R.O.C. : a thirtieth anniversary reappraisal

R.O.C. – R.O.C.

(Setanta)

Originally released in January 1996.
Reissued for the first time on vinyl
by Metal Postcard Records in 2015.

A 30th anniversary reappraisal of the genre-hopping Brixton collective’s  shape-shifting debut album of 1996. Martin Gray reflects on its addictive and magical allure which remains undiminished even now.

The 1990s was an exceptional period for record releases that veered right off the scale when it came to wilful experimentation and total complete disregard for genre or convention. Even the phrase ‘left field’ doesn’t really do some of it justice. Eclectic and unclassifiable could be better terms I guess.

I’d never previously heard of the south London-based collective R.O.C. (often written as ROC) until I chanced upon one major review of their debut album in an issue of UNCUT magazine, although I did see them mentioned a few times in the pages of the NME (usually in the section TURN ONS where they focus on new acts and writers’ raves), but other than that I knew next to nothing. So obviously I did a bit of reading up on them and discovered they’d been around a couple of years and, after a debut release as a split 7″ single with another indie act Corradi Kid (now whatever happened to them?), they released several 12″ singles on their own label Little Star records, before signing to Setanta for their first full length album.

R.O.C. were initially a duo of founders Fred Browning and Patrick Nicholson before swelling to a quintet with further members Karen Sheridan, Gareth Huw Davies and Russell Warby with Peter Burgess mainly overseeing co-producing. After several early singles the line up contracted in 1995 to the core trio of Browning, Nicholson and Sheridan – with the others contributing in various collaborative positions – with Danton Supple as their main producer and virtual fourth band member.

Mentions of these earlier 1993-1994 singles and choice reviews plus a potted band history along with selected press bits can all be found on the band’s own website and also on this link here

Their debut album however, released in early 1996, and a welcome rebuke to the prevailing stilted conservatism and contrived retro-mania of much of the none-more-drab Britpop lad rock incumbents hogging the airwaves, was simply mind-boggling in its shape-shifting scope and ambition, with its schizophrenic range of moods, textures and indeed styles – straddling numerous disparate genres with ease, as if in complete disavowal of any boundaries which they would reasonably expect to operate within (usually from record company pressure).

R.O.C. eschewed all of that and thumbed their noses up gleefully at anything remotely approaching tradition or conformity. They simply did as they pleased and wrote and recorded whatever style suited them whenever it took their fancy. This is what makes their debut album so endlessly fascinating, addictive and rivetting. I am a complete sucker for albums that you cannot pigeonhole easily and which come across like somebody trying to juggle twenty bowling pins at once. Invariably some lesser accomplished examples will end up sounding utterly unfocused and directionless. However, the beauty of this debut from R.O.C. is that it neatly sidesteps any such fears and curiously still sounds accessible and cohesive, despite its brain-scrambling sense of wilful eclectism.

Each track of the sixteen on show here (with a hefty running time of over 66 minutes) makes out like a story or musical vignette, some of them much weightier, others comparatively lighter and more reflective, some more sardonic, abstract and deliberately open ended, others functioning as sketches or short interludes. It’s actually sequenced very much like a twisted road movie soundtrack in many ways, and it’s really effective in this one aspect.

The opener is typically deceptive in its tranquility. ‘Desert Wind’ (the quotes surround the title as originally written) is a lazy, languid, gently wind-blown – and almost onomatopoeic – introduction that sets the scene perfectly, conjuring up tumbleweed-strewn plains in the vast expanses of the wild west. It eases itself in on skittering hi-hats, distant harmonica, warm Hammond organ and languidly soothing slide guitar as Karen Sheridan coos gently ‘Can you hear the train, it’s coming all the way from California’…..proceedings continue pleasantly in similarly mellow fashion before it becomes clear that this is merely the calm before the storm.

