Our friends over at FatCat records have posted one of our Monster Music Shows from 1992. Dave Cawley remembers the label from those days:

It’s a real honour to share this podcast with you, created by Neuropolitique (Matt Cogger) for Irdial Discs‘ Monster Music radio shows in 1992. I had this mix on cassette and have lovingly held onto it ever since. To think that it’s 21 years since this was first broadcast – and the music on here still floors me.

Irdial Discs were a huge inspiration to me and i know many others who felt the same. They played by their own rules, followed no one and forged a path that left me speechless. If you want to know how to run a “real” record label then go and investigate just what they achieved, from records to books, software to radio shows. There was an attitude too that is so lacking these days, statements of intent. “In Your Hearts Not The Charts…”….”We Suffer To Bring You Beautiful Music..”..

When I read this, it felt like a call to arms and I knew whose banner I wanted to stand by. I always said to myself if we can get to be a tenth as good as them then I would be happy.

Dave Cawley

FatCat Records

The FatCat shop in the West End of London, originating in Monmouth Street were very important hubs of the music scene. They helped many people who were running independent labels, were open eared and open minded, friendly and non intimidating and were not afraid to expose anything that we brought in to the people who shopped there. Compared to many other retailers in London, who would not stock Irdial releases, FatCat was an island of open mindedness.

For example, there were some record shops that put their staff, literally, on a pedestal  standing over the punters, handing down vinyl to insiders as if it was a sacrament. These unfriendly, closed record shops were hostile to buyers and only a fool would attempt to bring in a 12 inch that they pressed themselves  without knowing the high priests behind the long pulpit.

All of these shops are now gone, and FatCat remains. This goes to show that nice guys finish last, which in business, is a good thing.

And here is our description of this edition of Monster Music:

During the summer of 1992 we decided to do some radio shows, since what we were hearing over the pirate airwaves was very similar station to station, and there seemed to be a need for something out of place. This was especially true on a late Sunday morning, after being completely exhausted by high energy music, a different mood on the radio was an idea just waiting to happen, so we made it happen.

Monster Music was transmitted on ten Sunday mornings, around 11:00.

Approaching the licensed radio stations to do this was of course, absolutely out of the question. They were, as they are now, like cold tombs overrun by the living dead and their stiff, lifeless sounds.

Pirate radio on the other hand was free and alive; you could do literally whatever you wanted, and we proved that this was actually true with Monster Music. No one was vetting our shows, looking over our shoulders or telling us what to do or how to do it. To make this happen all we had to do was call up the station hotline of Touchdown FM, talk to someone and they said “yes” to us.

This is exactly how a free world would work. There would be no licenses to operate a radio station, just as there is no license to run a record label, website or publish a book. There would have been dozens of cool stations out there, all operating together, pumping the music scene. Now of course, there is no need at all for radio, as the internet takes care of all your music needs, from discovery of new sounds to the distribution of them. Anyone can do any part of it, and that is a change that you could not have described to anyone in 1992.

Monster Music’s aim was to be different to anything out there on the pirate air, and having access to some of the best people, it was a simple matter of putting two and two together. I invited Matt Cogger, the genius behind “Neuropolitique”, to construct a show in our studio, which was the third in the series.

The hour of Monster Music Number 3, “Cosmat Selection”, is made up of deftly mixed and sensitively chosen “Techno” tracks, of the kind that drove us all absolutely crazy, and which today, still make the hairs on the back of my neck straighten out and stand up. And that really is something. At the half way mark, there is the exclusive, unreleased, “Theme for Rambo” by Derrick May. One can only imagine what it would have been like if this piece had actually been used in the titles of a Rambo film; machine guns firing in sync with the arpeggiated notes, the backward “shoops” punctuating Viet Vet flashbacks, Stallone’s twisted mouth screaming, attack helicopters raining bullets…

But exposures like that were not to be; it was and is “underground music”.

What are we doing now?

We have been running a blog since 2001 and we have been developing some software projects.

We are re-releasing The Conet Project in a new 5 CD edition, that we are crowd funding right now. If you would like to have your name inscribed in the booklet that accompanies this release, you need to pledge right now.

And we are working on some new and exiting software projects that should be released early in 2013.

And here’s Cosmat Selection…

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 20th, 2013 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Beautiful, Music, Remember.