This is the first material I made as Illusion O recorded in the early to mid 90s (likely '93-95) when I was aged about 15 to 18 years old. These lo-fi recordings were made without any kind of multi tracking, sampling, sequencing or other DAW software. Everything was recorded into a tape recorder then played back at high volume with another tape recorder capturing the next layer. The process continued until the track was done, I got bored and moved onto the next thing or (in the case of A Thousand Fiery Pieces) a member of my family walked in the room interrupting the recording session. The tracks are influenced by the music I was really into at the time including bands like Stereolab, Huggy Bear, Gallon Drunk, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci and Pram as well as rave, jungle and weird experimental electronics and noise which I was becoming increasingly aware of.

The tracks were made with any instrument I could get my hands on which included (alongside a snare drum, guitar, bass and keyboard) records deliberately stuck in loops, video game sounds, cutlery being dropped, a hole punch, speech from audio tapes of talking books, random bursts of music from the radio, recordings played back via the high speed dubbing feature on one of the tape players and, most memorably, an ocarina sellotaped to my face and played whilst drumming at the same time in a bid to record two sounds in one take and keep the sound quality (which deteriorated with each recording playback) as high as possible. Dead Chaulmoogra features the final death rattle of an old hi-fi speaker that had been knocking around my family home for years waiting to be sacrificed at the alter of my crazed musical experimentation!

Originally compiled on a tape titled No Beats Till Bedtime and given to friends, this is is first time this material has been available digitally. The tape was catalogue 001 on Random Orbits- the label I started which reached the grand total of one release. All the tapes are, as far as I know, gone. If you do have a copy please get in touch as there are a few tracks that seem to have vanished along the way in the process of transferring from tape to digital some years ago. The start of Projection features the tail end of one of these missing tracks.

The name Illusion O and the B-movie theme of three of the tracks are inspired by the director William Castle who employed various gimmicks to accompany his movies. These including dropping a rubber skeleton from the celling of the cinema onto unsuspecting punters below or, most famously, buzzing the audience with a mild shock from electrified seats in the auditorium during screenings of The Tingler. Illusion O was a system Castle used during screenings of his movie 13 Ghosts involving the audience being given individual "Ghost Viewers" in order to spot otherwise hidden ghost images on screen.

Shout outs to all my good friends at the time (some of whom lent me records that feature on these tracks) and all the members of my old band Loomer. Thanks to my family for some of the instrument loans and a huge THANK YOU to Peter Rockmount for taking care of and then supplying the digital files without which a lot of this material would have been lost looooong ago!

Thanks also to the anonymous artist who produced the artwork for this release.

BIG LOVE X

Vicious Sticks Recordings
VSR030

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