If previous R.O.C. singles were anything to go by (the most jaw dropping example being the violence that erupts half way through the eight minute ‘holiday story’ epic that was Girl With Crooked Eye from 1994) then you steel yourself to expect the unexpected. Second track Excised duly obliges by barging its way in like an unwanted guest with a monstrous sustained bass note and proceeds to maul the listener’s ears with its superlatively nasty, gnarled and scuzzy Godzilla-sized sludge-funk groove that is so excoriating you can feel the shards of static cracking out of the speakers. Set amid a home recording of an American friend’s wedding, with lots of evangelical overtones, we are blasted by an angry tirade from second main vocalist Fred Browning ranting about indulging on a drug-fuelled bender that, inevitably goes awry. Sounding like he’s undergoing a bad trip, his voice becomes an increasingly angry, distorted bellow that recalls Cathal Coughlan from the Fatima Mansions at his most bilious. If Happy Mondays featured a truly unhinged and psychotic preacher as vocalist, they would probably sound like this.

And then as it slams to its end like the ricocheting blast from a smoking gun, in fades a bit of a brief respite, the haunting disembodied dream sequence of God Willing (completely reworked from its previous 1993 single incarnation from an Orb-esque narrative-cum-dance track to an ethereal beat-free ambient interlude), sounding almost filmic in its deployment of gentle woodwind and strings. In it Karen’s spectral-sounding voice intones ‘Christ above me, Christ below me, Christ before me, Christ within me’ (religious themes abound on a fair number of tracks of this album, leading one to surmise that the subject is a favourite of R.O.C.’s to confront and debase) before it’s abruptly shattered again by a noisy ringing snare drum which heralds the start of Hey You Chick. Cue a disorientating babble of sampled voices and ethnic dialogue as the track promptly coalesces into a brassy, breezy, slice of sensual indie-pop with lots of busy wah-wah and beeping car horns in the chorus before some truly untethered guitar histrionics start reappearing towards its fade. If you can imagine a more belligerent Saint Etienne with fire in their bellies and drooling lust on their lips, then you won’t be too far off the mark.

Four tracks in, and R.O.C. sound like four completely different bands…..and the euphoria continues with the quite sublime instrumental intermission Balloon which follows – an exquisitely bouncy bit of pastoral electronica that is as summery and light as air. Pretty much like the title suggests, it really does conjure up images of a ride high up into the heavens and features a middle eight which sounds for all the world like you’ve just hit the stratosphere. It reminds me very much of fabled folktronica specialists Ultramarine – just gorgeous. Its contrasting companion piece immediately follows: the smoky late night, jazz-inflected lounge of Real Time, its lazy somnambulant sprawl complemented with double bass, tinkling pianos and Karen’s suitably sleepy vocals.

Such refusal to adhere to one sound works to R.O.C.’s distinct advantage. John Peel is already well quoted for saying that with this band ‘you never really know what you’re going to get next’, and this is more or less confirmed with the ensuing track, another short excerpt, this time a straight-faced and spartan cover of that popular old evangelical chestnut Plastic Jesus (albeit the one sung by Paul Newman in the film Cool Hand Luke). Granted, the Flaming Lips also covered it on their 1993 album Transmissions From The Satellite Heart, but this rendition – just lone voice and guitar – appears as a bit of a red herring as it abruptly stops after the second verse to make way for following track I Want You I Need You I Miss You – effectively R.O.C.’s own take on the trip hop genre. It’s slyly seductive and steamy, but even here things are never quite so straightforward – in the background are various sounds like emergency sirens and random clanking noises trying to unsettle the listener.

The way in which the album appears to cut from genre to genre is akin to a compendium of short films which does the same from scene to scene. Karen’s closing sighs of ‘Oh yeah…oh yeah…oh yeah….’ are abruptly cut off as the track then lurches into the swampy interlude Gold Bug, another instrumental heavy on the wah-wah guitars but one where it now sounds like the band are interred in a subterranean cavern for all of the reverb that can be heard on here. This is the sort of thing that goes on. When this track in turn cedes to the opening triangle sounds (now, how often do you ever hear a triangle being played on an indie rock album, albeit one that’s hugely amplified?) that ushers in the deeply disconcerting and almost claustrophobic bass and guitar stomp of La Heredia, you know that the wayward ride that you’ve being taken on here will continue to throw out ever more beguiling twists and turns. Here, Fred Browning’s almost indecipherable vocals are practically smothered under the churning clangour, and after a sneaky false ending, the track soon starts up again and winds towards an increasingly frenzied climax where it’s hard to make out whether it’s human screams or squalling guitars battling it out in what sounds like the cauldron of hell before it all abruptly fades.

