North America’s alternative music power couple Tom Shear and Mari Kattman are back as HELIX.
The former is the mastermind behind ASSEMBLAGE 23 while the latter has established career as a solo artist as well as collaborations with the likes of PSY’AVIAH, 3FORCE and BLACKCARBURING. Originally coming together for Shear’s 2014 EBM side project SURVEILLANCE, their debut HELIX long player ‘Twin’ came in 2018 but busy with their main musical outlets, an EP follow-up ‘Bad Dream’ didn’t appear until 2021.
Blessed with one of the most captivating voices in electronic music, Mari Kattman is on top form with the new HELIX EP ‘Unimaginable Place’. Meanwhile Tom Shear creates soundscapes sympathetic to his leading lady while exploring textures and beats in a variety of dark styles without resorting to the calculated miserabilism of some acts.
The opening ‘Unimaginable Place’ title track is an infectious slice of electronic pop that is perfect for goth club dancefloors with its sparkling hooks and groovy rhythmics. The shadowy drama of ‘Lie To Herself’ though allows space for ominous piano in that present day Gary Numan vein while manoeuvring a staggered lattice of traps.
But sparkling arpeggios act as the draw into ‘Grey’ with the chime of eerie bells alongside bass frequency bubbles for a chilling Eurocentric atmosphere… it is kind of pretty although something far more sinister lies behind the façade that might have more than a few shades… to close, ‘Hurt Like Me’ provides percussively the hardest song on the EP as Mari delivers an impassioned vocal to suit the powerful but distressing backdrop.
There’s a strange appealing romance and hope about this ‘Unimaginable Place’ which presents the best and most immediate body of work that Tom Shear and Mari Kattman have made together as HELIX. Hopefully, there will be more…
Behind the alter-ego of CAT TEMPER is the prolific Boston-based synth meowsician Mike Langlie.
With 13 full length albums since 2019 including the DURAN DURAN endorsed ‘Furio’, there is a new CAT TEMPER long player on the way entitled ‘Nineteen Eighty-Fur’. From it as the first single is the fast-paced catchy electronic pop instrumental ‘Happy Tails’ which owes more than a musical debt to early A-HA.
‘Happy Tails’ comes with a delightful video directed and animated by Jim Ether which takes a trip through the music video hiss-tory of classic MTV as Cat Temper scampers into pop promos including ‘Money for Nothing’, ‘Take On Me’, ‘Billie Jean’, ‘When Doves Cry’, ‘I Ran’, ‘Sweet Dreams’, ‘Faith’, ‘Once in a Lifetime’, ‘Lightning Strikes’ and ‘Whip It’.
Incidentally the ‘Sweet Dreams’ section even includes a computer modelled reproduction of the prototype Movement Mk1 Drum Computer used by EURYTHMICS with the iconic Felix The Cat making a cameo on the monitor while the end sees CAT TEMPER a-a-a-a-a-as-as-as Max Headroom! Among the humorous Easter eggs (and fuzzy mice) are a Furlitizer juke box and a Meowg synth based on the Micromoog.
From behind his Meowg, Mike Langlie chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK with some ‘Happy Tails’.
This is a fabulous audio visual presentation paying tribute to the classic era of MTV when MTV actually played music… how much of a collaboration was it with animator Jim Ether regarding the storyboard etc?
Thank you! Jim Ether and I are both 80s kids and we jumped at the idea of doing an homage to classic MTV hits. I put together a video storyboard of clips and stills from the originals as a guide for my alter ego taking a trip through music video hiss-tory.
Each shot is different and presented unique challenges that Jim solved quite creatively. We wildly underestimated the amount of time and effort it would take and Jim went way beyond what I expected. I’m blown away by his attention to detail and ability to give so much purr-sonality to masked animated characters.
How did you choose the videos to pay homage to? Are these songs that have a special place in your heart or was it about choosing the most visually striking?
Both actually. Also ones with cool costumes and environments. It was fun compiling that list and then figuring out how scenes would flow together.
The Klaus Nomi ‘Lightning Strikes’ reference is a comparatively obscure one but welcome, was he an MTV discovery?
Most of the references are quite well-known but we couldn’t make it all too easy! People like Klaus Nomi and other innovative bands like THE RESIDENTS and DEVO focused on visual art as much as music and were already making experimental videos before there was a platform to distribute them. MTV gladly took them in to fill airtime as the channel got off the ground, providing them with a huge audience they may have never found otherwise. Many of my favorite musicians and albums are from that moment in time when the outsiders invaded the mainstream.
The ‘Happy Trails’ track itself is inspired by ‘Take On Me’, what synths / software were you using to construct it and how did it develop?
