Altern 8
Hardcore ravers from Stafford, Altern 8 consisted of Mark Archer
and Chris Peat, and were actually an offshoot of their Nexus 21
pure techno act. Of the two, Archer was the house music
aficionado, while Peat was a former music technology student with
his main interests lying in computers. Former deckchair
attendants (or so they claimed), they crashed the chart with
Infiltrate 202 and Activ8, two chaotic slices of overground
techno. They were aided in their chart aspirations by the
circulation of fictitious press stories concerning their alleged
activities. These included; patronage of the decongestant Vicks
Vapo Rub, which, it is claimed, can heighten the effects of
imbibing the Ecstasy drug; playing shows in a hot air balloon
(dispensing Christmas Cakes laced with E to the masses) and
standing as candidates for the 1993 General Election. Music
journalists lapped it all up, and were roundly beaten in laser
combat for their troubles. Their live ‘events’ were
also designed as eye catching, surreal performances where the
band donned RAF chemical warfare suits and dust masks (biazarrely
banned in Scunthorpe as a result): ‘Dance music is there to
be danced to, not to be looked at like rock music is. But,
unfortunately, dance acts have to perform live on occasion, and,
when we do, we want to provide something visual’. They were
aided by their resident dancers Crez and John Parkes, and, in the
case of their gig at Stafford Bingley Hall, an actual shaman. His
job was to cleanse the venue of its ‘rock ‘n’ roll’
past’, prior to performance. Their vinyl outings, in
addition to the hits, consisted of the OVERLOAD EP (1990), E
Vapor 8 (1991) and Frequency, 10,000 copies of which were on sale
for a single day only. The protagonists long maintained that this
was a temporary diversion from their main project, Nexus 21, and
confirmed this by releasing a ‘final’ Altern 8 single,
Everybody, in June 1993. Mark Archer has gone on to form
Slo-Moshun, a duo of Archer and Danny Taurus from Stoke On Trent.
They released Bells Of New York, one of the biggest dance hits of
early 1994, breaking the Top 30 on the back of its house/hip hop
undulations. But some of the Altern 8 methodology remained. This
time the scam was to trick everyone into thinking it was a US
import. Their second single would be summer 1994's Help My
Friends.