The Systematics What we did in the afternoons (TU-134)

I was a Systematics fan from the second release, though I would have been one from the first. Hard to imagine an Australia that was so provincial, in the sense not of being one large province but a number of them, that an independent band’s first single basically could not get out of the city from whence it originated, but I’m pretty sure that’s what happened to the Systematics’ single ‘Pulp Baby’; I didn’t see or hear the record until about five years ago, and I’ve seen things. The second release was a 12” EP called Rural, and it was extraordinarily (literally) diverse, showing pretty much the limits of what two wry Sydney men (Patrick Gibson had been the only member of the ‘Pulp Baby’ band; he was then joined by Michael Filewood) could do with a four-track, a guitar and a synthesiser. They were sick (just as ‘Pulp Baby’, as its title might suggest, was sick) with their songs ‘When I’m Older’ and ‘Numbers in General’; they were dextrously tuneful with their instrumental ‘Dinner’s on the Table’; they were outrageously (literally) obscure with fauxk tunes like ‘Stuh Echipidah’; they weren’t cool, in fact the whole thing might have been regarded as a proud wank, but much of it was highly listenable. They added a member in Fiona Graham and their next release was another EP – a 7” this time – called My Life in the Field of Cows, with funny songs like ‘Bovine’. And that was it (or rather, one member, Patrick Gibson, left and Michael Filewood, Michael Tee and Fiona Graham became Ya Ya Choral, a group with a whole weird history of its own). The Systematics were a part – a formative part – of the M2 record label, which issued about ten records of varying quality bound to divide opinion. If there was a label sound it was probably partly because there was a label studio, and synthesisers record better to four track than guitars (and because they had a niche there). This sumptuous double LP collects the whole world of the Systematics with one disc of the official vinyl releases (not the cassette releases, though M2 did do some – there was a ‘Rural side 3’, for instance, and a live compilation called Box Brownies which was ¼ Systematics) and a second of demos and etcetera. There are a number of ways one might approach this material; the way I’d be most interested in, I suspect, though probably because it’s the one I’m least able to imagine or take on, is what one might make of it today having never heard any of the material before and, even better, having little understanding of or familiarity with late 1970s/early 1980s independent pop-‘electronic’ (as Patrick Gibson points out in his sleevenotes, a very problematic and probably quite lazy descriptor) music. My memory of this kind of thing was that it – not just most of the M2 material, but contemporaneous international things like Throbbing Gristle (particularly their pop end), Fad Gadget, men-only Human League, perhaps even Suicide, was that its very existence seemed like a brash challenge. Synthesisers were regarded with suspicion in some quarters (until they sounded sufficiently like ‘real instruments’ that they could be used secretly) and – just like sampling a few years later – were seen as, somehow, a cheat. To my mind the Systematics demonstrably engage with this all the way: a number of their songs (‘Pulp Baby’, ‘International Voltage’) are about electrics (as opposed to electronics); Patrick Gibson’s (it is usually he, I think) vocals are affected and over the top ‘showbiz’ parodic. The mere act of recording synthesiser music with mistakes deliberately left in (and not just pushing-the-wrong-key mistakes – towards the end of ‘Numbers in General’, Gibson announces he’s finished the vocal track, things like that) and then releasing it on a permanent, forever, unchangeable vinyl record was a statement of its time. In these ways the Systematics were very 1980, and even if you really like experimental music of a particular epoch (like me, in this case) you might well ask, as so many people so often do, why should I have to learn about a milieu to enjoy its artefacts? Then again, perhaps my knowledge/ memories mask for me the fact that much of this stuff is, on its own terms, quite remarkable. I can’t know!!!

On the other hand, there are some things I can know, and indeed some things I only really appreciate now I am listening to this material again in a new form. That is, the Systematics – whatever incarnation – really had a way with a tune. ‘International Voltage’ is a really fine punk rock workout, like the Buzzcocks in its rock-pop simplicity; ‘When I’m Older’ is a jaunty, thudding recording the first thirty seconds of which are simple (accidental?) genius; ‘Midnight on Balancing Day’ is just a plain old catchy ballad in the best mid-70s way. ‘Pulp Baby’ is too long, but it is a great song. Even when the words are overly jokey-throwaway (‘Golden Age’, ‘Going to War’, ‘Hippie Happening’ – a lot of songs that weren’t released the first time around, in fact) the music is a grouse combination of the very obvious and the unusually skewed, a simple formula but how could it not work?! Something I have never really grown out of is the fine, trebly, crystalline sound of the late 1970s drum machine. Gibson, in his sleevenotes (presented here in a sweet booklet) discusses, amusedly, the difference between M2 and their main Sydney rivals/co-‘electronic’-ists Terse Tapes: it all comes down to Roland vs. Korg, apparently. Like the synths themselves, a drum machine went down to tape easily and sounded so fine, people seemed to like to give it greater prominence than they might an ‘ordinary’ drummer (perhaps there were just no rules; perhaps it naturally sticks out more because it’s repetitive and propulsive. Whatever. It (and the very nice mastering on this reissue, generally) makes the songs sound aggressive and fragile at the same time. Nothing wrong with that. Limited edition of 500. Available from Round and Round