A History of Lime Green Yellow

The Lime Green Yellow Recording Company was set up in the summer of 1989 by three frustrated city types based in Bromley, Mr Lime, Mr Green and Mr Yellow. Initially the plan was to put out music by three bands they'd discovered or knew locally, as a promotional device in limited numbers. Systematic August, an electropop duo unashamedly in the "old style" - pre-techno, using what we've now come to call "vintage" synthesisers, drum machines and vocodered singing, were the first to start recording for LGY. A return to early eighties sounds as a reaction to the gigantic retro "summer of love" English pop mistake, which had kicked in and set a tone for most nineties rock music, while paradoxically allowing genuinely progressive music to thrive. Music using technology, music made as a progression from electropop, not a wholesale return to the early seventies or before. Music like Detroit techno, Sheffield electro, New York hip hop, etc.

The Systematic August ep "The strange case of food poisoning at number thirteen" was the result of the first recording sessions. It's about robots living in the community, and is at times humorous, at others a paranoid airing of secrets normally locked in cupboards under stairs. Very few copies of this, LGY 001CD were made, and it's long since deleted. The singer, VSC Climb, has returned to the States. We occasionally get postcards from him telling us about fixing up Chevrolets, or tapes of engine noises. Hiram McGlider, who played synthesisers, is a recluse, living in a flat in Street in Somerset. He spends his time making short abstract films - sometimes as videos for LGY - or working with the Sigma Pulse Plus sound regeneration system he invented. This notoriously unreliable electrical effects unit has been used on some recent Lime Green Yellow music, and secretly on some more well known songs. The device is still too large to move out of the living room, and is apparently difficult to miniturise, so its commercial appeal is somewhat compromised. This suits McGlider.

A rather more ambitious project was started next, the recording of local art rock band A Footsoldier of the Good General, led by loudmouthed, confident, uncouth but charming noise guitarist X. Bakke. He'd briefly been in a south Bromley covers band, lending his own brand of distorted volleying raucousness to songs as diverse as "She loves you", "Pretty woman" and "12XU". At cocktail lounge volume levels it made sense. Mr Lime had seen one of these rare performances and encouraged Bakke to write some original songs. He even filled in on bass guitar at a few early aFotGG shows under the nom-de-100Hz 'SB - 1'. The group was also known for having a drummer who programmed the percussion patterns and recorded live drums onto tape then became part of the audience at gigs, adopting an arms-folded "impress me, then" stance. After a few of these he gave up, complaining he couldn't hear the drums, and went back to his previous shady job, fencing, in The Tigers Head. These tapes became the basis for the Footsoldier album "In the camp with toothache and a severe height problem". The brief south east London fad for punky overdriven-PA system short gigs took "In the camp..." to its heart, with the song "Perforation; shout it out!" a live favourite, and after an unexpectedly well-attended gig somewhere in Belgium we sold all copies. For a lot of punks reared on cheap 7" vinyl and photocopied sleeves this was their first CD purchase, and some have yet to forgive us for launching them on this proverbial slippery slope. But still we were losing money - the packaging was too expensive and unreliable to produce. X. took a few weeks off to rest his ears, somewhere in the The Lofoten Islands, and never returned.

The designers of the packaging were a couple of students at the local art college, and drinking mates of the record company executives (as they styled themselves). Dash Tall and Matt Moss were also making tentative steps into the game of pop music with their guitarist Stevie P, writing songs as the band The Performance Car Ethos. Finding a sympathetic drummer was becoming difficult, and to a certain extent Dash was still hopeful that his previous band Desperately Unprofessional was going to be given the third CD release on LGY. This was the experimental artpop duo he'd started with guitarist John "Uncle" Future (aka Johnny Fridgemagnet, aka Johnny Mandelbrot, aka Johnny von Neumann, etc. etc.), and way before even the early fractal, chaotic electric guitar experiments John became relatively well known for, particularly in New York. Desperately Unprofessional, who are only now lining up a debut release, have ammassed hundreds of songs over the 17 years or so they've been strolling their idiosyncratic path of questing, textural pop. Songs about fast cars and fame from the point of view of the Fiat 500 driver on the Somerset back lane, Tall's pastoral invective is ably balanced by swathes of the purest English, chiming, guileful haircut pop, that he and John fashion from whatever likely sound source is to hand. Some of their taped experiments with SH101, radio, shouting and feedback from 1986-7 were influential on far later work, like Net and Placement.

