The Cat & Bells Club [LP]

In 1992, under the guise of the Cat & Bells Club, eighteen-year-old Cheriton residents Graham Lambkin and Darren Harris self-released three tapes—two yellow cassettes and one pink—documenting their earliest musical efforts at S.H.P. studios (Lambkin’s bedroom in his parents’ house). The lowest of all lo-fi recordings, these tracks were laid down live, directly into a boom box with no overdubs. Relieved of their academic expectations and plunged into the workforce, the duo aspired to enter the annals of rock history, making their own primitive teenage overtures to Marc Bolan, the Incredible String Band, Whitehouse, and the Godz. Lyrically and spiritually the Cat & Bells Club had much to do with Bolan’s early Tyrannosaurus Rex project, but with a hyperlocalized Folkestonian twist that nonetheless maintained his penchant for chevaline. While much of the Club’s repertoire comprised free form instrumental try-outs—untuned charity shop guitars and coffee cup drum kits—a number of songs featured Lambkin’s original lyrics, read by both members of the band, dramatizing the comings and goings of anthropomorphic animals and musing abstractly on the minutiae of daily life in Cheriton (their native C-Town).

Tracklist:

1. Cat Thread
2. Father's Dead
3. Salt Would
4. Coffee House
5. Prallo By Window
6. Oak Key
7. Raven Chest
8. Pipe Fly
9. A Fairwell Rive
10. Spanish Donkey
11. C-Town Breeding Ground
12. The Co-Operative
13. Clip Blue Ceap
14. Cave of Ice Cats
15. Theme'ers
16. Kent Custer

UPC: 783970982575
Label: BLANK FORMS EDITION
Release Date: 6.23.23
Format: Vinyl