Category: Interviews (Page 4 of 112)

GENEVA JACUZZI Interview

24 September 2024 /

Photo by David Zuckerman

Geneva Jacuzzi is an artist whose oeuvre includes music, live theatre, installations, set design, costume, makeup and set decoration.

Released recently by Dais Records, ‘Triple Fire’ is her third full-length album, following her official debut  ‘Lamaze’ in 2010 and 2016’s ‘Technophelia’. Based in Los Angeles, Geneva Jacuzzi brings a collaborative approach to ‘Triple Fire’ while vocally she continues to recall the delightfully odd mannerisms of Gina Kikoine, Lene Lovich and Jyl.

Quirky and fun, ‘Triple Fire’ presents a hit parade of playful avant pop and sly post-apocalyptic camp across 12 songs, each possessing an immediate if occasionally chaotic burst of energy. Geneva Jacuzzi spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about her artistic process and her take on the state of the modern world…

You’re an artist with many facets, what attracted you to making music and particularly electronic music?

When I moved to LA at 18, I was fortunate to meet some incredible people who were true music heads, a little bit older, record collectors, book collectors, philosophy quoters, tellers of stories, owners of 10,000 rare obscure books and records kind of people leftover from the 80s and 90s art and music scenes who co-mingled with the hipsters of LA. Mind you, this is the early 2000s, no YouTube or internet music so prior to that, the only electronic music I had heard was 80s pop and disco (which I loved but always felt so produced and unattainable)

Then all of the sudden I was exposed to early CABARET VOLTAIRE, THROBBING GRISTLE, KRAFTWERK, LEGENDARY PINK DOTS, CHROME, HARDCORE DEVO, THE STRANGLERS, early CURE and HUMAN LEAGUE, WIRE, KRAUTROCK, SUN RA, CAN, THE HOMOSEXUALS, LOS MICROWAVES, PALAIS SCHAUMBURG, DER PLAN, DAF and Kate Bush. It all blew my mind because I had never heard anything like it before. But the minimal synth was what really hit my core at the time. I think because it was so simple, my little brain was like “I can make this” so I tried it… and was hooked.

I didn’t have money to buy gear but I would run thrift store keyboards through pedals to manipulate sound and sometimes friends would loan me synths and I would spend hours just designing sounds. I had no intention of being a musician. I was just playing around and challenging myself… for fun and escape. It became a compulsion. I think my lack of musical skill combined with a passion for sound manipulation and inclination towards pop melody started to yield interesting results and I discovered I had a knack for composition.

Did you have an epiphanal moment with a synth, and if so, with which one?

My first real synth I experimented with was a Sequential Prophet One and I feel really fortunate to have had a friend who loaned me one for a couple of years. I remember jamming on it and turning knobs without any knowledge of what does what until I got to the point where the synth would make no sound and I had to figure out WHY?? It literally forced me to learn about what each knob is doing. But it was a great way to learn. It was like being lost in a foreign city with no map and you have to go around asking for directions and looking at the position of the sun and buildings until one day, you just know where you are and how to get to where you wanna go instinctually.

Your first official album release ‘Lamaze’ in 2010 was a collection of 4 track and 8 track recordings as well as demos, what inspired you to issue them “as seen” rather than polish them up?

Honestly, I didn’t think I had any other way of polishing them up. I didn’t own a computer and the songs were accidents trapped in tape so recreating them in a studio didn’t seem like an option. It’s not like I had a record advance or money to go into the studio either. I was just experimenting with music and then eventually someone wanted to press it on vinyl. I’m pretty sure at the time, I thought they sounded perfect as is. It didn’t occur to me to fix or change anything. It’s like having a kid with a crooked nose. What, are you going to take them to a plastic surgeon at age 6? I suppose you could but that would be weird. And what if the kids face grew and the fake nose stayed small? It would just be a bad idea.

Your second album ‘Technophelia’ took a few years and was much more of a produced record, how do you look back on its gestation?

That’s so funny. I recorded ‘Technophelia’ on GarageBand and the vocals were done with the little microphone above the screen on my white MacBook. Not kidding. But I never used soft synths. I think Chris Coady levelled up the sound in mixing though. He’s a total boss.

I don’t know why the record took so long. Now that I think about it, all of my records take a long time. Not that I’m sitting and working on them for years or anything. I’m just recording songs and playing shows and making art and living life and things come together when they come together. I’ve never been one to wait for ideal situations before I do things. I’ve got my paws in lots of different projects and things come together when they do. My new record coming out is the first in 8 or 9 years but only because I was working on video projects and live performances for a few years. Then I came back to the music again only in the last two years.

The songs on ‘Technophelia’ ranged from synthpop like ‘Casket’ to dysfunctional disco like ‘Cannibal Babies’, could these be now seen as blueprints for where you are now with ‘Triple Fire’?

A little bit, yes. Except I had originally planned to do something totally different. Then when I got started, it sounded like the same kind of stuff that I’ve done in the past. Which is cool but not very interesting to me. I think I realized that I have my way of doing things and if I expect different results, I need to start including different people.

‘Technophelia’ was just me in my room and ‘Triple Fire’ was me with my friends. I brought in other producers and songwriters to collaborate on this record. My friends Roderick Edens and Andrew Briggs who have a great band REPTILE TILE in Virginia Beach. The three of us worked on the majority of the tracks together and it was fun blending skills and styles. Also worked with Josh da Costa on a track and Andrew Clinco from DRAB MAJESTY produced a track as well. This was my first time collaborating like this and it was really fun for me to move out of my comfort zone.

Many of your musical influences appear to be European?

It’s true. Love me some kraut and Italo disco. I don’t know what drew me towards that part of the world. Perhaps there is a depth to it that reflects a culture or history that Americans have yet to achieve. But many American bands like CHROME and DEVO hooked me as well. I think because there is a sense of humor and self-awareness that pokes fun at the insanity of America that I can really appreciate. After all, I am American and I am f*cking insane.

Quite a bit of time has passed since ‘Technophelia’, so has there been any changes in your creative and recording process for ‘Triple Fire’, be it from tech developments or collaborative opportunities?

It’s all about collaboration. ‘Technophilia’ was the peak of my loneliness. Which I find beautiful but you can only go so far on your own before you start sounding repetitive. I also don’t feel the need to prove anything as far as my musical abilities go. I could of course become a better musician but I don’t think that song writing is about musical skill. It’s about sublimating a moment in time or an experience. ‘Triple Fire’ was me expanding into a collaborative space (which, honestly is a huge challenge for me because I never ever felt comfortable doing that in the past), Roderick has an amazing studio in Virginia Beach that we recorded at so having access to all of those synths also expanded the sound quite a bit. Andy brought in a bundle of synth racks so we had a bountiful bank of sound to choose from. It was such a fun experience working on this record.

‘Art Is Dangerous’ celebrates the subversive potential of all art, what inspired you make such a statement?

Funny enough, it was an accident. Roderick (who co-wrote) misread something on the TV screen one night after our recording session and yelled out “ART IS DANGEROUS?!?!” We looked at each other and both knew that it would be the title to the track that we were working on. Then the lyrics started flowing. I co-mingle with the art world and it was fun to play around with the absurdity of it all. Industry, ego, sensationalism, commodification, celebrity. The bridge vocals are all clichés. “All is fair in love and war”, “All that glitters isn’t gold”!

Cliché is a big theme on ‘Triple Fire’. We have songs like ‘Rock & A Hard Place’, ’Take it or Leave it’, I felt like pop music relies heavily on simplicity and stupid lyrics so I thought it would be interesting to go all in on using the most mundane phrases of the English language to describe something mysterious and deep.

