безбожный

About the album

безбожный (Godless in Cyrillic, pronounced "bez-bosjz-ny") is an Australian electronic music album from MK Ultra & the Assassins of Light, originally released in 1989 as a compact cassette by Cosmic Conspiracy Productions.

It is a compilation of solo and collaborative home based recordings made by John Prendergast and Phillip White between 1984 and 1988. Paul Von Deering (Severed Heads) and Scot McPhee (Now Zero) also contribute to a couple of tracks. John and Phillip were members of early 1980’s Sydney experimental performance groups Cannibals of Style and the Institute of Applied Uselessness, which were notable for their largely unstructured performances using tape loops, analog synths, random noise and visual elements.

Most tracks on безбожный were composed, played and recorded with at the time state of the art technology. Earlier tracks often used digital delays as samplers and drum machines as sequencers. By the end of the decade, computer sequencing and digital samplers had made an appearance.

Stylistically, безбожный is a bit of a dogs breakfast. Currently listed on Wikipedia there are nearly 300 distinct electronic music genres and sub-genres. Безбожный doesn't really fit neatly into any of them. Weird synthesizer pop blended with random noise and electronic sounds co-exist alongside experimental electronic and music concrète tracks.

If there is any sort of theme, it would be mocking US televangelists and preachers. Samples of these parasites feature prominently in many of the recordings as well as anti-corporate, anti-fascist and introspective lyrical samples.

The album was called Godless due to its predominantly anti-evangelist sentiment. The Cyrillic spelling was probably due to Phil having a Russian to English dictionary.

A compilation VHS video cassette called Psywar was also made. It and безбожный are the only media released under the name of MK Ultra & the Assassins of Light.

Audio quality varies considerably throughout this collection. Just about everything was recorded and produced in bedrooms and lounge rooms with non professional recording equipment. The production and mastering quality would make a sound engineer weep. The reissued tracks haven’t had any significant remastering except for some compression and EQ enhancement, No AI tools have been used on any tracks. - Phillip White