ANTIPOISON - Happy Monoculture EP 1987

Side A
00:00 Aquadome
03:33 The Grip
07:27 Poison Love
Side B
10:10 Senses Unlocked
12:46 Breathing down my neck
16:52 Black Crow
Here are the Happy Monoculture sessions and artwork, as promised these dry mixes from the sessions are much better than the released cassette version. I'm putting these songs up here in the EP format as they were recorded, with our original artwork and photos by my surfing mentor and art school buddy Lester Clarke.

Bad Karma and Antipoison, from the BDMN demos, got thrown together with this EP for the Happy Monoculture cassette release on Funnel Web records. The proof we were the heaviest band that never was is in Ben's Black Crow, reworked from Bob Dylan's Black Crow Blues, it's a good name for a band too. Might I say some nice guitar work there.

The Dreamtime mixes were soaked in reverb and the mastering on the test pressing was so bad we wanted to remaster it, but before we knew anything it was released on cassette with Ben's Iron Man t-shirt artwork on the cover, looking like a bootleg. Label mates Stake Cave had the same cassette artwork format, black on burnt orange. I'm gonna post the cassette version for your comparisons.

Tony from Dreamtime who had a record shop on Barkly st St Kilda wanted to dress the vinyl record cover up with some gimmicky frills, which really didn't fit the tone of the band. His idea was more along the lines of 'The Grip', (Ben's ode to auto-erotic asphyxiwhatchamacallit) than 'Antipoison', the lyric sheet appears on the vid at 05:20.

Ben's inner sleeve design of the Iron Man can be found at 10:42 and the back cover at 15:55

Vince Melzak: Guitar, Vocal
Ben Ling: Bass, Vocal
David Leslie: Drums, Backing Vocal
Artwork: Ben Ling Vini Melzak
Photos: Lester Clarke
Layout: Pete Bennett & Michelle Hu
Copyright: A V Melzak 1987, 2024
ISRC AU-A2F-24