Bourbonese Qualk [Artist Profile]

December 5, 2024 metatron

Bourbonese Qualk artist profile focusing on the early 90s hardcore techno releases on Praxis.

Bourbonese Qualk started as a project of Simon Crab, initially with his brother Ted, in 1979. After Simon moved to London he expanded the project to a band format which went through a few mutations throughout the 80s.

Bourbonese Qualk was often lumped in with the early “industrial” movement in Britain, but this is only part of the truth. Indeed they were way more uncategorisable than most of the other groups of the scene – if scene is the right word, more unconventional than most. In fact rather than “industrial”, perhaps the label “difficult” was better.

“A compilation of difficult music” was the subtitle of the Elephant Table Album, a double LP put together by Dave Henderson in 1983, which featured them alongside Portion Control, Chris And Cosey, Coil, Nurse With Wound, Lustmord, Muslimgauze, Nocturnal Emissions and others.

1983 was also the year when – after a couple of now ultra-rare cassette tapes – the first album Laughing Afternoon appeared. Others followed throughout the decade, but in this post I want to focus mainly on the short “techno” phase of BoQu which saw them release two 12″ and a full length album on Praxis in the early 90s.

When still living in Basel in the late 80s and having started and developed my label Vision, I started reaching out to artists, labels and publishers internationally and especially in the UK and London – where I wanted to move and eventually did. Simon found a squat I could move in and also provided me with a space in the Bourbonese Qualk HQ in Malt Street which became the first Praxis “office”.

This ushered in a couple of years of close collaboration during which Simon produced the Knee-Jerk Reaction and Qual EPs and the Autonomia album. Praxis released the first two on vinyl and the album on CD in 1992/93.

The first one was

Knee-Jerk Reaction EP (Praxis 2, November 1992)

which appeared alongside the Scaremonger EP in late 1992. Check out more information about this release in the Praxis Discography HERE.

Praxis Records · Bourbonese Qualk – Knee-Jerk Reaction

A few months later

Qual EP (Praxis 3, Spring 1993)

another 4-tracker of future-sound hardcore techno came out.

Praxis Records · Bourbonese Qualk: Qual EP

… and finally the full length album:

Autonomia (Praxis 5CD, 1993, vinyl in 2018)

12 tracks of techno and hardcore, some melodic, some harsh. Initially only released on CD. To me a perfect techno album that should have classic status.

Nevertheless it divided the Qualk fan-base which was additionally confused when you look at the album being situated between Unpop, the last album in the previous band format and Feeding the Hungry Ghost, a live album of that line-up released after Autonomia.

In 2018 Autonomia eventually came out on vinyl with a new version of the orange camo sleeve.

Praxis Records · Bourbonese Qualk: Autonomia

Bourbonese Qualk at this point in time was Crab’s solo project and when playing live was supported by Christoph Fringeli, who operated turntables and occasionally analog synth, mostly between tracks – while the Cheetah sampler was loading the sounds from a floppy disk!

Together they toured the US doing a 12.500 miles round from Pittsburgh to Chicago, Denver, Dallas, Houston, Austin, Tucson, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and back to Pittsburgh and New York. They also played a few gigs around Europe. The video is from a show at the 121 Centre in Brixton London in late 1993.

After the adventure of the three Praxis releases guitarist Miles Miles re-joined Bourbonese Qualk. Following his death in 2002, Crab announced the end of the band.

Since then a number of rereleases of the early albums have seen the light of day, mainly on the Mannequin label, as well as the big box compiling oddities and rarities on the Vinyl on Demand label.

Crab has re-launched his new musical output in 2015 and has since released three albums which are clearly situated in the tradition of the Bourbonese Qualk project. His latest album Invisible Cities was released on Space Ritual in 2022 (double vinyl and digital).