Daniel Miller

Laibach: From Mount Paektu to Shepherds Bush

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

LAIBACH
02 SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE
LONDON, 1 MARCH 2019

Photo: Marija Buljeta / AltVenger

Laibach might seem bonkers. They might even be bonkers. But there is a lot of method behind their staging of The Sound of Music.

To start with, it is in accordance with their plan that you will be seated. The band are playing theatres on this tour, so don’t get any funny ideas about moving your hips.

The evening will start with a film: in this case, a documentary about Laibach’s visit to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on the 70th anniversary of its liberation from Japanese militarism.

Liberation Day tracks the band as they prepare to present The Sound of Music in Pyongyang. It is the most internationalist thing in the world: a Slovenian art collective, travelling with some curious fans and their British label boss, putting on an American musical, written by the children of German Jews and set in Austria, for a film co-directed by a Latvian and Norwegian and financed by the Norwegian arts council, in the capital of North Korea.

Their visit in 2015 was not without controversy, either inside or outside of the DPRK. The right-wing press went nuts in the US and Europe. At their welcoming dinner, the representative of the official culture committee read the group some of the criticism received from his comrades. There were many, it seems, who couldn’t cope with the invitation given to Laibach to stage the country’s first Western “rock” show. Philistines raised the same arguments from both sides of the DMZ: Laibach make use of totalitarian imagery and styling; their music doesn’t fit into conventional “rock” forms; and no one can control them.

The culture committee representative, to his credit, appeared to understand that Laibach is like a fairground mirror – reflecting the viewer in ways that confound their expectations. Born in a pseudo-socialist environment, which collaborated with and confronted foreign systems in accordance with the whims of Marshall Tito, Laibach well understand how to select and position images to provoke a response.

Photo: Marija Buljeta / AltVenger

Even so, before it can be put on, the show has to be run through a number of filters: images from Korean culture that are insufficiently reverent have to go; translations have to be cleansed of South Korean idioms; the arrangement for “Arirang” must be normalised; and Nazi space ships have to give up their Maltese crosses.

The group accept these changes with good grace: the show must go on, so long as the power lines can be jerry-rigged and local busybodies can be pushed away. The collaboration works, and a sizeable but bemused audience takes in the performance politely.

The choice of the musical was to overcome the difficulty of selecting Western material that the North Korean audience would find acceptable. On paper, as one side of a cultural exchange, it makes sense. In the hands of Laibach, a band known for the low growl of Milan Fras’ vocals and martial rhythms, it sounds bonkers. In fact, it is brilliantly subversive.

The Sound of Music is one of the best known and loved musicals of all time. The film version, starring Julie Andrews, is one of the most viewed films globally. For Laibach to tackle the material makes sense on a number of grounds: they are more theatrical than “rock,” even if they make albums and appear with guitars and drums; the U-rated material invites repurposing just as readily as images from Christianity or Western political traditions; and the universal reach of the 1965 film means that the songs will be familiar wherever they go.

In fact, a careful balance is achieved between corruption and conformity: the performance is largely faithful to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s songs, while the use of propaganda graphics and Fras’ distinctive voice mine at the foundations of standard expectations. Idealisation of states, they seem to say, isn’t much different than idealisation of states of mind.

Photo: Marija Buljeta / AltVenger

The most significant change to the material is a tweak to ask, “How do you solve a problem like Korea?” Fras hasn’t changed his typical head-dress; but, in the context of this performance, it takes on the resemblance of a nun’s veil.

The band are joined for this performance by Boris Benko and Marina Mårtensson, who both performed on the album version of the show. They add striking vocals that contrast with and complement Fras’ own.

After the intermission (this is theatre and not a standard “rock” show, remember), the band returns to play a number of songs from the back catalogue. Mårtensson leads them onto the stage for a belting version of “Sympathy for the Devil,” her hair seemingly expanding as the song goes on.

There are some songs from their early days, which make good sense in the confines of a theatre. You can’t dance to them, but you would have fun trying.

The show comes to an end with some material from the Iron Sky movies, completing the conceptual arc from a film about music to music from films. Fras exchanges his head-gear for a cowboy hat, which he tips to hoots and hollers from the audience: for certain, subverting music genres is one of their favourite things.

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Take It to The Bridge: Leer and Rental

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

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.

