E3 – E3 [12''] (1991, Peacefrog Records)

 

The 12" single 'E3' by Mark Tinley (released under the alias E3) landed in 1992 on Peacefrog Records. It’s one of those early-90s white-label style releases that feels like it was made for DJs first and everyone else later. Pressed as a 12" with multiple mixes, it leans heavily on squelchy 303 lines and that hypnotic, slightly rough-around-the-edges groove that defined a lot of underground UK techno and acid house at the time. 

The record itself is built around variations of the same core idea. On the A-side you get “E3” in different mixes, including the “Ian Key Mix” and the “E303 Mix,” both stretching past the five-minute mark and giving plenty of space for those acidic patterns to evolve. Flip it over and things get a bit looser with “E33” versions and the extra cut “Voodoo Groove (A Slight Return),” which adds a slightly funkier twist while staying firmly in that late-night warehouse zone.

 
Mark Tinley, the mind behind it, is one of those low-key but fascinating figures from the UK electronic scene. He worked under several aliases -Essybumpi, Polaris, Trashmaster T- and had a knack for blending experimental ideas with club-ready formats. His work often sat just off the mainstream radar, which is probably why records like this feel a bit like hidden artifacts from the era rather than big headline releases. 

The label, Peacefrog, was just getting started around this time and would go on to become a respected name in electronic music, especially through the ‘90s and early 2000s. Early catalog entries like this one capture a moment when the label was still rooted in raw techno and acid before branching out into deeper house and even leftfield electronica. 

Context-wise, 1992 was a wild moment for UK dance music. Acid house had already exploded, rave culture was in full swing, and producers were pushing hardware like the Roland TB-303 into new territory. Records like 'E3' sit right in that transition, less about the initial rave euphoria and more about locking into deeper, more hypnotic grooves that would shape techno and house going forward. 

 

Label: Peacefrog Records – PF004 

Format: Vinyl, 12", 33 ⅓ RPM 

Country: UK 

Released: 1991 

Style: Techno, Acid Techno, Acid House, Deep House 

 

Tracklist: 

A1 E3 (The Ian Key Mix) 

A2 E3 (The E303 Mix) 

B1 E33 (The Bow & Arrow Mix) 

B2 E33 (The Karaoke Mix) 

B3 Voodoo Groove (A Slight Return) 

 

Other Versions: 

'E3' (12", 33 ⅓ RPM) - Peacefrog Records [PF 005] (UK, 1992)

 

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Various – Darker Skratcher [LP] (1980, Los Angeles Free Music Society)

 

'Darker Skratcher' is one of those records that feels like a time capsule from a very particular underground moment in Los Angeles. Released in 1980, it captures the anything-goes spirit of the Los Angeles Free Music Society, a loose network of artists and musicians active since the early 70s who treated sound as a playground rather than a craft to perfect. 

Rather than sounding like a carefully sequenced album, the record plays more like a window into a scattered, hyper-creative scene. It jumps between primitive electronics, fractured punk, tape experiments and offbeat spoken pieces. Tracks such as “Cleanliness and Order” by Boyd Rice and Daniel Miller lean into minimal synth territory, while contributions from Jad Fair, Human Hands or Airway drift between playful pop fragments and total abstraction. The flow is unpredictable, almost like tuning into a collage of parallel broadcasts. 

Many of the contributors came straight out of the LAFMS orbit, where projects like Le Forte Four, Foundation Boo or The Doo-Dooettes functioned as fluid identities rather than fixed bands. People moved freely between names and ideas, recording whatever they felt like without worrying about technical skill or genre boundaries. That openness gives the record its charm, moving from catchy lo-fi moments to completely unhinged experiments without warning. 

There are also a few connections to scenes that would become more visible later on. 45 Grave appear here in an early form that still leans toward punk, and Dennis Duck would later be part of the The Dream Syndicate. Monitor links the record to the broader art-punk and performance scene tied to zines and mail-art culture, where boundaries between music, visual art and concept pieces were pretty much nonexistent.

 
The LAFMS “label” operated far outside traditional industry structures. Releases were often pressed in small quantities, packaged in a DIY way and circulated through personal networks rather than formal distribution. It was less about building a catalog and more about documenting activity as it happened, even if that documentation felt rough or incomplete. That approach ended up influencing later underground movements, especially cassette culture and noise scenes.

