NO PIGEONHOLES (U.S.A.)

While we're on the subject of the underground's biggest hitters, it seems appropriate to pay Don Campau a visit. Well, not like an actual "hey, pop in for a coffee if you're passing" visit, more of a virtual one, right here in the pixelverse, on account of we're in Knott End-On-Sea and he's in California. Don's another one I go back 25 years plus with. In fact, it was some of the conversations we had during his and Kevyn Dymond's (Guaranteed Cleveland Records) visit late '91 that shaped M&E in the first place. He's done a lot for us over the years; releasing our music in the States (when he used to be the U.S. wing of KFR Distribution), oodles of airplay on his No Pigeonholes radioshow and provided us with the most gobsmacking coincidence ever. In the mid 90's, when we were still living down south in Frimley, Don married the ultra talented American singer, Robin O'Brien - whose sister was married to an Englishman - who turned out to be the vicar at St. Peter's Church - IN FRIMLEY! So, weirdly, when Don and Robin came over to visit in '96, we could walk it! I still find that really trippy twenty years on. Anyway, back to the modern day; Don's had copies of "Decadion 2" and "Flashbax Ω Ultimate", the latter quite recently, so I'm guessing he's aired some stuff from the former at least. Um, thinking about it, he's not said. I'll ask him. Done that, must remember to leave room for a response at the bottom. Meanwhile, let's point you in the right direction to check out Don's fine music, his radioshows (for which he's always keen to receive home recorded and/or experimental music for broadcast), life, the universe and everything, and that's on his OFFICIAL WEBSITE. Also very much worth checking out is his LIVING ARCHIVE OF UNDERGROUND MUSIC. Like myself, Don feels that that whole 80's/90's global underground movement was one of the most significant cultural revolutions of the modern age and deserves to be remembered. That's exactly what the site does; it's an amazing repository of information, images and music. Trust me, you can browse through it for hours. Don is a seriously keen archivist, and as such, is an ardent supporter of Frank Maier's (Vinyl On Demand) project in Germany. Over the coming years, he is planning a museum in the south of the country, featuring as many cassettes as he can get his hands on (Don will be donating his own mega-vast collection, buy shares in the U.S. Postal Service now!), which he also intends to digitise and catalogue. An absolutely monumental task (kind of puts our planned M&E 25th Collections into perspective), for which we wish Frank every success. That could well be the ultimate home of the few hundred remaining M&E masters, certainly a very worthy cause. Oh, while I think of it, Don also suggested I mention the SONM ARCHIVE site too, a "sound archive of experimental music and sound art" set up by Francisco Lopez and colleagues in Spain. And finally, just to mention that I interviewed Don a couple of years back, so you might fancy a read of that too. See if you can guess which link to follow this time;

MICK MAGIC INTERVIEWS DON CAMPAU / MORE ABOUT TRAMS

Did you win a sticker? Well done! That was fun, wasn't it? Now let's finish off with a nice photo of Don (left) and him from March this year that Kevyn sent me recently...

RADIO ESCOBAR (GERMANY)

Doing all the big hitters here, and next up is the mighty Carsten Olbrich, aka Herr Ebu of Ebus Music (I always want to put an apostrophe in there, grrr!) fame. Once again, we're going backwards of 20 years here to first contact. Well, I know it was 22 years ago that the Ebu's label released "The Last Flashbax Vol. 10" in Germany. Whoosh! Where does it go, huh? Of course, we released some of his stuff on M&E too; Schmertz Der Welten et al. Carsten's still making music, including work with a new band called Die Hacke Peters, you can find all the info about his sounds on the official EBUS MUSIC website, plenty of links on there to other relevant sites too. There's also the HERR EBU FACEBOOK PAGE if you want to keep up with his news on a regular basis. Aside from being a great help in distributing our recent "Decadion" collections in Germany, he's also given them quite an airing on his Radio Escobar show, broadcast on RADIO X (FM) in Frankfurt, and over most of the globe thanks to the invention of the internet. Rock on, Tim! Really good shows (German language, but music is music, huh?); space, prog, psyche and general homespun underground sounds - check his PLAYLIST ARCHIVE for more details. He's also been kind enough to play a few tracks from "Flashbax Ω Ultimate" on his shows, we even made it onto his 'Review Of The Year', for which we will be his bestest friends forever. He broadcast an interview with me for his Xmas Show last year (MMATT are for life, not just for Xmas!), which was cool. Well, I say interview - it was just a handful of questions, he did his bits there and my answers were pre-recorded here, then he would have used his tech wizardry to put it all together seamlessly. And I've just completely shattered the illusion. Sorry. Anyway, I dare say the show is archived somewhere (and I saved a copy coz I'm very vain), but in case you missed it and would like to see a transcript, here it is;

CO: Say something about your intention to bring out a best of album after such a long time?

MM: Well, there was no master plan. Klappstuhl originally asked about re-releasing ‘Flashbax 4’, but there were ten in the Flashbax series and that was just one of them, nothing special, thought it seemed a bit arbitrary. So I put the idea forward that we did a completely new Flashbax collection, and I suppose that was always going to end up being a best of, being the first MMATT release in 19 years!

CO: And your collaboration-experience with Klappstuhl?

MM: Oh, great label to work with, they really push to get the best out of you. I couldn’t tell you how many revisions they had me do on the cover art, but the end result, it was so much better than what I first sent them. We’ve all put a huge amount of work into it, but seeing and hearing the finished package, it’s been so worth the effort.

CO: And the past times of MMATT and M&E?

MM: There’s a reason I only used tracks from our earlier cassette releases on this, nothing from the ‘Creavolution’ CD, that’s because I wanted it to be a celebration of the golden age of the cassette underground. Some of the most interesting years of my life were the ones I spent running the M&E label, ya know, I’ve some really big collections planned to mark the 30^th anniversary in 2017. There was so much great stuff on Music & Elsewhere, it deserves to be out there and remembered.         

CO: Will there be also a release with new material?

MM: Yeah, I’m working on a new project currently, a thing called “In Search Of Albert”. The plan is to put it out under the name of Magic