· By adrian harland

The Story Behind VU's Artwork by Butch Attai - Searching for signal.

Many years ago when we were building an updated website, Vinyl Underground regular artist Butch Attai had ideas for some graphics. These were the results.

He remembered Aidy chatting about the lengths he’d go to around 1991/92 to listen to London pirate radio.

Driving to a local high point near Brixworth, he'd stick a long aerial out of the car window from a battery powered radio, with a tape deck so could also record. If the weather conditions were good then you could just about pick up Kiss FM and Colin Dale ‘s Outta Limits radio show on a Thursday night. The deep selection would start at midnight, and you would often hear Detroit, Black Dog, As One tracks for the first time, sometimes only just through the hiss and crackle.

butch attai vinyl underground northampton

 
Eventually Aidy persuaded his folks to get an FM aerial put up on the house roof and fed it into his bedroom, where he started VU a year later. It was bliss for a few months, then Classic FM came along and wiped out the 100FM frequency up here!

butch attai vinyl underground northampton

This obviously resonated with Butch and his own early pirate radio experiences in Birmingham. We all grew up on pirate tapes eagerly copied and swapped at school/college.  

They chatted about this when recording a selection for his radio show “This That This” on @lwstd.fm. Some of it was left in the edit, there was a lot of chat. He used these images as promo for the show, Aidy was so happy to see them again as he’d forgotten about them and how good they are - so we brought them out for our new website update, where you can enjoy them as your browse for the latest handpicked underground records.

Cheers Butch!

Show transmitted Sunday 17th March 2024 12-2pm.