In the second instalment of a two-part extended feature on the band Prolapse, to mark the 30th anniversary of their superlative debut album, Martin Gray takes a detailed look back at their beginnings and examines most of their recorded output up to their dissolution in 1999, and what transpired afterwards when the band reformed to play a few live shows again in 2015.

Leicester: So much to answer for.

Yes, notice that I actually wrote Leicester – and not Manchester. And yes, also notice that I sneakily paraphrased a certain album title from a certain legendary band associated with that very same northern city in the parentheses of the main article title (more of that will be made clear later).

Generally regarded as the third largest city in the Midlands (in terms of total metropolitan area inhabitants) after Birmingham and Nottingham, Leicester surprisingly has given us quite a veritable pick’n’mix of names, in a bewildering array of genres, over the years. Not that it ever bangs its drum and blows its trumpet about it a lot, unlike some cities I could mention….

For starters, it gave us the venerable Engelbert Humperdinck (actually born in Madras, India as Arnold George Dorsey but relocated to UK as a child with his family – bizarrely adopting his familiar stage name from a 19th century German classical composer), no-nonsense bassist John Deacon of Queen, veteran 60s folkster Davey Graham, late-60s to early 70s rockers Family, 70s’ rock’n’roll revivalists Showaddywaddy, early 80s post punkers Yeah Yeah Noh and 2-Tone act The Apollinaires, legendary cult weird-psych eccentrics The Deep Freeze Mice and The Thurston Lava Tube, obscure and elusive sampladelic experimental dance poppers Discordia, genre-straddling indie-poppers Cornershop, late 80s garage punks/greboes Crazyhead and Gaye Bykers On Acid, and latterly Young Knives and King Power stadium rockers Kasabian…

But one act which rarely if ever was afforded much of the same attention – except with the more accommodating weekly music publications at the time – was Prolapse, a bunch of defiant non-conformists who first got together whilst all were students at the city’s former Polytechnic (now De Montford University) in 1991. Among the undergraduate subjects studied being English Literature, Archaeology and Physics….anything arty most likely didn’t even get a look in. It was pure academia.

Shit Indie Disco Music: Nein Danke!

The story – apocryphal or genuine, it doesn’t really matter, it’s still intriguing – goes that three or four of the members simply hung out together in the student union bar from sheer boredom and disdain for the crap music that was being played at the regular disco (we’ve all been there I guess!). Chat turned to drinking and pretty soon, they went from meeting regularly at the table to finding themselves UNDER the table, in a manner of speaking. This, evidently, was where the idea for the band soon transpired: the seeds were sown. They got together after a few drinks and began to concoct an unholy racket with whatever instruments they could get hold of. A couple had guitars so that was a start.

In a matter of months much of the personnel had been sought and recruited with a view to forming, in the words of one of the members, ‘the most depressing band in the world with the most depressing name ever making the most depressing music’. And what name did they settle on? The biological term thus:

PROLAPSE : noun
a displacement of a part or organ of the body from its normal position, usually downwards or outwards, often resulting in it protruding from an orifice.

Definitely a household name in the making that would soon grace the weekly chart rundown on TOTP we think….. or is it? But hey – before you start raising your eyebrows and sighing, consider the context. The fact that the band have a bleakly black sense of self-deprecating humour! Prolapse is an ideal band name – one that surely encapsulates the unsightliness and ugliness of much of life in general. A word that inspires a certain degree of revulsion in the faint-hearted. But then, many would choose to associate it with arses or rectums (particularly the bovine variety). That’s pretty shamelessly punk rock I suppose.

Granted, it’s not as downright crude and puerile as Bum Gravy (Melody Maker band name of the year back in 1989, in case you forgot), but, consider this, it’s not that far removed from Butthole Surfers either, is it? And look how infamous THEY became!*

(*Having said that – can you imagine how utterly heavenly it would be to have had Prolapse AND Butthole Surfers playing together – or co-headlining – on the same trans-Atlantic bill? In my wildest and most fanciful dreams, I guess)

Here Come The Misfits!

Okay so who were/are Prolapse…and why are these misfits so goddamned important to some of us?