You’ve said ‘Dry’ is about being ghosted after a date but is there a wider metaphor?

There always is lol. “Set it and Forget it” is a catch phrase from a 1990s infomercial selling a mechanical appliance. I suppose I felt that the modern approach to love via technology sort of mechanizes the magical. Not to say we are being dehumanized by dating apps or anything lol… But shopping for love on a cell phone can definitely alter amount of value we place on our human interactions thus creating a tricky landscape for a type of love that celebrates coincidence and the sweetness of imperfection. I’m an over thinker so when I get my heart broken by my cell phone, I tend to find the absurdity of it all and can’t help but see how funny it is when the mere chime sound of a text message is enough to ignite a Pavlovian flood of emotions… or in this case… No text message!

How did Andrew Clinco come to produce ‘Speed Of Light’? How was his approach compared with your own and was there something you learnt that you will continue with your own productions?

Andrew and I have been friends for years and have collaborated on different projects and bands in the past so when I told him I was making a new record and hoped to work with him on something, he was super down. I’m pretty sure he sat down one night with me in mind and cooked up the track to ’Speed of Light’. When I heard it, it was a definite “Yes!” And I heard the vocals / lyrics in my head almost immediately. I recorded the demo vox then we finished it up together in his studio.

Andrew is one of those special kind of humans that can do everything… but unlike me, he does it quickly and has some incredible production tricks up his sleeve that I have yet to master. He is a machine who compulsively makes music non-stop and I witnessed the effects of his skill with production. It’s almost effortless and our personalities really get along so it was super fun and easy to work together. When it comes to collaborating, it’s important to pick the right people. I’m fortunate to have friends like Andrew who are incredibly talented and funny who totally get it.

Is there a key track or favourite on ‘Triple Fire’ which summarises what you were hoping to achieve on this album?

It changes. ‘Art Is Dangerous’ and ‘Dry’ feel the most “Geneva Jacuzzi” but I definitely strayed from the box with tracks like ‘Heart Full of Poison’, ‘Rock & A Hard Place’ and ‘Keep it Secret’ which I love. But ‘Bow Tie Eater’ , ‘Nu2U’ and ‘Yo-Yo Boy’ are secret favorites. I wish they were singles. ‘Laps of Luxury’ is also a strong track and I’m really excited for it to come out with the release.

Who is ‘The Scene Ballerina’? Has this “main character syndrome” become worse since the advent of social media influencers or has it always been one of those social diseases particularly prevalent in the entertainment industry?

I think everyone knows a “Scene Ballerina”. That person who loves to make it all about themselves and craves drama. It’s so funny, I never really thought to write about those sorts of people but Andy and Roderick invented the term and we just ran with it for fun. I wasn’t expecting it to be a single but it ended up so poppy and fun that it made the cut. I don’t think that social media has anything to do with it. There have been Scene Ballerinas since the beginning of time. It’s just a weird personality type. So silly and obnoxious.

Before ‘Lamaze’ was released, MySpace was the social media of choice while Facebook and Twitter were beginning to gain traction but now, there’s TikTok and algorithms prioritising reels on Instagram… do you find this aspect overwhelming or does this all slot in nicely with your artistic ethos?

Yeah, it took me two and a half hours yesterday just to announce a show because I had to log into 20 different apps and tag everyone lol. So yeah, that can be overwhelming but I’m not ungrateful!!! Social media, like anything else has its pros and cons. It’s just bigger and faster. You can reach more people but good luck holding anyone’s attention. I think every artist over the age of 25 has a love-hate relationship with it because it’s real / not real and emotions and expectations get tangled up into algorithms and AI. I find it to be neutral in the artistic sense. Good and evil depending on how you look at it. I think it’s just an energy, like money. Best to not overthink it and play with the fun of it all. Because as much as I like to talk shit about it, my Instagram feed is full of probably the funniest memes on the planet and I find it deeply entertaining at times so there you go. I’m a tool like everyone else.

Walter Gropius said “Today’s luxuries are tomorrow’s norm” but has the world become more culturally ignorant despite it getting smaller due to the indirect consequence of smart tech becoming ubiquitous?

Great question! It’s such a fascinating phenomenon. Things getting smaller when everything gets bigger. Or slower when the world speeds up. Isn’t it crazy to think that art and music looked and sounded sooooo drastically different between the 1960-1980 verses 2004-2024. I think technology is creating the illusion of things speeding up but everyone is oddly slowing down as a result. At least as far as culture goes. And when it comes to ignorance? I don’t know if people are more ignorant as much as they place less value on things because of the amount of accessibility we have to it all at any given time with little effort and little investment.

Yeah, everything is going to shit but it’s always been going to shit. I think the pendulum swings but now the swing will be more subtle and unconscious / abstract. I believe that we will start to crave a deeper and more meaningful connection to things and each other which will tip things over in time. It will never be like how it was in the past. I’m rambling here. Probably not making any sense but I do believe it is the duty of the artist to keep making art regardless of it all and to strive to be authentic. Otherwise humanity is lost.

Have you any fears as an artist with the advent of AI and seemingly more conservative attitudes being shouted out louder than ever?

So much of that is outside of my scope. But I think about it often. I’m fascinated by it all.

Back to the pendulum, it will always swing left and right as long as we believe in the binaries of good and evil. Duality processors lol. I’m convinced AI is nothing more than parasitic intelligence or a self-cannibalising mechanism of the collective unconscious feeding back and eating itself alive.

What are your hopes? Can music, art and chaos energy save mankind?

Music and Art is the only thing that can. It is the only thing that has this far. Without it we would have destroyed ourselves thousands of years ago.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Geneva Jacuzzi

Additional thanks to Frankie Davison at Stereo Sanctity

‘Triple Fire’ is released by Dais Records in various vinyl LP, CD + digital formats, available from https://found.ee/TripleFire

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Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
24 September 2024

NASH THE SLASH Rises, Again!

28 August 2024 /

NASH THE SLASH was the late Jeff Plewman, a Canadian multi-instrumentalist adept at electric violin and mandolin.

He was also the first Canadian to ever use a drum machine on an album, while his music was a complex blend of prog, art rock, new wave and performance art. His persona was inspired by a killer butler that featured in the 1927 silent film ‘Do Detectives Think?’ starring Laurel and Hardy.

Plewman started performing as a solo artist beginning in 1975 and founded the progressive rock band FM in 1976. The NASH THE SLASH trademark look covered in surgical bandages began in 1979 to raise awareness of the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster; he walked on stage wearing bandages dipped in phosphorus paint and exclaimed: “Look, this is what happens to you!”

NASH THE SLASH opened for Gary Numan on his ‘Teletour’ and played violin on the tracks ‘Cry The Clock Said’ and ‘You Are You Are’ from his 1981 ‘Dance’ album; as well as this, he appeared as an onstage guest at Numan’s then-farewell concert at Wembley Arena in April 1981.  Earlier in the year, he had released the Steve Hillage produced album ‘Children Of The Night’ on Dindisc Records, the Virgin Records funded imprint that brought OMD their initial commercial success.

This was the period when NASH THE SLASH had his highest mainstream media profile, with him even being given the honour of a profile interview by ‘Smash Hits’ where he stated his full name was “Nashville Thebodiah Slasher”! Indeed, NASH THE SLASH’s best known recording in the UK was an early stripped down version of ‘Swing-Shift’ alongside his label mates’ live rendition of ‘Pretending To See The Future’ on a blue flexi-disc given away free with ‘Smash Hits’.

