The foundational British power-electronics imprint, run from a bedroom on tiny editions, whose early flirtation with Nazi imagery the archive records plainly and does not excuse.
Difficult Legacy. Several early Broken Flag and Ramleh releases used Nazi and Holocaust imagery for shock value: concentration-camp names as titles, a reference to the execution of Adolf Eichmann, and a "White Power" marking on one sleeve. This was part of the early power-electronics template of deliberate provocation, and Gary Mundy and Philip Best have since discontinued and disavowed the practice, denying any affiliation with political parties or hate groups. I record this without endorsing it, and keep the label for its documentary importance to the form, not for that imagery.
Broken Flag is the British power-electronics and noise label I keep at Tier II, founded in 1982 by Gary Mundy and run from his home in South London. It began alongside his own band Ramleh, and for a little over a decade it was the defining UK imprint of the form, pushing past the industrial template Throbbing Gristle had set toward something more extreme. The releases were small, rarely more than 500 copies, mostly cassettes, wrapped in cryptic drawings and abstract texts.
The roster is what earns the entry. Beyond Ramleh, Broken Flag launched Skullflower, Consumer Electronics (the project of a fourteen-year-old Philip Best), The New Blockaders and Ethnic Acid, and issued Maurizio Bianchi and Controlled Bleeding. For all its association with power electronics, the catalogue was remarkably broad, drawing artists from across the facets of noise.
My reading. Broken Flag is at Tier II as a foundational UK noise imprint, with its difficult early record stated plainly above rather than smoothed over.
VAGO · c. the Anthropocene