Come Organisation is filed at Tier I as the position from which the F·07 power-electronics tradition issued. William Bennett founded the label in London in 1979 for a single, specific reason: no other label would release the records of his pre-Whitehouse band Come. The label's first release, the Come single "Come Sunday / Shaved Slits" (1979), is the founding document. Daniel Miller of Mute Records played synth bass on the Come single and album under the alias "Doctor Death"; the connection between Mute and Come Organisation runs through Bennett's friendship with Miller, which preceded both labels and shaped the early releases of both.
The turn came in 1980. Bennett dissolved Come and formed Whitehouse, citing as grounds the desire to push the Throbbing Gristle and SPK position further than either was prepared to go (both were, by 1980, retreating from extreme noise toward more conventional electronic positions). The Bureau's reading of the early Whitehouse catalogue is that the label is definitional for F·07 power electronics: Birthdeath Experience (1980), Total Sex (1980), Erector (1981) and the term-coining Psychopathia Sexualis (1982, the album whose blurb introduced the phrase "power electronics" to the vocabulary) constitute the founding documentary record of the form.
Come Organisation released all early Whitehouse albums between 1980 and 1985 · the entire pre-hiatus catalogue, ending with Great White Death (1985). Recording was concentrated at IPS Studios in London, the same facility Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton used through the period. Mastering ran through George Peckham at Porky Prime Cuts. The production structure is sustained across the catalogue: IPS for recording, Porky Prime Cuts for mastering, paste-on covers, hand-numbered limited editions on coloured vinyl. Whitehouse live actions through the period (Live Aktions 22, 24, 28 and others) generated parallel documentary releases on Come Organisation.
The imprint's roster ran beyond the Bennett positions. The Bureau records the significance of the Come Organisation working list: Sutcliffe Jugend (Kevin Tomkins and Paul Taylor, the position adjacent to Whitehouse and frequently working with Bennett); Maurizio Bianchi (the Italian noise release the imprint internationalised); Nurse With Wound (the Steven Stapleton position releasing through the imprint, the 1981 Whitehouse / NWW collaboration 150 Murderous Passions); Charles Manson (the controversial 1980s archival release the imprint published); Leibstandarte SS MB (a Maurizio Bianchi alias the imprint released across two LPs); Consumer Electronics (Philip Best's pre-Whitehouse and concurrent position); Musique Concret; Etat Brut; The Sodality; Ramleh (the UK power-electronics release the imprint released early documents of); Iphar (Philip Best's pre-Whitehouse band, disbanded 1984 when Best moved into Whitehouse full time).
The editorial-direction position is documented in the imprint's compilation releases. The 1981 Come Organisation various-artists LP (red-vinyl first edition, paste-on cover by Steven Stapleton) is the early-period document: Whitehouse, Come, Nurse With Wound, The Sodality. The 1983 compilation Für Ilse Koch documents the list: Whitehouse, Come, Nurse With Wound, Consumer Electronics, Leibstandarte SS MB, Musique Concret, Etat Brut, Wiking DDV, and archive recordings (including Aleister Crowley). The Whitehouse / Nurse With Wound 1981 collaboration 150 Murderous Passions sits between Come Organisation and the United Dairies catalogue, with the position later complicated by the unauthorised United Dairies CD reissue that Bennett has been documented as objecting to.
Come Organisation was dissolved in 1985. The reasons: Whitehouse went on temporary hiatus after Great White Death; key personnel left London (Bennett himself moved to Madrid after his London flat was robbed of all possessions following the band's final live actions in Madrid); IPS Studios closed in 1985. The combination of personnel dispersal, the working-position pause and the loss of the recording base ended the imprint. The catalogue went out of print and remained in circulation through bootleg and grey-area positions across the second half of the 1980s.
Bennett did not revive Come Organisation when Whitehouse reactivated in 1988. The successor position is filed under a different imprint name, Susan Lawly, with the continuation handled as a deliberate renaming rather than a revival of the dissolved imprint. The Susan Lawly reissue programme from 1993 onward (CD reissues) and 2007 onward (legacy vinyl reissues) returned the Come Organisation catalogue to print under the new imprint position. The Anthology compilations (Anthology 1: Come Organisation Archives 1979–1980, 2CD, 1998; Anthology 2: Come Organisation Archives 2 1981–1982, 2001) are the Susan-Lawly-era documents of the dissolved Come Organisation position.
The Bureau's editorial reading: Come Organisation is the first document of the F·07 power-electronics tradition. Bennett coined the term "power electronics" on the Psychopathia Sexualis sleeve; the imprint's catalogue established the method (extreme high-frequency electronics, sub-bass electronics, vocal positions ranging from screamed declamation to whispered transgression, deliberately confrontational lyrical content); the imprint's roster established the network (Whitehouse central, Sutcliffe Jugend / Consumer Electronics / Ramleh / Iphar adjacent, Nurse With Wound and Maurizio Bianchi as the partners). The Bureau files the imprint as the genre's definitional position; all later F·07 positions sit downstream.
Filed by Bureau editor · VAGO · c. the Dark Ages · last revised c. the Restoration