Before the Footsoldier lp was ready for release, in 1990, another band, Ox Bow Lakes had been signed and rushed out an ep of some tapes they'd made (and been signed on the strength of). Formed around an enigmatic male - female duo, the group claimed friendships with certain well-known music figures, both in pop and classical music. Naively assuming this would help their commercial chances, Mr Green financially paved the way clear with some of a big bonus he'd received, and "Alexander Rodchenko, William Morris and a dog meeting in a small cafe after the war" was put out, largely to indifference. One critic pointed out that one Dead can Dance was quite enough, and while there was a similarity or two, and certainly an influence on Ox Bow Lakes (they'd named themselves after the front cover photo of "The Serpent's Egg") this was a cruel slap to a young band finding their feet. The formalities of lawyers for The English Concert wading in after discovering extensive sampling-without-permission of their CDs closed the operation for good, and we had to destroy all copies that remained. A shame, because, although overlong and a muddy recording there were some moments of transcendental beauty in the weird tonality of layering samples of unreliable archaic stringed instruments. Relations between certain LGY staff were souring because of this debacle, and this was really the beginning of the end of the first chapter in the history. Mr Green left for the Seychelles, to set up home and train to be lawyer himself by correspondence course on his huge fortune. He took the two Ox Bows with him as staff. We've not heard from any of them since. He gave his share of Lime Green Yellow to Johnny Future, and no one has ever said why. These days when asked John just taps his nose and says "I deserved it..."

So, with the now-deleted ep given the catalogue number LGY 002CD, and the Footsoldier album ready by early autumn 1990, Mr Lime took a firm hold of the reins and put it out, number LGY 003CD, and as we've said all copies were sold. By this time he was tiring of the business, and frequently used to exclaim that it'd be easier to be a restaurateur - and cheaper. Leaving no debts, he moved his part of the firm into the welcoming arms of Dash Tall. Not exactly an arch pragmatist, but certainly enthusiastic, this quiffed typographer was equally at home in the warm underbelly of south London, or striding around the hills of his beloved Somerset, just as he happily flits from lotech bass guitar - albeit heavily effected - to bashing away at banks of synthesisers. At this time he was playing occasionally at his old college and elsewhere, making large, usually

unlistenable noises from layered textures of sound, calling himself Pan techno icon. Those members of the audience who stayed and watched his "ambidextrous spider" routine (as his brother Al styled it, similar to the way he bowled a cricket ball) felt the experience was an ear cleansing one, and made them hear music in even the humblest tube ride or washing machine cycle. Tall became known as The Conductor, and although essentially shy, he delighted in the attention. A nasty crash in the Greinton bends, rolling his Fiat, slowed things up a bit though, and he returned to his country studio, The Playroom, to recuperate.

The final twist of the key to open the lock of modern-day Lime Green Yellow came when Matt Moss, a quiet but determined north Londoner wrestled the last third of control from Mr Yellow. Details are sketchy at best and hazy in the timeframe, but it was time for a change. His personal music pieces were long, ambient and in this tradition, belied a strength of character that has made English pop music the respected global force it is today. And he wanted to see some of this gentle and benign beautiful music represented in a rounded Lime Green Yellow catalogue. Above all he was beginning to see a vision where his balanced sound wafts were layered with the squawking analogue blasts from Dash Tall's Moog and John Future's space-between-the-bites electric motor guitar. A digital realm of sound finessed on top of the finest drum machine topography. It took several years to realise, but the seminal album by Net, "En route as it is in action" was slowly being conjured into being in a Muswell Hill top floor flat.

The first and most important music for Matt Moss, Johnny Future and Dash Tall has always been pop. They will argue at length that this is the most important art form, and that all music released on Lime Green Yellow is pop music. With the completion of the Net album some way off, and its status as a pop album not yet assured - even this early on the plans were for a songless series of electronic and electric improvisations; welcome to ambient hour - and the unfortunate demise of The Performance Car Ethos, Matt, John and Dash decided it was time to refresh the pop parts with a new project. Roping in John for his guitar textures and tunes swooping through their short ambient punk songs was an inspired move by Matt and Dash, and after a series of four track false starts and through the night discussions, Curtains' first songs were invented. Borrowing a big old tape recorder from Dash and John's old mate Hiram McGlider, the group set about capturing these early songs. The first ep was the result, though it took many months. "Accidents waiting to happen" grew from a planned four song ep to the six song discourse on the failure of a relationship that was eventually released. The tracks were finally mixed at the studio Small World in Yeovil, Somerset, under the guidance of Mark Bowyer. The group had been rehearsing here in readiness for a few low-key performances in the south west, and it seemed a natural place to take their tapes. The nature of their very particular pop meant it took a few goes before Mark managed to usher in the Curtains sound. The group were used to layering up huge numbers of textures, in an effort to get their wall-of-sound on top of electronica pop sound, which is easy enough on four track tape recorders, but with the possibilities of studio-quality, the sound had space breathing round the corners. The arch, playful blending of Modernist punk with the ascetics of ambient was refreshingly disconnected from the waves of authentic-fit retro bands, championing the romance of the pioneer and energising the future.

