Adored and detested in equal measures, Cardiacs defied classification; and their expansive line-up included musicians who proceed to play main roles in trendy progressive music. Tim Smith’s brother Jim, William D Drake, Kavus Torabi and others look again – and supply an replace on their long-awaited ultimate studio album, LSD.
A packed Hammersmith Odeon, December 13, 1984. Awaiting their heroes, Marillion followers are rising more and more impatient with assist act Cardiacs, a bunch of outliers led by the charismatic Tim Smith. Sporting horrible make-up and customised bandsmen uniforms, neither they nor their deliriously unclassifiable music goes down nicely with the Marillion hardcore, who’ve begun to hurl insults and objects.
Cardiacs are used to hostility, having been on the highway with the neo-prog giants since early November; however tonight is especially vicious. Fish, appalled at what he’s seeing, feels compelled to intervene. He marches onto the stage to reprimand his personal followers: “When you don’t prefer it, fuck off to the bar and allow them to get on with their set!”
“The folks on the entrance actually hated it; they had been shouting over us,” recollects Cardiacs’ then-keyboardist William D Drake. “However we had been revelling in it. At one level, somebody spat at Sarah Smith, our saxophone participant, so Tim kicked this man within the mouth, completely completely in time to the music.
“Marillion’s administration ended up cancelling the previous couple of gigs – however afterwards we obtained a number of letters from individuals who had been actually into us, who’d found us on that tour. Fish was a giant fan. He used to come back and see us on the Marquee.”
Such a polarised response wasn’t unusual for Cardiacs. Their music tended to encourage both fervent devotion or intense loathing. Nothing was off limits. Bizarre and experimental one second, brash and excitable the subsequent, with a passion for leaping time signatures, they alchemised prog, punk, pop and psychedelia right into a spectacular sound.
“When Cardiacs got here alongside, I realised that’s what I’d been searching for,” says Kavus Torabi, a disciple lengthy earlier than he joined as guitarist in 2003. “Seeing them stay was sort of a scorched-earth factor. After that there was simply no going again to regular rock’n’roll.”
He wasn’t alone in his sentiments. In 1993, drummer Bob Leith joined up, reuniting with guitarist Jon Poole, his former ally in prog-pop band Advert Nauseam. Each had been already dedicated followers. “After I noticed them for the primary time it was like, ‘Fucking hell – that’s my new favorite band!’” Leith remembers. “Earlier than they’d even performed a notice, that they had this presence. Jon and I hardly missed a gig for the subsequent two or three years. We had been obsessed.”
Cardiacs issued 5 studio albums below Smith’s management – which could seem to be a comparatively meagre return over 30 years. However consider quite a few EPs, singles and rarities compilations, plus offshoots like The Sea Nymphs, Spratleys Japs and Panixphere – and it constitutes a sizeable physique of labor. Regardless of brushing the UK Singles Chart with 1988’s magnificent Is This The Life, Cardiacs by no means rose above cult standing. But they’ve been cited as influential by Blur, Radiohead, Mike Patton, Steven Wilson, Opeth and Andy Partridge.
It’s tempting to think about the band’s surreal pageant of melody and dissonance was born in a vacuum. However each band have their roots in one thing or different. In Smith’s case, prog ran deep: Henry Cow, Egg and early Genesis had been amongst his key inspirations. “Tim launched me to Mild Big, Gryphon and Gong’s Angel’s Egg and Flying Teapot,” recollects schoolfriend Mark Cawthra, who joined the band – then known as Cardiac Arrest – as drummer in 1979.
“PFM as nicely. And King Crimson’s Starless And Bible Black. Once you take heed to Cardiacs, it sounds loopy that he’d by no means heard Zappa at that stage. The primary album I took spherical was We’re Solely In It For The Cash, then Apostrophe. He was hooked after that. He beloved Zappa.”
Devo, The Residents and XTC additionally fed into Cardiac Arrest, fashioned in Kingston upon Thames in 1977. The preliminary line-up featured singer Michael Pugh, drummer Peter Tagg, Smith, and his older brother, Jim, on bass. In keeping with their fortunately unreliable folklore, Tim solely fashioned the band to actual revenge on Jim for all of the unkind issues he’s carried out to him as a toddler. The thought was to play unpalatable, unpopular music and due to this fact humiliate his older sibling.
Workmates had been excited that I had a file out… They purchased it, then nobody ever spoke about it once more
Peter Tagg
“It was a brotherly relationship – let’s put it that approach,” laughs Jim, who would discover himself topic to low-level bullying onstage. “Again then, Cardiacs was extra of a passion and amusing. Nevertheless it step by step grew to become one thing else fairly organically. Tim exerted his writing prowess on every little thing.”
They had been nonetheless billed as Cardiac Arrest for 1979’s debut single, A Bus For A Bus On The Bus, its title a riff on the Moms’ A Pound For A Brown On The Bus. “I labored at Norwich Union on the time and many workmates had been excited that I had a file out,” Tagg recollects. “Fairly just a few of them purchased the one, then nobody ever actually spoke about it once more! I assume they didn’t prefer it, however we had been simply doing what we needed to do. It was by no means about attempting to suit into something.”
As Smith’s songwriting developed, so too did his preparations. Sarah Cutts joined Cardiacs within the second half of 1980, elevating the sound to a different degree. “She was a giant catalyst,” believes Cawthra. “We didn’t have any polyphonic keyboard in any respect till she arrived and stumped up the cash for a string machine.”