A curiously dispassionate monologue about coming of age and losing one’s virginity, recounted by Karen, forms the narrative that drives the next track Thirteen Summers – with the rest of the band jamming away in what sounds like a sports hall. With this spoken dialogue (and other audible voices too) over an instrumental backing, the track’s stoned vibe practically evokes a slacker rock take on The Orb’s Little Fluffy Clouds. As this rumbles to a halt, there is a short silence of a second before R.O.C. pull off their second pop masterstroke on this album: the irresistible beatnik indie rock of Dear Nicky. It’s a shameless upbeat love song (there aren’t many on this album it has to be said) with a rousing horn-drenched chorus to match, and functions as a nice counterpart to the slightly less innocent and suggestive leer of Hey You Chick earlier. I once read another review of this album elsewhere where the writer described this track as ‘perfect Paisley Park pop’ and I can definitely see a resemblance in the way some of the instrumentation brings to mind Prince & The Revolution (the title alone isn’t that far removed from the latter’s Darling Nikki).

It’s a lurch back to the sordid on next track Sylvia’s Thighs. Beginning with an unsettling hollow droning noise with cockerels crowing, like the dawning of a particularly uninviting day, it soon transforms into an almost mutant country/skiffle romp which sees the demonic muse of the band (Browning – the Yang to Sheridan’s Yin) regale with a surreal tale of seduction namechecking celebrated Dutch actress, and star of the Emmanuelle films, Sylvia Kristel. It’s open to interpretation exactly what he is singing about (the words are usually deliberately tricky to make out properly) as he sounds positively lascivious in parts but this provides only relative levity as it gives way to the most harrowing track on the album yet: Ascencion [sic].

Opening with a taped recording of a medical prognosis that reveals the patient having sustained some degree of permanent brain injury (which then continues through most of the first half of the track), it’s a slow building billowing soundscape where the ominous pumping rhythmic undercarriage is provided by an amplified bedside ventilator and clicks and whirrs of operating theatre machinery. Karen’s distant, eerie cooing and other ambient droning sounds waft in and out – almost simulating somebody recuperating from a life-saving op in their hospital bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, but not knowing the worst part of whether they will live or die. As the track gains traction and a doleful guitar chimes in, and drums enter the fray, things start to pick up and the track increases in velocity and intensity whilst Karen intones almost as if in a trance ‘my head was burning…. my head was burning….and I thought it would explode’ reaching a climax when her voice hits a distressing piercing wail as the track fades. It’s all very disquieting for sure.

It’s been quite a rollercoaster ride, with a full hour having elapsed, and the closing, sign-off that is Clouds leaves the listener in no doubt as to exactly where the band’s true intentions lie: to lull them deceptively with sweet melodies that conceal extremely dark, if not downright spiteful, twisted and vengeful lyrics. The degree of ill will on display on Clouds is made clear at the very start when Fred recounts a car crash victim with both her cheekbones smashed, and goes on to wish gleeful revenge (‘I should have fucked her sister instead of her mother’) after another tryst goes disastrously wrong. His increasing malice and resentment is all played out against ironically the prettiest backing track on the album and as it builds in urgency then gradually fades, with the protagonist still feeling bitter acrimony and eschewing forgiveness, an even angrier voice suddenly comes bursting back in shouting something half unintelligible before the album ends on a whoosh of electronic sci-fi noises.

There’s a perverse conundrum of sorts, whether unintentional or by design, and it’s that a sixteenth track titled Old Man is listed, but the final indexed track is Clouds – the fifteenth. Perhaps the Old Man is the angry geezer who shouts at the fade out of Clouds? That puzzle notwithstanding, this is a damned impressive and ambitiously sprawling debut album from a band whom even to this day appear as a bit of an unknown treasure, given their relative elusiveness and steadfast refusal to play the game. Live gigs have been sporadic but have always been well-received by those fortunate enough to be witness to the band’s all too infrequent appearances.

