Julian Cope - Teardrop Explodes - The apocalyptic storyteller

Julian Cope's discographic and biographical story begins in the late '70s and can be divided into his three main projects: Teardrop Explodes, his solo career, and Brain Donor. His dazed, otherworldly music has always been in constant evolution, never repeating itself from one record to the next, except for minor side projects, always following in the footsteps of the greats of the past, from Californian psychedelia to electronica and the new dark sounds of British new wave.

His musical career began right as new wave was taking shape, in 1978, in Liverpool, with stints in bands like Crucial Three and Nova Mob, before founding, together with Gary Dwyer, Paul Simpson and Michael Finkler, the embryonic nucleus of Teardrop Explodes. The following year, after releasing two singles, "Sleeping Gas" and "Bouncing Babies", David Balfe stepped in to replace the departing Simpson. Teardrop Explodes began making a name for themselves across the English scene, building up a sizeable following that, after the release of the third single, "Treason", got to enjoy the band's debut LP, Kilimanjaro (1980). The album contains the three aforementioned singles and unfolds over a sonic tapestry rich in influences, with new wave as the backbone, its dark tones muffled as if from inside a sealed metal box, while a post-punk rhythm section immediately defines the record — just listen to the opener "Ha Ha I'm Drowning" to hear it for yourself. "Poppies in the Field" is perhaps the album's finest track, on par with the dark "Kilimanjaro", delivered in a visionary, hallucinated style, perhaps also fuelled by Cope's own heavy drug use at the time. The album doesn't shy away from melody either, which in fact comes through strongly: the booming "Brave Boys Keep Their Promises" proves it, as does "When I Dream", with its hook that lodges itself in your head and won't let go. Digging deeper into the record, one could even find traces of dream-pop, given the heavy use of keyboards, but perhaps that's too marginal and minimal an element to really count as such. Kilimanjaro finds a fitting close in the long, elaborate live version of "Sleeping Gas".

The band closed out the year with a live album and opened 1981 with a long tour to conquer the States. Troy Tate on guitar, Alfie Agius on bass and Jeff Hammer on keyboards joined the duo of Julian Cope and Dwyer. The run of shows was a success, but it also sparked internal tensions over leadership of Teardrop Explodes that would eventually lead to the band's breakup. Two singles came out during this period, "Passionate Friend" and "Colours Fly Away", which would later become part of the band's second album, Wilder. The sound immediately feels more polished — perhaps too polished, given how much more the melodies take shape in a bold push towards pop. That doesn't stop it from being a brilliant record, one that boasts flashes of real compositional genius such as "Seven Views of Jerusalem", with its Eastern-tinged rhythm, horns and percussion, exotic locales and eccentricity all rolled into one, or the hushed, lonely, melancholy night-time atmospheres of "Tiny Children" and, why not, the much-maligned psychedelia of "The Great Dominions". In short, an overflowing melting pot of sounds and influences, in some ways an even better album than the all-out energy of their debut Kilimanjaro — perhaps a musical memento they wanted to leave us with, given that the breakup of Teardrop Explodes was just around the corner.

Neither the promotional tour nor the release of the single "Tiny Children" was enough to change the course of events. In November 1982, Cope and his bandmates parted ways, leaving behind a handful of scattered recordings that would later be collected on the posthumous album Everybody Wants to Shag the Teardrop Explodes (1990).

The band's members would go their separate ways, and Julian Cope would devote himself to a solo career, proving he still had plenty to say. As we'll see, his would be a discography rich with successes, further proof of his eccentric and brilliant ego.

To get into the examination of Cope's sprawling solo discography, we must first mention, without a doubt, the year 1983, spent putting his ideas in order, working through the various projects racing continuously through his mind, shaping them into an innovative sonic fabric, and finally reworking them into a finished product. We can't therefore consider 1983 a fallow year for Cope coming out of his Teardrop Explodes experience, but rather a cycle rich in artistic evolution, in which our man tries to retrace the paths of visionary, mystical poet-shamans, setting himself up as the new Morrison or the new Barrett. He draws ever closer to sonic experimentation, growing fascinated with the German kraut-rock scene — even writing a book, "Krautrocksamplers" — and finally immersing himself in Britain's Celtic and mythological tradition: the book "The Modern Antiquarian" is proof of that.

