Lion Productions Electronic & Dance 3 Items

'Up there with V-O-D selections, the Color Tapes series so far has provided invaluable insight to hidden or much lesser-known currents of the ‘80s cassette subculture which gave birth to myriad artists, styles and industry conventions whose influence can still be felt over 30 years later. ' - Boomkat

“Evil Synths and evil beats” - Norman Records

“The re-born Color Tapes imprint is every bit as essential as it’s Minimal Wave and electro-focused predecessors” - Juno

The highly anticipated sixth volume of the well received electronic compilation series of tracks drawn from the vaults of the Color Tapes label. As with the other volumes you can find great examples of cold wave, minimal wave, and synth electronics made by obscure British bands in the 1980's such as: Berserk In A Hayfield, Lives of Angels, Silicon Valley, Modern Art, Disintegrators, Echophase, The Lord, and Mystery Plane. As with all of the other volumes, this is a co-production between Lion Productions and Color Tapes.

* Pressed on black vinyl
* Originally released in 2014
* Artwork by Kim Keever

'We hand over words, instruments, and rhythms — trading back and forth until everything belongs to both of us. Until we are indistinguishable.' — Lore City

Small quantity available of Lore City’s second album, 'Kill Your Dreams,” composed in the wake of 'Absence and Time.” To me, this has an edgier sound than their more recent albums — sort of their “Garlands” (to put it into Cocteau Twins terms), as compared to say, “Victorialand.” Fun fact... Kim Keever, who contributed the front/back cover artwork, also did Joanna Newsom's 'Divers' LP (Drag City)! But Lore City were first!

'Lore City begins “Kill Your Dreams” (2014) with a challenge: “Go back to the old haunts…,” from the opening track, “Gone Past,” (the longest track on the record), as if, like detectives, we have to look at the evidence first before we decide. Many of the eight songs on this record feel like time travel — warnings or laments — from a time when it might have been easier to tune out the terrible noise. From the 2014 vantage point, as lived today, maybe “Kill Your Dreams” is less about the death of “dreams,” perhaps, than about the death of nostalgia, perhaps even more… the death of any illusion that the past can ever be better than it was. Like some of their acknowledged influences, bands as diverse as Radiohead, Joanna Newsom, Michael Gira/Swans, Quicksand (I could add an equally compelling case to be made for Lisa Gerrard/Dead Can Dance, Mazzy Star, and even Sigur Rós) — some, like Gerrard, have created their own language to say what they need to say, even if we can’t initially recognize the structures and vocabulary.” — goatpalacezine.com

As summer receded into the Northeastern woods, the first songs to emerge were 'For You' and 'Big Intersections'. Then a familiar place beckoned, a pull to Chicago, returning different, both new and old at the same time. Sculpting the monastic from the raw foundations. Catching voices on the wind, moving across chasms, a knowing – glitter on, glitter on, glitter on the garbage. Recording with a trilogy of studios, between a revolving door of people and shows. Hearts soaring. Waiting on the line, suspended timing.

Excavation of astounding underground post-punk recorded from 1979-1988
Style: minimal, semantic, intense. There is poetic subtlety and musical freshness not confined to one historical period
8-page insert booklet contains the Daszu manifesto, poetics for most tracks, a measure of band history, and Part 1 and 2 of Mark Rudolph's poetry from the Daszu era
Vinyl edition comes in a heavy-duty tip-on jacket
First time on vinyl for all tracks
Contains two additional tracks not on the CD edition

If there's one thing we've learned from doing reissues for twenty years, it's that there is often a lack of justice in the arts. All too often, the intensely talented are shunted aside, or not able to access the means to a greater hearing, or marginalized (or eradicated) by larger societal (commercial) (racial) (political) forces, to name just three potential prongs of an art-crushing pitchfork. The less an artist's work can be categorized, the greater the odds of being an eternal outsider. The more pure those artistic efforts are, the greater the chance they cannot be categorized. Such is the case with the music of Daszu. They were three, and minimal. Bass, synthesizer and drums.

I'd like to tell you that the music of Daszu reminds me of This Heat. I'd like to tell you that the music of Daszu reminds me of the Pop Group... or A Certain Ratio… or as some have suggested, early Devo. It does, in purity of intent—in the great expansive reach of the attempt, and the self-assurance of the resulting music. This intensity of intention is evident in the dark, burbling and buzzing electronics; in the propulsive drumming; in the insistent bass-lines; in the emotional vocals; and in the evocative and poetic lyrics.



An impediment to achieving a place in the post-punk pantheon — Daszu was based in Milwaukee, not in the UK. Except for cassette distributions in Helsinki and Dublin, and a few scattered performances, they lived, practiced and performed near home. In 1979, Mark Rudolph (now an interactive 3D artist, musician, software developer, mathematician and the director of i3Dmedia LLC) talked in his kitchen to David Wolf about an idea he had for a new music: how music could be 'popular' without rock guitars and a big wall sound such as large amps and organs. 'I said we could do a minimal three-piece music based on new melodic lines and poetry and synthesis. I thought that we could remake reality. It was possibly ambitious, but I didn't think so. We decided to do it.' They did it. Not with a big polyphonic keyboard, but with a mini-moog sound generator.



The 1/2 Dativa material included on our Lion survey of Daszu's musical innovations was the work of Rudolph and his Australian friend and musician, Greg O'Connor (Boom Crash Opera). Rudolph had been studying mathematics and computer music in Australia, and a mix of Daszu, his computer generated music and O'Connor's great genius with electronic parts is evident in these intense, propulsive recordings made on a pair of DX-7 synthesizers one feverish day in 1983.