Some of the gear they used had been sourced from Pink Floyd’s Britannia Row studio, but their environment was a million miles from the insulated sound rooms in Islington where it was normally employed. As they noted on the album cover, “All blips clicks & unseemly noises were generated by refrigerators & other domestic appliances & are intrinsic to the music.”

The two week recording period in the summer of 1979 when The Bridge was made was an intensely creative period for the two Scottish artists. Former hippies whose paths had led them to London, Leer and Rental (real name, Robert Donnachie) produced an album that sounded like the future. Side 1 contained five songs that followed conventional structures, while the flip led to a set of ambient tracks that were inspired by Brian Eno and still sound magical today.

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.

Leer’s own career, which entered the mainstream and included releases on Trevor Horn’s ZTT label, was shown with artifacts sourced from his own collection. Dell managed to excavate memories and equipment for the show that brought the careers of both musicians to life in a surprisingly detailed and compelling way.

The story of Leer and Rental begins with hippy idealism. As Dell sets out in an essay accompanying the exhibition, the two met while working as gardeners in Port Glasgow and were connected by a joint appreciation for psychedelic music. They took a lot of drugs and found electronic music through an album by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, recording as Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, called Zero Time. For hippies living in communal squats, equipment like that used on the album would have been completely out of reach, but the seed was planted: Leer worked with a friend to make a synthesizer that could be played using nails as contacts.

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.

A turning point came when Rental met Daniel Miller and Throbbing Gristle at the latter’s infamous May 1978 show at the London Filmmakers Co-op. The show descended into chaos, as TG’s music provoked the crowd, but from the riot of thrown chairs and swung basses emerged a set of contacts that would lead to new innovations.

Miller had just released “TVOD/Warm Leatherette” as The Normal, and the two shared an interest in using the new technology that was becoming more affordable and available to create a kind of electronic punk music. They teamed up to tour with Stiff Little Fingers and Essential Logic for Rough Trade, performing as Robert Rental & The Normal in early 1979. One of their shows, at West Runton Pavilion, was released by Rough Trade as a one-sided LP in 1980.

The exhibition displays the backing tapes used by the duo, which they played forwards or backwards as necessary. On the Live at West Runton Pavilion recording, it is near impossible to make out any of Robert’s words shouted or half-sung over the buzzing electronics, but it is revealed through the tape covers that there were titles for the songs. The lyrics might be lost to history, but these details help to fill in a picture of one of the first industrial music performances. It’s a magnificent, epic block of noise and pulsations that would have blown a hole through the accelerated pub rock of punk at the time.

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.

In their impish way, TG didn’t let Leer and Rental use their Martello Road studios. Instead, Sleazy Christopherson (who also took the picture that appears on the album cover) hired some equipment from Britannia Row and Chris Carter provided the pair with a quick explanation of how to use an 8-track reel-to-reel system. They were left alone with their Wasp synthesizer, a guitar and a lot of cigarettes to come up with something interesting. A lot of the time was spent trying to make the gear work, and they took clues from a schematic on the reverse of Brian Eno’s Discreet Music album to organise the equipment.

The exhibition includes a Wasp synthesizer (on loan from Mark Warner, Rental’s original having been passed on some years ago), as well as Leer’s Japanese drum machine and a contraption from under Rental’s bed that looks like an effects unit. Forced to work with this limited equipment and working to a deadline, Leer and Rental ditched plans to create a split album and worked together to create the nine songs of The Bridge.

Leer threw out guitar chords while Rental worked the Wasp, and then they took turns laying down tracks with the synthesizer. Their results were released at the end of 1979, and sales generated enough income to allow them to invest in new equipment.

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.

Leer, by contrast, was increasingly comfortable with the recording industry. Also in 1980, he signed to Cherry Red for a five album deal. He was turned off by the man-machine labours of Gary Numan, and an appearance of “Private Planes” on Virgin’s Machines compilation made him worried about being stuck in a futurist rut. His first release for Cherry Red, the single “Four Movements,” revealed his soul and jazz interests and a turn towards more commercially viable pop.

A well-received album, Contradictions, followed. Besides good reviews in the music press, it attracted the attention of the major labels, and Leer’s contract with Cherry Red was bought out by Arista. That gave Leer access to a Fairlight and recording time at John Foxx’s Garden studio. A single, “International,” showed what Leer was capable of. The exhibition features ephemera from this time, including an airplane model issued to promote “International.”

