From the City of Angels comes a devilishly good EP by Die Sexual. The duo of Anton and Rosselinni Floriano have shaped their debut release with a deft club-friendly touch. It helps that Anton has been honing his craft as half of Black Light Odyssey, which has an official remix of Depeche Mode (“Oh Well”) to it’s credit, as well as unofficial remixes and covers.
Bernard Van Isaker
(Via RedSandPr)
Based in Belgium, Side-Line has been active since 1989 and is one of the most popular websites worldwide for electro/industrial music. They also regularly release “name your price” compilations of darkwave, post-punk, electropop, synthpop and industrial music via Bandcamp to give a platform to new bands and also fund their charity work.
An 88 song collection, entitled Electronic Bodies, was released on 1st September that immediately hit the no. 1 spot on the Bandcamp Industrial chart, while it currently sits at no. 3 on the Alternative chart and no. 5 on the overall chart.
The compilation dives deep into the rhythms of 1980s EBM (Electronic Body Music), New Beat and their contemporary offshoots, while featuring artists from territories that span Germany to Australia, USA to Estonia, and many more. In doing so, it proves that these styles still resonate worldwide after being established four decades ago. Electronic Bodies is also in some ways a tale of two halves, with the first immersing listeners in old-school vibes and the latter offering participating artists additional freedom in their sonic manipulation.
The commitment of Side-Line in showcasing a blend of emerging talents and seasoned acts remains unwavering, with chief editor Bernard Van Isacker providing “a special shoutout to Erlend Eilertsen [Lights A.M, Essence Of Mind] for masterfully enhancing some of the tracks, as not every artist boasts high-end studio equipment.”
All proceeds from this compilation support licensed, trauma-informed PTSD care in Ukraine. In preparing the release, Side-Line consulted sustainability expert Figen Sekin, who told us:
PTSD treatment relies on continuity of care. Donations fund the clinical intake, the scheduled therapy sessions, the supervised group support, and the follow-up appointments. Music communities mobilize quickly; that momentum helps people enter care while engagement is high.
The Bandcamp offering also includes an exclusive Electronic Bodies T-shirt and – in true EBM spirit – a combo package that includes a strictly limited edition hand-numbered stainless steel flask. Each of these orders include a medallion and badge plus a download of the entire compilation, ensuring that the beats never stop.
The T-shirt can be purchased HERE and the T-Shirt/flask HERE. Shipping will take place in early October.
All proceeds from sales of Electronic Bodies will be donated to psychological support for Ukrainian soldiers and citizens suffering from PTSD.
(Via Mute)
Vince Clarke has announced details of his debut solo album, Songs of Silence, a 10-track lyric-less album of uncategorisable ambient beauty. The album will be available on vinyl, CD and digitally via Mute on 17 November 2023, and launches today with ‘The Lamentations of Jeremiah’, the first piece of music to be shared from the project.
Listen to the track and watch the moving video – one of the first to be directed by Turkish-born NY-based portrait photographer Ebru Yildiz (Laurie Anderson, Mitski, A Place to Bury Strangers, Algiers) – which finds Clarke in a liminal space:
Ebru Yildiz explains, “When I first heard the song, I felt like it contained a whole lifetime within itself. All of the drama and peace, anxiousness and calmness, tension and hope, and everything in between. I wanted the visuals to feel like all those extremes as well.”
As the Ivor Novello winning songwriter behind countless chart-topping pop songs as co-founder of Erasure, Yazoo and Depeche Mode, Clarke has – unbelievably – waited until now to embark on a solo release.
Recorded in his home studio in New York, and featuring photography and artwork by the award-winning Magnum photojournalist Eugene Richards, work on the album began as a distraction during lockdown, a chance to finally get his head around the possibilities of Eurorack, a modular synthesiser format famed for its addictive and limitless configurations. “I could have gone on forever, I could have not stopped,” explains Vince, “I was enjoying the process so much and wasn’t thinking about anyone else hearing it. But hearing it develop in my studio, in my head, learning new tricks – that’s been the best thing about this. I was in a state of shock, actually, when Mute said they wanted to release this album.”
Alone in the studio, Clarke set himself two rules: first, that the sounds he generated for the album would come solely from Eurorack, and second, that each track would be based around one note, maintaining a single key throughout. “Nobody in my household is particularly interested in what I get up to in the studio” says Vince. “Even the cat used to leave after an hour or so of listening to drones.”
