The Short Circuit festival dedicated to Mute was a celebration of the label’s diverse but talented roster.
One of the artists to perform was Yazoo, who had toured during a break that Vince Clarke was able to take from Erasure work.
There were many cameras out at the event, including many from Mute, who were archiving it. This footage seems to have crept out without anyone noticing, however.
For cooler and shorter days, we offer this rare footage showing the full Yazoo performance.
[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Two thousand and eighteen was a challenging year for electronic music.
After a spate of excellent releases in 2017, it was as if a lot of artists were pausing for breath.
If we were cynical, we might suggest that could have been because Soft Cell sucked so much oxygen out of the scene with the hype and merch for their “final” show. In our support, we could point to the Last Pint in Sodom beer glasses, USB sticks, snow globes, remix albums, box sets, t-shirts, books, DVDs – a long list of products that must have kept Chinese factory workers at their tables long into the night. Who was ever going to compete against a marketing event on that scale?
Against that argument, one could point to the actually very substantial collection of remixes and rarities released by one of the greatest bands ever to migrate from Leeds. Soft Cell had some great moments, and they unearthed and repackaged many of them for fans in the course of the year. You only live twice, Marc Almond once sang on a cover song, and he was right: once as an edgy cabaret act with a penchant for leather; and again as a vendor of knick-knacks in the O2.
The fact is that Soft Cell’s songbook is a mighty but variable thing. It’s full of flaws, and there were mis-steps in their show, but they were always the girl who puts her lipstick on slightly askew.
Their experience should be an inspiration for artists who head for Melodyne plug-ins and hire a dozen songwriters to work on a single track. Sometimes, grit is sexier than gloss.
A set of covers by Lexxy from Norway, The Outsider EP shows off her unique ability to focus the essence and sound of electronic music.
The title track is a Psyche song, and it is possibly chosen as a statement as well as an excellent alternative track.
It is joined by a powerful version of Ultravox’s “Sleepwalk”; a cover of Rational Youth’s “I’ve Got a Sister in the Navy” (that first appeared on the Heresy compilation from Cold War Night Life, we don’t hesitate to say); and a version of Depeche Mode’s “Puppets” made with fellow Norwegians, Stephan Groth of Apoptygma Berzerk and Angst Pop.
All of the covers have been recorded with sensitivity and affection for the originals, and the EP format allows for precision and economy of vision.
There was a long gap between Familjen‘s previous album in 2012 and this year’s release. It had something to do with concern about the growth of mainstream fascism in Hässleholm, but in the interval Johan T Karlsson found a way to give voice to the stories of Syrian refugees and insurgent women.
Hailed on its release as a politically informed album, Aftonbladet also positioned it somewhere on the spectrum between Happy Mondays and New Order. We didn’t get the Manchester connection, and we wouldn’t have gone so far from Skåne, which has its own tradition of electro. Suffice to say that we found it more Björk than Bez.
There are, in this world, a lot of dicks who steal instruments from musicians. It’s happened to most artists at some point – gear left in vans can disappear with the vehicle, but even keyboards left on stage can vanish in the dark of a concert venue.
It happened to Daniel Myer while he was trying to complete an Architect project, so he put out this compilation of rareties on Bandcamp to raise funds to do what insurance did not.
As a collection, it’s a strong set from the German producer. There are twenty live recordings, demo tracks, alternative versions and unreleased songs on offer, and there isn’t a weak moment between them.
With any luck, the clowns who lifted his equipment will experience the karma wheel rolling over them, while those who purchased this material will get a new Architect album soon.
Robert Rental was one of those quiet souls who made big noises. When he toured with The Normal, at the end of the 1970s, he made such a racket that it was impossible to tell what he was shouting over the industrial maelstrom the two created.
He also made a seminal record together with another Scot, Thomas Leer. Throbbing Gristle provided them with the basic equipment needed to record The Bridge, and they made an album divided into ambient and electro-industrial halves.
In connection with a masterful exhibition curated by Simon Dell, some of Rental’s old tapes were recovered and shared on this album. It adds to the collection of fuzzy experimental material that Rental had himself passed around, and provides a link to the material that he released through Mute Records.
