VA - Further Perspectives & Distortion: An Encyclopedia of British Experimental & Avant-Garde Music 1976-1984 (2019)

A year in the making, ‘Further Perspectives And Distortion’ presents a snapshot of the UK’s experimental and avant-garde music scene, observed through the paradigm-shifting lense of the post punk revolution and bringing together disparate names from across the experimental spectrum. This is a long-overdue look at the ‘other side’ of the freedom offered by the tectonic shifts in the musical landscape in 1976 & 1977.

For all of the upheaval of that mid-late ‘70s demolition of musical boundaries, the guitar and the search for a saleable melody continued to dominate. But for the willing the opportunity also arose to operate free of such commercial concessions, and in tandem with the explosion of angular guitar music and electronic pop (and often alongside those sounds on the same album or EP) came a wealth of exploratory and experimental material which, for the first time, demanded an audience beyond the culture set and the art world. From speed-fuelled kids bursting with raw talent and homemade electronic gizmos to trained composers and writers with a new, fresh audience to explore, herein lay the flipside – literally, in many of these recordings’ cases – of the independent explosion and the newfound ability to find homes (and stockists) for even the most unruly of sounds.

By design, ‘Further Perspectives And Distortion’ seeks to comfort, challenge and question in equal measure.