OUTER HIMMALAYAN PRESENTS

Soft Drinks - Pop Stars In Pyjamas Soft Drinks - Cinzano Wet Dreams Soft Drinks - Dangers of Drink Soft Drinks - Misconception The Magits - Fragmented The Magits - Disconnected The Magits - Disjointed The Magits - Detached The Magits - A Pawn In The Game S-Haters - Death Of A Vampire S-Haters - Research S-Haters - The Deepest Of Reds S-Haters - Drift S-Haters - Industry & Nature S-Haters - 1980 Dark Entries and Sacred Bones team up to release the early discography of UK synth-punk and Deathrock label Outer Himmalayan Records. Between 1979 and 1982, Nick Blinko and Martin Cooper™s Outer Himmalayan Records released 7-inches by three short-lived bands  The Magits, Soft Drinks, and S-Haters  who would nonetheless cast a massive shadow on the UK™s burgeoning post-punk/anarcho punk scene. Outer Himmalayan Presents collects all of the music found on those original records, along with rare and unreleased tracks by all three bands. It™s a snapshot of a period of frenzied creativity by some of the UK™s most thrilling experimental punks. Before Blinko went on to found the essential anarcho band Rudimentary Peni, whose storied body of work also appeared on Outer Himmalayan, he and label co-founder Cooper were The Magits. The lone release by the minimal synth-and-vocals duo, Fully Coherent, was the inaugural release on Outer Himmalayan ž and, in fact, Blinko and Cooper™s impetus for starting the label. The four tracks on Fully Coherent are short, sharp bursts, comprising a total of four minutes. Here, they™re presented alongside the five-and-a-half minute šA Pawn in the Game,› a song that sees Blinko and Cooper get truly weird with the extra space the longer runtime afforded them. The next release on Outer Himmalayan was S-Haters™ Death of a Vampire 7", which the quartet quickly followed with Stories as Cold as the Irish Sea. The band was recognizably a deathrock act, their gothic punk in the same lineage as Joy Division and PIL™s Metal Box, but it showed the same sonic adventurousness that characterized the rest of Outer Himalayan™s output. š1980,› an oddity taken from the rare Another Bouquet on the Grave of Free Enterprise cassette comp, shows the most experimental flourish, with dueling male/female vocals and a prominent acoustic guitar. The final Outer Himmalayan release before it became strictly a Rudimentary Peni label was Soft Drinks™ Popstars in Their Pyjamas 7". Popstars ended up being the tongue-in-cheek synth-punk trio™s only release before their breakup, though they would also record šDangers of Drink,› for the Bouquet of Barbed Wire comp and included here, as well as the one-off track šMisconception,› previously unreleased but now available exclusively on Outer Himmalayan Presents. All songs have been mastered for vinyl by George Horn at Fantasy Studios. Cover artwork features a collage by Eloise Leigh and each copy includes a 20-page zine featuring liner notes and ephemera associated with the original pressings plus never before seen photos.