We hardly knew Jeff Plewman, the man behind the bandages. Nash the Slash, on the other hand, had a global following. In his top hat and suit, Nash was a silent film star in an age of noise; widely appreciated for his misuse of electrified violins and mandolins. Fed through effects pedals and played over drum machines and keyboards, Nash’s instruments yielded shrieks and drones that could mute a banshee or echo Prokofiev.
Gary Numan stumbled across Nash in a Toronto nightclub and immediately dropped his scheduled support act. Nash accompanied him on tour, gaining exposure, a UK record deal and even a place on a Smash Hit flexidisc (alongside OMD); however, unlike Canadian label-mates, Martha & The Muffins, Nash failed to achieve commercial success in the UK. Dindisc, the Branson-funded label run by Carol Wilson, promoted Nash as a post-punk novelty act, playing on his horror-film imagery and clever covers of songs by The Rolling Stones and Jan & Dean. Frustrated by the lack of appreciation for his inventive original material, Nash returned to Canada.
From his base in Toronto, Nash released records on the Cut-throat imprint. The label’s distinctive logo included a skull, and one of the eye sockets was positioned over the spindle hole on Cut-throat releases. Listening to a Nash album therefore required listeners to impale the skull and rotate it around the violated socket. That dark sense of humour and his attention to detail were constant features of Nash’s work, whether in songs like “Vincent’s Crows” or in the production of a Nash the Slash comic book.
Nash played to packed arenas and small clubs. He warmed up for The Who but also for The Spoons. He toured with Iggy Pop and played along to silent films in local cinemas. He composed albums that could be played at any speed and practically invented the sound of The Orb and System 7 with “Blind Windows” in 1978.
He retired from music in 2012, leaving a note charting his accomplishments and lamenting the consequences of file-sharing:
A journalist once asked me to describe a typical Nash the Slash fan. I replied, ‘They just get it’. They get my references to Ray Bradbury, Boris Karloff, and even my opening quote from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was my intention to shock, but not offend.
Nash had a full stage name – Nashville Thebodiah Slasher – but his family and friends knew him as Jeff. His passing last weekend leaves a hole in the heart of alternative music.
Cold War Night Life became one of the defining electronic albums of the early 1980s, comfortably sitting alongside John Foxx’s Metamatic, Kraftwerk’s Computer World and Fad Gadget’s Under the Flag. Released on an independent Canadian label, its commercial reach was limited, but over the years the record became a cult favourite among the synthescenti. A copy found its way to neutral Sweden and C90 duplicates began to circulate throughout the country’s burgeoning electronic music scene. In this case, home taping didn’t kill music; it built a base of fans for whom Rational Youth issued distant signals on wavelengths tuned to the alternative dancefloor.
The original plan was to transport a six-piece pop combo from Canada for a mini-tour of Sweden and Norway, but logistical considerations trimmed the act down to the essential duo of Howe and original keyboardist Kevin Komoda. Not a problem: fans were more than happy to receive them for a purely electronic show. Armed with a Moog Little Phatty and Roland JX-8P, Komoda was able to recreate classic sounds while confidently adding runs and fills that lifted the atmosphere higher than the International Space Station.
Psyche’s Swedish shows opened with the hard-edged stomp of “The Saint Became a Lush” from 1986’s Unveiling the Secret. There were hints of “Tubular Bells” in the sequencer pattern; but, instead of Max von Sydow in a dog-collar, the fog gave way to singer Darrin Huss, occupying the stage with a vigorous dance routine, and keyboardist Stefan Rabura. What followed was a selection of hits from Psyche’s extensive back-catalogue, covering a range of styles while maintaining the dialectic between the morbid and uplifting. Songs like “15 Minutes”, “Sanctuary” and “The Crawler” easily got the appreciative crowd making noise: in Gothenburg, Huss told the boisterous audience, “I’m singing to the rhythm of your screams!”
Bengtsson has an informal rapport with fans, who push to the front of the stage to sing along to “Sekunder” (EN: “Seconds”), “Allt är klart” (EN: “Everything is Ready”) and other SMPJ classics. Flanked by Christer Hermodsson, he knocks out energetic poptronica gems with an ease that belies their sophistication. For sheer elegance, songs like “Luft” (EN: “Breath”) and “Det där är grönt” (EN: “That is Green”) are without peers in modern electronic music. The crowds in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm know this, and the bartenders at the venues are left in relative peace for the duration of SMPJ’s sets.
MacQuarrie’s show isn’t all robotic longing: audience favourite, “Bubbleboy,” taken from 2003’s Auto:Matic album, explains the fate of a boy “alone in a bubble world,” superimposed over a sonic palette lifted from 1979. The I Satellite originals on display are both quirky and catchy, and after the shows groups of young men press forward to ask questions and seek signatures. Who knew in Södermalm that Kalamazoo was hiding such an interesting act?
Never mind – the crowd at Stockholm’s Nalen venue knows all of the words to the 1980s singles: Claudette, The Face of Dorian Grey and Calling All Destroyers. They sing along contentedly, while Robert Enforsen, the former Elegent Machinery vocalist, handles iPad and keyboard duties and adds harmonies. Marlow’s voice holds up, but the years have clearly weathered the lad from Essex.
