sharp enough to spot a talent "so fuckin' brilliant". Recorded in a handful of minutes with the clumsiness of a first time, Clawhammer is worth remembering only as part of a flexi-disc that also features the Fury Things and – above all – Spacemen 3. It's no surprise, then, that sales were encouraging enough to convince the label to renew its faith in the band, this time for a 12" with no guests of any note.

With All Different Things begins the procession (so it would seem, judging by the timeline) of singles that, together with the debut album, would earn Bark Psychosis a reputation and renown destined, paradoxically, to grow stronger only after years of inactivity, and always within certain limits. With a lineup completed by Mark Simnett (drums) and Sue Anderson (vocals), the band offers a first taste of its songwriting ability across two long tracks that alternate moments of disarming tenderness (Anderson's singing) and icy introspection with bursts of noise like a natural upheaval. The enthusiasm that leads the band to carelessly lay down its cards (a good hand, at that), and the naive attitude behind a certain roughness in the production, might raise a smile and get the EP branded "immature" – the usual routine, in other words – but a closer listen would pay more attention to the glimmers showing through in filigree: the care in the choice of tones, the interlocking instrumental parts conceived as layers, the ease of the dynamic piano/forte alternation. The ingredients, as mentioned, are all laid out on the table in All Different Things, from the opiated indolence of the shoegaze vocals to guitar waves worthy of the best A.R. Kane – whose "69" would richly fertilise the British musical humus of the early 90s – from jazzy rhythms played on the tip of the ride cymbal to a compositional structure stretched out in the tradition of the best (neo)psychedelia. "By Blow" is the acid vision of a hissing geyser, a flashback to the wildest krautrock of Can and Amon Duul updated to the age of samplers, or a flashforward to the "Von" of the equally young Sigur Rós (and, curiously enough, the studio where the single was born is actually called Von).

It takes a year for the release of the second 12" on Cheree, Nothing Feels: much of the band coming of age seems to bring a breath of maturity that, countering the initial noise-driven impulses, shapes two disembodied ballads. "I Know" rises from inaccessible depths like a siren's (en)chant and floats freely in the most intimate folk of Slowdive, before settling into the reverb that laps at "Nothing Feels", a reassuring landing on the shores of the pop-jazz still to come.

One cannot speak in similarly poetic terms of what happens between this single and the next: a contract signed lightly, yet already binding, with Cheree turns into a nightmare when two shady businessmen take over the label's management, clearly intent on squeezing pounds out of their young and naive clients. While their friend Rudy Tambala, one half of A.R. Kane, helps the band wriggle free of Cheree's contractual tentacles, it's 3rd Stone Records that takes on the responsibility of releasing a new 12" under the Bark Psychosis name.

Of the three tracks making up Manman, only "Blood Rush" follows the soft lines traced on the shoreline by the previous single, while the other two shift the focus onto a driving electronic sound, packed with dub and sampling (the title track), anticipating the drum and bass drift that would later lead Sutton to found the Boymerang project.

Inevitably marked by the turbulent period of its conception, Manman matters insofar as it reveals to its makers the possibilities and limits tied to a creative, technologically aware use of the studio. So much so that for the next single, the band hires a wealth of equipment, despite having nothing concrete in hand and no clear idea of what to do. The jam session becomes an almost necessary choice, and what comes out of it – bypassing the obviousness of every cliché – is an archetype of the 90s rock "suite" (without even bothering to invoke the Teutonic forefathers): twenty-one minutes and twenty-four seconds of frothing urban psychedelia.

Scum is the city speaking to Bark Psychosis, telling its own story and, by extension, theirs. A tangle of cells interacting chaotically, now fast and convulsive, now silent and imperceptible in its concrete-and-steel "interiors"; a body coiled around its pulsing core, which for ten long nights becomes a rehearsal room set up in the basement of St. John's Baptist church in Stratford, East London. That's enough to give birth to the work that best encapsulates the art of Sutton & co., one hardly translatable into words since it's stitched together from details: the location's ambient recordings (from the echo of the halls to the chants of a gospel choir stolen through a door), a bass fullness ahead of the Bristol trip-hop scene, guitars like flickering mirages burning in feedback, and still more black jazz tar enveloping the movement of the drumsticks.

