Cultural Amnesia

Cultural Amnesia (CA) are an English post-punk music group, first active between 1979 and 1983 as participants in the so-called cassette culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s in the UK.[1] During this first period the band released three cassette albums: Video Rideo (1981), The Uncle of the Boot (1983) and Sinclair's Luck (1983) on English and German record labels, and contributed to a number of compilation albums. Early on in his career, CA worked with the late Geff Rushton (John Balance) of Coil, who wrote a handful of songs for them and who was an important supporter and enabler due to his contacts as editor of Stabmental magazine, arranging most of their releases and providing constant encouragement.[2]

This article is about the musical group. For the book by Clive James, see Cultural Amnesia (book).
Cultural Amnesia
Also known asCA
GenresPost-punk, electronic, industrial
Years active1979–1983; 1998–present
Websitehttp://www.culturalamnesia.com/
MembersBen Norland
Gerard Greenway
John Peacock

Working in the wake of the early industrial bands, CA's output is diverse, ranging from ambient soundscapes to synthpop, but it can be broadly characterized as song-based electronic music, normally making use of synthesizer, drum machine and guitar. The three members of the band were occasionally joined for recording and live performance by guitarist, Alastair Murray. The band’s methods of recording, as with many of those involved with the cassette/DIY scene of the post-punk period, were initially extremely primitive, growing more sophisticated as they could afford better equipment. However, CA never recorded in a professional studio of any kind.

Cultural Amnesia stopped activity close to the completion of what was to be their first vinyl LP, Obscenity, with the German company Datenverarbeitung.[3] John Balance’s sleeve notes for the unreleased album give a perceptive insight into CA’s body of work (the blurb was published on the inner sleeve of the 2007 compilation LPs, Press My Hungry Button).[4]

What does one say? Cultural Amnesia have never ceased to amaze me with their finely honed songs of innocence and insecticide. Each gleaming tune a button on their hair shirt. There is a raw spirit of experiment, of mis-adventure with emotions, that is almost awkward to listen to. Time shifts and personal twists reveal a complex web of older children, playing with something they know full well is not really for the general public. Using a vocabulary of myths and symbols, along with splintered shards of themselves, caricatures and alter egos weave and parade in drunken ‘night on the town’ scenarios, in crazy-glass-house confrontations with each other. All life is here. Bitter and sweet. Love, sex behind supermarkets, truth and lies, jealousy and an all-pervading earthy magick. And Death. Having lurked in the herbaceous borders of the DIY cassette scene, earning critical acclaim for their numerous releases, this record now marks the edge of that dark, tangled frustration of a country. Beyond... is another day. – John Balance, the Ides of March 1983

After fifteen years of silence the band produced three new tracks in 1998. Their resumption of activity coincided with renewed interest in what has become known as ‘cassette culture’[5] and the emergence of specialist labels, of which Vinyl On Demand is the best known, dedicated to reissuing on LP and CD material originally released on cassette in the late 1970s and early '80s.[6] Having launched a website in 2003, CA began to receive inquiries from labels. Enormous Savages, a compilation of material from 1981–1983, was released on LP in the summer of 2007; Press My Hungry Button, a double LP of 1980–1983 material, was released November 2007. The CD Enormous Savages Enlarged, from April 2009, includes five tracks recorded since 2004 in addition to the '80s tracks that appeared on the Enormous Savages LP. These compilations of 1980s material were well received in print and online, with Enormous Savages described in The Sound Projector as “a remarkable piece of musical archaeology and certainly one of the reissues of the year”.[7] In November 2011 the band released This Is Not Your Shape, their first full album of new material since the early 1980s. The album was accompanied by a highly designed A4 lyrics booklet, Verbose Logging, including the songs on the album and others recorded during their second period. A special-edition CD of the album was released September 2012. Two further albums and two EPs of new material have been released since then. A number of videos for both new and old material have been produce by John Peacock of the band. (Please see the discography below for further information and references.)

Although the 2007 compilation LPs collected many of the best of the band's 1980s recordings, a considerable amount of material remains unreleased.[8] The CA website is an extensive source of information on the band's output, released and unreleased, and on the milieu in which they worked.

John Peacock and Ben Norland (the latter as themilgramobediencetoauthorityexperiment (sic)) are active as solo artists.


