Hotcha's Calypso Now Label

December 6, 2009

Years On Earth

Filed under: Bands,Free MP3 Download — Tags: — Hotcha @ 2:00 pm

I came across Years On Earth in 1984, when they sent me their third tape asking for distribution. I liked it at once and wrote back asking for licence production, and they agreed at that, even sent their second tape with a handful of covers for distribution. As you can read in the file I enclose for your documentation, they sent 11 covers. Helas, it’s a shame that I still have a couple of these original copies here, proof how underestimated the band was at their time.

Today I have the impression there’s quite some fans of this period of homemade electronic music who are on the lookout for music from Years On Earth, and for more infos, of course. That’s why I’ve decided to upload some tracks from “Worlds Apart”, their third tape, and also the material they sent me, as well as the letters we’ve exchanged. I hope we’ll hear from them again some day. As for now, they seem to have been disappeared, and by reading their letters, this comes as no surprise – they weren’t that interested in exposure back then already.

So enjoy the music – you can also get their tapes from me, as long as I still have some of those covers (just a handful). As for the money after covering costs, by the way, it will all go into microcredits – i’m thinking about using kiva. The tapes sound so much better than it’s possible for an MP3, hope you kept your deck!

Years On Earth – Worlds Apart

[audio:Dreams Carry.mp3,Madness in Motion.mp3,On The Ice.mp3,Let The Power Fall.mp3]
Press the playback button

To download right-click

You can download all the printed material I have from them, it’s a PDF (3.5 MB) – right-click on this link here.

yoe review

Krakatit – wie wird es hergestellt

Filed under: deutsche Postings,Free MP3 Download,Radioshow — Hotcha @ 12:00 pm

Krakatit – wie wird es hergestellt? So hiess meine Radiosendung, die ich in deren Startphase in Schweizer Lokalradios platzieren konnte. Unter anderem Namen lief sie auch zeitweise in Bern, St. Gallen, Zuerich, unter Namen wie ‘Labor’, ‘Stupid Stupid’, ‘Blow Job’ bzw. ‘Piepston’. Letztere bei Lora 😉 Der Name wurde mir dann untersagt, deshalb Piepston…

In der Sendung wurde praktisch ausschliesslich Independent-Material gespielt, vieles natuerlich von Kassette. Gestern ist mir ein Stapel 90er Kassetten mit einer Sendung von 1990 in die Haende gefallen, die ich damals als Promo an die Labels und Musiker verschickte, die mich bemustert hatten. Das Highlight sind sicher einige Tapes von Daniel Johnston, die vorgestellt werden.

Ich lasse die Sendung hier fuer kurze Zeit online, muss sie dann aber irgendwann loeschen – der Platz auf dem Server ist kostbar, und ich habe noch tonnenweise Material

Krakatit – Wie wird es hergestellt?

[audio:krakatit90_1.mp3,krakatit90_2.mp3]
Einfach den Abspielknopf druecken

To download right-click

Heute waere eine solche Sendung natuerlich unmoeglich – die Lokalradios haben ihre Experimentalphase schon lange hinter sich und senden nur noch Schrott, soweit ich das ueberblicken kann.

November 30, 2009

Kommentar, ohne Worte

Filed under: deutsche Postings,Free MP3 Download — Tags: — Hotcha @ 10:00 pm
Muezzin?

[audio:muezzin_1.mp3,muezzin_2.mp3]
Einfach den Abspielknopf druecken

Kassette in Paris gekauft, 1983 glaubs

November 28, 2009

Chart Attack (deutsche Version)

(To read the english version, just scroll down or click here)


Habe heute mein Revox repariert, immer schoen nach dem Motto: Schmeiss nie etwas weg. Du koenntest es eines Tages gebrauchen. Wahrscheinlich genau am Tag nachdem du’s weggeschmissen hast. Aber das wisst ihr ja.

