Features

Shine On: Conny Plank

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

When the RocknPop Museum in Gronau, Germany, incorporated Can’s studio into a working exhibit, they acquired a mixing desk made for the band by the legendary producer and engineer, Conny Plank. They also made an exhibit of part of Plank’s kitchen. Another mixing board might have provided the functionality of Conny’s Studio, but its heart was where the engineer gathered with musicians to talk about music and life. Its significance is clear in the story that Plank’s son, Stephan, told The Quietus about the recording of Die Kleinen und die Bosen, the first album on Mute Records:

[…] when they did the first D.A.F. album on MUTE [Editor: This was in 1980.] Daniel Miller made a deal with my father to record the album in four days. So my father spent the first day talking to Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado [of D.A.F.] discussing music. Daniel said, ‘Well, they’re going to record for the next three days.’ And the next day, they spent talking about music, eating good food and being very philosophical about it and didn’t record anything. Daniel was getting very nervous at that point. On the third day, when they were really supposed to start the album, they talked some more about music and went for a long walk and nothing was recorded. Now, Daniel was really afraid of losing his money. On the fourth day, in the morning, they had a really nice breakfast, went to the studio and recorded the album.

Plank’s appearance in photos is of a slightly unkempt, bearded and amiable man, often clad in a woolly jumper; perhaps a little like Michael Caine’s character in Children of Men. The former Stockhausen technician was famed for living and working in a cloud of smoke and taking his artists to unexpected places, sonically and otherwise. Brian Eno, who borrowed Plank’s sound for Bowie’s Berlin albums and worked with Plank on his first overtly ambient album, Music for Airports, has his own anecdote that he told to the art magazine, Frieze:

‘I recall one evening, after we’d been working all day, [Conny] said “Do you feel like a ride into the forest?”’ says Eno. ‘That seemed like a nice idea on a warm autumn evening, so we jumped into his lovely old Merc and set off. We were in the forest after about 20 minutes, sitting in the car in a sort of clearing, just birds and breeze around us. We sat talking for a few minutes. “Do you want to hear something on the radio?” he asked. I said “Why not” – though I thought it was a bit odd that he’d want to put the radio on in this bucolic place. He switched on the radio – and it suddenly broadcast the piece we’d been working on all day!’ ‘It turned out that Conny,’ Eno continues, ‘in another brilliant technological stroke, had rigged up a transmitter at the studio so that he could hear the day’s work in his car – he thought, and was right, that that gave a different perspective to the music. I was impressed, not only by the idea, but by the fact that he must have secretly synchronized watches with somebody at the studio so they started playback at exactly the right moment – That was very Conny!’

It was Plank’s unassuming but technically forward style that attracted a number of experimental artists to his studios outside of Cologne. He was at the center of the Krautrock universe, helping to shape the sound of Neu!, Can and Cluster, and the producer of choice for Ultravox, Killing Joke and Eurythmics. Moebius and Roedelius saw him as an unofficial member of Cluster, and he played and toured with the band. Not all of his artists were as willing to recognise his contributions: having pushed Kraftwerk in the direction of synthesizers and added the vital delay to “Autobahn” while the band were out of the studio, they in-sourced their production work and froze him out of future albums. Plank’s reputation was undiminished, and the story is told that Brian Eno suggested him as the producer of U2’s Joshua Tree album – an idea that Plank himself rejected with characteristic directness, simply saying, “I cannot work with that singer.”

Plank once explained his approach in these terms:

The job of the producer – beyond the technological aspect – is, as I understand it, to create an atmosphere that is completely free of fear and reservation, to find that utterly naïve moment of ‘innocence’ and to hit the button at just the right time to capture it. That’s it. Everything else can be learned and is mere craft.

Plank passed away in 1987, after the cloud of smoke that he lived in had caught up with him. Conny’s Studio continued to be run by his partner, Christa Fast, until her own passing in 2006. The kitchen is on display in Gronau.

 

10. Organisation – Tone Float

Before there was Kraftwerk, there was Organisation – or, if you prefer, Organisation zur Verwirklichung gemeinsamer Musikkonzepte. Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider were the group’s core, and it was in this guise that they first worked with Plank. Like AMM in the UK, Organisation were influenced by the improvisational practices of jazz artists and the indeterminacy of experimental composers like La Monte Young. Under Plank’s guidance, they created an album, Tone Float, in 1970, that was loosely structured and by today’s standards sounds a little naïve. At Plank’s urging, RCA released it in the UK, where it failed to make much of an impression, but a ball had started to roll for Hutter and Schneider, who quickly refocussed their efforts on Kraftwerk.

 

9. Neu! – Hallogallo

Klaus Dinger had been recruited to play drums on Kraftwerk’s debut album. Michael Rother joined the band as guitarist after completion of the record. For a short time, Kraftwerk was the trio of Dinger, Rother and Florian Schneider, following the departure of Ralf Hutter. An attempt to record an album together failed, however, and Hutter rejoined Schneider while Dinger and Rother split off to start Neu! Both Neu! and Kraftwerk worked separately with Plank, creating uniquely influential recordings.

The first album from Neu! contained this track, which embodies the Motorik rhythm that became one of the most influential elements of Krautrock, as well as soaring guitar lines. The opening riff still echoes in the work of dance acts like System 7.

 

8. Cluster – Für die Katz’

Cluster was the project of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. The pair enjoyed a close creative and personal bond with Plank, who was identified as a member of the group on their first album and provided them with material support. Plank is credited as a producer and composer on 1972’s Cluster II, from which this track is drawn. A cosmic swirl of noise and electronics, it is 2,000 light years from any recognisable song structure, but both anticipates industrial music and makes use of the studio as an instrument.

 

7. Brian Eno – 2/2

Roxy Music’s former keyboard player had already recorded much of Ambient 1 – Music for Airports in the UK before he arrived in Germany to work with Plank. Eno’s ambition was to write music for public spaces, which could be interrupted, wouldn’t interfere with conversations, and was sufficiently long that changes would not be jarring. He had already created several albums of ambient music, but this was the first time that he consciously applied the label to a release. With Plank, he recorded “2/2” using loops of tape that were wound around chairs and were layered together.

 

6. The Meteors – Together Too Long

The Meteors were one of the new wave of artists who made their way to Conny’s Studio, seeking a touch of his magic, following the success of his Krautrock projects. Plank is credited both as producer and as a composer for this track, taken from the Dutch band’s 1980 album, Hunger. Plank’s commercial successes enabled him to continue working on less financially viable projects, but the story goes that he kept his awards in the studio’s bathroom.

 

5. Rita Mitsouko – Marcia Baïla

One of the most popular French pop songs of the 1980s, “Marcia Baïla” was Rita Mitsouko’s tribute to their dancer, Marcia Moretto, who had died from breast cancer. The sound was shaped by Plank into a squelchy, synthetic hit.

 

4. Phew – Signal

Take Can’s Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit, throw in a Japanese vocalist who sounds like an art-punk refugee, mix with Plank’s studio skills, and you get this rare release from 1981. It’s a great example of Plank’s experimental side, but it also owes something to the sound he was shaping for DAF at the time. Phew is musical Marmite, but it’s certain that he had moved past his early work for Marlene Dietrich or Duke Ellington.

 

3. Ultravox – Quiet Men

Ultravox recorded 1978’s Systems of Romance with Plank, lured by the prospect of working with Kraftwerk’s former producer. On “Quiet Men,” the Roland TR-77 rhythm box mimics the Motorik drum style of Neu!, while synthesizers play string and lead roles. John Foxx was impressed by Plank’s use of the studio as an instrument, including his creation of an analogue sampling system that allowed the mixing desk to be played like a polyphonic keyboard. Foxx later summed up Plank’s significance this way:

He’d ditched all the boundaries between engineer, producer, artist and equipment, and reinvented the whole environment into something human, organic and intelligent, rather than received or conventional. The best operators do this – George Martin to Lee Perry. Conny was equally important. He’d discovered and recorded an entirely new genre of music – allowed it to retain complete integrity and made it available to the world. Without him, most of that might have remained undiscovered – may have been disregarded, misconceived, or lost completely.

