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Black monk time (official re-issue)

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black monk time was recorded in March of 1966 at the famous Polydor studios in Cologne (Germany). It was produced by Jimmy Bowien. It was released in May of 1966 only in Germany and Sweden. This re-issue of the original LP and CD has been fueled by the underground success of the documentary film monks - the transatlantic feedback. This new release is accompanied by extensive liner notes about the 'making of' of black monk time.

Cover art by manager Walther Niemann (taken from the 2009 liner notes to the re-issue)

Any gestalt reflects the essence of its creator and, therefore, his or her position in current affairs.” This is a statement by Max Burchartz, a graphic designer famous for applying the ideas of Bauhaus architecture to his design work. Also, Burchartz was Walther Niemann’s tutor from 1957 until 1961. Niemann, in turn, contributed his share to the managerial master plan when he created the “Black Monk Time” album’s sleeve design: a black cover, decorated solely with the band name and album title set in Helvetica, thus recalling Malewitsch’s 1915 painting “The Black Square on White Ground”. Malewitsch’s intention was to mark a new beginning. On the flip side you can see sixteen identical squares. They are filled with the liner notes, the track listing, and b/w photographs highlighting lines and circles with shadows and light. In one of the photos, the “black Monks” can be seen performing shamanic dances in the snow. It brings to mind one of the press releases written by the managers: “Now The Monks are back. And the sound is so hot, so uncompromising, so hard-core that teenagers or young people can’t leave the dance floor anymore. The sounds are fired off like a volley of machine-gun fire. People squirm and writhe, the blood’s boiling.” Ending on a high note, the managers had written liner notes that remain sensational to this day."

Original 1966 Liner Notes written by managers Karl-H. Remy and Walther Niemann

"Sunlight grids quiver in the system. Read on! It's monk time - it's hop time. Don't read this. We said: don't read this. Let sapphires glide into the grooves. What is beat? What is beat today? And what is over-beat? And who the hell is going to melt the hot and cold world of tomorrow?

Listen, as Roger beats, Gary plucks, Dave pummels. And Eddie dreams hell's bass part. And Larry fingers the keys of the day after tomorrow. The monks believe in nothing. The monks believe that everything is possible. The monks give everything. Words are the outline of lies. Why do the monks produce their own words - for days on end, as the moon shines - until one word leads to another. Don't listen. Count from nine until blast off, then swim into the city's primeval forest. Black discs mirror colorful, shimmering illusions. This black circle, however, quivers within the system of our dear world - goodness gracious - the experiment, after all, is only beginning. Truth is habit-forming. Lying is the art of pleasing the other. The monks for their part, love . . .

Gary Burger plays guitar and was born in Minnesota. Roger Johnston, a Texan, gives his drums the works. Chicago boy: That is Larry Clark - crazy-fingers at the organ, for his father was no gangster, but a priest. And Dave Day has more than one banjo and more than one microphone built into each of his banjos. He claims that he was born in Washington. And Eddie Shaw, who hails from California, uses his bass guitar as he sees fit!"

Reviews

The Rolling Stone writes: In November 1965, the doors had just opened for business, James Osterberg was not yet Iggy Pop, and the Velvet Underground were four months away from recording their debut album. Meanwhile, the Monks – five ex-GIs living in what was then West Germany – were in a studio in Cologne cutting the most precociously extreme, exuberantly screwy platter in rock history.

To this day, there is nothing in art rock, punk rock or nut rock that comes close to the goony conceptual rigor of the Monks' image (monastic threads, partially shaved domes) and the crude, avant-biergarten sound of the group's sole LP, Black Monk Time. Imagine the stark, raving dada of the Fugs bumrushing the crisp la-di-da of '60s Brit pop – pogo-action rhythms, the taut-rubber-band twang of an electric banjo, big-fuzz guitar, pidgin-beatnik verse ("Oh How to Do Now," "Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice") delivered in wigged-out chants and yodels. Long before disgruntled draftees in Vietnam were getting baked on hard drugs and Jimi Hendrix records, the Monks brought the neuroses of Cold War-era front-line service to bear on rock & roll.

The tracks on this first-ever U.S. issue of Black Monk Time are warped-riff stomps performed with a shredded-nerve intensity just this side of total emotional meltdown. In "Monk Time," singer and guitarist Gary Burger brays like a scalded mule – "It's beat time! It's hop time! It's Monk time!" – over pneumatic drumming, the brittle clank of Dave Day's banjo and a numbing one-note organ riff. "I Hate You" is "96 Tears" soaked in battery acid – two chords, a forced-march beat, impressively ugly guitar distortion – and charged with a violent sexual tension ("I hate you with a passion, baby!/But call me!") that suggests "I Want to Hold Your Hand" – at gunpoint.

The amazing thing about the Monks is that they didn't play this stuff as high-attitude corn; Burger, Day, bassist Eddie Shaw, drummer Roger Johnston and organist Larry Clarke actually believed they were making pop music. And they were right. In the tense rhythmic frenzy and absurdist chorales of "Complication" ("Complication! Constipation!") and "Higgle-dy Piggledy," the Monks set the standard for the contagious, anything-goes lunacy of '60s garage rock, '70s punk and '90s grunge – way ahead of schedule.

The Monks paid heavily for their audacity, breaking up in 1967 after tasting only minor German success. But with this reissue, they're back just in time to kick rock & roll out of its post-Nirvana, premillennial blues. Now, more than ever, it's Monk time. (RS 758).[1]


Track list

Release 2009 CD/LP

Side A
  1. monk time
  2. shut up
  3. boys are boys and girls are choice
  4. higgle-dy piggle-dy
  5. i hate you
  6. oh, how to do now
Side B
  1. complication
  2. we do wie du
  3. drunken maria
  4. love came tumblin' down
  5. blast off!
  6. that's my girl


Complication Single

"Black monk time"
Song

To promote the album, "Complication" and "Oh How To Do Now" were released as a single in May of 1966. In 2009 Play Loud! Productions in conjunction with Universal (Polydor) released complication / oh, how to do now re-mastered and in the original art work by Walther Niemann.

Sources

  1. ^ Rolling Stone
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