NASH THE SLASH’s next album was ‘And You Thought You Were Normal’ in 1982 and featured the single ‘Dance After Curfew’ produced by Daniel Lanois; it fittingly became a radio hit in Poland as the country’s Communist government declared martial law.

NASH THE SLASH also later worked with Bill Nelson and opened shows for Iggy Pop, THE WHO, THE TUBES and DEVO. He rejoined FM but continued to perform solo and returned for a UK tour in 2008. He was also on stage with Gary Numan again in October 2010 for a rendition of ‘Complex’ at Toronto Opera House but announced his retirement via his website in November 2012, stating he was “rolling up the bandages”.

However, NASH THE SLASH sadly passed away in May 2014. But his work and legacy lives on; a number of his costumes and instruments were donated to the National Music Centre in Calgary while his custom skull mandolin is on display in the Canadian Music Hall of Fame.

In 2015, Artoffact Records reissued six of his albums and in 2017, filming began on the documentary ‘NASH THE SLASH Rises, Again!’. Written by Colin Brunton, Kevan Byrne and Tim Kowalski, the film has been produced  in collaboration with The NASH THE SLASH Legacy; over 50 interviews have been conducted with his friends, collaborators and fans of his work, while archival footage and rare images have also been unearthed.

Featuring contributions from Gary Numan, Danielle Dax, Steve Hillage, Youth and Owen Pallett among others, it tells a universal story of artistic struggle. Several years in the making, a GoFundMe has been set up to help bring the project to completion with regards post picture lab and sound mix, legals, music rights, TV + Film licenses, publicity, accounting and insurance.

Back in 2010, Stephen Roper interviewed NASH THE SLASH for his Gary Numan book ‘Back Stage: A Book Of Reflections’; he has kindly given permission for ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK to publish edited extracts of his delightful conversation with a unique individual.

On his start in electronic music…

I started doing solo electronic music in 1975 and back then, I was probably the first guy in Canada using a drum machine when drum machines were illegal. People don’t seem to know all these years later but drum machines used to be illegal and according to The Musicians Union, anyone using an artificial device to make music would be barred from appearing on a union stage.

On performing at The Edge in Toronto 1980…

I was the second biggest draw at the club after MARTHA & THE MUFFINS. The club held 150 people and even the band THE POLICE had only attracted 35 people to what was their fifth gig ever. I asked to do a week-long show which I decided to call ‘The St. Valentine’s Week Massacre’. It played from Monday to Sunday night, the Thursday being St. Valentine’s Day, February 14th.

For the second part of my set I changed into a grey pinstripe suit with a grey fedora. I was doing a symbolic re-enactment of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre! At the end of ‘Danger Zone’ you could hear 1930’s gangsters talking and then gunfire on the backing tape.

Meanwhile, I jumped off the stage and as the music and gunfire continued, I pulled a blank-gun from my vest and began shooting at the stage at my imaginary assailants. I escaped through the crowd back to the dressing room, firing all the way. To say the least, it was dramatic and went down a storm.

Today, I would be arrested for carrying a concealed weapon and sued for causing extreme emotional trauma! I had no idea then, that I would be offered the gig to open for Gary Numan at The Toronto Music Hall on the following Monday.

On opening for Gary Numan…

This was my first big tour and I loved it. I was somewhere in age between Gary and his dad Tony and the whole family on the road thing suited my personality. Beryl was the tour mom and it felt nice to be part of their personal family dynamic.

His mum and dad weren’t prudish and didn’t tut tut over people doing strange rock ‘n’ roll things – they knew what it was about. I was just another performer whom Beryl wanted to make sure looked his best on stage. She would send my stage-clothes along with everyone else’s to the dry cleaners.

I wasn’t that familiar with Gary’s music when we first set out. I’d heard ‘Cars’ and ‘Down In The Park’ but I didn’t know his other TUBEWAY ARMY stuff but I certainly got a quick lesson in it! I really did love the music and I still love it today. Not everything that Gary’s done has been that memorable but I think that period of time when he was writing those tunes was just killer stuff.

On touring the UK…

I didn’t think twice about it if I’m honest. For me, the UK was all about the intensity. I’d already established myself opening for Gary at big venues on the North American tour.

I was just pleased to be playing to these rabid British crowds. In North America, the audiences were good but at the same time, they were just getting into Gary.

When I got to England, his crowd were already well established and enthusiastic to say the least. They were also very respectful of me in the opening slot so that was very nice.

Photo by Paul Till

The only low point for me on the tour was having my mandolins stolen from the Hammersmith Odeon. As we were doing two consecutive nights there, the equipment was left set-up on the stage overnight. Unfortunately for us, someone broke in and stole three of Gary’s keyboards, a few guitars and my mandolins. Keyboards and guitars were relatively easy to replace but custom-built electric
mandolins were a different matter.

Scotland Yard came to the venue to take statements from everyone. They got a police artist to do a drawing of my mandolins and showed the picture on the TV on a show called ‘Crimewatch’. I managed to get by using a cheap electric mandolin I found in a shop in London.

I managed to modify it so that it sounded half-decent. My mandolins eventually turned up four months later in a park. They were found by a little old lady walking her dogs and luckily, weren’t seriously damaged.

On signing to Dinsdisc and recording with Gary Numan…

After the tour, I stayed on in London and managed to get a deal with Dindisc who were a subsidiary of Virgin. I went in the studio in December 1980 and recorded the album ‘Children Of The Night’. In January 1981 I was doing my own one-man shows in London and I got a call from Gary. “How would you like to play on my new album ‘Dance’?” I went to the studio and met Gary and QUEEN’s Roger Taylor and the three of us sat around and mucked about on the piano and came up with some ideas.

I’d been forewarned about the phenomenon of QUEEN and their status but it turned out that Roger Taylor was totally non-pretentious. I found him to be a really nice guy. Although it was fun to play on the tracks, I don’t think ‘Dance’ was one of Gary’s strongest albums. Considering its title, the LP just doesn’t make me want to DANCE! I found it all too laid back for my tastes. It was as if Gary wanted to sound like the band JAPAN which frankly, I can’t stand.

We were recording the ‘Dance’ album in February 1981 and not long after that, Gary became busy formulating his big farewell concert at Wembley. Knowing I was available, Gary asked me to be part of it. Gary said to me “I don’t want you to be the opening act, I want you to be in the band”.

On performing with Gary Numan…

It was still a lot of work though and as I remember, the big film studio we were rehearsing in had no heating and April that year was particularly cold. The crew brought in these giant heaters for us that looked like jet engines but they barely made any difference. I remember we rehearsed every day for a week. When you have such a monstrous stage show, you can imagine the amount of preparation needed.

My part was to stand on-top of the massive rig and play ‘Cry, The Clock Said’, (reprising my role from the new album) and then my big moment would be to come running out onto the stage for ‘The Joy Circuit’ and join the rest of the band with my violin. We did three nights but the last was just a bit more special and would definitely be one of those unforgettable moments for me.

On the UK music press…

It’s wonderful that Britain has a passionate music press but on the other hand they can take their role too seriously. There’s the praising you one week and crucifying you the next. I think that has a lot to do with power tripping. I became aware of the bad press Gary was getting when I got over there and started to tour with him.

