D.F.S.celebrates 30th anniversary (1989-2019)

I decided I would revisit and re-release for the first time on CDr since the original cassette-only release in 1989, D.F.S.' first official album - "Dialectically Impotent Thanks To Dogged For Sympathy", as well as offering a "commentary track" (in written format for this post" to commemorate 30 official years of D.F.S., my first solo musical venture after a couple of years fo playing around with bands.


THE EARLY YEARS (pre-D.F.S.)


In 1987 I was one of the three founding members of a high school band which we called Voice In The Attic, for Chris' drum set and Martin's bass were located in the attic of Martin's parents' home on the South shore of Montréal.


We all came from different backgrounds and all had different musical tastes but wanted to play in a band so we decided "what the heck" and just had fun. I think our set was 6 to 8 songs which included a cover of Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead", the only song in which Martin would sing lead and I would do nothing at all. The line-up for 1987-1988 was as follows:
Christoph Evalek (Christian Robitaille): drums and lead vocals
Martin Belzile: bass, background vocals, lead vocals on "Bela Lugosi's Dead"
Alex Wheill: synthesizer


We did a gig at a youth center for mainly Young hardcore punks, so after our set we just improvised thrash stuff real fast to allow them to thrash amongst themselves.


Sometime in 1988 Chris recruted a real female singer who was new to our high school that year, and she took over lead vocals for a few practices and one mini-concert at our high school.


After that Chris and I went our seperate ways; he sold his drums and bought a synthesizer, as did I, and we started doing synth-pop flavored songs as we tried to get into the Skinny Puppy-Front 242-Frontline Assembly sound. Our first tape, the 90-minute long "Do You Love?" served as a double album which included all sorts of tracks both from our Voice In The Attic days, to slow ballads (sic), to complete ridiculous nonesensical jokes ("We Are The Popcorn" was a particular standout).


It was on our second "album" that we started having a "crunchier" sound, closer to what I wanted with the project, and what I also thought was Chris' prefered direction at the time... or so I thought. I forget the name of that tape, but it was also at the time we attempted to record a proper demo tape on a four-track using Chris's friends' equipment and studio, which led to a horrible sounding demo where some of our tracks lost their unique flavor. He would sometimes leave his bulky synth at my place back then as well as our "Sequential Drumstracks" drum-machine which tended to overheat during prolonged power up. It was during this time that I started doodling and noodling around as a "solo" project whenever I had time and Chris was busy doing stuff elsewhere.


I started working on the first D.F.S. pièces during mid-late 1988 simultaneously as we were working on another "album" on tape which was to be called "God's Dilemna". Chris became less available, perhaps more interesting in spending time with his lady friends in intimate scenarios, and his interest in our "aggro-dust-industrial" sound was being replaced with that of 70s-80s prog-rock. We did do a few house basement shows and at least one high-school mini show as "Tome IV" (the band name we had agreed upon when leaving "Voice In The Attic"), and I did find a copy of an old 1/4inch tape of one of those shows somewhere in my huge cassette stash. I would like to digitalize it because it is the only real Tome IV recording I actually have: Chris kept all our Tome IV original tapes.


D.F.S. : The beginnings


I will need to get back to Chris for around 1990 or so he conned me into playing a concert meant to promote him, using money he owed me as hostage. He'd take both new songs, covers, and even Tome IV tracks he would translate into french lyrics, because singing in french was becoming a big thing back then, apparently. Anyway, it was a horrible experience. So back to D.F.S.


I started working on what would be D.F.S. in 1988, first by trying out an improvised industrial-flavored song which would turn into "Dementia (Glass Shadows)" later on. I know there are a few takes including the intrumental version somewhere, but again I need to sit through a ton of old tapes.


"Messe Noire", "Cipher", "Calm On Valium"
The first three track from what would later become the "Dialectically Impotent Thanks To Dogged For Symptahy" were used using Chris's "Juno-something" synthesizer with it's onboard 16-step sequencer, the over-heating "Sequential Circuits" drum machine, a small Casio sampler (the one everyone had in the 80s and early 90s), and a tape machine. All three tracks were essentially recorded live direct to the cassette master, except for background tapes which would play underneath as I would play the songs. All three pièces were essentially improvised on the spot, usually just practiced one or two times before hitting the record button. They weren't supposed to be any "good" as these were essentially primitive ideas never meant to overshadow the Tome IV material which was still, at the time, the main project.


"Messe Noire" was sung in french, as I had written some lyrics which I felt weren't relevant to the Tome IV material but also were maybe too "personnal to be sung by someone else. It was originally meant to be "re-recorded" with a secondary track, a technique Chris and I were using extensively on the Tome IV material, which basically consisted of recording the track on a cassette, then taking that cassette and playing it back on another tape player which was plugged in our mixer which our gear and microphone, and recorded onto another cassette while we would play and sing along with the pre-recorded tape, hence the two-track technique. This was also why I used to call the pre-Wreck Age label "Half-Trak" because we couldn't even afford a 4-track recorder. I remember experimenting above the two-tracks, but any additional tracking meant the sound quality would become unbearable to listen to.


