>
<

Cache Cache

48 CHAIRS - 70% Paranoid

"Documenting 48 Chairs, the unlikely coupling of British free jazz bastion Lol Coxhill and the saucy synth pop don't-wannabes known as Gerry And The Holograms, 70% Paranoid is a rare incognito full-length album. It bridges the micro-niches of electronic jazz and punk jazz from a band formed in 1979 at an axis where DIY and new wave hadn't quite collided! With sprinklings of post-punk female vocals worthy of PragVEC and Suburban Lawns, featuring angular art rock paeans to voodoo dolls and closed-circuit TV, this privately pressed LP comes directly from the man who gave Factory Records's Martin Hannett some of his best ideas and wrote the blueprint for Manchester's new musical order. Imagine if Talking Heads became Mark E Smith's backing band for a week before being sacked for wearing a Frank Zappa t-shirt while Eric Dolphy forgot to take his headphones off. If that sounds attractive, one should be paying double. A genuine lost moment from the post-punk era with progressive pop credentials from the university of Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias before everyone got a job at the local Factory. Why are you the only person who doesn't know about this? As one of the few fully formed feature-length album projects of the immediate independent post-punk era, the 1981 album 70% Paranoid by 48 Chairs is still often referred to as one of Manchester's best-kept secrets by many of the anti-genre's most switched-on collectors and critics. Combining the talents of the squat-pop synthesists who brought you Gerry And The Holograms with the free jazz Brit-skronk of Lol Coxhill and gelled together with vocals by female punk one-timer Fran Kershner, this seldom-travelled, hand-assembled LP was both deeply underground and wildly overambitious, earning it an inverted status as a genuine "unknown pleasure". Politely waiting in queue for delayed accolades to this day, 70% Paranoid was born out of a direct reaction to the short-lived journalistic cranny known as "new-music" which bridged the pigeonholes of punk-rock and new-wave allowing a small wide-eyed flock to escape the coup in the process. Evading the final nails in the coffin of prog and jazz-rock and dreading the reverse reverb of the New Romantic onslaught, a certain breed of overqualified underdogs, with small plates and huge Zappa-tites took the Mancunian manifesto of do-it-yourself and decided to do-it-your-own-way instead, with a secret hope that the book shelf was gonna collapse either way." - Finders Keepers.
  • Sale
  • Regular price $28.00


After nearly a decade of false starts, multiple game plans veering off the rails, and a handful of shattered hopes and/or dreams, the odyssey is finally complete—the new Fusetron site is here.

This is the first phase of a multipart rollout that will span the next few months: the currently browsable stock includes miscellaneous new releases from the past 8+ months (we have a lot of catching up to do), plus approximately a third of our backstock. Note that we’ve reduced/slashed prices on many titles and will continue to do so in order to make room for new stock. We’ll also be expanding / tweaking / improving / debugging the site itself (for example, we still have work to do on the automated international postage system, not to mention the inevitable inventory discrepancies that come with transferring an ancient and massive database to a new system).

Over the next few months, as we take inventory, clean house, and delve into our storage, we will be uploading thousands of additional items, gradually, on a near-daily basis. This will include the majority of the LPs, as well as many titles, in all formats, once thought long-gone. Many currently “sold out” items are likely to resurface.

Finally, once our general backstock is up (probably in the next two or three months) we’ll begin making our extensive stockpile of rarities available online for the first time: tons of random out-of-print titles, "deadstock," warehouse finds, secondhand collectibles, etc., accumulated over the past few decades.

Frequent/returning customers will be getting early access to these items. Details to follow on how this will work (a priority mailing list? a 'frequent flyer'-like program?), but it will not be based on dollars spent. We want to reward those who consistently support us, especially in the discogs marketplace era (to those who show up trying to poach five copies of a one-off rarity, and nothing else, ever… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ).

So—we suggest you take some time to dig through the site—even we’ve been surprised by what’s been turning up, and there’s much more to come.
I understand these terms

Sale

Unavailable

Sold Out