What was or is Traumatone?
A long time ago, a bunch of people made some music. Traumatone was the sound of isolation. A sort of outsider-spirit which sprung from the quiet, suburban middle-class heart of a seaside town in South West England. The thing was, we didn't realise we weren't supposed to do this — so as the world opened up before us, we stepped through and probably ended up further from the windy Esplanade than we ever expected. Burnham-on-Sea in 1991 was slumbering: the same old musicians circled around the same old bands. Pub rock and blues constituted the scene, such as it was.
Into this, a tiny label made a tentative step. Many of us couldn't play, almost all of us couldn't sing. But we realised that all over the world, a tiny convulsion was underway. Inspired by labels like Shrimper, Instigation, Simple Machines and K we began to release a series of home made, photocopied cassette releases. We communicated by mail — waiting a week for tapes to scud across the earth — and played live only sporadically. We released each other's bands — a handful of other British labels springing up to carry the torch — Theme Park, Sticky, Bacchanalian Revel. It felt like a little movement in a big world. Naturally, the locals couldn't quite understand — and really didn't care. They carried on plodding away at their pub rock, remembering when the young 'uns used to have a bit of respect. They just couldn't see the point — they can't play!
Traumatone burned brightly for a few years and then I decided that a dull career in public administration needed more attention than I'd given it. I was getting older and I could almost feel myself atrophying into one of those angry old bluesmen who propped up the bar of The Crown until it was unceremoniously demolished. I didn't ever mean this rather strange project to become so serious — but somehow it had.
Traumatone took me half-way across the world, cemented friendships I still treasure decades later, and divided opinion in ways that still seem to get some people a little steamed up even now. Along the way, we released nearly fifty cassettes, bringing the ebullient power-pop of Brown Tower to the masses, and introducing the discerning to the scattershot poetics of Wizard Ho Ho. I mumbled my way through a few songs as The Bucknalls, and Spacehopper shuddered and funked his way through some dark pop. We introduced the UK to Lambchop and a host of other US acts, and we provided a mutual link with a varied bunch of US, New Zealand and Japanese labels. I'm actually quite proud.
I've quit Traumatone more than once — that first time when I needed to get on with a career, the second time when I decided it was all too much trouble and passed the flame on to others, and more recently when I decided that the Bandcamp site which had done sterling service since 2011 had to go. The thing is, Traumatone has never been about gold-plated connecting leads, high sample rates and high quality dubs. It was resolutely mid-fi. Any sense that people can curate or archive this music is wrong — it doesn't work — I've tried. It is now exactly what it was back then, a record of a moment — almost always just one take.
The catalogue today
These digital releases are what I've been able to salvage of our output. Each release is supplied as a ZIP download for £3. You can put several releases in your basket and pay together using PayPal. The copyright has always rested with the artists.