Wednesday 1 January 2014

strange sounds for freaky people



cool review of the BCM 4 compilation on

 

THE SUNDAY EXPERIENCE

 

"...an absolute colossal must have set if that is your listening loves extend to stuff emerging out of the weird imprint or if you happen to be sonically time locked into the 80’s DIY synth pop scene."



Staying with band camp finds, an absolute colossal must have set if that is your listening loves extend to stuff emerging out of the weird imprint or if you happen to be sonically time locked into the 80’s DIY synth pop scene. This is the fourth collection in the ’bedroom cassette masters 1980 – 89’ series, the set available for download comes with detailed liner notes of all the featured tracks and artists and get this – for further vintage appeal – even gives you the option to print off your own cassette inlay card. How cool. Anyhow the set curated by Simon Holland – better known to the synth pop community as Carillion – promises a feast of lost bedroom grafted groove by 80’s folk all of whom I’m distressed to admit I’ve never heard of, on this the fourth volume of what we assume is an ongoing library series, sit 34 tracks culled from the continents. Alas time constraints prevent individual mentions – all the tracks admittedly deserving of exposure – but a rummage through the set reveals some interesting must hear finds. Laugh clown laugh’s ’tattoo’ owes much debt to a youthful Human League so much so that we swear they must have been cloning little Phil Oakey’s whilst programming their synths with early Depeche Mode presets. Those much loving of their sounds graced in the kind of statuesque chill pop that marries the cool clinical austere rush of Client with the frosted romance of Ex Post Facto might be well advised to seek out ‘proximity’ by Vile electrodes while if in need of something darker and more ceremonial like Laker-Herzog’s ‘tired’ is pure late 70’s Berlin post punk fused out of the body parts of Clock DVA and a particular sinister B-Movie. Regular observers of these musings will no doubt testify to our admiration of all things Wizards Tell Lies which in many respects was why the implicit order’s ‘the fear’ found itself elevated skywards in our affections, of course those with an eye for thee things will duly note that this lot have graced these pages in previous dispatches though here on this occasion teamed up with Mary Shelley (not the writer I suspect) for a brooding and foreboding slab of industrial futuro groove that wouldn’t look to far out of place on a John 3:16 release if that is he ever met the revolutionary corps of teenage Jesus in a studio face off. Horizon 200 stump up some lost 60’s Gerry Anderson / space spy theme kookiness for ‘protect and survive’ while a silver age’s ‘the fourth man’ is surely an old John Foxx b-side that has somehow been removed from our memory banks while seamless link time the fourth man’s ‘dare’ is so Front 242 it comes clutching paternity test results. Broken machine films present round up the collection with the enigmatic vapour trailed celestial dream drone of ‘space for the prize’ which by our reckoning should satiate the minimalist loving space cadets among you. Here’s to volume 5. http://www.bedroomcassettemasters.bandcamp.com/album/bedroom-cassette-masters-1980-89-volume-four

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