Did You Hear The Music

2025

Cultural Amnesia's first album for eight years, Did You Hear The Music was released 17 September 2025 as a limited-edition cassette by the small Ice Cream For Crow Records and as a digital download at Bandcamp. 100 cassettes were produced, of which 64 were available for sale (after review and complimentary copies). Ice Cream For Crow was originally to take 25, with the remainder of the run to be sold by CA. In the event pre-release demand was such that Gav of the label sold his 25 and an additional nine from CA's allocation. As of September 2026, a few cassettes remain available for sale through CA's Bandcamp.

Inner Sleeve Text

Tracks initially recorded 2013–2015
Produced by Ben Norland & John Peacock
Mixed by John Peacock
Graphic design by Ben Norland
(Cover features a diagram from The Physics of Music by Alexander Wood (Methuen & Co, 1944))
Many thanks to Gav for his interest & support
Released by Ice Cream For Crow 2025
This is an Iron Banana Product. IB28
© Cultural Amnesia 2025
Cultural Amnesia. Postpunk electronic ensemble, est. 1980

Cultural Amnesia are:
Ben Norland – keys & programming, voice, sampling
John Peacock – guitar, keys & programming
Gerard Greenway – voice, wind (including 1980s samples), Stylophone (sampled)

Selected Reviews

“A gorgeous slice of minimalist synthpop and the perfect encapsulation of the group’s unerring balancing act between sardonic pastiche and genuine pop perfection."

“The trio at a new peak, effortlessly combining pristine synthpop with experimental mischief."
– Electronic Sound Magazine

“After more than four decades, Cultural Amnesia still sound like no one else.”
– Compulsiononline

"Musically Cultural Amnesia sound as arresting as ever, with Greenway’s eccentric-schoolmaster vocals riding on waves of gaunt synth melodies and minimalist electronic percussion. There’s a sharp inventiveness at work here, sly touches of guitar and woodwind augmenting the electronic textures and lending the album a tense, fidgety sound that’s entirely in keeping with the discursive bite of the lyrics."
– Richard Rees-Jones, Viennese Waltz blog

The Press Release

CULTURAL AMNESIA  •  DID YOU HEAR THE MUSIC

Back to CAssette!

As one of the original "cassette culture" bands (first active 1980–1983), and 44 years after our first album, Video Rideo (1981), Cultural Amnesia’s first release since 2017, and first physical release since 2012, is a cassette with Aberdeen’s feted Ice Cream For Crow Records: Did You Hear The Music.

The “compact” eight-track album draws on the band’s large archive of post-2000 recordings. It’s a strong and varied CA set, fitting neatly onto a C46 cassette.

On the “Outer” side (of the ear, you see): Force Field, an enigmatic tale of scientific innovation and avarice; the sweaty and hormonally charged Every Body; Hyacinth Boy (with thanks to T.S. Eliot), a mutant summer pop song of manic teen infatuation; and
They Know What They're Doing, visionary moments of self as other, other as self.

Venturing to the “Inner” side: Baby, I'm Cursed, a damned soul proposes matrimony; the eerie soundscape of Beston Forest; the title track Did You Hear The Music, another “inscape” or “instress”, as Gerard Manley Hopkins calls it, and perhaps the most beautiful piece of music CA have recorded; and finally, gathering us up to “take [us] to [our] home on high”, Blues,
an attempt at a kind of genre metasong.

So, plug in the cassette player on the hi-fi, or dig out your shoebox, boombox, Walkman from wherever it may be gathering dust, and “eject”, insert, “play” – and do give us a few words if you like what you hear.

Created 13/09/26