I think there was a lot of jealousy in the industry at the time. I noticed it being bantered about at Virgin and Dindisc in general conversation. It seemed that anytime I went into those offices and we’d be talking about electronic pop music, if Gary’s name came up the reaction would be “Gary Numan’s just a poser, a w*nker, you know a David Bowie wannabe…” and all that stuff. I would just reply “Yeah but he’s had hit songs; what about you?”

I’ve always been offended by the term “one-hit-wonder”. Not from the perspective to condescend to these people but to say to people who comment “well what f*cking hit did you ever have?”

One hit is more than nothing. I wish I was a one hit wonder! Gary certainly rose above that, I think he was bugged by the slagging personally, (I know I sure as hell was) but regardless, he rose above it. He just got on with doing what he does.

On his impact in the UK…

It was great to have the opportunity to come back and play in the UK in 2008. I had an epiphany from when I was there. What happened was that every night, these guys were coming up to me and telling me the same thing. “I was going to my very first rock concert to see my new idol Gary Numan, I was 14 years old and what’s the first thing I see? Not Gary Numan but this guy in white tails, top hat and bandages playing solo electric violin and ripping my face off, and I never forgot it.”

All of these guys were telling me this 28 years later and I’m thinking, Gosh you people have a helluva memory. It wasn’t that at all… it was that I’d brainwashed them all when they were 14!

Photo by Paul Till

In memory of NASH THE SLASH 1948 – 2014

To contribute to the completion of ‘NASH THE SLASH Rises, Again!’ go to https://www.gofundme.com/f/nashtheslashrisesagain

https://www.facebook.com/NashTheSlashDoc

https://x.com/nashtheslashdoc

https://www.instagram.com/nashtheslashdoc

A selection of the NASH THE SLASH back catalogue is available via Artoffact Records from https://nashtheslash.bandcamp.com/

http://nashtheslash.com/

https://www.facebook.com/nashtheslashnews/

Interview by Stephen Roper
Additional Text by Chi Ming Lai with thanks to Simon Helm
28 August 2024 reworked from an article originally published 25 November 2018

JOHAN AGEBJÖRN & MIKAEL ÖGREN Interview

23 August 2024 /

Photo by Liora Havstad

1982 saw the release of the Diana Ross single ‘Work That Body’ and Jane Fonda’s ‘Workout’ video which cashed-in on the phenomenon of home exercise and aerobics. On the soundtrack of the latter were disco tunes by the likes of THE JACKSONS and BROTHERS JOHNSON.

But with participants seeking a more communal experience to fitness, there was an explosion in health clubs and gyms as captured in the storyline to the Jamie Lee Curtis and John Travolta film ‘Perfect’ in 1985. People wore lycra bodysuits, headbands and legwarmers, now often ubiquitous as the retro fancy dress image of “The 80s” and leading to the midlife Peloton pop of today.

Almost simultaneously, the New Age movement was blossoming using downtempo and ambient music for inspiration, relaxation and optimism during yoga, massage and meditation. Such was its expansion that Tower Records in Mountain View, California introduced a “New Age” section in 1981 while major labels like Geffen Records signed artists such as Japanese electronic composer Kitaro and American crossover jazz musician Pat Metheny to capitalise.

Inspired by the music and exercise tapes of that period, and in tribute to those times, Swedish producers Johan Agebjörn and Mikael Ögren present ‘Dynamic Movements – Music for Exercise & Relaxation’. Agebjörn is best known for his work in Sally Shapiro and has made two ambient albums ‘We Never Came To The White Sea’ and ‘Artefact’ with Ögren over the last few years.

“Sometimes throbbing and at other times gently lapping at your toes”, the result is a limited edition cassette contrasting ‘music for exercise’ on side A and ‘music for relaxation’ on side B. But ‘Dynamic Movements – Music for Exercise & Relaxation’ has an interesting concept, in that other than the inclusion of their 2020 single ‘A Tribute To Florian Schneider’, the tape is made up of remixes and reworkings of their cosmic Scando-disco  track ‘Dynamic Dance’. These have been provided by musicians and producers from around the world to create an album of diverse interpretations and deep sonic nourishment.

In their happy place, Johan Agebjörn and Mikael Ögren spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about making ‘Dynamic Movements’.

Photo by Lasse Nilsson

How did you first come to be aware of each other and then work together?

Johan: We were neighbours between 2011 and 2018, but it took a few years until we became friends and discovered our common musical taste in 90s electronic music (techno, IDM, ambient etc), and still a few years before we started to make music together. The first track we made was a remix for TOMMY ‘86 ‘Aurora’, that was in 2015. It went so well that we started to work on our first album.

Mikael: I think it started out with Johan borrowing one of my synths and then we just thought it could be a trip trying a collab together. And that most certainly was the case.

Which was, at that time, your favourite piece of music by the other?

Mikael: Back then, I really hadn’t released that much, and I wasn´t familiar with Johan´s music. But as soon as I started exploring his discography I instantly got sucked into his more ambient soundscapes. His ambient releases ‘Mossebo’ and ‘The Mountain Lake’ in particular, are albums that were an inspiration to me.

Was there any “synth envy”, did one of you have a piece of equipment that the other didn’t have and was fascinated by?

Johan: If there is one of Mikael’s synths that I would like to own then it would be the Roland JD-800. Our ambient music would not sound the same without that synth, it has such a calming mellow sound. Some pad sounds from it that Mikael has programmed have been used for some Sally Shapiro tracks as well.

Mikael: Well, ever since I heard Johan’s stunningly beautiful ‘Swimming Through The Blue Lagoon’, I´ve had a special eye for the Casio MT-52. The things he does with that home keyboard sound! Such an inspiration to me, and a reminder that it´s not always the fancy Stradivarius of synths that does the trick.

Photo by Lasse Nilsson

In terms of your creative dynamic, do you compose together from the bottom up or is it remotely?

Johan: Since we live in the same city, there is always at least one session where we work on a track together, either from scratch or based on some idea that I or Mikael have. Usually it’s me who then makes the final mix. We both compose, and if we have different production roles then Mikael is leaning more towards sound synthesis and I more towards arrangement and mixing.

Mikael: It´s funny, because more than one time, a collab has started out with me sitting in my studio noodling around and then Johan shows up from nowhere asking “Hey, what’s this?” and we start off from that point. Usually, Johan has such skills refining our studio sessions, that I rarely have that much to do with the final steps of the process.

How do you look back on the two albums you have made together so far ‘We Never Came To The White Sea’ and ‘Artefact’?

Johan: We are proud ha ha 🙂 It’s cool that both of these are concept albums with a soundtrack vibe. ‘We Never Came’ is a soundtrack to a road trip to Russian Karelia. ‘Artefact’ is a soundtrack to the novel ‘Rendezvous With Rama’ by Arthur C Clarke. ‘We Never Came’ is more warm and nature romantic, ‘Artefact’ is more cold and spacey.

Mikael: It’s been a beautiful ride completing these two concept albums. Whereas ‘We Never Came’ was more of a “building the road while we travel it” kind of project, we had kind of an ultimate aim with ‘Artefact’ (since it was based on Clarke´s beautiful novel). Both projects were exciting processes to work together on.

Photo by Lasse Nilsson

In 2020, you did a re-edit of PET SHOP BOYS ‘The Man Who Has Everything’ which was from the ‘Relentless’ bonus album that came with ‘Very’, was there any particular reason for this?

Johan: ‘The Man Who Has Everything’ is my favourite track from ‘Relentless’ and actually one of my favourite PET SHOP BOYS tracks overall. I thought the production of the original could be a bit updated and I also got some musical ideas playing on one of Mikael’s programmed Schulze-like sounds on the JD-800. We took these ideas and added some drums and a bassline from the Alesis Micron. This was during a period when we didn’t work on any other musical projects, so it was just a spontaneous in-between thing that we were so happy with that we gave it an unofficial release.

