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Album Review

A Witness I Am John’s Pancreas
Euphonium Records

Article written by Ged M
May 30, 2006.

We usually describe a record as ‘C86’ when it’s full hyperactive guitars, trebly squeaks and buzzy pop. A Witness’s ‘Sharpened Sticks’ on the NME C86 cassette represented a different sound, but no less of an antidote to the pop inanity that was prevalent in the mid-80s: a thrashy attack of angular guitars and stream of consciousness vocals, driven along by a grumbly bass and TR606 drum machine, that owed a debt to the Fall, the Nightingales and Captain Beefheart. It was pretty left field for the time but those aggressively driving post-punk rhythms have become almost mainstream in indie circles 20 years later. ‘I Am John’s Pancreas’, A Witness’s first record, has been released on CD for the first time after the master tapes were rediscovered in the drummer’s attic. Although nothing on here matches the brilliance of the sicko thrash-pop of ‘I Love You Mr Disposable Razors’ from 1989, it shows that the elements were in place three years earlier: from the buzzing, bass-y ‘Smelt Like A Pedestrian’ to Soft Boys-meet-Beefheart skronky jazz-pop of ‘Car Skidding’ to sampled, experimental ‘4.49 Stool’ to Swans-like doom of ‘The Loudhailer Song’ (“things to remember/ there is no God/ liberation will never come/ we are all doomed to a life of servitude”), without losing contact with a little melody.

A Witness broke up after guitarist Rick Aitken, for whom this record is a bit of a tribute, died in a climbing accident in 1989. But they’ve left something to be proud of: not just a piece of the C86 legend but a record that stands up more than you’d have thought among the young post-punkers of today.

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