Philip Sanderson

By 1981, after four years of DIY electronics, it was time for a change. For Philip Sanderson that change came in the form of film. At first, requests came from friends for soundtrack work, and by the end of the decade he was making short experimental 8mm films himself. On One Of These Bends is a collection of unreleased songs, soundtrack work and obscure cassette-only pieces from the 80’s which reflect Philip’s shift in focus. It was a departure from the industrial music he had been making with his group Storm Bugs, having more in common with Nino Rota and Henry Mancini, albeit as seen through a DIY lens, and with a reel-to-reel orchestra comprised of an EMS VCS3, vibraphone, DX7, Roland SH-101, Roland TR-606, tape delay, acoustic guitar, fretless bass and Yamaha FB-01. On two numbers, Philip jokingly asked an American chanteuse to “sing it like a cross between Streisand and The Shangri-Las”, and to his surprise she did, the results sounding like a loungey AC Marias, or a lost early Crépuscule recording by Anna Domino. Counterpointing this are tracks such as E For Echo made with just an acoustic guitar, and the very first piece Bright Waves which combines the choral vocal talents of Nancy Slessenger with a Revox tape delay system, originally released on his own label Snatch Tapes, under the pseudonymous duo Claire Thomas & Susan Vezey.

These tracks are presented with the ‘picture turned down’ so to speak, and as such the music acts as a kind of memento mori for the absent moving images, and maybe even for the decade itself. Remastered from the original reels, DMM pressing.