Thank heaven for Wikipedia’s disambiguation pages. Just as I was about to regale you with tales long and short about Franz Kafka, a disambiguation page puts me right back on track with a well-timed reference to the post-punk sounds of early eighties Edinburgh band – Josef K. Signed to the ridiculously prickly Postcard label along with Orange Juice and Aztec Camera in an era that rattled to the art-punk sounds of Television and a local scene that literally throbbed with the bristling, agit-romance of The Associates, the Visitors, the Fire Engines, TV21, the Scars and Another Pretty Face. In these days, frontman Paul Haig and the K’s were known as TV Art swapping their name a year or so later in deference to Haig’s fascination with the anarchic magic realism and social anxieties of Czech writer, Franz Kafka, who shaped Haig’s own depressively absurd take on everyday revelations and the joyful epiphanies of youth in the latter part of the twentieth-century. Makes him sound rather grand, doesn’t it? But with titles as existential and anti-social as ‘Drone’, ‘Sense of Guilt’, ‘Crazy To Exist’, ‘Final Request’, ‘Citizens’, ‘Endless Soul’ and ‘Sorry For Laughing’ it’s not hard to understand his appeal to a brow-furrowing intelligentsia still mourning the loss of commander-in-chief and former National Socialist German Workers Party leader, Ian Curtis. Naturally, nothing on ‘Entomology’ rewards the listener with any of the ebullient pop-sensibilities of Orange Juice’s ‘Rip It Up’ but it does yield some of the same funk and disco methodology. But neither is it as remote and inaccessible as the Fire Engines. In fact, if these straws I am clutching at in my hands are anything to go by, I’d have to say they arrive at a station somewhere in between, although the twitchy, glittery joy of ‘Sorry For Laughing’, ‘Chance Meeting’ and ‘Picture of Cindy’ suggests that given the opportunity and the right managerial tweaks, Josef K might have eventually scored the kind of slow-burn commercial success perfected by the likes of the Cure and Pulp.
Unfortunately though, it wasn’t to be.
In November 1980 Josef K recorded their debut album, Sorry For Laughing, which, to the ears of the band at least, failed to adequately capture the sound they created live or the new direction they been pursuing with newer, more abrasive songs. As a result the release was canned, the band quoted as being unhappy with the smooth, unadventurous production and the fact they already had it’s more learned successor, Only Fun In Town ready to roll some nine-months later. Twelve tracks were cut, test pressings were made but until 1990, at least, when the tracks re-surfaced on a compilation, the album was resigned to history. Until now that is.
In deference to their own heroes, Postcard, Domino Recordings, pallbearers to the post-punk movement of the early eighties, and interested reanimators of the 21st Century art noize (Franz Ferdinand, Orange Juice, Fire Engines, Arctic Monkeys) are releasing several of these recordings as part of their ‘Entomology’ compilation, a shirty, robust 22-track account of the band’s Postcard career including B-Sides, 7” versions and Peel Sessions. It’s one of those rare occasions that the past can be seen at least 12 months ahead of the present.
The good news? I have seen the future. The bad news? I’m some 25 years too late.