Regener 8! Altern 8 mark the 25th anniversary of their klaxon and samples driven debut as the rave scene's Vick's loving masked marauders with the release of a deluxe remastered edition of their iconic Full On Mask Hysteria album.It comes as a limited edition triple heavyweight release.And in true Altern 8 style there are 2 separate individually numbered editions - 001 to 808 and 001 to 303.Cut super loud to allow DJ support for tracks that were cut too quietly on the original 1992 LP for club plays, the album also features exclusive tracks. MMEMOR-8I'm tellin' ya - sometimes words aren't enough. You had to be there.John McCready,one time legendary Network rabble rouser publicist,sums it up best. Talking about the current lengthy dissertations on how dance music has gone on to conquer the world, he points out: "The writers do not even scrape the surface of understanding just how iconoclastically funny this music and its' intrepid architects could be. A music - some of it over 30 years old now - which has a life of its own, and an inner core still burning long after its creation"
We were in fact very serious about the music, but we never stopped smiling. And Mark Archer and Chris Peat had us grinning more than anyone else.
Network became the UK's best selling independent single label in 1992. PWL were not impressed. The same year, we released the "Full On Mask Hysteria" album which music industry experts pompously told us would not sell, as Altern 8 were by definition a singles only act'. It got to No 3. We were workaholics, it seemed like we were connected to the mains some days, and had lots of success,But to be clear, there was no master plan.Yes ,the emotions were electric. but the direction was often dsyslexic. We were surfing a manic Techno / Acid House/ Rave Generation wave and we were desperate not to fall off and drown. It was time of (to quote McCready again) "deranged plans, impossible schemes and wild conceits" and of course our masked marauders Mark and Chris were slap bang in the centre of it.
The credible thing to say would be that I met Mark on the dancefloor at The Hacienda. In fact it was at a small club, No 7's in Burntwood, near Cannock Chase in Staffordshire. On Thursday nights No 7's was taken over for an Acid House session, where my mate Pat Ward would be joined by Neil Macey on the decks. I lived nearby, and at the time was managing Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson, and Inner City ,as well as partnering Dave Barker with the Kool Kat and Network labels. So, when not having the time of my life in Detroit pretending to be a techno version of Brian Epstein,I would rock up at No 7's with my latest collection of one-off acetates of brand new recordings. They would be duly handed over to Macey to be given their first play in Europe. Surreal does not even begin to describe it.
Anyway, Mark and I bumped into each there, and he seemed most impressed that Derrick and Kevin had both actually been to Burntwood. We arranged for a meeting with him, and his Nexus 21 partner Chris Peat, at Network's Tudor building HQ in Sparkbrook, Birmingham,and soon after they were duly signed to recording and publishing contracts. The plan was to make perfect Techno records with not an air horn in sight. Mark and Chris were both inquisitive and bright, and they fitted well together because they were polar opposites. Mark the dance music fanatic contrasting with Chris the ace musican. I liked them a lot. Nowadays Mark gets the recognition because of all the other things he has done since Altern 8, and is still very active as a DJ and producer, but Chris was a vital component in what became the Altern 8 success story.
Kevin came up with a corker when we sent him the parts of Nexus 21's "Still Life (Keeps Moving)' to remix, supplying astonishing remoulds not just from himself, but also by then unknowns MK and Carl Craig. Soon after, the awesome new Nexus 21 recordings "Self Hypnosis" and "Bio-Rhythms" proved just how on top of their game Mark and Chris were, and led to Network financing a trip to Detroit where they had the time of their lives making music and talking Techno at Kevin's KMS Studio with MK, Anthony Shakir, and Jay Denham, plus vocalist Donna Black. The results had us flying back over the Atlantic thinking we had cracked it. Nexus 21 were about to become Techno Royalty.
