Once more a post on the mysterious Drinking Electricity. Their first few single releases were on the Pop:Aural label, (including the previously featured ‘Cruising Missiles’ and ‘Shake Some Action’) but by the time of this – their fourth 7” single – the band had parted company with Bob Last and Hilary Morrison’s label and with this release would debut their very own label, Survival Records.
This opening release on Survival was a double-A side affair, with the super-catchy synth-pop and guitar driven cautionary tale of the kind of marketing assault deliberately aimed to besiege our attention (seemingly every second of every day now) – ‘Subliminal’ – on side A. Meanwhile, side AA featured ‘Random Particles’ – perhaps slightly less obvious than the A side, with more synthetic-driven rhythmic stylings and perhaps greater emphasis on the choppy rhythm guitar, but an equally fine piece of work.
Survival Records was an interesting label that as well as releasing the band’s own records also debuted the first release by Hard Corps as well as releases by the Ultravox/related Faith Global and Shock/Numan-related Tik & Tok.
A later re-packaging of the single as part of a six single set, ‘6 From Survival’ (Survival, SUR PAK 1) included an additional label history info sheet and that stated the release date for the original single as May 1981. However, a news item in Music Week magazine, issue dated 8 August 1981, mentions the release of the first two Survival Records releases and the following week’s issue (Aug 15 1981) includes a review.
As for where you can track down these tracks nowadays, the single got a digital release on its own and also as part of a digital-only ‘Singles EP’. ‘Random Particles’ has been included on the Cherry Red compilation set ‘Musik Music Musique 2.0 (1981 | The Rise Of Synth Pop)’ (3 x CD box set, 2021, Cherry Red CRCDBOX115).
‘Subliminal’ would see a second life in remixed form on a separate 12” release in 1982 – but that’s another story.