Description

Polish pressed music cassette. Clear Ilon cassette with gold text.

Poland is probably the country that had the most record labels in the world that only released cassettes. But even though there were lots of labels the market was still small as they only printed these for their own market inside of Poland. And a label in one town maybe lacked the distribution for another town and so on. A Warzaw or Krakow label might print more copies of a tape then labels from a smaller town. So even if there are thousands of releases you will notice how rare some are if you start to try to list the catalogue number of one particular label. Some cassettes just rarely shows up. One label were Ilon. Some suggests its an Ukrainian label and maybe its both. Where they were based are for me unkonwn (if anyone has more information then please contact me). The label showed up in the early 90s and after the new copyright laws of May 1994 it seems like they continued for a few years more with just releasing compilation and Russia and Polish artists. Approximately around 1100 titles were released during their active years. One of the gimmicks the label used was that they printed Produced In Germany on several of their covers

This is one case where the legend really precedes the record itself. Cut for about 600 dollars in Jack Endino’s studio over just a matter of days, this captures Nirvana at a formative stage, still indebted to the murk that became known as grunge, yet not quite finding their voice as songwriters. Which isn’t to say that they were devoid of original material, since even at this stage Kurt Cobain illustrated signs of his considerable songcraft, particularly on the minor-key ballad “About a Girl” and the dense churn of “Blew.” A few songs come close to that level, but that’s more a triumph of sound than structure, as “Negative Creep” and “School” get by on attitude and churn, while the cover of “Love Buzz” winds up being one of the highlights because this gives a true menace to their sound, thanks to its menacing melody. The rest of it sinks into the sludge, as the group itself winds up succumbing to grinding sub-metallic riffing that has little power, due to lack of riffs and lack of a good drummer. Bleach is more than a historical curiosity since it does have its share of great songs, but it isn’t a lost classic — it’s a debut from a band that shows potential but haven’t yet achieved it.

Track list:
1. Blew
2. Floyd The Barber
3. About A Girl
4. School
5. Love Buzz
6. Negative Creep
7. Scoff
8. Paper Cuts
9. Swap Meet
10. Mr. Moustache
11. Sifting
12. Big Cheese
13. Downer