Mikael: Both I and Johan are long time PSB fans (even though Johan is much more of a hardcore fan than me). And I think the one thing we both fancy with this relatively unknown release is its more dark and melancholic approach. Both of us are kind of “minor” rather than “major” guys, so it was exciting to experiment with this one.

The new album ‘Dynamic Movements – Music for Exercise & Relaxation’ has two distinct moods, what was the idea behind this?

Johan: The project rotates around the track ‘Dynamo Dance’ and different interpretations of that one, and since that track has both nu-disco and ambient qualities (a one-minute ambient intro followed by a dance arrangement), it fit very well for being interpreted in both dancey and chilly ways. So it was a perfect departure for the idea of an exercise tape where you can exercise to side A and chill / stretch to side B!

Was there a Swedish equivalent of the Jane Fonda Workout or Jamie Lee Curtis’ ‘Perfect’ film?

Mikael: Actually, the big work out icon in Sweden was Susanne Lanefelt. She appeared regularly in her work out programs on public television (back in the day, there only existed two channels in Swedish television, and they were both public service). You could say that she was a perky, considerably more commonplace counterpart to Jane Fonda´s significantly more exotic, sexy and suggestive persona. But to me as an 11 year old boy, I found Susanne´s shows kind of arousing and the music pretty exciting.

Photo by Lasse Nilsson

‘Dynamo Dance’ is now out as a single, what inspired it and in particular, the slinky sax passage?

Mikael: ‘Dynamo Dance’ is a new musical direction for us. We have mostly worked on ambient music before, as well as some excursions to 90s trance. This single is something different, more like Norwegian space disco, but still with our trademark of mighty soundscapes. Actually, we played live on a festival in Norway in 2023, and were inspired by the space disco we heard there.

Johan: We thought the track needed “something else”, and for a while we considered turning it into a vocal track, but we decided to keep it more of an instrumental dancefloor track and instead a section with some funky solos, first a sax solo and then a synth solo. We asked my long-time friend / collaborator Steve Moore to play a saxophone solo for it. He has played the sax a few times in tracks I’ve been involved in already – on his Sally Shapiro ‘Down This Road’ remix and on the Sally Shapiro ‘Rent’ remix by NICOLAAS – so the choice came naturally.

The other tracks on ‘Dynamic Movements’ are remixes and reinterpretations by other artists and producers which is an interesting approach, did you give them a brief or were they given a totally free rein including the titles used?

Johan: We wanted these interpretations to work together as a compilation album, so we asked them to divert quite a lot from the original and to keep it danceable for side A and chilly / ambient for side B. The titles were decided together, sometimes the ideas came from us and sometimes from the artist.

Mikael: Yeah, and we’re happy that we gave them a lot of freedom to do their own interpretations. In that way it was easier to avoid that their contributions went down a more generic road with less space for artistic room for manoeuvre. The result was exciting to say the least.

How did you choose each of the artists?

Mikael: To me, several of the artists have been true inspirations, and their contributions to the release has been an honour for us. For example I’ve been an admirer of Dr Atmo’s work since the early 90s, and many of the releases of Patricia Wolf have been touching me on a deeper level. Jarle Bråthen we met when we performed on a Norwegian festival, and felt like an obvious artist to include on this specific release. Every single artist in this project are producers who, each and everyone, has contributed with one important piece to ‘Dynamic Movements’ with their own unique characters and approach.

Johan: We chose the artists in close collaboration with Jon Tye of Lo Recordings (who is also 50% of SEAHAWKS, so that selection came naturally) with the aim to be of high artistic quality and fitting for the project and for the Lo Recordings sound. Steve Moore / Lovelock is a longtime collaborator / remixer for both my solo work and Sally Shapiro. CAUSEWAY is a label mate from Italians Do it Better. It was also nice to ask some artists from the new ambient scene (Mary Yalex and One Million Eyes) on the A Strangely Isolated Place label.

Photo by Lasse Nilsson

You have included a previous single ‘A Tribute To Florian Schneider’ from 2020 on the album, how did this fit into the concept, or was it just too good a track to not get a wider audience for?

Mikael: Since this is one of our favourite productions, we always felt that it deserved more love and attention than was the case when it was dropped. In addition, we think that one of the icons that by far has been the greatest inspiration to us, really deserves as much tribute and acclaims as ever possible.

Johan: In addition to this, including the track made the project reach exactly 32 minutes on each side of the tape. On cassettes, it’s always a challenge to avoid a few minutes of silence at the end of the side… so it felt like fate wanted it to be included!

Is there a conceptual reason that ‘Dynamic Movements’ is a cassette only release in the physical realm?

Johan: Since the project is clearly divided into two halves, it felt like a must to release it on a medium with two sides, like cassette or LP. A cassette release fits very well in tradition with “exercise tapes” of the 70s and 80s.

What is next for you both, individually and together?

Mikael: Together, Johan and I have three new ambient tracks pretty finalized – two of them will appear on Johan’s forthcoming ambient album, the third one will most likely be released as a single. There´s also a nice deal of other projects that calls for my attention. I´ve produced an electronic interpretation of a classic Bach masterpiece that´s in the final mixing stage and will drop in late 2024. Furthermore there´s an old school acid trance collaboration that I aim to release further ahead. In addition to that there´s a number of parallel productions that I´m about to give the final touch. These are truly exciting and productive times.

Johan: I’m currently focusing on finishing the new Sally Shapiro album, which is currently in mixing stage (actually Mikael has co-produced two of the tracks on it). I’m also working on a new ambient album which is about 90% finished, but moving forward quite slowly – that one will be my first solo album with completely new material in about ten years. Before those two albums, I’m releasing an EP with the synthwave singer Yota in early October (on 12” via Keytar Records), the first single from it ‘Universe In Flames’ is already released.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Johan Agebörn and Mikael Ögren

‘Dynamic Movements – Music for Exercise & Relaxation’ is released on limited edition cassette and didgital formats via Lo Recordings, available direct from https://agebjorn.bandcamp.com/album/dynamic-movements-music-for-exercise-relaxation

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Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
23 August 2024

TIM BOWNESS Interview

29 July 2024 /

Tim Bowness expresses his nowness with a summer album release entitled ‘Powder Dry’.

Cutting his teeth in PLENTY and then NO-MAN with Steven Wilson, the multi-instrumental singer / songwriter has also worked with the likes of Richard Barbieri, David Torn, Phil Manzanera, Roger Eno, Peter Hammill, Gavin Harrison, Saro Cosentino, David Rhodes, Colin Edwin and Peter Chilvers over the years.

While the gothic synth-driven first single ‘Rock Hudson’ is inspired by the iconic Hollywood star, it also doubles as a paranoid ode to online discourse. ‘Powder Dry’ possesses an urgency not previously heard on a Tim Bowness record. 16 tracks speed through its restless 40 minutes with a dark mood looming as a result of Bowness revisiting his passion for the post-punk and electronic pop acts of his teens.

His eighth solo album, ‘Powder Dry’ sees Bowness entirely write, produce and perform a full-length album on his own for the first time. But post-production reinforcements arrive in the form of Steven Wilson (also his partner in the popular podcast series ‘The Album Years’) who contributes its stereo and Surround Sound mixes as well as acting as a sounding board during that process.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK chatted to Tim Bowness about the genesis of ‘Powder Dry’ and much more…

The new album is different in so many ways from previous releases, not least that it is a truly solo effort. Was this a conscious decision or did it just ‘happen’?

