Warping sounds and minds since 1985
Except Buses emerged in the 1980s through friendship and a common interest in music that crossed boundaries, and did not bore. Using basic programmable keyboards, household and automotive objects, and later, an Atari ST computer, Simon Lewry, Steve Tree, Aidan Walsh and Richard Zarywacz created challenging music, and sometimes not-so-challenging music, and issued it on cassettes. We cannot forget Carlton Newbould who occasionally contributed. Often, an album's worth of material was produced during weekends in the countryside, which included walks to watch the dawn break and intensive food shopping in supermarkets.
Family, careers and life left Except Buses behind, but not the archive and an extensive collection of photos. Selected pieces are being restored and published, and photos appear from time to time.
RELEASES
P.O. Box 1439
In 1985 The Committee For Sonic Research was created in order to self release the work of the band ‘The Working Party’, who quickly became ‘Mr Schmertz’s Wordless War’ after a headline in the London Evening Standard. On 29 Feb 1988 in mid-concert Mr Schmertz’s Wordless War morphed in to ‘Except Buses’ (there’s a VHS of the concert somewhere). The most popular 20th century cassette releases were those of Except Buses, so in this digital age we have used the name Except Buses for all archive tracks from the 1980s and 1990s.
Cassettes were distributed at concerts in London and also by mail order. The Committee For Sonic Research had a mailbox address P.O. Box 1439. The building on the cover is the Royal Mail West Kensington Delivery Office.
It has been a decade since we last issued anything from the early years so for the 40th anniversary of TCFSR we have pulled together an Except Buses retrospective compilation.
Solstice 25
Released on the 25th anniversary of being recorded in a live session on 11 June 1989 'Solstice', the title track from the Except Buses album 'Solstice' has been remastered by tourmaline hum and is presented with three never before released tracks recorded in the 1980s by Except Buses.
BANKSIDE
A re-imagining of the 1988 cassette release by Except Buses.
The Pimp / Vice Squad
Whilst collating the 'archive' Richard found what we believe was a first generation copy of 'The Pimp', the first thing ever recorded by The Working Party / Mr Schmetz's Wordless War / Except Buses. It's very 8-bit lo-fi and was recorded, in late summer 1985, on to compact cassette on an early karaoke machine! Over the following years we made a few attempts to recreate a more polished version of the track, but nothing ever sounded as good as the original.
The band developed and expanded and in 1987 decided that since we couldn't recreate a worthy version of The Pimp we would instead compose a follow up. 'Vice Squad' is the result.
Both tracks were recorded 'live' in one take
The Pimp in September or October 1985
Vice Squad on 16 August 1987
