Liner notes from the pre-release of Radio Silence

Formed in mid-1977 The Instant Automatons comprised (then) of Mark Lancaster on toy electric guitar and Martin Neish on electric floorboard bass. Right from the start every rehearsal was recorded, though in those impoverished days that meant hanging a microphone near the vocalist and hoping that everything went onto the tape. Also, right from the start, the Automatons never learnt from the mistakes of other people - preferring to make their own mistakes, and never did cover versions. [This is blatantly untrue - Ed.] The result was a collection of poorly recorded, badly played, unusual songs with bizarre mistakes in them.

As the Automatons accumulated equipment the quality of both performance and recording improved; at an intermediate stage Michael Holmes was brought in to operate a basic microphone mixing desk - but ended up supplying rhythms from biscuit-tin lids (very brash!) instead. The dissipation of the part-time rhythm section to full-time education resulted in the necessity for a drum machine. This is the dearest instrument the Automatons have, and together with slightly better cheapo guitars and a stereo cassette made possible the tapes from which this album is compiled.

It will still be some time before the Automatons do gigs, and before they record in traditional studios, but this is all the more reason for preserving one point in their ascent to fully-operational touring-potential. Retrospectives are alright but with just a little foresight it is possible to have a prospective...

This cassette is definitely not a stepping stone in this ascent...it is never expected, or even desired, to make money from this type of art. To those friends who've helped us, or just been generally nice people, to industry/media people or organizations worthy of respect, this cassette and it's contents have gone free. People answering an advertisement and sending a cassette will have the contents of a very similar master tape recorded, free.