Way back in the early 1980s, a trend arose for smashing pieces of metal and organising the resulting sound into ambient urban soundscapes or dance tracks. Berlin’s Einstürzende Neubauten arguably kicked it off, but in short order the availability of new-fangled sampling technology had Fad Gadget (“Collapsing New People”), Depeche Mode (“People Are People”), SPK (“Metal Dance”) and others incorporating post-industrial metal-bashing into their tracks. One of the originals was London’s Test Dept, who reversed the trend by starting as a hammer-wielding group and moving into dance music. This was their first single, released by Some Bizarre to an unsuspecting public in 1983.
DJ Sarah Blackwood
Speak & Spell
Vile Electrodes
Hertford Corn Exchange, 13 September 2014
The Electricity Club has established itself as the leading poptronica journal by reporting on the most vital artists on the electronic music scene in a forthright way. So, when it puts on a show, TEC is just as careful in its curation and presentation as it is on the page. At the Hertford Corn Exchange, the large crowd that has filled the venue for TEC003 receives an education as well as an experience, with previously unseen images from the 80s Basildon scene and a blistering run-through of Vile Electrodes’ album, The Future Through a Lens. It’s an event that reflects the dedication of TEC’s team, who carry the flame for electronic music with respect for its roots and an eye to the future.
For many, the event began with a public exhibition of Deb Danahay Mann’s unique archive of Depeche Mode and Yazoo memorabilia. As a central figure in the legendary Depeche Mode Information Service, Deb was often a fan’s initial point of contact to ask questions or hear about the band’s projects. As Vince Clarke’s other half, she was closely involved in the early days of the Basildon scene. She and Vince have moved on, but Deb’s memories of those times are a treasure trove for fans, which she generously shares with visitors from around the world, who head to Essex to see the suburban ground zero where “Ice Machine” was written. Stocked with photo albums, as well as interviews and reviews from the early 1980s music press, the exhibition gave a context to both Depeche Mode and Yazoo that was far richer than anything seen to date. Given that Depeche Mode are becoming the Rolling Stones of their generation, a commission by the Barbican ought to be in the offing.
The first band on stage at TEC003 were among those fascinated by the mystique of early 80s Basildon. Speak & Spell have established themselves as the fans’ favourite Depeche Mode cover act, devoting themselves to faithfully playing the classic songs from the band’s seminal first album. Most of them have been dropped from Depeche Mode’s live set over time, but there is still enormous interest in the songs on Stumm 5. One of the accomplishments of Speak & Spell is to recreate many of the original instrument sounds, so that “Big Muff” sounds headily like it did in 1981; another is to base their stage show on live performance, replicating the experience of an early Depeche Mode show. Their inspiration is clearly drawn as much from the bootlegs of early Depeche gigs as from the recordings made at Blackwing Studios, and they get knowing cheers from the crowd for their version of unrecorded track, “Television Set.”
DJ Sarah Blackwood took over the sound system between sets, deploying an arsenal of heavy duty beats that hit the high notes of 1980s electronics. Simple Minds’ “I Travel” filled the room with rhythm, and a seamless mix of Fad Gadget’s “Lady Shave” with Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ “Los Ninos del Parque” was a revelation. A singing set followed, with performances of Blackwood classics, including Dubstar’s “Not So Manic Now” and Client’s “Price of Love.” Blackwood’s voice is as distinctive and classy as ever, as she recently demonstrated on Fotonovela’s A Ton of Love album, and she easily charms the (speak and) spell-struck audience. Later in the evening, Blackwood would go on to perform a storming version of Depeche Mode’s “A Question of Time,” ensuring that every melodic base has been hit solidly.
Live electronics can be a difficult beast to tame, but Vile Electrodes are capable disciplinarians. Their searing show depends on the flow of electrons through a seemingly endless tangle of wires, but every plug has been checked, tested and tested again; the ambience of the room has been measured; the positioning of each element carefully assessed. It is difficult to name another act that places so much reliance on temperamental hardware and carries off their show with as much professionalism. When they take to the stage, it is like watching a Tesla coil unleashed at its highest setting; but, instead of lab coats, its operators wear electric blue suits or latex skirts.
The Future Through a Lens was one of the top releases of 2013, and it is played through at TEC003 with a new running order but all of the creative power of the album. The central shopping precinct of Hertford shakes to “Empire of Wolves” and “Damaged Software,” marvels at the grandeur of “Proximity” and finally has its heart torn open by “Deep Red.” Anais Neon’s vocals sound extraordinary, marking her out as the Debbie Harry of the new generation of poptronica artists, while Martin Swan teases pulses from his keyboards and hammers drum pads with abandon. The Vile ones are sitting on top of a dynamo, and the ride is breath-taking. They are at the pinnacle of British poptronica, and at TEC003 there are a lot of happy Sherpas.
With special thanks to The Electricity Club
In Canadian history, there is special respect for les voyageurs; the early pioneers who explored uncharted territory, discovered its wealth and opened paths for others to follow. Montreal’s Rational Youth will be remembered as electro-voyageurs; the country’s first band to make pop records and perform using only synthesizers and drum machines. The release of their first 12” single, I Want to See the Light/Coboloid Race, in 1981, was a watershed moment for electronic music in Canada: up to that point, synthesizers had been used by academics creating “new music” in the manner of Stockhausen or as high-end organs for conventional songs. Rational Youth took them into the studio to make a new kind of electronic pop music, rooted in the aesthetics of Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra, but with a distinctively Canadien flavour.