A broiling cauldron of conflicting and disparate personalities: two guitarists David Jeffreys and Pat Marsden, often playing in complete asynchronous styles but still tight enough to helm in discernible structures and melodies; a bass player Mick Harrison, whose taut, insinuating four string attacks prowl and intimidate like the bastard demon offspring of The Stranglers’ karate god J.J. Burnel; the fiercely polyrhythmic octopus of a drummer Tim Pattison, whose gleeful battery and assault sounds like BOTH tub-thumpers from any classic Fall line up throwing each other down the stairs; then lastly two wildly contrasting vocalists: Linda Steelyard may be diminutive, but demure she certainly isn’t – her alternately impassive, cool, angelic or spiteful retaliatory tones are the perfect foil to the loose cannon that is Mick Derrick – a gregarious lanky Glaswegian who simply mouths off at every opportunity and blares out whatever the fuck he likes without in so much as any sense of reason or decorum, other than the fact that he wants to say something and say it loud and profoundly and to hell with anybody who stands in his way!

To avoid further confusion, we’ll hereby refer to the two Micks in the band by their geographical origin: thus Mick Derrick is ‘Scottish Mick’ and Mick Harrison is ‘Geordie Mick’ – in a rather amusing modern reprisal of an old Dandy comic strip (The Jocks and The Geordies) which I remember fondly from my ’70s childhood!

Linda Steelyard recalls with amusement being recruited into the live stage line-up by the others when the original plan for her and a friend of hers (to both stand stage back, peeling oranges or making out like the evil twins in The Shining and stare out the audience whilst the band cranked out their usual cacophony) was scuppered as her mate didn’t show up. It was through this serendipity – plus the fact that she was at one point an item with Scottish Mick which explains the association – that she eventually became a more regular presence and contribute words and spoken/sung vocals that soon became the band’s defining signature sound as she and Derrick would trade insults and even fight on stage, to the bafflement (and sometimes alarm) of onlookers witnessing this.

Prolapse often sound like an accident happening – never mind waiting to happen! The sheer tumult and turmoil that often ensues when all six of them are on stage locked into their own infernal battle zone is really quite something to behold. It’s a beautifully dysfunctional blitzkrieg like no other: and yet, paradoxically, thanks to the formidable rhythm section of Geordie Mick and Octopus Tim, we have what is a truly remarkable dichotomy of simultaneous discipline and disorder. Very few bands can carry this off with such verve and aplomb without being derided as desperately amateur or attention seeking for attention-seeking’s sake.

Whatever happens to prevail with Derrick and Steelyard battling it out in the vocal stakes, the ever dependable engine room of the band keeps its heads down and continues to knock out a solid fusillade of motorik beats and deft counter rhythms – all the while with the guitars usually sticking to one chord (or two if they’re being generous). Relentless, hypnotic, repetition is key. Even when things look like lurching out of control like a crazed merry-go-round spinning free from its moorings (which is often) the two of them somehow manage to rein things in with consummate skill.

Their influences are manifold…they can sound like a dozen bands at any one time, from a dozen eras….but most fans and admirers of the sextet would concede that their closest spiritual cousins, in terms of the tension and turbulence that always forms the undercarriage to their music, is The Fall. But add to this mix Krautfock / Neu! grooves (which then lend weight to them being often thought of as a ‘more violent Stereolab’, with whom they briefly shared a record label, Lissy’s, in 1995), classic post-punk bands like Gang of Four and PiL (the Wobble-esque bass especially on their later material), shambling 80’s indie (think a Sarah records tweepop party gatecrashed by a drunk), riot grrrl of the 90s (again, they once played as part of a live showcase bill that featured figureheads at the time Huggy Bear, but in all fairness the band have never associated themselves with this particular scene), defiantly bizarre and angular art-rock, and even the FX-laden ‘shoegaze’ bands of the early 90s….

They’re also – for me – a welcome and much needed antidote to the turgid, retrogressive and depressingly conservative mediocrity of the whole lad-rock / Britpop wave that was making such a massive splash on the radio and the charts around 1994-1995. Killing The Bland indeed… They stood defiantly apart from the rabble, a refreshing panacea to the hackneyed neo-patriotism and jingoistic flag-waving wannabes who suddenly thought that to be current and contemporary you had to regress by about 40 years instead (and to hell with being original and innovative)….Oh, and also to hang about basking in the glow of the shit-eating grin emanating from the sanctimonious Cliff Richard of politics that was Tony Blair during the truly cringeworthy ‘Cool Britannia’ fad of 1997.

