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.

Get it HERE

SHUN・4 - Shun -1987- (12 Inch, EP, CSV Shibuya), Japan

Shun was created during the eighties by Japanese chameleon composer Susumu Hirasawa. Hirasawa started out in the late seventies with Japanese devo-ish quirky minimal synth unit P-Model. Shun was already less driven by dada-esque craze and has more elaborated compositions you would expect to hear in a movie or play. It is real composed music that moves away from "pop-music", but still has quite a few new-wave influences in it. It reminds me a lot of the solo music of Holger Hiller around the same era when he started to use German classical music combined with drummachines and samplers, but then Japanese.

You should read this excellent article about Susumu Hirasawa over here, because the person that wrote it obviously knows much more than I do. Hirasawa did numerous projects and always seems to musically transform into something else. A 16-CD box set came out which covered most of Hirasawa's career. I believe the material of this EP is also included, but I still present it here in all its individual vinyl glory. Many of the songs here have had multiple remakes.

Get it HERE