Giving coherence to the raw material of Scum is the job of a production able to miraculously leave the sound's natural spatiality intact, while enriching it with opalescent shades: light overdubs of electronics, voices, ambient guitars and a piano.

The British press' curiosity over this not-quite-identifiable object (single of the week on Melody Maker), conceived by four child prodigies barely out of their teens, heightens anticipation for a debut album that would see the light of day almost two years later, on Circa Records.

Fourteen months is the time it takes to finish a project so ambitious that it deeply undermines the band's balance and future: Daniel Gish bails out during the recording sessions, John Ling declares himself "burnt out" and quits just a week before the start of the English tour… almost as if the spell invoked by Hex – "evil eye" in Italian – were working its effects directly on its own conjurers. The 10" that precedes it, A Street Scene/ Reserve Shotgun Man, once again shows a boldness and a will to throw the listener off balance: if the first track veers towards a pop-jazz enlivened by funk, which lifts off into sudden panning shifts between melody and noise before sinking into ambient soundscapes, side B returns to the scene of the crime of Manman to silence the witness, stripping it of its voice, while its body rattles out obsessions of bass and drums.

Hex is a trap. It unfurls its full bewitching power across seven long tracks in which it's easy to lose all sense of space and time, not unlike wandering at night through the streets of a city you think you know, but whose perception keeps shifting, revealing corners and crevices never imagined before, yet always there. A place you'd want to keep your distance from, as the LP cover suggests, depicting a glimpse of the city – that unsettling St. John's church – seen from the tracks near Stratford station, yet exerting a magnetism impossible to resist (the silhouettes of the four band members leaning into it).

The music of Hex is unprecedented above all in how skilfully it shapes its raw materials. The lesson of Talk Talk's “Spirit of Eden” and “Laughing Stock” is translated into a more earthbound dimension, woven into an everyday experience that diverges from Hollis's spiritual tension. Even in the sublimations of “Pendulum Man”, stasis is an inward folding and a moment of rediscovered calm rather than a (attempted) mystical ascent.

If the Blue Nile mirror the sophistication of a jazz club, with its welcoming interiors bathed in soft light, Bark Psychosis evoke the rawer vision of the alleys outside, of neon signs so decrepit and flickering they hurt the eye. Eyes used to confiding in asphalt streaked with needles of rain and cold in the darkness, during lonely transitions toward the next destination.

It's curious to note the perfect correspondence between the concept behind Hex and its internal structure: just as the perceptions of a nocturnal wander grow increasingly blurred as the minutes pass, before dissolving into narcosis, so too does the song form grow ever more frayed, moving from the recognisable blue-pop of “The Loom” to the pure textures of “Pendulum Man”, passing through the ECM-like middle ground of “Eyes and Smiles”, which reaches its climax in Sutton's furious plea not to give up. It is these two tracks, along with the disorienting “Fingerspit”, that make up Hex's finest legacy: the most expansive textures and the most taut, fragile voice, loosened from a thinly veiled reverence for David Sylvian – though lacking his same power, control and allure – best suited to conveying the emotional ups and downs that have marked the band from the start.

Hard to tell from the listening experience, the album (which features eleven additional orchestral players) makes extensive use of software, samplers and sequencers, as Graham, ever more eager to experiment with the new idioms of electronic music, stated in interviews at the time. We're in a crucial period for this: the early '90s, when unstoppable technology was about to open new frontiers for music with the widespread diffusion of laptops and associated audio software, available at increasingly affordable prices. A do-it-yourself mentality, not unlike the one that drove punk just over a decade earlier, was about to send a new shockwave through the record industry. It's no coincidence that Bark Psychosis played in the summer of '94 at the Britronica Festival in Moscow, alongside names such as Aphex Twin, Autechre and Seefeel.

A few months earlier, the band, having recovered from its internal collapse and reduced to a duo, embarked on the promotional tour for Hex with a reshuffled lineup (featuring Del Crabtree on trumpet and Paul Thomas on second guitar), closing it in style with a triumphant evening at the Shaw Theatre in London.