By the close of 1996, I nominated this album my personal number 1 release of the year – beating even impressive efforts from the likes of Stereolab, Super Furry Animals, Orbital, The Boo Radleys, The High Llamas, Tortoise, and even great albums from a trio of my favourites Cathal Coughlan, Disco Inferno and Moonshake, which all featured in my top ten.

To recap then: R.O.C. gleefully fucks with your [pre]conceptions. A gloriously multi-faceted beast, it entices you, it repels you, it teases you, it pushes you, it manipulates you, it soothes you, then it unsettles you and turns your whole complacent little world upside down and back again… and then just when you think you’ve finally been let off the hook, it signs off with a sucker punch.

2014 reissue of R.O.C. on Metal Postcard Records

At the tail end of 2014, rights to the album were finally obtained from Setanta Records and it was licensed to Hong Kong’s Metal Postcard Records for its first ever vinyl release (it was only originally issued on CD). Alas, due to reasons of economy or otherwise, six tracks were omitted from the album reissue on vinyl and it was a single LP affair minus the shorter tracks like God Willing, Gold Bug, Plastic Jesus, and even integral cuts like Balloon, Sylvia’s Thighs and Thirteen Summers. For me this felt like a bit of a disappointing lost opportunity as hypothetically the album would have worked wonders released in its original full widescreen 66 minute sequencing but split across 2 LPs. Furthermore, it divides perfectly into four sides of almost equal length as well, as seen here:

LP 1
Side A: ‘Desert Wind’ (5.13) / Excised (5.09) / God Willing (1.31) / Hey You Chick (4.20)
Side B: Balloon (5.12) / Real Time (5.02) / Plastic Jesus (1.02) / I Want You I Need You I Miss You (4.25)

LP 2
Side C: Gold Bug (2.03) / La Heredia (5.21) / Thirteen Summers (5.33) / Dear Nicky (5.49)
Side D: Sylvia’s Thighs (4.39) / Ascencion (6.37) / Clouds (5.37) / Old Man (0.08)

Ah well, we can all but dream for that moment to come, can’t we? We just hope that whoever it is who may make this a reality one day in the future simply refrains from releasing it exclusively for that godawful and much-despised Rip Off Store Day fleece-fest, that’s all!

Post-1996 activities, Virgin Records, and Virgin (1997 album) 

Later in 1996, having wrested free of Setanta’s grips after a major falling out with the record label, Virgin Records stepped in and signed the band. As a primer for new material which R.O.C. were working on during the period, Virgin lifted Hey You Chick from the debut album as a single. This was later followed, in 1997 by the first new material from the soon come second album – cunningly titled Virgin.  The first was another well-crafted dance-pop tune Cheryl, which got single of the week in some music papers (notably endorsed by Orbital’s Paul Hartnoll), was even playlisted on Radio One and was deservedly R.O.C.’s first to break into the top 100 official UK singles charts, peaking just outside the all-important top 75 at number 76.  This showed clearly that there was commercial potential for some of their music, and the fact that the single charted was 100 per cent down to the airplay it actually received on mainstream Radio One.

A further single [Dis]count Us In – another stream-of-consciousness narrative by Fred atop a pleasant summery dance track with Hawaiian guitars – followed quickly on its tail. This was augmented by a whole slew of remixes as it was now clear that R.O.C. also shared an affinity with many DJs and producers who would tailor tracks (and many future ones too) for club purposes, thus increasing R.O.C.’s profile in the dance and electronica fields. Indeed, a few years later Solah (aka Nicky Holt) would remix debut album cut I Want You I Need You I Miss You and thus provide it with yet another outing in the clubs as a stand-alone 12″ release.

Virgin, R.O.C’s second album, duly followed in mid 1997 and pretty much continued ploughing the same eclectic devil-may-care trajectory that their audacious debut so luxuriated in. Never mind the fact that Virgin (or rather, the A&R who at least had the astuteness to sign them in the first place) were of the impression that R.O.C. were a pop band of sorts. Well, of course they were, but they were quite an unorthodox pop band, and maybe that was lost on the big cheeses at Virgin (the label) when they realised that Virgin (the album) would obviously pose more questions than it answered.

