In 2011, Julia Thompson (DJ Black B1tch) gave me a TDK SA90 tape of a spontaneous live jam by Insync recorded in her flat in Forest Hill, South London in March 1991. She had found it in a drawer when clearing out stuff. She gave it to me to listen to simply thinking I might be interested in hearing it. Of course I was, particularly because the date on the tape immediately told me that the session was recorded more than a year before the release of Insync’s debut, the seminal Storm on Irdial Discs. In fact Storm was recorded before this session but not released for more than a year after it. The A side of the cassette is a live jam comprising a bass-line/repeating melody and one other four-note motif. Other than that, Lee Purkis rinses a Yamaha SH101, SPX90, Roland 909 drum machine and some delays, to create a 43 minute journey that passes through beautiful elegiac ambient passages to crashing drums that had me nodding my head to the point that I had to force myself to sit still because of the shooting pains in my neck. Insync was accompanied by Paul Chivers aka Ramjack. Ramjack was playing an Ensoniq Mirage containing samples of himself playing various percussion instruments. I listened a few times to see if there were four 7+ minute sections that could be released as an ep. I thought there were, and here they are. Lee Purkis gave his permission for Third Ear to release the cuts, and the whole jam (available as 3eep201409). Next I contacted Stefan Betke at Scape Mastering to ask if he would listen to the tape to assess whether he could create a master that would sound good enough on a big sound system. Together we decided that he could. The sound quality of these cuts is a testament to Lee Perkis’ sound engineering and to Stefan Betke’s mastering. Judge for yourself. Guy McCreery.

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