"Cipher" was a product of attempting to re-create the result of "Messe Noire" but with a different song "texture" of sorts. It was recorded in exactly the same manner and also on the same day, also using background tapes which were put together in quite a haste, to be honest. The lyrics are both in french and English, which felt normal to me at the time since I was quite fluent in both and I had just been exposed to The Young Gods, so maybe that could have been an inspiration. the out-of tuned chord "hits" were made on purpose as I wanted these to be "noisy" and not melodic at all, but I had some limitations in terms of useable sounds, and like "Messe Noire", "Cipher" was supposed to have the second track treatment.


"Calm On Valium" was a little melodic instrumental which may have been inspired by the softer stuff I was into at the time, like the Legendary Pink Dots or something. I don't recall exactly why I did this piece - maybe I wanted something softer to follow up the two previous "crunchier" tracks. The main melody was played on that Casio mini sampler which was not quite tuned to the keyboard, as is an actual sample of my voice if memory serves me right. It always was a little out of place when looking back upon it, but this was also done during the Tome IV days where were would sometimes do these "softer" almost ballad-like pièces to balance out the rest of the tracks. Ah those glorious days of feeling tht we had to adhere to a specific format!


I recall that after "Calm On Valium" I had recorded more material on that tape, including stuff with my long time friend Dave (who was never a musician in any capacity) but I had deemed those pièces way too horrid to remain, so I proceeded to record over the rest of the tape (!!!) with the remaining D.F.S. material which would round up the first album.


D.F.S. : It's on now!

"Apollonius" was recorded in 1989 using the two-track method, and was one of the very first official D.F.S. pièces "officially" crafted under the name D.F.S., as by this time I knew I was on this project in an official capacity, the strained relationship with Chris becoming worse with every meeting )meaning of course that Tome IV was on the verge of being no more, or was very freshly broken-up).


"Premium Fighter" starts off with some kind of fade-in like effect which was provided by the original tape being damaged and phasing into itself before settling at the proper volume. This was the first time I used the "26" sound on my Akai synth, and far from the last. Two sounds on my Akai synth are my "go to" sounds whenever I work on a bass line and a pad melody/accompaniement: "75" for the bass as it is this side's near perfect sequenced electronic bass sound (not used on this track) and "26" for those ethereal pad-like dreamy chords. Like "Apollonius", the sequenced bass was played using the live arpegiator function on the Akai synth. "Premium Fighter" was meant to compliment and continue where "Apollonius" left off, which was more song-oriented structure rather than pure aggro-dust-industrial.


"Dementia (Glass Shadows)" was the first real D.F.S. track ever, recorded before "Messe Noise" and "Cipher", but using that two-track method, recorded in 1988. This was the best cut/version of the piece and served principally as a grounded root of what D.F.S. was supposed to be, originally. I always was my favorite of this first album and always was what I was trying to copy or improve upon with the rest of the tracks, without attempting to over-carbon-copy it. It was recorded using Chris's synthesizer and 8-step sequencer, as well as that infernal over-heating drum machine.


"Faces In The Water" was another one of those LPD (Legendary Pink Dots) inspired "slow" pièces, originally meant to give the listener a "break" of sorts after the rather exhaustive beat sequences of the previous three songs. Chris and I had done a few similarly themed pièces as Tome IV ("Blue Water" was one piece I had written in 1988 for Tome IV) and I thought I could pull it off myself as well. It has it's naive charm in a way, sort of like trying out a different speed on your new bike. D.F.S. was still a new baby project back then so I allowed myself a few stylistic experiments with a varying degree of results. In the end it is far from a stand-out piece from the album, but serves it's purpouse nonetheless. It was recorded in 1989.


"The Multi-Station" was originally meant to wake the listener up from the coma induced by the previous piece, and again it is a hit or miss scenario of a piece, which I recall was put together quite quickly without much thought put into it. It was meant principally to re-shift the album back into a proper rhythm, but it was not done so without a clear idea which lead to this being a rather forgettable track. "The Multi-Station" was an excuse to use both my newly bought Akai AX-60 synthesizer as well as a beat pattern I had been toying on for a while. I also wanted to do a double-vocal thing which did not turn out as well as would have thought, but at least it was done and recorded in all it's embarassing glory! The use of a flute (recorder) doing a cacaphonous non-melody which bringes the main singing verses into the drum pattern changes was a conscious decision to not actually play the flute(recorder) in any real musical capacity, something I remember having seen done live and wanted to try out for myself, since I was so limited in my musical instruments.  Interesting to note however that a few albums later (1991's "Mind Altering Substance") some elements of this track would seep into that of the piece "Station 108", and I can see it now with 30 years of being removed from these recordings, but I had never seen the link before. This song also was recorded in 1989


