Barry Lamb - Dusk
Avant-Garde composer, experimental musician, noise architect, poet. Barry Lamb is all of these and more. He was one of the early cassette culture pioneers inspired by the diy ethic, energy and vitality of punk that started an underground revolution from their bedrooms.
Aided by a world of cheap photocopying and the possibility of cassette duplication it became easy to make an album over a weekend and have it in the hands of friends and fellow musicians by Monday break time at school or Wednesday morning by post.
An emerging network of fanzines, pirate radio stations and fellow sojourners in the world of diy music propelled the possibilities of cassette culture to a small but eager audience. Even the mainstream music papers began to take note with NME, Sounds and Melody Maker all giving some column space to the most interesting cassette releases of the week.
Barry became a founder of the Falling A label and distribution network with school friend and fellow musician Peter Ashby. The label was initially a vehicle for their own band Frenzid Melon but later became a hub of activity for countless cassette culture artists and enthusiasts.
Ashby & Lamb have worked together on and off for 40 years now in a number of bands and collaborations including work with Wavis O'Shave, Keith Levene (PiL), Jasun Martz (Frank Zappa), Tor Cesay (Mongrel) and many more.
This was Barry's first release recorded in his bedroom in Holland-on-sea, Essex, England in 1977. It was recorded on three cassette recorders, one of which was not working properly. This piece of work by his own admission is naive and flawed as were all of his early recordings. It has been remastered and cleaned with the help of modern technology and other tracks from the same period have been added as bonus tracks. Clicks and other noises have been left in because they were part of the initial sound recordings and reveal the painstaking problems of recording multi track with very limited equipment.
Whilst clearly this is no masterpiece (Dave Henderson of Sounds called it Difficult music back in the day), it is an intriguing exploration of early cassette culture and the roots of a musician who has for 40 years maintained a small but loyal following.