Chorchazade – Made To Be Devoured / Aaah, You Are As Light As A Feather

Sit right back and you’ll hear the tale of a British pop group called Chorchazade, an all-too unknown band from Bristol that remained active from 1977 until 1988. Keith Bailey drummed. Jack Hunt played guitar. Noel Lane played bass and sang. Chris Williams also played guitar. The quartet performed sporadically over the course of those eleven years, playing supporting gigs for groups like James, A Certain Ratio, and Marc Riley and the Creepers. There are two known Chorchazade releases, the twelve-inch single called Aaah, You Are As Light As A Feather, and a self-released full-length entitled Made To Be Devoured. In 1987, the legendary disc jockey John Peel played a track off the single, but said that he, “Wished the group had a simpler name, like the Moody Blues.” He never played another of the group’s recordings. In 1988 they performed as a warm-up act at the Glastonbury festival in in Pilton, England. It rained heavily during their set, and according to legend, only the band’s manager one of their girlfriends witnessed the event. According to one band member, “At the end though, the last few songs, when the sun came out and all these people wrapped in bin liners appeared from nowhere, nodding their heads and shaking the rain out of their hair. We had back stage passes for the whole festival but we went home as soon as we’d finished playing. We played the Ashton Court festival a few times of course, when it was free, before it turned into the total shit that it is now. We even played second to last on the main stage Saturday night once. The review in the paper said we ‘went down like a fart in a spacesuit.’ It was true too, all those people expecting a dance and a good time and everything. Hmmmm.” In 1988, the band recorded an album called Death Is Eeklo and toured Belgium to promote it. As legend has it, “the band’s minibus was found, empty, in a lay-by a mile or so outside of Waterloo. Half-eaten baguettes, a cigarette still smoking in the ashtray. The tour was not completed, and the album was never officially released.” During the mid-ninetees, about 75% of the group’s vinyl records were found in a skip (british slang for an old beat-up car?) outside of a Bristol music distrubution factory. They were warped and “looked like shallow black bowls.” Bassist Noel Lane writes, “If you own a Chorchazade Record, you have a very rare thing.”

Drummer Keith Bailey and guitarist Jack Hunt are active musicians. Bassist Noel Lane is no longer an active musician. He is a published writer who pens stories under the name of Bunny Dees. Chris Williams is also non-active. According to legend, his wife said, “It’s me or the guitar,” and he chose her. But that’s just a legend, and when it comes to a cult group like Chorchazade, every legend may or may not be a complete lie…

When I was a junior in college, my friend Jet called from Chicago to tell me about a seven-inch EP she recorded at Electrical Audio in Chicago. She wanted to send me a copy, but I told her I didn’t have a turntable at school, and wouldn’t be able to hear it for a while. I was planning on visiting my sister at Northwestern around the time of her graduation, and asked Jet to hold onto the EP until I arrived in Chicago. On the topic of records, she told me about how Steve Albini had played a record for her by a band called Chorchazade during a brief break from recording. She said it sounded like the first Slint record, jazzy and shoddily recorded, but filled with great songs. She asked if I’d ever heard of the group, to which I probably responded, “No fucking way. In fact it sounds made up to me.” Jet, not owning a computer, asked me to humor her and type the band’s name into a Google web search to see what came up.

The answer, of course, was not much. A page or two of results. There was a twelve-inch EP with a long title for sale on Gemm.com for over $100, and a tiny personal website made by someone in the UK that looked as if it was meant to keep track of their record collection. I scrolled down and saw that one of the records on the list was by Chorchazade, and it was called Made To Be Devoured. It had a little note next to it that said Â£6. She screamed, “That’s the one!” And asked whether or not the currency note meant that it was for sale. I told her I had no idea, but gave her a phone number that was listed at the bottom of the page, and she hung up on me.

Apparently it was for sale, and Jet called and spoke to the guy responsible for the website. She bought the record, and expressed glee when it arrived in the mail. She spoke at great length about how good it sounded, and swore she would play it for me when I was in town.

That never happened. Although I spent a day with Jet during my Chicago trip, I didn’t actually get to hear the record until I stayed with her during my book-writing excursion in the summer of 2005. It was as good as advertised. It was filled with obtuse structures, jazzy guitar noodles, strange drum rhythms and desperate, barely-there vocals. It sounded almost nothing like the first Slint record to me, but that’s neither here nor there. I think of it as post-punk, not pop. Somewhere between The Fall, Sonic Youth, XTC, maybe Wire or Gang Of Four? I don’t know. In the spirit of the post-punk movement Chorchazade managed to mix tense, moody and darkened songs featuring whispered vocals with lighter, jazzier, sing-songy guitar-based tunes. One thing is certain: everything is off-kilter.

I made it my business to find a copy of my own. I would search every few months for news on Chorchazade. I watched as the Google results expanded from two pages to ten. I finally found a band biography, and when I wrote to the author thanking them for the insight, it turned out to be none other than Noel Lane. Without my even asking, he offered to send me a copy of the Made To Be Devoured LP, and CD-r copies of all the band’s other released/unreleased materials. I was floored. Assured that this was some kind of hoax, I didn’t bother checking my mail for a while, until one day a parcel arrived from the UK. Stunned. The record is in great condition, (Noel warned about the water-damage, but said he sent the best remaining copy he could find) and I listen to the CD-r’s regular. I do have the unreleased Death is Eeklo, but I will save that for another day. For now, enjoy the two Chorchazade releases, Aaah, You Are As Light As A Feather and Made To Be Devoured.