Rational Youth’s first album, 1982’s Cold War Night Life, inspired more than the title of this magazine. It gave confidence to Canadian bands to make electronic music of their own, and became one of the classic LPs of the genre, alongside Depeche Mode’s Speak and Spell and Kraftwerk’s own Computer World. The album’s title was perfectly chosen: lyrically and sonically, it channelled the tension and neurosis of the superpower conflict, evoking the shadows-and-fog world of fictional spies, George Smiley and Harry Palmer. At the same time, it was able to describe teen romance in Solidarity-era Poland with humour and empathy. It was pop ahead of its time: Rational Youth sang Dancing on the Berlin Wall a decade before young Germans scaled it to celebrate the end of their political and physical division.
Thirty-two years after their first single, Rational Youth are back on the release trail. The discovery of a box of tapes, documenting stops on the band’s 1983 national tour, has opened a window to the past and a door to the future. Two shows, from Ottawa and Winnipeg, are scheduled for release as limited-edition cassettes and CDs, while a luxurious boxed set of Rational Youth records is being prepared for reissue on vinyl. The possibility of future Rational Youth live dates and even studio material is being explored, with keyboardist Kevin Komoda and singer Tracy Howe developing an entirely new show. While original keyboardist Bill Vorn has other commitments and won’t be joining them, his legacy is clearly present in the upcoming releases.
CWNL spoke with Tracy Howe about the band’s origins, experience and prospects. Currently drumming with The Normals, his revived 1970s punk band, Howe has been cheered by the reception given to news of the Rational Youth live tapes. A great raconteur, we let him tell the story in his own words.
On being in Heaven Seventeen (no, not that one)…
There was a small but pretty vibrant – and I guess kind of incestuous – music scene in Montreal at the time, starting in about 1978. People all knew one-another. We had The Normals, and then The Normals broke up, because I wanted to move on. It was funny. Scott Cameron, who was the bass player in The Normals, actually bought a synthesizer while we were still in The Normals. It was an original Korg MS-20. It must have cost him a lot of money. He bought the MS-20, and then I bought this thing in a music store – it was a Logan String Melody, which is a kind of string keyboard.
When The Normals fizzled out, we started this band called Heaven Seventeen, with “Seventeen” written out. Obviously, we stole the name from the same place the other Heaven 17 stole it from – it’s from the film, A Clockwork Orange. Alex, the Malcolm McDowell character, goes into this record store, and there’s an imaginary Top Ten on the wall, and one of the bands is called The Heaven Seventeen. The idea with Heaven Seventeen was, I really liked the first couple of Ultravox albums; so, they were kind of in-between, already. Then there was Howard Devoto, who had been in The Buzzcocks, and he had started Magazine. So that was what Heaven Seventeen was to sound like.
…and Men Without Hats (yes, that one)
We had a number of personnel changes along the way. We had the Logan and Scott’s MS-20, and Scott was in Heaven Seventeen. Eventually Ivan Doroschuk joined Heaven Seventeen. He had a version of Men Without Hats that was just a guitar punk band that played – not that often, once or twice – at the venues that The Normals used to play at. So, he was an actor for that period, pretty much, too. Of course, he was in Heaven Seventeen for a while, but he went off, after that, and he started Men Without Hats. He asked me to join Men Without Hats, but I joined as the guitar player. I was in Men Without Hats for a few months – four or five months or something. They had a shed-load of synthesizers, although what they were doing was not completely synth. It was a combination. It was a hybrid, as well.
When I left Men Without Hats, I thought, there is some really good equipment. I liked to fool around on it when we weren’t doing anything. I left Men Without Hats, but I wasn’t doing anything. I had my Logan and got the Sequential Circuits Pro-1, so I was just fooling around with that at home. I had the idea that I was going to do something with it. That’s actually when I wrote the song, I Want to See the Light.
On meeting Bill Vorn and recording the first Rational Youth single
I was working in a record store called Sam the Record Man. This was the one in Montreal on St. Catherine’s Street. Bill Vorn comes in – like, I knew him, but he came up to me and said, “Hey, you used to be in Men Without Hats. I do stuff with synthesizers. Do you want to try and get a band together?” And I said, “Yeah!” I kind of liked him, and so that is literally how it happened. He recognised me and walked up to me in the store and said, “Do you want to check it out?”
He said, “Come over to my place.” So I went over to his place, and he had this apartment; and there was this room where the equipment was, and it was just insane. It was just all of these modular synthesizers – the ones with patch-cords and everything – like the Roland System 700, the Roland System 100. There were these two massive Moog Studios 15 and 35, which belonged to another guy he was living with at that time. That guy was Mario Spezza. He actually played on I Want to See the Light, when we recorded it for our first single.
So that was how we met: he just walked up to me and said, “Do you want to do something?” And I said, “Sure!” I took my little synthesizers over to his place, and I said, “Let’s figure out a way of doing a record.” He had Coboloid Race. He had a very abstract arrangement, with synths and everything. It was just a piece of music, and he also had this poem he had written called Coboloid Race. The lyrics scanned really well. I never changed one word in his text. We arranged it into a song. It was just this bunch of sequences that he had, and we did that.
