A Nostalgia For Music Never Known
A pair of weird early-1980s obscurities resurrected by the Dutch label Music From Memory
Over the past decade Amsterdam’s Music From Memory label has worked to resurrect a series of obscure – long-forgotten, or never known – artists and feed them to people who love that sort of thing. What they release isn’t really music from memory, it’s mostly music no-one has ever heard.
Which doesn’t mean what they release is rubbish. The internet has been a boon for obscurity hounds and there a few greater feelings than having the YouTube algorithm throw something incredible from nowhere at you (something it is rather good at).
In the early-1980s, Michal Turtle was the archetypical bedroom musician, working with a four-track in his parents house, creating beguiling songs that are quite unlike anything from either that era or the current on.
In a previous essay on the Danielson Famile I wrote about outsider music - “a category that seeks to describe musicians making music without any kind of self-awareness, or understanding of conventional styles or trends.” Spooky Boogie seems to defy the laws of song construction, inserting incongruous sounds and lines into the song in inventive ways. It’s weird, but thrillingly so.
Another artist released by Music From Memory has been The System. The mostly instrumental song Vampirella from the early-1980s is a form of proto-techno that was almost a decade ahead of the influential sounds and styles that would come out of Detroit. A track that managed to be both propulsive and atmospheric.