Musically, it was entirely an instinctive process. I let what I automatically came up with dictate the directions. ‘After Butterfly Mind’, which was a very energising album, everything seemed to come to a sudden standstill and I only co-wrote around four or five pieces over an 18 month period. All were fine, but nothing felt particularly fresh.

During this lull, Brian Hulse (my fellow PLENTY band member and solo collaborator) suggested that I do everything myself for the first time. I always write and demo songs for my releases (and NO-MAN’s), but bar a few Bandcamp downloads I’ve never had the confidence to make a purely solo release. Generally speaking, I get much better musicians than me to flesh out the music!

Once I’d decided to go it alone, everything fell into place very quickly. From the first piece I wrote for the album (‘When Summer Comes) to the last (‘Summer Turned’), I felt a real sense of excitement and discovery writing the music. The melodies and ideas flowed and I tried not to get in the way of them.

What was the approach to writing and recording? Did you set time aside or was it more organic?

Organic. If I had a feeling or an idea, I tried to capture it as best I could. Once I was caught up in the process of writing the album, things moved rapidly. I wrote 26 pieces overall, most of which seemed quite distinct from one another both in terms of emotional content and musical style. I genuinely think that the finished album is my most eclectic and unfettered release, and the 10 tracks I dropped from it explored even more directions.

What equipment was used and was it recorded at home?

It was entirely recorded at home and, for convenience, I used my cheapest equipment. Partly because it was easy to set up and lying around, and partly (in the case of the guitar, anyway) because it had a unique quality.

The only extravagance was that I used about five microphones (an sE, a Shure, a couple of Rødes, a Neumann etc) for the vocals. I’d often sing the songs through different mics to gauge which worked better for particular songs. By the end of the album, I was using two microphones exclusively (the Neumann and the recently released Røde NT1 Fifth Generation).

On a few songs, I recorded an electric guitar acoustically through a microphone and then processed the recordings through virtual pedal boards. Lo-fi!

Did you miss the collaborative aspect of recording and as a solo piece was there more pressure on you?

I love collaborating and will continue to work with other musicians, but I can’t say I did miss it during the making of ‘Powder Dry’.

I felt a sense of freedom creating the album and while I’m without doubt the worst musician I work with, I found that my musical ignorance meant that I explored a lot more territory than I usually do. Often when I’m collaborating, musicians tend to present me with what they think will suit my voice. As such, the sonic and emotional palate can be more limited than what I come up with myself.

I didn’t feel any pressure, but the album was a real mixture of instinct and obsessive attention to detail. As you probably know, the recording process can be quick but the editing of vocal, guitar and keyboard takes can be exhausting and time-consuming (as can be the selection of sounds). The final 5% of any piece tends to eat up 99% of the time spent making it.

In the press release accompanying the album, you cite the likes of JOY DIVISION and THE CURE as influences on this release though I hear the likes of Momus throughout too. Did revisiting these artists during The Album Years podcast reignite something in you (The angry not so young man!?)

I think I realised a while back, that I’m still angry and unresolved in some ways and that that anger still makes its way into my music. Living in such a divisive and perilous time as we currently are doing also feeds in to this.

Momus’ work in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a big inspiration to the early NO-MAN. Particularly his ability to make ugly themes beautiful and accessible.

I was a big fan of the creative Post-Punk and electro-pop scenes between 1978-1984. As with Psychedelic / Underground / Progressive / Fusion / Progressive Soul music of the late 1960s/early 1970s, there was a real sense of artists expanding Rock’s vocabulary and accidentally discovering new sonic worlds. People like Bowie, Donna Summer, Kraftwerk and Eno had paved the way and established artists like Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Bill Nelson innovated in ways that equalled the young bucks such as JAPAN, COMSAT ANGELS, MAGAZINE and THE CURE, so it was an exciting time to be a teenager.

The tracks are all shorter than perhaps many of your fans would expect / like and in places are quite noise filled / punky. Was this what you felt was appropriate given the album themes of “ideological extremism, eco-apocalypse, and the all-too human quest for love in a time of crisis”?

It must have been!

In truth, the pieces came out the way they did and I just went with the flow of ideas. In most cases, the lyrics were a response to the music. I mostly write words to the melodies (which, in turn, spring from the music), though I do have a large file of phrases, titles and lyric ideas that I also draw from.

‘Built To Last’ and ‘Idiots At Large’ fall into the eco-apocalypse category and the music and lyrics work well together in both cases, I feel. Despite being ugly as hell, the final blast of ominous noise on ‘Built To Last’ was a delight to create. I was very pleased that Steven asked me how on earth I achieved the guitar sound (which is more like a distorted multi-tracked foghorn than an instrument!).

There are some moments of respite from the gloom. ‘Lost / Not Lost’ is as close as I’ve come to a euphoric love / lust song in years.

How did you get inspired to write a song about Rock Hudson, is there something in his tragic story that makes him perfect foil for the Tim Bowness world?

A definite yes to that. He was a commanding presence who did some great work (‘Seconds’ being my personal favourite). His dual life and the compromises he made in order to maintain a career in Hollywood was certainly a source of inspiration. Significantly, he was also the person who humanised AIDS for a generation (bringing in more funding and understanding as a result of publicising his diagnosis).

As a kid, I liked a number of his films and TV appearances. Knowing later that he did many under duress added a poignancy to his legacy as well as my enjoyment of his work.

Steven Wilson mixed the album and also acted as your sounding board. How did that second ‘task’ manifest itself?

Well, Steven was very encouraging right from the start. When I told him about what I was doing, he said (like Brian) that it was something I should have done a long time ago. Steven’s view was that my demos tended to be less polite and more adventurous than what ended up on my albums.

When I’d nearly finished the album, SW asked to hear the music. He was very complimentary and started mixing straight away. His positive response encouraged me to finish everything off.

He was a sounding board in that he commented on the tracks he liked the most and made me stick to the album just being me. He also edited a few tracks differently. So, he added a cut and paste coda to one track, truncated a couple of others, shifted where the backing vocals were on another etc. On a couple of the songs he went further, but I rejected those as I felt they weren’t operating in the spirit of the purely solo album that we’d both decided it should be.

You’ve been playing live sporadically over the last couple of years and the sets you have performed are not the usual fare one would expect, like at the ‘Butterfly Mind’ album launch in 2022, you played nothing from the actual album for example! How do you go about putting a live Tim Bowness set together?

I always work to the strength of the musicians I’m playing with. I’ve never been interested in replicating albums on stage as, for me, the live experience should be something unique, expressive and spontaneous. I select material that I think will suit the players.

The current live band I have is incredibly powerful and very different from most line-ups I’ve worked with (very ‘whisper to a scream’ in terms of dynamics). No piece is ever performed in the same way. While I do play solo and new work, it’s been a delight to breathe new life into NO-MAN pieces like ‘Housekeeping’ and ‘Sweetheart Raw’ that haven’t been played live for decades.

You have a number of different formats available for the release. Is this an expectation you have to meet now and how do you keep it ‘fresh’?

That was a record company decision. I’d have probably kept things to CD / Blu-Ray and vinyl if allowed. That said, I still like the cassette format and coloured vinyls are lovely to have and to hold.

The album is still sacrosanct for me and I always work to the classic 35 to 45 minute limits of the traditional physical LP. I feel it’s the ideal length for the music I make. It took me 30 attempts to get the sequencing right and I ended up dropping a couple of my favourite songs from the sessions.

