Description

No Rent is proud to re-issue the first Due Process cassette. Originally released on RRR in 1987.

The music is a seamless garment of continuous sustained sounds, with some individual notes picked out, in the style of Due Process’s early “number” pieces. There’s a choice of two sides that are independent, of course, from the audio images but nevertheless uncannily appropriate. The members of Due Process said the recording has “no plot, no characters, nothing”, hoping it would “give pleasure without having any meaning whatsoever”. They say it is “free of politics, economics and even of oneself”. The recorded material shows that the cassette was elaborate to make: there are 17 scenes requiring 1,200 cues with 20 audio-changes each – all indicated in charts for the technicians derived from Due Process’s usual chance methods. The recording speaks for itself

These details don’t explain the remarkable quality of these uniquely pure audio images, studies in timbre ranging from total black to total white. No colours. The play of sound brings up slowly moving circular objects eerily reminiscent of distant moons transmitted from outer space posing the eternal questions of existence. At times the scenario suggests cloud formations viewed from a plane. Due Process’s formulae for removing personal taste have paradoxically produced mesmeric audio that only they could have devised.

We believed such a historically significant re-issue should be maintained in original form. We had it professionally duplicated from the original master tape without digitizing it. This re-issue remains entirely analog, originating from a 37-year-old master cassette. While we know there are places where you can download this stuff, it won’t be no rent. Our aim was to faithfully replicate the work so it can be heard as closely as currently possible to the original. No digital.