No Words, No Titles, No Meaning - The World Of Alien Brains

The strange, uncompromising world of Alien Brains, the project led by Nigel Jacklin that helped define the outer edges of the early 1980s DIY cassette underground. Emerging from a school science lab, inspired by John Cage and nurtured by the fledgling cassette network, Alien Brains rejected conventional song structures in favour of pure spontaneity, raw improvisation and a deliberate embrace of failure as an artistic possibility.

The DIY cassette scene of 1979, with its “it's easy, cheap, go and do it” ethos, provided the perfect outlet for these early recordings. Mark Lancaster of The Instant Automatons and Deleted Records recalls encountering Nigel, playing an early gig with him at his school, and releasing the first Alien Brains cassette “Menial Disorders”.

The story takes a notorious turn into the heart of the British public school system. As head of the Rock Society at Oundle School, Nigel invites Throbbing Gristle and Monte Cazazza to perform in the main hall, a collision of avant-garde industrial noise and traditional boarding school culture. We find a recording of Cosey Fanni Tutti sharing her memories of the shock induced by the performance - to teachers and pupils alike. For some it was an outrage; for others, a transformative experience. The concert recordings were released by Industrial Records on VHS and cassette tape.

Richard Rupenus of the New Blockaders recalls finding Deleted Records via an advert in the DIY Corner column of the music paper Sounds, ordering the first Alien Brains release and eventually joining the group. He describes the strange, semi-chaotic Alien Brains performance at The Basement in Newcastle in 1982, where the band added another layer to the experience by introducing pungent smells into the venue’s heating system.

Nigel picks up the thread to talk about working with non-musicians such as Neil Purvis, echoing John Cage’s belief that people without formal training can be freer of inherited constraints. He describes recordings made in unlikely spaces – a disused Second World War water tower, an out-of-tune piano in a Women’s Institute hut – and a string of performances, including a sparsely attended but historically rich show at Centro Iberico on Harrow Road in London, a squatted former school where Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse had previously played. An excerpt from this performance would later appear on the “British Interiors” cassette, with member