Various - Premonitions: Underground Cassette Network 1989-90

Cassette

14 song collection of experimental electronic music pieced together from the extended network of Martin Franklin's Soundimage label, the UK-based DIY cassette label formed in the mid-80s that loosely operated in the hinterland between post-industrial ambience and the burgeoning scene of homemade electronic production. Premonitions is a telling title, foretelling of the revolution just around the corner that was about to democratise electronic music making: amateurs piecing together ideas with rudimentary equipment, folding their limited understandings into the fallibility of unreliable new technologies, and allowing their imaginations to colour in the inevitable gaps. As with most endeavours of this nature, what occurred is more inventive and engaging than that of any known 'professional', the autodidactism of post-punk praxis uniting with a broad palette of influences, made from 'real instruments' but collaged, overlayed and proto-sampled in ways no-one has to even consider now thanks to advanced programming software. There's not really a unifying sound, as such, but a shared inquisitive approach, at times giving off the sense of Jon Hassell falling backwards through a bedsit stargate into a more primitive fourth world, or at others a similar dystopian dread as O Yuki Conjugate or the psycho-active vertigo of Coil's ELpH experiments. Most of the names here will be new to the majority I'd imagine, which is not only increasingly rare these days, but also opens up the possibilities of alternative histories and new paths of inquiry. Which, for the most part, is what it's all about for us.