Members of This Heat. Gareth Williams, Charles Bullen and Charles Hayward/Courtesy of the artist
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
‘The Fall of Saigon’ (1979) is a hauntingly intricate song from This Heat’s debut album, an absolute classic of British experimental post-punk. This masterful surrealist song draws inspiration from the capture of South Vietnam's capital by communist forces in April 1975. It narrates how certain individuals who remained in the American embassy resorted to consuming the embassy's cat, Soda, the ambassador's wife's liver, office furniture, and a television.
In the song's unverified but historically evocative hallucination, a group of Russians with a noble mission emerges in the finale—to save the gatekeeper. Musically, this composition stands as one of the most hypnotic pieces of the English underground during the era of Margaret Thatcher. One of the few comparable tracks that come to mind is ‘Terminus’ by Psychic TV.