 

2. Kraftwerk – Autobahn

Autobahn was the album that took Kraftwerk global. It marks their transition from electro-acoustic experimentation to electronic pop music, and Plank’s influence can be heard by comparing demo recordings to the final studio versions. This was the last Kraftwerk album to incorporate flutes and violins, as their new EMS, Moog and ARP synthesizers became the key to their sound. Plank is credited with pushing the band in this direction, but it was the last recording they made with him.

 

1. DAF – Ich und die Wirklichkeit

Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft made three and a half albums with Plank: the studio side of Die Kleinen und die Bosen for Mute and Alles Ist Gut, Gold und Liebe and Für Immer for Virgin. The last three were released in a burst of creative energy over a short period, between the beginning of 1981 and the summer of 1982, after the duo of Gabi Delgado and Robert Görl had reduced the band to its minimalist core. With Görl’s tight drumming and concise synthesizer programming providing a framework for Delgado’s vocals – now menacing, now purring – the sound of DAF became taut and angular, while drawing rich emotions from simple waveforms.

“Ich und die Wirklichkeit” [EN: “Me and Reality”] is from 1981’s Alles Ist Gut album. The background sound, rumbling like a radio astronomer’s tape archive, gives the track a sense of space a million miles from the bombast of a Trevor Horn production, but the final bars lift the track into the stratosphere.

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Shine On: John Fryer

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]When John Fryer knocked on the doors of Blackwing Studios in South London, looking for a job, he didn’t know that he was walking onto history’s stage. On his first day of work, Daniel Miller was using the space to record covers of rock standards for his Silicon Teens project. As Miller found more artists for his Mute Records label, Blackwing became his go-to studio and Fryer graduated from engineer (usually alongside studio boss Eric Radcliffe) to producer. Look closely at the credits for Depeche Mode’s Speak & Spell and A Broken Frame, Fad Gadget’s first three albums or Yazoo’s Upstairs at Eric’s – Fryer’s name is there. He wrote and performed on the seminal Fad Gadget album, Under the Flag, and provided the definitive mixes for numerous Depeche Mode recordings.

4AD, another independent label that played a key role in shaping the styles of the 1980s, also found its way to Blackwing and Fryer. While often given assignments to produce artists like Cocteau Twins, Lush (to whom he introduced the magic of distortion) and Clan of Xymox, Fryer was also one of only two permanent members of the 4AD house project, This Mortal Coil, together with label founder Ivo Watts-Russell. They redefined the sound of late night listening, fusing romanticism and darkness in a way that made love and pain part of the same sonic palette. The Mortal Coil project drew in key figures from 4AD’s roster, recast and reimagined its own songs or cover versions, and could be said to have been the label’s heartbeat.

ThisMortalCoil.ItllEndInTears.posterFryer’s work attracted the attention of Trent Reznor, who picked him out for production work on Pretty Hate Machine, the album that launched Nine Inch Nails. Other artists followed, from Vancouver’s Moev (who spawned the Nettwerk label, home to Skinny Puppy and Sarah McLachlan) to Sweden’s Ashbury Heights, looking for a touch of the studio magic that had made Fryer’s previous work so successful.

Fryer hasn’t stopped producing, but these days he’s also involved with some musical projects of his own. In 2011, he released Noise in My Head, an album with vocalist Rebecca Coseboom, as Dark Drive Clinic, which included the contagious “Silhouette.” His new project, Silver Ghost Shimmer, a duo with Pinky Turzo, has released two videos with songs infused with ultra-retro stylings.

Muricidae, a collaboration with Louise Fraser, offers a tantalising refresh of the chorus-and-delay sound that made This Mortal Coil and The Hope Blister so intriguing. The visuals for Muricidae were developed by Roxx of San Francisco-based 2spirit Tattoo. The choice of a tattoo artist over a commercial artist reflects the maverick spirit that Fryer brings to his creative work.

He is also working with Chrysta Bell, who has previously collaborated with David Lynch. A recent series of shows by the Czech cult band, Vanessa, found Fryer rocking out on stage, as well.

John Fryer is presenting a rare DJ set, covering his work for Mute and 4AD, at the upcoming event, A Secret Wish (London, 19 April 2015).

10. Depeche Mode – Just Can’t Get Enough

Fryer worked on the first two Depeche Mode albums, together with Eric Radcliffe, and provided mixing support on several later releases. Speak & Spell was the record that made them a global force, propelled by Vince Clarke’s infectious pop songs and a distinctive sound that distinguished them from the po-faced stoicism of Ballard’s synthetic children, John Foxx and Gary Numan. One of his distinguished credits is for the second single from Speak & Spell, which has become an 80s icon in its own right.

9. Fad Gadget – Life on the Line

Fryer produced two albums for Fad Gadget. Under the Flag, which came out in 1982, refined the instrumentation to keyboards, drum machine and voices, creating an organic sound that tied together a string of classic songs, including “Love Parasite,” “For Whom the Bells Toll” and this track, which Fryer co-wrote with Frank Tovey.

8. Cocteau Twins – Sugar Hiccup

It’s not Fryer’s fault that Elizabeth Fraser sounds like she’s singing the line, “Sugar hiccup my Cheerios.” Her vocal style, while beautiful, can also be impenetrable. Apparently, the correct line is, “Suggar Hiccup, on she reels,” inspired by a racehorse of that name. In any event, the ethereal, misty guitar drones and soaring lead lines of Cocteau Twins owe a lot to Fryer’s studio craft.

7. He Said – Pump

The story is sometimes told that, among Wire’s members, Colin Newman was the conventional one balancing the uncommercial artistic experiments of Graham Lewis and Bruce Gilbert. That is a little too neat a description, which is probably based upon a comparison of Newman’s solo material to some of the Lewis-Gilbert releases as Dome, Kluba Kupol and P’o. The truth is that the three musicians are equally capable of recordings that fit pop structures, but they all resist conventions to different degrees at different times.

Of the group, Graham Lewis’ place along the continuum has most consistently been at the balancing point between beauty and obscurity. This single, released in 1986 as a He Said project, leans more to the former. With Angela Conway providing backing vocals (see AC Marias, below), “Pump” is a sophisticated but unpretentious pop track. Fryer’s studio work gives the song both warmth and room to breath.

6. Clan of Xymox – Stranger

Dark electro warriors Clan of Xymox were an important signing for 4AD, but it was through John Fryer’s remix work on two tracks – “A Day” and “Stranger” – in 1985 that the Dutch band found their way into the alternative dance clubs. Layered with sampled and processed choral lines and propelled by a rhythm track that is never tiring, “Stranger” is like “Blue Monday” for Goths.

As singer Ronny Moorings remembered for Unruhr, at the time of Xymox’s Best Of compilation:

The mixes were done in London’s Blackwing studios with John Fryer being a co-producer. These studios had already then a name for having bands like Depeche Mode and Erasure always recording their albums there. Nine Inch Nails even wanted to record with John Fryer after listening to our records!

5. Wire – Eardrum Buzz/Ahead

As a mixing engineer, Fryer has helped to shape the sound of many iconic records, from M/A/R/R/S’ “Pump Up the Volume” to Pete Murphy’s “Final Solution.” These two tracks show off Wire’s live sound and were released as part of a limited 12″ single to accompany “Eardrum Buzz” in 1989.

