Gareth Jones

Totally Wired: Sunroof’s Modular Improv

by Simon Helm
written by Simon Helm

Before you break the plastic seal around Electronic Improvisations Vol. 1, you are already back in the 1970s. The golden age of modular music saw sleeves that imparted important information about the sound and artist. They might have featured signposts in the form of waveforms or patches. The records were as often found in libraries than in shops, because they were clearly made by intellectuals who worked as engineers as much as musicians. The sleeves told a story of earnest modernity, just by their layout grid, but they also explained the method.

So, here we have the first vinyl collection of modular improvisations by Gareth Jones and Daniel Miller. Working together as Sunroof, they have issued material online and contributed covers to compilations of Krautrock classics, but until now they have held back from releasing an album. That it comes packaged as a delayed message from 1976 only makes things more interesting.

Both artists took significant steps as the 1970s ran out: Miller with The Normal’s “TVOD/Warm Leatherette” single, and Jones as the engineer on John Foxx’s immortal Metamatic. They were brought together by Foxx, who suggested Jones to work with Depeche Mode, and formed a working and personal relationship that has outlived the Cold War, Britpop and the fax machine.

Miller, of course, turned his hobby release into one of the mightiest independent record labels, Mute. Jones built a career producing and engineering many of the label’s acts, before settling into a remixing role. They worked in close quarters in the studio, particularly for Depeche Mode’s Hansa recordings, but also applied their skills together for The House of Love. They came together as Sunroof to remake “Hero” by Neu! and “Oh Yeah” by Can, as well as to remix Goldfrapp and To Rococo Rot.

The revival of interest in modular synthesis captured the imaginations of both men. As new manufacturers created tools for those who dream of wires, they filled a black hole with money to create novel configurations. Their shared love of circuitry led them from occasional noodling to a programme of recordings made in a spirit of free experimentation; subject to self-imposed limitations on time, interaction and channels. Electronic Improvisations Vol. 1 is, therefore, less Stockhausen than AMM; an album in the English tradition described by Cornelius Cardew in Towards an Ethic of Improvisation:

We are searching for sounds and for the responses that attach to them, rather than thinking them up, preparing them and producing them. The search is conducted in the medium of sound and the musician himself is at the heart of the experiment.

One of the features of modular synths is that they have their own character and are capable of producing unexpected sounds. Musicians working with traditional instruments have more control over the results, and their technical ability is a key to the manipulation of sound. Modular synths have flexible signal paths that can escape the grasp of even the most skilled operator. The sounds that come through the speakers might be heard for the first time and never be recreated again. They are the ephemera of electricity.

Good for us, then, that Sunroof pressed record on their sessions. As a result, we find within the old school sleeve a set of recordings that explore the interactions of waveforms over the course of eight tracks. With an emphasis on curiosity over composition, the results are less Jarre than Eno: in places, sounding like incoming signals at Jodrell Bank; in others, the visceral hum of subatomic particles; and then Brion Gysin’s Moroccan memories absorbed by an IBM mainframe. The pieces are surprising and playful, and they succeed most when the duo play with resonances. You can’t dance to them, but you will have fun trying.

(Main photo: Diane Zillmer)

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A Patch Above: Sunroof Reveal Album

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

(Via Mute)

Sunroof [Daniel Miller and Gareth Jones] have announced, after four decades of friendship and collaboration, the release of their debut album. Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1, a collection of eight improvised modular pieces recorded as live in various studio spaces across London in the spring and summer of 2019, will be released on the newly revived Parallel Series of Mute on 21 May 2021.

Daniel Miller (founder of Mute, the “accidental label” that began with the release of his own 7” single The Normal’s T.V.O.D / Warm Leatherette) met Gareth Jones, (the innovative and influential producer, engineer and artist) back when Miller asked Jones to work with him in late 1982 on what became Depeche Mode’s Construction Time Again. After the band had gone home for the day, they would stay on to work on their own sessions, a practise that continued and, by the mid-nineties Sunroof had emerged as remix project, reworking the likes of Can, MGMT, To Rococo Rot, Kreidler and Goldfrapp, and appeared on a compilation paying tribute to Neu!.

Back in 2019, Miller and Jones were heading to a György Ligeti concert at the Barbican and beforehand – as they often do when together in the same city – the pair spent a couple of hours improvising with modular systems. Unusually, this time they decided to record the session and over a pre-concert meal, Gareth asked a question that seems logical after all these years: “Are we actually going to make a record together before we die?”

The following day, they set themselves some rules: “We decided to get together to do a bunch of improvisations,” explains Gareth. “We said we’d work in a number of different physical spaces but always together, in the same room. We were keen to do shorter pieces because we were both very inspired by Chris Carter and Martin Gore’s electronic music projects, where the pieces were very concise and compact.”

Key to their manifesto was a distinction between an improvisation and a jam session. “With modular systems, you can just go on and on forever and never actually complete anything. Sometimes that’s okay – part of the joy of a modular is that you can just keep going indefinitely. But with this we were keen to actually finish something, so setting that timeframe became a really important rule for us.” adds Daniel.

Nothing was pre-planned, they didn’t rehearse, and the pieces were recorded as live performances using a limited number of channels. What they accumulated during the course of those 2019 sessions was a suite of evolving, restless pieces, each one containing layers of pulsing, atmospheric sounds.

The pieces on Electronic Music Improvisations Volume 1 have a timelessness evoking the classic sound of some of the earliest electronic experiments. They also  sound resolutely modern. Even for the two players, their individual contributions are no longer obvious to them, nor is it actually necessary to separate who did what – the whole journey is what’s important, not the individual twists, turns and tweaks that happened along the way.

The album possesses a spirit, energy and discipline of improvisation and in these pieces, you can hear the almost symbiotic connection that they share, and the new sonic pathways and different, unexplored ways of working opening up in front of them.

Pre-order the album: https://mute.ffm.to/sunroof.opr

https://www.facebook.com/garethjonesnoisemaker/

http://wwww.garethjones.com

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Shine On: Adrian Sherwood

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Adrian Sherwood launched his On-U Sound label in 1979, but he was already a fixture on the London roots and dub scene. Selling imported dub plates from his van across the city, a teenaged Sherwood had absorbed the transplanted sounds of the Caribbean with the air he breathed. Living in a Battersea squat with Neneh Cherry and Ari Upp, he was also close to the city’s post-punk explosion.

It didn’t take long for Sherwood to start putting out music himself. He soon learned to play with the studio controls in the spirit of dub pioneers like Lee “Scratch” Perry. Tearing sounds apart and reconstructing them through radical combinations of delays and distortion became the On-U Sound signature.

Sherwood’s ability to drive beats for projects like Dub Syndicate and New Age Steppers, while maintaining hypnotic grooves, brought him to the attention of electronic and industrial artists like Cabaret Voltaire, Skinny Puppy and Depeche Mode. Ministry’s Al Jourgensen used him to make the Twitch album, “borrowing” Sherwood’s studio techniques for later use in Ministry and Revolting Cocks.

Surrounded by talent from the roots and dub scenes, Sherwood took on industrial remix projects but also put out music with incredible sensitivity. The ultimate combination of these strands came on Mark Stewart’s “Stranger than Love,” which combined Erik Satie’s piano exercises with Bristol’s most powerful voice. It was proof positive that, in a master’s hands, the most delicate emotions can still be found in the red zone of the VU meter.

10. Bim Sherman – Slummy Ghetto

A key part of the On-U Sound ensemble, Bim Sherman was an uncompromising talent. He recorded solo, as well as with Dub Syndicate, New Age Steppers and Singers & Players – On-U projects that drew from the collective of artists surrounding Sherwood.

This take shows the mainstream version of Sherwood’s production work. In his hands, the material is classy but subversive.

9. Robert Wyatt – Biko

The British communist activist and composer, Robert Wyatt, engaged Sherwood to shape his cover of Peter Gabriel’s tribute to the South African anti-apartheid leader, Steve Biko. Recorded in London’s legendary Blackwing Studios, with John Fryer engineering, the track still raises goose-bumps with its haunting and spacious mix.

8. Cabaret Voltaire – Here To Go (Live Drum Jacknife Mix)

Cabaret Voltaire had already found their way to the alternative dancefloor when they recorded Code. Years of listening to James Brown in Sheffield had influenced the industrial pioneers; but, as this single showed, they were just as moved by Brion Gysin’s art and writing.

Sherwood was brought in for the production of part of the album, but he took the tapes apart for this remix.

7. Skinny Puppy – Deep Down Trauma Hounds (Remix)

Canada’s dark electro pioneers called on Sherwood for the 1987 release of “Addiction,” which featured this version of “Deep Down Trauma Hounds” on the flip side.

6. Depeche Mode – Master and Servant (An On-U Sound Science Fiction Dancehall Classic)

Many Depeche Mode fans were mystified by the limited edition remixes that Mute released with Sherwood at the controls. Stripped back melodically (and given what sounds like a thorough going-over with Keith LeBlanc’s drums), the retooling of “Master and Servant” and “People Are People” was unexpected and – for the less forgiving – unwelcome.

Today, the remix of “Master and Servant” isn’t as jarring. Sherwood’s signature is still engraved in the rhythm – carved by hammer and chisel across the master tapes – but the world has caught up to the idea.

5. Dub Syndicate – Wadada (Means Love)

Of Sherwood’s many projects, his collaboration with “Style” Scott as Dub Syndicate was the most successful. Infused with the possibility of space travel in the mind, and hidden in a cloud of sweet-scented smoke, it represented the avant-garde end of the roots spectrum.

Scott was murdered in Jamaica, which brought this project to an end. Its legacy is an incomparable body of reggae with experimental flair.

4. Mark Stewart – Hypnotized

The dissolution of The Pop Group freed singer Mark Stewart to mix his love of noise, funk and reggae together in a flammable cocktail.

“Hypnotized” is a savage cut-up of beats, breaks and scratches that completely dismantles conventional song structures.

Sherwood worked with Stewart to mangle tapes, splice beats and throw faders, created the most subversive 12″ single of all time. People still quote the statistics cited in the song.

3. Ministry – The Angel

Al Jourgensen claims to dislike Twitch, but Ministry’s last album before they let metal in was an alternative dancefloor classic. With tracks like “Over the Shoulder” pummelling clubbers like a backhoe shattering asphalt, it set a new bar for hard beats.

Jourgensen managed to sound menacing throughout, and nowhere more than on this track. When he returned to Chicago, he took samples of Keith LeBlanc’s drum sounds with him, fuelling the Wax Trax sound for years to come.

2. Einstürzende Neubauten – Yü Gung

German metal-bashers, Einstürzende Neubauten, recorded “Yü Gung” with Gareth Jones at Hansa in Berlin before Adrian Sherwood was let loose on the tapes. Blixa Bargeld screams “Feed my ego!” with the intensity of a drug-addicted chemistry grad starved of narcissistic supply – which is fitting, as the song was inspired by the chopping and snorting of methamphetamine.

1. Tackhead – Mind at the End of the Tether

In 1984, Sherwood was in New York on a studio assignment when he met up with Keith LeBlanc, the drummer in the Sugar Hill Records house band. Within short order, LeBlanc was in London with two other members of the band, Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald, making magic with Sherwood as Fats Comet.

Wimbish – who went on to play with Living Colour and the Rolling Stones – suggested using the name, Tackhead – New York slang for a homeboy – for the group’s less commercial work.

For this powerful 12″, LeBlanc’s beats create a furious racket, while a voice laments the decline and fall of civilisation. Citing H.G. Wells, the narrator asks, “Is there a way out?” The only way is across the dancefloor.

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Oh Yeah! Can’s Keyboardist Reveals Album, Concerts

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Irmin Schmidt (Photo: Diane Zillmer)

Irmin Schmidt, the Can keyboardist and soundtrack composer, has announced a new album of piano pieces.

5 Klavierstückeis set for release on 23 November 2018 through Mute. It will contain five piano improvisations recorded with Gareth Jones at Schmidt’s house in the south of France. Schmidt explains the concept:

The tracks are spontaneous meditations, only played once and recorded simultaneously – no edits or corrections. They are formed from an emotional memory in which Schubert, Cage, Japan (Gagaku) and Can are equally present.

The album is slated to come out in conjunction with a retrospective of his work for film by the International Film Festival Braunschweig in the week commencing 6 November 2018, as well as a series of events at the Volksbühne in Berlin to honour Can’s work. These include Schmidt conducting the Deutsche Filmorchester Babelsberg and a Can Tribute concert curated by Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten) in December.

“Klavierstück III” can be listened to here:

The album can be pre-ordered through Mute.

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True Bromance: Spiritual Friendship Release Debut

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Spiritual Friendship is the self-titled debut from the duo of Gareth Jones and Nick Hook. Jones needs no introduction to readers of Cold War Night Life, having played key studio roles for John Foxx, Wire, Fad Gadget Tuxedomoon and Depeche Mode – just a few names in a long list of artists. Hook is Jones’ mate. Well, he has been involved in music for some time in a variety of roles, but the point of the collaboration is that Jones and Hook get along rather well and this is their joint creation.

It’s not a conventional album, though at times it threatens to become one. There are danceable moments (in “Dance” and “Chicago K Hole”), but this isn’t a dance record. It is a collection of field recordings that bears some comparison to Gaia la terre, the 1980s cassette release by Pierre Perret. The artists themselves refer to it as a soundtrack to an urban stroll, so it might be thought of as a counterpoint to Perret’s more pastoral work.

Is it any good? That rather depends on what you are expecting. There’s no point looking for fragments of old Depeche Mode recordings, like early Recoil, and there aren’t many tracks that will fit into a playlist. Taken as a conceptual whole, however, the album is full of playful surprises and delightful twists. Like some of Brian Eno’s work, or the studio adventures of Dome, there are ideas described enough to get the point across, which intersect with other suggestions and fade into the background. If you want three singles, then you’re on the wrong channel – but it’s free to play on Tidal or Soundcloud, so just hit >> or << and find something more contained, commercial and comfortable. If you have 40 odd minutes and an open mind, then, yes, this really is good.

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Shine On: Gareth Jones

by coldwarnightlife
written by coldwarnightlife

Gareth Jones is best known for his work with Depeche Mode, having manned the studio for their so-called Berlin trilogy – Construction Time Again, Some Great Reward and Black Celebration. As the first DM records involving Alan Wilder, making use of emerging digital technology and using the legendary Hansa studios for mixing or recording, they are key to the evolution of the group’s sound, and Jones had a central role in their production. He dispatched the group into the side streets of London with a Sony Professional Walkman to record found sounds, turned Hansa into a multi-level experimental sound room, and ran tracks through tiny speakers to maximise their effectiveness for radio. Commercially and artistically, there was no looking back.

Jones’ connection with Mute Records began with a nudge from John Foxx. As an engineer working at London’s Pathway studios, Jones had been tapped by Foxx to work on his first solo album, Metamatic. The icy, stoic electronics of Metamatic were an English re-imagining of the technology-driven music then coming from Germany, informed by the dystopian fiction of J.G. Ballard. Himself a Ballard and Kraftwerk fan, Mute’s Daniel Miller had begun to make his own music as The Normal and Silicon Teens, as well as developing the Fad Gadget sound and encouraging other electronic artists. His discovery of a young group of musicians from Essex, who named themselves after a French fashion magazine that they weren’t entirely sure how to pronounce, had given Mute a chart-baiting hit band, but by the time of their third album he was looking for a way to raise their game. Foxx’s East London studio, The Garden, was an attractive proposition, and Jones was then working as a freelance engineer. Foxx suggested that Jones have a chat with the Mute team, and a short meeting led to a relationship that started with sampling trips to abandoned building sites and has held strong over three decades.

Jones has worked closely with a number of Mute artists, from Fad Gadget to Erasure and Nick Cave, but he also has a solid track record away from the Hammersmith-based label: Tuxedomoon, Indochine, Efterklang, Ideal and Madness have all had the benefit of his studio magic in the course of a career that began at the BBC in the 1970s.

In 2008, Jones had a near-miss with cancer, which he blogged about and used to inspire occasional “field recording” compositions, including “A Visit to the Oncologist”:

Jones continues to produce and mix, but is also found outside of the studio, providing time to encourage young artists and engineers, including through the Red Bull Academy lecture series. He is working on a book on “Spiritual Friendship” with his friend, Nick Hook. Below, we’ve collected some of the highlights from his career so far.

 

10. Nitzer Ebb – Let Your Body Learn

Nitzer Ebb showed up on the scene as obvious descendents of DAF and Portion Control, but it was when they were taken on by Mute that their sound acquired real finesse. While Phil Harding of PWL produced and mixed most of the record, Jones and Miller teamed up to remix “Let Your Body Learn” for NE’s first album, That Total Age.

 

9. Wire – Ahead

Paleontologists will look back at Wire’s time on Mute as a discrete period in their path from art-punk outsiders to indie rock godfathers. They made five albums for the label (six, if you include Wir), and Jones produced the first two, The Ideal Copy and A Bell Is a Cup…Until It Is Struck. This track, the first single to be lifted from The Ideal Copy, is an enduring classic.

 

8. Tuxedomoon – Music #2

Tuxedomoon is another band that called on Jones through connections with John Foxx. After a European tour, towards the end of 1980, the band was ready to record the Desire album in England. They found a studio in Surrey and Foxx pointed them in Jones’ direction as engineer and co-producer. They returned in 1982 to record a 12″ single, “Time to Lose,” which was backed with this simple, elegant track featuring Steven Brown on piano and Blaine L. Reininger on violin.

 

7. Fehlmann’s Ready Made – Ready Made

Thomas Fehlmann’s Ready Made project arrived at just the right time to make use of sampling technology. The former Palais Schaumburg performer went into the studio with Jones to make this track, which incorporated contributions from Art of Noise’s JJ Jeczalik and Neubauten’s FM Einheit, among others.

 

6. The House of Love – Safe

The choice of Miller and Jones to produce “Safe” wasn’t made by the suits at The House of Love’s record label. Having left Creation Records, the band was on the cusp of shoegaze greatness, and Fontana weren’t entirely pleased at the idea of Depeche Mode’s production team having a look-in. The track was used as the B-side of “Never,” but the band felt that the results deserved more appreciation – and they were right.

 

5. Erasure – Fill Us with Fire (Fired Up Mix)

Jones has carved out a niche for himself as a remix artist, taking assignments from acts like Erasure. This mix, prepared for a track from their 2011 album, Tomorrow’s World, is a high-energy example of his talents.

 

4. Einstürzende Neubauten – Yü-Gung (Fütter mein Ego)

Jones provided the technical link between the metal-bashing rhythms of Einstürzende Neubauten and emerging sampling technology, which led through design or inspiration to EN’s “Yü-Gung (Fütter mein Ego),” Depeche Mode’s “People Are People,” and Fad Gadget’s biggest commercial success, “Collapsing New People.”

 

3. Sunroof! – Various

The Sunroof! project is a studio collaboration between Jones and Daniel Miller, which has mainly produced covers of classic Krautrock tracks for tribute albums and remixes. Jones uploaded many of them to his Mixcloud account, so they can be enjoyed on demand.

Sunroof Mixes #1 by Geniusjones on Mixcloud

Sunroof Mixes #2 by Geniusjones on Mixcloud

 

2. Depeche Mode – But Not Tonight

The story plausibly goes that “But Not Tonight” was recorded quickly by Depeche Mode as the B-side to “Stripped.” Their US label, Sire, liked it better, and it found its way onto the soundtrack for the film, Modern Girls – a pure commercial play that annoyed the band and ensured Martin Gore’s abiding antipathy. It is, nevertheless, great 80s pop, and Gore recently performed the song to an ecstatic US audience.

 

1. John Foxx – A New Kind of Man

When he left Ulravox!, John Foxx had some ideas about how he wanted his first solo album to sound. The difficulty was that nothing had ever sounded like it before. Another was that the technology didn’t yet exist to create it. So, Foxx and Jones set out to craft the sound of Metamatic by hand, keying in the basslines in the space between delays and pushing an Elka string machine to the limit. Although “Underpass” seems to be the track that always makes it onto the retro compilations or is picked up for remixing, every song on the album was beamed from the future.

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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’ legenday 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.

https://youtu.be/PzzRWbdYQjE

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