Strawberry Birthmarks

Jowe Head's first post-Swell Maps recordings from 1980 and a further session from 1982 after his first LP 'Pincer Movement' was released in 1981. 6 tracks from these recordings were released on Constrictor in Germany in 1986 alongside tracks from Pincer Movement as 'Strawberry Deutschmark' but the other 13 here are previously unreleased. Completely remixed by Jowe Head in 2020 for Glass Modern. "I recorded these tracks in my home at Londesborough Road, Stoke Newington, between 1980-1982, using a TEAC 4-track reel-to-reel tape recorder. All instruments played by me: electric guitar, fretless bass, electric fire, typewriter, sticks, a battered trumpet and an old harmonium. Overdubs recorded at GWBB in 1983. Remixed at Perch Street in 2020. Words and music composed by me. Being a musical magpie, It seems that I nicked a line from an aria in ”La Boheme”, some ghastly opera by by Puccini, and used it on “February”. There is also a phrase from Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So” stories in “Cooling Fins”, and a bit of Mark Twain in “Tar Babies”. I also found some old tape-boxes in a bin outside a film studio in Soho. This was fortunate indeed, since I was broke, and that gave me some more tape to record onto, and they also yielded some bizarre dialogue, used on trailers to promote old horror films and martial arts movies, so you can hear fragments of these." (Jowe Head, November 2020)