The first question doubtlessly arose upon hearing the album’s first track Dada. Does the sneaky decoy of using pleasant birdsong as an opening foil to entice the listener into the gaping jaws of a searing, terrifying firestorm of all-out digital chaos laced with demonic laughing Idi Amin samples provide any clues as to the band’s perversity? Very probably. Whilst the two singles Cheryl and [Dis]count Us In may also feature in their extended versions, providing some much needed melodic bounce and shameless Euro-pop suss, the album’s moods and textures are every bit as varied and catholic as on their debut.

Karen’s mournful prison lament Mountain – an achingly beautiful and heartbreaking ode to a friend or partner who has been sent down (for what crime is never revealed, thus increasing the sense of tragic mystery) recalls Minnie Riperton’s beatific summer elegy of 1975 Lovin’ You. The ravishing instrumental interlude Corner Off Interstate-25 comes across like an even more dreamy and ethereal cousin of Balloon from the first album, evoking a sunrise or sunset on an Arizona highway, whilst Fred’s whispered narrative on Dead Pool ups the tension and menace atop a strangely tuneful burbling electronic-cum-industrial undertow which explodes into more frantic noises at its climax rather like a Bladerunner chase scene being acted out.

The second half is more forlorn still. Ever Since Yesterday is a woozy, lethargic sprawl of a track that sounds like it’s so stoned it’s barely strong enough to hold itself together (repeatedly ambushed by chaotic bursts of brass, it cracks up at the very fade sounding like the song is being violently wrenched off the turntable as it’s switched off). 25 Reasons To Leave Me is pure lovelorn angst magnified, whilst K.C. is a sad, slow, delicate ballad wistfully sung by Karen and featuring the bewitching sound of spinning coins panning across the left and right channels and a lovely mellifluous trumpet solo.

Cold Chill Just Lately, like its title suggests, is a plunge into the existential abyss with its foreboding drones and rueful accusations from Fred, and is the bleakest thing on the album. It’s leavened by the truly crazy cut-up-sample-fest electro-clash (did R.O.C. inadvertently invent that genre??) of Said What I Said – a frantically-paced techno glam stomp liberally splattered with all manner of rude dialogue samples (‘fucking bitch! cunt! fucking dick!’) and post-rave synths and beats. Play it back to back with Goldfrapp’s Black Cherry album, and be astonished at how this pre-empted the latter by six years!  Karen’s plaintively majestic and almost symphonic Ocean & England is as peaceful and tranquil a ballad as it’s possible to have with which to close the album…… As the waves lap against the shore in the final dying moments, you hear a low murmured male voice musing: ‘the human imagination…’ thus ending on a cryptic note.

Listen to Virgin in full on R.O.C’s YouTube channel

Further activity to the present

R.O.C. continued to issue recordings at sporadic intervals after their one and only foray with a major label. A couple of further releases appeared in 1999 and 2000 on their own Rocmusic imprint, one remix 12″ on Spiky, and a new single, Princess, preceded their third full length album, Night Fold Around Me, which appeared in 2006 along with a second single, the stirring Journey To The Centre Of Brixton. The latter two were both released on the London/Brooklyn dance label 12 Apostles.

Another long yawning hiatus elapsed – thirteen years! – before they re-emerged yet again with their fourth and most recent album Bile And Celestial Beauty, once more issued on their own Rocmusic label in 2019. This was very likely originally conceived as an EP to be released a few years earlier (rumoured around 2014/2015) but ended up being a full length album instead with additional tracks having been completed in the interim period.

For more than three decades now, R.O.C. have revelled in being perennial outsiders, defiantly square pegs in proverbial round holes, and of course their resolute avoidance of doing things the conventional way is to their eternal credit. None of their four full length albums so far released over this relatively protracted timescale are anything less than intriguing, if often captivating, listens. Being a group that have been for so long perfectly comfortable with existing and operating on the fringes of the often staid and predictable music industry environment, this can often have its own intrinsic benefits. R.O.C.’s determinedly idiosyncratic approach to their art, eschewing all compromise in favour of their own vision, is what makes them so compelling.

A wonderful in depth feature on this endlessly fascinating band conducted by Electronic Sound can be found here.

Visit ROC on their official page  for band history, press, and music plus their albums to purchase.

Reappraisal review written by Martin Gray
other articles by Martin can be found on his profile