THE CD SERVICES HISTORY OF

SYNTHESIZER INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC

It’s a bit of a plotted history of the UK ‘Electronic Music’ scene...The story starts back in 1980 when Andy G (now promotion manager at CDS) started Lotus Records, the first serious ‘EM’ mail-order outlet in the UK. Another rising retailer of the time was Richard Branson’s Virgin Records, and via just a few shops in major cities and a mail-order operation, they had already introduced the real pioneers of the genre: Tangerine Dream & Klaus Schulze to the masses. Top rock DJ Alan Freeman also played his part, with regular plays on his prime-time ‘Saturday Rock Show’ for the likes of Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis, paving the way for the pair to become future household names, but it was to be Lotus Records that would open the floodgates to a whole new world of ‘Electronic Music’ for those who wanted to listen.

Operating out of a shop in English midlands, Lotus imported instrumental ‘EM’ from a many different countries, offering music fans a wide choice of styles and their first opportunity to sample the works of musicians that are now considered to be some of the greatest names in the ‘EM’ business. The Lotus warehouse was an ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ that housed hundreds of fantastically illustrated albums that no-one had ever seen or heard of before, with cover art that, by it’s very nature, made you desperately want to investigate each and every one’s hidden musical treasures. Many turned out to be total revelations - Just look at this little sample list of names that were originally found on the shelves of this innovative dealer of the time: Kitaro, Neuronium, Gandalf, Wavestar, Mark Shreeve, Far East Family Band, Ian Boddy, Software, Steve Roach, Richard Burmer, Richard Vimal and the rarer side of Vangelis. But this was only a small selection of the artists introduced and promoted by Lotus throughout the 80’s. Some of the most innovative ‘EM’ labels of the time, like I.C. and Sky Records from Germany, also scored high sales via Lotus. Not only that, many ‘Space-Rock’ and ‘Progressive’ bands also got their names spread far and wide by Lotus, long before any other dealers even knew of their existence – Groups like Eloy and other now familiar bands, all became popular as a direct result of Andy’s activities within that company.

One music fan (and customer of Lotus) was Dave Shoesmith, and although Compact Discs were still in relative infancy at the time, he foresaw the massive potential that the new format had, so he decided to start a mail order company in 1987. C&D Compact Disc Services was started primarily to import domestically unavailable CD titles of albums by big name bands like Yes, ELP, Led Zeppelin & Rush for European music fans that were in the process of taking that giant step of upgrading from Vinyl to CD! Being a fan of ‘EM’, Dave gradually started to find and import whatever CD’s were available by ‘EM’ artists that Lotus had originally sold on vinyl. As the new medium grew at great pace, so did the ‘EM’ side of the business, and more new talent was discovered (both in and out of the UK) to add to CD Services growing roster of musicians working in the field of ‘Electronic Music’. Among the many new names that eventually rose to fame in ‘EM’ circles via CDS promotions were: John Dyson, Robert Fox, Wavestar, David Wright & Nick Franks from the UK, Yanni, Chris Spheeris, Patrick O’Hearn, Constance Demby, David Arkenstone, Kevin Braheny & Peter Buffett from the States, and Synco, Peru, Bernd Kistenacher, John Kerr, Peter Seiler and Mind Over Matter from Europe. CDS also further developed it’s promotion of established names like Isao Tomita, Kitaro, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Kraftwerk, Gandalf, Ian Boddy, Mark Shreeve (including his more recent Red Shift albums) and Vangelis. CD Services was the only outlet that ‘EM’ fans considered to be their ‘one-stop’ outlet for all the available releases by these artists.

But, the real jewel in the crown came when Dave’s in house label Centaur re-issued on CD three long sought after Jive Electro albums by UK synth man Mark Shreeve. This was their first CD release of these long deleted albums and with all had bonus tracks. Dave then went on to discover the man who is now arguably the UK’s most talented synth musician to date, in Andy Pickford, releasing to this day, 5 stunning albums. Dave also issued a couple of albums by American musician/DJ Chuck Van Zyl, then he introduced the world to Radio Massacre International, a trio that were a perfect match to the improvised music that Tangerine Dream were playing in the early 70’s, and there was a hungry audience out there gagging for as much of this as they could get their hands on. RMI fitted that TD bill perfectly and went on to become the undoubted leaders of all the retro styled bands in Europe, further developing their style into one of their very own as each new album was released. At the end of the 90’s, Centaur issued a stunning symphonic synth based album by Nick Magnus (Project D main-man and keyboards player of ex-Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett’s band) and to great acclaim. Now, Alan Davey, a member of the UK’s biggest Space-Rock outfit Hawkwind has also produced an excellent synth based album for the label.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Andy G was asked by his one-time customer Dave, to come and join the CD Services team, so he moved up to Scotland to join the company, and brought with him a vast wealth of knowledge gained from his years working in music retail in general and mail-order with Lotus, plus a few new strings to add to the CD Services bow. One was his interest in another offshoot of the ‘Electronic Music’ genre. In the years just prior to joining CD Services, Andy had pioneered the UK’s introduction to the new genre of the time: ‘90’s Ambient Music’. Yet again, he was first off the mark with talents of high degree such as Banco De Gaia, Astralasia, Timeshard, Biosphere, Neural Network, Higher Intelligence Agency, Optic Eye, Sun Electric and of course, Pete Namlook, and through Namlook he introduced his mail-order clients to what is now one of the most collectable of all the ‘Ambient’ labels: Fax Records.

That is all with CD Services now, and the result is a definite broadening of our range of ‘Electronic Music’ artists, encompassing musicians such as Delerium, Dilate, Komakino, O-Head and the mighty Synaesthesia, all of whom have a foot in both the traditional and modern sides of ‘EM’. All areas of the genre are now covered, spanning ‘New Age’ through ‘Synth’ and ‘Industrial’ to ‘Trance’ and ‘Techno’.

As CD Services now embarks on to the ‘Business Super Highway’, we are armed with over 10,700 worldwide ‘Synth’ titles in our database, and that does not include ‘Ambient’, which adds a further 12,500 lines working under that ‘Electronic Music’ banner. This does crossover with the ‘Synth’ genre more often than some think, but we have still given it a department all of it’s own in our on-line store.

There is a huge amount of this stuff out there, and we will continue to bring you the best of what has gone before, together with much of what is happening now, with a future that promises an abundance of fresh new talent to come. We intend to spend a lot of time expanding all forms of ‘Electronic Music’ by taking it to new audiences that have yet to discover the existence this wonderfully fulfilling and exciting genre.

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