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Hex Enduction Hour

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Hex Enduction Hour is a 1982 album by The Fall.

It was the first album to feature both Karl Burns and Paul Hanley in a two-drummer lineup and was partly recorded in Iceland during the group's 1981 visit, with the remainder being completed in a disused cinema in Hitchin, England. A single, "Look, Know" / "I'm Into C.B.", was recorded contemporaneously but not included on the album, standard practice for the group until 1986. Mark E. Smith told journalist Sandy Robertson that he had envisaged Hex as being the group's final album and that he would not have continued in music had this been the case.[1] However, the record received very positive reviews and was the first Fall album to make the official chart, spending 3 weeks in and peaking at #71.

In 1984, Motown Records expressed an interest in signing the band to a new UK division and asked to hear their back catalogue. "Hex" was the only album Smith had to hand. The letter the group received back stated "I see no commercial potential in this band whatsoever". Smith publicly speculated that this might have had something to do with the lines "Where are the obligatory niggers? / Hey there, fuckface" from album opener "The Classical".[2]

"The Classical" was later covered (though with altered lyrics) by Pavement, who had frequently been accused of copying The Fall in their early career. Their version is currently available on the expanded edition of Brighten The Corners.

One of the record's most recognised tunes is side one's "Hip Priest", with its lyrical riff of "He is not appreciated." Smith later reworked the song for the band's 1988 work I Am Kurious Oranj, while the original track was used as the soundtrack to the climax of the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. Colin Wilson, a writer on the occult and existentialist philosophy is mentioned in the refrain of "Deer Park".

The album went out of print when the Kamera label folded in 1983 but a German edition on the Line imprint was widely imported with copies pressed on white vinyl. Line also issued a CD edition. In 2002, a remastered edition was released via Mark E. Smith's Cog Sinister imprint adding both sides of the "Look, Know" single. It was remastered and reissued again in January 2005 via Sanctuary with a disc of bonus material (omitting "Look, Know" but not its b-side). In April 2007, a single disc edition containing just the original album was issued in a digipak sleeve at midprice. The Sanctuary 2CD edition was repressed in alternate, expanded packaging by Universal in 2009.

Track listing

Side one

  1. "The Classical" (Mark E. Smith, The Fall) – 5:16
  2. "Jawbone and the Air-Rifle" (Smith, The Fall) – 3:43
  3. "Hip Priest" (Smith, The Fall) – 7:45 (Audio file "The Fall Hip Priest.ogg" not found)
  4. "Fortress" / "Deer Park" (Smith, Craig Scanlon, Marc Riley, Karl Burns) – 6:41
  5. "Mere Pseud Mag. Ed." (Smith) – 2:50
  6. "Winter (Hostel-Maxi)" (Smith, Scanlon) – 4:26

Side two

  1. "Winter, No. 2" (Smith, Scanlon) – 4:33
  2. "Just Step S'ways" (Smith) – 3:22
  3. "Who Makes the Nazis?" (Smith) – 4:27
  4. "Iceland" (Smith, Scanlon, Riley, Steve Hanley) – 6:42
  5. "And This Day" (Smith, The Fall) – 10:18

2005 bonus disc

  1. "Deer Park" (Scanlon, Riley, Burns, Smith) – 4:26
    • from the band's fifth John Peel session broadcast 15 September 1981
  2. "Who Makes the Nazis?" (Smith) – 2:57
  3. "I'm into C.B." (Kay Carroll, Scanlon, Smith) – 6:30
    • originally released as B-side on the single "Look, Know" in 1982
  4. "Session Musician" (Smith, Riley, Scanlon, Hanley) – 9:11
    • live at the Boerkeller, Leeds, 5 November 1981
  5. "Jazzed Up Punk Shit" (Scanlon, Riley, Hanley, Smith) – 4:10
  6. "I'm into C.B. (Stars on 45 Version)" (Carroll, Scanlon, Smith) – 3:14
    • live at Fagins, Manchester, 30 September 1981
  7. "And This Day" (Smith, The Fall) – 6:13
  8. "Deer Park" (Scanlon, Riley, Burns, Smith) – 9:34
    • Live at Main Street, Auckland, 20 August 1982
  9. "And This Day (Revisited)" (Scanlon, Riley, Burns, Hanley, Paul Hanley, Smith) – 5:24
    • live at Astoria 2, London, 26 February 1997

Personnel

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ Edge, Brian. "Paintwork". Omnibus Press, 1989, 72
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