The experience at Arista wasn’t a smooth flight, however, and Leer founded a new act with Claudia Brucken of Propaganda called…Act. Their first single, “Snobbery and Decay,” appeared on Trevor Horn’s ZTT label. It was given the full ZTT gloss — Anton Corbijn promo photos, Steve Lipson production — despite the track spearing the decadence of the entertainment industry.

What followed was swallowed up in the emerging acid house and eurodance crazes. Act was too refined for ravers’ fields and not amped up enough for warehouses. Leer took a long break, and only slowly re-emerged following his relocation to Greenock.

His return to the starting point has led to several albums of interesting and varied material. From the waterfront outside the Beacon Arts Centre, where his memorabilia is exhibited, one can understand the nourishment of the environment. It’s a beautiful setting in the autumn, with clean air and none of the intellectual grime of London. It’s a place in which hardy things can grow.

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Red, Black and Cool: Tina Schnekenburger

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Tina Schnekenburger has worn a number of guises over the years.

From the punk scene in Kraftwerk’s home town to the world of modern art, she is a card carrying member of the avant-garde.

Schnekenburger can be seen in the new Conny Plank documentary, operating backing tracks for DAF. In leather, with cropped hair, she is effortlessly cool: a Teutonic Siren behind Gabi Delgado’s beat-fuelled leaps.

A long-time friend of DAF, she is credited with typography on the liner notes for Die Kleinen und Die Bosen, the very first album on Mute (cat: STUMM 1).

As an early member of Die Krupps, her contributions to the rhythm section can be found on key recordings.

Recently, Schnekenburger held her first showing of modern art. A long-time painter, fans pushed her to present her dramatic artwork to a wider public.

It’s on the back of her Berlin show, Colors and States of Mind, that we took the chance to catch up with Schnekenburger from her base in Germany.

You were part of the German punk scene. What was it like in those days, and what inspired you to start making music?

When I moved from Spain to Düsseldorf, I had a heavy drug and drinking problem. For the first few weeks in Düsseldorf, I kept on drinking and using. Then, one day, I somehow ended up in Ratinger Hof, and the music just hit me!

Punk and me – that was love (or rather hearing) at first sight. From then on, I was in Ratinger Hof every single night. I stopped drinking, smoking and using all together, from one day to the next, because I finally had something that actually touched me inside and gave a meaning to my life. As clichéd as it may sound, you can truly say that punk rock saved my life.

As punk gave me the feeling that everything was possible, even when you were a girl (which was not normal at the time), I thought about getting into making music myself.

As it happened, one day there was a party at the house of Thomas Schwebel’s parents in Solingen.

First, we ruined the garden by kicking a ball around, and then later the guys started jamming (Thomas had all the equipment there). At some point, I just grabbed the bass guitar and joined in. That was that.

Next thing I played bass in Die Rächer, together with Eduardo and Olga Delgado (brother and sister of Gabi).

How did you originally connect with DAF?

Well, Ratinger Hof was the place to be, so naturally I met absolutely everybody there, including the guys of DAF.

I got to know Gabi at the pinball machine. Jürgen Engler, Gabi, Wolf-Dieter Lauenroth and I were the best pinball players around, and you would find us at the pinball machine quite often.

Did you ever have to sleep on the floor at Daniel Miller’s house in London?

Of course! For about six weeks, as far as I recall. That was so nice of Daniel – I will never forget that.

When DAF reduced to a duo, you joined them for live shows. Those were high energy but incredibly stylish events. What was it like for you being on stage with them?

I was incredibly nervous every single time!

First, just putting on the tapes was not as easy as it may sound. You had to wind them exactly to the beginning of the song, and you were always afraid of “Bandsalat”.

Second, it’s not easy at all to have nothing to do between the songs and still look cool. But apparently I managed quite well.

In Die Krupps, you had a role in production and songwriting. What kind of sound were you going for? Did you have specific influences?

That, in fact, is a bit too much credit. I know that in some place it says that I was involved in the production but that was Jürgen’s part.

When I joined, Volle Kraft voraus was nearly finished but it still needed lyrics. So, I wrote some of the lyrics, together with Jürgen.

In Entering the Arena, which still is my favorite, I wanted to go back to the roots – i.e., “Wahre Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn” – something more high-energy and danceable.

