The following is an account of my work with Zoviet-France. It's as comprehensive as memory allows. I wrote it originally three years ago when a number of ex-members were keen to resolve some of the issues that had been hanging around like a damp fog for many years. Three of us have recently started to work again as "The Reformed Faction of Soviet France." So, I have decided to put this writing back on-line. It's an accurate recollection of what happened and explains why I'm sat here, today, back in the North East of England, as a member of A version of Soviet France. This is for Robin, and Andy. Two people who experienced much more than me but have managed to retain dignity, understanding and invention.

Hunt Saboteurs
I first met Ben from the band due to my work with the Hunt Saboteurs Association.

I had formed a group in County Durham and liaised with the group on Tyneside. Ben became their spokesperson and I used to talk to him on the phone. This happened in the winter of 1986. About that time Ben was assaulted whilst on a hunt in the Lake District. During a telephone conversation he mentioned that he was a musician and he sent me a copy of one of his records, which was Gris. I thought it was great. I had heard of the band because I ordered things from Recommended Records and Gris was released by Recommended, Germany. I'd been a drummer in various bands for years but wasn't making music at the time, however, I was painting a great deal and was using creative techniques in my day job.

Condition 1
Ben remarked that his band were looking for a third member, as someone (Paolo) had just left them . I moved to Newcastle and became increasingly less involved with the Hunt Saboteurs but in the summer of 1987 Ben and I got together and I heard some more of their music. He invited me to a meeting with Robin at his flat and we made music together for the first time in approximately July of 1987. An excerpt of this was later used as part of the soundtrack to Stan Brakhages film, "Loud Visual Noises." I was given a three month conditional offer of joining the band .We recorded together for the first time at Ben's flat in Fenham, on August 17th, 18th and 19th. Excerpts from these sessions ended up on the Noh Mans Land (Recommended Germany) sampler, the track was called " First Vigil " This track was included on the Mute album, Collusion. I recognised my contributions on a couple of tracks from that record. I could easily tell by the presence of my voice and the fact that I know the kinds of noises I made. I had a few instruments of my own, including a Dictaphone that had sounds on it that I used with Zoviet-France. The Dictaphone finally broke years later but not before I'd used many of those sounds, many times, in all sorts of different settings. For example, I recorded my wife singing old catholic hymns and these surfaced on several Dead Voices On Air tracks on my first proper release, New Words Machine.

Taped Delay
I have lost one or two of the tapes from this period but generally I was given a copy of every session we recorded. I think I've moved house about 10 times since 1987. That includes moving to Canada, to Holland and then back to England. I have 9 full length "finished" mastered tapes with me on (each at least one hour in length).

Larking About
I 'passed' my three month audition. We had been tentatively offered a concert on the Island of Pampus, just off the coast at Amsterdam (although this never happened in my lifetime, Andy told me that they did in fact play this show in 1990). So we worked quite hard really. I started to make my own instruments and got involved in the organization of the band. Ben was regularly leaving the country for short trips to various places. His girlfriend at the time was working somewhere in Europe. He was also still involved in the Hunt Saboteurs. We also started to socialise quite a bit. Robin was living in a small flat and he seemed to make music all of the time. I think he did a few odd jobs but he was always painting or making music. At the time all of us were active visual artists and I had a very good job in a hospital that saw us undertake large visual art exhibitions and public art events. I can recall that Ben came to one of our openings.

Mr. Demarco I Presume
It was through this job that I made contact with Richard Demarco, a well known arts entrepreneur from Edinburgh (he was largely responsible for much of the work Joseph Beuys created in the U.K and numerous other European artists such as the Polish Dramatist Tadeus Kantor). I felt that Demarco would be interested in the work of Zoviet-France and I started a communication with him that saw all three of us visit him at his gallery in Edinburgh, armed with a beautiful model of a triangular speaker system we had worked on, with ambitious plans for a live show. Elaine drove us. Demarco was as eccentric as it comes. Firing off dozens of photographs of us and 'interviewing' Elaine, "Why is it important for you to drive this group to Edinburgh." We had this plan for each of us to be on three separate scaffolding towers, with the speaker system in the middle of the hall. All of these decisions were worked on collectively. Ben was fond of band meetings and there was a spirit of collective energy, although Ben seemed more engaged in the administrative side of the work than Robin and I. Sadly, despite much excitement, the meeting did not result in anything.

