Impulse 2 (1992) C40

Impulse was an A5 mag produced by Mark of Konstruktivists, Binary, Codex Empire, and others I probably never heard of. Each issue came with a compilation cassette of (what I'm pretty sure was) all new material by many of your weirdy faves, which is why it's here. I missed the first issue, in case anyone was wondering, but here's the second with forty minutes of very listenable stuff.

 

You should have heard of Nagamatzu, I would think, so I doubt they require introduction, although for what it's worth this is one of my favourite tracks by them*. Antonym have already turned up on this blog. Nova State Conspiracy were something to do with Alex Novak of Venus Fly Trap, Attrition, and others. I don't know much about any of the others, and I wish I knew more about Whiteslug as their track is fucking great. The collection has a bit of a whiff of combat boots about it, but mostly it's done well, and certainly better than a lot of those village hall scout hut versions of Front 242 which were around at the time.

 

I've scanned the mag (plus a copy of the first issue which someone kindly sent me), so those are also included in the download as a series of jpegs in separate folders. Where tapes came with booklets, I usually include them as scans, and this is sort of the same deal, I guess. You can see who features in the mag by looking at the picture above. I haven't had time to re-read the thing so take no responsibility for any claims of simply exploring controversial ideas and imagery made therein, but it is, if nothing else, a labour of love and really well put together.

More of these to come when I get around to it.

*: Postscript 2022 - I can't fucking listen to them any more. One of them kicked off when I first shared this, demanding to know 'what have you done to our track?' in more or less those words, apparently having mistaken me for his employee and being unable to believe that the digitisation of a track from a fucking thirty year old cassette tape wouldn't sound like you were right there with the band in Abbey Road during recording. Oh - I'm so sorry, did I just spend all fucking day cleaning up a sound file as best as I could manage thereby drumming up free publicity for your back catalogue meaning you might actually flog an extra CD next time you're out on the industrial music chicken in a basket circuit with A Tribute to Controlled Bleeding and Sounds Like Muslimgauze? Well, excuuuuuuuse me.

Download the ten tracks, cover and magazine by clicking on this link.

Tracks:
1 - Nagamatzu - Firewalker [remix]
2 - IAV - You Make the Groove
3 - Nova State Conspiracy - Definitive Item
4 - Antonym - Prime Mover
5 - Red Sekta - Torture
6 - German Shepherds - I Adore You
7 - Whiteslug - Motherfucker
8 - Trance - By the Pound
9 - Shinkansen - Ishikari
10 - Momento Mori - Excerpt

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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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