Pleasantly Surprised was a cassette label that focused on post-punk, cold wave, new wave and ethereal bands, many of which happened to be on the legendary 4AD label. Pleasantly Surprised was a contrivance of Robert H. King based in Glasgow Scotland. It was originally intended as a fanzine… " But most of the bands I had written to sent demo's, so I thought rather than write about them I would put together a cassette and let people judge for themselves." -Robert

With the financial assistance of a friend who was already doing a fanzine, Robert released An Hour Of Eloquent Sounds. The cassette came in an 6x9 manilla envelope with photocopied inserts and featured an assortment of important bands of the day like The Birthday Party, Ludus, Cocteau Twins, The Wake, and Sunset Gun (notable for the band members Deirdre and Louise Rutkowski, future vocalists for This Mortal Coil). "Initially it was a one off, but due to the success, we set about putting together PS 002. We received such positive feedback that we had decidedly more cassettes than we needed. So rather than let people down, we put out a double C60 [cassette]." -Robert

After the release of PS 002 The Angels Are Coming, Robert and his partner went their separate ways. "We parted company, and so the money was halved." With a new enthusiasm and donations from a few friends, Robert carried on with great success. At the label's peak, 5000 copies of PS005 were sold. By the end of the run, Pleasantly Surprised had mail order service and distribution that reached all corners of the earth including: USA / Canada, Australia / New Zealand, Iceland / Scandinavia, Israel / Arabia, East & West Europe, Japan / China and of course the UK.

The cassettes were all elaborately packaged, usually with oversized cardboard covers in plastic sleeves and including several inserts or booklets. The music was mostly made up of demo, live or alternate take recordings which gave music fans a great opportunity to hear their favorite bands in a different light. In addition to offering compilations of otherwise unheard material, Pleasantly Surprised had the opportunity to release entire collections of rare music by Band Of Holy Joy, Test Dept, God's Gift, Clair Obscur, Dif Juz, and Dance Chapter. It's also rumored that there was a Stockholm Monsters collection that never saw the light of day.

"I just want to do as much as I can to help groups, increase circulation and to put out cassettes in a better quality of packaging." -Robert

In 1985 Robert went on to start another record label called Cathexis Recordings. The First release was a Cathexis Recordings / Pleasantly Surprised LP release entitled You Bet We've Got Something Against You.

Since then Robert has been busy with Cathexis Recordings and has been involved with and audio magazine called Total. Cathexis, Like Pleasantly Surprised has released several Various Artist compilations and albums but more geared toward experimental, industrial, field recordings, sound sculpture and avant garde bands like: Current 93, Revolting Cocks, In The Nursery, Shock Headed Peters, Coil, Pink Industry, Click Click, Clair Obscur, Legendary Pink Dots and many more.

All Pleasantly Surprised releases have long since been sold out and are highly sought after by collectors. Although some of the songs were eventually released by the respective bands, usually in a remixed or re-recorded form, most of the material remains otherwise unreleased (with the exception of Test Dept - Ecstacy Under Duress & Clair Obscur - Clair Obscur which was included on their Play album). Perhaps one day the remainder of the releases will be reissued on CD…

-ck