 
What comes through strongest on 'Darker Skratcher' is that sense of a community creating its own rules in real time. It’s chaotic, uneven, occasionally funny, sometimes surprisingly catchy, and deeply rooted in a pre-digital era where experimentation thrived in small, self-made circles. 

 

Label: Los Angeles Free Music Society – LAFMS#12 

Format: Vinyl, LP, Compilation 

Country: US 

Released: 1980 

Style: Industrial, Punk, Experimental, Art Punk, Post-Punk, Experimental Rock, Minimal Wave, Netherlands

 

Tracklist: 

A1 Boyd Rice & Daniel Miller – Cleanliness And Order 2:45 

A2 Jad Fair – XXOO 0:30 

A3 Vetza – Stale Puppy-Dog Tails 1:30 

A4 The Rick Potts Band – Platform Swimfins 3:00 

A5 Monitor – Guardian 2:05 

A6 Doodooettes – Pork Had Better Behave 2:05 

A7 45 Grave – Riboflavin-Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsaturated Blood 2:37 

A8 NON – NON-Watusi 

B1 Foundation Boo – Nap 2:10 

B2 Airway – Perpendicular Thrust 3:45 

B3 Dennis Duck – Davey The Worm 3:00 

B4 Le Forte Four – The Lowest Form Of Music 3:08 

B5 Human Hands – I Got Mad 3:00 

B6 Bpeople – The Other Thing 2:38 

 

Other Versions: 

'Darker Skratcher' (LP, Compilation) - Frizz Bee (LAFMS #12) (Netherlands,1980)

 

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Alain Savouret – L'arbre Et Caetera [LP] (1978, INA-GRM)

There’s something quietly fascinating about 'L’arbre Et Caetera', by Alain Savouret. It’s one of those records that feels less like an “album” and more like a document from a very specific moment when sound itself was being rethought from the ground up. 

Savouret, born in 1942 in Le Mans, belongs to that generation of French composers who came up inside the orbit of experimental institutions rather than traditional bands or orchestras. He worked closely with the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), a place where composition meant cutting tape, sculpting noise, and exploring how recorded sound could behave once freed from instruments. His work tends to sit somewhere between playful and analytical, often mixing structured forms with a kind of surreal sonic storytelling. 

This album, released in 1978 on INA-GRM, gathers pieces that were actually composed earlier in the 1970–72 period, which already tells you something: this wasn’t about chasing trends, but about archiving and circulating works created in the studio lab environment. The main piece, “L’arbre Et Caetera,” runs over 15 minutes and plays with a rondo-like structure, alternating recurring fragments with more freeform sections. What’s striking is how it uses layers of “concrete” sounds -recordings manipulated on tape-sometimes shifting between mono, stereo, and even early quadraphonic spatial ideas, which was pretty adventurous for the time. 

The label behind it deserves as much attention as the music. INA had absorbed the GRM in 1975, and soon after started putting out records under the INA-GRM imprint. These releases were never mainstream in the usual sense; they were more like dispatches from a research lab. The GRM itself goes back to the late 1940s, when Pierre Schaeffer began experimenting with recorded sound as raw material, essentially inventing musique concrète. By the time Savouret’s LP came out, the studios had evolved into a hub with custom gear, tape machines, and early electronic tools, attracting composers who treated sound like something to dissect and reassemble. 

So when you put on 'L’arbre Et Caetera', you’re not just hearing a composition, you’re hearing a slice of that whole ecosystem. The edits, the abrupt shifts, the almost tactile quality of the sounds all point back to hands-on tape work. It’s experimental, sure, but not in a cold or academic way. There’s a strange sense of humor in how fragments repeat and mutate, like objects being turned around to catch the light differently each time. 

 

Label: INA-GRM – AM 647.07 

Series: Collection GRM 

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album 

Country: France 

Released: 1978 

Style: Musique Concrète, Contemporary, Experimental, Electroacoustic, Modern Classical, Tape Music

 

Tracklist: 

A1 L'arbre Et Caetera 15:42 

Selon 

A2 1er Tiers-Temps Variations 1 À 6 7:00 

B1 1er Tiers-Temps Variation 7 3:00 

B2 2ème Et 3ème Tiers-Temps 18:04 

 

Notes:  

"L'arbre Et Caetera" for tape realized at studio 52 of Groupe de recherches musicales de l'ORTF.

