Its 1988, we're all E'd up, shaking maraccas, and white man-dancing like idiots;but there were small oasis's of sanity to be found.One of those places of solace was Color Tapes, and probably the most well known Color Disc/Tapes compilation is dis (sic).
It's got the usual array of Gary Ramon,Lives Of Angels collaborations, and the usual mix-up of Neo-Psych and minimal synth tracks. There are few tracks that i haven't already featured elsewhere on the Blog, but it makes a fine introdustion to one of the founding father labels of British Independent music culture.
Tracklisting:
A1 –Modern Art - Golden Legend
A2 –Modern Art - Forbidden Universe
A3 –Modern Art - Cutting Water
A4 –Mystery Plane - Snakebite
A5 –Mystery Plane - Burning Desire
A6 –Mystery Plane - Crazy Bombs
B1 –Lives Of Angels - Look Out Kid
B2 –Lives Of Angels - Red Suit
B3 –Lives Of Angels - After Dark (Intended Version)
B4 –WeR7 - Bread
B5 –WeR7 - Caped Crusader
B6 –WeR7 - Now Wash Your Hands
Lives of Angels ,after disappearing through a hole in the sky,have now qualified for a career spanning retrospective on Dark Entries. Including tunes from 1983 to 1989,and a few unreleased tracks thrown in for good measure.
Better quality versions of tracks from those Color Tapes compilations, and from their previous cassette albums can now be heard with almost crystal clarity. Now a new generation can thrill to the O'Connell's proto-indie sound of neo-psychedelic guitar jangle mixed with minimal synth pop analogness. Imagine Spacemen 3, Felt, 3rd album VU,and Depeche Mode in the same concrete mixer with added strawberry flavoured Angel Delight,resulting in a rather pleasent fluffy blancmange and you've got Lives of Angels.....or, Lives Of Angels Delight?
Notes:
Lives of Angels are Catherine O'Connell and Gerald O'Connell
All songs previously unreleased except:
A3,A6 originally released on ‘Elevator To Eden’ cassette by Color Disc, 1983
B2 originally released on ‘An Hour Of Color Vol. 2’ cassette by Color Disc, 1985
B5 originally released on ‘Color Pop Explosion’ cassette by Color Disc, 1989
Tracklisting:
A1 Call Moscow
A2 I Know About You
A3 Nothing Yet
A4 She Turns Aside
A5 Popular Violence
A6 Heartland
B1 Somebody Else
B2 Threatened
B3 Look Out Kid
B4 After Dark
B5 The Infinite Corridor
Lives of Angels,husband and wife duo Gerald and Caterine O'Connell, were responsible for the first release on Color Tapes, back in '83;...so they took the intervening four years to 1987 to do another one. That being this 60 minute cassette, also on Color Tapes, called "Alternative Programming".
Husband and Wife endeavours are seldom a good idea, but for these two it seems to work,as well as being a bit quaint.It's in a similar style to the debut,a hybrid of jangly Doug Yule-era Velvets indie-psych and minimal synth-pop which is very effective neo-psych-lite for the fringe wearing student. Its an experience akin to playing a Yazoo record at the same time as Felt's "Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty" album. The Dichotomy,however unlikely, seems to work as a softly psychedelic experience with lashings of naiveté dripped onto one tiny sugarlump.
Tracklisting:
A1 Expert System
A2 Heartland (remix)
A3 Green On Black
B1 Samba School 1
B2 Artificial Intelligence 3
B3 Samba School 2
B4 Ruby In The Dust
The incredibly high standard of stuff from Color Tapes continues with volume 3 of the 'An Hour Of Color' series of compilations.I've said it all before, you know what you're gonna get, so get on with it.....its good.
Tracklisting:
A1 –Space Brothers - Lost Civilisation
A2 –Modern Art - Monument Of Heaven
A3 –Lives Of Angels - Lives Of Angels
A4 –WeR7 - The Hearts Outstanding
A5 –Kata Kolbert - Poor Poor Thing
A6 –Cleaners From Venus - Ilya Kuryakin Looked At Me
A7 –Moisten Before Use - Where To Now
A8 –Bill Pritchard - Fact Or Fiction
B1 –Space Brothers - Purple Twilight
B2 –Modern Art - She Cannot Yet Be Seen
B3 –Lives Of Angels - Green On Black
B4 –Kata Kolbert - Marriage Of Inconvenience
B5 –Shadow Of Light - Play Your Joker
B6 –Cleaners From Venus - Follow The Plough
B7 –3D5 - Special Fx
B8 –Face In The Crowd - Somewhere, Sometimes
B9 –Mystery Plane - Madame Sin
Another one of the many compilations released on cassette by Color Tapes in the eighties, this one is from 1985....not a vintage year elsewhere, but on the Color label, it was as if the 'New Romantics' had never happened.
