CLICK TO VISIT OUR SHOP LATEST NEWS DISCOGRAPHY MEMBERS CLUB BLOG CONTACT US HOME

A Glimpse Inside The Glamourous World Of Audio Lathe Cutting

Phil Macy runs 3.45RPM Lathe Cutting, and is also the main brain behind cosmos rockers I Am Voyager 1. He has been involved in bands, labels, gig promoting and numerous underground musical circles since the late 80's, encountering varying degrees of success in that time.

3.45RPM pays homage to Pete Bingham and his colourfully prolific output

The recent passing of Pete Bingham, master Sendelican, Isolated Psychedelicist and Fellow Of Hallucinatory Voyaging amongst many other attributes (he was a guitar teacher as well !) was a sad loss to the world of creative Psych musicianship, as the fitting wave of tributes that flooded social media after the news broke aptly testified.
However, his proud legacy is a prolific output of finest quality space rock, ambient soundscapes, beat laden dubs and cosmic instrumentations, and I'd like to present for you a varied selection of the choice cuts that 3.45RPM was blessed enough to be able to work on for him.

I was first contacted by Pete in 2015, after Keith FdM kindly put him in contact with me. I thought at first it was an angry complaint from an irate customer AS IT WAS ALL TYPED IN CAPITAL LETTERS, BUT I WAS RELIEVsorry, I was relieved to find it was just a case of Pete not sorting out the font size on his keyboard and/or he'd mislaid his glasses. As soon as I'd ascertained that I wasn't being lined up for a GOOD OLD CYMRU KICKING then we got on like a house on fire, and the next few years saw Pete keeping me constantly busy with a whole heap of great looking, great sounding cuts. Here is an incomplete run through of a few that came to mind, but please do feel free to message prompts and/or anecdotes of any I've missed out !

The first order I received from Pete was a 10" LP entitled "Sendelica Acoustica", four live tracks culled from their live set at the 13th Dream Of Dr. Sardonicus Festival. This came in a plain black sticker-sealed card sleeve, which was signed in silver and gold pen by the band members, and numbered out of an edition of I think 50 copies.

After this, things started to get colourful. "My House Is Made Of Angel Hair" was a one-sided 12" picture disc promo to publicise the "Disco Daze" CD EP, and there were only a dozen or so made. Hot on the heels of this, the glorious "Return Of The Maggot Brain" appeared in three different lathe cut formats, 8" in both black and clear, and a 7" picture disc.

Seemingly within minutes of that order, I was tasked with another Sendelica 8", this time a one-sided affair entitled "Theme For An Imaginary Victorian Ghostbuster" which was included in a limited edition version of the epic "Cromlech Chronicles III" (edition of 100), and it was around this time that The Curious came into being...

The Curious collection was a cover version collaboration between Pete and his long time companion and cohort Colin Consterdine.
(That sentence was brought to you by the letter "C")

Some were released under the psuedonym A.B.B.A., but I think this was generally still Pete and Colin ? They picked some of the most classic tunes of our age, and gave them treatments that could veer between gentle soothing massages or full-on head spinning massacres. Anything went, and the slew of highly desirable 7"s they spent three years or so producing in editions of around 50 are all very much worth your time trying to track down. "20th Century Boy", "Human Fly", "Black Magic Woman", "Communication Breakdown"...you know them all, you just don't know them as how they are presented here!

Around this time, The Lost Stoned Pandas took shape, and things got even interestinger. An embarrassment (look it up...it's the correct terminology !!) of 12" Panda lathe discs emerged, all of which floated and grooved and made ya move in ways that Pandas hadn't previously been associated with. "Panda 1 - Pandamonium" started it all off, with an edition of 25, and then another 25 as unsurprisingly the first 25 didn't last long. That was v.soon followed by "Tune In, Turn On, Get Panda'd" which included a lathe cut "Vocal Mix" of "Track Two" (edition 100).
Still with me ? You are ? OK, then there was "Panda 3" which was two sets of 25 x 7" (black/clear) and I have no idea what happened to "Panda 2". Lost, literally, and quite possibly stoned as well. I think there were other 3.45RPM Pandas, but it at this point things really started to kick off as the Pandademic kicked in, and if you're struggling to keep up then so am I. This list is NOT exhaustive, even if it IS exhausting !!

