Monday, November 23, 2009

STORM BUGS-A SAFE SUBSTITUTE, TAPE, 1980, U.K.


Many thanks to Philip Sanderson, one half of these legendary fringe dwellers and proprietor of the equally renowned Snatch Tapes for providing this crucial lost piece of the Storm Bugs puzzle, a follow up to my post of his Carriage Return project. Dunno whether this tape or their Table Matter single was officially their debut (they're both listed as 1980), but this is everything a fan of left field D.I.Y. song structure perversion (U.K. stylee) could hope for. Much of what's heard on A Safe Substitute (fragments of which would re-appear elsewhere) were generated from that great old British analog beast, the VCS3 synthesizer, a machine used to more tonal ends by the likes of Franco Battiato and Pink Floyd and here providing swaying pendulums of corroded bloop, greyscale warble and hollowed out rhythms triggered from filter fucked arpeggiations, upon which they graft passages of alternately morose and plangent song structure fragmentation.

NOTE: Link removed as this is due for reissue shortly on Harbinger Sound.

15 comments:

  1. REALLY enjoyed this tape! The sounds come in so heavily and strangely, almost organic while bits of catchy loops fade in and out and start to mutate. Excellent post!

    -Potter

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  2. Yay, Storm Bugs! Thank you! All I have is the Fusetron LP and was very keen to hear more!

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  3. Thank, will be very interesting to listen to this tape

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  4. This blog have great content and really possible to get helpful information.

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  5. Sanderson's "Seal Pool Sounds" CD is very similar to this. In fact, some of the tracks are from the storm bug era.

    www.seal-pool.org

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  6. Deafinitely, the best blog in the world, yours.
    Greetings from Spain,
    Jorge

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  7. Bless you for this, never thought I'd see it.

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  8. very beautiful music... this should be available on vinyl!!!
    many thanks

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  9. I'm pleased to say that A Safe Substitute will be available later this year on blood red vinyl from Harbinger Sound

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  10. Philip-That's great news! Did you want me to take down the link for this then?

    Eric

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  11. Thanks -hopefully people having heard it on here will make it more likely that they will snap up one of the 250 copies when it comes out though I think Harbinger would be happier if you took the link down just in case distributors complain that people can just download it

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  12. Hi Philip,

    Okay...no problem. link's been removed. I wasn't able to find a website for Harbinger Sound, or I'd have provided a hyperlink in the post. If they DO have one and you have the address for it, I'll be happy to revise the text on the post.

    Eric

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  13. Thanks Eric - Harbinger tell me the website is on its way - I'll let you know when it is up.
    Philip

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  14. The Safe Substitute LP is out now on red vinyl from Harbinger records. Available from all good emporiums (Secondlayer, Fusetrom, Volcanic, Swill etc etc)

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  15. The sound of the red vinyl reissue is realy bad, what a shame for a so great tape. Next time on cd please or in a good quality vinyl.

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