Colin Potter - Here (1981)

When punk died down in the early 80's and people realised that you didn't have to be a musical genius to make music, there was a huge surge in self-recorded cassettes being sold through underground magazines and word of mouth, and I was buying as many as I could get my hands on. Not every one was an undiscovered gem, and a lot of them were quite frankly rubbish, but a few names shone out, most notably Martin Newell and The Cleaners From Venus on the pop music side, via his Man At The Off Licence label, and Colin Potter with his synth-based recordings, released through his own Integrated Circuit Records label. As it was relatively easy to get hold of a synthesizer and record yourself at the keys, there was a lot off unstructured noodling released on tape, so it was good to hear that Potter also made use of sequencers, and even added in the odd burst of guitar, making his tapes stand out among the others in the same genre. He was actually an engineer, recording some of the biggest names in the underground scene, such as  Nurse With Wound, and Current 93, and he was also a musician himself, so having his own studio and the expertise of his day job, his tapes are expertly produced. I still have all of the original cassettes that I bought from him, and it was seeing another one online recently that I'd never seen before that prompted me to dig out a couple of them and play them again. 'Here' has always been a favourite, mainly for including the entrancing 29-minute 'Gas' on side two, but the other three tracks are all as good in their own way. As an original tape is nigh-on impossible to find, as although some of his cassettes were re-issued for Record Store Day in 2014, they were only in a limited edition of 60 copies, I thought I'd post it here to see if there are any fans of Tangerine Dream/Klaus Shultz/Mark Shreeve/Ian Boddy etc who hadn't heard of him, and are interested in hearing one of the best underground artists of the early 80's DIY cassette boom. If there's a positive response to this then I might post some more later, and try to get Potter's name more well known in the electronica community. 

Track listing

01 Two Feet On The Ground
02 Hear
03 Shallow Water
04 Gas