Stump -

Stump was an English–Irish avant-rock band that released the 1985–86 zolo EPs Mud On a Colon and Quirk Out, followed by the 1988 Ensign album A Fierce Pancake. Bassist Kev Hopper launched a solo career.

Members: Kev Hopper (bass), Robert McKahey (drums), Chris Salmon (guitar), Mick Lynch (vocals)

Background

Stump assembled in London in 1983 when English musicians Kev Hopper and Chris Salmon placed an advertisement for a singer and drummer. Hopper and Salmon had met during the summer of 1982 in Whitstable while Hopper completed his studies at the Canterbury College of Art. Irish drummer Rob McKahey, lately of Microdisney, answered the advertisement and met the two in Peckham. A singer, Nick Hobbs—who later joined the Shrubs—was already in place, but McKahey pushed to replace him, and the slot stayed open until McKahey persuaded fellow ex-Microdisney member Mick Lynch, whom he had seen perform in Cork, to audition. Lynch heard the material, agreed to join, and the four-piece was complete.

The band built a following in London indie circles through live performances and landed a debut EP release in late 1985.

Mud On a Colon

In November 1985, Stump debuted with Mud On a Colon on the UK indie Ron Johnson Records.

The four tracks set up oblique rhythmic frames over which Salmon’s guitar and Hopper’s bass lock at cross-purposes, the ensemble’s forward motion driven by McKahey’s drum patterns, which draw from Irish jig time signatures alongside a conventional rock backbeat. Lynch’s lyrics pile surrealist imagery and upend normal syntax, delivered in a Cork-accented bark that treats meter as optional.

A1. “Orgasm Way”
A2. “Ice the Levant”

B1. “Grab Hands”
B2. “55-0-55”

Stump recorded Mud On a Colon at The Point Studios with producer Danny Hyde, who also served as engineer.

Quirk Out

On October 27, 1986, Stump released their second EP, Quirk Out, on Stuff Records.

The six tracks extend the ensemble approach of the debut while tightening the song structures into more defined shapes. Hopper’s fretless bass—played through a Wal instrument and HH Baby Bass compressor—drives much of the ensemble’s momentum while Salmon builds guitar lines on a standard Stratocaster through a Selmer Treble n’ Bass amplifier, avoiding effects and producing what the guitarist described as “wobbly” lines that coil around the rhythm. McKahey’s kit work gives the ensemble its rhythmic anchor, incorporating the bodhran alongside a five-piece Sonor setup. Lynch’s vocals carry the ensemble’s darkly comic register throughout.

“Tupperware Stripper” opens the record on an offbeat collision of snarling guitar and drumming that jolts between metric frames, its lyric built around a man in yellowing underwear performing an exotic dance for a group of middle-aged housewives. “Our Fathers” slows the pace into a comparatively spacious, even-tempered arrangement, its anti-war lyric carried on a more sustained melodic arc. “Kitchen Table” propels a shorter, more percussive frame with hyperactive bass movement and a carnival-barker vocal delivery centered on personal hygiene.

“Buffalo” is as a mordant satire on American tourists in London, the lyric’s absurdist conceit—that slaughtered American bison have been reincarnated as camera-toting visitors—carried on a fretless-bass-led instrumental full of slides and discords beneath an irregular vocal melody; the song’s recurring refrain “How much is the fish?” became a widely circulated indie-circuit phrase. “Everything In Its Place” draws a country-inflected looseness into the ensemble’s usual angularity. “Bit Part Actor” closes the record at speed in a clangorous rush of compressed drums and frenzied guitar.

A1. “Tupperware Stripper” (4:01)
A2. “Our Fathers” (3:27)
A3. “Kitchen Table” (2:53)

B1. “Buffalo” (3:54)
B2. “Everything In Its Place” (2:48)
B3. “Bit Part Actor” (2:12)

Stump recorded Quirk Out at Rockfield Studios, Monmouthshire, in July 1986 with producer Hugh Jones.

The artwork features a buffalo head designed by Salmon, with additional artwork by Phili Josephs and a backdrop by Linda Scott. In spring 1987, Stuff Records reissued Quirk Out on cassette with Mud On a Colon as bonus tracks on the second side; the reissue also allowed the band to address the distortion that had affected the original EP pressing. Chrysalis Records distributed the album in Australia and France in 1986.

Quirk Out reached number 2 on the UK Independent Albums Chart and spent 26 weeks on the chart. By its twentieth consecutive week it had matched the longest chart run in the chart’s history at that point, a run previously set by The Smiths’ The Queen Is Dead.

