The House of Love chose Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones to go into the studio with them to record “Safe,” which caught their record company stiffs off-guard. The Miller-Jones team was best known for work with Depeche Mode, and the sound that they obtained from the session was excellent but not what the long-hairs were expecting from a HOL record. In its live incarnation, the song follows the studio pattern closely, but with Guy opening up the vocals at the end. Magic from a Channel 4 recording.
Rare Video of the Week
Music misses Linea Aspera. The duo of Alison Lewis and Ryan Ambridge was founded in 2011, but broke up a couple of years later. They left behind some of the most exciting new dark wave material to emerge from the UK in decades, including an album and two EPs. This clip, from their 2013 appearance at the Grauzone festival, reveals them as an exciting live act.
Komputer were the duo of Simon Leonard and David Baker. They started out as I Start Counting, and were supposed to be Daniel Miller’s next big thing after Depeche Mode went supernova big. When that didn’t work out, despite creating exceptional and enduring material, they generated music for raves as Fortran 5, but it was with the creation of a Kraftwerkesque groove that Komputer was born in 1997. Their first album, The World of Tomorrow, contained this gem, which traces a route through North London along Archway, Muswell Hill and Alexandra Palace, by foot and public transportation.
This clip is from a 2011 live appearance.
Possibly the worst music video ever made, this clip is a playback with Plastic Bertrand walking – it would be a stretch to call it dancing – through Cannes while tourists stop to watch. The song, however, is one of the most infectious pop tracks ever recorded. Bertrand is the Belgian pop star credited with the song, but he didn’t sing on his first albums – which should have given him time to work on his dance moves.
Hard Corps had a French singer but were part of the English alternative electronic scene of the 1980s. With Martin Rushent doctoring their sound, they could have been the Human League. Instead, they got thrown off a tour with Depeche Mode after Regine, their lead singer, defied an order to stop baring her torso on stage. The legacy they left is a precious one in poptronica history, which is being rediscovered by the minimal wave generation. This was their best known song, as recorded by the legendary UK music show, The Tube.
Reaching back to 1987, Sista Mannen på Jorden (SMPJ) made their first live appearance at Stadt Hamburg, an all-ages venue in Malmö, Sweden. The band started as a side project to Page, with Eddie Bengtsson working on science fiction-influenced spacetronica. Almost thirty years and many quality albums later later, SMPJ are making their UK debut on 19 April 2015 at A Secret Wish.
We are immense fans of Fad Gadget/Frank Tovey here at Cold War Night Life, so finding this treasure from 1982 is a source of great happiness. The clip is from the British TV series, Whatever You Want. The show starts with a nonmusical reference to “Lady Shave” and launches into “Coitus Interruptus” before moving onto tracks from his then-current album, Under the Flag.
Thirty years ago this week, Psyche released their debut album, Insomnia Theatre. The record was significant on several grounds: it was one of the first North American dark electro recordings; it was made by a couple of Canadian teenagers, instead of by rich Europeans armed with Rick Wakeman-scale equipment; and it gave us some of the catchiest tunes in the genre. “The Brain Collapses” was the most immediately gripping track on the album, and it tells the story of singer Darrin Huss coming to terms with the aftermath of a party. Psyche relocated to Europe and went through some personnel changes, but are still bothering the bats and making great tunes.
In 2003, Echoboy played the Montreux Jazz Festival. Their set opened with this classic track, from Volume 2 (Mute), with a dedication to Joe Meek. The proceedings were captured by the festival crew, but we don’t recall seeing a Blu-Ray edition next to their Johnny Winters or Nile Rodgers offerings.