Daquise by Leopards of white

This album was originally released on a very limited edition cassette in 1985. It was produced using what was, by modern standards, a very primitive set of equipment: a few monosynths and drum machines, which were bounced between two cassette decks. Given that none of the instruments were fitted with MIDI (which had only just been invented!), all of the pieces were performed live, then overdubbed with a second layer of performance. They have been reproduced here exactly as offered on the original cassette, complete with the occasional tape drop-out and plenty of hiss. These are elements that we tried hard to avoid during the original recording, but today tape saturation, noise and other artefacts are considered to represent the height of analogue goodness, so we have left them in. Also, the instruments featured (chiefly the Pro-One and Roland SH101, with TR606 drum machines) are now considered to be vintage classics; at the time, they were simply the cheapest synths available and all we could afford!

Stylistically, these pieces were very much inspired by the electronic music of that particular time: early '80s Tangerine Dream, and the community of other musicians who this group inspired, particularly Mark Shreeve. In other words, a style that today would probably be referred to as 'Berlin School', with plenty of analogue synth sequences, but also featuring the drum machines that had recently become available. Thematically, the album was inspired by an Inter-rail trip that we made together across Europe, just before recording it. The legacy of the Napoleonic and Hapsburg empires seemed to be everywhere we went.

At the time, this album was featured on the Inkeys cassette magazine, and since then, it has occasionally cropped up on Discogs and once on college radio in the USA. So it has never been quite forgotten. For us it represented some of our earliest attempts at playing around with synthesizers, which subsequently developed into a life-long hobby. But rarely has playing synths together been as much fun as it was that summer.

Downtempo ambient music made from analogue synths, sequencers and drum machines