The resultant album’s mood of synth-generated, cosmic remoteness is interrupted by stark interventions, reminders of the human hand at work amid this machinery – a scrambled sample like a distressed transmission from a fighter pilot, the wordless operatic contributions of Caroline Joy, the sawing brimstone of composer Reed Hays’ cello on ‘The Lamentations of Jeremiah’, and the album’s centrepiece which builds around the 1844 anti-scab folk song ‘Blackleg Miner’, glowing with resonance and relevance. Elsewhere on the album Clarke manifests relentless sequencer patterns, gradual accelerations, Moog-style drones, glistening droplets of synth, and burgeoning swells of processed guitars, with Clarke describing the tracks as “having a sense of sadness, of things going bad, things crumbling”.
Not content to rest on his considerable pop legacy, Vince Clarke has instead opened up exciting new electronic vistas for himself, and for the rest of us, in which the permutations and possibilities are limitless, Clarke declaring “The infinite shades of sounds you can create with just the tiniest tweak of a knob or slider continues to fascinate me.”
Here’s a piece of trivia: Where was the last ever Fad Gadget performance? The answer is: the Swedish Alternative Music Awards in Gothenburg. It was a tragedy to lose Frank Tovey, but it was not accidental that the promoters of the legendary Romo Night had pulled him across the North Sea for a show. They know how to respect their elders in the Nordic music scene.
So it is that a Lustans Lakejer shirt plays a prominent role in this video from Strange Tales. Sweden’s answer to Duran Duran is still playing shows, but respect where it is due. That isn’t to say that Strange Tales are newcomers to the scene – the band was first active in the period, 1984-1987, but it was only in 2020 that they returned.
The band is made of up of:
- Karl Johan ”Kalle” Larsson – composer, lead vox, backing vox
- Tobbe Lander – composer, synths
- Jonas Berg – composer, synths
There is an album on the way. Untold will include this single, “Somebody Else” – which gives good impressions, and not only because we love a good LL promo shirt.
The legendary producer, Stephen Hague, started out making the most uncool music possible. As a member of La Seine, he shared responsibility for long-haired 70s guitar combos making mainstream rock. As a songwriter, he provided input to Ringo Starr. As a session musician, he programmed synths for Gordon Lightfoot. Hague’s real break came, however, from his time with Jules and the Polar Bears – the lead singer went on to write songs for Cyndi Lauper (“App Around the World”) and Alison Moyet (“Whispering Her Name”), while Hague became an in-demand producer.
Things started to look up with work on Ric Ocasek’s Beatitude. The Cars front man had decided to move in an electronic direction, and Hague’s keyboard experience was just what he needed. The fact that Hague had acquired a CS-80 didn’t hurt, either. Thus began a career making many of the hits of the 80s for OMD, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, and New Order. That turned into a career making hits in the 90s for Dubstar, Blur, Robbie Williams and Electronic. And it continues, to this day, with efforts for Lizzo, Whitey, and the renewed Dubstar.
Hague’s reputation has come at a cost. Some bands have seen him as their record label’s attempt to impress them with a winning sound. Others have worried that his production – like that of Trevor Horn – is just a little too glossy. There is no arguing with the results, however: Stephen Hague productions have a technical quality that the labels are willing to pay for. He has writing credits on songs that have never lost their appeal. And he has helped UK bands to cross the Atlantic when they were struggling to get attention. There is no pleasing some people (looking at you, Peter Hook), but the songs speak for themselves.
10. Rock Steady Crew – (Hey You) Rock Steady Crew
Hip hop and electro had been taking shape for a few years before Rock Steady Crew appeared on the scene. This Hague-produced and co-written single was a global sensation. The track topped the charts in Belgium and the Netherlands, and it was a top ten hit in Sweden and the UK. The Crew were a breakdancing troupe, and this song took their b-boy/b-girl ethos from the streets of New York to the world.
9. OMD – Secret
In 1985, the band that had written “Distance Fades Between Us” was searching for the commercial success that had fallen into the laps of the bands they had inspired. Cue a call from Virgin Records to Hague to work with OMD, whose radio-friendly direction had been demonstrated by the previous year’s Junk Culture. Hague went on to produce two albums for OMD; the first being Crush, which yielded this classic single. It is sometimes said that OMD is a band of two audiences – one experimental, the other commercial – but the pop credentials of “Secret” must be something that both camps can agree on.