So, those were our first two songs. This guy starting an independent record label in Montreal, YUL Records, came along and said, “Do you want to record them?” It was just serendipity. We said we had these two songs and we were doing this electronic thing and, guess what, it is really easy to record. That didn’t really mean much to him, but we did it in a couple of hours.
On YUL Records and recording with Pat Deserio
Pat [Deserio] worked with Marc [Demouy, of YUL Records and Rational Youth’s manager]. Marc brokered this studio time, in this studio that was actually reasonably good, and we went down there and we did it [the first single]. The guy who was the engineer ended up being our sound man later on, because he was just freelance – he was a good guy. We recorded that there. Pat just came along. Well, it is credited to Pyer Desrochers. He recorded it and that was pretty much it.
Pat had been a producer in the infamous Montreal disco scene prior. We were pretty wary of him, because of the disco scene – we didn’t want to have anything to do with that. Pat turned out to be an awesome guy. He became our producer, and he got us a deal with a label that was a disco label but also a distributor – so they became our distributor. They had their own studio. That is how we did Cold War Night Life, because they had a studio. So, you could go there at night. Pat used to go to work in the morning, and he had been up all night with us on Cold War Night Life.
The most frustrating thing in those days was engineers who didn’t have a clue. We had this drum machine, the TR-808, so they didn’t really know what we were doing. To them, it was like, “Is this a demo?” They didn’t get it. It was so different.
Talking about being purely electronic, Bill was such a fanatic. At one point, Pat wanted to use one of the stairwells in the building the studio was in, to use as an echo chamber – you know, put a speaker and mike down there to put on the snare drum. Bill freaked out: “We don’t do electro-acoustic music!” The idea was that we were completely electronic. There was nothing, except for the human voice, that was not voltage-controlled. That was the idea.
On musical influences beyond Kraftwerk
I really liked Ultravox. I was the one with YMO and Logic System, and all of that stuff. Bill, the first day I went over to his house, all his records were there. As you might expect, there was Kraftwerk, but there was also Klaus Schultze and Tangerine Dream. For electronic stuff, I also like Eno, Moebius, Roedilius – that kind of stuff. He liked stuff that was pure synth. He didn’t like Klaus Schulze that much – it’s just that Klaus Schulze did everything on synthesizer and he liked synthesizers a lot. That’s why he liked Klaus Schulze.
Both of us would buy a Jean-Michel Jarre album and say how much we didn’t like it. Really, we didn’t like it, but we bought it because we wanted to hear what it was. We wanted to hear what he was doing. We wanted to hear the synth thing in that. There weren’t really other things to listen to – yet. Quite honestly, in a way, for what we did – apart from some people in Germany, who had been doing it from years before – it’s funny that not that many people from anywhere else tried to do it. When we did it, we were certainly the only people we knew of. There was stuff like The Normal that had come out, and early Depeche Mode that had already started.
On the Montreal scene as an incubator for electronic music
Montreal was already a big market for progressive rock. So that kind of stuff had an edge in Montreal already, anyway. People who liked progressive rock sort of liked krautrock; and if they liked krautrock, maybe they liked Kraftwerk, too, because they liked Can and Amon Duul. It was all kind of mushed together there. People in Montreal would also associate that with progressive stuff, so in those days people who liked Rick Wakeman would also like something maybe more esoteric.
On playing in Sweden the first time
It’s kind of a funny story. There was going to be this thing in 1997, the Stockholm Synth Festival. We got contacted, because I had just put up a rudimentary Rational Youth Web site – you know, early days – and started to get all these emails from people in Sweden. I put up the site and all this stuff started flooding in through Sweden. I got this email from a guy, and he was putting on this thing called the Stockholm Synth Festival at Stockholm University. He wanted to know if we wanted to play, and he would bring us over. It was going to be headlined by Front 242 and us. Quite honestly, I didn’t know who Front 242 were, at the time. I looked into it, and we said sure. I looked up Bill and said, “Bill, they want us to go play at this festival.” So, we got together. I was living in Toronto at the time, commuting to Montreal to practice. It was so exciting – we were going to go to Sweden and play. It was crazy – how could you imagine that?
Then it turned out the whole thing was a big scam. He sold tickets, but he never intended to bring us. He never sent us any sort of contract. He just put us on the poster. It was really bad, and people were really mad. People showed up at this gig, and they were really upset that we weren’t there. But I tried all the contacts that I had beforehand, because he was supposed to send us an air ticket or something. He was supposed to tell us something. He just kind of disappeared, and we couldn’t reach him. It came up to the date of the show, and a week before the show I started telling all the people I could, tell people over there that it doesn’t look like we’re coming, because this guy is not contacting us.
So, that’s what happened, and we were really upset. But the guy from Energy Rekords, Per Faeltenborg, contacted me and said, “I would like to put you on, and I really will put you on.” He made a persuasive pitch with that. He said, “I will go up to Stockholm and we will tell people up there that you’re not in Stockholm but will be in Lund,” in what turned out to be two weeks later. So, we said, “Go for it!”