4. AC Marias – Just Talk

AC Marias was the short-lived project of Alison Conway, who recorded a single album for Mute, together with her then-boyfriend, Bruce Gilbert of Wire. The production credit for the album is given to a super-group of John Fryer, Paul Kendall, Gareth Jones and Bruce Gilbert. The roles aren’t elaborated, but Paul Kendall recalled to Wireviews:

One of my favorite records of all time. I was a bit sad that I didn’t get involved in the mixing process, but I think John Fryer did an absolutely marvelous job. The pecking order of involvement, if you discount Bruce, was Fryer, me and then Gareth Jones. I did a lot of recording and experimentation with the sound and Fryer just pulled the whole thing together. He also did all the vocal recording.

Gilbert was himself a significant influence on Fryer, and they worked on a number of iconic recordings together, including those of Dome and Duet Emmo. Fryer was also in the chair for the soundtrack commissioned from Gilbert by dancer Michael Clark, The Shivering Man.

Conway went on to focus on videography, making music videos for Mute and other artists, but she left behind a sterling sonic legacy of her own.

3. Muricidae – Away

With LA-based Louise Fraser on vocals, Fryer has refreshed the atmospherics of This Mortal Coil and The Hope Blister for a new project, Muricidae. Named after the rock snails that leave behind complex and attractive shells for interior designers to find, an EP is on the way in the spring. As this early release hints, there is more space(echo) to be explored.

2. Silver Ghost Shimmer – Soft Landing

The strength of Fryer’s own songwriting comes through clearly in another of his current projects, Silver Ghost Shimmer. Another California singer, Pinky Turzo, provides the vocals for SGS. “Soft Landing” was the first release for SGS, and it combines elements of The Shangri-Las with decayed glamour in a smudged-lipstick kind of way.

1. This Mortal Coil – Song to the Siren

Originally recorded by Tim Buckley, “Song to the Siren” in its This Mortal Coil incarnation is widely regarded as one of the most perfect pop songs ever released. Featuring Elizabeth Fraser of Cocteau Twins on vocals, the pain and poignancy of the original is lifted to serene heights in Fryer’s hands. It is immaculate iciness incarnate.

 

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Shine On: Frank Tovey

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

fadgadget11

Frank Tovey made art ahead of its time but didn’t stay long enough to see the world catch up to it.

As Fad Gadget, his gadfly alter ego, Tovey came to attention by marrying electronic music to performance art, using it as a vehicle for biting political and social criticism. He wrote about the devastation of the environment (“Pedestrian.” “Wheels of Fortune”), the use of the working class as cannon fodder (“Life on the Line”), consumer manipulation (“Swallow It”) and patriarchy (“Saturday Night Special”) with cutting insight. Although, as the first signing to Daniel Miller‘s Mute Records imprint, he was closely associated with synth music, Tovey’s humanist instincts eventually led him to eschew keyboards and sequencers and wash off Fad’s stage face, searching for a musical form better aligned to his social concerns. Commercial success eluded him, though he left a trail of critical plaudits, and he could only look on as those he inspired overtook him in the charts.

As a live act, Tovey was notorious for total performance, and on occasion he would have to be helped from the venue with broken limbs or patched up after colliding with equipment. He gave the audience part of his soul but also his body, as he swang microphones around his head, tore hair from his body or leapt from speakers. This commitment made performing as Fad Gadget a punishing experience, but it also contrasted with the robotic alienation affected by many of his Futurist contemporaries. As a student of mime in the mid-70s, Tovey had learned to use physical movement to get his point across, and as a singer he put that experience to unrestrained use. Boyd Rice of NON noted:

He was a great performer. You know, the other people doing electronic music were kind of standing there cold and emotionless where he was being over the top, running around the audience screaming, yelling at people. I don’t think the like of that has been seen in electronic pop since.

Tovey passed away in 2002, shortly after reviving his Fad Gadget persona. He left behind a young family and a legacy of music characterised by both experimentation and integrity.

10. Fad Gadget – Pedestrian

The first Fad Gadget album, Fireside Favourites, was recorded at Blackwing Studios, which was the main base for many classic Mute recordings in the first half of the 1980s. Daniel Miller had discovered the studio, in a church south of the Thames, when looking for a facility with sufficient space to set up the synthesizers for Silicon Teens. The studio’s owner, Eric Radcliffe, and his assistant, John Fryer, are credited with performance on the album, as well as production and engineering duties.

The songs on the album are not exclusively synthetic, and Tovey’s approach to the vocals is engaging. This confounded the expectations of some who identified Fad Gadget with the machine-driven, stoic stylings of the Futurists like John Foxx, Gary Numan, and even Miller in his incarnation as The Normal. The general trend might have been towards Kraftwerkian alienation, but Tovey’s own tendency was towards humanisation: his “Pedestrian” hero is fighting for space in a world clogged with traffic, instead of watching cars burn in Ballardian images.

9. Fad Gadget – Ladyshave

“Ladyshave” was released as a double-A sided single in 1980, paired with “Make Room,” following the Fireside Favourites album. Named after a depilation device aimed at women, the song reflects a feminist critique of body image pressures. Its backbone is a repetitive sequence, based on a single note repeated eight times to a bar, over which layers of synth runs and a sinister bass line come in, while Tovey purrs his anticonsumerist message. It is a work of absolute genius that still stands up today.

8. Fad Gadget – Swallow It

Taken from the second Fad Gadget album, the John Fryer co-produced Incontinent, “Swallow It” is a bass groove with a serious message about accepting the authority of media and a social role as a consumer. Tovey’s lyrics cut to the quick, but it’s the rhythm section that carries the moment here, even if it does make it a little bit like dancing to Noam Chomsky.

7. Fad Gadget – Love Parasite

Under the Flag, which came out in 1982, in the shadow of the Falklands conflict, is arguably the Fad Gadget meisterwerk. Produced by John Fryer and featuring Anton Corbijn imagery before U2 and Depeche Mode got in on the act, the album is stripped back poptronica, balancing choral tones (with input, notably, from Yazoo’s Alison Moyet) and sequenced electronics to devastating effect. There were two singles released from Under the Flag, including “For Whom the Bells Toll,” which featured this track on the reverse. “Love Parasite” is a typically off-centre expression of Tovey’s experience of becoming a father, in which he is cast as a loving anthropologist.

6. Frank Tovey – Ricky’s Hand

The original version of “Ricky’s Hand” was released as a 7″ single in 1980. It is an essential step on the path of British electronic music, combining an octave-jumping sequencer and a Black & Decker power drill, glued together by unique sounds crafted from Daniel Miller’s ARP 2600. Tovey’s lyrics are in a simple story-telling tradition, charting the uses of a hand that was separated from its owner after an episode of drunk driving. The darkness of the theme was one of Tovey’s connections to the alternative music scene, which later found full expression with “Collapsing New People.”

This version is actually an acoustic rendering, released as the B-side of “Sam Hall” at a time when Tovey was exploring the traditions of rebellious folk songs, such as those popularised by Pete Seeger during the Great Depression. Adapting the track to the style of Irish rebel music gives it a curious feel, which highlights the attempt by Tovey to move in a popular direction – in a political rather than a commercial sense of the term.

As a bonus, here is Fad Gadget miming to the original single on Belgian television. If you look closely, you can see Jean-Marc Lederman of The Weathermen and Mari & The Ghost playing the role of a synth player. Lederman was part of Tovey’s original live band.