We don’t have Rental with us any longer; but, thanks to the work of his family and fans, his musical legacy can still be appreciated.
John Fryer’s Black Needle Noise project is the spiritual successor to This Mortal Coil, and each release reveals a little more of the DNA that spawned that legendary enterprise.
Released on vinyl for the first time, via No Devotion Records, BNN is finally in its natural element. With three tracks on this release, including a collaboration with Bill Leeb from Front Line Assembly, there’s a nod to the singles that Fryer was heavily involved with in the 1980s.
As the house engineer at Blackwing Studios in London, Fryer worked on many of the iconic releases from Mute and 4AD from the 1980s. This release proved that the touch he brought to those recordings is still alive in his LA studio set-up.
Tomaga is an experimental project, but it yields excellent results.
The duo of Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen came up with two albums in 2018, but this is the one we bought. It’s rich with rhythms and loops, percussive flourishes and reverb. Just the kind of thing that you can put on for a Sunday night with the lights down.
Click. Click. Drone.
Psyche and No More are two of the most influential dark wave acts, and putting them together for a collaboration was a great idea.
“Ghosts of the Past” came out in time for Halloween, and it makes it seem simple to make melodic poptronica.
Darrin Huss has one of the best voices in the genre, and both bands know how to put together a solid slab of horror electronics. Tina Sanudakura’s Theremin wails and swirls around Huss’ lead vocal, calling down the spirits. It’s a nightmare only for commercial radio.
Yazoo broke up even before they recorded their second album. Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet paid separate visits to the studio, so that Clarke didn’t have to put up with Alf’s emotional states. The cover image, showing two dogs fighting in the cold, summed up the relationship as well as the title, You and Me Both.
Things gradually thawed between the two, leading to the Reconnected tour in 2008. Since then, however, there has been only a brief appearance for the Mute Short Circuit event, a live album from the tour and some remixes on offer.
The Four Pieces box Set (Three Pieces for those going down the CD route) doesn’t offer anything new for avid collectors, but it does refresh the vinyl and offer graphical treats. How does a reissue of thirty-five year old material push its way our year-end chart? By still sounding fresher and better than 99.99% of the material pushed on us by PRs in 2018.
Dubstar‘s dreampop had an obvious home in the 1990s. It was as English as a cucumber sandwich eaten on a lay-by in the rain on a trip with your parents, but it was also subversive. They made pencil cases do things.
Fast forward to 2018, and the band has broken up, got back together without a lot of unnecessary baggage, and only gone and made one of the best albums of the year.
Everyone loves Sarah Blackwood’s voice, and it hasn’t lost any of its charm by clean living. Chris Wilkie’s guitar work has retained its psychedelic edge, even if he appears on the cover dressed as a Maoist factory worker circa 1964.
The songs are great: still impressed with an edge and as refreshing as a tin in the park on a warm day.
What started as a collaboration for a (still forthcoming) album of Fad Gadget songs led Jean-Marc Lederman (The Weathermen, Kid Montana) and Jean-Luc De Meyer (Front 242) to work together for a full album of Eleven Grinding Songs.
Their cover of “Back to Nature” was blessed by Daniel Miller, and their version of Wire’s “20 Versions” was sensitive to the original, but it was “Atoms of Fury” that showed the real potential of this link-up. It came out with a set of remixes, but none were as good as the official version.
Iceland’s best dance music export, Gus Gus, returned with an excellent album in 2018. By now, the template of modular synths, effects units and dynamic vocals is easily recognisable, but they still haven’t exhausted its possibilities.
Sweden’s famous Romo Night might not be with us, but it lives on through Romo Records.
This compilation brought together a diverse set of artists, including Hiltipop, Glas and Anymachine feat. Jeddy 3. It highlighted a collection of new and classic Swedish artists who need to be heard on vinyl. We hope for more from this team in 2019.
Sweden has produced its shared of EBM bands over the years. There must be something in the Viking blood that draws them to 16-step sequencers and electronic drum pads.
From that scene, the duo of Cryo has consistently made some of the most atmospheric and emotionally infused material. For more than a decade, going back to releases like Cryogenic and Mixed Emotions, Cryo has marched to the beat of its own drum (machine).
