Tuesday 30 August 2011

From the Top Drawer XXII - The Ullulators


A first outing on this blog for the fondly remembered Ullulators who brought their own brand of space-rock-reggae and general jamming madness to many free festivals and gigs in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Formed by guitarist Gavin Griffiths after his departure from the original twin guitar line-up of Ozric Tentacles, and having decided that the energy of their early period would best be served by splitting that atom off into the creation of a separate second entity, the Ullulators came into being.


Joined by the ubiquitous Joie Hinton on keyboards, Roly Wynne on bass and drummer Nick van Gelder among others for early gigs and recordings, initial home studio efforts yielded the first of several tapes, 'Share A Clam With The Ullulators', a collection of instrumental rock, dub reggae, deep synth experiments, and excursions into headspaces flavoured as much by the inhaled ambience of travels to the East as by the vibe of life in London at that time.


Later Gavin and Joie were to be joined by Jane Bradfield, Generator John, Kay Springer, Chambers and Andy Ull as the band found itself a more stable gigging line-up.


Two other tapes followed until in 1989 the then current line-up of the band recorded an album at Dave Anderson's Foel Studios in Wales. Called 'Flaming Khaos' and released on vinyl through Anderson's Demi Monde label, this showed the band incorporating more overt influences from world music as well as numbers from the full-on live shows that their audience had been enjoying for some time.


The band was later put on extended hiatus in the early 1990s when Gavin worked with the Thunderdogs and Cirque Archaos until the eventual demise of that travelling show. More studio tapes were issued in the 1990s, but live appearances became more rare. Unfortunately bass player and singer Kay has since passed on. In remembrance...


  Side One: Gunk Rock / Zuzklucky / Tango Mango / The Ruzbitud Shuffle / Mixy Noise / The Full Itself Remains / Fatty Dub / Stomach Speaker
  Side Two: Hanuman Dub / Blue Aethyr / Narasimha / The Ostragoth / Elephants Have Gills / All You Need Is Hash / Eternal Now / More Tea Vicar?

Ripped from an original cassette as two side-long tracks @320kbps
Share A Clam With The Ullulators HERE

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Recently Gavin has announced his intention of remastering these early cassettes and releasing them digitally on CD, so this tape rip will act as a taster for those reissues.

(Plenty photos taken from the Ullulators Facebook page here)

 ***

Ullulators at the Pullens Free Festival 25 August 1990Watch on Google Video 

10 comments:

  1. Thanks for stopping by - enjoy the soundz...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Fantastic music , unfortunately considered by few.
    Brilliant artists !

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  3. The Ullulators were superb!!! A Side step away from the Ozrics but still in a similar style. Check out their album 'Flaming Khaos' its brilliant especially the 'pin sharp' CD version. Its got several tracks from those early tapes now 'beefed up' & with extra lyrics beautifully delivered by Jane Bradfield & Kay Springer. Its also got a really good crystal clear production too. Some great, melodic songs, Space Rock/Dub/Reggae/World all feature and not forgetting some 'Hillage' style riffs from Gavin Grifiths especially on the last track 'Do You Wanna'.

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  6. All of The Ullulators recordings have now been digitally remastered by their main man Gavin Griffiths himself, something which has taken him 6 or 7 years to do! All of these remasters are available to buy from their Bandcamp page. There's also some 'new' Ullulators recordings available to download too.
    https://ullulators.bandcamp.com/music

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