Play Struvé & Sneff

Brian Poole writes:
In all, about 250 copies of Struve and Sneff were made from 1979 to ( I guess) 1982 or 3. Each one was run off in realtime from the original master which was a 7" reel to reel 4 track tape made on an Akai 4000DS. The songs were mastered onto 2 tracks in one direction and we found an old improvisation going in the opposite direction on the other side. This sounded neat when it spun into and between the songs, so we kept it in.

The original copies were (invariably) recorded onto TDK AD tapes, the back 'spine' foldover should note this. But the labels stuck on the cassette will probably cover up the TDK logo leaving only the graphic stripes to identify it. I don't think any tapes were chrome .

The covers were photocopied onto different colour papers, after each batch of 10 tapes the colour would change. There was no record of the colour sequence except that the first 10 made were on golden yellow paper and the accent over the E of STRUVE on the spine foldover was accidentally left off. The next batch of 10 were on grey paper and the accent was put on. The cover was a folded sheet of (almost) A4, folded first lengthways then inwards into 4 panels. (Hope this is helpful, it's almost sounding archaeological !)

The tapes were generally sold by mail order and most were sold in the UK, Germany and some in Scandanavia. Some were sent to the USA, I think Ralph stocked a few.

On a trivia note - on side 2 on one copy we included a 'secret' extra track that we had just done, it was called 'I Believe In Bugs / Fennix' ,a rendition of an Ivor Cutler poem,it was never intended for release.