In the wake of the recent news regarding Hard Corps' reissues on Minimal Wave Records, we had the opportunity to connect with one of the founding members of the group, Clive Pierce. He graciously agreed to share insights in an exclusive interview for our blog.
The genesis of Hard Corps dates back to 1983, emerging from years of musical experimentation. The trio of Clive Pierce, Hugh Ashton, and Rob Doran laid the foundation, later joined by the French-born singer Regine Fetet. Their inaugural single, "Dirty," debuted on Survival Records in 1984, followed by two sessions on Richard Skinner's Radio One show. Martin Rushent and Daniel Miller subsequently approached them, collaborating on several singles released in 1985.
Throughout their musical journey, Hard Corps had the privilege of supporting renowned acts such as the Cure and Depeche Mode during their 80s tours. In 1990, the group disbanded after releasing a compilation featuring a diverse array of tracks. This compilation, available on both vinyl and CD with slightly varied track lists, encapsulates most of their discography, including remixes and rare b-sides.
For an in-depth exploration of Hard Corps, including lesser-known facts, influences, details about the recent reissues, and much more, stay tuned for the interview below.
hard CORPS
naturally evolved through the disintegration of a group called Craze around
1979/80 who in turn had morphed from a punk group called The Skunks. I joined
The Skunks towards the tail end of of their life as a drummer. This is where I
met Hugh Ashton and Robert Doran, bass player and sound engineer respectively
for The Skunks. The Skunks were very fortunate to have access to studio
facilities that were in the basement of a house in Brixton that Hugh owned and
when the studio was not being hired out to groups wanting to record demos etc,
we would make very good use of the time either rehearsing, recording or just
experimenting with the equipment there. Unlike many other groups who would just
hire a hall or room to rehearse in, having access to this equipment made us
fearless of embracing new technology that later would see us using the studio
as the instrument rather than the instruments we had stood or sat behind
previously on stage.
Punk was a becoming a parody of itself by this time and to
continue going round being angry at everything was not being felt as strongly
anymore. Here we were, surrounded by these incredible pieces of studio
equipment that commanded something more cerebral from us than just barking at a
world from behind a guitar...a drum kit.. or a microphone and we were more than
curious to drop everything to find out more. To coincide with this new
awakening and to signify a clean start a name change was put in place. The
Skunks were now known as Craze. The sound was a lot more refined but never
without some of the grit and dirt still ingrained in us from the Punk days.
That never entirely leaves you if you have experienced that for real. More of
the environment we were surrounded by came much more into play too. Brixton, in
a suburb of London had and still has a very large Black community and Reggae in
all it's forms was all around us and we could not fail to be influenced by it.
Not blatantly plagiarising it but embracing the ethics within it. For example
never being afraid to stay on a groove to explore it inside out and back again
with out becoming fidgety and plagued by the traditional verse, chorus, middle
eight prison most chart groups found themselves in. Craze continued for a year
or two being signed to Cobra Records an EMI subsidiary label and had two
singles "Motions" and "Lucy" released and an album
"Spartans" which we recorded but was never released before falling
into obscurity by the later collapse of Cobra Records. The two other members of
The Skunks and Craze, Gerry Lambe and Franco Cornelli, decided that enough time
had been invested in trying to make a living out of music and decided to
reluctantly part company and go find fame and fortune elsewhere.
Hugh, Rob and
myself decided to continue but had no desire to form a new group at the time.
We would again when the studio was not working use that time to just jam with
each other often for days on end into the early hours of the morning. It was
like a drug. Not having a vocalist the things we were coming up with were sort
of epic length cinematic soundscapes. I remember one particular night we went
on to about 3 am in the morning...the only thing that finally stopped me was
when I just blacked out and fell off the chair. Thing is the other two didn't
even notice I had stopped playing let alone notice I was on the floor. I think
they carried on for another hour before finally realising something was amiss.
