Mac Austin of White Door Returns with "We Need Fiction" by BRITISH STEREO

Cherry Audio regular Phil Heeks of THE BRITISH STEREO COLLECTIVE has teamed with Mac Austin of WHITE DOOR for We Need Fiction with BRITISH STEREO, a synthpop off-shoot of TBSC. Preview the tracks here and download or pre-order the CD at Bandcamp or order the clear vinyl LP from Fairsound.

Phil tells us, "I think everything (or at least 95% upwards) on this is Cherry Audio!"

For the past six years Phil Heeks has been producing retro-futurist electronica as THE BRITISH STEREO COLLECTIVE, releasing three vinyl albums (one of which entered the Official UK Album Download Chart at 42 in 2024) and a deluxe CD on the Castles in Space label; sixteen self-released CDs; a self-released 12 inch single and a vinyl album through the long-running Starburst Magazine.

The project began as a series of faux TV and film theme compilations but quickly branched out into other fare in the style of Jarre, Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, Komische, Kraftwerk etc.

After a request from The British Library Sound Archive in November 2024, the BSC’s recorded work up to that point was digitised and stored there for posterity.

THE BRITISH STEREO COLLECTIVE has been favourably reviewed many times by ELECTRONIC SOUND magazine, and also by SHINDIG magazine, FILM STORIES magazine, SFX magazine and several online zines, as well as extensive airplay on BBC6 and many other independent electronica shows.

From 1983 onwards, on extended hiatus from prog-rock group GRACE, Mac Austin fronted WHITE DOOR (along with Harry Davies and John Davies) releasing the legendary synth-pop/ new romantic album, ‘Windows’, which gained radio rotation on the BBC with hits such as ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Love Breakdown’ and ‘Windows’.’ It was also highly regarded among European fans of electronic pop music.

Due to huge demand, the album was re-released on CD in 2009, via Cherry Red/Cherry Pop. The original vinyl and the CD re-release are now rare items on the second hand market.

In 2020 a long awaited, but unexpected, second album from WHITE DOOR was released. The three original members, Mac Austin, John Davies and Harry Davies joined forces with a new, fourth member, the Swedish artist and producer Johan Baeckström (Daily Planet etc.) to create an epic album titled ‘The Great Awakening’, which is also now extremely hard to find on the second hand market.

Now Heeks and Austin join forces for the debut release from the THE BRITISH STEREO COLLECTIVE’s synth-pop off-shoot project ‘BRITISH STEREO’ – an album 35 years in the making...

Circa 1990, Heeks and Austin co-wrote four of the songs contained on this new album entitled ‘We Need Fiction’.

The songs were originally recorded on the TEAC Tascam 144 4-track cassette recorder that WHITE DOOR’s demos had been recorded on in the early 1980s and, in mid-December 2025, Phil Heeks contemplated the feasibility of these tracks being salvageable. After a mercifully brief search through old cassettes, he found the 2-channel mixes. The vocals were then isolated and extracted and Heeks set about reconstructing the songs.

Mac Austin then came to the studio to record additional vocals which were then blended with the old vocal takes to create an interesting hybrid of Austin’s voice now and Austin’s voice three-and-a-half decades ago. The opportunity was also taken to write and record a brand new song ‘Hall of Mirrors’. There are ten tracks in total, including a couple of instrumentals and some impressionistic part-vocal/part-instrumental tracks. Backing vocals are supplied by Jane Bailey, who sang lead vocals on THE BRITISH STEREO COLLECTIVE’s 2025 12” vinyl release ‘Marked to Kill’.