Robert Rental takes up residence with Dark Entries again for an expanded double vinyl reissue of Mental Detentions. Robert Rental was a Scottish pioneer of DIY electronic music. Along with his illustrious collaborators like Thomas Leer and Daniel Miller, Rental helped shape the countercultural sound of the UK with his timely melding of Krautrock, dub, and punk. Originally from Port Glasgow, he moved to the south of England with Thomas Leer in the late 1970s, and became involved with the local music scene. Robert Rental however released very little of his solo music - the only solo recording from The 1970s is the 7" single "Paralysis" first released on the homemade Regular Records in 1978, and re-released on Dark Entries in 2020. Mental Detentions was released as a cassette in 1979, the same year as his masterpiece The Bridge, a collaboration with Thomas Leer. Using an assortment of budget electronics—a Roland drum machine, a kid’s Stylophone keyboard, and an Electroharmonix DrQ—Robert takes us on a gauzy, trip, at once expansive and intimate, minimalist and maximalist. “Stuck” is mangled motorik, like Neu! run through a meat grinder, while “Vox” meanders like an 18 minute ambient fever dream. Robert spoke to friends of his frustration at being unable to replicate his sound in a commercial studio - it was these demos' sound that he wanted to create. Sometimes having only access to the most rudimentary of equipment can sharpen one’s craft—necessity is the mother of invention, indeed. This ethic shines in his...
2XLP $29.00
11/01/2024
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Robert Rental is an artist as influential as he is overlooked. An anchor of the early British DIY and post-punk scene, his name is most frequently uttered alongside illustrious collaborators such as Thomas Leer and Daniel Miller. Dark Entries and Optimo ally to illuminate some of Rental’s early solo works with an expanded reissue of his debut 7” "Paralysis/A.C.C." Both labels have previously excavated Rental’s catalog; we reissued the collaborative LP with Glenn Wallis in 2017, and Optimo released a collection of demos in 2018. The double A-side "Paralysis /A.C.C." 7” was self-released on Regular Records in 1978, around the same time as Leer’s "Private Plane/Internationa"l 7”. The record is a perfect document of the DIY ethos. It was recorded with the assistance of Leer in the council flat that Robert lived in, using an assortment of budget electronics: a Roland drum machine, a Stylophone, an Electroharmonix DrQ, and a TEAC A3440 4-track recorder. The record’s sleeves were surreptitiously photocopied after hours at the offices of Virgin Records by Robert's partner Hilary Farrow, and the labels were hand-stamped The initial print run was a scant 650 copies. With its prominent notes of Krautrock, prog, dub, and ambient, "Paralysis/A.C.C." points to a then-emergent musical form. “Paralysis” makes its four and a half minute runtime feel like an eon, an endless morass of processed vocals and mournful melodies underpinned by the static whirrings of synthesizers. “A.C.C.” is an angular pop song that is at once both fractured and droning,...
12" $12.00
07/31/2020