Biography
Among the trailblazers of Australia's underground music landscape stood Severed Heads, whose sonic palette fused industrial edges, synth pop hooks, electronic textures, and experimental impulses while treating found sounds, tape loops, samples, and unfiltered noise as equal partners to any standard instrumentation. Defiantly eclectic and resistant to stylistic pigeonholes, the project shifted shape repeatedly between its 1979 emergence and its 2008 dissolution, circulating an enormous body of work across every available medium from vinyl and cassettes through VHS, CD-ROMs, CD-Rs, MP3 downloads, and even the brief-lived MP2 format, as roughly twenty musicians rotated through its ranks with Tom Ellard remaining the lone unchanging presence despite his discomfort with portrayals of the group as solely his creation.
The narrative opened in Sydney when Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright launched the experimental outfit Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. Once Tom Ellard joined to form a trio, they produced their initial cassette-only recording. A demo forwarded to 2JJ Radio carried the name Severed Heads because a station DJ favored early industrial outfits such as Throbbing Gristle; although the moniker began as little more than a jest, the broadcast exposure proved sufficient for it to endure. Wright exited by 1980, after which the group made its vinyl introduction on the split LP Ear Bitten, sharing space with fellow Australian act Rythmyx Chymx. Clean arrived in 1981 just as Fielding departed, steering the music toward greater melodic clarity and conventional structures while new member Garry Bradbury persuaded Ellard and his cohorts to relocate performances from avant-garde spaces into rock clubs better suited to live presentation and audiences ready to confront unfamiliar sounds.
Dissatisfied with the costs and constraints of vinyl, Severed Heads initially issued the 1983 album Since the Accident solely as a sixty-minute cassette and appended the track “Dead Eyes Opened” merely to complete the program. The song proved sufficiently memorable to secure deals with Ink Records in the U.K., distributed by Virgin, and with Virgin’s newly established Australian division, turning the piece into a modest chart success. Live presentations grew correspondingly ambitious once Ellard began working with video artist Stephen Jones, who designed a custom video synthesizer to generate stylized visual environments. Ellard also prepared detailed information booklets explaining recording methods and source materials; when these were omitted from packages, he mailed copies to fans who supplied stamped return envelopes.
Bradbury departed in 1984 ahead of City Slab Horror’s release, leaving Ellard as principal songwriter thereafter. Invited to tour the U.K., Ellard elected to appear as a duo with Jones supplying video accompaniment. During that tour Severed Heads secured a North American arrangement with Nettwerk Records and, as relations with Virgin Australia soured, aligned instead with Volition Records. Visibility increased, Ellard investigated digital sampling and emerging studio technologies after earlier albums had been captured on four-track cassette machines at home, and his vocals assumed greater prominence amid expanded live lineups whose productions kept pace with Jones’s advancing video capabilities. Steady recording and touring continued until 1989 brought the U.S. alternative hit “Greater Reward” from Rotund for Success. Despite a firm commercial footing and Jones’s continued video role until his 1992 exit, Ellard grew weary of major-label constraints and terminated the Nettwerk agreement, leaving the 1994 album Gigapus unavailable in North America until 1996. By then a Robert Racic remix had revived “Dead Eyes Opened” in Australia, propelling the new version into the domestic Top 40 while the group became fixtures on the Boiler Room stage of the Big Day Out festival. Volition encountered financial difficulties in 1996, prompting Ellard to seek another Australian outlet.