There was more Bingham/Consterdine involvement in The Isolated Psychedelicists, a Covid explosive of an outfit that produced hours of deeply relaxing inwardly outfacing audio during the times were we not allowed out, even as adults. They only had one actual physical release Discogs tells me, and it also tells me that it was an edition of 56 x 12" lathe cuts, 28 on black and 28 on clear, but I have a gloriously vibrant and colour picture disc of it in my collection and it doesn't appear to have been a home-imagined thing, so I'm guessing there are more out there ??

Now I've started searching properly, there are Bingham related acts popping out of my collection left, right and centre - far more than I'd remembered...
I mean, look ! look here ! Mrs. Hawkwing's Deep Space Jam ! An 8" disc in full colour sleeve that took me longer to construct than it did to cut the actual records themselves ! This one is a beauty, simply a must to hunt down - Hawkwind deity Nik Turner leading a star studded line up of Pete, Colin, Glenda Pescado and Chris Mekon through a couple of nailed on Brainstorming romps that touch pretty much every corner of our beloved cosmos.

AND THEN !! There was The Fellowship Of Hallucinatory Voyagers which was possibly an art gallery based happening, where paintings were created to the sound of Pete's composing ? Is that right ? Can anyone help out here ? I know for a fact that I got an order for 11 x 12" pictures with each one having different artwork. "The Imaginary Gallery" it was called, and I think the lathes were for a unique set of some sort, and I'll be fully candid and say that I picked my favourite frame and did myself a copy as it was one of my all time favourites of Pete's work, swerving effortlessly between krauty motoriks, Flying Saucer Attackesque distorto-drones, and a couple of nifty little "rock-tunes", to keep the traditionalists happy.

There was also "...And That Is The End Of The Poem", which was entirely different and yet seemed to fit completely in with the whole vibe of everything TFOHV had done previously. Superb stuff. Pete was particularly complimentary to me about the picture disc version of this which pleased me no end as it was the first ones I'd made after deciding to spend extra on semi-gloss paper for picture discs rather than the cheaper matt I'd been using previously and I was chuffed that someone had noticed the difference in quality so quickly. In fairness it was a beautiful design anyhow, so it was a winner all round.

I haven't mentioned Band Of Cloud yet, have I ? "A For Andromeda" appears to have been a completely one-off collaboration between Pete and David Owen, and the pleasingly soothing wash of ambience, electronics and space drift was rightly deemed fine enough to be given it's own 12" picture disc release and if the music wasn't cool enough in itself I'd be saying search it out anyhow for the classically psychedelic collage artwork...a proper eyeball tickler which you know is going to sonically win as soon as you feast yr mince pies on it.

Ooh, just remembered, there was a LS Pandas track on the Morning Brake 10" lathe cut of cover versions of "I Go To Sleep" by The Kinks, a kind of promo thing for Andy Bracken's current book at the time, "The Cut". From 2021, both are very much worth searching out, though the book is somewhat easier obtained than the 10" !!






Back to some more Sendelica stuff, as there was loads of it...
...the Sendelica/Elfin Bow 7" on Fruits de Mer was a wonderful one to work on...pick it up, I implore you (85 copies split between clear and black) ! And another 7" - picture disc this time - was a Velvet Underground cover of "Venus In Furs", with Unpeeled Banana artwork. This must have been as a promo for the Sendelica FdM 7"s compilation 12" picture disc that I did around the same time (30 copies). In the same order, I also worked on the 15th Anniversary Re-issue of "The Alternative Realities Of The Re-Awakening Somnambulist", which was an edition of 75 copies (25 clear, 25 black, and 25 on vividly artful picture disc), and these were all sold at Dr. Sardonicus in 2023.

The last Pete Bingham lathe I cut was for Sendelica's "Live At The Cellar" LP, a 40 min set at 2025's "Son Of Sardonicus" Festival in Cardigan, and released by Cellar Tapes late last year. As we all knew at the time, the event was something of a farewell to the annual "Dreams Of Dr. Sardonicus" weekenders that had been so successfully curated by Pete and Fruit de Mer's Keith over the previous decade or so, but it undoubtedly went out on a high.

It's a more than decent musical legacy that Pete leaves behind, and one that'll undoubtedly be remembered for many a year to come, not only by those who already knew, admired, and loved him and his work, but also by those yet to discover the sprawling canon of top notch underground space sounds he brought into the world.

click here to visit Phil's 3.45rpm website

and click here to read Phil's previous piece for FdM