At the risk of alienating everyone, I’ve found myself back in 1982… yet again. It’s like therapy, I will get over it. It’s curious to discover how much music I can listen to again comes from 1982. But I digress.

And at the risk of a digress on top of a digress, this track is a good example of why sites like rippingvinyl.co.uk exist. It’s a cracking tune, not a classic granted, but there must be rafts of stuff like this gathering dust on shelves. The point of this site originally (and of course I’ve digressed) was to dust down music that doesn’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of being heard ever again. The Leisure Process’ back cat is long deleted, can’t buy a sausage by them anymore, except from collector sites (see ‘More Hear…’ section below).

It doesn’t seem right somehow when labels spend time scratching their collective arse and wondering how to make money when they’re sat on piles of tunes that stand no chance of making any money because they’re no longer available. If any label bosses would like to talk to me about how they could turn dusty tracks into cash, I have some ideas, natch, but I guess arse scratching and shoulder shrugging is probably easier.

Anyway, disgress over. I’m enjoying the current eighties electro throwbacks (Little Boots, La Roux, etc), because I was there as a newly turned teen first time round. It’s going to get quite odd over the next few years as the 30th anniversaries start to come thick and fast – how about The Human League’s ‘Dare’, released 30 years ago in October 2011?

Which brings me to Leisure Process. I was nothing if not a trainspotter in my early teens, and I had a favourite producer. Yup. I came to recognise the genius that is Martin Rushent after falling for his Altered Images remixes. I recall this mix catching my ear on Peel one night. It’s stuck with me and a few years ago I found the 12-inch in a shop for a couple of quid.

It’s funny how people remember Peel as an indie champion, I always saw him as a champion of good music who happened to be tucked away in a late-night hidey-hole. Always thought the joy of the radio DJ was they could just play the music without offering up an opinion. If they hated it, three minutes and it’s gone. I still wince at some of the bands I championed, in print, at The Maker.

Anyway, Leisure Process, as you can see, are a man with a saxophone and another man. The other man is singer Ross Middleton who arrived from Scottish new wavers Positive Noise, while the saxaphone man is Gary Barnacle, the go-to sax player during the eighties (and no, Hazel O’Conner didn’t go to him for ‘Will You’, that was Wesley Magoogan). A renowned session player, Barnacle has enjoyed a pretty successful career, even redeeming credibility lost by his association with Level 42 by popping up on no less than three albums by The Clash.

More hear…
- As we mentioned up top, everything is long deleted, but there’s still stuff knocking around, pretty cheap, on collector sites like discogs.com and eil.com.