8. Malcolm McLaren – Madam Butterfly
Hague worked with the former Sex Pistols manager, Malcolm McLaren, on a number of projects. Their first connection was indirect: the World Famous Supreme Team had taken samples from “Buffalo Girls” for “Hey DJ,” which had been produced by Hague. That was quickly noticed by Charisma, McLaren’s label, who had known of Hague through an association with Peter Gabriel, and he was soon in the frame for McLaren’s Fans album. An LP full of cod opera merged with hip hop must have sounded mad on paper, but they managed to record elegant voices that still raise a shiver.
7. Pet Shop Boys – Love Comes Quickly
The first producer to work with the Pet Shop Boys was Bobby Orlando, the Hi-NRG pioneer who had created alternative dancefloor hits for the Flirts and Divine before Neil Tennant tracked him down in New York. Orlando gave his treatment to “West End Girls” and co-wrote “One More Chance,” but his studio was not big enough to contain the stars that the PSB were turning into. A change of labels led to an invitation for Hague to rework the PSB material for their first album, Please. It was a step ahead of Orlando’s octave-bouncing Hi-NRG style, and it gave the duo a string of hits. Hague got a writing credit on this single, which helped to establish their new sound and his credentials as the go-to producer for electronic pop music.
6. Erasure – A Little Respect
When Vince Clarke wrapped up Yazoo and started Erasure, it was assumed that his Midas touch would be revealed again. Instead, the first Erasure album almost sank without a trace. It is a good thing that he held his nerve and carried on, as the duo were able to establish themselves as one of the most enduring and entertaining acts to emerge from the 1980s. In 1988, Hague’s reputation as an electronic music producer led to an engagement that saw Erasure topping the UK album charts for the first time. It wouldn’t be the last time that Clarke and Andy Bell would lead the sales tables, but their change of fortune owes something to Hague’s ear. Vince Clarke wasn’t entirely happy with the experience, however, and the gig for the next album, Wild!, went to Gareth Jones and Mark Saunders.
5. The House of Love – I Don’t Know Why I Love You
In 1989, The House of Love were on the verge of becoming massive. Hague was called in to work some magic on this song, which was released as a single despite singer Guy Chadwick’s intuition that it wasn’t the right track for the times. It didn’t reach the top 20, but it became a hit among US college radio stations and the cool crowd. It is still one of the band’s best-regarded songs from that period.
4. James – She’s a Star
James were discovered by Tony Wilson of Factory Records and recorded their first release for the legendary label in the same Stockport studio used by Joy Division. They were concerned about using up their best songs in the studio, however, so opted to record what they took to be their three worst songs for their debut EP with Chris Nagle. No fear of that Mancunian logic being allowed when Hague got involved, but he was pulled in by Fontana while the band were in a shambolic state: the singer had another project to work on; Brian Eno was only half-involved with production work to date; and the studio set-up was a mobile arrangement in the drummer’s house. Retreating to Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios near Bath, Hague set about cleaning up the process and the songs, leading to a string of top-ten hits and critical acclaim. Nice one.
3. Sheila Chandra – Ever So Lonely/Eyes/Ocean
One of the greatest voices to emerge from Britain belongs to Sheila Chandra. The former Monsoon vocalist had a solo career that was tragically cut short when she developed “burning mouth syndrome” – a condition that makes even whispering painful. Hague was tapped to remix a medley of three of Chandra’s greatest songs, “Ever So Lonely,” “Eyes,” and “Ocean,” for the 2001 compilation, Gifted: Women of the World. The digital release had to wait until 2023’s Out in the Real World, but the sonic purity of Chandra’s voice is timeless.
2. Dubstar – Hygiene Strip
Hague’s work with Dubstar began in 1995, when the original line-up was still on Food Records. Disgraceful – which had a pencil case on the cover that was so sexy that Woolworths banned it from display – contained the classic tracks, “Not So Manic Now,” “St Swithin’s Day,” and “Stars.” Hague added accordian to the album, as well as a layer of glossy production that lifted the pop potential of the songs.
Fast forward to the Covid-19 lockdowns, and Hague was called on to work with the renewed Dubstar on tracks for their album, Two. Sarah Blackwood’s vocals had lost none of their innocence or classiness in the intervening years, while Chris Wilkie’s guitar playing had acquired a new sensitivity. Hague’s unpressured approach highlighted the self-assurance of the band, while adding to the playfulness of the enterprise.
