The Eye Bent Grape Spasm
Who are they?

A reprint of the article by Chelt Grafter - courtesy of the bigfug music archives.

To answer this seemingly simple question we must look back to the heady days of the early nineties when the Internet was still in the realm of the educational establishment and had yet to unravel its slimy tendrils into the home of the common man.

Hardened technophiles still utilised modems but instead of logging onto a faceless corporate network, they created their own home spun version by connecting to other local computers which in turn connected to others forming a global hierarchy of hubs, nodes and points.

Across this network you could send private mail, much like email but it could take days to travel across the world, or join in the many public discussion groups. The main network was called FidoNet, which still exists today, but the same technology allowed thousands of splinter networks to form that focused on specific topics or, as found down in the south coast of England, a local area.

Brought together through Net 441 (the local arm of FidoNet) and PAFOWnet, the soon to be members of the Eye Bent Grape Spasm started to discuss a musical project and collate many of the influences that would later appear on their debut album.

HJ Rock Star had the technical wizardry, an aerial running up the side of his house so he could receive the latest Jungle music from the pirate stations in London, reel-to-reel tape recorders, old drum machines, unlabeled cosmic effect boxes, and an impressive archive of black and white films.

Meester Wheeepy would not normally find himself accepted into the strict definition of 'musician' but the EBGS would blow this rudimentary concept away. His subtle mastery of the stylophone, rich vocal stylings and his savage desire to blow up the viaduct just to see what kind of tone it would have made him a corner stone of the EBGS sound.

'Holiday Inn' May was just a guitar bum, lying in the gutter of adult contemporary stylings and tasty bendy licks and yet he aspired to be at the bleeding, tattered edge of the sonic envelope. Through his association with the EBGS he was able to playfully jostle with the concept of 'wrong note, wrong time' that even 'jazz people' shy away from, and, as heard at the final soaring peak of the album, even transcend the restraints of the guitar's tonality making it sound like a pig being killed... horribly.

Recording started in September 1992 but it would be eight months before the finished album, entitled simply 'Large Scary Nasal Hair', was ready to be unleashed onto an unsuspecting world.

An unexpected fusion of minimal technoid beats, oblique social commentary and deviant musicianship, 'Large Scary Nasal Hair' is a journey through a tri-cortex distortion-o-rama that leaves its listeners weary from being barraged by such constant aurally challenging conceptitudes but at the same time despondent with wonder at why all music isn't just like this...

Chelt Grafter

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