Tracklist
1. Little Bob Minor 03:33
2. Blackheath Episode 04:47
3. Hiemal 04:52
4. Slip Slap 01:37
5. Solely From 06:37
6. Under Press Of Sail 05:01
7. Scratch Dub 06:26
8. Hodge 06:42
9. He Rose Up Again 03:09
10. Reprint 2 (Extract) 03:29
11. Karl's Empty Body - 1464 03:07
12. Nasal Passage 03:07
13. Winter Trees (Extract) 05:06
14. Slow Along The Wire 01:24
15. Maps 03:21
16. Cat Skin Shine 01:08
17. On One Of These Bends 04:04
18. Bugs Are Back (Instrumental) 02:08
Credits:
Format: DL (
Release Date: 2025
Label: Snatch Tapes
Catalogue Number: None
Production/Music Sleeve Design: Philip Sanderson
Notes:
Review by Derek Walmsley. The Wire August 2025
The music of post-punk duo Storm Bugs and their Snatch Tapes label is a shape-shifting mass of tape murk, surreal songcraft, dirty electronics, mysterious distortion and rogue echoes. Variātiōnēs - The VCS3 Variations opens the bonnet and provides a brief glimpse of how the South East Londoners' music worked, by pulling together some of the electronic sketches made by Philip Sanderson which cropped up across Storm Bugs, Snatch Tapes and solo recordings in the late 1970s and early 80s.
The EMS VCS3 synth - an instrument with a patchboard matrix but no keyboard, which Sanderson was fortuitously able to use at both Morley College and Goldsmiths while studying in London - underpins the music here. Variātiōnēs spans abrasive sequences of bleeps and beats such as "Blackheath Episode" and "Under Press Of Sail", weird instrument treatments such as Karl's Empty Body's "1464" (previously featured on a Vinyl On Demand collection), and thrilling and unfathomable collages like "Scratch Dub", which features magpie musical additions from David Jackman and a spoken rumination from Graham Massey, later of 808 State.
The vibe is equal parts Cabaret Voltaire's Attic Tapes and the homemade techno of Nocturnal Emissions's Accumulator. The music exemplifies how post-punk was never just a genre, style or set of musical motifs, but more like a space of possibilities which mixed and matched musical materials and took control of the means of production. Their music continues to flux and mutate over three decades later - "The Bugs Are Back" eventually formed the backbone for a song for the Storm Bugs comeback around the turn of the millennium, and Sanderson's recent Snatch Tapes Symphony release on Bandcamp continues the endless mix and match process.