TSM – NOISE-HEAD – Lowest Form Home Recordings 1990-1999 CS

The 2nd in our Archival cassette releases

Artist: TSM

Title: NOISE-HEAD – Lowest Form Home Recordings 1990-1999

The back story:

Big Si aka Sci-Fi aka TSM (known to his mates locally as ‘The Sausage Man’) is a bloke who worked as a delivery driver for a pork processing plant in Southampton throughout the 1990s by day, and by night was a sonic scientist experimenting with making and recording DIY noise in his cheap bedsit, having read about and become obsessed with Japanese noise (also known as Japanoise ジャパノイズ, Japanoizu ((from Wikipedia)) via reading The Wire and sending off cheques for CDs by the likes of Masonna, Merzbow, PAIN JERK, K2, Hijōkaidan, Incapacitants from the mailer order part of the magazines adds section. He also says he built up his collection by swapping many home dubbed cassettes via a self-built (now many decades lost) mail order network of like minded collectors from distant cities and far away friends he met at industrial, noise and jungle nights in and around Southampton at the time and while on record buying/hunting trips on weekends away across the UK and as far into Europe as his wage at the time would take him.

Big Si aka Sci-Fi (in)famously claims (unverified by ourselves) to have been fired from the pork processing plant after the company received a court order for a ton of unpaid parking fines for tickets he received after hijacking the sausage van during the long hot summer night of the 13th July 1995 to drive up to London for the Blast First night Disobey at the Garage in Highbury, North London to catch Merzbow playing live (a set that was recorded and released on CD via Blast First under the title ‘Noizhead’). Having seen our archival release ‘1981 Electronics’ by Evil Roger, he got in touch and wanted to share his archive of homemade DIY noise recordings in the off-chance there might be room for his own archival release. Having pulled out the very best 10 tracks from a vast archive that ranges from 30 second long bursts of static to longer stoned drone-outs the tracks presented here in a way are his debut album (despite the tracks being composed almost three decades ago).

At the request of Big Si aka Sci-Fi each track has been named after a much loved album he was obsessed with having scored the CD or received a home-dubbed cassette copy in the post from a distant contact during the years 1990 to 1999, a decade that he says massively inspired in spirit and in sound his DIY experiments with making noise (or a racket as his neighbours apprently called it). He asked us to warn any purists reading and listening that the echos of the hardcore, jungle and drum & bass sounds evolving within the decade these recordings date from may make it not strictly just a ‘noise’ album. Si feels that the use of vinyl ripped breakbeats provided manic juggernaut drum patterns that he thought might ‘bulk it up a bit’.

Fast forward to the present day and with his musical interests having long since moved beyond the noise and the Japanoise ジャパノイズ, Japanoiz sound that so heavily inspired his experiments, and his life now revolving around a standard 9 to 5 corporate job (he wishes to use only his first, ‘artist’ and nicknames to hide his true identity incase anyone reading this knows or works with him) ‘TSM – NOISE-HEAD – Lowest Form Home Recordings 1990 – 1999’ is essentially something of a historical document, an unknown time capsule from a by-gone era when underground mail-order noise enthusiasts and bedroom metal machine music makers were given the instruction manual to really let loose and get lost within the ideas and inspirations of the harsher end of the 1990s underground DIY sound

C30. Jcard. Labelling to side A & B. Postcard art. Presentation envelope

Cassette only. No digital. No repress

An edition of 50