This is truly a ‘bedroom band’. Schoolfriends Paul Fortune and Peter Fitzpatrick shared an interest in songwriting and the early 1980s synth-driven pop from Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Howard Jones, OMD, and Thomas Dolby.
Recording on a Tascam 144 4-track cassette portastudio and mixing to cassette the duo spent evenings and weekends through 1984 and 1985 with minimal equipment (until March 1985 they did not have a polyphonic synthesizer).
The instruments included a Roland CR-78 drum machine, Moog Rogue monophonic synthesizer, an acoustic 12-string guitar, a low quality 6-string electric guitar and a Casio keyboard of unknown ability.
A Roland Juno 106 was added in early 1985. Lacking in funds they did not have any effects and in order to produce echo/delay/reverb they discovered that they could ‘send’ the signal to a cassette recorder and then record it back to an empty track on the Tascam. The hit-and-miss approach to manual synchronisation produced interesting results. Trevor Horn was in no danger of losing a gig to Paul and Peter…
This instrumental track ‘You & I’ is one of the few recordings that survive. The clicking percussion was created by recording the clock voltage output of the Roland CR-78. The brass sound was from a borrowed Roland SH-101.
Want to hear my new demotape? 