It turned out we did this thing called Virtual Xmas 97 in Lund with a bunch of bands – Elegant Machinery and Mesh. We were the headliners. It was phenomenal. It was really great. That’s how the whole thing started. We got involved with October Records, which was eventually taken over by Energy.
On Swedish fans and Eddie Bengtsson
The thing about the guys in Sweden – especially in the south, in Skåne – is it’s a real hodge-podge type of music. The people there are incredibly loyal and into it – God bless them.
It’s lovely to see Page just doing stuff, and I think that Eddie [Bengtsson] is a wonderful talent. I always respected that they played in Swedish. I actually tried to do a cover of one of his songs – actually, it wasn’t a Page song, it was a Sista Mannen på Jorden song called Luft. The melody was so beautiful, and I still wanted it to be about luft – about air – but I never could come up with a lyric or a vocal part that did it justice. If it wasn’t going to be as good as Eddie was in Swedish, then it wasn’t going to be any good, so I kind of abandoned it, but I really think he’s a wonderful talent.
With Rational Youth, we come and go, like Page does, in a way. We are in a flurry of activity, because we found these old tapes. We have some fans who are so fanatical and dedicated, it’s amazing. It’s always come as a shock to me. We just don’t have that many of them!
On touring Northern Europe
I always wondered what would happen if Bill hadn’t quit the band, but after that thing in Sweden he said, “Ok, that’s fine, we’ve done that”, etc., and he didn’t want to do any more. So I found a couple of guys. I was living in Toronto at the time. That was when we did the To the Goddess Electricity album. Those guys were really talented. They were younger than me. The two of them didn’t get along together, so we did one trip over to Sweden with three of us; and then we came over a couple of times, and it was just me and one of the other guys. We did a couple of tours through Scandinavia. That was really fun.
We played one gig in Germany, but that is the only time we’ve played in Germany. It’s really funny, because we do have some fans in Germany, but how come we didn’t do better there? We made absolutely zero-minus-zero impact in the UK, which was kind of disappointing. It was always a dream to be able to go and play there.
On the show under development
We’re trying to put it together again, because this live stuff is coming out. Kevin Komoda is really driving it. We’ve going to try it. They are rehearsing it – and when I say “they,” Kevin and a few other musicians were working on Rational Youth stuff just yesterday. They’ve been doing that for a little while. I’m afraid to go, and he doesn’t want to bring me until it’s ready. I don’t want to impose on it too much. I’m really excited and really scared about doing it again. I want it to be something a lot better than what it ever was before, if we do it.
I don’t want to do a two-guys-with-laptops thing anymore. We are going to play this live. We are actually going to play every part live. So, there’s going to be about five people. There’s going to be a drum – we have a drummer. In the early days, like Depeche, you had these parts sequenced onto the MC-4 and all of this stuff – you couldn’t play it without playing along with a tape recorder. Then it became that you had it on a DAT machine. Now you can have it on your laptop and play it right out of Logic or Cubase. So, you think that’s live, but you have two guys standing up there looking like doctors. I want it to be exciting and a little bit risky. So, it’s going to be a drummer and four other people playing all this stuff, and a ton of synths, and no sequencers. That’s a first.
On the 1983 tour and the rediscovered live tapes
The 1983 tour – these live records that we have coming out – that was the band that we got together after Bill left. Nobody could replace Bill, in terms of what he did. The equipment that Bill had got – like the TR-808 and the MC-4– it’s not that you couldn’t buy an MC-4, but you had to program those things, and I didn’t have the patience for it. Anytime there was a step-time sequencer or something, I could run it, but Bill would sit there with the MC-4. You had to program the notes in as numerical values based on DC voltage. I used to joke with Bill: “Alright, let’s change this from 80 up to 90 volts here.” He had this all in his head. He could sit there, and he would write out these reams of paper with numbers on it, just to do the songs on Cold War Night Life. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t like you just played it into your computer and quantised it, like Garage Band. It was really complicated.
He left us, and we had this tour booked, and we had to get it together. We got a bass player and a drummer. At the time, I thought, people like it ok, but is this the real thing? We made a record for Capitol Records with Pat Deserio again. That first record with Capital Records had all its own issues, dealing with a major record label; and, from then on, it defined a lot of problems that I had and the band had. When Kevin found these tapes, which we are just putting out now, we listened to them and we both thought, “Oh my God, I didn’t realise we were that good!” Not only that, but I didn’t realise that it sounded kind of electronic. It just didn’t, because we had been with Bill before, and we knew that was totally electronic.
We wanted to do this tour; we had all these dates, going from coast to coast in Canada – nice gigs in universities and everything – and we wanted to do them. It worked out pretty well. At the time, it was like the ship had already taken a torpedo in the bow, in terms of morale and direction. When we listen to it now, it’s actually pretty good. So that gave us the idea: let’s do something like that, but do it way better. Let’s do it now, with what we can do now, and have at it. The idea is that it’s going to be this really live synth onslaught – if we do it. We’re going to rehearse this stuff. We’re going to play a gig in Montreal. If it goes well, we’ll do more – if it doesn’t, then hey. We’ll have to see.