Strawberries and Gris...
When I joined the band, they had never officially played live before. They had played at an anti-nuclear protest in Cumbria but this always sounded like a few people drumming together. I may be wrong as obviously I wasn't around at the time. I was very keen to play live, I kept telling the guys that I was sure there would be an audience and that we could reproduce aspects of our "studio" work live. I can vividly remember the guys being afraid that nobody would be interested in seeing ZF play live. That the music would not translate into a live setting. I have to say that I encountered ambivalence about this idea but we were offered a very low key show in a rather battered pub in Newcastle called The Strawberry. It was an OK place to hang out midweek (it had a good juke box) but on Saturdays was a no-go zone as it stood about 25 yards from St.James' Park, the home of Newcastle United and was full of drunken fans.

We played upstairs. I think at least half of the 25 people there worked with me. The place was a tip. It had been abandoned and was seriously dangerous. We did quite a lot of preparation for the show, probably more talking than action. We basically played in the ex-living room of the landlord. You have to understand that Zoviet-France were not that well known in those days. The scene, internationally, was small and communication was done by mail. There was no internet, no recognisable media outlet that specialised in promoting this kind of music and I hardly met anyone in the North East, unknown to members of the band, who had heard of us. It wasn't until I moved to Canada in 1992 that I discovered the band were known elsewhere. I walked in to a record store and saw a ZF T shirt on the wall! Even when we later played in Amsterdam, the "scene" was tiny and propagated by a handful of people, strange art organisations and record shops worldwide. Everyone knew each other.

At the Strawberry we prepared a set and played it live. Almost like a mini-greatest hits package and not a truly improvised performance. We started by playing back the famous "Hijacker" tape that was on either Flock of Rotations or Assault and Mirage. I encouraged them to play Shekinah from Gris as it was my favourite track! I used this strange stick with metal rings on it, banging it vigorously on the floor. Ben played an old synth with his foot I believe , Robin doing vocals. We then played a version of the "Look Into Me" tape collage that Robin had constructed. The same piece was used throughout the " Look Into Me," cd. Next up, we all used tiny keyboards, the kinds often enclosed within greetings cards at the time. We built up a texture putting them through an infinite delay and Robin added melodica over the top. We all added some low droning vocals. Quite beautiful, until the whole thing fed back and Robin stopped the delay and we literally started from scratch.

I have two taped versions of the show. One was recorded in the front row by a guy called John Smith (I kid you not) and the other was recorded by Ben. The show was reviewed by a friend of mine Steve, for a magazine that I can't remember the name of and that probably died years ago. I do recall that it was basically the only "What's on in Newcastle" kind of paper and that the editor had played drums in a band with Steve and was called Davey. I have a copy of this review somewhere, I keep discovering it by accident. I can remember it being favourable. Steve actually called it " the music of shifting mountains," which I always thought was a good analogy. The whole show lasted less than 30 minutes.

Eccentric?
I think we all felt it was quite successful really. At the time we would get lot's of really strange offers for mad shows. Like, " I own a castle in Northern Spain and I'd like you play for 24 hours," kind of madness. Ben dealt with the correspondence. I was around, coming up with crazed ideas, offering to help and working on my own art. Most major decisions were taken collectively. For example, the three of us went to York to meet Tony who ran Red Rhino (the label that distributed Zoviet-France) to discuss a new deal for the label, Charrm. It was at this time that CD's were becoming commonplace and we had all these strange plans for releasing cd's in bags of plasma or bags full of sand etc. Red Rhino morphed into APT about this time. I distinctly remember getting together with a bunch of slides to assemble the artwork for Shouting At The Ground. I had paintings from Ben and Robin and for years had them hanging on my wall together.

Ears Shot.
I remember helping Ben a little with an event called Earshot that called for submissions from experimental artists around the world. He was sent dozens of tapes from people such as Merzbow and Nicolas Collins but my absolute fave was a band from Montreal called the Blind Hunters, who spliced together a fantastic version of a Salt 'n Pepa hit (Push It) with sounds sampled from Zoviet-France. I still have some of those tapes.

Hamster Jam.
I remember visiting Amsterdam with my wife for a holiday in the autumn of 1987. I accidentally happened upon Staalplaat, which had a great reputation as a store.

I walked in and saw a guy called Andrew McKenzie (Hafler Trio) who I knew from Darlington (a town in Northern England that I used to live in). He worked with my ex-wife in a wholefood store. I had no idea that he was a. living in Amsterdam and b. that he had anything to do with music. I knew he "collected sounds." It came as a surprise for me to learn that he went to school with Ben. McKenzie seemed kind of shocked that I was in Zoviet-France as he had no idea that I made music. Strange meeting.

