SOFA: music, ambience, art & stuff
SOFA was the club night that inspired all this. It all started around 1993 when Pete started doing some unusual DJ/ambient installations with DJ Reg Tubby at The Waterfront in Norwich, providing a chillout zone for regular club nights. Brian Eno would be mixed in with live cricket commentary from the World service through an echo machine. 1970s video games would be played through a video projector - that sort of thing.
This evolved into a unique event its own right, very much in tune with those times with board games, ambient, electronic and lounge music, live acts, art installations, drinks delivered to your table and they'd turn the music down if people said it was too loud.
When Pete and Reg moved to London and Sheffield respectively it proved kind of difficult keeping a weekly event going in Norwich.
alpha seven
Alpha seven is the electronic music project of Pete Roberts, who was a member of Norwich band Testcard F in the 1980s but started releasing solo material sporadically in the mid 1990s. The name alpha seven happened to be a CD player he had and co-incidentally the name of Barbarella's spaceship.
Pete still adopts the 'D-I-Y' ethos pioneered by his old band Testcard F, using bins for percussion or misusing technology to make interesting noises. Over the years a cassette portastudio has been replaced by Ableton (the popular DAW) but the experimental approach persists.
Sofacom is the small spin-off record label Pete launched which released intermittently, although now you can find everything on bandcamp.
Great Lift Journeys of Norwich and other stories (1997)
This was the first release. Inspired by an encounter with a talking lift, Reg Tubby and alpha seven hit on the idea of recording them and mixing them in between tracks in their SOFA nights in various venues in Norwich in the mid to late nineties.
Pete then released a selection of these field recordings along with an entire album of music, entitled Great Lift Journeys of Norwich at the start of 1997.
The media predictably got the wrong end of the stick. There followed a bizarre week of national media coverage, finishing with an appearance on the Today programme with Anna Ford.
Later on the CD got some Radio 1 airplay from John Peel and Mark and Lard.
Reviews for Great lift journeys of Norwich
- an excellent gem in the ambient/chillout realm - discogs review
- Suffice to say that this is a definite grower and modern/ambient fans should give this a try - Synth music direct
- Yes, as you'd probably guess, it's well-crafted Ambient muzak, elevator music for folks who can truly appreciate it. Hints of love, hints of sadness, hints of a lot of things, easily digested and passed, leaving you instantly hungry for more. - Ambience for the masses
- 'contains nothing but the sound of lifts' - The Daily Mail
And the journo from Elevator World magazine seemed to like it too.
alpha seven discography
Singles / EPs
- The Old Hovercraft Factory (1 August 2025)
- Number Station (27 June 2025)
- Europa (2023)
- One Tree Hill (2023)
- Automation for industry (2023)
- Perugia MiniMetro (2019)
EPs
- Music for imagined TV programmes (2021)
- 4am at the SOFA club (2020)
- Greenwich Light Vessel (2013)
Albums
- Clear skies and satellites (2020)
- Selected early works (2019)
- Great TV masts of the UK (2015)
- SPACE (2008)
- Alpha Seven (2000)
- Great lift journeys of Norwich and other stories (1997)
Videos
The alpha seven project is currently based in vibrant SE London tho' there is a historical connection with vibrant Norwich, so you'll also find the A-Z of Norwich bands which we still maintain as an interesting piece of web history.