On the potential for new shows and new songs
The problem with playing in Montreal is that it will be the scariest thing ever, because I know Montreal. It has changed in a lot of ways, but it hasn’t changed all that much. They’re going to like it, but they’re not going to like it that much. If we did go to Sweden with it, people would like it. I’ve talked to a couple of people already. People are asking, “Will you come over?” I think, if we feel comfortable with doing this and we feel like it’s working, we would certainly want to come over. It will be what people want but also something more. We’d have something to prove, so we’d have motivation – rather than click “play” and sing the song, look busy out there.
I’ve been doing music since I was 16. Even though I haven’t been a full-time professional musician since was a child, I still know when something’s good. The plan is to do something that, if you saw us and you liked Rational Youth, you wouldn’t be disappointed; you wouldn’t feel cheated in any way, but you would also get something out of it that you didn’t think you were going to get. It’s going to hit you on an emotional level. That’s because it’s going to be live and it’s going to be powerful. We’ve got a little girl on drums who is risky dynamic, and Kevin and those songs. Although we haven’t had a huge number of records out, we do have what I think are quite a lot of strong songs. If you play them live and play them well, it’s not hard to put a show together with those songs.
If the stuff goes really well, I am sure it will inspire us to do some new stuff. It is hard to do some new stuff today – not just in terms of dragging the songs out of yourself, but some people will inevitably be disappointed. For some of our hard-core supporters, Cold War Night Life was this iconic album. Hey, it’s nice to have done one in your lifetime, even if it’s not for 50 billion people, but there are a lot of people who think it’s a really classic album.
I remember when, with J-C [Jean-Claude Cutz], back in the nineties, we did the album, To the Goddess Electricity. We busted our guts doing that album. We were trying to say, what would it be like if this was our second album? We were trying as hard as we could. People sort of liked it, but I think some people were disappointed. It’s like trying to catch lightning in a bottle, but you never know. Maybe by doing the band this way – because it’s kind of different, especially for now – it will trigger some kind of different direction for us that would be something a little bit ground-breaking but still rooted in where it came from and make sense to people.
Live 1983 is released in November 2013 on Artoffact Records, and is available for pre-order through Storming the Base.
To viewers of Nordic Noir detective stories, the south of Sweden is a place occupied by disillusioned and lonely policemen, living in houses filled with wooden furniture, surrounded by endless fields of yellow rapeseed. To listeners of Swedish alternative music, it is a region brimming with creative artists, carrying forward the spirit of early European synthesizer bands like Kraftwerk, The Human League and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark; a place where the flow of electricity from the country’s power-stations keeps analogue keyboards and drum machines humming. Now that a British audience has embraced Wallander on television, through the original Swedish films, surely the time has also come to discover that Skåne’s finest songwriters and musicians don’t just live in the collective shadow of Agnetha, Benny, Björn and Anni-Frid.
Take Page, the original Swedish synthpop act. Founded in the suburbs of Malmö in 1980, Page were inspired to take up keyboards by Silicon Teens, the alter-ego of Mute Records’ founder, Daniel Miller. The back-story is that, before he discovered Depeche Mode, Miller had dreamed of a teenaged pop group based entirely around the synthesizers that were starting to become more compact and affordable at the end of the 1970s. He set out his vision through a series of singles and an album of rock standards re-conceived using analogue synths, which were attributed to a fictitious quartet of youthful musicians. When these records reached Sweden, Miller’s idea was turned into reality by 18-year old skateboarder Eddie Bengtsson, who was inspired to sell his drum set and buy two Korg synthesizers: one for himself and one for 15-year old Marina Schiptjenko, a classically-trained pianist who had fallen in love with electronic music when she saw Gary Numan playing on Swedish television. Together, Bengtsson and Schiptjenko created a new template for electronic pop, and Page became the house band for a growing audience of dedicated syntare (synthers).
Page’s first recording was the single for which they are best known within Sweden. Dansande man (Dancing Man) was written by Bengtsson and Anders Eliasson, who had joined the band shortly after it was founded. Released on the band’s own label in 1983, the record featured a distinctive hook, which was impressed with the feeling of Slavic folk music. Up-tempo and catchy, Dansande Man caught the attention of the Swedish media as a home-grown version of the synthpop wave then being led by Depeche Mode and Yazoo. Sung entirely in Swedish and released in a limited edition with quaintly hand-painted artwork, the record didn’t reach a wide public outside of Scandinavia, initially, but it has become a synthpop classic for the Minimal Wave generation. If you can find a copy for sale, it won’t be cheap: rare Page records are held onto tightly by collectors.
The departure of Eliasson for other projects reduced Page to the original duo of Bengtsson and Schiptjenko. Page continued as a live act, frequently appearing on-stage at the Stadt Hamburg venue in Malmö, which was the regional ground-zero for synth music and culture. Because the club lacked a liquor licence, teens were able to attend Page shows, which meant that the growing and youthful base of Swedish synthpop fans had a band to call their own. Even if Page would find commercial success at the level of Depeche Mode or the Pet Shop Boys elusive, within Sweden they shared much of the same audience – and are as highly regarded by many.
