Rediscovering a Lost Synth-Pop Treasure | Leisure Process: The Complete Epic Recordings

There are some artists whose music seems to shimmer just outside the edges of mainstream memory - adored by the few who knew, forgotten by the many who didn’t. Leisure Process were one of those acts: a duo whose sharp intelligence, melodic precision, and electronic sophistication placed them among the most intriguing pop propositions of the early 1980s. With Leisure Process: The Complete Epic Recordings, their entire body of work finally steps into the light - a vivid reminder of just how inventive, stylish and heartfelt the British synth-pop scene could be at its best.

This new 2CD collection brings together, for the first time, all of Leisure Process’s 7- and 12-inch singles, their B-sides, and a cache of unreleased demos originally earmarked for their unfinished 1983 album Remarkable People With Interesting Lives. Produced in collaboration with the band and featuring a richly illustrated 32-page booklet, the set is an act of loving excavation - a tribute to a group who, for a brief moment, seemed poised to rewire the circuitry of early-’80s pop.

Born of Books, Beer, and Bold Ideas

Leisure Process began, fittingly, as both a joke and a philosophy. As singer and lyricist Ross Middleton recalls, the name came not from highbrow French theory - as he long believed - but from a drunken evening spent with journalist Paul Morley, after several bottles of Carlsberg and a flash of misremembered inspiration. The band’s very name suggested the irony and intellect that would come to define them: a sly nod to the commodification of pleasure, and to the mechanical rhythms of modern life that would find their expression in synth and sequencer.

Middleton, formerly of Glasgow post-punk outfit Positive Noise, joined forces with virtuoso saxophonist Gary Barnacle, whose résumé already included The Ruts, The Teardrop Explodes, Soft Cell, and Level 42. Their chemistry was instant. Bonded by shared humour, musical curiosity and a restless sense of ambition, they began experimenting with primitive recording equipment in Barnacle’s Battersea flat - Middleton laying down vocals in the “reverb chamber” of the bathroom, Barnacle coaxing impossible sounds from a tiny Casio keyboard.

The resulting demos - Love Cascade, Cashflow and A Way You’ll Never Be - were enough to secure them a deal with Epic Records, thanks to a chance meeting and the enthusiastic support of A&R icons Annie Roseberry and Muff Winwood. “Hearing this reminds me why I got into this business in the first place,” Winwood reportedly said. It’s still the best compliment Middleton ever received.

Leisure Process - A Way You'll Never Be 1982

The Martin Rushent Connection

If ever there was a producer who could bottle the electricity of early-’80s pop, it was Martin Rushent. His work with The Human League, The Stranglers, Altered Images and Pete Shelley had already made him one of the architects of the electronic age. With Rushent at the controls and Level 42’s Mark King and Phil Gould guesting on rhythm section duties, Leisure Process’s sound snapped into dazzling focus - sleek, literate, and euphorically strange.

Their debut single, Love Cascade, was a thrilling introduction: taut, sensual, and “machines in passion shock,” as Melody Maker memorably described it. It became Single of the Week in several music papers and was championed by Radio 1’s Peter Powell - only for a disastrous pressing-plant delay to scupper its chart momentum. “No records made it to the shops,” Middleton recalls ruefully. “People were being turned away in their tens of thousands.”

Still, the single set the tone for what followed: A Way You’ll Never Be, Cashflow, and Anxiety, each a self-contained world of emotional intelligence and electro-soul. They combined pop immediacy with biting wit and existential curiosity - songs that explored money, power, relationships and alienation with an awareness far beyond the typical Top 40 fare.

Style, Substance, and the Missed Moment

Leisure Process were as much about image as sound. Their collaborations with Malcolm Garrett, the legendary sleeve designer behind Buzzcocks and Duran Duran, gave their singles a visual punch to match their music. The Cashflow sleeve - a collage of German hyperinflation iconography rendered in brutal yellow and black - remains one of the era’s most striking pieces of design.

But despite critical acclaim, the charts remained elusive. “Love Cascade” reached number one in Bolivia (a claim Middleton recounts with mock-serious pride), but in the UK their singles barely grazed the Top 100. By 1983, after four releases, Epic quietly pulled the plug. Their planned album Remarkable People With Interesting Lives was shelved, and the band - exhausted, disillusioned, and beset by personal struggles - dissolved soon after.

Middleton later reflected with typical candour on how depression and self-doubt had derailed what could have been. “Leisure Process could have been big,” he admits. “But I was a mess. I missed sessions, I disappeared. I messed things up for Gary, for everyone.” Decades later, with the clarity of hindsight, his self-deprecating humour and emotional honesty only make the songs’ strange poignancy feel deeper.

A Lost Album Found

This new collection, compiled with the full cooperation of Middleton and Barnacle, pieces together that missing album’s DNA. Alongside their four official singles and B-sides are the demos and unfinished works-in-progress that hint at what Remarkable People With Interesting Lives might have been - a sleek, literate, politically aware synth-pop record that rivalled anything from The Associates, Tears for Fears, or Visage.

As project consultant Barney Ashton-Bullock notes, Leisure Process were never just another “lost” act; they were “at the apex of a loaded flush of artistic near-misses” - a duo who embodied the optimism and ambition of a decade obsessed with sound, style and meaning. Their songs pulse with the tension between hedonism and critique, between the dancefloor and the lecture hall. Middleton’s lyrics wrestled with consumerism, power, and the futility of pop protest - ideas that remain startlingly relevant.

“You can illuminate someone’s life for three minutes on the dancefloor,” he said in 1982, “but you’re also an instrument of control. People who dance to disco records don’t burn down police stations.”

Gary Barnacle 2025. Credit Barney Ashton-Bullock

The Sound of a Time - and Timelessness

Listening now, Leisure Process: The Complete Epic Recordings feels both of its era and beyond it. These tracks - from the glacial pulse of Love Cascade to the wiry funk of Cashflow and the noir melodrama of Anxiety - glow with Rushent’s immaculate production and Barnacle’s breathtaking saxophone. They’re pop songs built with philosophical bones: elegant, cerebral, and brimming with hooks.

Forty years on, they sound less like relics and more like revelations. This isn’t just a retrospective; it’s a resurrection - a reminder that beneath the surface of pop history lie dozens of untold stories, each as vital and dazzling as the hits that overshadowed them.

As Middleton signs off in his 2025 notes from Paris: “A lot of good people still like our stuff or are discovering it for the first time. Thanks to Barney, a whole new generation can listen to Love Cascade, A Way You’ll Never Be, Cashflow, Anxiety and all the rest with fresh ears. Hope you like it. We’ve certainly enjoyed putting this together.”

Leisure Process: The Complete Epic Recordings is a testament to the bright promise of what might have been - and to the enduring brilliance of what was.

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