There was not a whole lot of tape left on the cassette and so it came time to finish it off. I had heard a few beat-less more ambient-like experiments on albums by Frontline Assembly (pre-Delirium) and Skinny Puppy, and so decided that that was the way to go to finish off my album. "Forecast 1" was originally meant to be the first in what I thought would be all ending pièces to my subsequent albums (so for my second album it would finish with "Forecast 2", "Forecast 3" for the third, etc.), but as fate would chance it, it would remain, to this day, the only "forecast" in the Wreck Age catalogue! It was also my first accidental brush with minimalism but I felt it could work (I did always had the option to come up with something else and record over it if I did not like it) - using background tapes obviously culled from a VHS of John Carpenter's "Prince Of Darness", which I felt had a lot of potential as background narrative and spoken word, not to mention that awesome "dream from the future" series of sequences. I would then play very minimal chords on my Akai just to augment and compliments the background tapes, and the whole piece was essentially recorded live as a semi-improvided bit. Perhaps it would have fit better with the then yet unexistant ARCHangel project, and was the last piece recorded in 1989 before the purchase on my Mirage sampler and Korg SQD-1 sequencer later that year.

"Dialectically Impotent Thanks To Dogged For Sympathy" is not a great album and for a while I was ashamed of it. It did not have a decent sampler, and was more "tape"-based than sample-triggered. There was severe limitations with effects as I did not have any pedal effects, nor did I have a proper sequencer which meant the pieced were basically held up by the drum machine patterns and the chords played on the arpegiator off the Akai meanst to emulate that sequenced bass all aggro-dust stuff at the time was "supposed" to have. I remember once summer/autumn going to my dead end student job back in those days which I was recording this album at home that I was basically doing it to make music for myself, to make music that I wanted to listen to, as too much music back then (long before the days of networking and the internet) was just very dissapointing to me: industrial aggro was becoming fluffier and underground music as it stood was becoming more commercial, less aggressive.


In 2017, it was the 30th anniversary of my very first song, "To Be A Machine", originally recorded with Voice In The Attic in 1987 and then re-used and re-adapted continuously by Tome IV, become a staple of sorts in our sets and whatnot, leading it to not being re-done by myself as a solo artist. I had planned to do a 2017 re-visiting of the piece but every attempt I made made it sound either kitchy, or a cheap re-hashing of something I had already done numerous times in the past, so the idea was scrapped after a few attempts. When 2019 reared it,s ugly head, I recalled two things: this was the year of Blade Runner, and it was 30 years since my first "official" release as both a solo artist, and as D.F.S., a project which would last all those years. including two lost albums ("Phase 2: Recloned" originally meant for a 1999 release but original sound data discs were lost, and "Threat To The Human Race", which suffered a similar fate when band members Simon Sinistar and Atmospheh-rhycxx decided to pursue other ventures), a few shows, some mild soundtrack appearances, and a lot of démos and tests in the piles and piles of audio cassettes in my posession.


30 years later and I am still working on D.F.S. material, although the sound has shifted and mutated quite a bit since it's original incarnation.


Looking for additional material from the era has left me stumped. I wanted to add some more goodies to the digitalization of "Dialectically Impotent Thanks To..." but I seem to be left short in terms of material that old. On the week of January 21st (or so) 2019 I unearthed another box filled with old cassette goodies and I am in the process of goinf through them to find out what little niblets lie within. So far nothing as old as the first D.F.S. release, save for a live set of Töme IV we did in someone's basement one night, and a half erased track from what was to be our third of fourth cassette "album". So far as I continue to dive deeper in the "@nal5" of analogue memories I have yet to unearth anything of the era which would be proper bonus material or such for the re-release.


I did find however a lot of demos and out-takes, trials and unfinished ideas ranging between the "Sick" days ("Sick" and "Sick 2nd Edition" were the second album by D.F.S., both master tapes stolen decades ago making these "lost" albums) up until the "Threat To The Human Race" days (another lost album, this one from 2000-2001-2002 or so). I also found a completelly unmarked tape which sounds both familiar and completelly alien, which be the infamous lost A.K.A.inc. E.P. entitled "The A, B, C's Of Noise" which was out first and only real multi-track studio experiments from early 1993 or so, but since the music/noise sounds unlike anything I can identify, it could also be something else entirely. Anyway do stay tuned!
UPDATE:
Sadly, as I am continuing to unearth and re-listen to old cassettes from the archives, I am still not finding any material dating back from the "Dialectically Impotent Thanks To..." era. The oldest I found so far (as of Febuary 12 2019) was a track called "The Military Complex", which was obviously recorded in and around the 1989 era, but was actually used as a song for the second D.F.S. album "Sick" - this track was probably recorded right after "Dialectically Impotent Thanks To..." just before the aquisition of the Mirage DSK sampler and the Korg SQD-1 sequencer, and was therefore used for "Sick" even though it has all the failings and primitive-ness of the first album.