Ceza Evi was probably the first full length tape I bought by any artist then limited to cassette only releases - therefore not counting Throbbing Gristle live tapes or compilations such as Larry Peterson's A Sudden Surge of Power, on which We Be Echo's Sex Slave was easily one of the best tracks and thus the one which caught my attention and inspired me to send for this. I'm probably influenced by this having been the first full length tape I bought by any artist then limited to cassette only releases, but it remains one of the greatest out of that whole cassette thing for me. When people get all misty eyed over the hits of the eighties, they're usually thinking about Spandau Ballet or Michael J. Fox dancing on the hood of a car and showing the adults a thing or two about what it means to be young, but for me the eighties was We Be Echo, the Unkommuniti, Opera For Infantry and the like, because I was actually there (authors of twatty point-missing histories of industrial music take note, having actually been there really fucking helps).
The incredible thing about Ceza Evi, at least so it seemed to me, was that it had been recorded on a home stereo system - employing a fine sense of judgement to produce something at least ten times more exciting than what most artists pulled off in a proper studio - and yet it felt like a real thing. It didn't feel like a demo, or someone pissing about with a tape recorder simply because they could. Ceza Evi is an album. Some of this was thanks to Kevin's artwork - he was [still is] a graphic designer (and even today I still find myself doing things I picked up from studying his artwork when designing book covers or whatever) - but also because the music was just so well realised, weirdly dark little film soundtracks in miniature occupying a halfway point between Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire without ever quite sounding like either.
Yup. This one's a classic.
Lawrence Burton