About this time, Lohland was released on Staaltape and there was an excellent experimental arts scene in Holland that seemed to have access to money. In the summer of 1988 Ben visited Amsterdam and saw the infamous SRL action around the Conradstraat squat. I met him on his return in Camden, London at a pub with some friends from the band Echo City. The same organisation, DEM invited us to play at their anniversary of the squats demise in December 1988.

Workers and Drones.
Meanwhile we had registered Charrm as a Co-operative business and as part of its development, the three of us, Ben, Robin and myself went through a period of training. I can't remember how long it lasted. To be honest, I was exhausted. I had to travel to work in Sunderland (getting up at 6.30 am), work all day, travel back to Newcastle and then go for our business development training sessions. We were all involved equally, although Ben and Robin did more work around the business plan, as it was principally centered around the re-release of old cd's. Shouting At The Ground finally came out, after a lengthy delay, on vinyl and cd. It was a very, very busy time for all of us. I was also finishing off a training course at this time, having to spend a day a week in York. I can also recall us all talking about finding a property in the country where we could have a recording studio and a small office/warehouse to house the "company." It was about this time that my wife and I were tiring of living in Newcastle. We ended up moving into a fairly remote country cottage in February of 1989, just after I left the band.

Output.
When I listen to all these old tapes I am impressed at the integration of the sounds. I can detect certain contributions by various people because, for example, Ben's vocal style was different to Robin's and Robin had an uncanny ability to pick anything up and make coherent and beautiful sounds or tunes. Robin is a natural musician. Ben was a fine engineer and had a great skill in mixing. He was also inspired whilst we were recording, he would pick up the most unlikely "tools" like a tape spool and a drumstick and perceive that together, played in the right way, they would be able to make a great sound. I brought with me certain instruments, such as a trumpet, that can be immediately recognised. I was not a virgin to this kind of music. When I was 13, I was in a band that did not sound dissimilar to Zoviet-France, we certainly used some of the same instruments. I had an extensive collection of avant-garde music and my exploits in various bands as a drummer usually tipped in the direction of "oddness." Plus, I had collected strange toys and musical objets d'art for many years. Additionally, I used music, drama and visual art in my work. I was obsessed by the nature of spontaneity or improvisation. I felt at home in Zoviet-France and whilst we were working together, never felt that my contribution was second rate. It is absurd to think that anyone could dominate the performance of the music. To think so, is to work against the very nature of how the music was created. When we sat down to make music, everyone was an equal. We all worked TOGETHER. Personalities did not matter. We communicated directly through the act of making music. In fact we communicated a whole lot better by making music than we did by talking.

When we started to make music, the room was bare. By the time we finished it was covered in all sorts of toys and strange instruments. It was very much organic. I played whatever came to hand. I did not have a four track and to be honest I was dead set against becoming familiar with how to use gadgets and studio tricks in those days. It was double Dutch to me but when we were making music, we were equal.

Endgame
The end for me came in the run up to the show we did in the Paradiso, December 1988. We mistakenly decided to do a greatest hits package, odd as it may seem. Within the confines of the "studio" we could control our sounds but when it came to the performance it was a mess. I was the only one who did not have a four track. Most of my microphones did not work. The set was plagued by terrible feedback and to be honest, it was awful. At least the four tracks could not feed back. All of my sounds were made on the fly into a bare microphone. It was horrid. I think we tried to do too much. We tried to create a composite picture of Zoviet-France, to reflect the variety of recorded work. It was a mistake. Years later, I learnt that the kinds of microphones we used were impossible to control in a live setting unless you played very quietly and got a good monitor mix but none of us took this into account. I have since mastered this trick for myself and played in all sorts of combinations, even with louder instruments (for example working with a typical "rock band") and still managed to make a decent contribution. Even more years later, I learnt that someone who was also at the mixing desk that night had messed with the desk, pulling out all the patches and putting them back in the wrong way. Nice. I won't flatter him by mentioning his name as I think he may enjoy the attention.

When we returned to the U.K we had a band meeting in January 1989 and the conclusion was that I left the band but not the Company. To be totally honest, I felt as if I was being blamed for the bad concert. I was angry but I couldn't see a way of working within the threesome, as at that time Ben and Robin were still the nucleus and I was ostensibly, the odd man out. The whole vibe in Amsterdam was wrong. We were surrounded by horrible liggers at the show in Amsterdam from the experimental cognoscenti and I thought they were pretentious fools. To this day, I don't like many of these 'sort' of people. They're all still around, trading off past glories, being exonerated by magazines such as The Wire, living off Mummy and Daddy's ill gotten gains. Not my scene at all I'm afraid. I don't read The Wire.

