This 1981 New Wave, independent single was the second release by Sydney band, the Agents. Until now it has never been reissued and has only been available in it’s original forms - as a limited edition, 7 inch vinyl 45, or as part of the Agents 1983 12 inch EP, No Adjustment To The Face – so it’s with great pleasure that we can at last release this re-mastered, digital edition.

 

 

Personnel (left to right on record cover):

• Karl May, bass
• James Griffin, vocals
• Gye Bennetts, drums
• Kydric Shaw, guitar, keyboards, backing vocals

Recorded by Ian Davies at Studio 221, Sydney, 1980 Produced by Ian Davies, Kydric Shaw & James Griffin Cover photography, Bruce Tindale Cover design, Bruce Tindale & Richard Lewis

“Merciless Cinema first came out on the Agents own label; received a lot of airplay on alternative radio; was popular with DJs at music venues around Sydney; did well in the alternative charts. So it’s good to think it’s available again now – to anyone who liked it then and, of course, to new listeners coming to this cinematic song/’movie’ journey for the first time. Welcome to Merciless Cinema!

“I wrote the lyric and sang the song. Kydric Shaw wrote the music and played those great guitar parts…and what an inspired piece of music composition it is; and what fabulous guitar playing. This was a new kind of song for both of us: a breakthrough in our song-writing collaboration after several months of trying to re-imagine and re-create the Agents sound into a new place. And Karl May’s bass is just right and the drumming from Gye Bennetts is exactly what you’d hope for in such a song.

“Lyrically, the whole Merciless Cinema poem/’movie’ sequence grew out of the title. And what follows - a seemingly random but none-the-less painstakingly arranged montage of urban images and urgent vignettes: a stranded meditation on ‘home’ – still speaks to me now, whenever I hear or sing the song. The bridge, however, arrived intact, from some unconscious, instinctive place - like automatic writing – and remains, of all my songs, one of my favourite verses:

Heaven is a uniform
Of passionate embrace
Home is where the heart
Needs no adjustment
To the face

The slow kill turns
To an animal howl
Toxic kisses
In the gold-fish bowl
The traffic screams
Like a millionaire
The panic alert
Is the normal nightmare

Pretty pretty pretty
Dressed to kill
Walking wounded
Standing still
Go-go dancing
Cheek to cheek
In a plastic bag
From the junk-boutique

I….
I can’t go home
I….
I can’t go home
The cinema escorts me
Mercilessly
Blow by blow

Ricochet bullets
Of violent eyes
Love you leave you
Paralysed
Small hearts flutter
In the midnight storm
The kidnapped promise
Is safe and warm

Heaven is a uniform
Of passionate embrace
Home is where the heart
Needs no adjustment
To the face

I….
I can’t go home
I….
I can’t go home
The Cinema escorts me
Mercilessly
Blow by blow

I do hope you enjoy it, along with the song/music itself.

Merciless Cinema is available from James's Store.

All tracks available digitally from Apple Music, Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, Amazon, Deezer, Pandora, YouTube Music, Tidal, Groove Music (Microsoft) from Sept 1st 2017.