It's 1984 — ready, set? A sonic wave breaks from the mould and takes shape in Julian Cope. In rapid succession come two of the most important and revolutionary records of new wave, and clear landmarks of the sound of the '80s: World Shut Your Mouth and Fried. Two genuine bombshells that tear down the foundations of past music, replacing them with a new way of thinking about music. Listening to these records, the classic Barrett-esque melody immediately comes to mind — the melody of "Love You", or the darkness of "No Man's Land" — with that psychedelia tempered by rhythmic tones, that visionary, dazed eccentricity; because deep down, on first listen, it's natural to compare Cope to Syd. Try to imagine Barrett singing over a post-punk backdrop, or amid the metallic chill of new wave, accompanied by a sitar, the sound of wind and an organ; not easy, is it? But in this case you can listen to World Shut Your Mouth and get a precise idea of what's being described. The album almost feels like a historical continuation of Kilimanjaro, and it's all summed up in the hallucinated symphony of "Sunshine Playroom".

Psychotropic substances were probably playing their considerable part too, and the revolution begins from an aggressive take on British psychedelia, as you might gather from two tracks on Fried: "Reynard The Fox", ravaged by distortion and piercing screams, and the gentler "Laughing Boy". Still on Fried, though, Cope's more melodic side also emerges, well represented by the hybrid pop of "Sunspots".

The beauty of these two albums, just as happened with the first Velvet Underground records, would find no adequate commercial response, and for Cope that would be a very hard blow to swallow.

The failures of the two following singles, "Competition" and "Sunspots", combined with drug abuse and problems with his record label, push Julian to the brink of abandoning music altogether. A retreat into private life that would last two years.

We'd have to wait until 1986 to see new musical lifeblood flowing through Cope's veins again. That year saw a world tour take shape with guitarist Donald Skinner, and a contract signed with Island. The following year brought the third album, Saint Julian, which was essentially a revisiting of the previous records, made more accessible and thus, in substance, simplified. With this record our man would finally achieve the commercial success he'd long awaited. And yet it's an album that doesn't deserve to rank among his best. A merely decent work, with only "Trampolene" flying the flag for the exceptions. The rest is a string of simple choruses tailored to win over a wider audience, as in "Placet Ride". Even "World Shut Your Mouth", unrecognisable and reduced to an inconclusive skeleton, hardly reflects the masterpieces of three years earlier. Saint Julian nonetheless remains an honest pop record with a few good new ideas scattered here and there, like "Pulsar", "Screaming Secrets" and the closing "A Crack in the Clouds".

It would, however, prove to be a brief interlude within Cope's discography, so much so that the following year, 1988, already saw a new venture into sonic experimentation, with the release of the eccentric My Nation Underground. The album was preceded by three singles, later included on the record itself: the romantic "China Doll", "Charlotte Anne", and a cover of The Vogues' "5 O'Clock World". The album sounds like a melting pot of sounds with no apparent logical thread, arranged with a parody of percussion and heavy use of synthesizer, organ and harmonica, with wah-wah vibrato entering the fray, leaving us startled at this first, plausible foray into electronics. As usual, the catchy little choruses persist, and Cope's theatrical voice manages to carry the whole record off perfectly. A real breath of fresh air, in short, after Saint Julian.

We began our profile of Teardrop Explodes by saying that Cope's solo career was a continuous musical evolution, never one record quite like another, and so, having charted the course of sonic experimentation, 1990 brings Skellington, recorded on his own label, CopeCo. It's a record built solely around acoustic instrumentation, with the drums-bass-guitar triad always front and centre. For the moment he abandons sonic experimentation and ventures into dark rock closer to an eclectic folk, with the occasional blast of horn. It almost feels like a reflective, intimate record, a completely new side of Julian Cope — yet one he manages to carry off brilliantly, true stage animal that he is. Songs like "Robert Mitchum", "Doomed", "Out of My Mind On Dope and Speed" and "Comin' Soon" once again recall Barrett, with that deep, hypnotic voice, a cornerstone of British psychedelia.