Severed Heads began archiving their multimedia output on CD-ROMs in 1994 and ranked among the first Australian acts to establish an online presence, listing an e-mail address on Gigapus artwork to facilitate direct contact. As new platforms matured, Ellard adopted them readily to secure greater autonomy, launching Sevcom Music Servers as the group’s own imprint so that releases from Haul Ass onward appeared as CD-Rs and subsequently MP3s. In 1996 he issued Severything, compressing nearly the entire catalog onto a single disc via the MPEG 1, layer 2 format and inaugurating an extended sequence of self-replicated archival projects. LTM Records reissued Rotund for Success in 2004 and later collaborated on selected catalog reissues and anthologies, while in 2005 Severed Heads composed the score for The Illustrated Family Doctor, which received the Australian Recording Industry Association award for Best Film Soundtrack of the year. Ellard formally concluded the Severed Heads saga in 2008; the official site announced, “It was euthanised...as it no longer brought happiness.” The Sevcom site remains operational, offering both historical information and CD-R editions of the back catalog. ~ Mark Deming
The narrative opened in Sydney when Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright launched the experimental outfit Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. Once Tom Ellard joined to form a trio, they produced their initial cassette-only recording. A demo forwarded to 2JJ Radio carried the name Severed Heads because a station DJ favored early industrial outfits such as Throbbing Gristle; although the moniker began as little more than a jest, the broadcast exposure proved sufficient for it to endure. Wright exited by 1980, after which the group made its vinyl introduction on the split LP Ear Bitten, sharing space with fellow Australian act Rythmyx Chymx. Clean arrived in 1981 just as Fielding departed, steering the music toward greater melodic clarity and conventional structures while new member Garry Bradbury persuaded Ellard and his cohorts to relocate performances from avant-garde spaces into rock clubs better suited to live presentation and audiences ready to confront unfamiliar sounds.
Dissatisfied with the costs and constraints of vinyl, Severed Heads initially issued the 1983 album Since the Accident solely as a sixty-minute cassette and appended the track “Dead Eyes Opened” merely to complete the program. The song proved sufficiently memorable to secure deals with Ink Records in the U.K., distributed by Virgin, and with Virgin’s newly established Australian division, turning the piece into a modest chart success. Live presentations grew correspondingly ambitious once Ellard began working with video artist Stephen Jones, who designed a custom video synthesizer to generate stylized visual environments. Ellard also prepared detailed information booklets explaining recording methods and source materials; when these were omitted from packages, he mailed copies to fans who supplied stamped return envelopes.
Bradbury departed in 1984 ahead of City Slab Horror’s release, leaving Ellard as principal songwriter thereafter. Invited to tour the U.K., Ellard elected to appear as a duo with Jones supplying video accompaniment. During that tour Severed Heads secured a North American arrangement with Nettwerk Records and, as relations with Virgin Australia soured, aligned instead with Volition Records. Visibility increased, Ellard investigated digital sampling and emerging studio technologies after earlier albums had been captured on four-track cassette machines at home, and his vocals assumed greater prominence amid expanded live lineups whose productions kept pace with Jones’s advancing video capabilities. Steady recording and touring continued until 1989 brought the U.S. alternative hit “Greater Reward” from Rotund for Success. Despite a firm commercial footing and Jones’s continued video role until his 1992 exit, Ellard grew weary of major-label constraints and terminated the Nettwerk agreement, leaving the 1994 album Gigapus unavailable in North America until 1996. By then a Robert Racic remix had revived “Dead Eyes Opened” in Australia, propelling the new version into the domestic Top 40 while the group became fixtures on the Boiler Room stage of the Big Day Out festival. Volition encountered financial difficulties in 1996, prompting Ellard to seek another Australian outlet.
Severed Heads began archiving their multimedia output on CD-ROMs in 1994 and ranked among the first Australian acts to establish an online presence, listing an e-mail address on Gigapus artwork to facilitate direct contact. As new platforms matured, Ellard adopted them readily to secure greater autonomy, launching Sevcom Music Servers as the group’s own imprint so that releases from Haul Ass onward appeared as CD-Rs and subsequently MP3s. In 1996 he issued Severything, compressing nearly the entire catalog onto a single disc via the MPEG 1, layer 2 format and inaugurating an extended sequence of self-replicated archival projects. LTM Records reissued Rotund for Success in 2004 and later collaborated on selected catalog reissues and anthologies, while in 2005 Severed Heads composed the score for The Illustrated Family Doctor, which received the Australian Recording Industry Association award for Best Film Soundtrack of the year. Ellard formally concluded the Severed Heads saga in 2008; the official site announced, “It was euthanised...as it no longer brought happiness.” The Sevcom site remains operational, offering both historical information and CD-R editions of the back catalog. ~ Mark Deming
Albums
Singles
