[the] Mudguards

[The] Mudguards - On Guard
Horn of Plenty. HOP1. LP
250 copies.


Hey, hey we’re the Mudguards! Said nobody ever. Maybe because [the] Mudguards were an obscure politically motivated Art Noise duo working out of London’s East End whose mantra was ‘the commodification of dissent’ and not some goofy Yank pop quartet with perfect teeth and a TV show to their name. This being ‘81 to ’93 and greed is good and the miners strike, Greenham Common, The Falkland’s war, the Poll Tax riots and all manner of social unrest and upheaval. This being Thatcher’s Britain and Reagan’s America. A miserable time that resulted in many an effective cultural response.

[The] Mudguards being a collective built around Nelson Bloodrocket and Reg Out who drew influence from ‘quintessential English working class entertainment’ hence tracks like ‘Any Old Irony’ that sounds like The Residents after six pints in The Old Bull and Bush. They built kinetic sound sculptures from scrap metal produced sounds from vintage audio equipment and circuit bent electronics [long before ‘circuit bent electronics’ became a household name] and collaborated with noisemakers [information is hard to come by], they appropriated [squatted?] empty housing in which to perform and I’ve never heard of them.

Probably because they never released anything. Horn of Plenty [the label that used to be Vittelli] have done a sterling job of collating an albums worth of material as recorded between 1983 and 1988, expect bleak proto Industrial bleat, speeded up spoken word samples, tape echo, electric guitars going through reel to reel tape decks, rockin’ synth blurt. The two longer tracks on side two is where they work best with the bleak Industrial landscape that is Theme From The Big Trigger sitting cheek by grotty jowl with On Guard, an absurdist spoken word parp-a-thon anthem of sorts with added dog barks courtesy of an analog synth. I’m quite liking the fact that the Cockney sing-a-long classic Any Old Iron becomes a morose ur zombie-esque reverse knees up [knees down?] and that Birthday Smile is all grubby Industrial churn with heavy nods towards Throbbing Gristle who I suppose we have to make comparison with even if only tenuously.

How the Mudguards have escaped my attention all these years is bugging me. Obscurants obviously and covered in a shroud of secrecy that evades even the depths of several internet search engines. Maybe their activism ran deeper than covering old music hall songs and hosting the odd sound installation [the inside sleeve shows a particularly interesting example of this with a pair of ghetto blasters atop a pair of forward facing ladders, a sound horn on a turntable of sorts atop two tables separating them] maybe they got erm ... involved? The sleeve notes by Johnny Cash-Converter are good and helpful but we need to know more. And hear more.

https://www.lowcompany.co.uk/products/on-guard