Label: Final Image – FIB 5 Format: Vinyl, LP, Compilation Country: UK Released: May 1988 Genre: Electronic Style: Industrial, Experimental, Ambient
Who's afraid of the dark?
A blurry, grainy, out-of-focus photograph of a generic British roadway, the orange sodium-vapour street lights greyscaled out like Daido Moriyama photograph. Nothing sets the scene better for what is undoubtably the best encapsulated survey of the fertile DIY industrial / ambient scene happening in the late 80s UK. Final Image was a disproportionally short-lived yet hugely influential label ran (mostly) by Andrew Hulme, best known for his activities with ‘dirty ambient’ group O Yuki Conjugate, alongside a number of other fleeting projects - Mute Calm, Gush - which both feature here. Grown right out of the helpless urban ennui of late 80s Britain under Thatcher, Nightlands yokes together a mysterious group of loosely connected artists operating way out on the fringe of independent experimental music, somehow connected (pre-internet) in documenting the increasing urban decay and disillusion. This is atmospheric music for nocturnal nomads, the after-after hours sounds of post-industrial Britain where the emergent sounds of rave music have fully dissolved into a serotonin-depleted soundscape of lonely contemplation. Many of the artists involved - Muslimgauze, Pump, Bourbonese Qualk, Biting Tongues, O Yuki Conjugate - blossomed into household name for experimental music followers, but Nightlands stands alone as a perfectly realised whole. An imaginary soundtrack to the urban after dark. (NM/VG+ - tiny split in top).
Tracklist A1 Muslimgauze– Green Is The Colour Of The Prophet A2 Pump (4)– Do This A3 Biting Tongues– Half Deepmen A4 Gush– New York, 1940 A5 Bourbonese Qualk– Lullaby B1 John Avery– That Marilyn Walk B2 Tim Story– The Moors B3 Mute Calm– Zone B4 Human Flesh– First Soundtrack B5 O Yuki Conjugate– Another Journey