5. Frank Tovey & The Pyros – Worried Man

By 1992, Tovey had refined his post-electronic style into a fusion of blues, folk and rock. He recorded Worried Men in Second-Hand Suits, one of his finest albums, with The Pyros, an Irish bluegrass band that had relocated to London. “Worried Man” is premier-league material: Tovey’s vocal delivery is touched with a plaintive quality, while mournful guitars stretch out anxious notes. Given the tentative economic situation Tovey typically found himself in, it’s hard to imagine that there wasn’t an autobiographical impulse behind the song, but the richness of his poetry and story-telling comes through with a sense of wider sense of dread:

Wears a hat to protect him
from the sky
But there ain’t no leather
can protect him from the earth

4. Fad Gadget – Collapsing New People

The fourth Fad Gadget album, Gag, was recorded at West Berlin’s Hansa studios. Daniel Miller had discovered that recording in the walled city was economical, compared to arrangements back in the UK, and British engineer Gareth Jones (who had worked on John Foxx’s Metamatic album and was on-board for Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again) liked it there. At that time, Berlin was an alternative music centre, with groups like Einstürzende Neubauten subverting pop music with an industrial aesthetic while hard drugs freely circulated. Tovey and team absorbed the environment and reflected it back through “Collapsing New People,” which celebrated the sounds of Neubauten while gently mocking the scene:

Takes hours of preparations
To get that wasted look

3. Frank Tovey – Luxury

“Collapsing New People” became an underground hit for Tovey, but he never managed to break out of the box that the music industry had put him in. A valiant attempt was made in 1986, when Tovey first shed Fad’s skin for Snakes & Ladders, an album made under his own name. Featuring songs written by Daniel Miller, and with Eric Radcliffe, Flood and Miller all playing studio roles, the album had clear commercial intent; but, despite the catchiness of the lead single, “Luxury,” it failed to penetrate the mainstream. It was the first and last time that Tovey aimed in that direction, and his subsequent work became part of a search for authenticity along completely different lines.

Some of Tovey’s frustration has been captured in this German TV clip, in which he reacts to being asked to mime to a recorded track.

2. Frank Tovey & Boyd Rice – Extraction 7

Back in 1981, Tovey found himself in Blackwing Studios with Boyd Rice of NON. Rice, a controversial figure in the industrial underground, was a friend of Daniel Miller and a fellow Mute artist. The results of their collaboration didn’t see the light of day until 1984, when Mute put out Easy Listening for the Hard of Hearing, and many were baffled by it. Rice explains that Tovey had wanted to do something more abstract than his poptronica work, while Rice was interested to make poppier music. They performed the material live in 1985, but this was deemed to be of specialist interest only and the project attracted little attention from the mainstream.

1. Frank Tovey – Back to Nature

The first Fad Gadget single was a science fiction-inspired commentary on the devastation of the environment. Ecological themes had come up in electronic music before – Cerrone’s “Supernature” being just one example – but Tovey’s approach was to write a love song set within the domes used to take refuge from the polluted world. It’s a dark, brooding track with Miller’s influence clearly in evidence in the instrumental lines, including rhythm sounds familiar from his live show as Robert Rental & The Normal. It’s just too bad the warning wasn’t heard in time.

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Shine On: Colin Newman

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Colin Newman describes himself as the spotty boy at school, who had trouble with the local Wiltshire bullies. His escapes were listening to Todd Rundgren’s “A Wizard, a True Star” in his bedroom and close-reading of the weekly NME with Desmond Simmons. Together with Simmons, he started a duo that never performed outside of his friend’s living room but gave him the confidence to start a life in music.

Newman left Salisbury for art school in Watford, where he fell in with a band led by George Gill. One day, the band had to rehearse without Gill, who had broken his leg, and discovered that they sounded a lot better without their principal songwriter. Gill’s leg recovered but his musical standing didn’t, so the band went on to become Wire (and, for a time, Wir). Newman’s role in the band has evolved from rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist to include production duties, leveraging the skills that he has honed working with other artists and making solo recordings during Wire’s periodic hiatuses.

Wire has never been a monoline undertaking. Although originally pigeon-holed as a punk/new wave act by the press, the band’s intellectual genealogy owes as much to Marcel Duchamp as Malcolm McLaren: its art school roots occasionally break through the surface as experimental composition and performance art. However, while other band members tested the limits of sound and the subversion of expectations, Newman often found himself exploring the practical side of the industry, including independent distribution (Post Everything), recording (Swim~) and performance (Drill Festivals). Besides Wire, Newman maintains a separate recording project, Githead, together with his partner, Malka Spigel (ex-Minimal Compact), composer Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) and Max Franken (also ex-Minimal Compact).

10. Colin Newman – Alone

Newman’s “Alone,” a track from his first solo album, 1980’s A-Z, made a high-profile appearance in the movie, Silence of the Lambs, where it served to set the atmosphere for a scene showing the house occupied by the crazed Buffalo Bill. The brooding, dark tone of the song was drawn out for a cover on This Mortal Coil’s Filigree & Shadow, but the original track still sets the bar for nervous anxiety.

9. Wire – Dot Dash

Written together with Graham Lewis, “Dot Dash” captures Wire’s early aesthetic: short, sometimes snarled, but entirely infectious and hovering on the border between pop and punk. Released as a single in 1978, its chorus is a Morse code message from the future. The single filled the gap between the Pink Flag and Chairs Missing albums, acting as a bridge between the taught, Spartan style of the former and more open, expansive leanings of the latter.

8. Colin Newman – & Jury

Newman’s solo work yielded three albums between 1980 and 1983. The first of these, A-Z, has been characterised as the Wire album that would have followed 154, but for Bruce Gilbert putting the band on ice. While Newman’s songs could have slotted into the Wire groove, there is a question whether the band could have agreed on them. 154 reflected a growing tension within the group, reinforced by the need to subvert expectations, and the songs on A-Z are leftfield art/pop held within a relatively conventional framework. They remain strong compositions – much stronger than some of the material on 154 – and there is something to be said for them having been aired in Newman’s own space.

7. Parade Ground – Moans

Newman helmed Parade Ground’s “Moans,” and the sound of this track clearly owes something to his studio performance. Part of the Brussels scene of the 1980s, in which Newman became immersed, Parade Ground crossed Joy Division with Fad Gadget, maintaining a po-faced look and sound that contrasted with the commercial excesses of the times. Newman adds vocals, keyboards and guitars here, and the result is a certified indietronica gem.

6. Virgin Prunes – Decline and Fall

After Wire hit the wall, following a disastrous tour supporting Roxy Music in 1979, Newman turned to his solo work, but the lure of production and the need to make a living led him into a studio chair for the first album from Virgin Prunes. Rough Trade had talent-spotted the Irish post-punk outfit and wanted something quite specific and quite general: “A pop record,” is what Rough Trade boss Geoff Travis asked of Newman. He found the task challenging, as the Prunes were desperate to avoid any comparisons to another Dublin outfit then gaining attention: U2. It didn’t help that one of the guitarists was The Edge’s brother. Newman described himself “bludgeoning” the Prunes into releasing “Baby Turns Blue” as a single, but the song he has expressed the most appreciation for was “Decline and Fall,” an album track.

5. Wire – Drill

Poor Suzanne Summers didn’t know what had hit her when Wire performed on NBC’s The Tonight Show in 1987. The most Establishment entertainment programme on American television was usually hosted by the comedian, Johnny Carson. On the night Wire played a musical slot, Summers was in the host’s chair and Wire were touring “Drill” – so that’s what they played. Based on a riff from early punk-tinged hit, “12XU,” which had been abstracted into a repetitive framework that could stretch to 30 minutes in performance, a key vocal element was the onomatopoeic, “Dugga dugga dugga.” Summers was complimentary, but she would have known that the audience at home, watching from their Sealy Posturepedic beds, must have thought that the band had landed from outer space.

4. Minimal Compact – My Will

Brussels has played an interesting role as the cradle for a lot of alternative music. For a long time the home to Tuxedomoon, the birthplace of New Beat and the centre for many EBM artists, such as Front 242, the city was also the base for the Crammed record label. Minimal Compact were part of that scene when they wrote off to Newman – legend has it, at the suggestion of Daniel Miller of Mute Records – to ask him to produce them. They had already hit the US college radio sweet spot with “Next One Is Real,” and Newman found he had a number of shared interests with the band. One thing led to another, as they say, and Malka Spigel became his life and musical partner.