The release of “Sanitarium,” built upon a scene from One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, reinforces their position as the most original and human of the machine-operating artists on the cold side of the Baltic Sea.
It has been more than thirty years since the Gristle ceased to throb, but Chris Carter continues to plow a unique furrow of experimental electronics. The creator of some of the most romantic electronic music of all time, Carter remains an industrial original.
Famed for creating his own synthesizers from schematics printed in magazines, Carter now has modular synth manufacturers lining up to collaborate with him. He is also in constant demand as a remixer. The surprise, therefore, is that he has found the time to put together a new solo album at all.
Although inspired by his take on the material produced by the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, CCCL is unmistakably in Carter’s own style. On a track like “Blissters,” one hears more European Rendezvous than Dr Who. Similarly, “Modularity” might be driven by Euro-rack gear, but the signature of the man twiddling the knobs is written across the piece.
There is a new collection of Carter’s solo work coming from Mute. This is a timely addition to his catalogue.
A surprise on its release, Zanti‘s first album is elegant and deep. Made by the duo of Anni Hogan and Simple Minds’ bass man, Derek Forbes, it more than made up for a year of half-hearted releases and Soundcloud flotsam elsewhere.
Hogan has a history of collaborations that stretches from Marc Almond to Lydia Lunch. With Forbes, she has linked up with one of the great geniuses of rhythm, and it turns out that he has an astonishingly good voice.
If 4AD still cared about the kind of music they are putting out, instead of finding the latest dubstep, this is an album that they would have killed to release. A track like “Will You Be Mine” is tailor-made for fans of This Mortal Coil.
If you missed Broken Hearted City on release, correct that now!
The best album in years from one of Europe’s go-to party bands, Destination Amour built on a combination of space disco and Europop influences. “Toute la nuit” buzzed with killer saws, Els Pyloo’s ethereal vocals and a pulsing rhythm section lifted straight from 1977.
Just brilliant.
The really mad thing about Robert Görl is his ability to wrestle emotion from synthesizers. Although best known for his heavy rhythm work in DAF, an early solo single, “Mit Dir,” demonstrated that with a limited set of equipment (and a limited number of words) he could produce works of fragile and enduring beauty.
The Paris Tapes were recorded while Görl was evading military service in France after one of DAF’s many break-ups. Armed only with an Ensoniq ESQ-1, he trained himself to deploy basslines instead of barbed wire. His marches took him to the UK, where he teamed up with Dee Long of Klaatu (and Rational Youth’s one-time producer) to work on the material. A visit to Germany led to a drive in a car; the car led to a tree; and the rehabilitation that followed led to the abandonment of the actual Paris tapes.
They were eventually recovered, but the moment to develop them had passed. They came out for Record Store Day, then, frozen much as they were when Görl’s body was shattered on an icy Munich road. Even so, the material out-Jarred Jarre in the year of his return to Oxygene.
Sweden’s original poptronica act came to London to show off their new material in October. Page brought with them a very limited run of CDs featuring versions of some of the songs on their Start EP, and the first forty people through the door at their show received a copy courtesy of Cold War Night Life. Needless to say, their appearance at the sold out show was warmly received by an international crowd, and the CDs quickly became collector’s items.
What gets Page to the pole position on this year’s list isn’t their generosity; nor is it their willingness to switch into English for their London audience – it’s their unrivaled feeling for poptronica. Eddie Bengtsson is called “Sweden’s Vince Clarke” for very good reasons; and, with new Moogs at his disposal, he might very well be the Nordic answer to Dramatis and Ultravox, as well.
If Soft Cell could have pulled off this trick, they wouldn’t have had to retire.
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Depeche Mode fans will know Rico Conning’s name best from the Blind Mix of “Strangelove” or the Black Tulip Mix of “A Question of Time.” Nick Cash will come to mind first as Fad Gadget’s drummer. Jo Forty’s name is less bound up with the heroes of early electronic music; but, together with Conning, Cash and ex-Alternative TV guitarist Mick Linehan, he formed the core of The Lines, a celebrated post-post incubator.
