QUICK STAB
MUSIC PRODUCTS
DETAIL - PRODUCT INDEX JUNE 1982 QUICK STAB MUSIC PRODUCTS.
CASSETTE LABEL
“We made our tapes one by one directly copying from the master reel to reel tape and we distributed them through the cassette scene postal network of the early 80s. We definitely were only interested in sounding original.”
Photographic project documenting Quick Stab Music Products cassette tape collection.
Robert Lawrence
was the driver behind the cassette label Quick Stab Music Products. I collected tapes the label produced from 1980
until it was wound up in May 1983.
Alongside photographs of the cassettes and graphics there are notes on meeting and working with Robert Lawrence. There are also two Paul Shorthouse interviews by Robert Lawrence from 1980 and 1982. In addition there are texts by Robert explaining the process of recording.
Mark Andrew Philips founder of MAP TAPES had a strong presence on Quick Stab recordings. Rob and Mark eventually formed the singular 5XOD which I have also documented from my collection.
Alongside photographs of the cassettes and graphics there are notes on meeting and working with Robert Lawrence. There are also two Paul Shorthouse interviews by Robert Lawrence from 1980 and 1982. In addition there are texts by Robert explaining the process of recording.
Mark Andrew Philips founder of MAP TAPES had a strong presence on Quick Stab recordings. Rob and Mark eventually formed the singular 5XOD which I have also documented from my collection.
DETAIL - PRODUCT INDEX JUNE 1982 QUICK STAB MUSIC PRODUCTS.
MAGNETIC TAPE
I corresponded with Robert Lawrence after Cosey
Fanni Tutti sent me a copy of Throbbing Gristle’s Industrial News. That contained a list of
people looking to connect. One year after that print edition came out, I was
the third person to write to Rob. We first wrote to each other in 1980
exchanging a few letters.
I met Rob in person around June 1980 when I had fled Scotland from a dysfunctional home life aged sixteen. Rob was extremely kind and got me a room within the bedsit apartments he lived in. The Quick Stab studio was in the basement of a Victorian town house bedsit conversion on the Cheltenham Road Bristol.
Rob had an Akai GX4000D 1/4-inch Reel to Reel tape machine. It was incredibly advanced technology to my mind. The machine was visually striking and to hear that leap in audio information from cassette tape was just like, fuck. This felt like a jump into professional audio recording. It signified a possibility.
I also saw an Electric Dream Plant WASP synthesiser. I had never seen anything like it. The sounds were aberrant, yet I could see a link to the Normal and The Human league that I had just been exposed to via friends and John Peel.
I happened to walk into Robert’s studio to find that he had spat on the WASP touch sensitive keyboard and was dragging the spit to hold a note from which he could manipulate the synth and generate a rhythm.
Robert said it only happened once, but I am fond of this image which to me indicates the distance he was willing to travel in the pursuit of pushing sound. Not many people were going to spit on their new £199 WASP synth or £1k in current money.
In his own words “I did spend a fair bit of effort on working on the quality of sounds - that was my first goal - get an interesting sound and then do something with it”. I found the sounds Rob manufactured were new, literally, dark, and magnetic.
I met Rob in person around June 1980 when I had fled Scotland from a dysfunctional home life aged sixteen. Rob was extremely kind and got me a room within the bedsit apartments he lived in. The Quick Stab studio was in the basement of a Victorian town house bedsit conversion on the Cheltenham Road Bristol.
Rob had an Akai GX4000D 1/4-inch Reel to Reel tape machine. It was incredibly advanced technology to my mind. The machine was visually striking and to hear that leap in audio information from cassette tape was just like, fuck. This felt like a jump into professional audio recording. It signified a possibility.
I also saw an Electric Dream Plant WASP synthesiser. I had never seen anything like it. The sounds were aberrant, yet I could see a link to the Normal and The Human league that I had just been exposed to via friends and John Peel.
I happened to walk into Robert’s studio to find that he had spat on the WASP touch sensitive keyboard and was dragging the spit to hold a note from which he could manipulate the synth and generate a rhythm.
Robert said it only happened once, but I am fond of this image which to me indicates the distance he was willing to travel in the pursuit of pushing sound. Not many people were going to spit on their new £199 WASP synth or £1k in current money.
In his own words “I did spend a fair bit of effort on working on the quality of sounds - that was my first goal - get an interesting sound and then do something with it”. I found the sounds Rob manufactured were new, literally, dark, and magnetic.
Rob was very physical with the tape transport on the Reel to Reel impeding the
transport slowing the recording process as he performed. He was thinking ahead
knowing that section would speed up on playback.
Robert Lawrence demonstrating his project studio as an instrument in a damp basement bedsit altered the structure of my thinking. His commitment to DIY production of cassettes was focussed and all-encompassing taking on all tasks from sound engineer,correspondent, graphic production, interviewer all on top of pursuing an original sound presence.
Broken Pipes Exposed 4 track “Lose Yourself” 1980 signifies the point where the old order is dismantled and the gestation of something ultra-modern hangs in the air.
Lose Yourself opens with an environmentally filtered radio entering your head from the outside world. It’s the muzak of sedation the relentless monotony of fake promise vibrating out of focus. Cutting through the corporate anaesthetic a sequence emerges. An electronic code and melody actively responding to each other and growing in complexity. Alien signals scan the communication of the oscillating beat.
The corporate sedation is still present but growing muted sporadically asserting a “Quiz featuring our Resident Mastermind”. Radio anaesthesia is swamped by the electronic revolution as the groove locks. We are on a new journey now, with electronic flesh.
As the track concludes the sponsor postulates “sound’s great Barry Manilow?” That was how the the future arrived, on cassette tape through the letter box.
Outlined below are three cassettes that heavily shaped my experience of time during 1980-1983. Only 178 other people on the planet bought one or more of these cassettes and were listening during that period. Cassette tapes were delivered by the postal system in manilla envelopes often with a sticker campaign attached.
Malcolm Brown. Edinburgh 2024.
Robert Lawrence demonstrating his project studio as an instrument in a damp basement bedsit altered the structure of my thinking. His commitment to DIY production of cassettes was focussed and all-encompassing taking on all tasks from sound engineer,correspondent, graphic production, interviewer all on top of pursuing an original sound presence.
Broken Pipes Exposed 4 track “Lose Yourself” 1980 signifies the point where the old order is dismantled and the gestation of something ultra-modern hangs in the air.
Lose Yourself opens with an environmentally filtered radio entering your head from the outside world. It’s the muzak of sedation the relentless monotony of fake promise vibrating out of focus. Cutting through the corporate anaesthetic a sequence emerges. An electronic code and melody actively responding to each other and growing in complexity. Alien signals scan the communication of the oscillating beat.
The corporate sedation is still present but growing muted sporadically asserting a “Quiz featuring our Resident Mastermind”. Radio anaesthesia is swamped by the electronic revolution as the groove locks. We are on a new journey now, with electronic flesh.
As the track concludes the sponsor postulates “sound’s great Barry Manilow?” That was how the the future arrived, on cassette tape through the letter box.
Outlined below are three cassettes that heavily shaped my experience of time during 1980-1983. Only 178 other people on the planet bought one or more of these cassettes and were listening during that period. Cassette tapes were delivered by the postal system in manilla envelopes often with a sticker campaign attached.
Malcolm Brown. Edinburgh 2024.
BROKEN PIPES EXPOSED 4