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Tim and Sarah had been married in 1983. By then, he’d discovered different musicians who might translate his extra formidable items, together with percussionist Tim Quy and William D Drake. “Tim and I simply actually clicked,” says Drake. “The primary tune I introduced in, The Complete World Window, might be the start of prog Cardiacs. We co-wrote The Everso Intently Guarded Line and that’s a giant, immense kind of factor, a bit like Mild Big.”
As Cawthra places it: “As soon as Invoice turned up together with his Wakeman arsenal, they had been off.”
Launched in 1988, A Little Man And A Home And The Complete World Window was Cardiacs’ first studio album correct. It was a file with a purposeful directive, teeming with creative tempos, melodies and lyrical motifs – half absurdist theatre, half sensory deluge.
The lady who first launched me to Cardiacs described Tim as ‘the Beethoven of Kingston
William D Drake
“Tim knew easy methods to manipulate sounds to do issues that actually made you need to take heed to music,” says Drake. “He was such an excellent arranger. It by no means looks like there’s an excessive amount of sound happening; it’s very spatial. I feel he simply had an incredible readability of imaginative and prescient. The lady who first launched me to Cardiacs described him as ‘the Beethoven of Kingston.’”
Psychedelic single Is This The Life picked up airplay on Radio 1. though its chart journey stalled at No.80. One other minor traditional album adopted with On Land And In The Sea, that includes free-spirited treasures comparable to The Duck And Roger The Horse and the epic The Everso Intently Guarded Line. However other than the band’s fiercely loyal fanbase and a handful of music press supporters, nobody gave the impression to be listening.
Cardiacs slimmed down from a sextet to a four-piece throughout the 90s. It proved a temperamental decade. There have been three extra albums (together with 1996’s irrepressible Sing To God), a headline spot over Radiohead on the Astoria and a luckless cope with Tough Commerce – then on the point of closure – that left the band in dire monetary straits.
They pressed on, via good instances and lean, re-emerging in late 2007 with a wonderful single, Ditzy Scene. Co-written by Smith and Kavus Torabi, its launch augured nicely for a proposed double album, LSD. Then tragedy struck. In June 2008, Tim Smith suffered a coronary heart assault that led to a stroke and, ultimately, a uncommon muscle situation known as dystonia. He was left semi-paralysed and unable to talk. Understandably, Cardiacs went on indefinite hiatus.
A crowdfunding marketing campaign, numerous gigs and the two-part tribute album Chief Of The Starry Skies all raised cash to assist with Smith’s care. The outpouring of affection was big; however his restoration by no means occurred. Smith died in July 2020, aged 59.
Doing it once more has simply been unbelievable. And it’s nonetheless actually, actually enjoyable
Bob Leith
The journey from Cardiac Arrest to Ditzy Scene is widely known in A Huge E book And A Band And The Complete World Window. Printed by Melodic Advantage, the espresso table-sized tome consists of uncommon and unseen pictures, paintings and ephemera, alongside contributions by followers, contemporaries and previous and current bandmembers. It’s what Tim would most likely approve of: another historical past of Cardiacs.
However the story doesn’t fairly end there. In Might 2024, Tim Smith’s Spratleys, that includes Cardiacs personnel “previous, current and future” performed a tribute present at London’s Storage. A pair extra dates had been added, adopted by 4 nationwide gigs in October. Audiences had been in raptures.
“I by no means even thought of enjoying whereas Tim was in poor health,” explains Jim Smith. “As soon as he’d popped off to paradise, Bic [Christian Hayes] and Jo [Spratley] got here up with the concept of doing it. I assumed, ‘Yeah, the time’s good. Let’s give it a go.’”
“The primary time we obtained again collectively in a room, it was like, ‘God, can we nonetheless do that?’” says Leith. “However inside the first run-through of The Duck And Roger The Horse, it was fairly apparent that all of us nonetheless had that factor, regardless of our advancing years. Doing it once more has simply been unbelievable. And it’s nonetheless actually, actually enjoyable.”
“My band supported them in Manchester they usually had been terribly good,” marvels Drake. “It was so superbly performed, with Jim and Bob because the rhythm part and Jon Poole on guitar. Clearly there was the unhappiness of Tim not being there, however his spirit was loud and clear, and the music was so playful and vibrant and unbelievable, as a result of all of the individuals who beloved him had been enjoying it.”
I hate it when folks say ex-Cardiacs. I feel, ‘God, I put my blood and bones into that!’ We’re all nonetheless Cardiacs, positively
William D Drake
Not solely that, however LSD – begun in 2005 and revisited since Tim’s loss of life – will lastly see mild of day this 12 months. “It’s nice – it’ll knock your socks off,” says Jim. “A few of it’s previous archive stuff, when Tim had carried out some roughs in his studio. On a regular basis he was in poor health, I feel he had it in his head that he was going to complete it when he obtained residence. Sadly, he by no means made it; so I assume we owed it to him, actually. It’s been a labour of affection.”
There may be, too, a legacy to contemplate. Speak to any bandmember, previous or current, they usually usually agree that when a Cardiac, at all times a Cardiac. It’s a singular membership. “I hate it when folks say ex-Cardiacs,” Drake experiences. “I feel, ‘God, I put my blood and bones into that!’ We’re all nonetheless Cardiacs, positively. And I’m so pleased with it.”
For his half, Jim Smith doesn’t measure the band’s affect when it comes to recordings. It goes deeper than that. “I feel it’s extra of a philosophy than something,” he says. “If you wish to do it, do it. You don’t want folks that will help you – you are able to do it your self, even when it takes 50 years. Imagine in one thing sufficient and it’ll occur.”