Die Doraus Und Die Marinas ’Blumen Und Narzissen’ (ATA-TAK, 1981)

We’ve followed the secret map of electronic music past and found a hidden chest of lost gems. This month, we’re pulling out and polishing Bel Canto’s ‘White-Out Conditions’

As a fledgling fanzine writer, it seemed implausible that anyone would send anything resembling decent music to an outpost on the Wirral.

Since the huge commercial success of Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lord Of The Rings’ movies, it’s been easy to forget the significance of the JRR Tolkien novel to the 1960s counterculture hippies.

They were called Vidéo Aventures. They were French, they had links to the extreme Rock In Opposition movement, and in 1981 they released ‘Musique Pour Garçons Et Filles’, a superb example of underground electropop weirdosity

Leila Arab was born in Iran, but moved to Britain at an early age, her family forced to flee the country’s Islamic Revolution because of her father’s ties with the ousted Shah

Few music discovery anecdotes start with “I was rugby tackled by a man in a cinema because he liked my T-shirt”, but discovering Lancashire oddballs Element starts like that for me.