Founded in London in the immediate wake of punk and its DIY culture, The Lines came together when Conning and Forty met on an English literature course. As Conning tells the story:
We both had a strong interest in music. For me, music was probably a stronger interest than English literature. I found the study of music very boring. I didn’t like to study it; just to play it. We decided to start a band. This was around ’76, and a lot of other people in London were focused on the same thing about the same time. It took us a couple of years to get to where we thought we were good enough to put a record out, and we put out “White Night” in 1978.
“White Night” had a long shelf life: besides The Lines’ original, it was covered by both Torch Song and Adult Net. Although Laurie Mayer, the third member of Torch Song, together with Conning and William Orbit, sang the version that appeared on their album, a version also exists with Sarah Blackwood of Dubstar and Client. Adult Net, the band launched by Brix Smith after she left The Fall, took a more indie route with its version.
Although major success proved elusive, The Lines or its members crossed paths with many of the key players in the city’s independent music scene. Recording at Blackwing Studios, they returned one time to find Vince Clarke and Alison Moyet concluding the first Yazoo single, “Only You.” The band had been drawn to Blackwing by the sound of Dome, the Lewis-Gilbert side project, and Conning went on to work with all of Wire as a mixing engineer for “Eardrum Buzz.” That was only one of many assignments given by Daniel Miller to Conning, who became one of Mute Records’ house studio gurus, recording or mixing Depeche Mode, Erasure, Laibach, Renegade Soundwave and Frank Tovey.
Conning recalls:
I had known Daniel, anyway, from the late 1970s, and The Lines were gigging at about the same time, and our drummer was in Fad Gadget’s band. I did know Daniel vaguely, and one day he turned up at Guerilla, where I worked, to mix some Depeche Mode live tapes. He asked me to do a few of the mixes by myself. He asked me to do “Black Celebration.” After that, he asked me to do “A Question of Time.” They were both good mixes, and then the one I did with Daniel after that was a really good mix which I think actually affected the career of the band – the Blind Mix of “Strangelove” – was a pretty important mix for them. It was the main single out here in the States.
It was another Mute favourite, John Fryer, who did a lot of the studio work on The Lines’ first two full-length albums, Therapy and Ultramarine, together with studio boss Eric Radcliffe. Fryer, one of two permanent members of This Mortal Coil, had developed a reputation as an experimental engineer, and his ability to cope with reel-to-reel tape loops, wrapped around the studio premises, was one of the attractions for the band. Like Dome, The Lines played the studio as an instrument, and their sound owes a lot to the creative setting in Southwark.
After those albums, the band went on hiatus. It was never officially dissolved, but the band members all went in different directions: Conning assumed a job as engineer at William Orbit‘s Guerilla Studios and as a member of Torch Song (just listen to his work on S-Express’ glorious “Mantra for a State of Mind” with Orbit to see where he was going); Cash had his Fad Gadget responsibilities; and Forty and Linehan each went on Eastern travels. Although tracks were in demand for compilations and a retrospective was issued in 2008, it seemed a remote prospect that new material would be forthcoming from The Lines.
Fast forward to 2016, then, and one of the surprises of the year is the release of hull down, the third album from The Lines. Although the original demos had been recorded in 1982-3, and some attempt had been made to improve the recordings in 1987 for a potential release through IRS, the material had to be parked until 2004. That’s when Conning digitised the tracks and started to play with them in Pro Tools; blending the versions to create something new and potent.
We tracked down Conning at his Los Angeles base to learn something about the story of the album. He told us:
This is an attempt to realise what we were trying to realise back then, with the benefit of hindsight. All I did, on some of the tracks, was blend very early demos with much later, much more polished, 8-track versions. When I did that, it was a bit of a revelation. In a couple of cases, particularly – I would say “Flat Feet” and “Archway” – I had no idea what to do with those two until I blended the earliest demo with the later thing. With a couple of others – “Raffle” and “Haberdasher” – it was a similar thing, but in those cases the demo starts and finishes the track and the later development is in the middle.
Although the product of work that began in the 1980s, the sound of hull down remains fresh. “Flat Feet,” the lead track, is rhythmically vigorous and filled with enough authentically snappy analogue sounds to stump even the most jaded hipster. “Single Engine Duster” could be a later-era Wire track, albeit with trombone, Linn drum and Chakk-like funk in the mix. “Nicky Boy’s Groove” features Cash’s TB-303 actually playing a bass line – its sound sitting on the cusp of acid house while guitars and synths drift around in dark, apocalyptic swirls.
