Tapes Received: Industrial Music for Industrial People

From 1978-1980, Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records published a newsletter called Industrial News. With a philosophy of exchange and transparency, they listed attendance numbers at their concerts, future label plans, and a list of contacts who had mailed them tapes of their own music: the “Tapes Received” list.

Capturing a cultural watershed moment where the bedroom bands of the DIY Punk scene gave way to something new: ambitious, experimental, abstract, industrial. Making music using the newly available technology of synthesisers, with tape media and looping as part of the creative process.

In this episode of Cassette Culture we begin to unravel the story of those tapes sent to Industrial Records - what was on them, and what became of the artists who sent them?

At the centre of this episode is Val Denham - painter, singer and tape experimentalist. We hear how a deliberately provocative letter to Genesis P-Orridge loaded with insider references, led to a invitation to London and the beginning of a friendship that would influence her creative life.

Her early tape recordings won fans in Genesis and Peter Christopherson and almost became a release on Industrial Records. Val walks us through the London of the late 70’s, studying at the Royal College Of Art while creating striking artwork for TG gig flyers, attracting Some Bizarre Records’ Stevo and Marc Almond to her Degree Show. Then later creating album artwork for Marc & The Mambas, Psychic TV, and Throbbing Gristle.

Philip Sanderson of Storm Bugs and Richard Rupenus of Funeraldance Party offer their own stories of corresponding with TG, sending in tapes, and finding themselves part of a growing international network of like-minded artists. Richard received an encouraging letter from Genesis himself; Philip developed his own music as Vote Police, Storm Bugs and launched his label, Snatch Tapes.

Years later, after the death of Genesis P-Orridge both contributed to a search for the original “tapes received” cassettes. A search that ended at the Tate Gallery archive and, ultimately, led nowhere.

Hosted by Martin Franklin.

Theme music "This Is Concrete" by The Happy Citizen.

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IN THIS EPISODE