Acetates and Reel-To-Reels

The story behind this somewhat different Spoke release begins approximately fifteen years ago when Col obtained two boxes of acetates and reel-to-reel tapes at a Chelmsford auction house.  Being unlabelled and having no means to play them, they were stored away for a good few years until a fellow vinyl nerd who also happened to be a vintage audio tech-head offered his services. 

The service provider came in the form of Ben Hayes AKA Soundhog and within a few weeks Ben was buried knee-deep in miles upon miles of spools.  Sadly, most of the tapes were blank/wiped or worse, in very poor and deteriorating condition.  It soon become apparent that these tapes had originally belonged to a studio associated to library/music publishers Boosey & Hawkes and Philips/Fontana as most of the known tracks came from affiliated artists. 

Predictably, the most exciting recordings appeared on the most corroded reels.  This is where Ben’s Soundhog persona took over; scavenging cellulose remnants and transferring elements before further oxidisation could occur.  It was obvious at a very early stage that we were dealing with alternate cuts to some very well known recordings but there simply wasn’t enough surviving copy to present them in their original form.

Luckily for Spoke, Soundhog is renowned as a pioneer of the bastard pop/mash-up craze of yesteryear and went to work on formulating sympathetic edits that astound and impress in equal measure.  Recently, select scene DJs have been using carves to great effect.  We love them and we know you will too.

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