❉ Martin Ruddock excavates cult label Buried Treasure’s hidden gems.
We Are Cult like to run reviews, features, and Q&As on things and people we like, that we think would be of interest to our readers. We obviously cater to a broad church, from Lindsay Anderson to Gerry Anderson, from Fire Records to ‘The Water Margin’, and so on. Many of us take great pleasure in digging around record crates and eBay looking for the kind of exotic, esoteric records that float our boats. We enjoy the thrill of discovery and we like to share it with you. (Yes we do. Go check out that Pattern Forms album we told you about. Off you pop.)
With that spirit of sharing in mind, we’d like to introduce the aptly-named Buried Treasure Records, a wonderful repository of electronic, tape, radiophonic, jazz, psychedelia, folk and library music.
It’s best described as an online Old Curiosity Shoppe, releasing archive and new music in the grand tradition of De Wolfe and KPM’s vintage library releases. The sleeve artwork’s great too.
The newer sounds on offer from Buried Treasure include the ambient electronic folk of Revbjelde, who create Folk Horror-tinged music for the wee hours steeped in folklore, myth, and the old, weird England.
There’s also The Dandelion Set, whose ‘A Thousand Strands 1975-2015’ is a wonderfully inventive collaboration with Alan Moore (yes, that Alan Moore), evoking White Noise, jazz, early electronica, and the kind of music King Crimson might have made had they worn red plastic raincoats and been into Stereolab.
Both artists feature on ‘The Delaware Road‘, a lovingly curated ‘illusory motion picture soundtrack’ that’s both a feast for the ears and a genuinely disorientating experience. It sounds very much like an occult office party being held in the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s Maida Vale studios. It’s probably the best starting point for investigating Buried Treasure’s output.
There’s also a feast of archive material on offer. The Vendetta Tapes is a collection of incidental music cues composed by electronic-jazz whizz John Baker for the 1966 series ‘Vendetta’ – which manage to be droney and electronic whilst packing more swing than a Pro Golfer on powerful amphetamines.
The collection ‘Rare Moogs, Psych, and Brass‘ is a real treasure trove of weird pop-funk, and probably the closest Buried Treasure comes to a (non occult office) party album.
There are also rarities like Groundhogs frontman Tony McPhee’s 1973 prog track The Hunt, given a modern reworking by Revbjelde, who frame McPhee’s ghostly vocal with a blitzkrieg of beats and bleeps.
Physical releases from Buried Treasure tend to be pressed in small numbers and sell out quickly, but the entire catalogue is still available digitally at the label’s BandCamp page. There is much to enjoy, even without a physical copy to thumb and admire. We Are Cult advise you to get digging.
❉You can follow ‘Buried Treasure’ on Twitter, ‘like’ them on Facebook or visit their BandCamp site.