For Prolapse, conventions and rules are there specifically to be broken. Conform to what others expect of them and play the game? Fall (arf!) over themselves to appear on the hollow superficial charade that is TOTP with their new single? They’d rather die! But instead of playing nice, they wisely opt to plough their own furrow of semi-improvised stream of consciousness psycho-babble touching on almost anything that takes one’s fancy (Mick), or nasty, retributory words of existential despair, betrayal, suffering, disintegrating relationships and death (Linda). What’s not to like about that?

Prolapse pictured in 1994.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY:

Crate : Songs For Ella EP (1993)
Pull Thru’ Barker EP (1994)

Their first releases were on Cherry Red Records and both produced in an intentionally lo-fi manner by legendary punk singer and writer/broadcaster/raconteur John Robb. Both showcased the band’s characteristic knack for creating pummelling slabs of kraut-punk but still pulling in opposite directions all at the same time to the point where the tension just explodes….. Many tracks deliberately start at a slower pace and then quickly increase in tempo, creating a backdrop for the neurotic squabbling of the two vocalists: Steelyard’s musings and recriminations are countered by Scottish Mick’s belligerent rantings – coming across rather like a post-punk Rab C Nesbitt. (Psychotic Now from Crate is as aptly titled as it comes). The fact the band already sounded possessed of real fire and purpose here boded well for their subsequent recordings.

Indeed, such was the volatility of the songs here, with almost everything tearing along at full tilt, I was reminded of a (rather amusing) anecdote John Robb related to me when I pressed him about what it was like when he produced the band in the studio (Peter Hook’s Suite 16 in Rochdale). He told me that some of the members of the band – he didn’t reveal which though – were often arguing with one another about everything and anything, and at some point this even spilled over into genuine drunken argybargy where punches were being thrown! Living the intensity of the music for sure!

Listen here:

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Doorstop Rhythmic Bloc EP (1994)
Pointless Walks To Dismal Places LP (1994)

A taster for their first full length LP proper Pointless Walks To Dismal Places, which followed at the tail end of 1994 (see full 30th anniversary reappraisal review of the album here:), the title track of the Doorstop Rhythmic Bloc EP comes in two variants: a radio standard edit (not that it ever got any airplay on the radio except John Peel who of course had good grace to give Prolapse the airwave exposure they merited) and the complete version which featured on the parent album.

It’s their most immediate number so far, more restrained in comparison to everything on the previous two EPs, built mostly around a sustained insistent one chord jam, and it’s practically a pop song by their standards. But just when you think it sounds kinda sweet with Linda’s repeated ‘get your own / now to get your own…’ refrain, Mick barges in with his usual non sequiturs… ‘ALL ABOARD THE ARK ROYAL!’ – he bellows like the human foghorn that he is so proud to be.

Things revert to type on the frantically clattering Pile Tent – the drums and bass strike up a hyperactive St Vitus Dance of sorts whilst Mick and Linda trade their insults across the clangorous wall of noise.

This sort of vocal interplay between the two is curiously reminiscent of a more demonic Sugarcubes – where Björk’s breathless, rapturous exhortations are duly shot down by the insufferable co-‘singer’ Einar Orn belching about not liking fucking lobsters (not copulating lobsters, you understand, oh, never mind…). But things do get very surreal nevertheless – this is Prolapse remember, not soddin’ Sleeper – when the words continue as stream of consciousness interjections from both Mick and Linda – where one attempts to outsmart the other with the most oblique and profound couplets they can come up with totally apropos of nothing.

And therein lies the charm of this juxtaposition of the two contrasting voices: most of what they are singing about is probably improvised anyway. Indeed Mick freely admits to making up the words on the spot, often when performing live (their skill at making these impromptu asides can be traced back to the fact that both have also had turns acting in theatre in the past).

Listen here:

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TCR 7″ single (1995)
Backsaturday LP (1995)
When Space Invaders Were Big 7″ (1995)
Flexed (1996)

It is worth noting that each of Prolapse’s four full length albums during their initial brief tenure were released on a different label. Backsaturday came out on Lissy’s Records, whilst the single which preceded it, the comparatively sprightly twisted anti-pop of TCR, was on yet another: Love Train. A second single released the same year comprised a further new track When Space Invaders Were Big – a Peel Session recording – coupled with a double AA side of a Gang Of Four cover Love Like Anthrax. This was issued on former label Cherry Red Records.