Um es kurz zu machen: ich habe 3 Revox Bandmaschinen, eine funktioniert, eine nicht mehr, die dritte habe ich von meinem Hifi-Haendler geschenkt gekriegt, als Ersatzteillager. Dieses Jahr war ich mehrmals ganz nah dran, die beiden letzteren wegzuschmeissen. Zum Glueck fuer mich tat ich’s nicht. Denn heute wollte ich einige Masterbaender nach MP3 kopieren, all das fuer euer hier Vergnuegen. Doch die Maschine begann sofort zu stoehnen und zu aechzen, so dass ich schon das Schlimmste befuerchtete. Doch es war nur die Gummiandruckrolle, die in der Hitze des Sommers buchstaeblich geschmolzen war! Gut, das ist nun geflickt – haette ich das Teil bei Revox bestellen muessen, haette ich erstens mal wohl einen Haufen Geld bezahlen muessen, denn heute wird der Gewinn vor allem auf den Ersatzteilen gemacht, und ich haette bestimmt 10 Tage auf die Lieferung warten muessen.

So ist nun alles soweit bereit, um die Sommer Master zu kopieren. Mehr darueber spaeter. Fuer heute gebe ich euch einfach einen kleinen Einblick in die kommerzielle Abteilung von Calypso Now: Sommer 1984 erschienen die beruehmten Cassingles (‘Splendid – The Sound of Young Switzerland’), Sommer 1986 der Sampler ‘Chart Attack’, gefolgt von ‘Guitar Town’ im ’87 (Sommer, klar), ein Sampler mit Genfer Bands, damals die Hauptstadt des schweizer Garagenrock. Ich sage nur: The Maniacs, The Needles, The Faster.

Zu Splendid und Guitar Town spaeter. Heute feiere ich die Wiedergeburt meines Revox mit den ersten drei Songs von ‘Chart Attack’

Chart Attack Compilation 1986 – The Reaction, Eugen, Hydrogen Candymen

[audio:The Reaction – Thoughts.mp3,Der Boese Bub Eugen – Ich will alles.mp3,Hydrogen Candymen – I can’t stand this love goodbye.mp3]
Einfach den Abspielknopf druecken

(Auf dem Bild die Rueckseite des Covers von Chart Attack, graphics by Martin Schori, thank you)

To download right-click

Peopleism (for Google to use hehehe): Max of The Reaction now works for SUISA, Stephan Ramming of Eugen for NZZ am Sonntag, Lori Hersberger from Candymen is a world famous biennale triennale documentale artist

Muede bin ich, geh zur Ruh. Hatte zuviel Arbeit mit dem Restaurieren einiger Masterkassetten, mit dem Evaluieren der richtigen Hardware und vor allem der richtigen Software. Benutze nun Audacity, ein sehr gutes Open-Source-Programm, vielleicht ein wenig komplizierter als Goldwave, mein vorheriges Programm, aber mit besserer Soundqualitaet, wenigstens auf meiner Hardware


Ich habe noch einige Exemplare hier gefunden, solange Vorrat:

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November 26, 2009

Chart Attack

Filed under: Bands,Free MP3 Download — Tags: , , , — Hotcha @ 12:00 am

Deutsche Version hier

Fixed my Revox today. I always say: Never throw anything away. You could use it one day. Probably just the day after having disposed of it. You know that.

To cut a long story short: I have 3 Revox machines, one is working, one isn’t any more, the third was given to me by my hifi vendor just in case I could use some spare parts. This year I was several times on the edge of throwing those latter two away! Lucky me I didn’t. Because today I wanted to copy some reel-to-reel masters onto my computer to mp3 them for your listening pleasure. When doing so the machine started to make some weird sounds, and I detected that in the heat of the summer a small rubber wheel that presses the tape to the recording head had literally melted! Ok, so that has been fixed now – to order the part from Revox would have cost real money, that’s where the money is made, on the replacement parts. Plus I would have waited 10 days for delivery, at least.

So here we are, ready to copy the summer masters. You’ll hear about them soon. For now, just a glimpse into the charts hungry side of Calypso Now. Summer 1984 saw the release of the famous Cassingles (‘Splendid – The Sound Of Young Switzerland’), Summer 1986 the sampler ‘Chart Attack’, followed by ‘Guitar Town’ in ’87 (summer, of course), a sampler with bands from Geneva, at that time the capital of swiss garage. Remember: The Maniacs, The Needles, The Faster.

I’ll give you some tracks of Splendid and Guitar Town soon. Today, to celebrate my newly fixed Revox, the first three tracks from ‘Chart Attack’.

