Interview with Andy Xport by Aural Innovations 2006
Greetings Andy and thank you for participating in this interview.
* What year did you first begin making your own recordings? Were you already a musician or in a band?
A: I brought my first guitar in 1974 i think, from money i earned from doing a paper round and helping the milkman on saturday deliveries, it was a cheapo from woolworths (uk walmart), i still have it!, and i also messed about recording onto a mono cassette recorder that i used to record top of the pops on sunday evenings from BBC radio 1, i was only 13-14 at that time, only draw back was i never got a amp for another two years lol!
* Tell me about the style of music and/or sound works you were recording in the beginning, and how your work has evolved over the years. Most of the artists I interview focus almost exclusively on experimental music. The albums I have download from your Myspace page are song oriented, but you also indicated being involved in more experimental projects.
A: my first venture into sound recording songs was with the APF Brigade, and our early tape was a demo of about nine songs that we recorded on a mono recorder in Jon’s garage, before this we were a trio going under the name “Syndrome”, but the other guy (forgot his name!) was a real poseur and stood looking in the mirror on the garage wall most of the time, but he had a gibson guitar which me and jon were jealous of!, but in the end we kicked him out and became just a duo who were inspired by the clash and the pistols,
After the APF Brigade split i carried on under the name Man’s Hate, which again was mostly song based music
with a political message, but i also collaborated with Zan Hoffman and made some experimental music using found sounds and my synth, this was released on Zan’s Zidsick label and we went under the name “Nick loves Septic Synthia”, i also experimented with a band called “katharsis” from San francisco who used vibration mics to make sounds, some of there instruments looked like a clothes horse with metal wires and objects strung from them, which they attached the mics to and hit with fervor, making some most odd sounds that built into a cocophony of sound, they sent me one of these mics in the post and i used it to make some rhythm sounds by taping it to stuff and hitting it with drum sticks, my favorite object was this old wardrobe which i had used before on some of the Apf Brigades songs!
* What recording equipment did you first use? Did you start with something other than a cassette recorder?
A: no just the mono tape recorders, which were cheap and came with a plastic mic and shoddy little stand, we had a few of them, we liberated them off brothers and friends who did not use them.
* At what point did you become aware of other people making their own home recordings, and how did you find out about them? (This is a very important question. HOW people found out about each other, how they discovered there was a network in the first place, is a key subject of my book.)
A: well that all started for us when the band Crass put an add in Sounds music paper for bands to send in tapes for possible inclusion on their bullshit detector compilation album, and to our surprise Crass chose one of our tracks “anarchist attack” for inclusion, this was around 1978 i think, each band got a square of cover to do their own artwork, and on this we put our address and the fact that if people sent us a blank tape and S.A.E we would record our demo live, we were flooded with mail!, i am talking sacks of it every day for months!.
* I read on Zan Hoffman’s web site that you published a contacts list? Tell me about that.
A: I think Zan may be referring to my ISC compilations which all came with the addresses of all the bands/artists so people could write to them and get their music by mail.
* Tell me about the 15 International Sound Communication Compilations you put together. Was there a wide variety of music on them? Artists from around the world? How did you solicit contributions?
A: ISC was a no holes barred production in that it would feature any music/sound/noise from any artist from around the world, each person who was part of the cassette underground printed flyers that they would send to other people in the mail, these would be passed on from person to person reaching all the corners of the globe, i am proud to say that ISC featured music from nearly every country on this planet, on each release i would just put please send contributions for ISC 2 etc, and i received enough contributions in a month to make the next ISC, ISC also received good coverage from good magazines at the time.
* I think I read on your Myspace page that something like 3,000 tapes were sent to you? Were those all submissions for the compilations? General trading? Both?
A: People just use to send me tapes to trade out of the blue, it use to cost me a fair bit of money for all the tapes i traded and gave away for free, not forgetting all the air mail etc, last time i had a rough count there was 5000 ish!, now they are all in bin bags in my loft, and maybe one day i will get round to sorting them out.
* Tell me about communicating with and/or trading recordings with other artists? Did you first reach out to others? Or did someone first contact you? Who was your first hometaper contact and where were they located? (Please go into detail about writing letters to other hometapers, mailing tapes, however you might have communicated. What countries were various people from during these early PRE-internet years?)
A: I cannot remember who was first to contact, maybe that would be Crass cause they sent us letters about our demo tape and various bits of artwork were stuffed in there as well, writing letters and answering mail in the late 70′s eighties use to be a serious undertaking and use to depress me quiet a bit because there was so much of it, it use to take me hours every night doing the mail, recording tapes on a multitude of tape decks, i would record about 4 tapes at a time with those new fangled tape to tape machines that were a boon at the time for me.
The trouble with all this was, finding time to create new music of my own.
My first main contact in europe would have been Sandy Nys from “Magisch Theatre” (Belgium) , we exchanged tapes, and he sent me some music of his own and also his “sound communique” tapes which is where my spin off came for my own ISC series, i found magisch Theatre and a lot of the belgium experimental pop/industrial bands very influencing, Unovidual, Absolute Body Control, Det Wiehl to name just a few.
* I read with interest about how the A.P.F. Brigade would fill orders for their first album by recording them live to blank cassettes people sent in. That’s amazing! Was the intent really to personalize each individual tape?
