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I Start Counting should have been the next Depeche Mode. Recording for the same label (Mute), working with the same producer (Daniel Miller), and writing songs filled with melody and pathos (see: “Letters to a Friend“), they ought to have nestled easily into the slipstream of the Basildon boys. Instead, their brand of detuned synths and pained observations took a less commercial turn; and, like Fad Gadget before them, the band became more influential than successful. The fickleness of the music industry meant that they were more likely to have their sounds plundered than played on radio. It is a pity, because many of the tracks they recorded were stronger than the charts could bear.
Simon Leonard and Dave Baker met at Middlesex University (which, in 2014, awarded an honorary doctorate to Daniel Miller, but that is another story). They began DJing together before recording some demos, which Leonard presented to Miller, a fellow North Londoner and acquaintance from the underground electronic music scene. That led to two singles produced by Miller using his Synclavier, “Letters to a Friend” and “Still Smiling.”
An album followed with one of Mute’s in-house producers, Paul Kendall, that demonstrated the duo’s ability to cannily combine experimental, humorous and pop-oriented material. My Translucent Hands was followed two years later by a second album, Fused (with the amazing “Lose Him”), before the project folded. Leonard and Baker then relaunched as Fortran 5, joining the wave of club material issuing from the house movement, before becoming Komputer, an act drawing heavily on the sounds popularised by Kraftwerk. Throughout, they have maintained their slightly quirky but knowing approach to music.
This past summer, Mute released two limited edition cassettes of material from the I Start Counting archives. Ejected (the blue one) featured a selection of demos, including the original versions of “Million Headed Monster” and their cover of “Rawhide.” Re-fused (the red one) continued the theme with versions of “Lose Him” and the excellent “Million Headed Monster.” The hand-made releases were a treat for collectors, but now they are being made into commodities for distribution through record shops and digital platforms. If there is any justice in the world, that is where I Start Counting belong.
Ejected and Re-fused are released by Mute on 25 March 2022, and pre-orders are open now.
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The I Start Counting duo were famed for their connections to London’s Spitalfields Market. The circle is completed, then, with the news that Mute Artists will be releasing two, limited edition, cassettes of demos from 1985 and 1986 at the 10th Anniversary Independent Label Market this weekend.
Before you break the plastic seal around Electronic Improvisations Vol. 1, you are already back in the 1970s. The golden age of modular music saw sleeves that imparted important information about the sound and artist. They might have featured signposts in the form of waveforms or patches. The records were as often found in libraries than in shops, because they were clearly made by intellectuals who worked as engineers as much as musicians. The sleeves told a story of earnest modernity, just by their layout grid, but they also explained the method.
Thomas Leer and Robert Rental accidentally made one of the most compelling and influential albums of the 1970s. While disco and punk faded around them, they locked themselves in an apartment in Battersea with some rudimentary equipment supplied by Throbbing Gristle and gave birth to The Bridge.
The history of The Bridge and the paths of both artists were displayed at the recent exhibition, From The Port To The Bridge, in Greenock. Organised by Simon Dell (right), it captured an enormous amount of detail that had been obscured by Rental’s retirement from public music activity. With care and precision, it laid out the creative flare that burned when Leer and Rental came together, as well as Rental’s notorious live collaboration with Daniel Miller of Mute Records.
The pair moved around, starting families and playing punk in Edinburgh, before finding themselves in London. Inspired to make their own singles, they pooled their resources so that Leer could make “Private Planes/International” and Rental could record “ACC/Paralysis.” Part of the DIY revolution that saw the early electronic music from The Normal and Human League emerging around the same time, the singles from Leer and Rental hinted at the gritty, alternative sounds that they would bring to The Bridge.
Following the tour, Throbbing Gristle re-entered the picture. The Industrial Records label, started to release their own music, had already issued a single from Monte Cazazza, and the “very friendly” quartet were looking for other artists to get involved with. A signing ceremony was organised at a Soho restaurant, just like they imagined major labels would do, and arrangements were made for an album to be recorded.
Rental was asked by Daniel Miller to record a single for his fledgling Mute Records imprint. “Double Heart/On Location” was recorded at Blackwing Studios, where Miller had first set up his equipment for Silicon Teens, and it involved Leer and the DAF drummer, Robert Goerl. Recorded by Miller with Eric Radcliffe and John Fryer, “Double Heart” was Rental’s last studio project. The pressure of recording with others and the technical challenges of getting the sound he wanted frustrated Rental, and he invested in making his own studio in Battersea. Although he produced music for The Comic Strip’s A Fistful of Traveller’s Cheques, his perfectionism got in the way of releasing additional material, and there were no further public recordings before his premature death in 2000.
Tina Schnekenburger has worn a number of guises over the years.
Did you ever have to sleep on the floor at Daniel Miller’s house in London?
By the summer of 1983, when You and Me Both came out, Mute was on the cutting edge of electronic and experimental music. Founded at the end of 1978, Mute was originally just a name for Daniel Miller to release his single, “TVOD/Warm Leatherette.” The DIY punk ethic had seen many bands put out their own 7″ singles, and as The Normal he wanted to make punk with a Korg 700s synthesizer.
November opened with Chris Carter taking to the stage at Rough Trade in London to demonstrate the new TG-ONE synth module from Tiptop Audio. Filled to the brim with samples from Throbbing Gristle’s recordings, as selected and processed by Carter, the unit allowed him to generate a show in the TG style. Due to the random looping feature of the module, the show can never be reproduced in the same form.
Depeche Mode fans will know Rico Conning’s name best from the Blind Mix of “Strangelove” or the Black Tulip Mix of “A Question of Time.” Nick Cash will come to mind first as Fad Gadget’s drummer. Jo Forty’s name is less bound up with the heroes of early electronic music; but, together with Conning, Cash and ex-Alternative TV guitarist Mick Linehan, he formed the core of The Lines, a celebrated post-post incubator.
“White Night” had a long shelf life: besides The Lines’ original, it was covered by both Torch Song and Adult Net. Although Laurie Mayer, the third member of Torch Song, together with Conning and William Orbit, sang the version that appeared on their album, a version also exists with 
Fast forward to 2016, then, and one of the surprises of the year is the release of hull down, the third album from The Lines. Although the original demos had been recorded in 1982-3, and some attempt had been made to improve the recordings in 1987 for a potential release through IRS, the material had to be parked until 2004. That’s when Conning digitised the tracks and started to play with them in Pro Tools; blending the versions to create something new and potent.