After 2010’s Nu (EN: Now) revived the musical partnership of Eddie Bengtsson and Marina Schiptjenko, the profile and creative output of Page have been reaching new heights. Sweden’s original synthpop act, Page went through several transitions before bowing out at a performance in 2000. The reunion of Bengtsson and Schiptjenko, a decade later, surprised many by reinvigorating their music with mature themes and catchy melodies. Nu came across as a reboot, rather than a simple refresh, of Page’s sound.
Sitting for thirty years in the attic of Kevin Komoda, a box of memorabilia collected from his days in Rational Youth yielded some expected treasures when opened earlier this year. Besides pictures from Kraftwerk’s 1981 show in Montreal, Komoda found recordings from Rational Youth’s 1983 cross-Canada tour. Tapes from shows in Ottawa and Winnipeg were promptly digitised and released as cassettes and CDs, including bundles with rare and unreleased tracks from the RY archives.
Irish-born and Barnsley-raised, multi-instrumentalist Hannah Peel is best known in the electronic music community for her work with John Foxx & The Maths. With her amplified violin and keyboard work, Peel has brought an iridescent quality to Foxx’s stage shows, complementing the contributions of drummer and modular-synth master, Benjamin “Benje” Edwards. Peel’s solo material occupies a different place from Foxx’s, ranging from music-box versions of classic synthpop to ethereal, sweeping pop tracks that are more obviously inspired by a mixture of the Cocteau Twins and Irish folk traditions.
The release of Cryo material is always special, but the first single from the forthcoming Retropia album, In Your Eyes, came with an outstanding bonus track. While the A-side single is a definite alternative dancefloor-filler, The Portal is solid evidence that Martin Rudefelt has a deep well of compelling songs to draw upon. Although released in the position of a B-side, The Portal could easily have been a single in its own right. Dark, brooding and uplifting at the same time, it shows why Cryo continue to set the benchmark for EBM.
One of the surprises of 2013 was the low-key release by the electro-crooner duo, Julian & Marina, of their Distance EP, which included this exceptional track. Count the Stars is a wonderful pop song: elegant and charming in equal amounts. It goes a long way to preserve the feeling of early Pet Shop Boys songs, at a time when the PSB are borrowing ideas from Michael Nyman while singing Fabien Society pamphlets, and deserves wider exposure.
They’ve been around since 1984, but Candide aren’t stuck in an old-school groove. They released two singles in 2013, both of which were excellent; but, if pressed, we preferred this tribute to influential Swedish new wave act, Lustans Lakejer.
Belgium’s number one party band, Vive la fête went all Vicious Pink for this sultry but rhythm-infused remix. We made it a Track of the Day, but in truth it is one of the top songs for the year. A bouncy synth line, laid in by remixer Pantser Fabriek, gives it a minimal wave feel, but the vocals of model Els Pynoo take it over the top. More of this for 2014, please.
The duo of Richard Flow (ex-Vision Talk) and John Lindqwister (ex-Cat Rapes Dog) have conjured up a number of high-quality songs in their short time together, and with Pushing the Angels Astray they have established their place among the most exciting new acts of 2013. Their performance at Electronic Summer was one of the highlights of the festival, and with their signing to Juggernaut in the UK, we’ll be seeing a lot more of them next year.
In his next life, William Orbit is going to be a university professor. A particularly English kind of genius, he appears on stage with course notes that he doesn’t read and muses about the relationship between notation and music at the end of the universe. Along the way, he shows off a drum machine that is actually a machine that plays drums, explains the formal structure of pop hits, tells the history of his work with Malcolm McLaren and Madonna, and shares videos of Soviet trains crashing. An engaging and charmingly self-deprecating speaker, students will love him. A tweed blazer with elbow patches is all that stands between him and tenure at a top college.
Orbit’s appearance at the London Electronic Arts Festival was billed as a show, rather than a seminar, but it moved between both ends of that spectrum like the needle on a VU meter. Orbit came to the stage with Torch Song and Bassomatic songs, reaching back more than two decades to his early club hits. In the course of the evening, he shared a remix of Falling Free made for Madonna (revealed as one of his favourite tracks), Purdy from his My Oracle Lives Uptown album and snippets from the next Strange Cargo effort (expected in the New Year). They are all distinctively Orbit-treated tracks, impressed with sublime style. Although he makes a living sharing his creativity with household-name artists, Orbit’s output is often on the alternative or experimental side – like Brian Eno without his oblique strategy cards.
Take Page, the original Swedish synthpop act. Founded in the suburbs of Malmö in 1980, Page were inspired to take up keyboards by Silicon Teens, the alter-ego of Mute Records’ founder, Daniel Miller. The back-story is that, before he discovered Depeche Mode, Miller had dreamed of a teenaged pop group based entirely around the synthesizers that were starting to become more compact and affordable at the end of the 1970s. He set out his vision through a series of singles and an album of rock standards re-conceived using analogue synths, which were attributed to a fictitious quartet of youthful musicians. When these records reached Sweden, Miller’s idea was turned into reality by 18-year old skateboarder Eddie Bengtsson, who was inspired to sell his drum set and buy two Korg synthesizers: one for himself and one for 15-year old Marina Schiptjenko, a classically-trained pianist who had fallen in love with electronic music when she saw Gary Numan playing on Swedish television. Together, Bengtsson and Schiptjenko created a new template for electronic pop, and Page became the house band for a growing audience of dedicated syntare (synthers).
