"CINDYTALK", Jamming! No. 23, 1984
Jonh Wilde

Cindytalk have quietly and unobtrusively made one of the most darkly compelling records of 1984. 'Camouflage Heart' crept out in late September on Midnight Music -- a vivid pandemonium of one million shades and shapes -- performed by Gordon Sharp (voice and instruments), David Clancy (instruments) and John Byrne (instruments).

Gordon, their focal point and founder, might be already familiar for his involvement with This Mortal Coil or his rare guest appearances with the Cocteaux. It is his cogent, unique vocal style that dominates the LP, its high pitched starkness which serrates the Cindytalk structure. It is his exquisite sense of disorder that makes 'Camouflage Heart' shudder so lustfully, that makes it such a resounding success.

The whole aim was to "make a record that occupied its own space and which wasn't akin to anything around it -- but which bore faint relation to other things; it has its own strange influences". Gordon knew that he was making a record that couldn't compete because it was so different. He talks of the record with something approaching abstraction: "it's so close to me...there's so much of me in it."

This record, he sees as a logical extension of his previous work with Edinburgh band The Freeze, who recorded a brace of singles before disintegrating sometime in 1982. Cindytalk have fallen together in the meantime, recording this album over the last six months. Surprising...because it sounds as though it would have had to be made in a single day, with its improvised, spontaneous way. Entirely divorced from the sophistication of '84, their senusous melt hardly makes for the easiest of listening. Instead, it crashes through the grotesque, the horror and the tender in one abandoned heave. 'Camouflage Heart' is claustrophobic, unsettling and deformed. During this year, only Scraping Foetus Off The Wheels have bettered it as a scrawl of threatening force. Gordon is aware of its infernal nature.

"We didn't intend it to be necessarily difficult, although we accepted from the very start that it might well be that way. We did take a conscious turn from a palatable sound, though. Some of the early Cindytalk songs, when we first came down to London, were actually quite lush and dreamy...almost floaty. That wasn't really satisfying me. I demanded something much more forceful.

"We place ideas as more important than actual songs and taking those ideas into a studio is difficult. It was mentally exhausting to make."

...And to listen to. 'Camouflage Heart' is a traumatic coalescence of emotion -- savage and yet delicately picturesque.

"Desire...a singular vision...an attempt at something beautiful/something of a blissful mess, caressing...and what of fear...stealing all the good lines, seeing more than the rest and always, always playing the part to perfection." (from sleeve-notes)

Out on the dark edges, what drives Cindytalk to such frightening extremes?

"It baffles me as much as anyone else", Gordon sighs softly. "I wouldn't want to make a record that I was completely happy with, which was totally clear. I get more from it every time I listen to it. The record falls over itself, it gets too caught up in itself, it's far too self-conscious, it's over-dramatic, it's sometimes too big for its own good, a little bit too intense for its own good. But that is reflective of us -- that's how it had to be. It's all from the sub conscious, just falling out in fragments. So therefore, it is coming from the truth. It comes from real experience, thoughts, imaginations, fears, dreams and desires.

"The way I visualise it is...walking through darkness, being aware of where you're going, but having no plan. Therefore, there is always an element of surprise or chance to thrive on. We actually welcome the accustations of pretentiousness which we know will come -- there's always going to be an element of play-acting in any art form. Cindytalk equates with playfulness. In our records, there is a sense, but we blur it somewhat. We stretch our senses to see what happens."

There's nothing definite about Cindytalk, nothing fixed or still. Already, since the recording of the LP, David Clancy has left leaving Gordon and John Byrne at the core. There are no plans for live work -- "We'll just have to see what happens" -- and the next record is surrounded by all manner of 'ifs'. The next record remains just a hopeful possibility; if it comes, Gordon promises a remarkable departure from this one. Likewise, Gordon's connection with This Mortal Coil is equally indefinite and tenuous.

For now, there's 'Camouflage Heart' and that's complete and certain enough for now.

"The objectives??", puzzles Gordon. "Well, we want to continue playing -- as in being playful. We never want to allow our musical order to become too clear. It's an end in itself really.

"I'd like people to see our record(s) as a mood that is special to them at a certain time. To appeal to a great mass of people, you have to make music that relates to the lives of the mass. We make music in a very selfish way, we don't often think of an audience when we write. I don't worry that our appeal is limited, because I know that it is that way. I think anything that demands more out of a listener will always appeal to a minority. Most people try to shut out the oddness and the quirkiness of their natures, but I'm not prepared to do that, because it is that side that makes it all so special.

"I don't think we could have made the LP two steps nearer to commerciality. If we could find a way of making people buy our records without having to sugar the pill, then we probably would. We're not about the beat of songs, or 'entertainment', it's not there to make clear, it was just there to throw some feeling out."

'Camouflage Heart' does just that, and does it marvellously. In one word -- consummate.

Reprinted without permission.