Thomas Leer Private Plane (1978)
“Private Plane” might sound like champagne above the clouds, but for Scottish electronic pioneer Thomas Leer, it was quite the opposite: Back in the early 1970s, Leer and his friend Robert Rental, with whom he recorded a good part of his discography, moved from Port Glasgow in Scotland to London to join a hippie commune in Hammersmith. They spent their days at free festivals, dreaming of making their own music.
By 1978, Leer was living in a small flat in Crouch End, surrounded by a modest stash of lo-fi gear: no synths, just guitar, a basic drum machine, a Stylophone (not the toy kind) and a tape echo unit. Leer and Rental pooled their equipment and skills to make music not for fame or fortune, but because “people just did things” back then. Those were the days!
With no studio, budget or whatsoever, he recorded “Private Plane” quietly at home, layering tracks through improvisation and even whispered the vocals so he wouldn’t wake his girlfriend. Self-released in a batch of 650 hand-stamped vinyl copies, the single quickly became a cult favorite and a landmark of the DIY electropop scene.
Start the conversation
Become a paid member of The Rest to gain access to the comments section.