Proceedings enter ACR territory with “Zoko Am3,” a track based on a live jam. Conning describes his contribution as a duet with a Watkins Copicat echo unit, and the lines-out soar with a prog-like effect, comparable to the early material from Nash the Slash or Steve Hillage. The use of effects continues with “Where Is the World,” a track that was originally laid down to test out various new gear, including the then-current TR-808. Come “Raffle” and the sound is not a million miles from the Guerilla template: arpeggiators glistening over brilliant, dancefloor-friendly bass lines, while Conning’s vocals come and go as needed.
The pace slows down again for “Archway,” which incorporates Cash’s vibraphone and a Hammond organ in a tribute to the road running under Suicide Bridge. It doesn’t lift for the run-out track, “Haberdashers,” but the sound is much more easily located in its time, using Laurie Mayer’s Juno 60 for arpeggiation. The experimentation at the heart of the The Lines is in the clearest relief here, and it is remarkable that IRS didn’t go for it as part of their No Speak series of instrumental albums.
Three decades after the original tracks were laid down to tape, hull down is partly a sign of what could have been for The Lines, but it also contains traces of what has been for its members. More than an artifact, the album is a document for the present, and it’s dense with rich, experimental music that is even better suited to our time.
LINKS:
Rico’s Reel blog
Buy hull down at Carpark Records
Born in the suburb of South Woodford and raised in Basildon, Vince Clarke could have ended up as a cab driver or worked at Ford’s Essex plant, but instead he founded three of the world’s most successful pop groups: Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure.
It was his charismatic, blue-eyed friend, Robert Marlow, who was expected to make it big amongst their Basildon contemporaries, but Simon & Garfunkel fan Clarke proved to be more adept at writing sparkly pop songs. He turned underemployment to his advantage during the early days of Depeche Mode, programming future hits into a sequencer on the sofa or practicing keyboard riffs with headphones on (to avoid annoying his mum).
Today, he lives and works in New York, surrounded by one of the world’s greatest collections of vintage synthesizers, and is revered as the musical genius behind more than three decades of chart-bothering electronic pop hits – from Depeche Mode’s “Dreaming of Me” in 1981 to the latest Erasure album, The Violet Flame.
Along the way, Clarke’s interests have broadened into ambient soundscapes, soundtracks and remixing work. In 2012, he released Ssss, an album of techno-driven instrumentals, with his former Depeche Mode bandmate, Martin Gore. The same year saw a 10 CD box set, The House of Illustrious, compiling more instrumental works – many of them designed for art galleries and dance companies – with Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware.
Having settled into the Erasure groove thirty years ago, it is almost forgotten how the ambitious but impatient Clarke left Depeche Mode just as they were on the cusp of world domination, or that his working relationship with Alison Moyet was so difficult that Yazoo’s second album was recorded in separate studio sessions. Of the latter experience, Clarke told an interviewer from Songfacts, “It was sad, but I don’t think we could have continued working together without probably strangling each other.”
A natural collaborator who likes to work alone; a synthesizer master who composes on acoustic instruments (guitar or piano) – Clarke is a man of contradictions, and some of his best work arguably has been generated by the tension between his pop instincts and the contrasting styles of his musical partners.
Blancmange was a duo that came to prominence about the same time as Depeche Mode. They became friendly with Clarke through supporting Depeche on their Speak & Spell tour. In the summer of 1984, Blancmange’s Stephen Luscombe put together this East-meets-West fusion track under the name, West India Company, with vocals being provided by the popular Bollywood singer, Asha Bhosle (who was later name-checked in a popular song by Cornershop). It was recorded at Splendid Studios, set up with Eric Radcliffe on the site of Blackwing Studios, where he worked following the break-up of Yazoo. Clarke set to work with his Fairlight CMI synthesizer, getting credit on the sleeve for “pyrotechnics.”
For the technically-minded, it will be of interest that, in the same year, Clarke showed off the capabilities of his Fairlight CMI for Electronic Soundmaker and Computer Music magazine. His presentation included samples of tablas recorded with percussionist Pandit Dinesh, who had contributed to West India Company’s recording.
Former S-Express and Electribe 101 vocalist, Billy Ray Martin, pulled in Clarke for a remix of her 2011 solo single, “Sweet Suburban Disco.” With Erasure, Clarke has perfected the adaptation of the disco template to contemporary danceable pop, so he would have been an apparent candidate for remixing duties. Less obvious was his match-up with Happy Mondays, for whom he provided one of the remixes of “Wrote for Luck” (the other coming from Paul Oakenfold) that signaled the transformation of Manchester indie into the Madchester rave scene. Clarke has been selective about his remixing assignments, but he almost always finds the sweet spot that infuses a great song with dancefloor magic.
Dome was the experimental project of Bruce Gilbert and Graham Lewis, on hiatus from their roles in Wire. Their output features little by way of melody or traditional song structure, but Clarke appeared on their fourth album, Will You Speak This Word, as the operator of his rare and expensive Fairlight CMI synthesizer. The story goes that Clarke didn’t feel comfortable turning over his Fairlight CMI to Gilbert and Lewis, fearing it could be messed up by inexperienced operators, so he found himself on the album as a manipulator of sounds. This track also features the voice of his then-girlfriend, Deb, who was one of the prime movers behind the Depeche Mode and Yazoo Information Services.
After the break-up of Yazoo, Clarke set up his own record label, Reset Records, together with the owner of Blackwing Studios, Eric Radcliffe. The artists released on Reset included Robert Marlow, Peter Hewson, Hardware and Absolute. Robert Marlow was the best-known of the Reset stable, but his Clarke-produced album, The Peter Pan Effect, didn’t see commercial release until 1999. Absolute’s effort is in a similar vein, and is interesting for the recognisable sounds and accents that were extracted from Clarke’s equipment.
“One Day” veered from Clarke’s usual formula. It was sung by Paul Quinn, the singer from Bourgie Bourgie, and incorporated a synthetic string sound that is a rare reminder of Clarke’s childhood violin training. The Cold War-influenced video featured the unlikely image of Clarke holding a semi-automatic rifle and manning a border post. The single just dented the Top 100 on its release in 1985, but its moody, brooding feeling has made it an enduring favourite for fans of Clarke’s music.
In 1999, Clarke released Pretentious with Martyn Ware. A second collaboration appeared in 2001, Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle. In 2012, a box set of their joint work appeared, gathering both albums and adding to them no less than eight CDs of material accumulated from commissioned works. Clarke has described the early Human League albums, before Ware left to start Heaven 17, as key influences on him, which showed how electronic music didn’t have to be emotionally cold.
The project with which Clarke has been most closely associated for three decades, Erasure, was not initially a great success. Andy Bell, a women’s shoe salesman, auditioned for Clarke, producer Flood and Mute Records boss, Daniel Miller, after dozens of other singers had been rejected. Their first album together, Wonderland, made it into the lower rungs of the Top 100 in the UK, but the band’s first three singles failed to achieve the commercial success or reap the critical praise that Yazoo had won. Touring and refinement of their sound built up Erasure’s profile, and a string of chart-topping releases firmly established them as a world-class act.
The Crackers International EP came out in time for Christmas in 1988, sporting a sleeve inspired by a Soviet propaganda poster and led by a high energy track that has become a crowd favourite. With its bright, synthetic brass and seasonal bells, pulsing synths and layered vocals, it’s iconic Erasure.
Clarke’s original plan for The Assembly was to record an album of songs with different vocalists – a concept that doesn’t sound dissimilar to the British Electric Foundation project of future collaborator, Martyn Ware. Together with Eric Radcliffe, Clarke worked out a scheme for the album, but they were reportedly defeated by the complex licensing and exclusivity practices of the recording industry. The only material to make it to release was 1983’s “Never Never,” which featured The Undertones’ vocalist, Feargal Sharkey, and the instrumental B-side, “Start Stop.”