The tracks never run past three minutes, much like on the second record, also from the same year, Droolian, with Cope on guitar and vocals for a pseudo-collection of sonic sketches. There's no shortage of eccentricity and flashes of flair: the mystical atmospheres of "Look After Your Leathers", the breezy, ironic "Unisex Cathedral", the baffling "Commin' Down" are just part of what you'll find on this album, which abandons folk melodies to delve into small experiments, as a dress rehearsal for the future, in the spirit of emulating the German kraut-rock scene.

But before that comes one of his finest records, the double album Peggy Suicide (1991). Put together with an entire "orchestra" at his disposal, it's the first chapter of a trilogy devoted to the environment and its troubles, courtesy of Cope the ecologist. But it's also one of the British druid's best records, a sort of refined Fried steeped in pagan religion, that glides along even through intense moments like "Safesurfer", a long meditation on the world of AIDS and its consequences for the human spirit. Other intense moments include the opening "Pristeen" and "Promise Land", while tracks like "You" and "Soldier Blue" wriggle free of convention, floating in total expressive freedom. Melody is always in fashion here too, as in the cryptic pop of "Beautiful Love" or in "Hanging Out and Hung Up on the Line".

It's a period of intense creative ferment, and Cope's activities grow frantic. Everything leads to distinctive, top-quality work, as with the second chapter of the ecological trilogy, Jehovakill. The record, as its title already suggests, is unsettling and dark; Cope expresses himself in a near-catatonic state, condemning the human madness unleashed on the environment and on our society. His voice turns grim and apocalyptic, over cold, slow sounds, in a vortex that soon spirals towards catastrophe. The opening "Soul Desert" rides a continuous build in rhythm. Worth noting is "Upwards at 45°", one of the record's most intense tracks, built around an experimental rock structure; the funereal "Gimme Back My Flag", which channels Eastern rituals amid incense and mystical atmospheres; and finally "The Subtle Energies Commission", which fuses Neu!'s "Hallogallo" with the Stooges, in a sequence of constant rhythmic shifts. It's right here, with this reworked Neu! track, that his closest brush with the kraut-rock scene begins.

After problems with Island, which cut him loose from the scene, it's thanks to Ma-Gog that Cope manages to produce two albums of pure psychedelic-electronic improvisation, Rite (1993) and Queen Elizabeth (1994). Two projects built around long jams inspired by cosmic music, like "In Search Of Ancient Astronomies" — a kind of kraut-tinged emulation filtered through new wave.

Also in 1993 comes The Skellington Chronicles, a fusion of Skellington1 and Skellington2, continuing the series of sonic sketches begun in 1990. October brings Floored Genius, a BBC compilation of the twenty best tracks recorded between 1979 and 1991.

His attachment to Germany is temporarily set aside, and his new contract with Echo leads Cope to wrap up the environmental trilogy with Autogeddon (1994). The record seems to pick up the thread of Peggy Suicide, which had previously seemed to go missing. Cope's attacks grow ever sharper; he wriggles through a mix of blues ("Madamax"), acid folk ("Paranormal In The West Country") and space rock ("Ain't But The One Way", or the closing "Starcar", probably the record's most representative track).

In 1995 came 20 Mothers, featuring twenty women on the cover, an album that's somewhat subdued by Julian Cope's usual standards, with no truly memorable peaks but still decent overall. It's a classic pop record, synth-pop with psychedelic touches, buoyed by the solid commercial success of "Try Try Try".

Things change substantially the following year with Interpreter. A less accessible album than its predecessor, tied to spatial and cosmic themes right from the cover art, continuing with the opening track, in which Cope declares himself a Martian, "I Come From Another Planet, Baby". With the help of Thighpaulsandra, Tim Lewis, a multi-instrumentalist devoted to sonic experimentation, Cope ventures into space-rock territory, first with a playful parody of the Cosmick Jokers on "Planetary Sit-In", then dedicating the eccentric "Spacerock With Me" to them, with a lyrical female voice soaring over a cosmic wash of sound. One of his best records, one that seems to spring from a newfound youthfulness in the man.

