The Creative Deconditioning Party

As the name implies, The CDP summon a reversal in structured musical format. The musical direction of The CDP is defined by it's two founding members; Trevor Wren and Mark Pickstone, who have progressed and converged from their diverse musical roots in world/rock and techno/punk. Together with the electronic pedigree of the third noise-ician on the album, Christophe Bride, their goal was to break away from the colourless pulse of popular music by means of creative imagination and technology, developing a style that was both provocative and accessible. To say Trevor plays guitars and Mark programs samplers and percussion is to greatly oversimplify the way in which The CDP create music, sound, and noise. On their debut album they wanted to do something different with guitars yet still create a 'recognisable' guitar-based sound; there were a number of things which are distinctive such as guitars powering analogue synths and feeding hard-disk recorders which were then played as performance instruments. One track required four computers to transfer the work onto tape. The idea of a guitar as of a sacred piece of wood with strings, which you connect to an amplifier to produce music and various posturing is an outmoded idea to The CDP. With creative imagination and the latest digital/analogue technology a guitar can be both a controller and a source of undefinable and infinite sound. The CDP portend that the wood and strings will be dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-second century. Mark Pickstone was a former keyboard player for Conflict, appearing on their last four albums. He concurrently played for Schwartzeneggar, which he formed in 1990 with Steve Ignorant of CRASS, and furthered it's realisation when the three members of Thatcher on Acid decided to team up and take it to a higher level. The band released a series of international albums and EPs. Mark brings a background of professional experience to The CDP, driving samplers, computers and various ana-digital technologies down undiscovered routes. Trevor Wren embarked on his musical path initially in the rock/blues genre, playing the North East UK underground scene in the band 'Scheme-R'. After several years of playing live he grew tired of the scene. "I wanted something original, something which would stick a pole up your arse and shake you around - but I could not find it, so I basically stopped playing the guitar publicly for about ten years," Trevor reveals. During this period Trevor explored new paths in musical direction particularly focusing on eastern and Moroccan scales, and also studying jazz-rock such as Mahavishnu and Holdsworth. On returning to the underground/jazz live scene he found, he either got the "tight-arsed 'jazz applause' or a look of stunned silence. They just were not ready for noise in their ears - and I couldn't blame them!" "Some people have described us as The Chemical Brothers meets Nine Inch Nails, in a progressive Prodigy sense. One record company likened The CDP music to 'The chemical brothers with imagination, Orbital with rhythm','' Mark adds, "I think the album covers a wide spectrum of musical influences. I feel it can be listened to on several planes of interpretation, the nature of it being solid foundations with an ever-changing sonic top layer... The more you listen, the more you hear." There has been no attempt to predefine the type of music The CDP will create, yet a coherent production emerges which should appeal to those who see beyond specific musical sub-cultures. Sound engineer and co-producer Christophe Bride enhances the music of The CDP with a wealth of knowledge and experience in studio recording, and a penchant for analogue synthesizers and "fat" rhythms. Regarded by The CDP as their co-pilot, Bride has been encouraged to break the 'rules' of conventional recording during the making of the album. All tracks included on A Reversible History of the Future were recorded at The Cutting Room Studios in Manchester, UK between January and September of 1996.