Bauhaus - The Bela Session (EP) - 45RPM Red/Black Vinyl

There is a special kind of thrill in hearing a band become itself in real time. The Bela Session captures Bauhaus on 26 January 1979 at Beck Studios in Wellingborough, barely out of the gate and already conjuring a mood that would ripple through post‑punk for decades. Beggars Arkive finally put the whole session together for release on 23 November 2018, pulling from the original tapes and giving us a complete picture of that day, not just the famous nine‑minute séance.

Everyone knows the centrepiece. Bela Lugosi’s Dead still unfurls like a midnight curtain, all negative space and nerve. David J’s dubby bassline crawls along, Kevin Haskins lets the toms breathe, Daniel Ash sketches wiry echoes that feel more like cold light than chords, and Peter Murphy turns the mic into a séance trumpet. It is deliberate without dragging, hypnotic rather than dour, and it still sounds like nothing else. The song’s place in The Hunger a few years later sealed its reputation, but even here, at the source, the charisma is obvious. You can hear how the room is working for them, how engineer Derek Tompkins lets the reverb bloom in a way that suggests a band thinking like producers already.

What makes The Bela Session more than a one‑track monument is everything around it. Some Faces is a revelation, brisk and serrated, closer to spiky Northampton punk than to the cinematic drift that would come later. Harry wears its subject on its sleeve, a sly, slightly camp nod to Debbie Harry that shows the band’s pop sensibility was present from the start, just refracted through their crooked mirror. Bite My Hip is the real historian’s treat, a raw sketch that would be reworked into Lagartija Nick in 1983, and hearing the bones of that future single inside this nervy demo is a thrill. Boys, which surfaced as the B‑side to the original Small Wonder 12‑inch, has the frantic, wide‑eyed energy of a young band charging at the red light. Taken together, these cuts underline how quickly Bauhaus were writing, how much range they already had, and how utterly natural their chemistry felt, even in a single‑day session.

The 2018 release benefits from going back to source. Remastered from the original reels, it gives space to the sub‑bass throb that makes Bela so immersive and brings out the percussive snap in the faster tracks. On The Bela Session vinyl you can feel the air in Beck Studios during the long intro, the guitar harmonics hanging like frost. If you collect Bauhaus vinyl, this is a satisfying listen front to back rather than a curio for completists. It has that archival glow without the dust.

Part of the charm here is the way the mythology fits around real, tactile details. Beck Studios was a modest facility, but plenty of British post‑punk landmarks passed through its doors, and Tompkins had a knack for getting performances that felt live even when bands were chasing mood. Bauhaus never needed much adornment, which is why this set hits so hard. You can almost smell the cables and cigarette smoke, the four of them working shoulder to shoulder and stumbling onto a sound that would soon be tagged as goth, whether they wanted the label or not.

If you are digging through a Melbourne record store and spot this, do not hesitate. For anyone trying to buy Bauhaus records online, it is one of the easiest entry points, since it distils what made them singular while showing off corners of the catalogue you do not hear on radio retrospectives. It also sits neatly beside other Bauhaus albums on vinyl like In the Flat Field and Mask, both of which expand on ideas seeded here. And for those searching out vinyl records Australia wide, it is one of those reissues that rewards a proper system, the kind that lets you turn it up and get lost in the negative space.

Forty‑plus years on, The Bela Session feels less like an archaeological dig and more like a short film you can play on your turntable. The charisma is intact, the ideas are fresh, and the performances crackle with the impatience of a band about to change the weather. For once, the origin story lives up to the legend.