After Dansande man, the band released three singles on the Accelerating Blue Fish label. These were collected and updated for their first album, the eponymous Page, together with new tracks and a previously unreleased demo. Put out by Energy Rekords in 1991, Page represents a decade’s work, showing off the rapid and skilful development of the band’s songwriting. Although Eliasson’s legacy is also present, through Dansande man and the delightful Hus av glas (House of Glass), the album is really a showcase for Bengtsson’s pop sensibility. With strong tracks like Mia och Tom (Mia and Tom) and En dag på zoo (A Day at the Zoo), Page were firmly established in the premier league of Scandinavian synthpop. However, by the time the album came out, a credible songbook was no guarantee of commercial success. Without radio support or video play on MTV, Page wasn’t going to be able to compete with U2 and Genesis in the charts. For the band’s syntare fan-base, however, the release of a full album, collecting their favourite songs, was a major event.
Critics greeted the album warmly. Backlash magazine gave it a 4/5 rating, noting:
The style of music is easily danceable synth pop which has its roots in the beginning of the 80s. It’s hard to find any comparators, because Page’s music is its own. Moreover, Eddie Bengtsson sings in Swedish, which is not very common among the Swedish synth bands. He doesn’t just sing well; he also writes great lyrics.
Writing in Zero Magazine, Alexander Elofsson later recalled seeing the release celebrated on home turf:
Stadt Hamburg was totally packed on the evening of the show, and the atmosphere was boiling when Page stood behind their synths and gave one of the most highly-acclaimed concerts in Stadt Hamburg’s history. […] Page were kings of the Skåne synth scene.
They might have been electronic royalty, but Page didn’t rest on their laurels. It took another three years to put the follow-up album together, but Hallå! (Hey!) was a step change from Page in both the quality and consistency of production. With songs like Fredag för dig (Friday for You) and Nr:12 (Number 12), the band showed that it could keep ahead of the pack stylistically, while maintaining its integrity.
The lead track on the album, Bilmusik (Car Music), was released as a CD-single, and it quickly found a groove with Swedish radio. The single paired the album recording with a dub version, as well as a new dance track called Acid Skate. The latter married the bubbling basslines of acid house to samples from a documentary on skateboarding, which had enjoyed a revival in the 1990s. Bengtsson’s love for boarding is no secret: when he lifts his arms during concerts, he reveals a tattoo showing the evolution of man from ape into a free-style skater. However, he is less committed to making what in America is now known as “electronic dance music,” seeing it as “too easy” and too far removed from the pop aesthetic that interests him. Acid Skate therefore remains a lonely example of 1990s dance music’s influence on Bengtsson’s output.
That’s not to say that the dancefloor wasn’t in Page’s sights. The next proper album, Glad (Happy), followed quickly (by Page standards) in 1995. The opening, electrifying chords of Står i din väg (Stand in Your Way) signalled that, despite the title, the band wasn’t standing still – and neither would the feet of its listeners. Songs like Tiden går (Time Flies) and Jag väntar (I’m Waiting) were dazzling pop tracks, flecked with glam and space disco influences. A close listening to Jag väntar reveals phrasing that owes a debt to the Sex Pistols, put through a set of Korg and Yamaha filters. There just wasn’t (and, arguably, still isn’t) another band making pop music that is so sophisticated in its stylings.
A creative triumph but commercial disappointment, Glad marked a fork in the road for Page. Schiptjenko left to join the philosopher (and future Swedish Idol judge) Alexander Bard in his new band, Vacuum, while Bengtsson’s attention also turned to other projects.
Vacuum was born for radio play, and the group achieved rapid success. Their first single, I Breathe, was released at the end of 1996 and reached number 2 in the Swedish charts within weeks. The album that followed climbed into the Top 20, with Europe-wide airplay and tour dates, including several former Soviet republics. For Schiptjenko, a modest “syntare från Malmö” (“synther from Malmö”) whose relatives emigrated from Ukraine to Sweden after the Second World War, the experience must have been other-worldly. Bard was playing by different rules than the synthpop fans that she had grown up with musically: Schiptjenko describes his style of writing as collaborative but with “hyper-commercial” ambitions.
When Bard started a new band, Bodies Without Organs, in 2003, Schiptjenko was invited on-board. Backed by a major label from the beginning, BWO was wildly popular by Swedish and European standards, reaching pole position in the charts with the single, Temple of Love. The style was amped-up commercial pop, treading ground previously broken by other Scandinavian acts, like Aqua and Dr Alban, but with a knowing wink and a heavy dose of humour. The band achieved heady success, but its members kept their feet on the ground: while Bard had his day job as an academic, Schiptjenko was already established as a dealer of contemporary art through the gallery she owns in Stockholm with Ciléne Andréhn. At the peak of BWO’s popularity, when they narrowly missed out on representing Sweden at the Eurovision Song Contest, she recalls overwhelmed fans coming into the gallery to seek her autograph (“It was cute!” says Schiptjenko).
Meanwhile, back in Skåne, Bengtsson was continuing to build on his reputation as a first-rate songwriter, juggling music with his day job as a teacher. While still in Page, he had started a side project, called Sista Mannen på Jorden (The Last Man on Earth), initially with collaborator Mats Wiberg. The name was taken from the Swedish translation of I Am Legend, the post-apocalyptic novel from Richard Matheson, and its songs reflected Bengtsson’s interest in science-fiction themes. Between 1998 and 2007, SMPJ released four albums of advanced pop music, with futuristic sounds teased from Bengtsson’s collection of analogue synthesizers. While the influences of Giorgio Moroder and Space can be happily detected in many songs, the music of SMPJ is strikingly original and often moving. Bengtsson is creatively fearless: he comfortably sings in a higher register, enhancing the emotional vulnerability expressed in his lyrics, which touch on themes of love and longing; and there aren’t many pop artists who would set the first song of their first release in waltz time with a theremin backing, as he did for En blå planet (A Blue Planet) on Först i rymden (First in Space).
