Special discounted pricing. Originally released on cassette in the winter of 1984, together with the 7th issue of Komakino fanzine—included here in its original format—Afterglow is more than a compilation: it’s a cultural time capsule, a tangible distillation of the hopes, noise, and fragile alliances of Italy’s burgeoning post-punk and new wave underground. Across 14 tracks from 8 groups, the album reveals the very spirit of the Afterglow operation. Some bands had already found their way into the vinyl underground, forging reputations with scarce 7-inch singles and hard-won gigs; others would emerge shortly after this document, while a final handful would dissolve, leaving barely a ripple, their names little more than rumors in fanzine footnotes.
Yet this flux defines Afterglow. As the compulsive linearity of mainstream music history falters, the album stands as a reminder of a time when small gestures—a home-recorded demo, a risky lyric, a photocopied sleeve—were authentic stances, and when the act of inclusion in a DIY compilation marked a band’s first, and often last, foray into a fiercely selective but welcoming community. The sound is bracing and varied: tense minimal synths bump elbows with agitated guitars, anxious Italian lyrics mix with stark English aphorisms, and production values range from resolutely lo-fi to surprisingly lush. As with so many DIY operations, the beauty often emerges from constraint, from tracks where tape hiss, reel irregularities, and suburban ambience are rendered not as flaws but as proof of lived reality.
Reissued now with the original fanzine, Afterglow serves not just nostalgia but critical substance. It represents a cross-section of a scene in motion, where bands like those included may have navigated fleeting moments of popularity or quickly faded from view, yet each contributed to a vibrant constellation of creative resistance. In an age before streaming and social platforms, this compilation is evidence that what lasts is not merely what survives, but what still glows at the margins, illuminating the ways in which amateurism, risk, and community can birth genuine art. For listeners and collectors today, Afterglow is both artifact and alive—proof that the most consequential musical revolutions often begin with the hum of a cassette deck and the flicker of Xeroxed paper.
