tom fazzini Neck to Neck (180g vinyl LP, £15.75)

Neck To Neck is a head scratching slab of warped primitive synth punk cut by a young Tom Fazzini in exile from a madness inducing tenure as a London postal carrier at Paul Dillon’s Complex Studios. Originally released in 1984 on Gordon A. Hope’s short lived A-mission label (which also included releases by Asmus Tietchens & O Yuki Conjugate), Fazzini’s combination of minimal synth and brutalist/absurdist industrial songs had more in common with the broader discomforts of the early '80s international tape network, Family Fodder, LAFMS, Flying Lizards and Ralph Records than the agit pop that dominated the Leeds music scene at the time. Once an outsider, always an outsider. “The record was made with the backdrop of recovery - a new place to live and a chance at renewal - quite on the edge, lots of anger and the absurdity of life all swirling around. I remember believing at the time that I would probably have a short life, so that desperation fed into the album. First and last chance to maybe say something on record. It took several months to record and each session was a short burst. Towards the end of the recording a welcome sense of levity crept in, spurred on by the ludicrous casio presets. That felt good, given the whole Industrial scene, in the broad sense, was a bit earnest and po-faced. The album title came to me from being familiar with a bar called ‘the swan with two necks’. I imagined Lyn and myself as two separate swans, damaged, their necks entwined and in my mind that poetically offset the industrial harshness within the grooves” - Tom Fazzini.