CASSETTE
LABEL
HERE COME THE ELECTRIC PEOPLE
Photographic documentation project of Trench Musik Kore cassette label. Operational between 1981-1984 in Central Belt, Scotland.
The quote “Here come the electric people” is from confrontational young males in Chapel Hall North Lanarkshire as Chris Duncan and Malcolm Brown walked through those streets during the winter of discontent 1979.
The founding members of T.M.K were:
A. Anderson, M. Brown, C. Duncan.
The label produced three audio cassettes.
FROM A TRENCH - Various Artists.
DUB FLACK – RBE, A. Wilson.
OPERATIONS:BRUTAL - C. Duncan, M. Brown.
Four Live performances were also deeply researched and enacted upon an unsuspecting public within the central belt and Glasgow.
More cassette releases were planned, and the enigma Jess Hopkins took up that baton with his own label SACRED ARMS RACE.
FROM A TRENCH - Various Artists.
DUB FLACK – RBE, A. Wilson.
OPERATIONS:BRUTAL - C. Duncan, M. Brown.
Four Live performances were also deeply researched and enacted upon an unsuspecting public within the central belt and Glasgow.
More cassette releases were planned, and the enigma Jess Hopkins took up that baton with his own label SACRED ARMS RACE.
TAPE PRODUCTION
Trench Musik Kore was a small council estate DIY cassette label, active in Scotland’s central belt.
The process involved creating master tapes on open Reel to Reel 1/4-inch tape of the collated audio material. T.M.K had two self-funded AKAI GX4000D machines. These were used to create master reels to run of copies to cassette decks for mailing out.
Producing a master tape from other cassettes was common practice within the cassette scene at that time. TMK acquired this process from Quick Stab Music Products. Some labels copied from cassette to cassette or used double decks.
Most tapes were exchanged for other tapes or fanzines within the scene. For T.M.K this was largely an exchange system dealing in barter not currency. Tapes were however sold for around £2 each in the absence of barter but in extremely small numbers.
There was a huge enthusiasm for well-designed home-produced products and well produced music. There was a lot of discussion around the visual identity of the global products we received. It genuinely felt like an art network as much as an audio network.
Chris Duncan was an exceptional networker and brought on board many of the artists featured on From a Trench.