In 1987, Chrysalis picked up Quirk Out for distribution in Europe and Australia.

“Buffalo” first appeared on C86, a 1986 NME compilation with cuts by A Witness, Age of Chance, bIG fLAME, Bog-Shed, Close Lobsters, Fuzzbox, McCarthy, The Mighty Lemon Drops, Miaow, The Pastels, The Servants, The Shrubs, and The Wolfhounds.

Stuff Records reissued “Buffalo” as a 7” single in 1988, backed with “The Song’s Remains,” an exclusive free-form cut.

A Fierce Pancake

Stump released their album, A Fierce Pancake, on March 7, 1988, on Ensign–Chrysalis.

The twelve tracks carry a fuller, more layered sonic frame than Quirk Out, with the addition of samplers and the involvement of multiple producers giving the record a wider dynamic range while retaining the band’s underlying interlocking rhythmic and harmonic approach.

Hopper’s bass and sampler work supply both a melodic and textural function, his playing increasingly entwined with programmed elements. Salmon’s guitar retains its idiosyncratic, oblique character against McKahey’s drumming, which again incorporates the bodhran alongside the standard kit. Lynch’s vocal range on the record spans a falsetto at the high end to a low, grunting register, shifting register within and between songs to match the material’s lurching lyric subjects. Keyboards and occasional vocals by Mimi Izumi Kobayashi appear on select tracks.

The opening “Living It Down” establishes the record’s signature instability through fluttering bass, lurching drums, and guitar that circles the pulse without settling into it. “Eager Bereaver” incorporates circus and cartoon-music gestures drawn from the compositional world of Kurt Weill, with eruptions and crashes that punctuate the arrangement. “Chaos” builds a slumping drumbeat and bent bass harmonics toward a repeated “Mutiny!” refrain, the lyric operating as a thinly veiled commentary on political authority. “Alcohol” sets a slow, atmospheric framework around a tale of self-delusion, with samples woven through the arrangement.

“Charlton Heston” deploys croaking frogs as rhythmic texture beneath a deadpan biblical recasting of the actor’s screen persona; the song originated as an improvised joke at a recording session breakfast table and was written faster than anything else on the record. “Doctor (A Visit to the)” runs a five-part monologue on sexual dysfunction through a framework drawn from Wilhelm Reich. The title track, an instrumental, builds an ominous, slow-moving frame from tremolo bass, bodhran, pipes, and clusters of found-object sounds—squeaking doors, celestes, and shopping trolleys recovered from the corners of Hansa Studios—in a mode Hopper described as Schaeffer-influenced. “Boggy Home” closes the record in a rush of compressed energy, its lyric carrying folk-inflected rural imagery.

A1. “Living It Down” (3:02)
A2. “In the Green” (3:41)
A3. “Roll the Bodies Over” (3:44)
A4. “Bone” (3:48)
A5. “Eager Bereaver” (3:52)
A6. “Chaos” (3:52)

B1. “Alcohol” (4:03)
B2. “Charlton Heston” (3:29)
B3. “Heartache” (3:04)
B4. “Doctor (A Visit to the)” (4:30)
B5. “A Fierce Pancake” (3:45)
B6. “Boggy Home” (2:12)

Stump recorded A Fierce Pancake across 1987 in sessions at Swanyard Studios in London, an additional location in Hoxton, and Hansa Studios in Berlin, with final mixing at Britannia Row Studios in London. Holger Hiller produced the Berlin sessions and John Robie produced additional portions; Hugh Jones mixed the completed album. Stephen Street served as engineer for the Hansa sessions before departing to work on Morrissey’s Viva Hate. The album was the band’s first CD release.

The cover photograph, taken by Fergus Bourke, came from a Christy Moore songbook and depicts a donkey on the Aran Islands. The album was dedicated to the life and works of Flann O’Brien and Wilhelm Reich; the title derives from a line in O’Brien’s novel The Third Policeman.

Ensign lifted “Chaos” as the lead single backed with the 1985 track “Ice the Levant.” The single also appeared on 12″ with a third track, the non-album “Safe Sex.” A music video directed by Chris Gabrin accompanied the release. “Charlton Heston” followed as a second single in July 1988, backed with “Angst Forecast,” another session outtake.

A twelve-inch version entitled “Lights! Camel! Action!” was a collaboration with The Irresistible Force. The single’s Tim Pope–directed video received MTV airplay and spent five weeks on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at number 72 on August 13, 1988.

Discography: