Fad Gadget

Try Walking in His Slippers: Jean-Marc Lederman Returns

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

The Jean-Marc Lederman Experience returns with a new set of material. The theme, this time, is a throwback to the synthetic sounds of Lederman’s formative years.

Lederman escaped Brussels and Digital Dance at the beginning of the 1980s with Phil Wauquaire. The two met up with Frank Tovey, at Daniel Miller‘s suggestion, and became the original backing band for Fad Gadget. That freed up Tovey to get more physical on stage, which often led to broken bones and bruises while the Belgians took refuge behind their synths. After a short European tour and a period of recovery, Fad moved to his next stage with a new band.

Lederman, in turn, moved on to Kid Montana; combining trendy shirts and solid beats with a persistent sense of humour. More commercial material followed, using a similar formula: The Weathermen, a collaboration with Bruce Geduldig of Tuxedomoon, skewered alternative pop with tongues firmly planted in cheeks. Across all of his projects, Lederman has maintained a distinct sense of levity, no matter how heavy the grooves.

Which brings us to Electronic Slipper Music. With lyrics written by Emileigh Rohn (Chiasm) and Jacques Duvall (of “Banana Split” fame), the album maintains Lederman’s penchant for collaboration. With its retro-electronic feel, it is a nostalgic trip into the modular and single-oscillator sounds of Lederman’s early forays into music.

“Last night, I saw the ghost of Alan Vega,” he intones over a track infused with the style of Suicide. Lederman doesn’t often sing on his own songs; but that is a pity, as he conveys a subtly comedic element that carries the theme.

On “False Start,” the beats are wrought from iron, but there is no let-up in the hints at levity. Electronic Slipper Music sounds ridiculous as a title, but Lederman’s humour is entirely self-depracating.

Overall, the album succeeds in its references to the late 70s and early 80s, despite being made using very modern equipment (Ed: Now that is ironic, Alanis Morrissette). It is also hugely entertaining.

The full album is out in physical and digital formats on 31 August 2025.

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Scratched and Warped: The Weathermen on Vinyl Again

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

We are in the year of the fortieth anniversary of Play It Again Sam Records. It is also the year that Bruce Geduldig, Tuxedomoon’s visuals artist, would have turned 70. Fitting, then, to find a six-track EP of songs by The Weathermen on release from PIAS.

A collaboration between Geduldig and Jean-Marc Lederman from Fad Gadget’s first touring band, The Weathermen leaped onto the stage with “Deep Down South” in 1985. From their base in Brussels, they combined the electro-intensity of Front 242 and Kraftwerk with a sense of humour that mercilessly mocked rock tropes and the lovers of Svetlana Alliluyeva. Named after a group of middle-class American radicals, who used to recruit youth by attacking them in the street and were known for blowing themselves up, The Weathermen took nothing seriously except the mixing of their samples and heavy-duty beats.

For their third communique, John F. Kennedy had been roped in for lead vocals on “Let Them Come to Berlin.” Using the cut-up tape style of Cabaret Voltaire, The Weathermen managed to turn the dead president’s anti-communist speech into a dancefloor classic. It set a template for subversion, both on and off the dancefloor, and anticipated Berghain decades before the queues started to form.

The 40 EP collects these songs with four others from the band’s very respectable back catalogue. The stand-out track, and the one that had the greatest reach for the duo, is “Poison,” in which Geduldig plays the role of stalking groupie, Suzanna Stammer. Over Lederman’s classic electro track, which featured sampled metal and a menacing bass line, Stammer leaves a series of threatening voice messages. The scary part is that there are real Suzanna Stammers, from Plan K to Pustervik. Thanks to The Weathermen, you can dance to genius tracks like “Bang!” in the club while she scratches up your Bruce Springsteen records back at home. Best have a word with your drummer about who he lets in.

It’s 2023. Bruce is gone, but the beats remain.

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Share the Jean-Marc Lederman Experience

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Jean-Marc Lederman’s career in music has covered a lot of ground: from playing with Fad Gadget and The The to sound design for video games; from reinventing alternative dance music with The Weathermen to classy poptronica in Mari & The Ghost. The Brussels-based musician and composer has been part of the European music scene for more than three decades.

His latest project is a concept album that reaches beyond the edges of your virtual turntable. The music in The Last Broadcast on Earth crosses genres and decades, but it is only one part of a multimedia package. The album is accompanied by an computer game (also available as an app for Apple and Android) that brings together Lederman’s interests in sound design, gaming and pop music. The umbrella of The Jean-Marc Lederman Experience draws under it contributions from chanteuse Anna Domino, Jay Aston from Gene Loves Jezebel, Matt Johnson of The The, Tom Shear from 23 Assemblage, The Weathermen, Mari & The Ghost, Jacques Duvall and a host of other artists.