In the time it took to finish "Accidents waiting to happen" other CDs had lined up to be released by Lime Green Yellow. The completed Net album "En route as it is in action" was an early experiment in mastering on computer, hence the seamless hour of pieces. The group had recorded the ten improvisations live in the studio The Playroom in Somerset, using all manner of sound making devices, some specially built for the task, creating the 'right' atmosphere and then sending the sound through an array of effects. The result, LGY 004 CD, is an ambient album of invention and brutal contrasts. Discernable influences are from dark 'isolationist' electronica and dub techno, it is nonetheless expansive, panoramic, human music; forward looking and civilising. Dash Tall and Johnny Future were also working on personal electronic music, all the while looking to invigorate the group efforts. The two albums that came out as a result of these sessions were released simultaneously. Pan techno icon, Dash Tall's deviant electronica alias was one, with the album "Brawling in an art hangout", LGY 005 CD, and John's meshing of various electrostyles as Ch... was LGY 006 CD, the album "Experimental clothing stories", subsequently licensed to cult New York dub/hiphop/electronica label ION.

Dash Tall had been spending a lot of time in his studio The Playroom after rolling and writing off his car. Experiences like these teach us values and meanings, and bubbling just under the surface of his debut solo work "Brawling in an art hangout" are a tesselation of concerns and reverberations. The titles of the tracks are juxtapositions of "found" phrases, as if a city-dwelling Europhile from another continent had grabbed them from the ether and rearranged them for new meaning. This abstract approach is echoed in the Pan techno icon way of arranging sound, and, indeed, in Dash Tall's own painting. Abstract Expressionism in particular, painters like Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko, is a chief influence on the music. Dash had been seeing a lot of Hiram McGlider whilst in Street, and he was influencing the sound of the album as well. The two would sit up for hours talking about electropop, microtonality and Kurt Schwitters with a good Petaluma or Chalone chardonnay. There are a few experiments with the Sigma Pulse Plus sound regeneration system on the album, but it was early days for this device, and it was hit and miss as to whether it would even work for the length of a track. It also meant that all the synthesisers and drum machines and tape recorders needed to be set up within a few yards of McGlider's electronic gizmos, which didn't aid the recording process. A lot of time was spent running around separating wires to avoid hums, usually with the result that no sound at all came out. The strong electropop influence on the album was also chiefly down to Hiram. He was missing making these tunes himself, and was endlessly encouraging Dash to make Desperately Unprofessional sound more like his previous band, Systematic August. Of course, Desperately Unprofessional had always been firmly rooted in the sub-plot of English electronic pop music, and with Pan techno icon one of the stated desires for Tall was to capture the moment when electro turned into techno. "Brawling in an art hangout" was also the moment when noise making turned into pop music, and the full realisation for all involved in Lime Green Yellow that their organisation of sound and images placed them in the English art tradition.

Johnny Future was going through one of his feverishly creative patches, getting to grips with sampling and breakbeats. The results were hugely influenced by the drum n bass music running up to that point, but somehow not quite the same. It says a lot for his innately musically rhythmic pieces that "Experimental clothing stories" straddles techno and drum n bass and maintains an identity. If "Brawling in an art hangout" reflects the moment when electro turned into techno, then "Experimental clothing stories" brings to mind the time when a strand of techno journeyed into breakbeat. Evolving forms, mutations and questing impudicity, the evolution of electronic music is a strong part of the whole point and is written largely. For Ch... the influence was animation. Just as in cartoons any caper is possible, all you need do is imagine it, then draw it, so with modern musical equipment any music is possible. Digital "realms" of sound existing somewhere and then re-existing at the press of a sampler button. With Ch... you get the sense of a shadowy magician electrician in an enormous coat conjuring a meshed tangle of breaks and textures, and layering everything over a gutsucking sub-bass; there is no floor, just as though you've skidded off a cliff in a cartoon and are waiting to fall. The other innovation on the album was the use of electric guitars and samples of that sonic type, to add texture and riff excitement. No surprise that the album was picked up on by Norman at ION records, as a way of getting into this new English music; similar to music that has become easily quantifiable (hip hop, electro, reggae,etc.), but different enough to be slightly scary.

