v/a - A Sudden Surge of Power (1983) C90

You may have noticed how I'm in the habit of apologising for the stuff I post here, occasionally even writing something amounting to I wouldn't bother if I were you; well, not today. A Sudden Surge of Power gets my vote for the greatest compilation tape of all time, and it's probably no exaggeration to say this thing changed my life when I first heard it. This collection tipped me off to a lot of stuff without which my life would have been significantly poorer, and of the eighteen individual contributing artists, there remain just eight whose work I never subsequently hunted down on vinyl or on other tapes. Fuck - I even ended up knowing a few of these people as friends. Third Mind's Red Sand is the one which always seems to get the publicity, and which is fondly remembered by industrial music historians who weren't actually fucking there; and Red Sand is great, and yes, I would never have bothered checking out DDAA were it not for that tape, but Sudden Surge was the one you actually listened to for pleasure because it was such a fantastic and varied assemblage of the weird and wonderful with a good few of those Wild Planet big names we were all gagging to hear.

Some trivia:

• Laugh by Mandible Rumpus may actually be the greatest song ever to appear on a compilation tape. Their 7" single wasn't as good though. Shame.
• These two Mex tracks come from the lad's Happy Life 7" which, at the risk of hyperbole, is probably one of the greatest 7" singles of all time, alongside Gambit of Shame's wonderful 18 out of 20, in which Mex also had a hand. Complete your Mex collection here.
• Cult of the Supreme Being were Mex and the late and greatly missed Robert Dellar, in case anyone was wondering.
• These are still my two all-time favourite Attrition tracks. I've heard a million versions of Monkey in a Bin but this one remains the most powerful for me.
• John Balance had something to do with Cultural Amnesia, but I'm not sure what - unless he just supplied the artwork for them or summink.
• Behold - even Chris & Cosey's track sounds great!
• Dave Henderson's favourite track was apparently Strangeways (because that's what he told me, so it isn't really apparently at all), and wouldn't it have been fucking wonderful if 400 Blows had lived up to their initial promise at least long enough to make a decent album?

The tape came with a highly informative 24-page A5 booklet with contributions from everyone involved, which I've scanned and included in the download along with cover, flyer, and a CFC tapes catalogue of the time.

Download the twenty-five tracks, cover and booklet by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Mandible Rumpus - On the Floor
2 - Mandible Rumpus - Laugh
3 - Mex - Happy Life
4 - Mex - Veins
5 - Gambit of Shame - Gambit of Shame
6 - Section 10 - Mr. Parker
7 - Cult of the Supreme Being - Chlorine Fills My Lungs
8 - Cult of the Supreme Being - God is Thicker than Water
9 - Attrition - Hang Me
10 - Attrition - Monkey in a Bin
11 - Test Dept - Shockwerk
12 - The Cause for Concern - Disturbing Visions
13 - Martin Howard Naylor - Modulation 4/5
14 - Cultural Amnesia - Colourblind
15 - Cultural Amnesia - The Pigs Are Coming
16 - Paul Kelday - Angel Hair
17 - New 7th Music - Apocalypse
18 - Chris & Cosey - Light Fantastic
19 - We Be Echo - Survivalist I
20 - We Be Echo - Sex Slave
21 - Ramshackle Ammunition Band - Space Song
22 - 400 Blows - Strangeways
23 - Twelve Cubic Feet - Fred's Song
24 - Red Herring - UAB Advert
25 - Red Herring- Crispy Wrap

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v/a - Untitled (1984) C60

I don't really know much about this one. At some point when Glenn Wallis was living in Meadowbank Road in Chatham, I popped around to see him (circumstances suggesting that it was probably about 1987) and he gave me a Sainsbury's carrier bag full of cassettes, things which people had sent him in the mail and so on. Some of the tapes were shite, but some were pretty good, and this was one of the more interesting things - a C60 compilation from Norway, and artists I'd never heard of aside from Glenn himself and Martin Howard Naylor, whom I seem to recall having made a fairly decent showing on some other cassette compilation. The cassette has a page on Discogs, although it's not wildly illuminating. The same label also put out tapes by Attrition and Paul Kelday, so I generally take that as a sign of their having been a good thing.

Anyway, this is one of the tapes I'm glad I kept (although to be fair there are very few tapes I ever slung) as it still sounds good now, and serves as a reminder of how exciting the tape scene once was, specifically that whole aspect of having no idea what you're going to hear when you press play (as distinct from being fairly sure you're going to hear something noisy with a man screaming about how he's going to steal women's knickers from your washing line, and you're going to be glad about it, for some reason).

Not sure about the Konstruktivists track. I've a feeling it may be from a gig at the King Charles Ballroom in Gillingham, but I could be wrong.

Download the eleven tracks and cover by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - System Lilliputt - Gatelangs
2 - Konstruktivists - Beirut (live)
3 - Martin Howard Naylor - Mod 4/5
4 - The Haters - Torn Apart
5 - FâLX çèrêbRi - Klimax
6 - Vous - May Pay
7 - Famlende Forsøk - Herren
8 - Dan McKinney - One to Five
9 - Ny Gate - Aldersgrense (live)
10 - Termisk Sammenbrudd - One Minute Digital Disco
11 - De Pravity - Data Kikk I-IV


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