You might say that “Wahre Arbeit, wahrer Lohn” was my influence at the time – a great song that is working live still.

When you left Die Krupps, were there musical ambitions you still wanted to fulfil? Will we see you return to stage?

After I left Die Krupps, Jürgen (Engler) and I founded the label Atom H. We released bands like Rumble Militia, a punk-/metal-crossover band from Bremen with a strong political message.

There was also, for instance, Protector, a Thrash Metal band that reminded one of Slayer.

At that time, New Metal was the thing, and there were lots of amazing new bands. It was a great time: we went to lots of gigs, almost every night. It was totally rock’n’roll.

After a while, I got tired of the music business – and especially the people in it – so I left Atom H. I moved to Berlin, just in time for the Wall to come down, where I took up photography again. I later returned to painting.

In London, I was in an all-girl reggae band where I played the drums, and it was always in the back of my head to go back to drumming; so, last year in May, I started taking drum lessons.

Whenever I can find the time in between painting and getting my next exhibition organized, I practice. I am dreaming of playing the drums in a rock band in the future – maybe in 2020.


You are also becoming known as a painter. When did you start? What do your paintings express?

I have been painting since I was a little kid and kept doing it until the age of 16, when I left school.

My mother took me to an art school in Stuttgart (at the time we were living in Heilbronn) to apply – successfully, but I never went. By that time, I already was heavily into booze and drugs, so I didn’t get anything together. Instead I hitchhiked to Torremolinos in Spain, where I lived until I moved to Düsseldorf.

Inspiration is coming to me in two different ways: One way is entirely from inside me, resulting in the darker paintings such as Suicide, the Tatort series and so on.

Those paintings are very much inspired by blood, which for me is the essence of life itself. Without blood we simply wouldn’t exist. Also, I very much adore the color of blood, which you can clearly see in my paintings. Red is dominant.

The other kind of inspiration comes from the outside world; solely driven by a specific color; inspired by something I see – for instance, a scene in a movie.

When I look at something, at first I notice the colors – always! Colors and the composition of colors. As Marie Pellicone (of Marie Pellicone Gallery in Soho/New York) said: I am truly a colorist.

You recently showed your paintings in Germany. Was the reaction encouraging?

Very much so! I even sold a painting weeks after the show, a lady bought one of my drawings for her husband as a birthday present.

Tina Schnekenburger's Colors and States of Mind shows in Hamburg from 7-10 September, 2018. Pop-Up Gallery BloodRedArt, Jungfrauenthal 3 in Hamburg (next to U Klosterstern).
All photos of Tina Schnekenburger by Krichan Wihlborg.

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This Is a Mute Book

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

To get the measure of Mute’s influence, it is enough to note that Yazoo’s second and final album was given the catalogue number, STUMM 12. The eleven that had come before it included three LPs from Fad Gadget, two from Depeche Mode, one by DAF and the only Silicon Teens album.

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.

Dividing his time between his mother’s house in Temple Fortune and Rough Trade’s back rooms in Notting Hill, Miller took on additional and more ambitious projects, gaining a reputation as the go-to guy for synth programming (Soft Cell, Thomas Dolby, Alex Ferguson) and alternative records.

Early projects, like his own Silicon Teens enterprise, were the stuff of record store fantasies: covers of rock standards using synths; industrial records with multiple grooves and spindle holes; singles about love during nuclear war. Then, attending a show by Fad Gadget, Miller stumbled upon a diamond the size of a TR808: four Essex futurists named after a French fashion magazine that they couldn’t pronounce accurately but with an instinct for infectious pop.

Depeche Mode changed everything for Miller and Mute. When they agreed to work with him, he gained the band that he had imagined Silicon Teens to be. Guitarless and guileless, Depeche Mode were on an upward pop curve but willing to experiment. He took them into Blackwing Studios in South London, where he had been working on other Mute projects, and emerged with a string of singles and an album, Speak and Spell, that lifted both the band and the label into the musical stratosphere.

When Depeche Mode lost their main songwriter, Mute gained another artist and repeated its success with Yazoo. When they broke up, the label kept its relationship alive with Vince Clarke, who provided them with a longer-lived project as Erasure.