The centrifugal pull that would lead Sutton to embrace synthetic music, spinning off the solo project Boymerang from the band's mutating body, begins to show itself on the EP Blue, released two months after the album. Built around techno-derived rhythmic patterns, the title track, clocking in at under four minutes, is a pop song through and through, polished and pleasant but light years away from the band's psychotic sound (though the “work in progress” approach constantly pursued by the group makes the search for a single sonic identity somewhat pointless). It peeks through the curtain of white noise generated by Hex's machines, before vanishing into the remix of “Big Shot”, with Rudi Tambala toying with a Roland synthesizer, sampling dry Martinis, olives and snacks.

The doubts stirred up by Blue only heighten anticipation for a second album, which would see the light of day only twenty years later, and in an entirely different context. External pressures sharpened the tensions already present among the musicians, quickly leading to an irreparable rift and the breakup of Bark Psychosis.

The next steps belong to Sutton, who dances to the cerebral, swirling rhythms of jungle as Boymerang for five long years. A period in which the Bark name seems to gradually fade from music consumers' minds – save for the occasional rediscovery by the more enlightened journalists and the avant-rockers inspired by them – until, in '99, Graham decides to lift the needle from his turntables and restring his guitar. In the meantime, two compilations had been released, one official, Indipendency (3rd Stone, 1994), and the other unauthorised by the band, Game Over (1997), containing their precious early singles. Then in 2004 came Replay (3rd Stone), which added five live tracks recorded at St. John's church to the mix – “bootleg” quality, make of that what you will.

Work on the future ///Codename: Dustsucker began at the end of the millennium, only to wrap up – in the manner of Mr. “perfectionist” Sutton – in 2004, when the record finally reached store shelves, after various fakes of it had already circled the globe along the Net's arteries in compressed format, amid Graham's mocking smirks and the amused tail-wagging of his mutt – the four-legged star of the promo photos! In an era of marketing strategies for every need, it's no surprise that the Bark Psychosis name was dusted off again for what is, all things considered, a Sutton solo project, garnished with outside collaborators. Among the various guests are Pete Beresford (on the inevitable vibraphone), Rachel Dreyer (piano and flute) and, above all, Lee Harris, the man behind Talk Talk's rhythmic (a)symmetries, to whom Simnett owes more than a good pint.

The atmospheres grow more spread out and thread-like: the claustrophobic tension of Hex is a ghost that materialises only for brief moments, while what prevails is the torpor of half-sleep, the foggy, surreally random consciousness of the insomniac, waiting for a new, purifying dawn.

Helped also by Harris's presence in the control room, Dustsucker builds a bridge to the dream-folk of “I Know”, a chapter left unfinished, viewed now through the diverging lens of Hex and in light of the Boymerang interlude (just listen to “Shapeshifting”).

Even finer is the sonic grain, shaped by the hands of a Sutton who had in the meantime founded Fire Records and become a respected producer. The sense of deja ecoute is always lurking (not least because, by this point, we'd already heard plenty of psychotic sounds), and much like an “exercise in nostalgia”, it leaves a bitter aftertaste that's hard to shake off. Yet it's also true that in the face of such caressing compositions as “400 Winters” and “The Black Meat”, every stretch of time is instantly erased, and you're suddenly transported back to the early '90s, when the sounds worth following with your eyes closed were the spontaneous fruits of the British underground.

Graham's return was met without half measures, with either over-the-top praise (especially at home) or unappealable pannings: the truth, probably in this case too, lies somewhere in between.

The truth about Bark Psychosis, however, isn't so different from that of other bands who passed almost unnoticed among their contemporaries and/or vanished too soon, yet still managed to leave an indelible mark on the generations to come (just to stay on topic: Slint can testify to that!). The creative force of “genius”, of the “new”, of the “different” carries within itself the active ingredient of its own rapid unravelling, easily triggered by external pressures. An old story, some will say. Well, if that's any indication, let's hope we get to tell it again... rather than X-raying the careers of the many dinosaurs who have spent years dragging themselves wearily, devoid of spark or vitality, toward their next pointless appearance.

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