Another channel for Bengtsson’s output was S.P.O.C.K, a science-fiction themed party band that had been put together in 1988 for a friend’s birthday celebration. The original plan had been only to write some songs to be enjoyed by friends, but the concept was hugely popular in the local scene. Live dates and foreign tours followed, with Alexander Hoffman on voal duty. Bengtsson’s involvement was originally limited to writing songs for the band, but by 1993 he had joined the group as “Captain Eddie B. Kirk” and took part in live shows. S.P.O.C.K’s touring schedule became more demanding, and in 1997 Bengtsson gave up his place on stage in order to spend time with his young family and focus on both Page and SMPJ.
In 2004, Bengtsson launched another project, This Fish Needs a Bike. Musically, it was consistent with the SMPJ line of albums, with the difference that the lyrics were in English for an international audience. One popular SMPJ song, Luft (Air), was rewritten, and songs like Putting My Suit On were unmistakably in the SMPJ style. After one album, From A to B, This Fish Needs a Bike ceased trading, and in 2007 Bengtsson returned to SMPJ for Tredje våningen (Third Floor). With a number of different balls in the air at any one time, how did he know whether a new song belonged to one project or another? Bengtsson explains:
It was always hard to know what I was doing – is this a Page song or a Sista Mannen song? Is this a S.P.O.C.K song? But I really tried, every time I was going to do a song – like, with Sista Mannen, I was trying to get into a certain mood for that. When I was doing a Page song, I was trying to get into a certain mood for that. Just to try to make some order for what was what. Sometimes it was hard, but I think, when I look back, that I managed it. If it was Sista Mannen, I tried to do a more spacey sound and the lyrics were about space, but also the style of the sound of the music was more dreamy and space-ish. For Page, it was more pop with a bit of punk and rock influence. And with S.P.O.C.K, there were more Euro and more Star Trek influences.
There is a reasonable case for comparing Bengtsson to Vince Clarke, who had launched Depeche Mode, made two albums with Yazoo and attempted a number of projects, before settling into a long-term relationship with Erasure. Like Clarke, Bengtsson has an instinctive ear for a pop song, as well as the technical skills to draw sounds from analogue circuits with emotional qualities of their own. Their careers in music began at approximately the same time, and they have each spent more than thirty years writing danceable pop without compromising to chase the trends of the day. Both are in demand as remixers – indeed, both have produced mixes for Robert Marlow’s forthcoming remix album – and are known for working alone in their studios to shape electricity into distinctive and catchy rhythms and melodies. Further comparison is perhaps unfair to both artists, because they have followed their own trajectories, but Sweden has not produced another songwriter or musician who comes as close to the influential role played by Clarke in British electronic music.
This much was recognised when, in 2010, designer Johan Wejedel released Tiden går – En hylnning till Page (Time Flies – A Tribute to Page). To the surprise of a humble Bengtsson, a cross-section of Swedish electronic artists recorded enough covers of their favourite Page songs to fill two CDs. Contributors included Candide, PA Tronic, Vision Talk, Norator, New Modern Angels and Diskodiktator. Bengtsson had previously made his own covers for tribute albums, but those were versions of songs by Depeche Mode and OMD – bands whose influence on the synthpop scene was universally acknowledged. With the tribute album, artists wanted to show their love and respect for Page’s music and the band’s place beside those internationally-known bands for the Swedish scene. Maybe Page wasn’t going to crash the file-sharing networks, but it continued to reach and touch music lovers and creators in disproportion to its performance in the charts.
The departure of Schiptjenko had not meant the end for Page. In 1996, Bengtsson made the first album without Schiptjenko, bringing in a drummer and another keyboard player to round out the band. Hur så? (How So? or How’s That?) came out only a year after Glad, but with a shift in its sonic structure that disoriented the public. While the integrity of his songs was firmly maintained, Bengtsson started to introduce fuzzy feedback sounds that replicated the tones of electric guitars. A follow-up, 1998’s Helt nära (So Close), moved even further along that path. Bengtsson explains that the listening public didn’t know what to make of the shift, even though mixing synths and guitars was by then a common pop practice:
I feel like, on those two albums without Marina, I was trying to do something different. I was trying to make more guitar-influenced music, but using only electronics. On the first of those albums, we used no guitars, but people thought it was guitar. So, for the album after that, I thought I might as well use guitars in the music, too. But, for that album, those who liked synthesizers said, “Too much guitar!” The other audience, which liked pop music, said, “Too much synthesizer!” We didn’t reach anyone, really, which was very, very sad because it was good music. It feels like everybody can mix guitars – look at Depeche Mode and other bands – but when we do it, it is very, very naughty, and that is a shame.
The situation was essentially the reverse of Neil Young’s experience with Trans. While the Canadian axe hero had bravely experimented with synthesizers, a large part of his existing fan base was implacably hostile, as they associated synths with sequenced disco music. On the other side, followers of Kraftwerk and Jarre didn’t know what to make of Young’s adoption of their favourite tools.
