Eugenio Bennato Carlo D'Angiò
Garofano D'Ammore

Formed in 2015, Vanishing Twin came together to make an exploratory record that marries English pop with a palette of arkestral sounds. Having previously released a string of conceptual cassettes under the name Orlando, founder Cathy Lucas named the group after her vanishing twin, an identical sister absorbed in utero, when they were both still a cluster of cells.Enlisting the help of producer Malcolm Catto (Heliocentrics, DJ Shadow, The Gaslamp Killer) the band began work at his London studio, Quatermass Sound Lab, last spring. Recording the basis for eight tracks, they blended structure and improvisation in pop songs that describe a personal mythology through the adventures of Lucas's vanished twin. Drawing on sounds outside of the usual pop vocabulary, the group used forgotten drum machines, home-made electronics, vibraphones, tablas, and harp to invoke the esoteric psychedelia of lost soundtracks, radiophonic experiments and minimal music orchestras. In a studio that Catto built for maximum atmosphere and minimum interfere, and crammed with obscure vintage equipment, he brought his own distinctive sonics to the table, informed by outsider jazz, Italian library music and ethnographic field recordings.Vanishing Twin is made up of singer Cathy Lucas (Innerspace Orchestra), drummer Valentina Magaletti (Raime, Tomaga, Uuuu, Neon Neon), bassist Susumu Mukai (Zongamin, Floating Points), library music head Phil M.F.U. (Man From Uranus, Broadcast) on strange sounds, and film maker and visual artist Elliott Arndt on flute and percussion.

Eighteen sacred psychedelic suppositories from the laboratory of mad scientist and scalpel-happy pop mutilator Jean-Pierre Massiera. Includesthe rarest and most sought after fuzz funk, spooked surf andinterplanetary prog from ‘The French Joe Meek’ and all his schizoid splitpersonalities and freakish friends - The Maledictus Sound, ChicoMagnetic Band, Visitors, Human Egg, The Pirhana Sound and Jesushimself. Let Finders Keepers introduce you to some old friends of theirs - Charlie Mike Sierra, Jean-Pierre Areisam, JPM and Co. Erik, The Horrific Child, Jesus, Les Maledictus Sound, Human Egg... This might sound like they’re flicking through the imaginary LP racks in the record shop from ‘A Clockwork Orange’ or perhaps congratulating the runners up in aHalloween fancy dress competition but for the previously uninitiated youhave just been ordained into the congregation of the many splitpersonalities of one Mr. Jean-Pierre Bernard Massiera. Bow down to thenine-headed monster as he mutates and shape-shifts back through timeto his humble beginnings in a Buenos Aires province ravaging andpillaging the music of the European people for his own twistedbenediction along the way. This might, as intended, sound a little bit dramatic but if there is onesingle ingredient that gives the eccentric Jean-Pierre Massiera hisdistinct flavour it’s a large dollop of drama. Add sprinklings ofschizophrenia, shock, myth and macabre and you are on the way to a Bmovie broth with an acquired taste that has, like all the best cheese,taken over thirty years to mature to perfection. Like all the best monsters,his split personality is the key to his infamy and the secret of his bloodsucking success. This is why Jean-Pierre Massiera is (un)commonly known for two keyperiods in his career which, like a worm, can be split down the middle tothrive and flourish independently. To cut a long story short, Massiera is,above all, a lover and purveyor of musique fantastique, and is willing andable to hijack whichever stylistic vehicle that passes him buy in order todo feed his lust. In the earlier part of his career he honed his sordid craftamongst psychedelic circles in Nice and Quebec. From late 1972onwards he moved to Antibes and started a disco revolution andbecame an in demand cosmic record producer. For years, prog rockobsessives and disco aficionados have wondered if there was twounrelated freak merchants called Jean-Pierre Massiera but, in this rareinstance, exploito-maniacs from both sides of the cosmic coin are unitedby the work of this singular, single-handed monstrous musicmanufactory. Remastered and available once again on deluxe black vinyl since theinitial Finders Keepers limited edition 2009 pressing

