Background:

Rozz Williams returned to his interest in creating experimenal music in 1985, following his departure from Christian Death. He had met Chuck Collison the previous winter and the pair immediately made plans to work together under the moniker The Happiest Place on Earth. Living Monstrosities / Descent would appear to be one of the first recordings Rozz made at this time as it is said to date from 1985. The listener will instantly be aware how the music has matured since the first recordings in 1981 and 1982. Rozz would have learned much during his time spent at recording studios with Christian Death, working with such renowned producers as Thom Wilson and Eric Westfall. These are very complex, structured pieces and both are previously unreleased in this full, unedited form..

Track listing:

1. DISC A: Living Monstrosities 27:32
2. DISC B: Descent 31:01

Living Monstrosities / Descent consists of two separate pieces of music on each side of the cassette. Living Monstrosities is on side A, and Descent is on side B. Living Monstrosities makes use of various repeated sound effects which gradually builds into a crescendo, and a repeated vocal sample of 'the most astounding living monstrosity of all time'. Descent is a purely instrumental recording, which again relies on repeated sound effects forming a very dark, menacing composition.

Artwork:

The original cassette sleeve for Living Monstrosities / Descent survives and is also in the possession of John Collins. The sleeve features a black and white image of a screaming child being held down by an unidentified adult, presumably a doctor or physician of some kind.

The original cassette artwork is quite dramatic, and we simply chose to rotate the image 90 degrees in an anticlockwise direction so that the child's face is the correct way up.

The next task was to remove the crease lines on the cassette sleeve from the scanned artwork and then decide on the design for the back cover. With only one image to work from, consideration was given to selecting other artwork or images from Rozz's vast body of work. However, we felt that we should be faithful to the original cassette and adding unconnected images would only distract and mislead fans. Our solution was to remove the child's face, leaving just the adult's hands.

We again chose to incorporate a barcode to the back cover in keeping with many previous Premature Ejaculation releases. Since the barcodes used by Rozz were purely decorative and served no other purpose, it was our intention to use a replica of the one on the 1989 issue of the Death Cultures cassette. The use of the barcode will be a common theme throughout the series.