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WHR 007CD
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CD reissue of this cassette, originally released by Coventry's Slob Tapes in 1984, featuring two lengthy pieces of garbled electronics, distant planet serrated guitar churn, basement Wobble-esque bass, primitive rhythms and the kinda spoken word that wouldn't seem out of place on a record by The Fall or The Shadow Ring. Originally recorded as a one-off, these tracks feature connections to what at the time seemed like a fervent enough local scene via the involvement of not only Slob Tapes' founder and early Attrition live percussionist Bob Oliver, but also Alan Rider of Stress and the Adventures In Reality label. Serving as another document of an incredibly fertile time in music, this album perfectly illustrates just how far some of those concerned could go with limited resources.
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WHR 006CD
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A collection of Alternative TV songs during recent years that have appeared on vinyl-only releases or compilations and suchlike. Includes "This Little Girl", "Negative Primitive", "The System", "Radiator", "Walls", and "Chinese Burn", amongst others. "Chinese Burn" will be a different version to the one which appears on the "Low Expectations" compilation 10" on Fourth Dimension. Even if you own some of the vinyl, this will be a neat way of listening to the tracks as they map out an arc in the group's more recent development that makes perfect sense hearing them all together on one release. As Mark Perry himself said, this release actually sounds more like an album in its own right than what's otherwise tantamount to a compilation gathering together various loose ends. However you choose to look at it, the CD makes for another great entry in the band's illustrious career, once again underlining that fine balance between commentary strewn songwriting that itself can sway perfectly between the melodic and more intense, plus pieces that nod to Mark's own love of electronic music drawing from the worlds of early industrial music and the avant-garde. As with only a few groups who initially came out of the cultural shift of the late '70s, Alternative TV always kept moving forward and exploring new ideas without completely abandoning everything that made them (a not so blind) force to be reckoned with at the outset.
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WHR 005CD
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Mark Perry has overseen the reissue of 1979's Scars On Sunday, which was originally released as a limited run cassette and is now highly collectible. Comprising material from around the same period as the excellent Vibing Up the Senile Man album period, the ideas behind the music were very much informed by Mark's experience of touring with Here & Now. Perhaps serving as a statement on punk, or the many hordes by this time now completely straitjacketed by it, it could be contended it was conceptually far more "punk" anyway. Beyond this, the music here illustrates precisely how Mark led Alternative TV into wide open terrain sometimes far removed from rock music in its more generally accepted forms. As both proof of where music could be taken once unshackled from all notions of predictability and, indeed, just how far it could go into those realms usually reserved for the avant-garde, this was about as non-conformist as music could get at the time. Originally recorded live at the Greenwich Theatre and The Lyceum these sets aimed for the jugular as they confounded, enticed, and ultimately gave the audiences far more than they'd anticipated. Between the music of this period, the earlier more direct attacks and the subsequent sidesteps into clever songwriting or more electronically-driven pieces, Alternative TV have always embraced the idea of going to wherever they intuitively feel like in the given moment. Since this early period, the group has gone through lengthy periods of hibernation and surges of activity that together might not have served them so well in a careerist sense, but at least maintained their roles as artists possessed of integrity. A rare virtue in music.
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