Chart Attack Compilation 1986 – The Reaction, Eugen, Hydrogen Candymen

[audio:The Reaction – Thoughts.mp3,Der Boese Bub Eugen – Ich will alles.mp3,Hydrogen Candymen – I can’t stand this love goodbye.mp3]
Ajust playback volume to 10 and press the play button!

(pic shows back cover of Chart Attack, graphics by Martin Schori, thank you)

To download right-click

Peopleism (for Google to use hehehe): Max of The Reaction now works for SUISA, Stephan Ramming of Eugen for NZZ am Sonntag, Lori Hersberger from Candymen is a world famous biennale triennale documentale artist

Tired, have to go. Had too much work restoring certain cassette masters, finding the right hardware and, much more difficult, the right software. Am using Audacity now, a great open source program. A bit more difficult to use than Goldwave, what I used before, but better quality, at least on my hardware.

November 19, 2009

90 Minutes of 80’s Indies

Filed under: Free MP3 Download,General — Tags: , — Hotcha @ 9:00 pm

when Beat Man was still working for Calypso NowYou would have guessed it: I did put a day’s worth of digging in my files tapes pix to ensure a lot of follow-ups to the tapes I’ve presented here in the last few weeks. Well, expect some heavy unheard stuff in the near future. But for tonight some ambient cut-ups… Yeah, I used to release catalogues of my tapes on a tape, usually a C-90, so you could cram as much as possible on it. I’ve uploaded one for your listening pleasure. I gave them away for free then, you just had to send a blank tape and return postage. That was the http-protocol of the offline world.

For the techies among you: It was made with an Aiwa Double Decker, the first of its kind, I believe. It was the backbone of my tape production, because it could copy a C-90 in 27 Minutes: both sides at a time at double speed. Plus it had a tiny mixing desk with a microphone input, so you had three separate channels, two for tapes, one for ambient noise or speech. I really miss those cheap simple can-do-alls….

So, that’s what you got here: two sides of the C-90 catalogue, probably from around 1986. Side one is obviously the commercial side, you’ll hear garage bands and above all the wonderful Cleaners From Venus, one of my all time faves, will tell you more soon. Side two takes no prisoners. Some fantastic snippets there. On minute 25 approx. you can hear my then incredibly powerful sax playing – now I know why the more clean punks hated me… Wow, those lungs…

Music for a unforgettable new moon night. Don’t know yet if those tapes are still around, but I really do hope so, mind blowing stuff, you’ll hear. I’ll be back with the news. Don’t hesitate to ask about something specific you heard on the tape.

The Calypso Now Audio Catalogue ~1986

[audio:cn cat pt 1.mp3] Side 1 of C-90 cassette

[audio:cn cat pt 2.mp3] Side 2 of C-90 cassette

Ajust playback volume to 10 and press the play button!

To download right-click Calypso Now Audio Catalogue Side 1
or Calypso Now Audio Catalogue Side 2

Be there or be square

Filed under: Bands,Catalogue,Free MP3 Download — Tags: , — Hotcha @ 1:48 pm

Releasing and playing music since several decades, I never cared much about keeping track of the stuff I’ve done. As the title of this posting says, I subscribe to the punk motto ‘be there or be square’ – pity, if you’re born after the fact. No pity, though, if you’ve missed on it because you were lazy.

Now, this may sound quite preposterous – I mean, you could rightfully say: Well, if nobody cared, then it probably wasn’t worth it.

Check it out for yourself – this is a catalogue poster I printed around 1987/1988 – click on each page for bigger view.

catalogue poster pt. 1catalogue poster pt. 3catalogue poster pt. 2catalogue poster pt. 4catalogue poster pt. 5catalogue poster pt. 7catalogue poster pt. 6catalogue poster pt. 8

You sure are right, if you like your taste mainstream and middle-of-the-road. Because I’ve never cared much to live up to expectations. Call me the Taste Hero, or, if you like it really heroic, The Man Who Wouldn’t Give A Fuck.

You read me spitting out big sounds now, because today I came across traces of my work from the 80s in the internet. As a matter of fact, I for instance discovered a site where some of my Calypso Now releases are listed, some quite popular, like the split tape by The Ex/Svaetsox, Pay no more than 6 Fr (the tongue in cheek title referring to hip indie releases ‘for the working man’ in England in the Thatcherist 80’s). But I’ve also come across a real obscurity, like Big City Orchestra’s Hand Of Fear – they were always my favorites, by the way, and if you read their portrait, you’ll know why.