1. New Order – True Faith
Peter Hook likes a whinge. The former New Order bass player became very upset when he felt that, during the recording of “True Faith,” Hague paid little attention to his contributions. Hague, to his credit, now says that he wishes Hook had made more of a noise when the single was being crafted. It certainly didn’t lead to him being vetoed as producer for New Order’s mid-career, difficult album, Republic, but Hooky’s unhappiness is featured loudly in his biography. New mind, Hague’s single-mindedness turned “True Faith” into one of New Order’s most majestic singles and got the band onto the soundtrack for American Psycho. Can’t complain about that.
These boots were made for dancing. The stomp of DMs to old school EBM fills the new album from Container 90 – AirWare soles lending bounce to the Swedish duo’s latest offering.
Grand PrixXx is the fourth studio album from Ronny Larsson and Jonas Rundberg. It contains some previous single releases, as well as new sounds to bring the train of sequenced bass further along the tracks. As usual, it takes extra motor power from the band’s no-nonsense, anti-fascist politics. From the opening “Eurovision Song Protest” to the Test Dept-esque “New World Disorder,” there are no punches pulled in the lyrics or the rhythms.
When you live in a society where the second largest political party (by votes) is led by synth-loving fascists, programming the machines to fight back makes all kinds of sense. In lieu of a regular package, Container 90 offer a sixteen-page comic book that has content for each song. In a time of universal streaming, that is a revolutionary act.
Sweden’s Kite aren’t nearly as well known in the UK as they ought to be. Two appearances this year should help to change that, but the shows were relatively low key. Back in their homeland, they just performed in front of thousands of rapturous fans, who have been treated to the duo’s anthemic poptronica for years in great locations with their full light-shows.
Their latest release, “Don’t Take the Light Away/Remember Me,” gives us two new songs to add to the sense that the Swedes know something that the Brits don’t. In this remix by Emmon producer, Jimmy Monell, the lead track from the single gets a harder treatment for the dancefloor.
Remember Delays? The Southampton band had a strong claim to be the kings of indietronica. Even Trevor Horn got in on the action, adding his production gloss to their hit, “Valentine.” Sadly, singer Greg Gilbert left us two years ago, which left a crown to be claimed.
A strong contender comes from Ireland, in the shape of Lucy Gaffney. Nettwerk, the home label of Moev, Delerium, and Sarah McLachlan, have already snapped her up. Gaffney’s songs are strong, and to our ears the sound owes something to the influence of Delays. She has a support slot with the Wedding Present in Belfast on the 7th of September in Belfast, which ought to cement her indie credentials no end.
Page (Photo: Simon Helm)
Page, the Swedish poptronica pioneers, have announced a new album. En ny våg [EN: A New Wave] features contributions from Chris Payne and Rrussell Bell, two icons of Synth Britannia who accompanied Gary Numan through his early successes and were members of Dramatis. Payne, of course, is also known as the co-writer of “Fade to Grey,” which Midge Ure made into a hit for Visage.
En ny våg further refines the sound that Eddie Bengtsson has been distilling with his Moogs; concentrating the feel of 1978-1980 into serious but melodic poptronica. Ever since he traded in his drum kit for two synthesisers, inspired by Silicon Teens, Bengtsson has been crafting exceptional pop material. Together with Marina Schiptjenko, the duo has carved a path that keeps the flame of that period alive and in tune with the times.
The first song to be revealed from the album is “Vi kommer tillbaka” [EN: “We Are Coming Back”]. The album is released in CD and vinyl formats on 29 September 2023.
Remember what summers were like when you were a kid? They never seemed to end, and the blue skies were a revelation after three other seasons spent locked inside a classroom. When you got a little older, it was when you could meet other kids of whichever sex appealed to you. As August came around, the weather cooled appreciably, and it became possible to wear jeans and jumpers without sweating to death. There was the excitement of a new school year approaching, but also a sense of loss because the best weather and the greatest freedom was behind you. Time to get a new pencil case, but also to say goodbye to the hang-outs with your new friends.
The new single from Dave Baker’s Lonelyklown project traces these feelings from an adult perspective. “All the Summers Gone” combines the senses of longing and loss with appreciation for the memories in the way that Baker does best without becoming overly sentimental (see: I Start Counting). Yes, there were 99 Flakes, cricket and contrails, but also sounds and sights that won’t be repeated. Savour them.