Edinburgh at the turn of the 1980s must have been some place to be for a dedicated underground music fan. Let’s face it, any city that can boast The Fire Engines, The Associates and Josef K as the bands at the forefront of its’ cultural evolution deserves serious degrees of respect, so if your reviewer were to be given the option of carte blanche with a time machine, this would surely be one location and timeline he’d set the controls for the heart of.
Much as your correspondent loves both The Fire Engines and Associates, though, it’s always JOSEF K he would choose if given the choice of this holy triumvirate. Named after the paranoid, condemned anti-hero from Franz Kafka’s classic novel, ‘The Trial’ and seemingly equally disconcerted by life’s machinations, JK comprised Paul Haig (vocals, guitar), Malcolm Ross (guitar/ vocals), Davey Weddell (bass) and drummer Ronnie Torrance. They were resolutely anti-rockist in stance, never played encores, favoured dark suits and sharp haircuts over regulation Punk-related glad rags and were pathologically opposed to all ideas of “selling out”: a stance they maintained through a short, but perfectly-formed 2 and a half years’ existence, splitting up just as more mainstream acceptance beckoned in August 1981.
Signed to Alan Horne’s influential Scottish indie, Postcard Records, Josef K were label mates of Glasgow’s celebrated Orange Juice and the nascent Aztec Camera, featuring a then callow 16-year old singer/ songwriter called Roddy Frame. They recorded a string of classic singles, one debut album that should have been (‘Sorry For Laughing’), flirted with Belgian label Les Disques du Crepuscule and released their ‘official’ debut album ‘The Only Fun In Town’ only to promptly split, leaving behind an exceedingly good-looking corpse and a slim, but magnificent back catalogue which has since been kept alive thanks to labels like James Nice’s LTM and Horne disciple Alan McGee’s Rev-Ola imprint.
So all credit to Domino, as the excellent, 22-track ‘Entomology’ retrospective collects virtually everything brilliant that JK recorded under one roof and presents us with a lovingly-compiled and lavishly-packaged compilation which acts as the perfect compendium for devotees and newcomers alike. It showcases a band whose sound virtually single-handedly invents the term ‘angularity’, but whose playfulness and occasional irreverence (they sometimes wore paisley shirts and had a ‘psychedelic’ lightshow to counteract accusations of being “depressing”) belied the fact that they were far more than simply a Scottish Television/ Joy Division (delete as applicable).
Ultimately, the gorgeous, disciplined racket Josef K made was very much of their own making. In Paul Haig, they had an incredibly charismatic frontman, blessed with a fantastic edgy croon and a breathtaking ability with strum-stun rhythm guitar. On duelling lead guitar was Malcolm Ross, alternatively tasteful and vicious of fret board (and the man who Edwyn Collins would later poach for Orange Juice when K split), while in rhythm section Davey Weddell and Ronnie Torrance, Josef K had one of the most fluid and exciting – and under-celebrated - rhythm sections ever to grace British independent music.
All four made telling contributions to K’s sound and between them carved out a series of truly classic singles. All of these are featured here and include the stark, skittery and militant ‘Radio Drill Time’, the strident and bracing ‘Sorry For Laughing’ and the incendiary urgency of ‘The Missionary’. Often, K’s songs would be frenetic and full-on, but sometimes their singles introduced a more considered approach, not least the great ‘Chance Meeting’ with its’ loping tempo, piano and brass and the wondrously dreamy ‘It’s Kinda Funny’, which – to this writer’s ears – remains K’s finest achievement of all.
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These singles – coupled with multiplying critical acclaim and a tremendous live reputation – ensured that K had the potential to crossover to a much larger audience when they recorded what should have been their debut LP, ‘Sorry For Laughing’ towards the end of 1980 with engineer Calum Malcolm at Edinburgh’s Castle Sound studios. Why the album never made the light of day at the time seems mystifying now, as it sounds nigh on perfect. It transpires the band were happy with the results when recording, but when they heard it later, decided it was too polished and wanted something that represented their live sound more fully. Thus, the project was shelved, though the cream of the album is now available via ‘Entomology’ and, well, if you can find fault with tracks like the sinewy and tense ‘Heads Watch’, the film noir intrigue of the wonderful ‘Variation Of Scene’ and ‘Endless Soul’ with Ross’s marvellous clarion call guitar work…well, you’re a better person than me.
It’s always at this point in the story that seasoned K fans wonder whether their story would have been different had ‘Sorry For Laughing’ been released when scheduled, but instead the band headed for Brussels in the spring of 1981 and recorded their ‘official’ debut album ‘The Only Fun In Town’. Darker and more abrasive in feel and recorded very ‘live’ in the studio (with Haig’s voice sometimes mixed unnecessarily low), it was unfairly dismissed by many critics at the time, yet – with hindsight – tracks like ‘Fun’n’Frenzy’, ‘Crazy To Exist’ and ’16 Years’ – where Weddell’s off-kilter, melody-hugging bassline eggs them on and Haig, Ross and Torrance wobble around like epileptic gyroscopes – now sound like some of their very best.
As if to tantalise us, ‘Entomology’ concludes with three of the four tracks K recorded for the John Peel show in June 1981. These tunes capture a band on fire artistically, and the lethal versions of ‘Heaven Sent’ and ‘The Missionary’ are nigh on perfect, while – somehow fittingly – the collection signs off with a weirdly poppy and accessible cover of (of all things) Alice Cooper’s ‘Applebush’. But then, somehow that’s perfectly in tune with Josef K’s sometimes wilful perversity and (under-rated) sense of humour. Sorry for laughing indeed.
Of course it’s easy to wonder “what if?” Josef K hadn’t abruptly split up as the summer of 1981 wound down, but they’d always intended to burn briefly and brightly and collectively had never intended to continue beyond two albums at most. ‘Entomology’s contents have since gained in influence and when you’ve heard this you’ll soon realise we’d never have Franz Ferdinand, We Are Scientists and many more of their ilk if it wasn’t for this lot.
Still the Young Sound of Scotland, then? Yeah. You’d better believe it.
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