I’ve also found several sites who still keep the fire going, like Mutant Sounds, which I found researching Years On Earth; like Crud Crud on a more general level, where you keep falling over rare and strange sounds, a lot of tape-only productions, but also other stuff like belly dance rip-off singles; like Sweet Thunder which is full of surprises, check it out for yourself.


I was looking for the whereabouts of Years On Earth because I used to release two of their fantastic dark droning tapes, ‘Site’ and ‘Worlds Apart’, and I’ve always listened to them ‘in private’ as well. I will tell you more about them as soon as I can find the master tape for YOE3 in my piles of incredibly great, rare and half-forgotten stuff. But for today, I will give you just a listening of two tracks from their tape ‘Site’ from 1982 (YOE2). Bedroom electronics really well done.

Years On Earth – from their tape ‘Site’, 1982

[audio:and i dream.mp3,lost letters.mp3]

Ajust playback volume to 10 and press the play button!

To download right-click Years On Earth: And I Dream or Years On Earth: Lost Letters

November 15, 2009

Bande Berne Crematoire & Anal Furgler

Filed under: Bands,Free MP3 Download — Tags: , — Hotcha @ 1:03 pm

There are boxes of master tapes laying around here, tons of sessions that were never released, hundreds of demos I got that I can’t release due to copyright reasons. Like for instance the first demo of The Young Gods – recorded in 1986 with ultra cheap gear, unlike Yello, by the way, but probably a lot more creative. No offense ment to Boris Blank…

So much to make you drool, drivel and slobber (thank you, Wikipedia 🙂

As you can imagine, I have a lot of my own masters awaiting to be filed under ‘trashbin’. So allow me to save one of those for this here blog. I didn’t like it at the time, but listening to it now I think this is nothing less than pure chart fodder – which in my world is the most positive statement there is about any track.

I hope he will not kill me, my buddy Michael Antener, who at that time, must have been 1984/85, had made himself a household name in the international industrial home recording scene, which in Europe was mostly the crowd around the Graf Haufen Label in Berlin. Antener then recorded, in the basement of his parents house in a small village, Utzensdorf, if my memory serves me well, under the dark name of Bande Berne Crematoire.

Myself, I went by the name of Anal Furgler, always hoping to create a media scandal by hijacking the name of a then famous politician, but to no avail. So much for the history of the two tracks I’ve unearthed today.

Michael invited me to record a session with him in his basement, and I went there with a sax, records and tapes, he playing the analog synthesizers noise makers back then usually had. I found today two tracks of this session on a lost cassette, and as I’ve said, I rather like them now. It has a nice ambient feel to it, all the while keeping that dark gloomy spirit BBC used to fancy then. I could have released them on my label, but I’ve decided against it, rather unwisely, I think, because it didn’t come out the way we liked it then; this being an entirely improvised session, without any overdubs, add-ons or remixes, both rather reluctand to really trash it away like we both did usually, the greatness of the result was lost on us. Anyway. Here they are now, for you to listen or download.

Bande Berne Crematoire, by the way, later teamed up with Ane Hebeisen, then a very young goth adonis and ideal frontman. They went by the name of Swamp Terrorists, played live around Europe and released several ‘real’ records. Hebeisen later was a better journalist than he was a singer, if you allow me my saying so, and his articles in the now almost bygone Berne newspaper “Der Bund” always made for a very pleasurable reading. Yeah, Berne really has a quite morbid touch to it…

Bande Berne Crematoire & Anal Furgler

[audio:mutter.mp3,manneszucht.mp3]

Ajust playback volume to 12 and press the play button!

(pic shows cover of joint tape release by nacht’raum and Nisus Anal Furgler, designed by BBC, who played in nacht’raum)

To download right-click Bande Berne Crematoire & Anal Furgler: Mutter or
Bande Berne Crematoire & Anal Furgler: Manneszucht

You can also find downloads of the early works of Bande Berne Crematoire at this site: http://www.vuzrecords.de

Also, the cassettes of Bande Berne Crematoire seem to be quite rare – several people have them on their want list, I see here. Well, if you missed on it: here’s the cover of the first official release of Bande Berne Crematoire, it came out on several labels simoultanesly, also on Calypso Now. Must have some laying around here… grin. As I always say: Be there or be square. Why, according to my ‘files’ I’ve sold seven copies of the tape in 1984 – and now I see that five people at Discogs have it on their want list. Bad case of being born too late, probably.