A: Yes this is what went on our artwork on the crass album cover, send us a tape and we will record onto it live!, it was a stoopid idea that even got a mention in the big music papers, we received about 5000 before it eventually drizzled out, and we did a 40 minute set which we honed down by playing faster and faster until it was under 30 minutes, by that time we had seven mono recorders we had got by hook or by crook and we set them all going at once and went for it, this went on every night for the best part of six months until we said enoughs enough, and we just duplicate them on these new tape to tape machines we brought.
* Did you collaborate on recorded works with those outside your locale? It sounds like you did that with the Noise Collective project. Tell me about that and describe how you accomplished collaborations in the pre-email era.
A: I did various music with other people, Zan Hoffman used a lot of my sounds i created on my synth for some of his projects, i also did a tape with Lord Litter of Germany, i did some songs sent them to him to add to, and he did the same for me, some of the songs actually came out really good, and i have featured them on my myspace player from time to time.
“Noise collective” was a knock on idea from this and ISC, i thought it would be cool to send a tape to a person with a track on it then they would record over another sound and then send it to a third person, the rule being htree people had to at least collaborate, the result was a 90 minute cassette release called “hello hello! can anyone hear me?” , all the pieces i received back i mixed them together to create one whole piece, i actually think this was one of my best releases, very experimental stuff, but something that really does have a feel of its own, and something i would call true Mail Art.
At some point i plan to digitse this piece and re release it
* I’ve received some very interesting descriptions of how artists have used the cassette recorder to create. If applicable, tell me about how you used the cassette recorder as a compositional tool.
I use to make loop tapes to make rhythms with, i would pull a tape to bits and cut a small repeating loop of tape to loop sound with.
* Did you feel that you were part of a network? What kind of link or common bond did you feel you shared with the artists you communicated with?
A: I felt a great bond with a lot of people, and we also use to talk to each other via tape messages that could go on for ages, and it was always great to hear people across the planet actually talking to me etc, i remember one artist Luca Miti from Italy did pieces for art gallery’s, and for one piece he got people to stick the mic out of their house window to record the sounds for one art installation he did.
* By the late 1970s lots of independently released vinyl was available. What does the term “cassette culture” mean to you, and how did the participating artists differ from those releasing their music on vinyl. (If you released both vinyl and cassettes, tell me about why you did one format versus the other.)
Cassette culture to me means people who were making music for free for ourselves and others, it was for me non-profit, a truly anarchist phenomenon that no large capitalist enterprise could become a part of, i made my music and sold it for no profit or exchanged with other artists, that is really the crux of mail/art and the cassette culture, no company rules, no laws, no boundaries of good or bad taste!, just the people doing it for themselves, DIY not EMI which was the main slogan of the time.
* You quote a Wikipedia article on your Myspace page about NME and Sounds launching cassette culture features in which new releases would be briefly reviewed and ordering information given. Had you seen these columns yourself? Were they actually showcasing underground hometapers? (In the US this attention was limited to specialty zines)
A: Yes Sounds and NME for a short time had a cassette review page where people sent in tapes for review, zines were also featured, but i think they stopped it because they felt the quality was not up to standards they expected, but then thats what attracted me to the music, i think the best music is raw music that bands often do often in their earliest stages, thats when all the real passion is caught, not when they are a few years down the line and tired.
* At what point do you think the cassette era came to an end?
A: 1989-90 for me because thats when i stopped doing it, i had had enough and was burned out i think.
ISC 12 has a date on it of 10/1986 and ISC 15 was the last volume released and was a double C90 with 50 bands and artists featured on it, my last cassette was “Turning pleasantly numb” which was my own music and
this was released in 1989, after that i took a break until 2006 when fueled by my hatred for Blairs Iraq war and the false flag of 9/11 i decided to make a comeback on myspace, but this time using the computer to record, and mp3 rather than cassette.
* One of the things I struggle with is the sheer volume of submissions I receive at Aural Innovations, and the challenge of identifying the quality vs. mediocre work. Was that a similar challenge you had to face in the cassette era?
A: With ISC i would accept any quality and it was purely a means of communication, but on the whole most songs /sound pieces were of surprising quality, i always remember one guy sent a piece entitled “lipstick”, and in the piece he punched a typewriter whilst chanting Lipstick lipstick lipstick!, as much a classic as stairway to heaven ever was!.
To me it was always about participation, most people cannot play guitar like Jimmy page but then who cares?,
why sit back and let others make music when its very easy to do yourself, DIY not EMI, the whole world watches a select few create, passive sheep that consume anything thats given to them, with the cassette culture and mail art we did it ourselves, sometimes it was bad, but mostly it was great and exciting to boot.
I never use to be able to get out of bed in the morning, i just lay there waiting for the thud on the doormat of all the mail the postie would drop through the letterbox. everyday was like xmas with packets to open and surprises to find, the only dull day was Sunday cause the royal mail did not deliver on Sundays.
* In hindsight, what is your opinion of the cassette as a recording and distribution medium (in the days when it thrived).
A: I think it was one of the best things to ever happen in my life and was a most powerful tool for getting a message to people ever, it was liberating and anarchic, and gave people the freedom to express there selves in a way that was just the privileged of an elite few at the time, don’t forget that the music industry at the time (like today with mp3) claimed it was destroying music at the time, the slogan read “hometaping kills music” that was from our friend EMI.
Myself and others put out flyers with the slogan on but with a line underneath “good fucking job!” and or “hometaping kills capitalism”
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