These pop successes drew in funds that allowed Mute to support work by industrial and alternative artists like NON, Diamanda Galas, Pan Sonic and Simon Fisher Turner. Sublabels began to sprout, focussed on everything from soundtracks to techno. Sometimes, these had massive hits of their own (S’Express, Bomb the Bass), but often they just accumulated catalogues of exceptional artists (SPK, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle).

Dedication to artists proved a profitable as well as principled practice for the label. Mute kept the faith with Moby during his Animal Rights years before turning Play into sync-rights gold. Nick Cave was able to explore a range of styles, becoming one of the greatest songwriters of his generation.

This is only the background to the stories of Mute and Miller. We have learned that his parents moved to the UK as refugees from Nazism. It has become well known that Mute bailed out Rough Trade during its lean years; but, in its own time, was sold to EMI. What did Guy Hands think about Neubauten? There is a lot of interesting material to be shared, for sure, but it’s being saved for another day.

What we do have is Mute: A Visual Document (Thames & Hudson) by Terry Burrows with Daniel Miller. It’s a trawl through the Mute archives, collecting artwork for sleeves and advertisements with short, accessible essays. Some of the biggest names in photography and design have worked with the label’s artists – including Anton Corbijn, Neville Brody, Brian Griffin and Peter Saville – so there is a lot of eye candy between the dayglo orange covers. The early graphics of Simone Grant are a key to Mute’s visual identity, and it’s great that Grant has been interviewed for the book. Miller provides colour commentary, and the approach is effective – rather like a director’s comment track on a DVD.

Even if our understanding of the economic history of Mute is not deepened by the book, Mute: A Visual Document does enrich our appreciation of a genuine success story. Mute have been innovators at using technology, exploring new formats and extending their brands. They didn’t have written contracts with their largest artists for a long time, but managed to keep them from being poached by the majors by living up to their handshake deals. As a consequence, the vaults are full of graphics that tell stories that might not otherwise have been told.

Mute: A Visual Document will delight fans of the label and its artists, but it will tease anyone who is interested to know more about the way Mute was grown from a start-up into a giant among independents. There needs to be a book written about Miller’s experience in business, and it may still come – it just won’t have so many shots of Add N to X covers.

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Rough and Ready: Carter, Tutti, Miller

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

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.

The occasion of the performance was a signing event for the 40th anniversary reissue of TG’s classic album, Second Annual Report. It also provided an opportunity for Carter and his partner, Cosey Fanni Tutti, to reminisce about their careers in music. They were joined on stage by Daniel Miller, whose Mute label is releasing Carter’s forthcoming solo album, for a relaxed conversation about modulars and the early days of industrial music.

The relationship between Miller and Throbbing Gristle goes back a long way – further, actually, than Miller recalled. His memory of chaos at TG shows, including one featuring Robert Rental & The Normal, was vivid, but Carter surprised Miller with an anecdote about visiting Mute’s original base in Temple Fortune when “TVOD/Warm Leatherette” was being recorded. “I met your mum!”

As they warmed up, the anecdotes started to flow. It came out that Miller met Robert Rental at a TG concert in July of 1978 where chairs were thrown in a Situationist cause. Also that Rental’s girlfriend worked with Thomas Leer’s at the Virgin store on Oxford Street. Miller recalled seeing a Peter Gabriel quote on a TG album there to the effect that it was the best thing ever (“I wasn’t sure if it was a piss-take or not!”). This was news to Tutti and Carter, but the dots were connected through TG member Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson’s work for Gabriel as a visual artist.

Further connections arose from events at the Cryptic One Club, which was organised by the promoters, Final Solution. After TG played a notorious event –  which featured Tina Turner’s doormen, who had been recruited as celebrity heavies – Miller and Robert Rental were separately asked to play at the club. Neither wanted to perform separately, so they teamed up as Robert Rental & The Normal, sharing a bill with TG.

The duo joined the Rough Trade tour with Stiff Little Fingers, recording a one-sided live LP for Rough Trade’s US label. There was a TG connection there, too: Carter had built a Gristleizer effects unit for Rental, which he used to process the sound of his Wasp synth.

The discussion moved on to modular kit. Carter explained that, in 1999, he had a mid-life crisis and sold off his old analogue and modular equipment; but, within a year, he was rebuilding his collection. Carter’s latest solo album, which comes out in March, has been made with his rebuilt modular collection. It was also revealed that a new version of the Gristleizer, designed for Eurorack systems, is on its way.

