Sympathy Nervous - No More Expo (Negative Emission NE-1002T)

This is the second cassette by Sympathy Nervous on the Negative Emission label. After posting the previous cassette, It's Second Coming, I was made aware that the music was the same as the Mutant Sounds posting of 'No More Expo'. So, it seems the actual 'No More Expo' hasn't been posted online before.

In my previous post, I mentioned that 'No More Expo' seemed to have a thinner sound from using updated equipment. Maybe this is a result of going from analog to digital equipment? Without knowing the equipment used on this and 'It's Second Coming', it is only speculation.

However, what this may lack from earlier work is compensated with more texture and sophistication in programming. There is a lot more going on in these tracks, and at times, the ideas are very similar, especially the use of gated vocals and guitar.

I do not know the actual release date of this, but it is likely from the early to mid 80's. Assuming it is mid-80's or earlier, it still sounds like a lot of music that would be released years later. The music here doesn't fit the minimal dirty electro/techno of 'It's Second Coming', but it does resemble dark wave/synth/IDM. If this had been released on vinyl or CD originally, I could easily imagine hearing many of these tracks in industrial dance clubs of the mid/late 80's/early 90's.

In 1993, Sympathy Nervous & Negative Emission released a CD titled 'Tracks' (NE-C001). This CD features many of the tracks on the 'No More Expo' cassette in this post. I've heard that these are re-recorded versions from 'No More Expo' , but I can't confirm this. I found a copy of the 'Tracks' CD to download online. I listened to the samples but it is hard to tell what, if anything, is different due to the sound quality of the samples. There are three tracks on this cassette that don't appear to be on the 'Tracks' CD: Heart of the Sun, Pale Port, Spirit of the Bomb.

Some of the tracks segue into each other, so I've left them combined. Track A3 is A3-A6, and track B3 is B3 & B4 combined.

Tracklist:
A1 - No More Expo
A2 - Music of the S.N. Phase-1
A3 - Lace Master
A4 - Unicostume
A5 - Khaki Cloud
A6 - My Favorite Patch

B1 - Money Crisis
B2 - Heart of the Sun (Roger Waters)
B3 - Pale Port
B4 - Spirit of the Bomb
B5 - Mescal

Although it is hard to tell, the cover is grey. The cover on Mutant Sounds and Discogs appear to be light blue. Not sure if these are variants, or a result of scanning/photographing. The track is misspelled 'No Moer Expo'.

Coming up, something completely different....

Enjoy