After a while some structures started to appear in these jam sessions and this
was around the time that Hugh to his great expense decided to spend his life
savings or at least part of them on a Roland MC4 Micro Composer and some Roland
System 100m modules. This was a seminal moment for us all. A way of recording
yourself and then getting inside each note's timing and length was just
staggering at the time. This didn't come easy though and would take hours of
numerical editing to get what you wanted along with the sheer terror that if
someone accidentally switched them off or there was a momentary power cut, days
of work would be lost forever. You see they had volatile memories. There was an
optional cassette dump machine that went with them which we acquired later on
when these complete losses of whole chunks of your life were too painful to
bare any longer. The same with the System 100m modules....you could spend a day
getting the sound you wanted only to find that the next morning someone had
moved a fader and your sound was gone forever. The only time you could really
relax was when your sounds were committed to tape. We were lucky that we
possessed a Tascam 16 track 1inch tape machine. By default and necessity we
re-discovered the merits of the vocoder. Up until that time we had been using
it to process the CR78 drum machine but Rob took it upon himself to brave the
problem of putting the human or rather sub human sound of vocals on the
faceless instrumentals we had been coming up with. For a very self conscious
personality I must say he deserves credit for the bottle he showed in trying to
resolve the missing brick in the sound.
At the time we were friends with a chap
who used to hang around us when we were with Craze ,David Porter, and he always
had aspirations of being in a group. Not really being that interested in him as
deep down we knew he was not a natural vocalist, in fact, he couldn't sing at
all really, we never encouraged him to join us however one day he came to see
us with a clutch of Gay Disco and Ital Disco 12 inch tracks he wanted us to
copy to create a backing tape for him that he could use to do some PA's with on
his own. So here we were note for note copying Bobby O tracks and Kano tracks
and Patrick Cowely tracks....it was odd but great fun and a great learning
exercise. The results were rather good I must admit and the week after we had
finished them he had somehow managed to get his first ever gig at the famous
Marquee club in London on the strength of them. He said would we want to come
along for the laugh as his backing group. What the hell we said and just turned
up with the keyboard controllers from the Roland System 100m...they made no
sound in themselves...we didn't even plug a cable into them to create an
illusion that they worked. We only had two of them and Rob had to pretend to
play his parts on top of a Teac cassette deck that was playing the Metal tape
backing tracks. We made no illusion that we were miming and thought that the
audience would see the funny side of it too. They did until after the last
track was mimed out with David Porter singing live vocals. No sooner had he
said thank you and good night the microphone was snatched from his hand from an
irate Fish from Marilion...why he was there that night I have no idea...a
closet Ital disco lover...who knows....anyway he announced to the audience that
we were nothing but a sham...a bunch of fakes..a disgrace to music..he missed
the point completely and anyway we found it rather rich coming from him. His
song Kayleigh has had me running for the sick bowl or the off button whenever
that came on many a time I can tell you. So anyhow this little incident sort of
forged a deeper bond with David as we admired his guts and guile that night
regardless of how badly out of tune he was. We told him to go off and try and
write some lyrics for some of the tracks we had and he came back with two.
"Sacred Heart" and "It will make me Happy" Now it was a
complete nightmare to record a decent performance off him as his timing was all
over the place and his tuning was non existent but he had something in his
lyrics and oddball vocal melodies that struck a chord with us. This was a
layman not a pro singer and some of the unorthodox natural of his performances
fitted very well with the oddball music. We continued for a while with him
until he too found our way of working too frustrating to his plan of being the
next pop sensation his patience and he decided to call it a day to become a
London Taxi driver of all things.
So again we were without a vocalist...not
that we really cared. Then one day and I can't personally recall how Regine
turned up at the door. Apparently a friend of Hugh's told him there was this
French girl who sings but everyone she knows that has a group thinks she is not
very good. Can we give her a chance. So Regine came along armed with this tape
of her in her flat warbling away and hitting objects in the room with stick or
something to create a primitive backing. It was unexpected a bit of a shock
really and was rather hard not to just laugh as this was almost Monty
Pythonesque to the extreme. But beneath the initial shock you would have been
blind not to see that there was something special here in front of us. Not a
polished muso...but something wild, raw and exciting...an urban fox had just
turned up on our doorstep and hard CORPS had found their vocalist.