We are treated to two melodic classix from the cruelly ignored 'Cleaners From Venus', worth the admission money all by themselves.This is countered by the truly awful 'That It', with some over-clever lounge jazz for the discerning pseudo intellectual.
The rest is populated by the usual Color crew, normally involving Gary Ramon somewhere in the mix of Minimal Synth, Cold Wave, and Proto-Indie ditties...really rather marvellous.
Tracklisting:
A1 –Cleaners From Venus - Soul Monday
A2 –Lives Of Angels - Red Suit
A3 –Take-It - Fallen Out
A4 –Modern Art - Confrontation
A5 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Pulse
A6 –WeR7 - I Was Not A Jew
A7 –Space Brothers - Lodore
B1 –Cleaners From Venus - Julie Profumo
B2 –Take-It - I'd Like To Talk To You
B3 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Fear
B4 –Mystery Plane - Dungeon Blues
B5 –Timothy London - Mission Impossible
B6 –The Teamtones - She Says No
B7 –Lives Of Angels - Threatened
B8 –Andy Boot Quartet - Perfectly Perfunctory
B9 –WeR7 - I Pray To A Moving God
The standard of these Color Tapes compilations are unsurpassed in the murky world of reissued pop from the past.
Amid all the excellent Synthwave, there even lurks a forgotten Good Missionaries tune, which has undergone the aural modernising process of remastering....not that it makes much difference to the very Lo-Fi missionaries sound.
Plenty here to satisfy electro-junkies, as well as a splash of proto-indie from Lives of Angels to remind us of Color's other strengths.
I'd struggle to pick out which was the best volume from this series.....at the moment i'd go for Volume 4,tomorrow may have a different answer.
Faultless.
Tracklisting:
A1 –Void - Isotope
A2 –Echophase - Silent Sky
A3 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Berserk
A4 –Silicon Valley - Transit 6
A5 –The Lord - Production Line
A6 –The Good Missionairies - Bending A Border (Dub Version)
B1 –Berserk In A Hayfield - August Haze
B2 –Echophase - Continental Shift
B3 –Lives Of Angels - Golden Age
B4 –Modern Art - Colliding World
B5 –Lives Of Angels - Pavillion
Yet more minimal synth cold wave classics from Color Tapes' classic early eighties period. All the usual suspects are here again.....most of them involving Gary Ramon (latterly of The SunDial). All previously available only on the medium of cassette, and have now been expertly remastered from the original masters to appear sparkly and as crisp as newly born babe. Its almost incomprehensible that these babes are now approaching forty years old; but they are!
Tracklisting:
A1 –Beatmixer - Danse Electrique
A2 –Silicon Valley - Going Out
A3 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Start Of Something
A4 –Disintegrators - Transmissions Unknown
A5 –Silicon Valley - ZX
A6 –WeR7 - Word Perfect
B1 –Mystery Plane - I'll Get You For This
B2 –Echophase - Train
B3 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Optical
B4 –Lives Of Angels - Gateway
B5 –Beatmixer - The Beatmixer
A third volume of lost or forgotten classics of the minimal electronic genre from the Color Disc archives.
Starts off with the sample fest classic of "You Tell Lies" by the mysterious Duke of Disrespect...or in other words Gary Ramon who'd just bought an Ensoniq Mirage.Then it gets even better from there.
Tracklisting:
1 –Duke Of Disrespect - You Tell Lies (Banging Away) 3:10
2 –Silicon Valley - X-Cell 4:00
3 –The Lord - Universe 3:30
4 –Disintegrators - Oscillations 4:00
5 –Lives Of Angels - Green On Black 3:09
6 –Silicon Valley - Holborn Station 3 am 3rd January 1982 1:50
7 –Stereo Machines & Kinesis - Excerpt From Cassette No.7 2:24
8 –Disintegrators - Filter Reactor 3:39
9 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Club Paris 3:29
10 –Echophase - Destination 4:29
11 –Mystery Plane - When The Money Runs Out 3:31
12 –Lives Of Angels - Red Suit 5:20
13 –Modern Art - Opaque 4:28
14 –Stereo Machines & Kinesis - Excerpt From Cassette No.6 2:54
15 –Disintegrators - Disintegrate (Edit) 7:09
Color Disc, previously Color Tapes, was once a vehicle for a bunch of Neo-Psych and Proto Indie bands from 1980 onwards, and it was mainly these same groups of musicians who also produced some of the best underground minimal synth of the early eighties. Electronic music is, in my opinion, a superior form of Psych, both in classic and Neo versions, so the leap in style is not as great as it would first seem. A form which would eventually haunt us all as 'Acid House', which then evolved into that bloody awful 'club culture' when the proletariat wrestled it from the grasp us elitist types.It always happens,mass acceptance leading to a generic indolence of a particularly unattractive kind.
The gorgeous analogue beauty of these timeless pieces of minimal electro-psych in that short window of time from 1980-85 when synthpop, or synth wave was almost impossible to do badly.Just look at that equipment list, perfect.
Tracklisting:
A1 –Disintegrators - Elixir Vapor 3:31
A2 –Void - Transvision 3:06
A3 –The Lord - Out Of Space & Out Of Time 6:15
A4 –Body Electric - Undercurrents 3:17
A5 –Space Brothers - Lodore (Purple Twilight remix) 3:30
B1 –Void - Radio 3:44
B2 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Pulse 5:11
B3 –WeR7 - Masterful Of Ceremonies 5:13
B4 –Lives Of Angels - Experiment 1 2:29
B5 –Mystery Plane - Find Some Body 3:53
B6 –Lives Of Angels - Experiment 2 2:44
A recent series of compilations of UK electronic cold wave and minimal synth from the legendary Color tapes label. Featuring many previously neo-psych bands, mostly including DIY legend Gary Ramon as a member. All of these tracks were previously only available on cassette, either/or previously unreleased. They could have been recorded yesterday such is the quality and future leaning inventiveness of all of these tracks.
Tracklisting:
1 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Tease
2 –Modern Art - Alternative Universe (Edit)
3 –Lives Of Angels - Lives Of Angels
4 –The Lord - Winds Of Space
5 –Berserk In A Hayfield - Code
6 –WeR7 - Don't Surrender
7 –Mystery Plane - Pigsty Cafe
8 –Stereo Machines And Kinesis - Excerpt From Cassette Number 10
9 –WeR7 - Volt Air
10 –The Lord - Space Is The Bass
11 –Disintegrators - Beyond Reason Beyond Time
12 –Lives Of Angels - Threatened
13 –Modern Art - Age Of Lights (Instrumental Version)
Interesting psych-pop electronica from a duo(featuring Gerry O'Connell
of Modern Art) called Lives of Angels, on the Color Tapes label. Sort
of a budget sub-Cherry Red Pillows and Prayers era kind of label; more
associated with the proto-indie psych of a pre-Sun Dial Gary Ramon than
this stuff. Very charming twee melodies floating over a mechanical drum
machine rhythm, with jangly guitars.
The bands on this label like Syd Barrett, Velvet Underground,Nuggets,
and Rubble; and what’s wrong with that? This being the first release on
said label, that changed its name to Color Disc when it released
'proper' records. They so wanted to be either Felt or on Cherry red for
real did this lot.
Track Listing:
A1
Imperial Motors
A2
Pavillion
A3
Ascension
A4
Heartland
A5
Golden Age
B1
Red Suit
B2
Cold Expression
B3
The Rock Drill
B4
Meltdown
B5
Nothing Yet
DOWNLOAD the down elevator to eden HERE!
Another group with Gary Ramon (Gary Gipps) in it, augmented by the
complete Lives of Angels line-up, and someone called Doctor Zero(?) on
vocals.
Again, not as psychedelic as you would expect,and more in line with the
alternative charts of 1983.No great innovations here,but still an
interesting listen for anyone sick of their Echo and the
Bunnymen/Teardrop Explodes records(ie everyone)..Beat box bedroom
Psych,for the discerning early eighties teen.
Though truly made in the DIY spirit, Ramon will not find his real mojo
until The Sun Dial's first album;then lose it,incidentally, for the
second Sun Dial album,which was absolutely dire Ecstasy
inspired/uninspired,baggy beat crap!But the Mystery Plane ain't bad, as
it was made before 'E' fucked pop music up forever.
Track Listing:
A1 Burning Desire
A2 Find Some Body
A3 Nosedive
A4 Food For Him
A5 Death Sentence
A6 Pigsty Café
B1
When The £ Runs Out
B2
My Obsession
B3
This Is Your Life
B4
New Bride
B5
Punishment Block
B6
Hello Dummy
DOWNLOAD or be punished HERE!
