In 1977 David Bowie released the album ‘Heros’ which he had recorded that summer in Studio 2 of Berlin’s Hansa recording complex.

In 1997 Ernst Hositiut purchased a mouldy notebook from a car boot sale near Kessingland, Suffolk for the princely sum of 50p. The book was written in German, but as Ernst was born and raised in an apartment off Karl-Marx-Allee, East Berlin, this was fine.

It had not been well looked after. The blue ink from the author’s fountain pen had smudged and dispersed over many of its feint-ruled leaves. Of its contents, only eight or nine pages were legible, with only fragments of the remaining pages clear enough to read due to excessive water damage. But Ernst didn’t care.

Here was a direct but unlikely connection to the motherland via a field in East Anglia. And what few pages he could read suggested something extraordinary: this notebook was either once the property of a Hansa Studio engineer, or at the very least someone who had attended the recording sessions for ‘Heros’.

With so few pages, information was limited but there was enough: microphone makes and positions were listed; the inventiveness of Robert Fripp’s guitar genius; what the tape op had for lunch; and a game invented during lulls in the recordings whereby they gave the East German look-outs they could see from Hansa's windows the names of prominent drag queens in the West.

But even better, tucked inside its delicate pages were strips of 1/4” tape totalling a metre or so. Much had corroded, but Ernst spliced together what was salvageable and played it back through his trusty Uher. His efforts were rewarded with an overdriven backwards guitar riff and in another section some trebly ambient synth. Sandwiched between these two short musical passages a distorted voice appeared to say “oblique strategies”. Was this Brian Eno? It was impossible to tell but frankly who cares: this was an amazing boot sale find.

I learnt about Ernst’s story first-hand at a boisterous party in Walberswick circa 2007. Fascinating as it was, as he spoke I couldn’t help feeling a little sceptical, after all he had clearly sunk a bier or two. Perhaps he sensed this as with a flourish he produced a short cassette recording of the original tape and photographs of the tatty book corroborating everything he had told me.

Sadly I wasn't to meet Ernst again but his story stayed with me. Years later I heard a storm surge had flooded his home with many of his possessions, including his precious notebook, 1/4“ tape and Uher, lost to the North Sea. Thereafter he left England and returned to Germany and all contact was lost.

‘Oblique Strategies’ is an instrumental track drawn from the memory of a rowdy party, a few short pieces of tape and a knackered old notebook. Wherever Ernst is, I hope he would approve of the finished piece.