As for freshness, it may seem weird at this stage of my career, but I approach everything as if it’s the first time I’ve ever done it. For me, this could even be a debut album.

On that subject, the recent NO-MAN retrospective ‘Housekeeping’ was very well received. How pleased were you both with that and will there be a second set covering the later releases?

Really pleased as it’s music that still means a lot to both of us. Yes, we hope that there will be a second set covering a later period of the band’s music (though licensing might be an issue with some albums).

The continuing success of ‘The Album Years’ podcast must be gratifying. Yours and Steven’s knowledge of the music covered is frankly at times staggering. Do you need to rein one another in at points or is that all done in the edit?

It’s pretty much all in the edit. We tend to talk for hours and then edit ourselves down ruthlessly. If anything, the show doesn’t contain the true extent of our listening. Then again, when people complain about us not covering certain albums / artists, I often feel as if we don’t know enough!
The success has been very welcome and unexpected as has been the knowledge that certain artists have sold things off the back of the podcast (Godley & Creme and Peter Hammill, in particular).

What’s next for you? Will you be looking to tour this release?

Hopefully. There’ll be a date or two, plus a live album with Butterfly Mind. I’ve been writing new pieces on guitar of late, but I’ve no idea what they’ll become. I do have an idea – and some lyrics – for a follow up to ‘Lost In The Ghost Light’ (another love letter to the dying art of the album!) plus a desire to make a very quiet album that drifts into total silence. Outside of that, hopefully there will be some more PLENTY, NO-MAN and Bowness / Chilvers as well as a single with marvellous Julianne Regan.

While I’m really happy with where my music is at the moment (both live and in the studio), I don’t feel optimistic about the industry as a whole or about my carrying on making albums in the long-term. We’re living in a time where music has lost its value. Music is suffering as a consequence, along with 99.9% of musicians. There are still idealistic / interesting artists out there if you’re prepared to look, of course. That said, I sometimes don’t know how long I can positively carry on making music in such hostile commercial conditions.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Tim Bowness

Additional thanks to Simon Glacken at For The Lost

‘Powder Dry’ is released by Kscope on 13 September 2024 in pink and yellow coloured vinyl LP editions alongside a bonus CD edition with 5.1 surround sound DVD included. Standard black vinyl LP and standard CD editions will also be available – information at https://burningshed.com/store/timbowness

Tim Bowness plays Prog The Forest at The Fiddler’s Elbow, Camden, London NW5 3HS on 1 December 2024

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Interview by Ian Ferguson
Additional material by Chi Ming Lai
Photos by Leon Barker
29 July 2024

DREAM MACHINES Interview

19 July 2024 /

‘Dream Machines: Electronic Music in Britain from Doctor Who to Acid House’ is a fascinating book tracing several decades of British electronic music.

Written by Matthew Collin whose previous books have included ‘Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House’, ‘Rave On: Global Adventures in Electronic Dance Music’ and ‘Pop Grenade: From Public Enemy to Pussy Riot – Dispatches from Musical Frontlines’, the content in ‘Dream Machines’ covers early avant-garde experiments, psychedelia, space rock, art rock, reggae, synthpop, electro, sampling, Hi-NRG, house and techno across 400+ pages. As well as technological advances in music making, the cultural and socio-political shifts that changed attitudes and gave tools to outsiders for self-expression are discussed.

Among the many who have been interviewed about this formative period are Gary Numan, John Foxx, Dave Ball, Stephen Morris, Martyn Ware, Chris Carter, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Steve Hillage, Miquette Giraudy, Stephen Mallinder, Ian Levine, Gerald Simpson, Mark Moore, Dennis Bovell, Don Letts, Adrian Sherwood and the late Keith LeBlanc.

Matthew Collin spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about the research and writing behind ‘Dream Machines: Electronic Music in Britain from Doctor Who to Acid House’.

What drew you towards a love of electronic sounds?

When I was growing up, you could hear all sorts of records on the radio and in the pop charts that used electronics in different ways – KRAFTWERK’s ‘Autobahn’, ‘Popcorn’ by HOT BUTTER, CHICORY TIP’s ‘Son of My Father’ with its gnarly Moog riff. But as a child, I didn’t really identify any of this stuff as ‘electronic music’ as such. You would actually have some quite strange music in the pop charts back in the 1970s, like Rupie Edwards’ bonkers dub track ‘Ire Feelings (Skanga)’. Then there was Bowie, Roxy, Donna Summer’s disco hits with Giorgio Moroder – amazing records, all futuristic in different ways.

This adventurous music that seemed to gaze into the future always excited me – records made by charismatic nonconformists, flamboyant idealists and crazy dreamers; the kind of people I found fascinating. That’s why I also loved that arty DIY postpunk period when people were making mad noises with tape loops, Wasp synths, echo units and drum machines put through fuzzboxes, as well as the raw, early electro-pop; all those releases on independent labels like Rough Trade, Factory, Mute, Fast Product and Industrial Records. Then as the 1980s progressed you got hip-hop and electronic dance music in all its thrilling varieties, which seemed to take this adventurous spirit forwards.

Photo by Nia Gvatua

There are a lot of electronic and dance music books already, so what makes ‘Dream Machines’ different in concept?

‘Dream Machines’ is a celebration of the early pioneers of electronic music in the UK, tracking the story back to the period after World War II when people who dreamed of a new kind of music first got access to tape recorders to turn their dreams into reality. The book follows the music’s trajectory through the sixties, when weird sounds were pumped into the nation’s living rooms by THE BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP, the sonic experiments of adventurous pop musicians like THE BEATLES, through the psychedelic era and into the seventies and eighties with the emergence of dub, electro, hip-hop and then house and techno.

What’s different about the book is that as well as examining how new technology affected the music that was being made, it locates the music’s development within the massive social changes that were happening in Britain during those decades – post-war optimism, the rise of sixties bohemia and liberation movements fighting for equal rights and against discrimination, the Windrush generation’s huge influence on British musical culture, the political turbulence of the seventies and eighties. All these social changes influenced the people who made this music and were reflected in the sounds that they made.

How important was THE BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP in this story?

Massively important. THE BBC RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP introduced so many people in Britain to electronic music, not only through soundtracks for science-fiction TV series like ‘Doctor Who’, but also via the musique concrète sounds that the Workshop’s composers created for BBC Schools Radio broadcasts. Kids would be listening to an educational programme and hearing these amazing otherworldly noises blasting out. A lot of people reckon this is why the UK became such a leader in electro-pop in the eighties, because all these schoolchildren grew up on THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP’s electronic sounds.

The Workshop also set a kind of template for electronic music-making in Britain, with its do-it-yourself, make-do-and-mend approach, using whatever equipment was at hand to create new sounds, customising and retooling technology to suit the needs of the moment, mutating and manipulating sonics. DIY futurism, in other words. This spirit endured all the way into the electronic dance music era.

What about the period which you maybe had less knowledge of but most enjoyed writing about from the research and interviews you conducted?

I wasn’t a massive fan of seventies hippie bands like GONG and HAWKWIND before I wrote the book, but I have huge admiration for them now. They were truly out there, combining cosmic electronics with psychedelic rock, experimenting with improvisation and tranced-out repetitive beats. It was a creative counterpart to the fantastic music that Krautrock bands like CAN, FAUST and AMON DÜÜL II were making in Germany around the same time.