That is
always a difficult one to answer as aren't we all influenced by everything we
encounter. The ones that I suppose influenced us the most were the dross acts
that permeated the charts in the eighties. Without mentioning any names these
were the groups and artists that we just despised so much that some evenings
when gathered round the TV to watch a music programme it was very hard not to
just get up and put you boot through the TV screen to get rid of some of anger.
If anything these "artists" were the ones to get us back down the
basement studio as quickly as we could to make sure whatever we composed was
nothing like that we had just witnessed on TV.
3. During your musical career, you were associated with great producers Daniel Miller and Martin Rushent. What do you think was missing for the music of Hard Corps to get wider audience it really deserved?
Well thank
you for that comment. I think the main barrier, again, not that we ever
considered it to be one at the time, was to be found lurking inside us all. It
was a conscious unwillingness to comply with what was considered the tried and
tested way to do things. You know we could have made it a lot easier for
ourselves if we had found an English vocalist for a start. but hard CORPS was
never about making easy music....it was about finding another way to do things
that took us places we wanted to be and not the places others expected us to
turn up at. Working with Martin Rushent and Daniel Miller was a real privilege
but it was also rather painful for me at times when somebody picks up your baby
and starts bouncing it around in a manner you wouldn't dare do yourself. You
have to keep telling yourself "this bloke knows what he is doing...let go
,relax and trust. Retrospectively I can now really appreciate what a fantastic
job they both did for us, but at the time, being so close to it all, l I really
wasn't at all comfortable about letting the baby go to any stranger regardless
of who they were.
Well that
is true to a certain extent, actually it was her coat not her shirt. My
reaction to it was rather indifferent. If she wanted to do it, that was her
prerogative. Of course we debated the merit, morality and ramifications of it
in private but ultimately Regine had to be allowed to be herself. I'm sure she
had thought long and hard about it too and decided it was something she felt
she needed to do.
I don't
know whether many people know that to make ends meet she used to work as a peep
show dancer in Soho, London and a good deal of her lyrics were born out of her
experiences during that time...so when she sang on stage about Desolation Land,
For Pleasure etc I can't really blame her for wanting to getting into character
to lend those lyrics a greater realism. Mind you we did suffer the consequences
for her actions and were replaced by Nitzer Ebb for Depeche Mode's USA leg of
The Music For Masses Tour. Martyrs or fools?....both probably.
If you mean
which track I consider to epitomise hard CORPS the most, I would have to say
Metal and Flesh...as it's linear format and structure really was totally free
spirited and intuitive.
Very sadly
Regine is not with us anymore. She passed away in 2003 after battling
ironically with breast cancer. Hugh still resides in his fantastic Victorian
house in Brixton, the spiritual home of hard CORPS. After hard CORPS Hugh was
in SunKings. Rob now resides in Peterborough and enjoyed success penning
advertisement music most notably for Castrol GTX oil amongst others. I live in
Reigate and have been working for the last 20 years in the exhibition industry.
By night you will find me in my studio at home or on location somewhere locked
away in a hotel room polishing up my latest gem.
Yes very
much so. It is not something that can ever leave you. I always question what
the motive and driving force is that keeps me up to the early hours in my home
studio when I should be sleeping. I think I know now and I think most people if
they can be honest with themselves do too. It is the quest to leave behind
sound trinkets that will be proof of my/our existence on this planet long after
we have left in body and soul. Just a small object of beauty, just one little
golden nugget for someone to discover one day. Right now I am part of a project
called Medora.. Not a group but an environment in which to unite grass roots,
raw soul and passion ....We go and find these gems from either resources close
to home or by trawling the Internet absolutely anywhere to locate and take them
back to Medora where we endeavour bring out a little more brilliance in them
and hopefully hone them into a something even more magnificent. You may be
forgiven if you think I may have a slight mental issue the way I talk about
gems, treasure, beauty etc....but for sure it out there just waiting to found.