Premiered August 2, 1972 at Cloître des Célestins during the 26th Festival d'Avignon as a tetraphonic work. 

The version of "L'arbre Et Caetera" presented here is the stereophonic reduced version. 

 

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Zeni Geva – Live On Suicide [Cass] (1989, Nux Organization)

'Live On Suicide' is one of those elusive late-80s cassette releases that captures Zeni Geva at a moment when everything around them was still taking shape. Issued around 1989 by Nux Organization, it belongs to that shadowy tape-trading era where recordings circulated hand-to-hand, often with minimal documentation. Copies were scarce, details inconsistent, and that roughness is part of what makes it interesting today; it feels more like a field recording from a scene than a formal live album.

 
At that point, Zeni Geva had only just started out in Tokyo under the direction of Kazuyuki K. Null, who was already active in the noise underground. The early lineup shifted frequently, and that instability fed directly into their sound: abrasive, repetitive, and intense, pulling from hardcore, industrial noise, and heavy rock in a way that didn’t sit comfortably in any single category. Their live performances leaned into volume and physical impact, so recordings like this cassette give a better sense of their raw presence than the more controlled studio work that came later. 

Nux Organization plays a huge role in understanding why something like 'Live On Suicide' exists in the first place. It functioned as a DIY platform rather than a traditional label, deeply connected to Japan’s experimental and noise networks. Cassettes were the format of choice because they were cheap and easy to duplicate, which helped artists reach listeners across continents through underground trading circles. The same network linked Zeni Geva with figures like Merzbow, placing them firmly within a broader international movement rather than an isolated local act. 

Heard in context, this cassette sits somewhere between their earliest recordings, like 'How to Kill' (1987), and the more defined direction they would take going into the 90s with albums such as 'Maximum Money Monster'. The material here feels less structured, more volatile, and closer to their noisecore roots. It captures a phase where ideas were still colliding and evolving, before their sound tightened into something more deliberate and widely recognized. 

 

Label: Nux Organization – NUX-18 

Format: Cassette, C60 

Country: Japan 

Released: 1989 

Style: Noise Rock, Pigfuck

 

Tracklist: 

A1 Blackout 

A2 On Suicide 

A3 Sweetheart 

A4 Godkill 

B1 Slam King 

B2 Blackout 

B3 Guystick Bodie 

B4 Vast Impotentz 

 

Notes: 

Recorded live at Eggplant, Osaka'89.3.5. & Antiknock, Tokyo'89.5.16. 

 

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Yazoo / Sudeten Creche / Colour Me Pop – Europe In The Year Zero [12''] (1982, S/Phonograph)

 

There’s something very early-80s UK about 'Europe In The Year Zero'; a snapshot of a moment when synth-pop hadn’t fully hardened into chart formula yet and still felt like a loose network of experiments, small labels and odd collaborations. This record came out in 1982 on the tiny S/Phonograph imprint. It’s a five-track compilation 12" with two cuts by Colour Me Pop, two by Sudeten Crèche, and a crucial early track by Yazoo. Only around 8,000 copies were pressed, which already tells you the scale: this wasn’t aimed at mainstream radio, it was more like a document of a scene in motion. 

What really gives the release its weight is the Yazoo connection. They were barely getting started at the time -Vince Clarke had just left Depeche Mode and teamed up with Alison Moyet in early 1982. Their track “Goodbye 70’s” appears here in a unique version, and this EP is often considered their first official appearance on vinyl, predating the full impact of 'Upstairs at Eric’s'. So you’ve got this odd situation where a soon-to-be massive act is sitting alongside much more obscure names.

 
One of those obscure names is Sudeten Creche, who basically orbit the whole project. They formed around 1980 as a kind of conceptual, semi–art-school experiment driven by Yvette Döll and Paul Carlin. Their tracks “Are Kisses Out of Fashion?” and “Dance” land right in that minimal wave zone: cold, sparse, slightly detached. That EP is actually their debut, and it also doubles as a launchpad for Yazoo, which says a lot about how blurred the lines were between projects at the time.

