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LP
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SV 084LP
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"The first-time vinyl reissue of the sole album from UK DIY legends Milk From Cheltenham, originally released in 1983 on famed It's War Boys imprint, is recommended for fans of Swell Maps, The Faust Tapes and LAFMS. 'Flashback to no-when (1978) in a musty cellar beneath a record store in Brixton, later to become the humble 8-track recording studio of It's War Boys. Milk From Cheltenham would regularly jam and invite friends / enemies to participate with whatever weapons / instruments they chose to deploy, making live recordings on an odd triple microphone input cassette player. By the time of the recordings at Surrey Sound in 1981-82, we had reduced in size from a hive of toxicity to a triptych of poisoners: Victorr Lounge, Salamander and myself. Like rabid quantum monkeys with broken typewriters, we were allowed to run loose in the studio, under the supervision of tonmeister Chris Grey and head zookeeper L. Voag. There was always a cornucopia of exotic instruments including kettle drums, synthesizers and electric sitar. To make some of the basement tapes sound bigger, Chris would play them through vast speakers and re-record the results. The footsteps you hear is our mate strolling around in cowboy boots on top of one of the speakers. Milk were hot -- like a triplet mega-brain generously juiced on creative steroids -- and this was before our special splice-and-be-damned bricolage of the tapes, interpolating into the jams a pastiche of Morricone lock grooves, early Sparks, radio fragments, a JFK speech and samples from our most cherished record, Christmas Carols With Breezy (a creepy singing rabbit). One track mined a session at Cold Storage (home studio of This Heat) where everyone played in different parts of the building, separated according to instruments and without much idea of what anyone else would be doing. The record was released to spectacular indifference and just 500 copies made their way into an unsuspecting world.' --Lepke B"
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CD
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TES 057CD
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2005 release. Milk From Cheltenham is the first in a series of Alga Marghen editions documenting the activities of the It's War Boys underground label, founded by Amos (of The Homosexuals fame) in the late 1970s. The original LP was issued in an edition limited to 300 copies. The material was recorded from 1979 to 1981 but wasn't released until 1983 due to problems with the silkscreened sleeve. The band only put out this record, a real hidden gem. Lepke said that he wanted it to sound like a Beach Boys LP by using lots of different studios, but it was mostly done on a cassette machine with a primitive "surround" function. Lepke is the man who does the impossible every time he picks up a tin, carton, bottle or instrument -- the first person with enough originality to adopt "anything" to his own idiosyncratic style. Retired to an obscure basement, still without peers in the world. Lounge makes rhythms with a wallop. A mix of inestimable ability with feelings as wild as they are rare. "Salamander" has that certain something that most people can never have, even if they practice for an eternity. Most important in his influence, most endearing in his emotional impact, and most convincing in his new-found authority. If The Homosexuals were a strange prospect, then this music should fit into a similar spot as that of angry young men like Wire and Magazine, who carried their penchants for art-school angst in the midst of proto-thug posturing. Milk From Cheltenham were an even more extreme band. Not only progressive with a certain artistic notion (a reference could be found to This Heat, Family Fodder and Chris Cutler's bands Henry Cow and Art Bears) but also closer to more primitive sound experimentations of a cryptic and sinister Residential perspective. This release finally documents one of the most important projects developed in the scene explored by The Homosexuals.
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