Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death: Felt's Most Collectable Release?

The story of Felt's 1986 all-instrumental LP Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death is a compelling read no matter how you approach it. As both a follow-up to the 1985 Indie chart-topper Ignite the Seven Cannons (which spawned the indie-classic 'Primitive Painters'), and the first full-length (well, sort-of) release for new home Creation Records, calling Snakes 'a change in direction' could not be more of an understatement.

True, Ignite the Seven Cannons was Felt's last release for Cherry Red, their label since their 1981 debut, Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty. Also true is that Maurice Deebank had quit Felt for good shortly after the release of Cannons, leaving Lawrence the lone songwriter, and guitarist. Change was clearly in the air.

The first single for Creation, 'Ballad of the Band', was an obvious reference to Lawrence's split with Maurice Deebank, as he saw it; musically, the song fit in well with the other Creation releases of the time. (Highly recommended: the label's landmark CD-only compilation Creation: Flowers In The Sky 1984-1987.) The single (and 12") was produced by Robin Guthrie, just as Ignite The Seven Cannons before, so it must have appeared at the time that Felt's transition from Cherry Red to Creation was going smoothly.

But nothing could have prepared Creation for what Lawrence delivered as Felt's first album for the label: ten instrumentals totalling 19 minutes, and all within the perplexing title Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death. Needless to say, the album confused the fanbase, confused the label, confused everyone, and thus failed to chart. But the follow-up, Forever Breathes The Lonely Word arrived so quickly after Snakes that old fans breathed a sigh of relief, and a new group of Felt fans bought into the cult of Lawrence and co. So if Snakes was merely a warm-up to Forever Breathes The Lonely Word, the other 1986 album which, to this day, is unanimously recognized by fans and critics as Felt's best album, then so be it.

Yet even in the years since its 1986 release, Snakes has taken a sort of mythic place among the Felt discography. It is still proudly among the '10 albums in 10 years' in Felt's legacy. When Cherry Red launched the full 'Felt Reissue Series' in 2003, there was Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death, faithfully released in its rightful order as 'Number 6'. The album, though, is still beyond classification. David Cavanagh, author of The Creation Records Story (2000),  gave it his best shot: 'short instrumentals moving between movies and muzak'. At Discogs.com today, the release's 'Genre' is classified as 'Lounge', 'Intrumental', and 'Avantgarde'.

Collecting Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death has also proved to be as mysterious, and only when one looks at the entire release history (in its current state). Using Discogs as the starting reference point - since we have posted three of these unique Snakes releases there ourselves - there are currently seven releases of Snakes as a stand-alone release. (There have been two occasions when Snakes was paired with another Felt release, but for the purpose of this essay will not be included.)

Let's begin with the original Creation Records LP release  from 1986 (CRE LP 009):

Or is it? Going back to 1986, searching the 'F' bins at every records shop was a certainty. This was a time before an Internet, before a 'discography'; so for someone who lived in the U.S. and couldn't afford the NME or other U.K. publications, the only way to see if there was a new Felt, Killing Joke, Smiths, Cocteau Twins, New Order, etc., release was to check the bins - and often. And we're sure glad we did, because one day we came across this:

What was this? Was this the first version of the release? Was it a 'test pressing'? Everything was the same as the other release (catalogue #, run-out groove, LP label, etc.), except for that front cover photo. Even when we posted this 'variant' on Discogs, the mystery has only deepened. While there are other people who own this version, there is still no answer as to why this Snakes cover photo has only appeared once.

However, perhaps the only 'clue' we have been able to uncover that this version was in fact the first pressing was revealed courtesy of the inner sleeves of the copies in our possession: The date on the sleeve of the 'standard' release shows '11/86', while the date on the 'variant' release shows '2/86'.

Creation Records was one of those unique indies that embraced the CD format early, and often. In 1991 alone, Creation released 39 CD's, most of which were label and band compilations. The first three albums Felt recorded for Creation were given their first stand-alone CD releases in 1991, Forever Breathes The Lonely Word, Poem Of The River, and  Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death (CRE CD 009):

This first CD release, while faithful to the 'original' vinyl version, did have a different band photo inside the booklet:

 

But these Creation releases would not be on the shelves long. Lawrence, who was heading Denim at the time of these initial CD reissues, was not pleased with Creation's handling of the Felt back catalogue on that label. In his March 1993 interview in Record Collector, Lawrence detailed his vision of the entire Felt back catalogue (Cherry Red and Creation) having a 'generic' look. Hence, the 'Lawrence approved' CD version of Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death appeared in late 1991 (with the same barcode as the previously released version but with a slightly altered catalogue number of CRECD 009):

'Generic' indeed. And seems all the more fitting for such an 'unclassfiable' release, too. Anyway, this version remained on the shelves until Creation folded in 1999. Now both Creation releases are collectable, with the original artwork version harder to find and thus more valuable.

The 1994 Japan CD release of Snakes on Epic/Sony (ESCA 5867) is interesting as it takes on the 'generic' look that Cherry Red was using for its own Felt back catalogue (interesting since Creation Records was still in operation):



Finally, and currently, the Cherry Red reissue, which is in a digipak format (CDMRED 235) and, inexplicably,  resorts to a sticker on the front cover indicating the release:



From a collector's standpoint, Felt's Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death is certainly a strange release with a strange release history. But much like the ten instrumentals that make up Snakes, the experience of discovering these various vinyl and CD versions for yourself can be, well, unclassifiable.