Everyone has their own view on Clarke’s work with Depeche Mode, which makes it difficult to pick out just one song. While “Just Can’t Get Enough” has become a mainstream classic, more experimental works from Clarke’s time with the band, like “Shout” and “Any Second Now,” have their own appeal. There are some who would argue that “Ice Machine” should have been the A-side of their first single, instead of “Dreaming of Me,” while debate continues whether the version of “Photographic” that appeared on the Some Bizarre compilation was better than the one on Speak & Spell. We selected “Puppets” because it captures the essence of the sound that Clarke designed for the band: simple, repetitive phrases building into elegant, interlocking sections, allowing room for Dave Gahan’s vocals to breathe. They took a different direction when he left, leaving fans to dream of what might have happened if he had stayed.
Given the fractious relationship between Clarke and Alison Moyet during the recording of You and Me Both, one might think that there is a reference to their working arrangements behind the opening line: “It’s over, there’s nothing more to say.” Actually, this song is a sweet story of love passing beyond reach, in which the warmth of the electronics contrasts with Moyet’s pained, blues-tinged vocals – just the combination that made an ex-punk and a Simon & Garfunkel fan such a potent combination.
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!
Jönköping’s Club Sputnik is on its feet. For its maiden voyage, the club has brought in one of Sweden’s most respected synth acts, Vision Talk, who are themselves playing their last show. The crowd is in a mood to move, and setting them in motion is the evening’s support act, Train to Spain. A pretty young woman in an Iberian dress is singing a selection of upbeat, original pop songs. Next to her, a sharply-dressed keyboardist intently presses keys, sending catchy hooks through the sound system. On the dancefloor, enthusiastic clubbers move body parts in syncopation with the thumping beat of synthetic drums. Their transition from studio to stage is so natural that it is hard to believe that this is Train to Spain’s first live show as a duo.
A few days after the Sputnik performance, the band’s songwriter and keyboardist, Jonas Rasmusson, is happy with the response but already preparing for the next show. New songs are coming quickly – one had been finished only on the day of the show at Sputnik and was programmed and debuted that evening. The growing body of work shows Rasmusson’s keen ear for catchy synthpop. Take Fences of Freedom, a popular song on mydebaser.com: a bouncy introduction uses classic synth sounds to signal the band’s 1980s influences, before giving way to energetic, thoroughly modern rhythms, fused with a strong, melodic vocal from singer Valeria Hjertberg. It’s classy, polished electropop that doesn’t rely on the fuzz of 8-bit chips or Flying Lizards-style deadpan lines to get your attention.
The duo was brought together by their manager, Kjell Ek. Rasmusson had needed a replacement for the original vocalist, who had moved to Helsinki after recording some early tracks, including a cover of The House of Love’s classic, Shine On. Valerie Hjertberg was born in Russia but moved to Sweden when she was just eight years old. Now grown-up and living in Stockholm, she fit the bill perfectly. Rasmusson maintains a base in the South, but they are able to leverage modern technology to collaborate: vocals are recorded separately and downloaded for mixing by Rasmusson before being released.
One of the things that makes Train to Spain click is the contrast between the vocal style of Hjertberg, who is influenced by mainstream pop artists like Lady Gaga and Pink, and the harder electronic sound created by Rasmusson. The result is more than the combination of its parts, just as the bluesy voice of Alison Moyet married to the analogue synth tones of Vince Clarke made Yazoo something special. The tension can be heard on a song like Return To, in which saws and squares grumble darkly in the synth stem, while Hjertberg sings, “I will be nice”. The fact that Hjertberg is not playing a dark wave role adds a freshness to the material and makes it difficult to locate within a single genre.
The band take their name from a song by The Human League. In The Things That Dreams Are Made Of, Phil Oakey sings, “Take a cruise to China/Or a train to Spain/Go round the world/Again and again”. The line refers to doing things that are pleasurable at a pace that allows them to be enjoyed. It also caught Rasmusson’s ear, because he has travelled and worked in Spain a number of times. He is pleased when music fans recognise the reference, but also likes the resonance of the phrase with his own experience.
The duo now wants to spend more time on stage, refining their songs. A show in Stockholm is behind them. An album is in the pipeline, with a commitment already secured to release a CD in Russia. This train is on the track to big things!