For fans of industrial and electronic music, the evening was very special. Carter’s demonstration and the open conversation between three legends showed that the DIY post-punk spirit that motivated them at the end of the 1970s is still vital today. It also put their imprimatur on the burgeoning modular scene. TG might be finished as a band, but its subversive and animating influence is undiminished, even after four decades.

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Post-Punk’s Not Dead: Here Come The Lines

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

hull downDepeche 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.

Founded in London in the immediate wake of punk and its DIY culture, The Lines came together when Conning and Forty met on an English literature course. As Conning tells the story:

We both had a strong interest in music. For me, music was probably a stronger interest than English literature. I found the study of music very boring. I didn’t like to study it; just to play it. We decided to start a band. This was around ’76, and a lot of other people in London were focused on the same thing about the same time. It took us a couple of years to get to where we thought we were good enough to put a record out, and we put out “White Night” in 1978.

whitenight_back“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 Sarah Blackwood of Dubstar and Client. Adult Net, the band launched by Brix Smith after she left The Fall, took a more indie route with its version.

Although major success proved elusive, The Lines or its members crossed paths with many of the key players in the city’s independent music scene. Recording at Blackwing Studios, they returned one time to find Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet concluding the first Yazoo single, “Only You.” The band had been drawn to Blackwing by the sound of Dome, the Lewis-Gilbert side project, and Conning went on to work with all of Wire as a mixing engineer for “Eardrum Buzz.” That was only one of many assignments given by Daniel Miller to Conning, who became one of Mute Records’ house studio gurus, recording or mixing Depeche Mode, Erasure, Laibach, Renegade Soundwave and Frank Tovey.

Conning recalls:

I had known Daniel, anyway, from the late 1970s, and The Lines were gigging at about the same time, and our drummer was in Fad Gadget’s band. I did know Daniel vaguely, and one day he turned up at Guerilla, where I worked, to mix some Depeche Mode live tapes. He asked me to do a few of the mixes by myself. He asked me to do “Black Celebration.” After that, he asked me to do “A Question of Time.” They were both good mixes, and then the one I did with Daniel after that was a really good mix which I think actually affected the career of the band – the Blind Mix of “Strangelove” – was a pretty important mix for them. It was the main single out here in the States.

It was another Mute favourite, John Fryer, who did a lot of the studio work on The Lines’ first two full-length albums, Therapy and Ultramarine, together with studio boss Eric Radcliffe. Fryer, one of two permanent members of This Mortal Coil, had developed a reputation as an experimental engineer, and his ability to cope with reel-to-reel tape loops, wrapped around the studio premises, was one of the attractions for the band. Like Dome, The Lines played the studio as an instrument, and their sound owes a lot to the creative setting in Southwark.

After those albums, the band went on hiatus. It was never officially dissolved, but the band members all went in different directions: Conning assumed a job as engineer at William Orbit‘s Guerilla Studios and as a member of Torch Song (just listen to his work on S-Express’ glorious “Mantra for a State of Mind” with Orbit to see where he was going); Cash had his Fad Gadget responsibilities; and Forty and Linehan each went on Eastern travels. Although tracks were in demand for compilations and a retrospective was issued in 2008, it seemed a remote prospect that new material would be forthcoming from The Lines.

300x300Fast 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.

We tracked down Conning at his Los Angeles base to learn something about the story of the album. He told us:

This is an attempt to realise what we were trying to realise back then, with the benefit of hindsight. All I did, on some of the tracks, was blend very early demos with much later, much more polished, 8-track versions. When I did that, it was a bit of a revelation. In a couple of cases, particularly – I would say “Flat Feet” and “Archway” – I had no idea what to do with those two until I blended the earliest demo with the later thing. With a couple of others – “Raffle” and “Haberdasher” – it was a similar thing, but in those cases the demo starts and finishes the track and the later development is in the middle.

Although the product of work that began in the 1980s, the sound of hull down remains fresh. “Flat Feet,” the lead track, is rhythmically vigorous and filled with enough authentically snappy analogue sounds to stump even the most jaded hipster. “Single Engine Duster” could be a later-era Wire track, albeit with trombone, Linn drum and Chakk-like funk in the mix. “Nicky Boy’s Groove” features Cash’s TB-303 actually playing a bass line – its sound sitting on the cusp of acid house while guitars and synths drift around in dark, apocalyptic swirls.