Did I leave or was I asked to leave? Both are true. I knew there were problems. At that time in their development, Zoviet-France were not a live band. I think I influenced their interest in playing live but to be honest, at the time, I think we made a hash of it.

I peripherally stayed with the Company until some time in 1990.

We've all moved on since.

Conclusion.

A Lot of Water Under a Lot of Bridges
Why have I written in such detail about what, on paper, seems like such a small period in the bands history?

It's simple. When I started to release music by myself I started to get all sorts of weird

e-mails from people around the world informing me that : a. I was never a member of Zoviet-France b. I never released anything with Zoviet-France c. I never played live with Zoviet-France. d. I was only drafted in for one concert. e. I sample Zoviet-France. f. I have released a bootleg Zoviet-France cd.

At the time, I reacted. Now, I don't particularly care what people with vivid imaginations think about what I did or didn't do. I have become good friends with Robin and Andy. That's all that matters.

Being a member of Zoviet France did not greatly help my career. I'm not remotely interested in talking or debating this point! I am happy with what I've done in music, for myself and with others.

Michael Karoli and Damo Suzuki of Can (without doubt, my favourite band..period) had never heard of Zoviet-France. That's a shame. I played with both and was a member of Michael's band. We tend to think that a lot of musicians really listen to a lot of music but it's often not the case.

About eight years ago I wrote about my time in ZF on my website: http://www.spybey.net

In fact it is the only piece of writing on the official website about my time with the band. Until this! I honestly can't recall saying anything that I regret about my time in the band in the interviews I have done over the years. I may have, I suppose but I can't remember doing so. In fact I have usually tried to make light of it when the interviewer has raised the question and politely said nice things about the band, their legacy and the members. If I have said anything caustic, possibly after a few drinks or in the middle of a 40 shows in 41 nights US tour, I apologise. Sincerely.

This is what I said on my official website:

This is an attempt to answer questions about my involvement with Zoviet*France.

I recorded with them. I played live with them for their first two shows, in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and in Amsterdam. I stayed with them between 1987 and 89. It was a memorable experience and I learned a great deal. In 1989 I moved into the country away from Newcastle and never made music again until 1992.Ben and Robin have done much to shape the world of ambient music. Zoviet-France are still a vital cog in the development of this and related genres. My role in that has been a small one. I follow their progress with interested distance. As T.S Eliot said in" The Love Song Of J.Alfred Prufrock,":

" No! I am not Prince Hamlet,

nor was meant to be ;

Am an attendant lord,

one that will do

To swell a progress,

start a scene or two...."

A wonderful Zoviet*France web site has been set up and i urge you to check it out:

http://www.teleport.com/~mars/ZF

end of article

2005
Let's celebrate Zoviet-France. Soviet France. The Reformed Faction of Soviet-France. To single any member out (ex or current) for attention is simply not right. The world of music is a big place. I don't think for one minute that any of the projects I have played live with sound ANYTHING like Zoviet-France live. I hope I've alienated Zoviet-France fans by, for example, singing songs and working with real musicians because I'm all for creative alienation! I stand by the ideas we used to talk about in ZF. We would often joke about releasing a pop song or a country album and I think I've deviated pretty radically towards that direction by interspersing live songs with folk singing, puppet shows, banjo players and various other ruses. I have no problem in alienating people artistically because if you turn up to see a show featuring me and anticipate what I'm going to sound like, I will inevitably disappoint you.

History Man
In terms of recorded work, as far as I am concerned, I appeared on:

1. Look Into Me cd.

2. Noh Man's Land compilation track, "First Vigil."

3. Collusion cd, tracks "First Vigil," "White Dusk" and possibly "Something This Beautiful." If this was the case, the date on the sleeve is incorrect (March 1990)

4. Soundtrack to Stan Brakhage movie, "Loud Visual Noises."

5. I have also been told that another compilation on Bad Alchemy recorded during the time I was in the band was released in something like 1993.

Branson's Pickle
It is only fair that active participants in recorded and released works are credited. To do otherwise is to be dishonest to the collective principles that underpinned bands like Zoviet-France. To claim ownership of a band and its recorded output is about as far from the spirit of collectivism as you can get, in fact it stinks of individualism, of me, me, me.

The Go-Betweenies
Now, in 2005, we've reformed a version of the band. Why? Why not? Nothing has changed. Everything has changed. We're not competing with the current version of Zoviet -France, because we really have nothing in common with it apart from the past and as L.P. Hartley said, "the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there."

Onwards.

The Reformed Faction of Soviet France.

Mark Spybey.