Synth Britannia put the pop into synth, is this a movement that you look on fondly, is it finally getting the cultural recognition it deserves?

Culturally, this was a very interesting moment, and not just for the music. People like Phil Oakey, Marc Almond and Annie Lennox were playing with ideas of sartorial genderfluidity, different ways of expressing sexuality, transgressing societal norms. FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD were jubilantly celebrating gay sex, while Imagination were presenting an “alternative masculinity with feminine attributes”, as the writer Marcus Barnes has put it, challenging preconceptions about how a Black British group should look and act. The greatest hits of the synth-pop eighties are now replayed on a seemingly perpetual loop on nostalgia radio as depoliticised and dehistoricised entertainment, but this was a much more culturally progressive period than it is sometimes depicted.

You discuss dub reggae in the book and John Foxx mentions how witnessing Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry at work influenced the sound of ‘Metamatic’, it’s interesting how all these dots join…

It’s impossible to understate how important dub has been to the development of electronic music, particularly its ideas about the creative use of space and echo. It was also a crucial factor in the musical make-up of genres like jungle, drum and bass, trip-hop, dubstep and most subsequent British-made electronic dance music, as well as making a major impact on rock and pop. “Dub changed the way people listen to music and it changed the way people conceive music and compose music”, as the veteran reggae producer Dennis Bovell told me. The Jamaican influence, brought to Britain by the Windrush generation, is something that has given electronic music in the UK its unique flavour and made it different from music created in mainland Europe or the United States.

By the way, Dennis Bovell tells an amusing story about how ‘Silly Games’, the hit he produced for Janet Kay, was recorded in the same studio around the same time as Gary Numan’s ‘Are Friends Electric?’ and used exactly the same synthesizer as Numan’s song. Bovell was actually a big prog rock fan, he even used to play in a band called STONEHENGE, which is why he said he wanted to use synths in reggae.

The story of how Ian Levine only turned to electronics to make ‘So Many Men, So Little Time’ by Miguel Brown due to budget limitations was a key turning point?

British Hi-NRG producer Ian Levine wanted to make lavish disco records using funky musicians and string sections, but because he couldn’t afford it anymore, he had to use drum machines and synths. It’s that DIY ethos again: adapting and mutating sounds because you have no alternative, and creating something new in the process. This is another thread that runs through ‘Dream Machines’, and through British electronic music in general – using the power of the imagination to overcome limitations.

You gave Stock Aitken & Waterman quite a bit of airtime when most books about electronic music wouldn’t be touching them with a barge pole?

I think there’s an interesting story there, however you rate Stock Aitken & Waterman’s records aesthetically. In the book, I write about the cultural importance of Hi-NRG, which was massive in underground gay clubs across the UK in the mid-eighties. Stock Aitken & Waterman then turned this gay electronic disco sound into straight electronic pop, and sold millions of records doing it.

They also brought textures from early Chicago house records into their music. It shows yet again how sounds from underground gay clubs and cutting-edge Black American dance music are readapted into white British pop, often very quickly, and then become part of the collective musical vocabulary.

Acid house took electronic music away from songs, so as an enthusiastic historian of it, where do you think the emotional resonance comes from it or is it more from memory association i.e. the collective experience and the chemical escapism?

I do think that the Ecstasy boom in the late eighties had an impact on the way British electronic music was made, because clubbers on E wanted more repetitive, trancelike grooves with weirder sonic effects, and as a result, producers were making tracks that became longer, freakier and more rhythmically intense. The original Chicago house music was an electronically-rendered, low-budget version of disco, and as time went on, it became increasingly deconstructed. The increasing popularity of E across the UK meant that there was a growing audience for these powerfully hypnotic records, and this in turn meant that more house and techno tracks were needed to meet this demand, which nurtured a rapidly-growing creative community of UK producers.

To you, was acid house like the spirit of THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP with a dance beat?

Acid house offered a kind of unique weirdness that attracted a lot of people in the UK; people who liked strange sounds with a heavy beat. Many of them had undoubtedly grown up hearing THE RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP’s soundtracks for TV and radio. In the book, Haçienda club DJ Jon Dasilva memorably describes acid house as ‘house music’s experimental wing’. When acid house exploded, you had musicians coming into the scene who had previously been involved with postpunk, indie and industrial music, and who brought in new ideas.

You also had people getting involved in acid house who had been involved in previous forms of psychedelic music and were excited by the idea of a technologically-enhanced psychedelia. Steve Hillage and Miquette Giraudy, former members of cosmic jazz-rock band GONG who became techno duo SYSTEM 7, are classic examples of this. As Hillage put it when I interviewed him: “We were very attracted to acid house because of the acid in it.”

You interviewed quite a few people for the book, from those who perhaps you not had spoken to much before, what were the biggest revelations for you, stuff that you were not aware of or had only heard on hearsay but now confirmed?

I loved the way that disparate musical ideas, scenes and people connect across history. One example is the historical link between the 1970s hippie festival by the ancient monument at Stonehenge and the 21st century techno temple Berghain. Britain’s first all-electronic band, a now-obscure group called ZORCH, played live at the Stonehenge festival back in 1974, where they met Tony Andrews, an expert in sound system technology. After working as ZORCH’s sound system man, Andrews went on to set up Turbosound, the company that provided the sound systems for the early acid house raves, and then he co-founded Funktion 1, which now provides top-of-the-range sound rigs for techno clubs like Berghain. So there’s this chain of creative links stretching for five decades through British electronic music history.

I also loved the way that sounds and styles are exchanged across countries and continents, adapting and mutating in the process. One example in the book is a UK-based producer called Tony Williams, a radio DJ in London who wanted to make a funky hip-hop groove that sounded a bit like THE SUGARHILL GANG’s ‘Rappers Delight’, which had just been a hit. But he booked reggae musicians to play it, and the sessions were mixed by a UK dub engineer, so the track, ‘Love Money’ by TW FUNK MASTERS, turned out like a kind of Caribbean-inflected disco-dub. Williams’ record then influenced New York producers and DJs like François Kevorkian and Larry Levan, who emulated Williams’ style for records that defined the sound of the Paradise Garage, the iconic NY underground club. So you had all these musical ideas from the US, Jamaica and the UK crossing back and forth across the world to create something fresh.

Did you get everyone you wanted to interview for the book? Were there any notable people who declined that you can talk about?

Paul McCartney would have been a fascinating interview. He’s often seen as the straightest of THE BEATLES, but he played a very important role in bringing ideas from the avant-garde into pop music. For a period in the mid-sixties when the countercultural ‘underground’ was emerging, McCartney became a cultural explorer on the bohemian fringes of Swinging London, going to see avant-garde concerts and exhibitions. He talked a lot in interviews at that time about discovering electronic music and musique concrète, and people took notice of what he was saying because he was a member of the most famous pop group in the world.

Then once THE BEATLES and their producer George Martin started experimenting with tape loops, sound manipulation and electronics, these techniques started to become assimilated into pop’s sonic universe. THE BEATLES’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ was a landmark in futurist pop, and it set many other musicians on the path of sonic exploration. At the time, it must have sounded like it had been beamed in from another dimension.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Matthew Collin

‘Dream Machines: Electronic Music in Britain From Doctor Who to Acid House’ by Matthew Collin is published by Ominbus Press, available from the usual high street and online booksellers including https://omnibuspress.com/products/dream-machines-electronic-music-in-britain-from-doctor-who-to-acid-house

https://dreammachinesinterviews.blogspot.com/

https://www.instagram.com/matthew._collin/

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
19 July 2024

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