3. Githead – Take Off

The Githead project was intended as a one-off live arrangement, for the tenth anniversary of Newman’s Swim~ label, but it sparked an interest that has kept it going for four albums. Although part of its work will sit comfortably to Wire fans, Githead has its own sound and feel, and the sense of familiarity comes from Newman’s voice rather than from a derivative style.

2. Immersion – Metal Sea

In the 1990s, Newman became interested in the prospects of electronic dance music and home recording. One of his projects was Immersion, which became an avenue for exploring ambient and dancefloor-oriented tracks together with Malka Spigel. The time spent working on this material helped to refine his recording skills, which led to a critical reappraisal of the production of Wire’s 1980s recordings and set the stage for Newman to exercise greater control over the band’s future studio sound.

1. Wire – Pink Flag

If Wire has a signature song, it is “Pink Flag.” The title track from their first album is an apocalyptic vision for the New World, rendered in two chords, with lyrics that read like a late-twentieth century Book of Relevations. Like a club track, it breaks down and builds up to an ecstatic release, but one that is delayed for as long as the band keep hitting E. “Pink Flag” has been performed as a minimalist composition and a wall-of-sound with a massed guitar collective, but the anchor is always Newman’s vocal contribution, imbued with more determination than menace.

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Shine On: Vince Clarke

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

yazooBorn in the suburb of South Woodford and raised in Basildon, Vince Clarke could have ended up as a cab driver or worked at Ford’s Essex plant, but instead he founded three of the world’s most successful pop groups: Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure.

It was his charismatic, blue-eyed friend, Robert Marlow, who was expected to make it big amongst their Basildon contemporaries, but Simon & Garfunkel fan Clarke proved to be more adept at writing sparkly pop songs. He turned underemployment to his advantage during the early days of Depeche Mode, programming future hits into a sequencer on the sofa or practicing keyboard riffs with headphones on (to avoid annoying his mum).

Today, he lives and works in New York, surrounded by one of the world’s greatest collections of vintage synthesizers, and is revered as the musical genius behind more than three decades of chart-bothering electronic pop hits – from Depeche Mode’s “Dreaming of Me” in 1981 to the latest Erasure album, The Violet Flame.

Along the way, Clarke’s interests have broadened into ambient soundscapes, soundtracks and remixing work. In 2012, he released Ssss, an album of techno-driven instrumentals, with his former Depeche Mode bandmate, Martin Gore. The same year saw a 10 CD box set, The House of Illustrious, compiling more instrumental works – many of them designed for art galleries and dance companies – with Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware.

vinceandericHaving settled into the Erasure groove thirty years ago, it is almost forgotten how the ambitious but impatient Clarke left Depeche Mode just as they were on the cusp of world domination, or that his working relationship with Alison Moyet was so difficult that Yazoo’s second album was recorded in separate studio sessions. Of the latter experience, Clarke told an interviewer from Songfacts, “It was sad, but I don’t think we could have continued working together without probably strangling each other.”

A natural collaborator who likes to work alone; a synthesizer master who composes on acoustic instruments (guitar or piano) – Clarke is a man of contradictions, and some of his best work arguably has been generated by the tension between his pop instincts and the contrasting styles of his musical partners.

10. West India Company – Ave Maria

Blancmange was a duo that came to prominence about the same time as Depeche Mode. They became friendly with Clarke through supporting Depeche on their Speak & Spell tour. In the summer of 1984, Blancmange’s Stephen Luscombe put together this East-meets-West fusion track under the name, West India Company, with vocals being provided by the popular Bollywood singer, Asha Bhosle (who was later name-checked in a popular song by Cornershop). It was recorded at Splendid Studios, set up with Eric Radcliffe on the site of Blackwing Studios, where he worked following the break-up of Yazoo. Clarke set to work with his Fairlight CMI synthesizer, getting credit on the sleeve for “pyrotechnics.”

For the technically-minded, it will be of interest that, in the same year, Clarke showed off the capabilities of his Fairlight CMI for Electronic Soundmaker and Computer Music magazine. His presentation included samples of tablas recorded with percussionist Pandit Dinesh, who had contributed to West India Company’s recording.

9. Billy Ray Martin – Sweet Suburban Disco (Vince Clarke Mix)

Former S-Express and Electribe 101 vocalist, Billy Ray Martin, pulled in Clarke for a remix of her 2011 solo single, “Sweet Suburban Disco.” With Erasure, Clarke has perfected the adaptation of the disco template to contemporary danceable pop, so he would have been an apparent candidate for remixing duties. Less obvious was his match-up with Happy Mondays, for whom he provided one of the remixes of “Wrote for Luck” (the other coming from Paul Oakenfold) that signaled the transformation of Manchester indie into the Madchester rave scene. Clarke has been selective about his remixing assignments, but he almost always finds the sweet spot that infuses a great song with dancefloor magic.

8. Dome – To Speak

Dome was the experimental project of Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis, on hiatus from their roles in Wire. Their output features little by way of melody or traditional song structure, but Clarke appeared on their fourth album, Will You Speak This Word, as the operator of his rare and expensive Fairlight CMI synthesizer. The story goes that Clarke didn’t feel comfortable turning over his Fairlight CMI to Gilbert and Lewis, fearing it could be messed up by inexperienced operators, so he found himself on the album as a manipulator of sounds. This track also features the voice of his then-girlfriend, Deb, who was one of the prime movers behind the Depeche Mode and Yazoo Information Services.

7. Absolute – T.V. Glare

After the break-up of Yazoo, Clarke set up his own record label, Reset Records, together with the owner of Blackwing Studios, Eric Radcliffe. The artists released on Reset included Robert Marlow, Peter Hewson, Hardware and Absolute. Robert Marlow was the best-known of the Reset stable, but his Clarke-produced album, The Peter Pan Effect, didn’t see commercial release until 1999. Absolute’s effort is in a similar vein, and is interesting for the recognisable sounds and accents that were extracted from Clarke’s equipment.

6. Vince Clarke & Paul Quinn – One Day

“One Day” veered from Clarke’s usual formula. It was sung by Paul Quinn, the singer from Bourgie Bourgie, and incorporated a synthetic string sound that is a rare reminder of Clarke’s childhood violin training. The Cold War-influenced video featured the unlikely image of Clarke holding a semi-automatic rifle and manning a border post. The single just dented the Top 100 on its release in 1985, but its moody, brooding feeling has made it an enduring favourite for fans of Clarke’s music.

5. The Clarke & Ware Experiment – House of Illustrious (Extract Three)

In 1999, Clarke released Pretentious with Martyn Ware. A second collaboration appeared in 2001, Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle. In 2012, a box set of their joint work appeared, gathering both albums and adding to them no less than eight CDs of material accumulated from commissioned works. Clarke has described the early Human League albums, before Ware left to start Heaven 17, as key influences on him, which showed how electronic music didn’t have to be emotionally cold.

4. Erasure – Stop!

The project with which Clarke has been most closely associated for three decades, Erasure, was not initially a great success. Andy Bell, a women’s shoe salesman, auditioned for Clarke, producer Flood and Mute Records boss, Daniel Miller, after dozens of other singers had been rejected. Their first album together, Wonderland, made it into the lower rungs of the Top 100 in the UK, but the band’s first three singles failed to achieve the commercial success or reap the critical praise that Yazoo had won. Touring and refinement of their sound built up Erasure’s profile, and a string of chart-topping releases firmly established them as a world-class act.

The Crackers International EP came out in time for Christmas in 1988, sporting a sleeve inspired by a Soviet propaganda poster and led by a high energy track that has become a crowd favourite. With its bright, synthetic brass and seasonal bells, pulsing synths and layered vocals, it’s iconic Erasure.