Then it went... insane. A month before, purely as a sideline, the always inventive pair had come up with eight tracks of demented helium rave pastiches: all air horns, speaker destroying bass blasts, and naggingly catchy samples. We didn't quite know what to do with them.We agreed, as it was an alternative to Nexus 21,to release all the tracks on one 12" (the kind of things our pals at Nu Groove In New York were doing) and call the project Altern 8, rather than a proposed suggestion of Alternate.That (accidental) eureka moment let the genie out of the bottle. Nexus 21 was shelved, as the value for money vinyl 8 track 12" was released and sold, and sold and would not stop selling. It was swiftly followed by a proper single, the crackling energy rammed Infiltrate 202" which charted... Network's first Top 40 hit. The next single Activ-8 went to number 3. The follow up Frequency could, in the zeitgeist of the moment, have gone to No 1 if we had not (for some quixotic reason) limited the release to 9009 copies.
Mark and Chris took to turning up at Network having driven down the M6 motorway from Stafford to Brum in their dayglo dust masks and nuclear warfare suits, revving up their mini and doing wheelies,outside our office and revelling in the craziness. Now fully fledged pop stars, they gleefully joined in with the plots for our (budget and less pretentious) take on KLF type activities. As fast as they came up with new tracks,John and myself would compete with each other to conjure up more and more scams to a very gullible Dance Music and Red Top tabloid press: Hot air balloons flying over Stafford dropping disco-biscuit Christmas cakes to grateful pensioners, purchasing rave tanks, setting up an Altern 8 chip shop in Ann Arbor, Michigan, picking up a stranded Elton John on the motorway...Mark and Chris happily picked up the baton on all of them, with photos of the duo looking like deranged Budgies in the hazmat suits appearing here, there and everywhere. The hype was well and truly on.Dave Barker kept things ticking over for the label while we indulged ourselves.
Later on Chris stood for election to Parliament in the General Election against Tory grandee Bill Cash on a Rave ticket. If I remember correctly he did not finish last, proving that there were some people around even less in touch reality than we were. My 5 year-old daughter was turned into MC Crazy Clair intoning "Top One, Nice One, Get Sorted" on Activ 8. Maybe someone should have notified Esther Rantzen...but if they had, no doubt Mark and Chris (not ones to miss a trick) would have simply have sampled her outrage on the next single.
Some of the stuff became legendary. The film of mad-eyed young ravers dancing on top of the cars in Shelley's Car Park, at an impromptu open-air gig (we needed shots for a video) after the club closed is now iconic. We had no permission to do it, and I had a very irate club owner after my blood.
Yes, we were contriving events, , but to be candid nobody with an iota of common sense believed the nonsense they were printing. It was all a game, and in reality a kind of innocence surrounded the whole Altern 8 adventure. Back then,The Sun would run front page headlines about Evil Acid House barons destroying the country. However, Archer and Peat, the duo who personified this alleged threat to the nation's youth, would be more likely to be having a refreshing cup of tea at home in Stafford, than recognise,never mind get involved in,any E's Are Good activities. Their modus operandi was more like The Chuckle Brothers than some of The Kray Twins type characters controlling the less wholesome parts of Rave Culture at the time.
It's easy now, for the cynical, to sneer and characterise Altern 8 as simply cartoon rave, and claim they were not as "vital" as some enigmatic myth maker who never smiled (and only sold a few records, mainly because they weren't that good anyway). But just step back and listen to this album: It's anthemic and iconic, and as John put it, - has an inner core still burning long after it was created.
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You ask about credibility One Saturday night, I went with Mike Banks of Underground Resistance, the Techno god who was legendary for his hatred of the commerce that had become part of dance music's landscape, to a huge Rave somewhere in London, and Mike spent ages taking photos of Altern 8 on stage, basically ignoring everything else going on. I asked him why he was interested in our hit makers,surely they stood for everything he detested . "Are you kidding. I love those guys!" Mike replied...
Like I said you had to be there.
Lots of the above bits are (inevitably) sampled from McCready, a lesson learnt from Altern 8. Dedicated to Mark and Chris, Dave Barker and John McCready - watch yer bass bins, I'm telling ya!
Neil Rushton