From here on, Cope's eclecticism would take on even greater weight within his musical career, and his bold works — such as the sequel to "Queen Elizabeth", namely QE – Elizabeth Vagina, alongside that same year's (1997) Rite2 — would once again give full rein to his endless urge to dig up new sounds, piece them together, and squeeze every last drop out of them.

Even more peculiar is Odin from 1999, which could easily be likened to the "Aumgn" found on Tago Mago by Can, clocking in at seventy-three minutes. A messianic, rather indecipherable record, probably the ultimate exaggeration of ambient music, but then again when it came to exaggeration Cope was never second to anyone. His latest venture (for now) would be with Brain Donor, but that's another story.

© Freakoutmusic

*****

The period between 2000 and 2005 proved crucial for Cope: setting up his own label (a luxury made possible by a lucrative contract writing archaeology books for Harper Collins) and the accompanying website (www.headheritage.co.uk), the hub for all of the "shaman's" musical and cultural activities, brought all of Julian's passions, old and new, together under one roof. His research into prehistoric civilizations, following the huge success of "The Modern Antiquarian", led him to produce a second volume of studies devoted to Europe, "The Megalithic European".

His off-the-cuff projects found a key milestone in "Rite Now", a continuation of his earlier ambient-kraut suites, this time soaked in wah-wah-driven funk marathons and pulsing rhythms. The "Brain Donor" project, meanwhile, served between 1999 and 2003 as the musical workshop in which he developed a highly particular idea of Odinist/shamanic rock: a power trio devoted to reviving many of the clichés of 70s hard rock (from the Stooges to Hawkwind and the like), paired with lyrics about paganism or "love, peace and fuck".

Still through his columns and reviews on "Head Heritage", Cope also began a genuine campaign to champion all the "hidden" and overlooked rock music from the 60s to the present, often acting as a sponsor for acts such as Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunn O))), Comets on Fire, Sunburned Hand Of The Man, and other standard-bearers of modern psychedelia and free-rock. This activity culminated, at the end of 2003, in the "Rome Wasn't Burned in a Day" festival, at which many of the above-mentioned bands performed in London alongside Cope. Under the same title as the festival, Julian also released an album, the first fully "rock" record since "Interpreter" and a brilliant summation of all the ferments stirring in him since the mid-90s, from vintage psychedelia to the most violent proto-punk, right through to funk-rock jams.

The same direction, but with more "classic" influences, reaches its most mature outcome with Citizen Cain'd (2005). A double album (even though 71 minutes of music fit comfortably on a single CD). In keeping with the unwritten laws of rock track-listing, each of the two sides closes with a track running ten-plus minutes.

It opens calmly, with no real jolt ("Hell is Wicked"), then morphs into Iggy mode: "Can't Hardly Stand It" and "Dying To Meet You" sound like a Pop/Williamson leftover unearthed from who knows where; "Living In The Room…" is "Gimme Danger" with a different lyric (and what a lyric!); "Gimme Head" slows things down but closes with Gibson-esque flourishes that not even Angus Young or the aforementioned Williamson could match. It closes with "I Will Be Absorbed", slow and blues/southern/mystical, fifteen minutes that are the ABCs of the ballad applied to Cope's present-day pagan, mystic-leaning persona.

Having played all his heavyweight cards, Julian takes a step back and opens side 2 with some ten minutes of a lumbering two-chord ballad in the style of Neil Young, "Feels Like A Crying Shame", which, while remaining the least convincing episode on the album, serves as a good introduction to the first half of the second side, where it is precisely the Young-ian musical idiom (think the "Time Fades Away"-"On The Beach" era) that serves as the reference point for our man's vocal and instrumental transformation, peppering two other monoliths, "World War Pigs" and "Hopeless Strangers", with high-pitched vocal lines and pedal-steel-like guitar work.

Finally, here comes the "old" psychedelic and visionary Cope: a preview in "Stomping Dionysus", and the full appearance in "The Living Dead" and "Edge of Death", two tracks almost devoid of a rhythm section, whose tension rests entirely on the dialogue between a voice that sings and declaims and the guitars.