3. The Assembly – Never Never

Clarke’s original plan for The Assembly was to record an album of songs with different vocalists – a concept that doesn’t sound dissimilar to the British Electric Foundation project of future collaborator, Martyn Ware. Together with Eric Radcliffe, Clarke worked out a scheme for the album, but they were reportedly defeated by the complex licensing and exclusivity practices of the recording industry. The only material to make it to release was 1983’s “Never Never,” which featured The Undertones’ vocalist, Feargal Sharkey, and the instrumental B-side, “Start Stop.”

2. Depeche Mode – Puppets

Everyone has their own view on Clarke’s work with Depeche Mode, which makes it difficult to pick out just one song. While “Just Can’t Get Enough” has become a mainstream classic, more experimental works from Clarke’s time with the band, like “Shout” and “Any Second Now,” have their own appeal. There are some who would argue that “Ice Machine” should have been the A-side of their first single, instead of “Dreaming of Me,” while debate continues whether the version of “Photographic” that appeared on the Some Bizarre compilation was better than the one on Speak & Spell. We selected “Puppets” because it captures the essence of the sound that Clarke designed for the band: simple, repetitive phrases building into elegant, interlocking sections, allowing room for Dave Gahan’s vocals to breathe. They took a different direction when he left, leaving fans to dream of what might have happened if he had stayed.

1. Yazoo – Softly Over

Given the fractious relationship between Clarke and Alison Moyet during the recording of You and Me Both, one might think that there is a reference to their working arrangements behind the opening line: “It’s over, there’s nothing more to say.” Actually, this song is a sweet story of love passing beyond reach, in which the warmth of the electronics contrasts with Moyet’s pained, blues-tinged vocals – just the combination that made an ex-punk and a Simon & Garfunkel fan such a potent combination.

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Shine On: Daniel Miller

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Daniel Miller is best known as the owner of Mute Artists (formerly Mute Records, but the original name didn’t come with the sale by EMI) and as The Normal, the artist name used for the release of “TVOD”/”Warm Leatherette.”

The son of Austrian refugees, Miller grew up in North London with a love of Kraftwerk, Can and Neu! and worked as a DJ before buying a Korg 700s and recording his first single. Modest and uncomfortable in the limelight, Miller performed as The Normal with Scottish electronics pioneer, Robert Rental, but found himself happier in the studio and working behind the scenes with his record label than standing on the stage himself.

He discovered and propelled the careers of Depeche Mode and others, but over the years has also been seen lending a technical hand to Thomas Dolby and Soft Cell or producing The House of Love. Miller still records as Sunroof! with his close friend and Mute producer, Gareth Jones.

To launch our new feature, Shine On, we’ve picked out a number of songs to reflect the breadth of Miller’s work as a producer, composer and performer. The constants are a well-developed sense of arrangement, an instinct for unique sounds that are often detuned or shaped in unexpected ways, and a feeling for driving rhythms. These reflect his Krautrock influences but also the effort that comes with closely reading the manuals to his collected synthesizers and then throwing them away.

10. Missing Scientists – Big City Bright Lights

The synthesizer credit on this 1980 release is granted to one “Jacki” and a co-production credit on the A-side goes to “Larry Least,” but both are pseudonyms for Miller. “Jacki” was one of the mythical players in Miller’s Silicon Teens fantasy pop group, while “Larry Least” was a name he adopted as a reference to the producer, Mickey Most.

The reggaetronica style is one that is not commonly associated with Miller, though he was later to contribute to On-U Sounds’ legendary Pay It All Back compilation a few years later.

9. Voice of Authority – Fuh Fuh

When On-U Sound released their first sampler album, Pay It All Back, in 1985, it cost the same as a single and was packed with the juiciest reggae/experimental tracks from Adrian Sherwood’s burgeoning stable of artists. It also contained this short and peculiar composition by Miller, featuring early sampling technology.

8. Thomas Dolby – Radio Silence

In the early 1980s, it was known that, if an artist needed help with some complicated synthesizer set-ups, or the use of a Synclavier, Miller was the go-to person. He did production work with Soft Cell, but less well known is his contribution to this 1982 Thomas Dolby song.

7. Alex Fergusson – Stay with Me Tonight

Another 1980 production effort credited to “Larry Least,” this single from Alex Fergusson (Alternative TV, Psychic TV) is clearly programmed/performed by Miller. At the time, Ferguson was experimenting with the move from punk to electro-pop, a path charted by Mute Records. This single appeared on the Red Records label.

6. Silicon Teens – Sun Flight

Miller’s Silicon Teens project was, for the most part, a series of covers of rock standards, like “Memphis, Tennessee” and “Just Like Eddie,” but it also yielded a couple of original Miller compositions. “Sun Flight” is the one that gets remembered best, as it combines themes of space travel and synths in a way that was not totally dissimilar to a later Mute release, “Fred vom Jupiter” by Die Doraus und Die Marinas.

5. Fad Gadget – Lady Shave

The strength of Miller’s songwriting and production work came out most strongly in his work with Frank Tovey (aka Fad Gadget). Miller took songs written by Tovey and turned them into brooding electronic classics with the menace of punk but a style of their own. The early Fad Gadget singles became an outlet for Miller’s creativity, where he could stretch his one-fingered compositional style to the limits.

“Lady Shave” is an exceptional song from a number of standpoints: the sequenced bassline that carries the song is electro-minimalism incarnate; the studio itself is played to generate tones based on an electric shaver; and the unconventional top line is distinctively Miller.

4. Duet Emmo – Or So It Seems

The most achingly beautiful pop song ever made, we’ve called “Or So It Seems” before, and this collaboration between Miller and Wire refugees, B.C. Gilbert and Graham Lewis, shows Miller at his one-fingered best. Lewis’ vocals are like threads of glass spun around the core of a grumbling bass-line and bells, but the build-up and release of tension in the song is 1982 shot-through.

3. Sunroof – Hero

Miller’s occasional project with Gareth Jones, Sunroof has largely been responsible for covers of Krautrock classics, like this legendary Neu! track. The vocals here are provided by the extraordinarily beautiful Alison Conway, who has appeared as A.C. Marias on Mute and made a number of videos for the label.

2. The Normal – TVOD

If you put out a record by yourself, while living in your mum’s house, the last thing you’d expect is for it to be covered by Grace Jones and adopted as the title for her album. Such was Miller’s luck with “Warm Leatherette,” which Jones’ producer probably heard played by DJ Rusty Egan at the Blitz club.

An attempt to make punk music with synthesizers, “TVOD”/”Warm Leatherette” came out in 1979, while the DIY spirit was still strong, and it is the springboard for everything that followed. We’ve picked “TVOD” for this list, because it gets less attention but shows off techniques like tape cut-up that link the single to the industrial scene that was taking shape at the time.

1. Depeche Mode – Shout

The influence of Miller on early Depeche Mode is very clear from their recordings. While a major label would have polished their sound and image beyond recognition, Mute and Miller brought out the experimental side of the band and gave them room to explore sounds and rhythms that were less obviously commercial. One of the best examples is on this B-side to 1981’s “New Life,” which is driven by sequenced drum-like sounds and the simplest synth line ever.

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The Twelve Songs of Synthmas

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

At this time of year, the malls are full of carols, television ads feature jingling bells, and radio stations highlight the latest commercial Christmas singles. We decided to line up an alternative playlist, to give your ears a rest. Come cynics, come stoics, come industrial dancers – here’s a set from your own record collection.

