The Instant Automatons – Blues Masters Of The Humber Delta [Cass] (1980, Deleted Records)

 

The Instant Automatons were leading figures in the largely cassette-based U.K. Bad Music scene (a British DIY movement whose adherents made their music available on cassette, for free) of the late '70s. Between 1977 and 1982 , using a bedroom full of homemade gear plus some conventional instrumentation, core members Protag (later of Alternative TV, Blyth Power and Zounds) and Mark Lancaster (“somewhere between Cooper Clarke and Mark E. Smith”) forged a warped hybrid of traditional songcraft and lo-fi primitive post punk. Although cassettes were the band's native medium, they also appeared on several vinyl releases, including their own EP and various compilations featuring similar weirdos. 

 
The Instant Automatons mixed the experimental and the conventional, with relatively traditional song structures often lurking beneath the surface weirdness -unlike some of their post-punk contemporaries who deconstructed the concept of "the song" itself. Again, Lancaster attributes some of this to practical considerations: "We were only just learning to play our instruments and our equipment was deficient, so even our best efforts to play 'properly' sometimes turned out quite bizarre." The band was never short of skewed rock and pop oddities. [SOURCE: BFE RECORDS BANDCAMP]

 

 

Label: Deleted Records – DEC 010 

Format: Cassette, Numbered, C60 

Country: UK 

Released: 1980 

Style: Lo-Fi, Experimental, Post-Punk, Minimal Wave

 

Tracklist:

North Bank 

A1 All You Need Is Love 

A2 Laburnum Walk 

A3 Mr. MacPhee 

A4 Esoteric No. 2 - Blazing Pedals 

A5 Catacomb (MG) 

A6 Catacomb 

A7 Prisoner Of The Grapevine 

A8 I Think Somebody Must Have Poisoned Me 

South Bank 

B1 Then He Hit Me 

B2 Esoteric No. 5 - Brains Under Glass 

B3 Restless Night (LMC) 

B4 Ballad Of The New Things 

B5 Disillusion (LMC) 

B6 August '78 (LMC) 

B7 When The Pubs Close 

B8 Outro (MG) 

 

Notes:

(MG) -> Live at Meanwhile Gardens 

(LMC) -> Live at the London Musicians Collective 

"Live performances and bedroom recordings made by the Instant Automatons during February to October 1980." 

"The Instant Automatons; not published not copyright 1980 rip us off - see if we care". 

 

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