Second album Backsaturday, however, is Prolapse at their most experimental and opaquely impenetrable. It defied easy pigeonholing (despite clear nods to Nurse With Wound and Faust on a few of the numbers) and its running length too fell midway between that of a full album and a mini-album: just shy of 38 minutes. However, 15 minutes of that total running time is taken up with the stupendous opening track Flex which is simply astonishing in its sheer execution and sense of dynamism: beginning very quietly and slowly with a tentative guitar figure before gradually accelerating in tempo and growing in volume and intensity as the bass and drums and noise kick in : then it’s a dizzying and merciless NEU-rotic rampage filled with Steelyard coos and Derrick in full throttle rant mode, which leaves you gasping for breath.

Some tracks are more cryptic and ambient, whilst others are unrelentingly visceral and confrontational, dominated by the fiercely belligerent drums and growling bass interplay with Mick and Linda once again exchanging righteous verbal crossfire – like on the gnarled and disquieting Every Night I Am Mentally Crucified (7000 Times). Most of the more avant-garde tracks clock in at just two minutes or less, whilst two others – Framen Fr. Cesar and the very Metal Box-sounding Zen Nun Deb – are stranger, weightier and more ponderous, stretching beyond 6 to 8 minutes apiece (listen out for the weird disembodied recorder which pipes up on the former). It’s by far the most uncompromising that Prolapse have ever sounded. Their next few offerings though would see some light and colour – and dare I say even accessibility – emerge from the suffocating and overly claustrophobic noisescapes on show here, but not before the album’s lead track Flex was remixed and issued as a more (ahem) ‘club-friendly’ 12″ single the following year, titled Flexed.

Listen here:

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Killing The Bland EP (1997)
Autocade EP (1997)
The Italian Flag LP (1997)

By this point Prolapse had honed their order-out-of-chaos-and-back-again to such a point of refinement that, having signed to Radar Records, there was now serious talk of getting them onto the radio…..unthinkable as it would seem. After all, only Peel had the wisdom and good judgement to play their records on his evening show, who else would?

The first of the two new singles that would trail the next album, Killing The Bland, may not have set heads and hearts fluttering with playlist programmers, but it was nevertheless a lot more immediate than anything on Backsaturday. It’s a breakneck rampage through usual territory – with flailing drums, terse guitars and even vintage burbling synths, with Mick and Linda’s parallel full-throttle monologues present and correct, but there’s even a chorus here that Mick belts out with something akin to passion that was unheard of in any previous offering.

The B-sides on this EP are fascinating in their breadth of sonic experimentation, most notable of them being Fear Of Teeth: a queasy, unsettling blizzard of distant bleached out violin drones and disquieting clipped guitar ambience which is both menacing and foreboding….whilst the decidedly odd Snappy Horse sounds almost like a Mediaeval folk tune played on what sounds like ukulele and mandolin.

Autocade, the second single, was – and remains – the band’s most divisive moment. It’s a shameless straightforward guitar-driven indie pop song of which there is no equal in the rest of the Prolapse canon. A complete anomaly (and in Scottish Mick’s eyes, a complete aberration – he loathed it and had nothing to do with it, walking off stage whenever they performed it live: to this day he regards it as a lame nadir in the band’s entire recorded career.), it features just Linda singing and it’s indeed a very – whisper it – commercial sounding tune which is consciously geared towards radio play. Perhaps this was the band’s sole concession to that dreaded beast called ‘compromise’. And it paid off – it was their biggest ‘indie hit’ and also made a fleeting appearance in the (very) lower reaches of the proper UK singles top 100.

But even here, once again the B-sides salvaged [artistic] victory from the jaws of defeat in a manner of speaking. Autocade also featured as a radically different and defiantly fucked up experimental noise remix (listen below) subtitled Didactic Feral Control, where, over some muffled and disembodied electronic loops, Linda’s sweet vocal is unceremoniously gatecrashed by a deafening roar of pure speaker-shredding static almost as if some digitally processed Godzilla had burst in through the walls and made mincemeat out of everyone. It recalls the confrontational avant garde manglings of Faust and Stephen Stapleton (Nurse With Wound). Unlike Mick though, I think Autocade is a great track regardless, and it’s nice that the band can pull something like this off despite themselves.

