Vol Sec - Game Over -1981- (Cassette EP, Attrix Records), UK

 

It has been a while (for several reasons) but here it goes again. Vol Sec (originally Voluntary Sector) was a post-punk outfit from Brighton that emerged from the band The Parrots in late 1979 or early 1980. The band consisted of Les Phillips (drums), Brenda Robinson (vocals), Rick Blair (guitar, vocals, synth), Colin Murray (bass), Jay Derrick (keyboards, synth, vocals), Nick Wells (guitar) and Tom White (trumpet). Rick Blair was simultaneously running Attrix Records (which also was a record store).

Vol Sec was embedded in a larger local scene of punk, post-punk and new wave groups. The main underground venue for this music scene in Brighton was The Vault. Other venues where punk gigs took place were the Alhambra and the Buccaneer. Vol Sec's song Love (Sic) was used as the signature tune for Radio Brighton's weekly programme featuring Brighton bands, which went out during 1980-1981. The Vol Sec sound is a nice mixture of post-punk and new-wave funk. 

More information on the entire scene in Brighton at the time is to be found here.

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Renegade Raspberry Retaliation ‎- My Name'll Be There -1986- (Tape, Northampton Musicians Collective), UK

Renegade Raspberry Retaliation was a band from Northampton, Northamptonshire, England that consisted of Richard Powell and T. Brice Bodsworth. The band was part of a larger community of musicians that organized itself within the region as the Northampton Musicians Collective. It seems that RRR wasn't active for too long despite belonging to this larger community.

Their only release - My Name'll Be There - displays a fantastic DIY post-punk sound including monotonous vocals, angular guitar movements, dirty garage rock tunes and repetitive analog synthesizer patterns. The music fits the typical English DIY sound reminiscent of bands like Amos and Sara, Sally Smmit And Her Musicians or Brain of Morbius later on. It even has some hints of The Fall (obviously dozens of bands could be named).

I guess Renegade Raspberry Retaliation actually still sounds fresh nearly 35 years later. The sound is bleak, punk, experimental, fairly absurdistic and contains quite some self-irony. At the same time it creates musical depth through simplicity. All the right musical ingredients for high value authentic British DIY post-punk I'd say (infused with some American themes). An unknown classic!

Kindly donated by the Y Create Archive

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Various Artists - Industrial Asylum -1983- (Cassette, WW Tapes WC5), Netherlands/UK

Industrial Asylum is a punk and post-punk compilation that was released in The Netherlands in 1983. It mostly (if not only) contains obscure English bands. I actually doubt that there is a Dutch band on here. It displays one of those characteristics of punk compilations which is to focus on a particular country, region or city and gather the various punk forces from that one place. Here some obscure groups from England were gathered to be heard by a Dutch punk audience. But aside from this cassette being released in Holland, I think most of these tracks are (and were) also quite hard to find and to hear in Britain so the release has an importance in itself.

The compilation gathers some nice post-punk and power-pop tunes, some anarcho-punk poetry, but also experimental sounds. The poems of Andy T moniker of punk poet Andrew Thorley are a returning theme on the cassette, he also released a great EP on Crass Records which he recorded in collaboration with Penny Rimbaud during the early 80's. The Manchester band Outer Edge kicks off this compilation with an energetic tune. They were also compiled on the legendary Manchester post-punk compilation Unzipping The Abstract from 1980, but aside from that I never heard other material by them. Wigan based band The System seems to be an anarcho punk group that's a bit more known. They were resurrected in the past years. The band Sons Of Earth play a weird cover of The Doors' Hello I Love You entitled 'The End'. For the rest I don't know much about the bands on here.

Some of the interesting tunes are played by bands like Untermensch, Giraffe In Flames and Oracle. Maybe someone has more information on these bands or has more recorded material. In any case this is another rare compilation of English punk and post-punk bands and is transmitting some strong musical energy here and there. The recordings are somewhat lo-fi in quality, but I think that only strengthens the punk nature.

From the collection Allard Pierson/NPI

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