Back in 1980, The Pump sessions prefigured Nocturnal Emissions. The same personnel (Nigel and Daniel Ayers + Caroline K) was later credited in the first NE performance in March 1981. Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire opened a path and a kind of DIY sound collage practice became popular in the underground. More punk than punk, right? With synth, bass, guitar and vocals, The Pump could almost be mistaken for a new wave band, but it was the start of a long, prolific and eclectic journey for Nigel Ayers, sole member of Nocturnal Emissions for quite a while now. Although it is not at all obvious, by 1980 Nigel had been exposed to a few dub tricks and mainly the otherwordly spatial sounds and breaks: «In the late 70s I became aware that dub producers such as Lee Scratch Perry, Prince Far I - and sound systems - were doing something with sound that was a very new and different approach. It was in the separation of recorded sound into very spatial elements, working very sculpturally with sound. I had absorbed the space concerns of Hendrix years before I got into dub, and the spatial elements within Gong, Hawkwind, early Pink Floyd, Velvet Underground, BBC Radiophonic Workshop, etc. When we did The Pump, we lived in Brixton and spent a lot of time absorbing dub in the streets and shebeens.»Growing up in the Peak District (northern England) during the 1960s didn't put one directly in touch with black culture or music. There was one black kid at school and «to see a black person you'd have to go to Manchester or Sheffield.» And mainstream culture tends to ridicule outsider forms and expressions, so a popular idea of reggae came through in things such as the novelty single "Johnny Reggae" by The Piglets, released in 1971. By that time, Nigel was already listening to a few reggae singles his dad brought home from Sheffield, where he worked. He remembers the labels being scratched and thinking it must be because the records were so rude, meaning lyrical content. His artistic inclinations led him to spend more time at home trying out his skills with Super8 films and pasting soundtracks onto them. One of the first he remembers was a loop worked out from side B of one of those singles (the traditional instrumental Version on reggae singles). First heard about tape loops from "Dr Who" on TV, a weekly show that imprinted strange sounds and sights on kids' minds since the first episode in 1963. More experiments followed, loops and cut-ups recorded to cassette with full conscience that non-musicianly, non-conventional approaches were sanctioned by such names as Captain Beefheart and Brian Eno.Punk made it easier for everyone aspiring to make a point with music, it created a context for rawness and spontaneity. «Punk was a necessary break from virtuosity, and a good thing. I dug punk, a lot of ideas about accessibility, tackling racism, sexism and species-ism, were brought to the foreground. And it created an infrastructure for the zine culture, and cassette culture, autonomous collectives & networked DIY.» Only the way most early punk bands recreated dub and reggae didn't strike a chord with Nigel Ayers: «That's more to do with questions of my own personal taste and preference, which is by no means fixed.» Things became more serious when "Tissue Of Lies" came out in 1980 and Nocturnal Emissions steadily became hot within the so-called industrial culture (or counterculture). Although never explicitly adopting a dub format, its techniques and inspiration certainly informed many of the more rhythmic tracks NE recorded over the years. «Personally I was trying to create something that integrated my own personal experience and had a focussed ethic in content, personnel, production and distribution. Women collaborators have been vital , for example, as active creators - not as set dressing. Caroline K (for example) had technical proficiencies that aren't often expected in a male-dominated music world, she ran her own studio and later became a telecommunications engineer.»Come 2010 and the love of dub finally surfaced explicitly on a very limited "In Dub" CDR. All the space is there, some might say also the industrial weight and - dare we say it - the weight of crumbling capitalism (notoriously visible after 2008). There's a sort of robotic pace in these dry statements of political commentary, not really the same as in 80s digital dancehall or 90s digidub. It sounds like the kind of autonomous zone dreamed about since the punk and cut-up years and informed by all the accumulated background in electronic music and knowledge and respect for dub pioneers. "In Dub Volume 2" appeared in 2020, also strictly limited, framed by the early stages of the COVID experience, expanding on the same sonics, gently dragging the listener along for a thoughtful ride. The music on both volumes was recorded at leisure over a period of roughly 12 years and it hovers timelessly above. Heavily synthetic, learned and respectful music, alienated and in sync with the desire to escape (even if temporarily) to an artificial and abstract safe zone. We now present carefully selected tracks from both volumes, given a proper boost for vinyl by Douglas Wardrop (Bush Chemists, Conscious Sounds).