I know so as I have found several gems already....The girl who sings into her
I-phone on her lunch break, in the bathroom, in the kitchen and just before
going to bed. She sings from deep in her heart and with such passion I have sat
and cried tears of joy listing to her. She is not a wannabee...she is just an
enthusiast. So natural and unforced Then there is the Greek dentist....this
chap just churns out riffs so against the grain and in a way so unique he
doesn't even know how good he is. He is not a professional musician... and that
is what sets him apart from the rest, what he comes up with has an honesty and
an oddball edge that I champion. Then there is Ona/She.....She is not a
vocalist but she can still make a compelling sound and atmosphere when ever she
opens her mouth. Her first ever vocal was the remake of For Pleasure, she had
never ever sang before.....Then there is Phen...Trucker by day music maker by
night. He has never made a record in his life but by god has he taught me a
lot, Then there is Jaymes Fenda....a pop singer from 1964. He is retired
now......like hell he is....he can still croon whenever called into service.
The list goes on and will continue to grow. We definitely are living in a
fantasy world, but that is what music is all about isn't it? We proudly call
our fantasy world "Medora".
I also find
myself being frequently asked to remix other peoples tracks which I absolutely
adore doing.
Well aside
from Kraftwerk's "Computer World" which was an education, My Life in
the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne really was an album I used to
always go back to and learn something new from and Grace Jones " Night
Clubbing".
I must
admit I'd rather make music that spend time listening to it, but when I do
listen to some then Portishead and Dead Can Dance are never far from hand.
Well, it all
came about a year and half ago actually quite by chance. I was just minding my
own Facebook business when up popped a friend request from a Lorene Simpson on
my account that I had just really opened to keep contact with family. She said
she was a fan of hard CORPS and also involved in the Minimal Synth community
while also being one half of a group called Violet Tremors She told me that
hard CORPS tracks were quite often posted up on the Minimal Synth group on
Facebook and she suggested it would be beneficial to myself and to people who
liked hard CORPS, of which she said there were many, to get involved. I must
admit to having never heard of Minimal Synth/ Cold Wave etc nor ever considered
myself or hard CORPS as belonging to any specific genre other than the one we
created for ourselves all those years ago but when investigating some of the
material being passed around could easily see that we were in fact loosely of
that ilk. Lorene's introduction into this arena lead to me being contacted by
Imi Vegh. During a conversation with him I mention hard CORPS had some
unreleased tracks that we planned to release sometime...he said he knew two
people who might be interested in that news and would contact them for us.
Within the space of 10 minutes we had both parties come in with a strong
interest ..one for the hard CORPS back catalogue and the other for the for the
unreleased tracks. For a time it did not seem wrong in least to court them both
but as things developed so the goalposts were starting to be moved...so much so
that at one point they both were almost wanting the same set of tracks. It was
an awful dilemma to be in as we liked both parties. We found ourselves having
to make a very hard and cold decision as to who we were to go with. Some
feelings were badly hurt and it unfortunately looked like we had been playing
one off the other. This was never the case as we even suggested, perhaps
naively, that they both get together on a deal with us. It was an absolutely
impossible situation be in and something we don't want to let happen again. So
here we are today and looking forward to the release of "Clean tables have
to be burnt" that will feature previously released material plus two
tracks that never saw light of day in any format to date.
The album
will be available through Veronica Vasicka's Minimal Wave label, we also have
"Dirty" our first single available on Minimal Wave Tapes Vol2 . A dub
version of Je suis Passee is available on Trevor Jackson's Metal Dance
compilation. The original Metal and Flesh album is available through iTunes.