This Heat

Formed in 1975 in Camberwell, a district of south London, This Heat were an English art-rock/post-punk group who nonetheless proved extremely influential on the Rock In Opposition/avant prog movements of the 1980s.

More than any story, their line-up is symbolic in itself: Charles Hayward, a drummer with a formidable jazzy touch, Charles Bullen, a skilled clarinettist who reinvented himself as a guitarist, and Gareth Williams, a record-shop owner and voracious connoisseur of underground music who was, at least in the band's early days, utterly unable to play anything, though he would bring to the group his skill as a tape manipulator.

In the distance separating Hayward's prog background (he was the drummer for Canterbury-scene outfit Quiet Sun) from Williams's anarchic do-it-yourself approach lies the source of their uniqueness, of their intrinsically divergent character.

This Heat were absolute outsiders. They emerged right on the heels of the punk revolution and shared many of its traits: the feral sound, the hostility towards instrumental technique for its own sake, the cult of do-it-yourself, the will to bring music back down to earth, into the cities, at the centre of real political and social situations. Yet with the bands of the progressive wave they had at least as many points of contact: Hayward's instrumental prowess, a passion for unconventional rhythmic interplay and segmented compositions, a radical aversion to the blues, a strongly experimental ambition, and meticulous attention to detail. Their dual nature made them a half-hidden bridge between the most extreme fringes of the progressive galaxy – krautrock, the Canterbury sound, Rock In Opposition – and the most urban, intellectual strand of post-punk, tied to Marxism, feminism and post-structuralism (from Gang Of Four to the Pop Group, via the Raincoats and the early Scritti Politti).

They would take the stage in second-hand clothes and short hair, but what really threw audiences was the combination of musical skill and seemingly random noise, equally baffling to early punk fans and prog enthusiasts alike, though they did find support and sympathy among a select audience, which included members of Henry Cow.

Having bought the Cold Storage studio (a disused factory in Brixton), they began recording their rare live shows. Their self-titled debut album – conceived as an uninterrupted suite – came out in 1979 and seemed to pick up the thread where Faust had left it in 1975, with muscular rhythms, musique concrète, found sounds and bizarre lyrics painting a strange post-apocalyptic soundscape. Flashes of industrial, noise-rock and expressionism alternate in songs built mainly through tape editing and looping.

Their second album, “Deceit”, came out in 1981 and, while seemingly more oriented towards the song format, pushed the radical ideas and apocalyptic imagery of the debut even further.

"Deceit" is the product of an era of transition, and not just musically: it was released in 1981, at the dawn of the "Reagan doctrine", as the spectre of mutually assured destruction once again loomed large. It's essentially a concept album about nuclear apocalypse, steeped in the same leaden mood the band was breathing at the time ("We were convinced we'd all be dead within three years," Hayward would later explain). What made things even more frightening was the sense of torpor they perceived in society, unable to see the web of deception spun by those in power and by the mass media.

The cover originally envisioned for the album was meant to depict the band playing their instruments, wired directly into a nuclear power plant: the record itself was part of the problem. Instead they opted for an expressionistic collage in which mushroom clouds, maps of nuclear arsenals, and the faces of Reagan and Brezhnev merge into a gaunt, screaming mask. It's also through the analogy between this tormented face and that of the "21st Century Schizoid Man" on "In The Court Of The Crimson King" that the secret connection between progressive rock and post-punk runs — a connection of which "Deceit" is the unrepeatable masterpiece.

Those two albums, plus a 12-inch single titled “Health And Efficiency” (1980), are the only official recordings left behind by the English band. Williams went on to study dance and music in India, and there were only a handful of shows as a quartet before the group broke up.

Other records, however, kept appearing even after the band's story had ended: “Made Available” contains two sessions the band had recorded for John Peel's radio show in 1977; “Repeat” comprises two lengthy pieces built on tape loops. Charles Hayward went on to form the equally interesting Camberwell Now, together with Trevor Gonwy. Charles Bullen focused on studio work as a producer/engineer. Gareth Williams died prematurely, in 2001. A box set containing all their official releases plus some live recordings came out in 2006.

This Heat thus managed to ferry the ancestral soul of traditional folk and the harmonic richness of the thorniest progressive rock into the bare, anxiety-ridden territories of post-punk. Their lesson proved fundamental for a whole string of later bands, especially American ones who, starting out from indie-rock, post-hardcore and alternative metal shores, gave rise to new forms of progressive music (chief among them Thinking Plague, Cheer-Accident, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum).