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After 20 years, Gary decided he wanted to do something different. He bought a $100 Yamaha PSR keyboard, complete with autochord and drum machine, and began to experiment with writing in new ways. Rather than having conventional song structure, the music was more open. The words were sometimes spoken, and sometimes sung. Gary also began writing poems and vignettes to include in his performances. While these songs were not as overtly political as his folk-style songs, they commented on life in the 80s with a uniquely cynical Baltimore view. (Many thought Gary was influenced by Baltimore filmmaker John Waters, especially given Gary's love of pink flamingos, but Waters was not an influence on the music.) Gary began to search out other performers to help him bring this material to the stage; at the same time he started working with producer Erik Steensen to create a recording of the music along with some of the spoken word pieces. The album, Original Soundtrack, was released about the time Gary did his first performance with The Generic Art Ensemble.

This reissue includes insert with complete biography and track-by-track notes by Gary Blanchard himself. Front cover artwork hand pasted on sleeve.

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All the tracks were originally self-released as demo tapes in a very limited run. Their first work, Coming Home, was published in 1983, and the second one, Too Many Lies, in 1984. Both of them were distributed by the band themselves. Shortly after, they released a more widely known 12" EP, Tired (Nova Express, 1984), with a different line-up and noticeably more rock-oriented.

Definers of a totally genuine sound, Hymn were coevals to the underground-synth-post-punk movement that surfaced in France in the early Eighties, easily recognisable today via cult labels such as Bain Total and Invisible/Scopa Records, with stunning releases by experimental references like Ilitch, Philippe Doray or Incontinents.

Liner Notes by Bap Bandiera:
" So... "Hymn" jumped out of my brain when I was about 20... I needed to sing songs to forget my family problems... At that point there were only two of us: Stefan Dalloz and me... our sessions were simple and we easily found a way of communicating through our music... smoking and drinking + heroin, speed , mushrooms and LSD... fighting Society and thinking of Revolutions! But Stef was a kind of Syd Barrett-cum-Syd Vicious type. He was on a permanent trip and decided to quit... then I asked Tony Bulfoni, with whom I shared a lot of quick pieces always in relation with our life and love experiences. We were such a romantic duo... Lucas Trouble joined us after a few months and his synth psalmodies became part of "Hymn", but he was not on our trip because he was more interested in business... "Hymn" was our screaming Way Out to blow away our sadness and No Future attitude... our influences were Joy Division, PiL, The Residents, Bauhaus, Siouxsie, Television, Talking Heads, Magazine, Killing Joke, Wire, XTC... and a lot of bands from our cold generation... "

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Minx / Zimmerman were a duo comprised of Don Minx (Marq van Broekhoven, now a well known comics artist) and Aldomir Zimmerman (Tonnie Eiting), two friends from the city of Eindhoven, who were into comics, avant-garde music and homemade cassette recordings. Influenced by diverse bands / artists such as John Foxx, Brian Eno, Fad Gadget, Sparks or Devo, (among many others), they decided to release an album. “Minx / Zimermman” was the result, self-released on their Freudian Backroom label, now very sought-after by minimal wave collectors.

*Insert with liner notes, lyrics and rare photos.

*Free download card included.

RIYL: CERAMIC HELLO, IRON CURTAIN, GEOFFREY LANDERS, FAD GADGET…

Tracklist: 1. Song For Alice – 2. Dreams That Money Can Buy – 3. Days On A Mountain – 4. Good Old Days – 5. Tearoom In The Train – 6. Batavia

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The Collapse of Ancient Funk (Vol.1) is a record which gathers all the vocal songs included in the cassette-album 'The Collapse Of Ancient Funk (1984-85 A.D.)', originally edited by Final Image (UK) in 1985.

A brief history of Son Of Sam by Chris Bishop:
" Sometime during 1984, during a period of Orwellian mass unemployment, I moved into a house in Leeds that had a basement filled with the collective equipment of The Cassandra Complex, O Yuki Conjugate and Mr Tom Fazzini. My pathetic contribution was the first Korg drum machine which nobody used and was eventually bought by Jez from Utah Saints. I don't suppose he used it either. It sounded awful.
Music at this time was largely devoted to guitar-oriented production, but the unwitting advantage these people had was our mistrust of the fretboard. Then Electro happened, we got an 808, and Son of Sam was born when I needed a nasty name to scribble on a cassette. As time went on, Razors and Mr Cheese fleshed my meanderings out into a "real band", we played a few dates around Europe, brought out some vinyl on Rouska and then logically destroyed ourselves when Techno arrived.

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Today, we feel particularly proud of announcing that we have rescued from the storehouse of memory all the unpublished demos, a collection of 8 songs recorded between 1981 and 1982 taken directly from the original tapes, in a really luxurious edition.

Each cover hand stamped.

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Amsterdam, among other European capitals, generated creative and associative nuclei closely linked to each other, with spaces open to everyone and venues available both to novel and veteran acts as Octopus, Mazzo, Paradiso, e.g. Circles of friends, made up of musicians and artists who created collectively without economic expectations, enjoyed the best of scenarios to express themselves freely, produce some relevant work and then share it with a small group of interested parties.

"We had no name for the music we made. Top Tape released the recordings of those hometape sessions, jams and performances on cassette tape in particular." tells us Menko Konings, founder of both band S.M. Nurse and independent label Top Tape; "I was forced to start a label (1983) to release my first solo-tape. This is how Top Tape was created. A few years in a row I released music from friends and myself. L'embrasse is a good example of this. (...) We recorded a lot: solo, try-outs, rehearsals, jams, live performances, demos, final versions and spoken audio clips from radio and TV. We also experimented with tapes: tape echo device, loops, sound on sound, backwards, two different mono tracks (on Revox A77 tape recorder), fast or slow playback, transferring, blurring of recordings by recording layer over layer, spoken word, etc.".

L'embrasse is a genuine testimony of this thriving scene Amsterdam embodied in the late 80s. Originally released in cassette format (Top Tape, 1987), probably less than 50 copies were distributed at the time through local shops and contains, in its original release, a dozen different acts: Menko (S.M. Nurse founder), Robbie Horsfall, Peter Van Garderen (Nine Circles founder), Der Rudi, Antonia (Tonny Timmermans), No Honey From These, Incredible Coöp (S.M. Nurse members), Beatnik Love Affair, Tranquil Eyes, Cheiron, Spin & Kokkie and The Male Ego. The recordings offer a fascinating insight into one of several different independent scenes coexisting in the city more than 30 years ago. This album is both a tribute to and a portrayal of this movement, immortalized by label Top Tape in 1987, which we can now retrieve on this exclusive edition.

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