A Fierce Pancake is the second and final release by Anglo-Irish experimental rock band Stump. It was released 7 March 1988 on Ensign Records, and was the only full-length studio album by the band. After they had enjoyed some underground success in the 1980s, including the release of their critically acclaimed "Buffalo" single and Quirk Out mini-album in 1986, the band signed to major label Ensign Records and began work on A Fierce Pancake in 1987. A major part of the recording process was undertaken in Berlin's famous Hansa Studios, where many of the band's favourite albums by other artists had been recorded. Recording sessions were very tense and problematic. The band initially worked with Stephen Street as engineer; he departed the sessions to work on Morrissey's Viva Hate, a decision the band would regret. Electronic pioneer Holger Hiller produced the Berlin sessions, a choice taken by bassist Kev Hopper whose recent interest in sampling and similar experimental techniques that Hiller was known for had grown, much to the other band members' disdain, who felt that Hiller and Hopper's direction was not to their liking.
Hopper's personal relations with the band grew increasingly strained and he left the sessions. The band returned to London where American electronic producer John Robie produced other parts of the album. His pop-centred production ethic was at odds with Hiller's avant-garde approach, but like Hiller, his approach was not to the band's liking. Hugh Jones ultimately mixed the album at Britannia Row Studios in London. The final album mixes avant-garde, funk and rock sensibilities that mix "jagged melodies that take abrupt left turns" with its "increasingly odd songs". Joseph Neff of The Vinyl District recalled that the album's "bent was deeply non-conformist yet not substantially indebted to punk precedent. It was surely bizarre, but was also highly structured."
The album was released in March 1988 on Ensign Records, with two singles released from it; "Chaos" and "Charlton Heston". The latter reached number 72 on the UK Singles Chart, but the album was not a commercial success, despite receiving favourable reviews from critics. The band split-up later in 1988, making A Fierce Pancake their final album. It went out of print in 1990 and only briefly returned to print in 2008 as part of a compilation album entitled A Fierce Pancake & Before: The Complete Anthology. However, today the album is praised as a "cult classic". Mike Patton named the album one of his favourite albums. Critics have noted the album may have influenced later bands, and one critic called the album a "significant precursor" to post-rock.
Background Stump formed in London in 1983. Initially featuring several line-up changes, the band settled in 1985 on the line-up of former Microdisney members Mick Lynch (vocals), Rob McKahey (drums), Kev Hopper (bass) and Chris Salmon (guitar). Becoming popular in indie circles for the band's unique, experimental sound, they built a following and released the four track EP Mud on a Colon in 1986 through the Ron Johnson record label. According to The Quietus, "the four tracks suggest Stump came out of the womb fully formed; the beguiling mélange of thwarted funk, traditional Irish drum rhythms (many of McKahey's time signature are concomitant with that of Irish jigs, usually performed in time) and Lynch's lyrics, which tended to play continual tricks with the English language, piling up Surrealist imagery with a humorous scorn for syntax." Their song "Buffalo" featured on the NME influential cassette compilation C86, featuring 22 tracks from bands within the British indie music scene, although Stump were said to stand out from the other jangle pop bands associated with the scene due to their quirky avant-garde bent.
After their success with their C86 appearance, the band recorded the mini-album Quirk Out, which included "Buffalo", and self-released the album on 26 September 1986, and was hailed by Melody Maker as "one of the pleasures of 1986", and stayed in the UK Indie Charts for 26 weeks, peaking at number 2.Lazell, Barry (1997) Indie Hits 1980-89, , Cherry Red Books The combination of the band's relentless touring and a specially filmed memorable music video for "Buffalo" for Channel 4 alternative music show The Tube prompted major record label interest in the band, and the band subsequently signed with Chrysalis Records offshoot Ensign Records. Hopper recalled that, "at first, we heard that Ensign were only interested in Mick," Hopper says, "because he was a good frontman and they saw him as the main guy in the band. I wasn't surprised at this; I can understand why that might be the case. A lot of record company people don't understand how bands work."
Although the band were associated with the C86 scene, Hopper. who was essentially Stump's "conscience" according to McKahey, had begun working with samplers. Hopper recalled "I was into the more avant-garde sample side of things. "But, at the same time, people were starting to slot in great chunks of other people's records [into their music], looping them and all that, half my friends stopped playing guitars and started programming guitars and using Ataris, including myself. Eventually, I bought an Akai S900 sampler. It was an absolute murder to program and operate and had about one second of sampling time. I was quite obsessed with sampling, I saw it as the most radical and exciting instrument of its time. The idea to pluck a sound from nature and then turn it into an instrument was a revelation." However, his fascination with sampling was met with disdain from his bandmates, with McKahey calling it "a complete fucking disaster". Despite the clashing musical ideas in the band at this time, nonetheless, they set out to record their next album, and first full album, under the spirit of their new record label. Hopper recalled "the songs had continued to evolve since Quirk Out and now with some money behind us we were ready to record our first full album and felt it was time to try a different producer."
