Up until the incredible "A Period of Review" reissue via RVNG Intl.last year we hadn't even heard of Kerry Leimer, yet that compilation and it’s astonishing followup, this years "Artificial Dance” set under Leimer’s ‘Savant’ alias, introduced us to one of the most fascinating and prolific producers of the era, operating at the cusp of ambient, 4th World and industrial musics. From his base in Seattle, Leimer accumulated a unique catalogue of recordings created on a Micromoog, drum machines, guitars and FX units, and heavily informed by imported Krautrock/kosmische titles sourced outta NME and Melody Maker, and equally the more Anglophilic ambient loop compositions of Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. This beautiful new double LP via Vinyl On Demand focuses on Leimer's earliest work and has once again left us dumbstruck, offering a genuinely remarkable addition to the canon of early '80s electronic/new age/4th world experimentalism, sitting very comfortably alongside some of the richest, most engrossing ambient music of the era. Leimer's first two tape recordings are included and were released on Robert Carlberg's Anode Productions in 1978 and '79 (Translucent / Memory and Natural History / The Mind and Its Likeness). The set also includes material from the 1983 cassette Installation View. As Leimer himself offers: "It's best to consider these recordings as a homage to much admired and deeply loved music of the time; to consider these recordings as the artifacts of lessons being learned during simultaneous attempts at conceiving, writing, voicing, engineering, recording, and mixing something that might at least seem to be music. It's also best to consider that the one card that repeatedly found its way out of the Oblique Strategies deck and into my hands prevented me from erasing almost all of it: Honor thy mistake as a hidden intention.” It all makes for one of the most engrossing ambient-era collections we’ve come across - give the clips below a listen and you’ll hopefully know exactly what we mean. Huge recommendation.