Following the first Curtains ep, "Accidents waiting to happen", LGY 007 CD, was potentially going to be difficult. It had been quite well-received, but flustered and confused as many as it had delighted. The decision was to turn up the pop dial another notch or two, at least for the opening song of the second ep. Lyrically, the ep "This is the long lie in" follows the point left at the end of the first, and borrows equally from Italo Calvino and The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Five pieces of music: four songs and one ambient electro "remix", the wall-of-sound was carefully sculpted, and gave a new excitement as it rolled the pure pop shell onwards over deep sexy bass. LGY 008 CD is asymmetrically designed Modernist pop music, and came out when the group was playing a few gigs, including the debut London concert. Live, the music is stripped down and excitable. Matt Moss, in particular is a nervy bundle of electrical energy, leaping up and down to the pounding beats, while Johnny Future floats an undertow of digitally enhanced guitar, and Dash Tall bounces an at times twangy, at times ultralow bass guitar into the admixture. The first song on "This is the long lie in", "Jet wash", is a live favourite, with its stepped structure leading into the bellowed chorus on a simple and effective pop-guitar riff. Since this time the group have been working on their debut album, "Fly to work", which we are looking to put out soon. Lots of songs recognisable from concerts, and mixed by Mark Bowyer at Small World. Defiantly in the English artpop lineage and blessed with whistling-milkman tunes, it's the first really important pop album of the new century, the best artpop debut since "Pink flag" and justifies recent claims of Curtains being the saviours of pop music.

The latest release from us at Lime Green Yellow is the second album from Pan techno icon, "Atlantech bossloper", LGY 009CD. This finds Dash Tall expanding on ideas from the first, and developing the abstract sound collage approach. It still concerns itself with electronica notions being bounced back and forth across the Atlantic between big cities and finding an echo in the middle of the twentieth century with abstract painters. The link between music and painting is made more explicit with some reproductions of some of Dash Tall's paintings as well as typographic pictures on the sleeve. The dripped and splashed paint and colourful textures are analogous to the dripped sound and layered tones and beats of the music. The same idea through different filters. The sound of the album is a further diseasing of electropop into contemporary electronica. There is a club influence, and ambient synthesiser giving a romantic English atmosphere, at times queasily microtonal and fourth-world, at others melancholic and yearning.

Other recent and notable work from Lime Green Yellow include a brace of soundtracks for exciting young Bristol-based filmmaker James Callow, a half hour film called "Cooking Pigeons" broadcast in 1998, and a 12 minute documentary, "Eden Approximately", broadcast early in 2000. This is a new approach for the LGY musicians, working with the strong willed and dynamic Callow, who always has ideas to spare, not least in the way he wants his films to sound, and therefore feel. The former film has an atmosphere of radio noise and static as the action takes place in a radio station, and the narrative uses radio and telephone waves as metaphors for human interaction. The keenly yearning denoument is dramatically underscored by a cover of The Byrds' version of "It's all over now Baby Blue", beautifully sung by Polly Carroll. The song is recorded in a style to fit the mood of the film, somewhere halfway between Stereolab and Portishead... For the latter film James required steaming, jagged, rusty moonshine music, a Somerset levels echo of delta blues and hillbilly noise. The documentary is a brief glimpse into the tribulations of chap running a car-breaking yard. Recorded in their Playroom studio, these pieces of music show the dextrous range of atmospheres that can be achieved with minimal budgets and a lot of imagination. There are vague plans to release these soundtracks on compact disc. Also soundtracking film in 1999 was the group Net, playing a concert of two hours along with cult science fiction film clips montaged together. Improvising both ambient and beat music, the group rejuxtaposed sound and image in a cacophanous but fun quest for new meaning.

The near future is an exciting one for Lime Green Yellow, with many pieces of music lining up for release. There is an album of ambient sound inspired by a Himalayan journey, "Our man in high places", by the group Placement completed. This will initially be in very limited quantities and beautifully packaged; a return to the beginnings of Lime Green Yellow, where the designers looked for an alternative to the "jewel box". The aim is to find affordable, exciting, good looking and unusual ways to package all Lime Green Yellow compact discs. There is a second Net album nearing completion, called "False colour pictures". This is another experimental journey in improvised pieces, played on electronic and electric machines, and as with the first some have been specially built for the task. The pieces were all recorded again in the Playroom, a comfortable and familiar environment, and although compact, the space is filled to cosiness with the paraphenalia of Net music making. This time the group has recorded much more music than before, to make the editing and juxtaposing of tracks when computer-mastering an important part of the process, even of the composition. Also look out for debut material from Desperately Unprofessional. We haven't decided the format yet; it could be a CD, or possibly vinyl, which might suit better the arch nature of the pop.

We have been receiving demo tapes from X. Bakke for the last few months. As far as we are aware he's still living in Norway, we keep in contact via his Hotmail address. His latest venture is a guitar troupe called Really Wild Generals, a blend of Duane Eddy twang and his corrosive noise. We hope to have something available soon. This is quite exciting as no one has heard from him for some time, and I don't think he had been aware of the upheavels within Lime Green Yellow back in 1992-3. We know a lot of grown up Belgian punk rockers who are going to be happy to hear something new.

Add to this various ongoing experiments by Matt Moss, Johnny Future and Dash Tall, individually, in pairs and as a trio, and this makes for an exciting future for pop music.