While there wasn’t a Dylanesque “Judas!” moment, Bengtsson had underestimated the wall separating the subcultures of syntare and hårdrockare (hard rockers). Though there was never any danger of Page turning into Rush or Cheap Trick, neither side was ready for Page to broaden its sonic palette so radically. In fact, both Hur så? and Helt nära contain exceptionally strong songs – like Trans, they are just waiting for their audience, and will in due course be recognised for their exceptional content.
The experience with those two albums convinced Bengtsson to focus on his other projects. Page went quiet, until a live performance at the Swedish Alternative Music Awards in 2000 reunited Bengtsson, Schiptjenko and Eliasson. Intended as a farewell wave to their fans, the show was recorded and issued as a limited-edition CD. With a final “Cha, cha, cha!” and the cheers of dedicated syntare filling their ears, Page had left the stage for good.
Or so the story would have ended, had Schiptjenko not looked at the calendar in 2010 and felt the pull of her roots. BWO was coming to an end. It had been fifteen years since she worked together with Bengtsson, and thirty since two teens in a suburb of Malmö plugged in a pair of Korgs and learned to make music using oscillators and keyboards. Wasn’t it time to make another album? Bengtsson happened to have one in him, and the result was a collection of grown-up pop, made without any pretences or pressure.
Nu (Now) was unashamedly electronic, and this time the album didn’t fall between two cultural stools. The synth scene paid attention again, and TV appearances and live dates followed. Radio, however, struggled to find a place for Nu between the latest Lady Gaga and Coldplay songs, despite the album climbing its way into the Top 40. Schiptjenko explains that this was not a new challenge:
We had a little peak in Sweden in the 90s with some radio hits, but it’s never been super-big. We had always been very popular on the alternative scene, and always among the fans, but we’ve never been a band played a lot on Swedish radio.
It doesn’t bother her a great deal:
I think the reason we are loved so much by the scene is that we were among the first, and we have stayed true to our roots, even if we have developed. We sing in Swedish, we have a certain sound. A big part of it is nostalgia. We created the scene, in a way. We were the first. The syntare and hårdrockare are really loyal to their bands. I also think that the fact that we are not played on Swedish radio is down to two things: it is a little bit prejudice – they don’t really listen – and I also think it is our age. I know for a fact, because I have been talking to those who decide what is going to be played, we are too old. We are not new. They want to find the young audience all the time.
In September 2013, Page are releasing a new album, called Hemma (At Home). If anything, the sound is more mature than Nu, with songs achieving yet another level of development from the days of Glad. Teasers that have been released on the group’s Facebook page reveal pronounced glam-rock stomping – a trend that began with Page’s cover of Slade’s Coz I Love You for The Seventies Revisited, a charity compilation that came out last year, and continued with the “Glamtronica” remix prepared by Bengtsson of a new Robert Marlow song. New promotional pictures show the duo posed next to a classic synthesizer in an early-20th century drawing room – a synthesis of the modern and the vintage. Bengtsson describes Hemma in these terms:
I think it is even more mature [than Nu], because I am maturing as an individual and a person, so the music is doing that, too – especially the lyrics. The music is actually the kind of electronic music I like. I can’t really say that I like electronic music, because electronic music is such a big genre, and my interest in electronic music is so very, very small. That small piece, that small bit, that’s like what I am doing. I am doing what I like, really, so there is no need for me to take a different direction. I am doing just exactly what I like. Electronic pop music stuff – that is what I like.
Hemma doesn’t completely shy away from the sounds of previous albums, but the guitars have been put back in their cases. Bengtsson again:
This album is purely electronic – like Nu, which was purely electronic, too. I tried to make it even more electronic and some of the songs are very electronic-sounding. Some of the songs are more guitar feeling, because I like that punk attitude and trying to make synthesizers sound like guitars – the arrangement of it. Instead of using Popcorn-ish sounds, I tried to do more grungy electronic sounds that sound like guitars. The way you play a guitar – I try to do that on synthesizers. I think it is very, very funny to do that, really, and nice. There are songs that sound like that, and songs that sound more like Giorgio Moroder – sequencer-oriented songs. All the songs seem to fit together in a way. They really make a whole body.
Will this be the time that Swedish radio finally grasps that they are sitting on a rich vein of home-grown pop music, just waiting for them to mine? Schiptjenko is stoic:
You never know – with this material, perhaps it will come through on Swedish radio, but I don’t think so. We do it for the love of the music and the scene, and it is so much fun, but it is not our main career.
A full tour is not planned, but a video is in the works and live dates are being lined up, starting with a performance at Gothenburg’s Electronic Summer festival. Schiptjenko will also be there with her “pet project”, an “electro-crooner” act called Julian & Marina, which is planning to release its own album shortly. Bengtsson is busy preparing another compilation of cover songs – this time, with a focus on punk rock done in an electronic style – together with artists from the south of Sweden. Page might not be the main career of its members, but only because their creative work is so broad and takes so many forms. It is a wonder that they are ever hemma at all!
Three young guys from a small city in Canada got together in the early 1980s, inspired by their love of Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, The Normal and Fad Gadget, to create original synthpop. The results were amazing, but there are few recordings (and none made available commercially). This video is taken from a 1984 appearance on the Technomode television programme.
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