Rec.1989 / Remaster / Ecopack

An exclusive release for Record Store Day 2014. This title may be available on sale one week after the event on Monday 28th April, dependant on availability.

It's the sound of a guitar with dead strings played through a fifteen watt tube amp, the throb of a Hofner Violin bass and a cardboard box with a tambourine inside it beaten with maracas

Le Beat Group Electrique is the sound of lo-fi from before the term lo-fi was invented.

The Searchers, The Hollies, The Mojos, The Merseybeats, The Big Three; 1964 and the sound of The Velvet Underground live in 1969.

Love songs, unrequited love songs, lost love songs, songs about losing the plot. Funny songs, sad songs, fucked-up songs, songs about fucking. And songs about not fucking.

Le Beat Group Electrique is Wreckless Eric's first entirely homemade album, recorded in 1988 by Eric in the living room of his flat - 165B Uxbridge Road, London W12 - using a Teac four track tape recorder and a ramshackle collection of redundant recording studio junk.

"People who thought they knew better than I did told me I didn't know what I was doing, that I couldn't possibly make a record with such basic equipment, but it was the end of the eighties and I was sick and tired of being told what to do, and instructed on what I couldn't do, so I broke every rule of modern recording."

In 1987 Eric stopped performing and writing convinced that his only musical contribution had been the proliferation of widespread unhappiness. He suffered a nervous breakdown and spent time in a London psychiatric hospital.

On his recovery, in the summer of 1988, he started to write again and made eerie, late-night demo recordings in his London flat. He met up with Andre Barreau and Catfish Truton who became his backing group. Originally it was a full-on guitar, bass and drums, high volume, large amplifier affair, but as they rehearsed in Eric's fl.......
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