C86
Compilation album by various artists
Released	May 1986
Genre	Indie pop jangle pop
Length	61:11
Label	Rough Trade,NME
Compiler	Neil Taylor, Adrian Thrills,Roy Carr
Various artists chronology
Pogo A Go Go! (1986) C86 (1986) Holiday Romance (1986)

C86 is acassette compilation released by the British music magazineNME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from Britishindependent record labels of the time.^[1] As a term,C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-basedmusic genre characterized byjangling guitars and melodicpower pop song structures, although other musical styles were represented on the tape. In its time, it became apejorative term for its associations with so-called "shambling" (aJohn Peel-coined description celebrating the self-conscious primitive approach of some of the music^[2]) andunderachievement. TheC86 scene is now recognised as a pivotal moment forindependent music in the UK,^[3] as was acknowledged in the subtitle of the compilation's 2006 CD issue:CD86: 48 Tracks from the Birth of Indie Pop. In 2014, the original compilation was reissued in a 3CD expanded edition fromCherry Red Records;^[4] the 2014 box-set came with an 11,500-word book of sleevenotes by one of the tape's original curators, formerNME journalistNeil Taylor.

TheC86 name was a play on the labelling and length of blank compactcassette, commonly C60, C90 and C120, combined with 1986.

The tape was a belated follow-up toC81, a more eclectic collection of new bands, released by theNME in 1981 in conjunction withRough Trade.C86 was similarly designed to reflect the new music scene of the time. It was compiled byNME writersRoy Carr,Neil Taylor and Adrian Thrills, who licensed tracks from labels includingCreation,Subway,Probe Plus,Dan Treacy's Dreamworld Records,Jeff Barrett's Head Records, Pink, andRon Johnson. Readers had to pay for the tape via mail order, although anLP was subsequently released onRough Trade on 24 November 1986.^[5] The UK music press was in this period highly competitive, with four weekly papers documenting new bands and trends. There was a tendency to create and "discover" new musical subgenres artificially in order to heighten reader interest.NME journalists of the period subsequently agreed thatC86 was an example of this, but also a byproduct ofNME's "hip hop wars"^[6] – a schism in the paper (and among readers) between enthusiasts of contemporary progressive black music (for example, byPublic Enemy andMantronix), and fans of guitar-based music, as represented onC86.

NME promoted the tape in conjunction with London'sInstitute of Contemporary Arts, which staged a week of gigs in July 1986,^[7] featuring most of the acts on the compilation.

The tape included tracks by some more abrasive bands atypical of the perceivedC86jangle pop aesthetic:Stump,Bogshed,A Witness,the Mackenzies,Big Flame andthe Shrubs.

C86 was the twenty-thirdNME tape, although its catalogue number was NME022 (C81 had been dubbed COPY001). The rest of the tapes were compilations promoting labels' back catalogues and dedicated toR&B,Northern soul,jazz orreggae.C86 was followed up with aBillie Holiday compilation,Holiday Romance.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[8]
Drowned in Sound	(9/10)[9]
Stewart Lee	(favourable)[10]
The Line of Best Fit	(8/10)[11]
Pitchfork	(9.2/10)[12]
PopMatters	(7/10)[13]
The Quietus	(positive)[14]

Ex-NME writerAndrew Collins summed upC86 by dubbing it "the most indie thing to have ever existed".^[15]Bob Stanley, aMelody Maker journalist in the late 1980s and a founding member of pop bandSaint Etienne, similarly said in a 2006 interview thatC86 represented:

[the] beginning of indie music... It's hard to remember how underground guitar music and fanzines were in the mid-'80s;DIY ethics and any residual punk attitudes were in isolated pockets around the country and theC86 comp and gigs brought them together in an explosion of new groups.^[16]

Martin Whitehead, who ranSubway in the late 1980s, added a new political dimension to the importance ofC86. "BeforeC86, women could only be eye-candy in a band; I thinkC86 changed that – there were women promoting gigs, writing fanzines and running labels."^[17]

Some are more ambivalent about the tape's influence.Everett True, a writer forNME in 1986 under the name "The Legend!",^[18] called it "unrepresentative of its times . . . and even unrepresentative of the small narrow strata of music it thought it was representing." Alastair Fitchett, editor of the music site Tangents (and a fan of many of the bands on the tape), takes a polemical line: "(TheNME) laid the foundations for the desolate wastelands of what we came to know by that vile term 'Indie'. What more reason do you need to hate it?"^[19]The Guardian published an article in 2014 challenging some of the negative assertions about the cassette.^[20]

In 2022, journalist Nige Tassell published the bookWhatever Happened to the C86 Kids?: An Indie Odyssey, based on interviews with members of all 22 bands that had appeared on the cassette. It outlines the "many and varied paths through life" these musicians took over a period of more than three decades.^[21]

The significance ofC86 was recognized by several events marking the 20th anniversary of the compilation's release in 2006.Sanctuary Records releasedCD86,^[22] a double-CD set compiled by Bob Stanley. TheICA hosted "C86 - Still Doing It For Fun",^[23] an exhibition and two nights of gigs celebrating the rise of Britishindependent music.

Cherry Red's 2014 expanded reissue was marked by anNME C86 show on 14 June 2014 at Venue 229, London W1; acts from the original compilation includedThe Wedding Present,David Westlake ofThe Servants,The Wolfhounds andA Witness.^[24]

Other record labels, sometimes in collaboration withNME, have, on occasion, released similarly titled albums themed around surrounding years.

• Fanzine
• Indie rock
• Punk ideologies
• Punk subculture

• Bladh, KristerEverything went Pop!, C86 and more, A wave and its rise and wake (pdf) 2005
• "Fire Escape Talking","Anoraky in the UK, C86, the punk that refuses to die" ("Fire Escape Talking blog", 7 July 2006)
• Fitchett, Alastair,"C86" (Tangents Blog, 25 July 2005)

• 1986 compilation albums
• Indie pop albums by British artists
• Jangle pop compilation albums
• Rough Trade Records compilation albums
• New Musical Express
• Compilation albums included with magazines

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• Use British English from April 2025
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