Cassette
Infinite Expanse follow up the release of their Jaroslav Koran release with another trawl through the archives, this time digging out this 16 track collection of improvised recordings from South-West London's MLR. Active from 1977-83, they've almost more members than they've songs, a rotating cast of musicians contributing to just a handful of recordings that seem to simultaneously adopt punk's function and reject its form. These are what you might call 'jams', almost entirely free of vocals and constructed from a host of very non-77 instrumentation - clarinet, bongos, tablas, accordions - alongside the more trad set up of bass-drums-guitar. The guitar in question is particularly off-brand, steering away from the chords and instead favouring lesser explored spidery terrain, almost psychedelic in its execution, at times even ethereal. There's some obvious sonic differences, but you'd not be entirely surprised to see this turn up on one of the Bullshit Detector comps or hear of them running with the Apostles crew - squat/anarcho punk affiliates but not necessarily adherent to its aesthetic. The recordings are, of course, murky and rudimentary, but it lends the whole exercise a suitably strung-out feel, the songs running into each other like one long, foggy trip. All the tracks here are taken from that golden age of 79-81, and the spirit of adventure of that period is pressed into each moment, MLR not quite sure what they are, but entirely convinced of what they're certainly not, archly rejecting codification with each spontaneous discharge.
