Ray Taylor

Born in 1949. I started collecting music in 1962. Mostly into early English Beat groups, Jamaican Reggae, Early American Garage Punk etc.Then moved onto mid-sixties Psychedelia and American West Coast Bands. With lots of other genres of music thrown in along the way.Onto the Seventies, and heavily into Punk, Industrial, Experimental and electronic Music.

At this point decided to have go at my own music. Started out with a couple of old keyboards and various pieces of recording equipment. My early tracks were recorded on an old Revox, reel to reel. Lots of over-dubbing and tape splicing occurred! I am completely self-taught and not had a music lesson in my life, I play by ear.

Then moved onto recording on cassette . Bought myself a four track Tascam analogue recorder. Continued recording and multi-tracking and most of the material was either Experimental or Industrial. A combination of instruments and everyday sounds messed around with via sound-effects units. Due to house moves, sometimes The Studio was in the front room, the back room, the attic and even once the cupboard under the stairs!

Along the way I learnt to play the guitar, the bass, piano, started to attempt vocals etc. And combined all this With other peculiar instruments from various continents around the world. If it makes a noise I will use it. Feed it through sound-effects units and come up with something completely different to it’s intended sound.

Old Tascam analogue recorder became faulty as cassette would not play correctly. I now use it as a feed, and use the monitor out as a direct output to record onto a CD burner. I use the original parts and input them back through the Tascam and then back onto the CD burner whilst adding my next section. I keep on over-laying until I have a completed track.

I have no desire whatsoever to change to digital or use computers as I love analogue! To this day I still record in my front room and don’t care too much if the microphone picks up any ambient noise. As it sometimes becomes incorporated in the track. The fun of being an amateur musician.

As you can imagine I have a vast music collection which consists of thousands of pieces of vinyl, 7” and 12”. Also, somewhere in the region of ten thousand CDs. Plus four and a half thousand cassettes. Not much room for furniture! Amongst the cassette collection I have several hundred relating to the DIY period of 1976-1982. Most of these are either Punk, Experimental, Industrial.Some may have only had a limited number of releases I.e.. 5. Others may have been numbered up to 200 etc. They were all on minor labels done by DIY enthusiasts and the only way I could purchase these particular items Was through the fanzines of the time. This is where my material was often reviewed and from this point onward I received lots of interested mail. I at this point allowed some of my tracks to be released on other DIY tape releases Usually compilations put together by other like-minded people. In countries such as Portugal, Greece, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and the USA.

I have been involved in lots of other musical projects I.e.. Run a pirate radio station, played out live doing DJ Sets. Before going solo, I played in various Punk/Gothic bands including; Passion of Death, Idoleyes, Royal Humane Society, Audio research Inc., etc. I still have all these recordings, but only on cassette, none of which were released commercially, only through me.

As of today and at the ripe old age of 61 ( pictures on CD taken in my 60th year). I am still continuing to record new material and will do so until the day I drop! Maybe now you will realise why I love what you are doing so much. I have just completed a double CD with a track from each year starting 1979 up to 2010. Each one does not necessarily represent that year as I record in general about twelve tracks a year. And they are very varied.