BLISS / AQUAMARINE (U.K.)

It seemed as though we were going to lose another long term networker too, but it's looking like survival now for this noble project by the hardest working girl in the underground, one Kim Harten. We've been friends with Kim now for over 20 years, when first we made contact with her then printed zine and tape label, all lovingly manufactured in her old home in Redditch, Worcestershire. She'd already been at it for a couple of years before we knew her, the Bliss label starting in 1993, followed by the Aquamarine zine a year later. She was always an immense support to M&E, reviewing dozens of our releases over the years, not to mention including us on a couple of her compilations; "Carnelian" (Bliss 026, 1995) and "Tourmaline" (Bliss 047, 1997), and a lot of other M&E bands on many of them as well. She was a bit ahead of the game when it came to the internet, converting to a web-based zine as early as 2000, back about the time I was still too scared to open the box the PC came in. It just used to sit in a dark corner of the room, mocking me. I wonder how we all managed without them now. Kim published a huge review of "Decadion 2" (M&E 601) when it came out in 2013. Anyone brave enough to review a 12½ hour megacomp like that deserves all the credit we can give them. And while we're at it, let's reprint it here for your joyful perusal, along with her more recent review of our "Flashbax Ω Ultimate" CD...

VARIOUS ARTISTS -

DECADION 2

mp3 disc (MUSIC & ELSEWHERE)

When I first started exploring the world of underground tape labels in the early 1990s, I found that the labels fell into two main camps: one being focused on the type of indiepop prevalent at the time, which was inspired by the likes of Sarah Records, C86, and/or other forms of late 80s/early 90s indiepop that eschewed a macho rock image and overly polished commercialism, earning itself labels like 'twee', 'cutie', or 'shambling' - insults that would in some quarters be reclaimed as badges of pride. This was a resolutely underground genre, not to be confused with mainstream 'indie' music, and was the genre that first made me aware of a whole world of music existing outside of the charts. (There has of course been a fairly recent upsurge of interest in this genre, and something of a reappraisal, with bands who were dismissed as twee wimps at the time of their existence now being hailed as musical geniuses, but I digress). The other type of tape label was one I had no time for at all, being all about harsh experimental noise, which was not only impenetrably brutal but often extremely amateurish (in the worst sense of the word) and unlistenably lo-fi. There was, however, another tape label in existence that was operating from a somewhat different angle from the others I was aware of. Founded in the 1980s and existing until 2003, Music & Elsewhere was a tape label which released a massive 600 albums by around 250 artists in a vast variety of underground music genres, making it surely the biggest and longest lived tape label ever. As well as being far less genre-specific than most other tape labels, M&E was known for incorporating more of a professional business-sense than was the norm for tape labels into its operation, whilst simultaneously remaining staunchly committed to the underground ethos and championing styles of music that were not remotely mainstream. Label founder Mick Magic, also of the spacerock band Magic Moments at Twilight Time, resurrected the label in 2013, moving it into the digital age with this MP3 disc compiling 147 tracks from the M&E back catalogue. There are of course way too many tracks here for me to describe every one, so I'll just focus on those tracks that grabbed my attention the most. There's a lot of songs here that I loved at the time though haven't heard for years, so listening to Decadion 2 has been something of a blast from the past. There is also much here that escaped my attention at the