Cultural Amnesia

Described by Electronic Sound magazine as one of the UK’s “very best tape culture bands”, Cultural Amnesia (CA) are an English post-punk music group, first active between 1979 and 1983 as participants in the so-called cassette culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s in the UK. During this first period the band released three cassette albums: Video Rideo (1981), described recently as “[t]hrillingly inventive, it deftly mixes literary influences with manipulated sounds,” The Uncle of the Boot (1983) and Sinclair's Luck (1983) on English and German record labels, and contributed to a number of compilation albums. Early on in his career, CA worked with the late Geff Rushton (John Balance) of Coil, who wrote a handful of songs for them and who was an important supporter and enabler due to his contacts as editor of Stabmental magazine, arranging most of their releases and providing constant encouragement. The band has become more widely known since 2000 following release of a number of compilations of their early '80s music in which the members of the group have been fully involved. The band reformed in the late '90s with the same personnel and there have been a number of albums and EPs of new material released.

Working in the wake of the early industrial bands, CA's output is diverse, ranging from ambient soundscapes to synthpop, but it can be broadly characterized as song-based electronic music, normally making use of synthesizer, drum machine and guitar. Although the early Industrial bands were an inspiration to CA, and they enjoyed the music, only a small part of their own output falls squarely into the genre. They did not share the Burroughsian/Ballardian melange that tended to characterise the attitudes of the Industrial scene.

The three members of the band were occasionally joined for recording and live performance by guitarist, Alastair Murray. The band’s methods of recording, as with many of those involved with the cassette/DIY scene of the post-punk period, were initially extremely primitive, growing more sophisticated as they could afford better equipment. However, CA never recorded in a professional studio of any kind. The members of the band had little interest in punk, but in addition to the inspiration of bands such as Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire they enjoyed a broad range of music of the post-punk period; they also listened a great deal to the art rock of the late '60s and '70s, including Krautrock and progressive rock, and had a keen interest in dance music and disco.

Cultural Amnesia stopped activity close to the completion of what was to be their first vinyl LP, Obscenity, with the German company Datenverarbeitung. John Balance's sleeve notes for the unreleased album give a perceptive insight into CA’s body of work (the blurb was published on the inner sleeve of the 2007 compilation LPs, Press My Hungry Button).

What does one say? Cultural Amnesia have never ceased to amaze me with their finely honed songs of innocence and insecticide. Each gleaming tune a button on their hair shirt. There is a raw spirit of experiment, of mis-adventure with emotions, that is almost awkward to listen to. Time shifts and personal twists reveal a complex web of older children, playing with something they know full well is not really for the general public. Using a vocabulary of myths and symbols, along with splintered shards of themselves, caricatures and alter egos weave and parade in drunken 'night on the town' scenarios, in crazy-glass-house confrontations with each other. All life is here. Bitter and sweet. Love, sex behind supermarkets, truth and lies, jealousy and an all-pervading earthy magick. And Death. Having lurked in the herbaceous borders of the DIY cassette scene, earning critical acclaim for their numerous releases, this record now marks the edge of that dark, tangled frustration of a country. Beyond... is another day. – John Balance, the Ides of March 1983