 
Then there’s Colour Me Pop, a short-lived act that had previously gone under the name Watch With Mother. Their tracks (“When Sex Was Fun” and “Bikini Trauma”) bring a more playful, slightly tongue-in-cheek new wave energy, but still sit comfortably in that DIY synth scene. They never reached the visibility of Yazoo, and even compared to Sudeten Crèche they feel more like a side branch than a core node, which makes their presence here even more tied to the label’s curatorial vibe. 

S/Phonograph itself is part of that story. It wasn’t a major player; more like a small, almost one-off vehicle connected to Illuminating Music and distributed through indie channels. The EP even had a loose political angle, with references to anti-nuclear sentiment (“No Nukes” appears in the notes), which fits with the early-80s UK underground where music, art and activism often overlapped. 

Put it all together and the record feels less like a traditional release and more like a junction point. You’ve got the future chart success of Yazoo just beginning to surface, the minimal synth underground represented by Sudeten Crèche, and a fringe pop act like Colour Me Pop filling out the edges. It captures that narrow window where synth-pop hadn’t yet split into mainstream and underground lanes, and everything was still happening in the same small ecosystem.

 

 

Label: S/Phonograph – SPH1 

Format: Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Compilation 

Country: UK 

Released: Aug 1982 

Style: New Wave, Synth-pop, Minimal, Minimal Synth, Post-Punk 

 

Tracklist: 

A1 Colour Me Pop – When Sex Was Fun 

A2 Colour Me Pop – Bikini Trauma 

AA1 Yazoo – Goodbye 70's 

AA2 Sudeten Creche – Are Kisses Out Of Fashion? 

AA3 Sudeten Creche – Dance! 

 

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We Are Going To Eat You – Four Heads Feast [Cass] (1987, 69 Tapes)

'Four Heads Feast' is one of those releases that feels like you’ve stumbled onto a moment in progress rather than a finished statement. It came out in 1987 on 69 Tapes, right when bits of the anarcho-punk scene were starting to drift into stranger, less defined territory. 

We Are Going To Eat You basically formed out of the fallout from Hagar the Womb. A few members carried over, along with a bunch of half-formed songs that hadn’t quite found their final shape yet. That’s pretty much what you hear on this cassette -older material being reworked, reshuffled, and recorded during that in-between phase around 1986. Some of these tracks never showed up anywhere else, so this tape ended up being their only home. 

It’s rough in a good way. Not messy for the sake of it, just very immediate and unfiltered. You can tell it wasn’t about making something polished or career-defining -it’s more like they hit record and captured where they were at the time. That’s part of what makes it interesting now.

 
69 Tapes, the label behind it, fits perfectly into that picture. It was a tiny DIY operation run out of the same circles as All The Madmen Records, with all the usual ingredients -small runs, hand-to-hand distribution, and a network built on gigs, zines, and word of mouth. Even the label name has that slightly cheeky, inside-joke vibe that a lot of those projects had. 

The wider setting matters a lot here too. Mid-to-late ’80s UK underground culture was deep into cassette territory. Bands weren’t waiting around for proper vinyl releases -they were dubbing tapes, trading them, selling them at shows. At the same time, scenes were starting to overlap in weird ways. Punk crowds mixed with travellers, early rave culture was creeping in, and gigs could feel pretty unpredictable. We Are Going To Eat You were right in that mix, playing shows where the energy could swing from chaotic live sets to something closer to a party. 

Not long after this, they started moving in a more structured direction, putting out records on bigger indie labels and heading toward a full album by 1990. That shift makes 'Four Heads Feast' feel even more like a snapshot of a previous phase -before things tightened up, when everything still felt loose, experimental, and a bit undefined.

 
It’s the kind of release that makes more sense the deeper you dig into that era. Not essential in the “classic album” way, but really telling if you want to understand how those scenes actually worked from the inside. 

 

Label: 69 Tapes – No. 8 

Format: Cassette, Album 

Country: UK 

Released: 1987 

Style: Post-Punk, Goth Rock 

 

Tracklist: 

Side 1 

1 Passion For Action 

2 I Want Fire 

3 No True Vision 

4 No Time To Stop 

5 Life Of Lies 

Side 2 

1 No Limits 

2 Mind Games 

3 You Never Learn 

4 We Are Going to Eat You ! 

 

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