Maybe ten years ago, I started picking up the odd tape from Fred Thomas' tape label, Life Like. Because of the per unit shipping costs, this only really allowed me to pick up the ones from his various ancilliary projects, a City Centre tape here, a SLGTM live tape there. I love the DIY feel of it - the way that it allows him to put out something a little less polished, a little less ready for prime time, a little more intimate.
And that's how I've got an Anna Burch tape. Fred and Anna have collaborated a fair bit over the psat few years, notably on the side project "Failed Flowers" so when Anna's first solo LP came out a few years back, there was a tape released around the same time on Life Like.
I'm not really sure what it is. It might be demo versions but there's audience noise. It might be a live show, but the audience noise doesn't exactly seem adjacent to the songs. What I can tell you is that it's stripped down versions of 6 of the songs from that debut LP, played just by Anna and Fred, reducing the songs to their bare essentials, but showing the strength of the songs and of the artists.
This tape was reissued twice (for a total edition of 300) so I would imagine it's maybe the biggest run for a Life Like tape and its easy to see why - as a companion piece to "Quit The Curse" it's terrific. Taken on it's own merits, its really good and thirty years ago, I could easily imagine singing along to this tape as it plays on my Walkman.