Listen here:

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The thirteen tracks that comprise their third – most high profile – album The Italian Flag, issued in September 1997, are among the best that the band have ever released. It’s a consistently strong set which touches on all of the bases they have made so distinctively their own since their debut. It’s their most fully-formed and consummate offering, an eclectic tour de force, and to this day, many of their most ardent fans cite it as their undisputed masterpiece. Produced by Donald Ross Skinner – best known for his association with Julian Cope – this may arguably be Prolapse’s finest hour.

Another satisfyingly great thing about The Italian Flag is that, as well as the most solid set of songs on offer here, there are now lyrics provided so you can actually MAKE OUT WHAT MICK IS RANTING ABOUT. Even more cleverly, the CD booklet has both respective sets of lyrics by Linda and Mick split across separate halves (or on separate inner sleeves in the case of the 2 x vinyl album) so they effectively make out like yin and yang….

The opening triumvirate of Slash/Oblique, Deanshanger and Cacophony No. A are flawless and seamless, in the manner in which they all cross-fade into one another, thus reinforcing that wonderful sense of continuity. In fact throughout the album a lot of the tracks do a similar thing, which is testimony to how perfectly the whole thing is sequenced.

Both Mick and Linda are on form here: the former rambling on in his inimitable caustic and unrelenting manner smashing the ornaments, kicking over all the statues and stomping over all the freshly laid cement with glee as Linda tries to get a word in edgeways (‘you will never understand me’ she keeps singing before Mick shoots her down with more of his hyperfast unintelligible babble).

By contrast, the following Deanshanger (it’s the name of a village in Northamptonhire for those who are curious) has some hilarious Mick diatribes focusing on his utter hatred of the 1980s (‘the music was crap/ the claise was crap/the hair was crap/except one…’ ‘…Gdansk was crap/Warsaw was crap/Solidarity was crap/ Aw ae it was crap!’). And, as if to ram the point home, he promptly pulls off something totally unexpected and does a neat turn on the bagpipes too. Brilliantly off the wall bonkers.

Cacophony No. A – more accessible by comparison – has an alternating stop/start/ quiet/loud arrangement with Mick intoning his strange disjointed tale of battle fatigue, but when Linda’s vocals weigh in at the same time as the intermittent cathartic release of guitars – sweetly trilling lines like ‘you make me feel abused’ and ‘never understand your lies’ – things even call to mind Blondie circa Parallel Lines (not a bad thing in this case).

Elsewhere, I Hate The Clicking Man adopts a masterful deployment of tension and release: alternately building up a sense of anticipation via a slower tempo before the floodgates open and the track speeds up again. Next up is the second of the album’s killer triptychs: Return Of Shoes, which is the most reminiscent of Stereolab on here (but then it’s just this one number whose guitar recalls the distinctive two note riff of the latter’s Jenny Ondioline), followed by the existential nightmare A Day At Death Seaside which opens with distorted wind-lashed fairground sounds. Strangely this is the only other track on here (apart from Autocade) which features just Linda on vocals – Mick is completely absent – but it’s quite the antithesis of that other pop tune.

This track then cross-fades into the mesmerising, trance-like calm of Bruxelles: it’s a lengthy word association poem of sorts where Mick and Linda trade single random words spoken alternately almost as if in a hypnagogic state…..they repeat the sequence of words over and over again, but the words are unevenly distributed between them – Linda uttering 21 whilst Mick only 14…. so each time Mick hits his 14th word, Linda is still reeling her 15th by which point Mick is back to his first word again – and they become mismatched whenever their respective cycles meet again. It’s a curious and very very strange piece, but there is a genuine serenity to proceedings here by way of total contrast to the tumultuous, often frenzied, din that has preceded it so far.

Just as the listener thinks that the album is going to end on this relatively low-key note, the band charge defiantly back into life again, all guns blazing, with the intense valedictory barrage of Visa For Violet And Van, and then as that finally recedes into the distance, you get this awkward pregnant silence……only for it to be followed by the downright bizarre, repetitious and almost nightmarish neo-folk chant of Three Wooden Heads (which sounds completely improvised), that serves as a suitably surreal footnote to close out and round off this impressively consistent album.

That said, The Italian Flag sounds like nobody else either. It’s the absolute pinnacle of greatness and a record which, 27 years on, has still not lost any of its potency and wayward brilliance.