Proceedings enter ACR territory with “Zoko Am3,” a track based on a live jam. Conning describes his contribution as a duet with a Watkins Copicat echo unit, and the lines-out soar with a prog-like effect, comparable to the early material from Nash the Slash or Steve Hillage. The use of effects continues with “Where Is the World,” a track that was originally laid down to test out various new gear, including the then-current TR-808. Come “Raffle” and the sound is not a million miles from the Guerilla template: arpeggiators glistening over brilliant, dancefloor-friendly bass lines, while Conning’s vocals come and go as needed.

The pace slows down again for “Archway,” which incorporates Cash’s vibraphone and a Hammond organ in a tribute to the road running under Suicide Bridge. It doesn’t lift for the run-out track, “Haberdashers,” but the sound is much more easily located in its time, using Laurie Mayer’s Juno 60 for arpeggiation. The experimentation at the heart of the The Lines is in the clearest relief here, and it is remarkable that IRS didn’t go for it as part of their No Speak series of instrumental albums.

Three decades after the original tracks were laid down to tape, hull down is partly a sign of what could have been for The Lines, but it also contains traces of what has been for its members. More than an artifact, the album is a document for the present, and it’s dense with rich, experimental music that is even better suited to our time.

LINKS:

Rico’s Reel blog

Buy hull down at Carpark Records

The Lines on Facebook

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Industrial Film for Industrial People

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

BFI, London
8 May 2015

The world premiere of a new feature film about industrial music brought out members of Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept, along with a tattooed and booted audience keen to see footage of TG, Non and Z’ev. What they got was a 52 minute trawl through the archives, original interview footage, a live Q&A with the film-makers and Chris & Cosey, and a DJ set from the original British metal-bashers.

imageIndustrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay is a French independent production, created by Amelie Ravalec and Travis Collins. Its premise is that industrial music – the experimental style that is characterised by harsh sounds, cut-up lyrics, the use of found sound, and so on – was born amidst urban decline as the counterculture of factory workers or unemployed youth. The story is told by many of the prime movers from the scene, including Genesis P-Orridge, Chris & Cosey, Boyd Rice, Stephen Mallinder, Graeme Revell and Dirk Ivens. Most of the interviewees are from the UK, so their reactions to the Thatchist police state of the 1980s are key to the narrative, but there is also space given to Vale from Re:Search and the Belgian founder of Sordide Sentimental, who publicised the industrial scene for the love of its art.

The term, industrial music, came from Throbbing Gristle, who created the Industrial Records label to issue their own music and that of artists like Thomas Leer and Robert Rental, Monte Cazzaza or Sweden’s Leather Nun. Adopting the communications style of corporations and popular culture reference points like Greatest Hits albums, they subverted the mainstream by injecting themselves into it. In the film, P-Orridge explains the coining of the term as a branding exercise, alongside the adoption of the band’s lightning flash logo, but the film and its participants steer clear of any pedantic discussion about what is truly industrial.

There is little in the film that will surprise long-time followers, and footage from the Rough Trade tour showing Robert Rental perfoming with Daniel Miller or clips of Cabaret Voltaire’s TV appearances, promoting their first album for a major label, can be easily found on Youtube. Fans who know the music will appreciate hearing “their” genre used in a feature film, but it rolls past quickly in a blizzard of clips that don’t always correspond to the soundtrack. Completists will point out that the film misses the chance to look at artists like Zoviet France, Muslimgauze or Severed Heads, so that the picture is somewhat distorted for less-informed viewers, but the producers explained that they were constrained by their budget and chose to focus on the artists they were able to interview.

The choice of several tracks from CV’s Crackdown album invites questions about the interface between industrial music and pop, but the opportunity is passed over. That is unfortunate, as many of the artists being highlighted made material intended for a more commercial audience – SPK’s “Metal Dance,” much of CV’s later output, Chris & Cosey’s “October Love Song” or Test Dept’s “New World Order” all provide examples – and it would have been interesting to hear their views about the creative limits of each genre.

Those quibbles aside, Industrial Soundtrack for the Urban Decay is an entertaining, accessible and informative run-through of industrial music’s history. Its running time means it can be squeezed onto Sky Arts, but for now look out for it on the festival circuit.

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Shine On: John Fryer

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

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: 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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