Impulse 3 (1992) C40

You will recall Impulse, the magazine which came with a compilation tape, either from Impulse 2 which I posted here, or perhaps even from reality (and in case anyone is wondering - no, I never saw the first issue). Well, here's another volume, short and sweet but with some great tracks. You will be familiar with some of the artists, perhaps not all, in which case, Google is your friend, as snidey forum dwelling internet wankers used to say and probably still do. Out of this lot, the big surprise for me was just now finding out that Cathedra was actually Mark who edited the mag and eventually joined Konstruktivists. Maybe I did know that, but in any case I had obviously forgotten it, despite actually having known the bloke since roughly the time when he was doing this mag. Good stuff anyway.

 

Last time I posted one of these, I scanned the magazine and included it with the download. I couldn't be bothered this time*, having noticed that issue three includes a big fat helping of Misery and Purity, a thoroughly clownish treatise on Death in June by Robert Forbes, also author of The White Nationalist Skinhead Movement: UK & USA, 1979 - 1993, and For Europe: The French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS, although obviously those are entirely different books sharing no thematic common ground with the aforementioned ode to Dougie, so I'm not even sure why I mentioned them. For Europe: The French Volunteers of the Waffen-SS is apparently great according to all the five star reviews on Amazon. It's a well written history of the people who tried to help stop communism according to one bloke, so that's nice. Going back to Impulse 3, there's also an interview with Somewhere in Europe about whom I've never been entirely convinced, plus they have a crap name; so sorry - better things to do with my scanner. If it's any consolation, by not scanning and sharing the thing I am at least helping to preserve the current value of the mag for those investors and shareholders lucky enough to have secured a copy as part of their portfolio. Long live the market.

 

*: Apparently I changed my mind at some point.

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

Tracks:
1 - Patternclear - Waiting in the Wings
2 - Cacophony '33' - Slander Upon My Head
3 - Doubling Riders - Suite Veritas
4 - Moisten Before Use - Thud Pt. 1 [excerpt]   
5 - Voltoid - Black Mass   
6 - factor X - Happy Birthday   
7 - Konstruktivists - Klub Zodiac '84   
8 - Cathedra - Neolith  


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Cassette Music 2 (1993) C60

Here's the second volume of the excellent Personal Soundtracks series, the first of which can still be found here. There's probably not a whole lot I can say which I didn't already say, although there's some information about the artists on the cover of this volume, so if you'd all kindly promise to give it a look, it will save me some time offering useless statements along the lines of I remember seeing Cabbage Head flyers but I never heard nuffink by them. Mindscan was of course Robert Maycock who ran the label of the same name, published Lockjaw zine, and always seemed like a decent guy in his letters, which is why he gets a special mention here. Close inspection of Fungus & Tongue - of whom I had no prior knowledge or recall - reveals them to have included Nathan Coles - guitarist of Academy 23 and UNIT at the same time as me, so that's interesting. At least it's interesting to me because I didn't know that.

That's all I've got (apart from reminding everyone that Patternclear is Phil Clarke of Stress for the millionth time), but thankfully the quality of this one seems to speak for itself.

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

Tracks:
1 - factor X - URDD
2 - Fungus & Tongue - Night, the Moon
3 - Secret Archive of the Vatican - Fish Drum
4 - Cabbage Head - The Hive Manager  
5 - The Conspiracy - Dave Hammerton  
6 - Mindscan - Crash
7 - Jim Jean - It Was a Dark, Foggy Night
8 - UPL - BFH (edit)
9 - TAC / Eye / fX - Casper
10 - Nux Vomica - Passing a Stone
11 - factor X - Armed w/ a Handgun
12 - Cabbage Head - My God - It's Full of Stars
13 - Patternclear - Inertic (6-7)
14 - Secret Archive of the Vatican - I Often Wonder, Am I Mad?
15 - Technoprimitives - I Desire

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Cassette Music 1 (1993) C60

My perception of the tape scene as was is that it pretty much went tits up in the mid-nineties. A few people struggled on, but we all knew it was over, supplanted by stuff recorded direct onto hard drives and distributed on CDR - a medium conducive to superior quality but which was never anything like so durable and had none of the charm. Of course more recently we have certain berks going back to tapes as some kind of artisanal statement for the same reason you'll occasionally get steampunk wankers issuing their most indubitably delightful examples of musical charivari on wax fucking cylinder, but let's be honest - it's over, upsetting though that certainly is, and you can never go home.

Dave Hopwood's Personal Soundtracks label has therefore come to represent - at least in my mind - one of the last great flourishes of the cassette, someone finally getting it right just before the lights went out, so to speak. There may have been others more deserving of such accolades, but I never heard them, so that's why I'm writing about this tape rather than them. Personal Soundtracks released five of these Cassette Music compilations (at least I'm not aware of there having been a volume six), and the music was always good, or worth hearing at the very least; the covers, as designed by Shaun of factor X, were decent; and it really felt as though some care and attention to detail went into these things - an entertaining sixty minutes worth as Scott McCrae wrote in his review in Music from the Empty Quarter #9. There was a similarly positive write up in Impulse #5, and I was going to reproduce both reviews here, but I've just had a quick look and aside from the thumbs up, they just tell you what's on the tape, so I can't be arsed.

If you've been following this blog, you should be familiar with a few of these names - Operation Mind Control, factor X, Chemical Plant, and Symboliks at least; Patternclear was Phil from Stress, the Stick Insects and others; Antonym was Mr. Burnham who edited Soft Watch - and I have a couple of his tapes to digitise at some point; Venus Fly Trap were, so I believe, Alex Novak, later of Attrition, and others - a familiar name, usually as the token rock band on tapes full of people reading poems over the sound of refrigerator hum, but it was always a pleasure to see their name on whatever had just fallen through the letter box; I believe Mr. Hopwood himself played the skins for Pranksters at some stage, and I'm not sure about any of the others - except the Chemical Plant track makes me wish I'd picked up more of their werks at the time.

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

Tracks:
1 - Patternclear - Dreamscape
2 - Operation Mind Control - Spark Intro
3 - Westland - Pterodaktyl
4 - Symboliks - Andeluvia
5 - Pranksters - Brut Force
6 - factor X - determinants
7 - Antonym - Tranquil Skies
8 - Chemical Plant - Dark Water (second mix)
9 - Ozone Bandits - Black Rain Edit
10 - Ozone Bandits - Slank
11 - Er - Who
12 - Symboliks - Getting Back
13 - Architects Office - A0809.7
14 - Pranksters - Govt. Agents
15 - Antonym - Song for Karen
16 - Venus Fly Trap - 19th Incident
17 - Patternclear - Flamenco
 
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