Cope and his band have by now fully mastered the language of "classic rock", and the simple fact that they wield it with a freshness and energy far removed from any nostalgia act speaks to the quality of their work.

2005 then saw the release of a second double album (split into two "sides" rather than two discs: seven tracks on side A, a single, very long one on side B), Dark Orgasm: a genuine, thoroughly over-the-top frenzy that, while lyrically and thematically it fully embraces a pagan and anticlerical — indeed, outright anti-religious — stance, musically presents itself as an exercise in hard rock style. The songs and choruses are there, but what dominates is the musical aesthetic of the guitar-bass-drums power trio, drawing heavily both from the proverbial MC5 and from somewhat murkier sources (Grand Funk, Montrose, Sir Lord Baltimore). Amid guitar acrobatics, pentatonic riffs and hard pop with explosions lurking in the background, Cope and co. deliver an extreme statement that, while some will relish its bizarre, naive attitude (as well as its formal precision), will make many fans of the more classically psychedelic Julian wince.

The same power trio at work on Dark Orgasm (Cope together with drummer Mr. E and faithful guitarist Doggen) re-donned the Brain Donor disguise again in 2006, rounding off Cope's journey into hard sonorities with an album, Drain'd Boner, blatantly doom-metal, almost entirely instrumental, bold in intent but not entirely successful overall — as a tribute to a musical universe Cope had championed since the mid-2000s it works, but as a record it's anything but original.

Also from 2006 is the closing chapter of the tetralogy that began with Rite: titled Rite Bastard, it contains the series' final "meditative funk marathons."

And after such a long journey to the outer limits of rock music, a hint of a homecoming: You Gotta Problem With Me, released in 2007, is yet another double album. Metal is kept at a safe distance, as is the glam-hard of Dark Orgasm; a messier, more uneven approach to the material returns, with acoustic and psycho-electric sketches worthy of bygone days resurfacing alongside some inconclusive episodes, perhaps the result of lacking a "vision" wholly focused on the album (by now Cope has permanently paired his musical career with that of writer; 2007 sees the publication of "Japrocksampler," the Japanophile twin of 1995's "Krautrocksampler," devoted to German rock, as well as in-depth research for new archaeological writings).

You Gotta Problem is perhaps the weakest record of recent Cope, but it hints at a future that could still be bright – provided all that exuberance from an enlightened fifty-something is channelled more constructively.

Cope, meanwhile, declares himself Archdruid, writes a book on megaliths and never misses a chance to attack monotheistic religions through his records. With him, it's a take-it-or-leave-it affair. As with Black Sheep (2008), where he has himself photographed in the booklet surrounded by ugly thugs even rougher than the worst of Motorhead, striking poses that are embarrassing to say the least.

Released as a double CD, even though one would have sufficed, it's a record that repeats the strengths and weaknesses of his recent output. The eleven songs revolve around the theme of individual uniqueness set against the masses and their forms of organisation. Much quieter and less hard than his recent past, the album is made up almost entirely of ballads that favour acoustic guitars and a generous helping of keyboards over electricity. Its biggest flaw lies in a muddled, often dated production, with occasional slips into the worst (and most minor) kind of prog sounds and the use of some dreadful effects and noises that could easily have been spared.

In the end, the scales tip towards the positive, and the record is a pleasure to listen to, starting with the rocking "Come The Revolution," moving through the folk-tinged "These Things I Know," the convoluted British atmospheres of "Blood Sacrifice," and the dark gothic touches of "The Shipwreck Of St. Paul."

The second disc opens with the pop appeal of the electro-acoustic "All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers," before moving on to an irresistible Lou Reed-esque track called "Feed My Rock'n'Roll" (which trails off into a noise coda), a gorgeous, gentle folk song like "The Black Sheep's Song," and the long, mesmerising repetition of "I Can Remember This Life."

He doesn't always get the doughnuts right with the hole in the middle, but this time, despite everything, the flavour isn't bad at all.

(edited by Luca Fusari, with contributions from Lino Brunetti)

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