Joakim Bouaziz is well-known figure on the French electronic music scene, although now based in New York. An artist in his own right, he is also a producer, DJ, and record label owner. His production history goes back to the early 2000s, with several releases on the Parisian label, Versatile Records. He launched his own Tigersushi imprint in 2002, and began putting out an array of new and reissued music from the likes of Cluster, Maurice Fulton and Metro Area. In 2013, he began the vinyl-only Crowdspacer imprint, from which this record is released. The record itself is an 11 minute-long Italo-disco, minimal cover version, somewhat incongruously perhaps, of the Neil Young song, On the Beach, from the 1974 album of the same name. Clinical, propulsive, machine-like, with a hint of Suicide’s first album thrown in, it’s the sort of track I bet that Gary Numan wishes he could have released, (assuming he did dance music, of course). It’s this very versatility and originality in approach that has marked Joakim out as one of the outstanding polymathic (is that a word?) performers on the current electronic music scene. Perhaps it’s best left to his website to sum him up: “Joakim has left his fingerprints on current electro, modernizing and hybridizing it, with no concern for schools and genres, taking his inspiration from new wave as well as krautrock, noise and disco, soul and pop, ambient and house.”

From the obscure Household Shocks compilation from 1980, comes this synth-heavy, Fall-like, post-punk blaster. This nine-track compilation of North of England bands was re-released in 2016 on Dark Entries records, preventing the need for one to fork out around £50 for a decent copy – which was previously one of only two ways to access this song, (the other being a CDr of their material entitled, A Cure for Insomniacs.) The band, with Richard Todd on vocals and guitar, (not the actor), didn’t seem to last long, and released only one single in 1983, Man of Your Dreams, on the superbly-named Tenuous Lynx records. Other than that, I can’t find much else about the band.

Schizophrenia by Schizophrenia was on a double A-side bonus, limited edition 12″ single, that came free with some copies of the Tresor 3 compilation. On NovaMute Records, and backed by Sun Electric’s Monolith, “Schizophrenia” was the alias of duo Moritz von Oswald, and Thomas Fehlmann.  A dub techno and ambient track, which samples krautrock legends Ash Ra Temple’s Sunrain, (taken from their New Age of Earth album (1977)), the song also makes more than just a nod to minimalist Steve Reich’s Music for a Large Ensemble. A real slow-burner, the song conveys a sense of nervous expectation and impending pleasure, which is amplified by the introduction of base about two minutes into the track. It remains ideal for playing at the start of a club techno night to build up the mood for the night ahead, and I must have heard it doing the rounds in Glasgow clubs in my early 1990s techno-house-head guise.  Although von Oswald is rightly feted as a pioneer of techno music, (and better-known as one half of both Basic Channel and Maurizio), Fehlmann’s contribution to this (very) short-lived project cannot be underestimated. As Fact Magazine put it, “‘Schizophrenia’ is a rare moment where he [Fehlmann]  allows himself to go headfirst into shimmering, trance-inducing long-form dub techno. Gorgeous.

The Valves were an early punk group from Edinburgh, featuring the wonderfully-named “Dee Robot” (aka Dave Robertson) on vocals. In common with a number of artists from the 1976-77 period, (such as Joe Strummer, who scrapped The 101ers to form The Clash in 1977), The Valves climbed aboard the punk bandwagon, in a Road-to-Damascus fashion, having become inspired by the raw and revolutionary energy of punk music. They ditched their former high energy pub rock sound and incarnation as “Angel Easy”, (although they still  looked like Eddie and the Hot Rods-esque former pub rockers), and signed to Zoom Records as “The Valves”. The band, chronicled in Henrik Poulsen’s book,  77: The Year of Punk and New Wave, duly released three singles, and eventually broke up in 1979. They reformed for a one-off gig in Edinburgh on 21 December, 2014.

This single, their debut, and indeed the debut recording of Zoom Records, (ZUM 1), was released in August 1977. It’s a bit of a minor punk classic. Both sides of the single are worthy of a listen, but it is the b-side, For Adolfs Only, which is the one that really grabs your attention. (The a-side is the comedic, but sinister, Robot Love). From the opening “Ein, zwei, drei, vier…” , this is a pounding, aggressive 1 min 46 secs of 1977 punk. It rips the piss out of Hitler, (hating Nazis, or comparing the powers-that-be to Nazis, being common themes of the time), and has a decent, spiky guitar solo in the middle. It’s not sophisticated music, but that’s not the point.

The band released their second single, Tarzan Of The Kings Road (ZUM 3), in December, 1977, but it had none of the punk energy of its predecessor, having a more watered-down R&B, surf sound. Their final, and third single, in 1979, It Don’t Mean Nothing At All, bombed. Nevertheless,  the Zoom singles notched up sales of over 22,000, with very little promotion.