If you tune your dial to 99.5 FM, then in most American towns you will receive the signal of a station that plays “only the HITS!” with the last word always in capital letters. At the end of the world, the last broadcast is not a collection of Top 40 favourites but an eclectic mix of original songs and covers that reflect the styles of times past. Civilisation ends, not with a bang (or, as The Weathermen would put it, a “BANG!“), but with alt-ballads and well-paced poptronica, interrupted only by listener calls, in a Steampunk blend. To let Lederman set the scene:

A deserted country road at night. You’ve been driving for hours, headlamps on full beam flash-illuminating ghosts of sleeping trees. The radio plays desperate love songs, songs of hope, songs of despair, lost time and moments where you regret not reaching out to touch another. These songs are gifts wrapped in shiny sonic paper that you tear open with just your mind and your heart. The radio station wants you to cherish them, as you wind through the empty starlit landscape, wondering if this really could be the last night on Earth.

The Last Broadcast on Earth is not a hardline manifesto from The Weathermen but an organic, flowing set of songs that come together as a whole. The links that connect them include out-takes from a genre-crossing collection of films, spanning the distance between Aladdin and The Big Lebowski. The album is best listened to as a complete piece, as the grooves are etched with elegance.

The album is available now on iTunes and Amazon. The dedicated Web site, from which the accompanying game can be downloaded, is at www.jmlederman.com.

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Fad Gadget – Feature from Whatever You Want

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

We are immense fans of Fad Gadget/Frank Tovey here at Cold War Night Life, so finding this treasure from 1982 is a source of great happiness. The clip is from the British TV series, Whatever You Want. The show starts with a nonmusical reference to “Lady Shave” and launches into “Coitus Interruptus” before moving onto tracks from his then-current album, Under the Flag.

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Shine On: John Fryer

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10. Depeche Mode – Just Can’t Get Enough

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

9. Fad Gadget – Life on the Line

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

8. Cocteau Twins – Sugar Hiccup

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

7. He Said – Pump

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

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

6. Clan of Xymox – Stranger

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

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

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

5. Wire – Eardrum Buzz/Ahead

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

4. AC Marias – Just Talk

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

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

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

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

3. Muricidae – Away

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

2. Silver Ghost Shimmer – Soft Landing

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

1. This Mortal Coil – Song to the Siren

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

 

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Shine On: Frank Tovey

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

fadgadget11

Frank Tovey made art ahead of its time but didn’t stay long enough to see the world catch up to it. As Fad Gadget, his gadfly alter ego, Tovey came to attention by marrying electronic music to performance art, using it as a vehicle for biting political and social criticism. He wrote about the devastation of the environment (“Pedestrian.” “Wheels of Fortune”), the use of the working class as cannon fodder (“Life on the Line”), consumer manipulation (“Swallow It”) and patriarchy (“Saturday Night Special”) with cutting insight. Although, as the first signing to Daniel Miller‘s Mute Records imprint, he was closely associated with synth music, Tovey’s humanist instincts eventually led him to eschew keyboards and sequencers and wash off Fad’s stage face, searching for a musical form better aligned to his social concerns. Commercial success eluded him, though he left a trail of critical plaudits, and he could only look on as those he inspired overtook him in the charts.

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

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

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

10. Fad Gadget – Pedestrian

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

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

9. Fad Gadget – Ladyshave

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

8. Fad Gadget – Swallow It

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

7. Fad Gadget – Love Parasite

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

6. Frank Tovey – Ricky’s Hand

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

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

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

5. Frank Tovey & The Pyros – Worried Man

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

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

4. Fad Gadget – Collapsing New People

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

Takes hours of preparations
To get that wasted look

3. Frank Tovey – Luxury

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

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

2. Frank Tovey & Boyd Rice – Extraction 7

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

1. Frank Tovey – Back to Nature

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

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Shine On: Daniel Miller

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

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

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

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

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

10. Missing Scientists – Big City Bright Lights

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

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

9. Voice of Authority – Fuh Fuh

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

8. Thomas Dolby – Radio Silence

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

7. Alex Fergusson – Stay with Me Tonight

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

6. Silicon Teens – Sun Flight

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

5. Fad Gadget – Lady Shave

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

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

4. Duet Emmo – Or So It Seems

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

3. Sunroof – Hero

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

2. The Normal – TVOD

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

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

1. Depeche Mode – Shout

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

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Test Dept – Compulsion

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

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.

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Review: British Acts Electrify at TEC003

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

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.

IMG_9643IMG_9655The 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

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