Listen here:

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Fob.Com 7″ & CD single (1999)
Ghosts Of Dead Aeroplanes LP (1999)

Jumping labels again (this time for Cooking Vinyl), Prolapse issue what turns out to to be their last recordings just as the old decade is starting to fade into the sunset. Preceded by the single Fob.Com, the fourth album continues the more accomplished and stronger arrangements found on predecessor The Italian Flag. Much of this is down to the producer of the last album, Donald Ross Skinner, now effectively the seventh member of the band, and with his expert studio prowess, the new songs that comprise this album sound much more focused, ditching completely the unbridled chaos and cacophony of the past.

Even the lyrics are more intelligible this time around because you can actually make out what both Mick and Linda are singing/saying without needing to resort to the words printed (to be fair only The Italian Flag ever gave us the luxury of a written insight into exactly what was sung/ranted/shouted/yelled on the album). But if you think this means Prolapse have become more accessible on this record, then think again. Ghosts Of Dead Aeroplanes is an altogether far more oblique and cryptic beast.

It’s not immediate on first listen – there are no accessible songs (or anything remotely approaching a pop track) on here: instead there is a uniformity of mood and execution on much of the songs here, accentuated by the comparatively clean and dry production that pervades throughout. The more typical sounding and uptempo Fob.Com obviously comes closest, given that it was the sole single after all. But even here the production tricks renders Linda’s vocal fragmented like it’s being sung through a Leslie speaker and the occasional jagged bursts of sheet metal guitars do their utmost best to overpower everything else.

The rather creepy opener Essence Of Cessna is insidious in its masterful deployment of understated but eerie atmospherics (backwards guitars and alien swooping noises) and Linda’s hushed, childlike narrative – backed by her own disembodied cooing – offsetting Mick’s equally restrained brogue recounting his own. As ever, one voice sits on the left channel and the other on the right…..but they appear to have swapped places this time. Meanwhile, the bass and drums are insistent – the former once again more than a little Wobble-esque circa Metal Box.

Linda’s reflective musings provide some sort of respite, sonically speaking, on the calmer and more downtempo Adiabatic (only augmented with Mick’s rancorous outbursts whenever the becalmed sections occur), but Mick then takes complete centre stage for Cylinders V12 Beats Cylinders 8, proffering his usual misanthropic put-downs at an unseen and unidentified adversary whom he repeatedly refers to as ‘a septic tank of a man’. Linda is simply content to ahhh wordless backing harmonies as he continues his venomous diatribe for much of the next five minutes or so.

The deep PiL bass sounds resurface on the juddering, throbbing subterranean pulse of After After – which buzzes and drills its way into your cranial synapses with Linda’s massively amplified whispers accompanied by all manner of disparate and otherworldy space-craft noises creating a sense of unease, before a return to the hyper-frenetic super-fast punk rampage of old Prolapse (for one song only) in Government of Spain – which is simply another showcase for Mick to spew his increasingly hysterical invective apropos of nothing, saving his most demented and deranged screaming to declare ‘The Government of Spain is all evil!’ – his rising pitch veering completely off the scale, leaving hardly any space for Linda to get even her words in edgeways.

But then maybe that is the whole point of their compulsively fascinating double act in a nutshell. And that is also the whole idiosyncratic charm of the quite singularly unique entity that was Prolapse.

Listen here:

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After the deluge came the drought.

Prolapse simply fizzled out (with no great dramas, no acrimony) and quietly called it a day soon after this album and went their separate ways taking up variety of different projects. Scottish Mick went back to being an archaeology researcher but moving to Oslo, Norway, whilst one of the guitarists (Pat) relocated to Denmark and pursued pretty much the same. Another (David) headed Stateside to continue teaching in an art faculty, Linda took up a full time journalism career with the Leicester Mercury newspaper, whilst the others Octopus Tim and Geordie Mick continued with playing music in other incarnations and guises.

Nevertheless, despite being all separated and having day jobs, many of the former Prolapse members still harboured that ever-irrepressible itch to continue making sporadic recordings and collaborate with other musicians. Some even reunited under new names: Mick Harrison and Linda Steelyard briefly hooked up under a project called Ears Go Fff! Mick Derrick and Pat Marsden, despite both being in their own Scandinavian enclaves, somehow created new noises under the name Cha Cha 2000**. Busiest of all was drummer Tim Pattison: he’d be holding the fort on the stool and elsewhere with various esoteric names: MJ Hibbert & The Validators, The Fabians (guest only), Ludd Gang, The Council, and more. The only one missing musically in action was Dave Jeffreys.

