1983 Unearthed

12″ vinyl of unreleased OYC early years.

‘EARLY WORKS OF CHARMING INSIGNIFICANCE’

Previously unreleased, these tracks are the missing link between the band’s Untitled 10″ and Scene In Mirage LP. A shadow album to their debut, it shows the inner workings of a group of Nottingham 19 year olds finding thier sound, embracing electronica but moving towards ambient. At times naive but always charming.

This excavation is based on a very deep dive into the various cassettes and master tapes of their archive. While OYC had thought they’d documented their early years sufficiently with the Ambiguism box set, it soon became obvious the task was incomplete. They reassessed many unreleased tracks they had previously thought insignificant and of no value, and were surprised to discover that wasn’t the case.

1983 Unearthed can be seen as a forerunner to Scene in Mirage, sharing the same format of two opposed and contrasting sides. The U side (tracks 1-6) is compiled from unreleased beat-driven cassettes, while the Y side (tracks 7-10) is primarily from the ambient soundtrack to an early unreleased version of their Peripheral Vision video.

Despite the radically different approaches, this record shows that 1983 was a defining year for the band as they strove to find their sound.