12. The Fall – Hark the Herald Angels Sing

11. Röyksopp – Le Cantique de Noël

10. Galaxie 500 – Listen, the Snow Is Falling

9. Pet Shop Boys – It Doesn’t Often Snow at Christmas

8. S.P.O.C.K – White Christmas

7. Rational Youth – Merry Christmas Mary Anne

6. Cocteau Twins – Winter Wonderland

5. The Knife – Reindeer

4. Erasure – She Won’t Be Home (Lonely Christmas)

3. Parralox – Little Drum Machine Boy

2. Winston Tong – The Twelve Days of Christmas

1. Captain Sensible – One Christmas Catalogue

Bonus! Page – Little Drummer Boy

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CWNL Presents: The Top 10 Releases of 2014

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

If 2013 was a bumper year for recorded music, then 2014 was the year of the live show. Besides carefully curated festivals, like Electronic Summer and TEC 003, there was an ambitious Nordic tour by Rational Youth, Psyche, Sista mannen på jorden and I Satellite, followed by a German-Polish outing for Rational Youth and Psyche. Cold War Night Life sponsored “An Evening with the Swedish Synth” in Brick Lane, showcasing leading poptronica Vikings, Page, Machinista and Train to Spain. Karin Park and Parralox stormed the London stage this year, as well. The high water mark for UK artists was set by Vile Electrodes, however, who warmed up for their show at TEC 003 by winning awards in Germany. Sure, Avicii can fill hockey arenas with EDM DJ sets, but does he hand-make CD sleeves from faux fur, wear hats made from washing-up gloves and sing like a young Debbie Harry? No, and until he does, the Vile ones will have the creative edge.

With that, we are pleased to present Cold War Night Life’s Top 10 Releases of 2014.

 

ALBUM OF THE YEAR

1. Rational Youth – Cold War Night Life / Recordings 1981-84

IMG_9621Pole position in 2014 was easily taken by a set of recordings that were all made by 1984. Rational Youth’s first album, Cold War Night Life, came out in 1982 and quickly took a place in the synth pantheon next to the classic releases from that time, such as Depeche Mode’s Speak and Spell and John Foxx’s Metamatic. Over the years, it has become a cult favourite outside of Canada, with Swedish and German synthers fanning the embers into occasional flames. This year, the leading European artisan label, Vinyl on Demand, lovingly collated it with live recordings, demos, singles and EPs for one of their ultra-high quality box sets. Stunning sound from heavy-duty 180gm vinyl and amazing design mean that this is a package that only comes around once every thirty years.

 

SINGLE OF THE YEAR

2. Sista mannen på jorden – ”Stadens alla ljus”

10171757_625556007514876_1542272301361497548_nEddie Bengtsson nearly didn’t record “Stadens alla ljus” [EN: “City Lights”] himself. He first offered it to his former band, S.P.O.C.K. It was only after they turned it down that he took the plunge with his legendary project, Sista mannen på jorden [EN: The Last Man on Earth]. That proved to be a good move, as SMPJ fans have come to expect world-class poptronica with themes of space and longing from Sweden’s own Vince Clarke. “Stadens alla ljus” is the story of an astronaut looking down on the Earth and commenting on urban illumination as his air supply runs out. With sweeps that cover the cosmos and sequences set to Warp 4, it’s an evocative song made more poignant by Bengtsson’s emotive vocals. Once you’ve been transported by the chorus, there’s no way back.

The 12” version came with another SMPJ original, “Vem gör det då?” [EN: “Who does it, then?”], as well as two covers: an exquisite version of OMD’s “Stanlow” with Swedish lyrics and a faithful Devo tribute, “Going Under”. The combination was unbeatable in 2014.

 

3. Hannah Peel – Fabricstate

IMG_9361One of the highlights of the year was receiving a copy of Hannah Peel’s Fabricstate EP on a Saturday when the Sun was shining. We said:

“It’s not just that the record is pressed in red vinyl, mirroring the colour of her hair; nor that it contains Chloe, the award-winning song already heard in a British television production – the thing that sets Fabricstate apart is that it is infused with distillates of folk music but is a thoroughly modern musical cocktail. Take the title track, which begins with a piano accompaniment, but quickly develops a martial rhythm underpinned by Test Dept-esque metal, before razor-sharp sawtooth waveforms come in. Peel’s voice has a delicate quality, which sits against the more dangerous sounds of the instrumental track, setting them off by highlighting just the slightest hint of menace. Folk music for urban living, let’s call it.”

Peel’s talent and technique are solidly in evidence throughout. We couldn’t pick just one song, so the whole EP takes third place in this year’s list.

 

4. Machinista – Xenoglossy

machinista_xenoglossyMachinista’s infectious poptronica travelled well in 2014, reaching London for “An Evening with the Swedish Synth.” Their live show is a razor-sharp combination of up-tempo pop and experimental rock (think Bowie meets Suicide at Nico’s house with lots of Italo records scattered around). Xenoglossy is their first proper album, and it comes filled with the same superb, original poptronica; sometimes pointing at the skies and sometimes in our hearts for signs of life, but always moving feet and hips in tandem. On disc, John Lindqwister’s vocals let rip while Richard Flow runs the machines, and the two Swedish veterans conjur up a sound that is both fresh and electrifying.

 

5. I Satellite – Zephyr EP

artworks-000076614130-12nl15-originalRod MacQuarrie’s collection of machines is impressive by any standards: he owns equipment formerly housed by Bill Zorn of Rational Youth and Phil Collins, and his studio is crammed with Oberheims, Rolands, Logans and ARPs that can be used to recreate the sounds of classic tracks by everyone from Alphaville to ABBA. With the release of Zephyr, the Kalamazoo-based musician showed off his old-school influences, as well as his ability to construct distinctive original material. Covers of New Order’s “Your Silent Face” and ABBA’s “I Am the City” are polished and respectful; but, by moving more in the direction of Gary Numan and John Foxx, we’d argue that the latter is arguably better than the original version. Tracks like “This Time” and “City Streets” are instant classics, while “Bubbleboy” channels alienation and pain to a mid-tempo beat. It’s pure magic.

 

6. Karin Park – “Shine”

karin-park-shineKarin Park ran a remix competition on Beatport for her 2014 single, “Shine,” but none of the contributions came close to the original. With pained lyrics yielding a glimpse of hope in the chorus, the track sounded best with the attack side of the envelope set high on the keyboards and the beats restrained. Park’s voice is distinctive and sometimes compared to Karin Dreijer Andersson’s, but it’s got a texture of its very own. It provides the emotional overlay that lifts “Shine” to the next level, gliding frictionless over the instrumental track.

 

7. William Orbit – Strange Cargo 5

avatars-000082801444-daft9x-t500x500It’s perhaps easy for an album given away for free on social media to be overlooked, but the latest instalment of William Orbit’s Strange Cargo series wasn’t exactly a vanity project. The musician and producer, best known in popular music circles for his work with Madonna, Britney and (once, but we doubt ever again) Blur, had the material up his sleeve but just wasn’t looking to cash in on it. He could have charged the market rate for Strange Cargo 5, because it is the type of exemplary poptronica that record companies write him large cheques to use as a platform for their major stars, but he just put it on Soundcloud with the download feature enabled. Pure class – in more ways than one.

 

8. Parralox – “Crying on the Dancefloor”

a1184752648_10We interviewed Parralox just before they appeared in London as support for Polly Scattergood. John von Ahlen’s sophisticated pop sense had consistently impressed us, but we were still blown away by the unveiling of “Crying on the Dancefloor.”  With the addition of vocalists Francine and Johanna, Parralox ramped up its capabilities and glammed up its image even further. The accompanying video, in which the band play the role of a talent show jury, revealed them to have a sense of humour, as well as style. Parralox are back on the London stage to warm up for Erasure before the end of the year, and this is certain to be a crowd favourite. We’ve featured a techno mix here by Your Silent Face.

 

9. Vile Electrodes – “Empire of Wolves”

a4154517545_10Drawing enough power to keep National Grid engineers on their toes during live performances, Vile Electrodes are the UK’s leading electro duo. Anais Neon has stunning vocal control, while keyboardist Martin Swan just about keeps the machinery under his spell in their synthetic Fantasia. This high-voltage track came in an exclusive package of remixes, embedded in a faux fur envelope, and it’s coiled to spring out of your speakers with fangs bared.

