Biggest Tip! Quartz-Mirliton Cassettes has been among the most obscure of 1970s experimental music labels. This forthcoming VOD release, presented in two boxes, throws light on this mysterious cassette venture, its context and associated recordings. Closely associated with the London Musicians Collective, Quarzwas launched by Paul Burwell and David Toop in 1977. Produced in tiny editions with handmade covers, the cassettes largely documented live sessions and field recordings made by a close network of improvising musicians, sound sculptors and sound poets then working with Burwell and Toop, including Bob Cobbing, Hugh Davies, Max Eastley, Evan Parker, Frank Perry, Steve Beresford and others. The manifesto of the label was uncompromising – recordings were mostly lo-fi and noises peripheral to the performance were left in because they affected the music when it was played and formed a part of its context.

Obscure as they were, these cassette releases from 1977 documented an intense burst of creative energy from within the London scene.