Recording
Recording the album in 1987, the recording sessions for the album, which spanned nine months, began at Swanyard Studios, London for a week, followed by "a place in Hoxton", before the band recorded for two weeks at the famous Hansa Studios in Berlin, Germany, only two years before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Chris Salmon said "It was an amazing place, I’m so glad we did it just before the wall came down. It had a faded grandeur; I think it was a brothel at some time." Stephen Street was the engineer for the band at Hansa, but he soon had to leave the sessions to work on Morrissey's debut album Viva Hate. The first person the band met at Hansa Studios was Nick Cave, who was recording Tender Prey. Salmon recalled "Hansa was great, I think the first person we met was Nick Cave, we had been up for 48 hours and we arrived and opened the doors and there's a very well-spoken nattily dressed gentleman. "Was that Nick Cave?" "Yeah it was, wasn’t it?" I think he had just finished Kicking Against the Pricks." McKahey recalled "Berlin in 1987, really exciting, the wall was up. It was a very Bohemian city, an incredible scene, the clubs were open all night, it had a real sense of danger. I can remember when I looked out the window of the studio I was looking directly into no-man's land at a Russian soldier on his wooden plinth."
The sessions at Hansa ended up being expensive and problematic because the band, especially Hopper, wanted to work with Holger Hiller, and incorporate some of Hiller's eclectic and experimental sampling techniques into their music, and ultimately the Hansa sessions "didn't work out"; Hopper recalled that he "liked the way [Hiller] deconstructed everything, it was incredible, and those records he made: Oben Im Eck and Ein Bündel Fäulnis In Der Grube, they were really amazing records, the whole notion of sampling chunks of music and then rearranging them and having all these fantastic noises that were from another genre in it. I thought that would suit the band, but I was wrong," whilst Hugh Jones recalled that "Kev had fallen out of love with playing bass and he'd gotten more involved in the sampling side of things and he really regarded this chap Holger Hiller. Kev very much pushed for the band to work with him and so off they went to Hansa and they spent a lot of time and the only person in the band who really was keen on this direction was probably Kev."
Robb later commented that "this is always the difficult part when you're in a band, working with no money for ages, then suddenly you can do anything you want, you can go to loads of studios and use loads of different people and you lose the focus, don’t you? So probably that's a problem Stump had. [...] So that's the thing, sometimes if you have too much, the focus goes. That's the thing about bands; it's so random to make a great record." There were numerous personality clashes between Heller and members of the band; Hopper recalled "It didn't quite work out, the guys in the band didn't want to be involved with him as he was saying things like 'rock & roll is dead'. I didn't mind him though as I quite like people who are cool and analytical about music." Hiller left the sessions, and McKahey commented that "Holger Hiller was a total mistake. I ended up disliking the guy intensely over his insistence on click tracks." After recording in Berlin was finished, the recordings were then sent to Quirk Out producer Hugh Jones to mix in London, where the band spent a long period whilst "things were patched up," including several re-recordings; however, as Ensign were "pretty panicked" about the relationship between the band and Hiller breaking down, and at that point the album having been unfinished, electronic producer John Robie aided to help finish the album, although the band saw his production style, which was more pop-orientated as opposed to Hiller's avant-gatrde approach, as differing negatively from the band's method.
Hopper recalled "John Robie was a big flashy, Arthur Baker-style producer; it was all beats and polished sounds. I was resistant to it, I respected him as a producer but I didn’t think he was suitable for Stump. If you listen to Stump songs they are very simple chords, they’re not sophisticated, they’re not like listening to a Cole Porter song or something like that, they are just major and minor chords usually. The interlocking drums and bass and the broken up mosaic style of the music is all about arrangement. I don’t think John Robie saw that as relevant, he just looked through all that to the melody, the rhythm, and the chords he didn’t look at the arrangement, which was what Stump's music was all about. It was an awful situation." The band thought of Steve Albini as a possible third producer to finish the album, but ultimately Jones was brought back to "clean up the mess" and finish the recordings at Britannia Row Studios in North London. Jones recalled that, by the point he rejoined the sessions, "the recording was finished; I was just there to mix it really. It happens a lot I think, once you get past that first ‘bang out stuff that you’ve done on stage for the last year’ bit which is relatively easy to do, it gets into second album syndrome, it's such a cliché." Hopper, nonetheless, stated the band were happy with the way the album turned out.
Music