Howl In The Typewriter Manifesto: A Universal Declaration of Indespendence CD
So far as I can tell, HOWL IN THE TYPEWRITER have been a mainstay of the UK underground punk/electronic/noise scene since the ’80s. Indeed, I probably traded tapes with this chap back in the days when that’s what any self-respecting/somewhat self-aware young punker did with their time and dole money. Like many such projects, it’s the brainchild and labor of love of one individual. And this effort is a single-track concept album about the evils of consumerism, advertising, and all the bad stuff betwixt both. Clocking in at just over an hour, and with a mishmash of stylings that includes thrashy punk, noise, and electronica; with lots of cut-ups, loops, jingles, adverts and stuff in between songs, it’s considerably more akin to CRASS’s Yes Sir, I Will than NOFX’s The Decline or the SUBHUMANS’s From the Cradle to the Grave (or even the DAMNED’s “Curtain Call”), but there you have it. Dozens of other underground luminaries add their vocal stylings to the oft-repeated refrain that runs through: “We don’t fucking want / what you’re trying to fucking sell / shove it up your fucking arse / then fuck off and go to hell.” At its best, it reminds me of CHUMBAWAMBA’s Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records, along with the AUTONOMADS. My six-year-old kids thought it sounded “pretty crazy.”