I’ve almost forgot, that the other tape by Bande Berne Crematoire, which remained unnamed, has also been released by Calypso Now. That must have been one of the last tape releases, as it is packaged the way I did it then: Have an A4-cover printed, to be folded in a plastic bag which allowed more paper work to be included. This cover has been handprinted by Rueebli, a madman back then, now successfull winemaker at the lake (Bielersee). Luckily, I’ve still got a couple of those covers…

Order here:

[MINICART item=”1″]

Payment through Paypal – shipping by economy mail included.

October 27, 2009

XXX sells

Filed under: Free MP3 Download,General — Tags: , , — Hotcha @ 12:00 am

I’ve just scanned some parts of the Calypso Now catalogues from the 80’s and I’m astonished by this ‘hit-and-run’ graphic style that just came natural because the tools weren’t really available – some catalogues were even printed in my kitchen on those heavy machines they used to have in schools, where you typed your text on a so-called stencil, and with this you could print up to several hundred A-4 sized copies, until the stencil just ripped itself apart. That was by far the cheapest way to publish a catalogue.

Later, when the label got ‘bigger’, I could afford to have flyers printed, at some time the catalogue came on a poster, from which I scanned a small part here. So, let’s talk about sex!
Steven Tetzloff on the Sex Sells catalogue from Calypso Now

The “Sex sells” slogan was used as a provocation for the swiss postal service, the catalogues being folded in a transparent enveloppe so you saw the picture and the slogan, but couldn’t tell if the penis would be visible as a whole. Well, the provocation worked marvellously, the catalogues were refused by the post office here, which gave me the opportunity to put a ‘Censored’-sticker on the cock, which anyway wasn’t really visible, as you can see for yourself. Click on the picture to see it full size in a new browser window.

Why this cheap provocation? Well, I was a bit fed up by all those shops flashing naked tits around to sell some product, so I really had to prove my point. As I said, it worked great. It would still work today, bet?

Steven Tetzloff, by the way, the man with the penis, was a guitar player from San Francisco who played in rather shitty New Wave bands (by my humble opinion ), but he made three solo tapes which I still adore; all of them have been released here by Calypso Now and I will upload some of his music soon. He did them really cheap in his bathroom, with nice distorted guitar and a cheasy rhythm box, kind of a Velvet-Underground-play-Suicide sound. Suicide? No, not suicide as an action, I mean Suicide, the band, with Alan Vega.

I liked the music of Steven Tetzloff so much that I also put him on the last compilation tape from Calypso Now, the Starspot Compilation (click here for a full picture of the catalogue and more information about Starspot), and on a promotional single, called Sex Sells, of course. By the way: I must still have some copies of this 7 incher laying around here somewhere, will probably have to dig in the boxes I’ve moved with at least three times in the last 10 years without opening them once more. I’ll keep you posted. Might interest you that the tape and the single also contains a marvelous track from Herr Dr. Michael Angele, now Leiter Kultur at german paper and web community Der Freitag… hehehe – more is here to come!

Oh, almost forgot: here’s some tracks on the Calypso Now Myspace space, Angele’s also at hand. Check out the the Trash Boys there, I think they were great. From Geneva.

And…. I’ve uploaded two tracks by Crash Course from Biel-Bienne, then renowned as the fastest (post) punk band in Switzerland (probably falsely), from their deleted single, which came out on a compilation tape of the band on Calypso Now. Singer is the same Herr Dr. Michael Angele 😉

Crash Course: Break Down The Walls, Television

[audio:crash course break down the walls.mp3,crash course television.mp3]

Ajust playback volume to 11 and press the play button!

To download right-click Crash Course: Break Down The Walls or Crash Course: Television

You can find Michael Angele’s track ‘Nazis’ on the Starspot Compilation – order here

[MINICART item=”7″]
Payment through Paypal

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