Discography

Albums and EPs
  • Video Rideo (Cassette, Conventional Tapes 1981, Datenverarbeitung 1983)
  • Sinclair's Luck (Cassette, Hearsay and Heresy 1983)
  • The Uncle Of The Boot (Cassette, Datenverarbeitung 1983)
  • The Undertow of Evening (Recorded 1982/3, unreleased)
  • Obscenity (Recorded 1982/3, unreleased)
  • Enormous Savages (LP, 1980s compilation, Anna Logue Records 2007)
  • Little Savage (Mini-CD EP, Iron Banana 2007)
  • Press My Hungry Button (2xLP, 1980s compilation, VOD Records 2007)
  • Still Hungry (EP, 1980s compilation, VOD Records 2007)
  • Enormous Savages Enlarged (CD, 1980s compilation + four post-2000 tracks, Klanggalerie 2009)
  • This Is Not Your Shape (File album, Bleak 2011)
  • This Is Not Your Shape special edition (CD, Bleak 2012)
  • Bad Meditation (File album, Bleak 2015)
  • Ring The Hungry Bell (File EP, 1980s compilation, Bleak 2016)
  • Agile Business Practices (File EP, Bleak 2016)
  • Laments (File EP, Bleak 2016)
  • Super Whippy (File album, Bleak 2017)

Compilation appearances
  • "Yellow Song" on Standard Response (1979)
  • "Cyberforms Dub" on Snatch 2 (1980)
  • "Repetition For This World", "Reprise", "Dialogue Of Skull And Soul" and "Secrets Of The Passive Margin" on Endzeit (1982)
  • "Colorblind" and "The Pigs Are Coming" on A Sudden Surge Of Power (1983)
  • "Nobody Does It Like You Do!" on Qu'est-ce Qu'il Y A? (1983)
  • "Resthome (The Man Who Worked With Tourists)" on Rising From The Red Sand (Volume Four) (1983)
  • "Kingdom Come" on The Angels Are Coming (1983)
  • "The Uncle Of The Boot" on Band-It 11 (1983)
  • "Dance" and "Where Has All The Difference Gone?" on The Best Of The Rest (Volume 27/28) (1984/5)
  • "Where Has All The Difference Gone?" on On-Slaught No. 6 (1985)
  • "Down By The Canal" on Cassette Culture I: Pause And Rewind (2005)
  • "Contains" on Cassette Culture II (2006)
  • "I Am Taking Photographs" on Electricity 3 (2006)
  • "Resthome (The Man Who Worked With Tourists)" on Nonpop 2 (2008)
  • "Repetition For This World" on Messthetics Greatest Hiss: An Introduction to the DIY Cassette Scene 1979-1982 (2008)
  • "Materialistic Man" on The Anna Logue Years (2010)
  • "Little Blue Grains" and "Brand New Day" on Why Be Blake When You Can Be Bleak? (2010)
  • "Materialistic Man" on Close To The Noise Floor (4xCD, 2016)[9]
  • "Materialistic Man" on Close To The Noise Floor (2xLP, 2017)

Discography sources: Discogs, Tape-Mag, culturalamnesia.com[10]

See also

Notes and References
  1. Dave Henderson, ‘Wild Planet’, Sounds, 7 May 1983. An A—Z of the UK cassette scene first published in the weekly music paper Sounds (magazine). Reproduced at the archive site of EST magazine. Retrieved 26 October 2020. A recent book by Jerry Kranitz, Cassette Culture, explores the scene in the USA, Europe and the UK; there is an interview with Kranitz here. Retrieved 8 January 2021.
  2. Enormous Savages, back-cover copy. A short history of the band appeared on the back of the Enormous Savages LP and is reproduced here. Retrieved 26 October 2020. See also: Tony Dickie, Review of Press My Hungry Button & Interview with Cultural Amnesia, Compulsion Online, May 2008. Retrieved 28 October 2010; Ed Pinsent, 'Cultural Amnesia', interview, The Sound Projector 16 (2008), p. 86. Reproduced at the Interviews page, culturalamnesia.com. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
  3. Datenverarbeitung page, Tape-Mag. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  4. Press My Hungry Button, culturalamnesia.com. Full sleeve text reproduced here. Retrieved 27 October 2020.
  5. Tim Naylor, 'C30, C60, C90, C21!', Record Collector, no. 393, 4 September 2011. Retrieved 29 October 2020. The sequel to the article is: Tim Naylor, ‘Home Taping is Thrilling Music', Record Collector, no. 462, 4 January 2017. Retrieved 29 October 2020.
  6. VOD Records, Discogs. Retrieved 25 October 2020. See also: Interview with Frank Bull, The Wire, 18 April 2018. The founder of VOD Records talks about the label and about his cassette-culture online archive, Tape-Mag. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  7. Richard Rees Jones, ‘Cultural Amnesia: Enormous Savages’, 17 November 2008. The Sound Projector review reproduced at the author’s blog. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  8. Unreleased page, culturalamnesia.com. Retrieved 28 October 2020.
  9. Close To The Noise Floor: Formative UK Electronica, 1975—1984, Discogs. This four-CD collection from the Cherry Red label includes many cassette artists. The accompanying booklet includes an essay by Dave Henderson (see 'Wild Planet', above). Retrieved 26 October 2020.
  10. Cultural Amnesia page, Discogs. Retrieved 30 April 2011; Cultural Amnesia page, Tape-Mag. Retrieved 28 October 2020; Compilations page, culturalamnesia.com. This incomplete listing remains useful for the links to information about labels. Further information on compilations on which CA has appeared can be found at Tape-Mag (1970s/'80s releases) and Discogs. Retrieved 26 October 2020.
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