Years On Earth « Hotcha's Calypso Now Label

December 6, 2009

Years On Earth

Filed under: Bands — Tags: Years On Earth — 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. Hélas, 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

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.

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November 19, 2009

Be there or be square

Filed under: Bands, Catalogue — Tags: Northampton, Years On Earth — 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.

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/Svätsox, 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

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

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