this perfect day

John had the ‘street-cred’ having previously been vocalist with ‘The Limit’ and for a short time was the vocalist with ‘The Passage’ during which time they played gigs alongside Joy Division. Mik, by contrast, had no ‘street-cred’, having been bass guitarist with a semi-pro ‘cabaret/covers’ band, playing 2 hour sets of pop songs every Saturday night. The antagonism between the two, the fight between ‘atmosphere’ and melody characterises THIS PERFECT DAY’s sound… in fact the name THIS PERFECT DAY is an attempt to convey this. It comes from the novel by Ira Levin in which everything on the surface is perfect, but underneath this surface is an underbelly of pure scum! Their music was never intended to be ‘synth music’ in the classic Kraftwerk / Human League / OMD / etc sense. It was music that just ‘used’ synthesisers because they didn’t have a drummer or a guitarist. They immediately started writing their own songs, ‘bouncing’ music from track to track on a Revox B77 tape recorder, using a monophonic ARP Axxe and a Soundmaster SR-88 drum machine. Over the next 2 years, besides playing a number of gigs in the northwest of England, they were able to record a total of 13 songs on 8-track tape at Bootleg Studios, Stockport, UK, culminating in the final session with the recording of The Garden and The Time of Your Life, which utilised the polyphonic capabilities of their new Crumar Stratus synth. The Garden and The Time of Your Life were put together as a double A side single purely for promotional purposes. Copies were sent to record companies, radio stations, DJs, etc. but no-one was interested, so the music finally faded away. No decision was ever made to stop… life just took over… until now…