 

10. Colouroïd – Long Play

275638_largeColouroïd are the Icelandic/Swedish duo of Jòn and Ella Moe. Besides making excellent lower-case M and W minimal wave music, they also run the FlexiWave label from their Stockholm base (which we hear will be relocating to Berlin soon). Their first album is a masterful slab of vinyl, pressed with grooves cooler than the surface of Neptune. From the run-in groove until the stylish inner-label, each side is an icy, voltage-controlled mindscape. With titles like “Pillow Fort” and “Eye Shadow,” we’d say their songs are playful and dark – fifty shades of black, if you will.

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And You Thought You Were Normal: Nash the Slash (RIP)

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

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.

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Rational Youth, SMPJ, Psyche and I Satellite: The Nordic Tour for the New Cold War

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

At the end of April 2014, a series of mini-festivals were organised in Norway and Sweden, showcasing some of the most exciting electronic music acts from the 1980s and today. Cold War Night Life took in the Swedish shows and came back with bags of salt licorice and memories of unmissable performances.

RATIONAL YOUTH
Malmö, 30 April 2014
Gothenburg, 2 May 2014
Stockholm, 3 May 2014

Caught between two superpowers, Canada was the right place for an album called Cold War Night Life in 1982. Though recorded in Montreal, the atmosphere of Rational Youth’s debut was distinctly European: basslines and leads echoed the sounds coming from Dusseldorf, Liverpool and London, while the lyrics evoked the shadows and fog of divided Berlin and Gdansk. As troops stared at each from opposite sides of no-man’s land, Tracy Howe and Bill Vorn absorbed the tension and cynicism of the times, filtered it through a construction kit of analogue synthesizers and sequencers, and produced a world-class collection of songs on themes of love, alienation, glamour and paranoia.

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.

It was only at the turn of the last century that Rational Youth finally bridged the physical distance between them and their Swedish fans, playing selected dates with local synthpop heroes like Elegant Machinery and contemporaries like Robert Marlow. The warmth of their reception on these occasions stayed with singer Tracy Howe, and a return to the Nordics was organised to coincide with the release of a box set on the German artisan label, Vinyl-on-Demand, and new vinyl editions of the last studio album, To the Goddess Electricity.

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.

For Rational Youth, the shows were about revisiting familiar songs and old friends. In Malmö, Howe sported a personalised version of the jersey of Sweden’s national hockey team – a gift from S.P.O.C.K’s singer on a previous tour – while diplomatically avoiding mention of the Olympic games final. At the same show, Howe paid tribute to the Swedish scene’s finest songwriter, Eddie Bengtsson, performing an English-language version of “Luft” by Sista mannen på jorden. Joined on-stage by Bengtsson, Howe was visibly moved by the beauty of the music and their reunion.

Rational Youth’s sets on each date were dominated by tracks from Cold War Night Life, such as “Ring the Bells” and “Beware the Fly”. The songs have lost none of their vitality in the three decades since they were recorded, and the tug-of-war over Ukraine by empire-builders provided them with a familiar geopolitical back-drop. Tracks from later releases, including “The Man in Grey” from their eponymous EP on a major label and “Pink Pills, Orange Pills” from To the Goddess Electricity, were warmly received. The loudest cheers were reserved for “Saturdays in Silesia” and “City of Night” – both up-tempo, sequenced singles fondly remembered from the days when superpower submarines prowled Sweden’s archipelago.

A surprise show-closer in Malmö and Stockholm was a cover of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” including Angus-like hopping. Firmly tongue-in-cheek, it was a playful riposte to the scene’s purists. Like many of the electronic pioneers, Howe was a punk who found his way to synthesizers (he still plays drums with his old band, The Normals), and he clearly couldn’t resist breaking down walls. It was also a coded signal that he hasn’t given up on adding drums and guitars to Rational Youth’s live act. A return to Europe is a real prospect, as is an expanded line-up with a new take on the band’s classic songs. The purists will secretly love it.

PSYCHE
Malmö, 30 April 2014
Gothenburg, 2 May 2014
Stockholm, 3 May 2014

Legendary Canadian exports, Psyche, have been pioneers on the dark electro scene for almost three decades. Informed by the hard electronics of early Fad Gadget and the Gothic imagery of post-punk artists like Joy Division and Bauhaus, Psyche launched in 1982 but first came to wider attention with 1985’s Insomnia Theatre, an album of horror-inspired classics with titles like “The Brain Collapses” and “Mr. Eyeball Ooze.” In due course, Europe called and Psyche were transplanted to Germany, from where they have continued to release edgy music born in the depths of the night and build their reputation as an outstanding live act.

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!”

Huss’ vocal range is impressive, and he is capable of bluesy belters as well as more delicate interpretations. On “Goodbye Horses,” one of Psyche’s signature covers, Huss successfully conveyed the song’s careful balance of pain and splendour, while Rabura’s accompaniment underlined its emotional ambiguity. The full power of Huss’ voice really came out on “Unveiling the Secret,” their 1986 hit, showing exactly how Psyche became a lasting presence on the dark electro scene.

A treat for Gothenburg fans was the appearance of Gothic personality, Adora BatBrat – who was on DJ duties for the event – for a cover of Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf.” The Swedish singer and model brought her entertaining brands of glamour and humour to the song – a main-stay of Psyche’s live shows – while acting as a foil for Huss’ own improvisation. Like the public service announcements used to say, “Sometimes the after-effects never wear off.”

SISTA MANNEN PÅ JORDEN
Malmö, 30 April 2014
Gothenburg, 2 May 2014
Stockholm, 3 May 2014

Eddie Bengtsson nearly gave away one of his best songs to his old band, S.P.O.C.K. When they turned down “Stadens alla ljus” (EN: “City Lights”), he recorded it for his own project, Sista mannen på jorden (EN: The Last Man on Earth). Released in time for Swedish shows alongside Rational Youth, it is a fusion of space disco, with a pulsating, filtered bass and classic sweeps, together with a melody line that Jean-Michel Jarre would die for. S.P.O.C.K probably knew their limitations: given a live outing, “Stadens alla ljus” fits smoothly into the SMPJ canon, sending hips and feet into motion with a sleek style more Studio 54 than old-time S.P.O.C.K-and-roll.

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.

A SMPJ live show is an interactive affair; and, as the lyrics are all in Swedish, the audience easily sings along at Bengtsson’s prompting. You don’t need to speak a word of the language, however, to enjoy the throbbing basslines and clever melodic poptronica: a pair of dancing shoes will do the job perfectly.

I SATELLITE
Malmö, 30 April 2014
Gothenburg, 2 May 2014
Stockholm, 3 May 2014

The first single Rod MacQuarrie ever bought was Gary Numan’s classic, “Cars.” On the B-side of the US release was “Metal,” one of the cover songs that is a highlight of I Satellite’s Nordic shows. MacQuarrie, who grew up in a remote part of Canada but now lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, clearly absorbed Numan’s futurist vibe deeply, as I Satellite travels with a vintage Korg System 700 synthesizer and an analogue sequencer the size of a small house. Turning out catchy songs that deconstruct city living and the love lives of replicants, I Satellite was a popular discovery for Nordic audiences who grew up with The Pleasure Principle and Telekon on their built-in IKEA record shelves.

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?

ROBERT MARLOW
Stockholm, 3 May 2014

Robert Marlow could have been a contender. While his Basildon contemporaries saw their careers take off with Depeche Mode and Yazoo, Marlow narrowly missed out on stardom. On paper, a label deal and production help from Vince Clarke should have been the ideal platform; instead, he was Andrew Ridgeley in the shadow of the talent he stood closest to. Sales of his singles were slow, and an album recorded with Clarke and Eric Radcliffe was shelved until the end of the 1990s.

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.

“Touch me!” cries a heavily made-up Marlow, extending his free hand from the stage. A sea of friendly Swedish hands reach back; and, at least until the music stops, Marlow is the Smash Hits cover star he always wanted to be.

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