Various - Bullshit Detector Three (2LP)

Crass Records’ Bullshit Detector series always felt like a secret map to the underground, and Bullshit Detector Three, released in 1984, is the most sprawling, unruly chapter of the lot. It arrived at a time when Britain was heaving with tension, the miners’ strike in full swing, nuclear panic still front of mind, and youth culture finding power in photocopiers, tape recorders and community halls. The record bottles that noise and nerve. It is not a polished compilation so much as a teeming snapshot of how people were actually making music and sharing ideas in the mid 80s.

The concept was simple but radical. Crass invited unsolicited tapes from across the UK and beyond, then pressed a clutch of those songs as a cheap, accessible compilation. The series was a practical extension of their DIY politics as much as an art project. You hear rough four track demos, rehearsal room clatter, bedroom ballads with kettle-in-the-background ambience. Bullshit Detector Three sticks to that formula and doubles down, stacking dozens of short shocks and scrappy gems in a sequence that makes sense emotionally rather than commercially. Crass had long worked through Southern Studios and engineer John Loder, a figure central to the label’s operations, and you can feel that same community-minded production ethos here, even when the fidelity drops into glorious murk.

What makes this volume sing is the sheer range within a tight aesthetic. One minute you get a brittle acoustic protest, the next a 90 second sprint that sounds like it was recorded with a single mic pinned to a wall. Lyrics rail against cruise missiles, police harassment, animal cruelty, dole queues and the calcified cruelties of daily life. In 1984 that was the news cycle, not a mood board, and the anger is sharp rather than affected. There’s humour too, a petty vandal’s sense of fun, chants that turn into crowd scenes, songs that stop dead because the tape ran out. The sequencing lets you catch breath then wades straight back into the din.

If you know the series, you’ll know the sleeves were as important as the grooves. Bullshit Detector Three comes with the stark black and white collage aesthetic that Crass and artist collaborators made iconic, and crucially, with contact details for the bands. That simple gesture was the point. You could write a letter, swap a tape, book a gig in a youth club three towns over. Earlier volumes helped shine a torch on names that later reached wider ears, Chumbawamba being the famous example, and this volume carries the same open door. Plenty of fanzines at the time treated it like a phone book for the scene, a way to catalyse new bands and gigs without waiting for anyone’s permission.

As listening, it is chaotic by design, and that is where the thrill lives. The tape hiss turns into a kind of cymbal wash, the dropouts feel like stage dives, and the occasional tuning trainwreck becomes part of the collage. If you want studio sheen, look elsewhere. If you want to hear real-time ideas about how to live, organise and make noise with your mates, this is gold. The best moments hit like dispatches, not performances, and they hold up because they are stubbornly specific. You can almost smell the damp carpet under the drum kit.

Hunting down Bullshit Detector Three vinyl today is a little quest in itself, but it is worth it. The format suits the material, the sides fall like zine chapters, and the physical package tells the story in a way playlists cannot. If you collect Crass vinyl or you’re slowly rounding out Crass albums on vinyl, this is one to keep on the list. I’ve spotted copies tucked in the anarcho section at the odd Melbourne record store, and every so often one turns up when you trawl vinyl records Australia sellers. If you prefer to buy Crass Records online, be patient and check condition notes, as many copies were played hard at parties and benefit nights.

As a document, Bullshit Detector Three isn’t just nostalgia for black-clad lifers. It is a reminder of how a label can use its platform to flatten hierarchies and let the audience talk back. That spirit is why the record still crackles, and why the title remains a tidy mission statement. If you’ve got even a passing interest in DIY punk history, put this on, let the edges cut a bit, and remember how wide the world gets when a compilation refuses to tidy it up.