**Taking their name after a live album by a late-80s project featuring Klaus Dinger from Neu! (now curiously called La! Neu?), Cha Cha 2000 didn’t actually record much, but their kooky and half-reverential / half-ironic ACOUSTIC one-off cover version of  Autobahn by Kraftwerk was quite inspired: it was released to great acclaim and enthusiastically reviewed by the music weeklies, even making the indie chart top 20 …. and yet it was all augmented and assisted by MJ Hibbert of all people.

Fresh stirrings…

For more than 15 years, it seemed that the likelihood of this volatile union of six quite distinct personalities reassembling again for any further musical endeavours touched on negligible. Then out of the blue in 2015 they got a call… from Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai….to play with them as the latter were doing a few shows to mark their own 20th anniversary. Braithwaite was a huge fan of Prolapse’s crazy, compulsively cacophonous racket and was all too eager to see the band regroup even if just for a couple of shows.

Strangely enough, the re-grouped Prolapse had little trouble easing themselves back into a few live performances and soon it was enough to consider maybe recording some new noises at a later juncture. But not before they decided to embark on a short ‘reunion’ tour of a few UK venues….one of which was the legendary Manchester Roadhouse (where I last saw them in 1997/1998 – and the venue which, along with the equally sadly missed Boardwalk across town, I ended up catching by far the most live gigs between them – something like 67 in total – during the period from 1988 to 2015).

However, by this point I was hardly on social media as such (I still loathe it to this day really) and I was utterly disconsolate to discover that they had already played their low-key Manchester date there on the same night I was actually in the city, having just returned from hosting an acoustic music event taking place ON A TRAIN from Glossop Labour Club back to Manchester Piccadilly (these were monthly folk trains which I helped run and compere for 15 years between 2005 and 2020). If I had known Prolapse were playing I would have made a straight beeline to the venue – heart in mouth and drooling deliriously in anticipation – without hesitation. And the worst thing was: despite being back in Manchester around 10.15pm that same night, and find myself standing less than 200 metres from the hallowed venue’s door, I instead caught the bus back home southwards down the A6 to Stockport.

Aaaaghhh, I guess that’s the sort of canny shit and bad timing you have to put up with when you’re a rabid Prolapse fan, sigh…..

Revisit Prolapse live at their 2015 Manchester Roadhouse gig in full here (thank fuck for YouTube, again!):

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Further future activity

Prolapse continued to sporadically get back together for further occasional live escapades for the next few years and even after the twin debacle that was the Covid Pandemic and the Brexit Breakdown (woeful, soul destroying shit fests both of them), interest in the band among their faithful following was still buoyant. Two welcome releases both containing previously unavailable Peel Sessions were issued in beautiful double 7-inch vinyl sets by Precious Recordings (so desirable that even yours truly hasn’t managed to get copies of either due to their supreme scarcity, harrumph!), and a few more live gigs were enjoyed in 2022.

There is still talk of new Prolapse material once the band are able to reassemble in a studio to see how things transpire….indeed two new songs were already premiered at a few further live gigs which took place in late September this year, to all those who were lucky enough to witness them (that would evidently not be me then) – including the humungous, gushing review of their Con Club, Lewes date, the report of which can be found here.

All of us are now a fuck of a lot older, wiser and greyer… and maybe a bit more cynical, world-weary, punch-drunk and saggier around the edges too, but the gloriously magnificent discordant racket that Prolapse have been blessing us with ever since 1994 will always be something that defies and transcends not just changing fads and trends, but, heck, gravity too. One of the most incredible and captivating bands ever in my view, live and on record – they really are exceptional, and that’s why my adoration for them will never die!

Prolapse can also be found on bandcamp. What the fuck are you waiting for? Search, click and DEVOUR!

all words by Martin Gray

other articles and reviews can be found here:

Acknowledgements:

Group pictures taken from Wikipedia’s entry on the band.
A special shout to the Brighton and HoveNews for the fantastic and delightful write up of Prolapse’s recent show in Lewes – god I wish I could have been there!
And of course invaluable gratitude to You Tubers missbarbell and Norm Waz who so graciously shared their footage of the 2015 Manchester Roadhouse gig I so desperately wished that I was at that fateful Thursday night!

• Source: https://louderthanwar.com/prolapse-the-weird-wonderful-and-frightening-world-of/