I started making music in the 1980s and my style hasn’t changed much through the years. Thankfully retro synthpop is back in fashion! I still use gear I’ve had since then and a lot of soft synths recreating classic hardware I sold or could never afford. Roland Juno basses and pads, Yamaha DX7 bells and leads, Jupiter-4 arpeggios, LinnDrum and Simmons drums among others. Also plenty of weird sounds from my first and favorite synth, the Casio CZ-101 which appears on almost all of my songs.
Your album ‘Furio’ with its ‘Rio’ inspired artwork got featured on the DURAN DURAN website, how was that for you and are you hoping for an endorsement from A-HA?
DURAN DURAN’s ‘Rio’ is my all-time favorite album and artwork so I couldn’t resist doing my own take on the sleeve design. I braced myself for backlash from Duran fans, but was thrilled to find it embraced by them as well as the band and their cover designer Malcolm Garrett. I can’t imagine A-HA will ever see the ‘Happy Tails’ video but if they do I hope they consider it a loving tribute!
‘Happy Trails’ is from the new CAT TEMPER album ‘Nineteen Eighty-Fur’, what’s the concept or is that blindingly obvious? Will there be more videos?
‘Nineteen Eighty-Fur’ is the third album in my trilogy of classic album art tributes, after ‘Furio’ and ‘Mystic Kitten’ which is based on Alice Cooper’s ‘Welcome To My Nightmare’. Jennifer Maher Coleman of the band ARCHITRAVE painted a great cover that I can’t wait to reveal in March. You can probably guess what album inspired it from the title. Several songs have musical nods to 80s staples that I hope listeners have fun picking out.
No plans for more videos yet but I hope to do at least one more. Jim Ether is still recovering from the work this one took!
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its feline thanks to Mike Langlie
Music made with “kind and gentle ears”, Suffolk-based modular synthesist and Oram Award Winner Loula Yorke has described her luminous second solo album ‘Volta’ as being like “Laurie Speigel meets AUTECHRE”.
Inspired by pioneering ‘Sisters With Transistors’ such as Suzanne Ciani, Laurie Spiegel and Caterina Barbieri, Loula Yorke has altered her approach to music making for her new long player. While her debut album ‘Florescence’ emerged from patching and routing experiments coupled with melodic content reliant on improvised pseudo-random quantised pitches, ‘Volta’ is born out of composed sequences.
Setting herself hard rules of no granular synthesis – no vocals – no drums, each track however had to be reproducible live with the minimum of repatching in-between. The end result is a wonderfully cohesive body of work with an appealing aesthetic.
For those who may be put off by the perceived self-indulgent nature of the modular synthesizer world, the beauty of ‘Volta’ is its melodic accessibility while still maintaining an experimental ethos. Born out of composed sequences, Loula Yorke keeps her set-up basic, using two Arturia Rackbrute 84hp 6U cases with the main sounds coming from a Verbos Harmonic Oscillator, controlled by a Erica Synths Black Sequencer.
A bittersweet meditation on overwhelm, the wonderful opener ‘It’s been decided that if you lay down no-one will die’ exudes a deep hypnotism with subtle entries into higher spectrums. Inspired by nature ‘The grounds are changing as they promise to do’ provides subtle cyclic changes before building into pulsating bliss to evoke the feeling of autumn leaves underfoot. ‘Staying with the trouble’ is shaped by a cascading array of engaging electronics while ‘The hidden messages in water’ comes at a slower pace with mystical zaps.
The longest track ‘An example of periodic time’ is a magical experiment, varying in tempo and bursting with bleepfests but the cerebral ‘Anecdoche’ offers a dreamy Terry Riley ‘A Rainbow In Curved Air’ feel. ‘Falling apart together’ closes ‘Volta with minimal structures and a very slow-moving sequence with glide applied for pause and effect.
With its carefully woven patterns of colourful sound, ‘Volta’ is wonderfully immediate. If you have never tried instrumental modular synth music before, then this is a very good place to start.
NO-MAN, the long-term musical collaboration between Tim Bowness and the musical juggernaut that is Steven Wilson is now amazingly well into its fourth decade and this retrospective boxset takes us way back to the beginning to cover the early output on the OLI label.
Featuring the band’s first two studio albums, ‘Loveblows & Lovecries’ and ‘Flowermouth’ alongside with the singles compilation ‘Lovesighs – An Entertainment’, the deluxe 5CD collection is rounded off with outtakes, alternate versions and the sessions for radio from the period.
Taking things chronologically, we come first to the ‘Lovesighs’ mini album which includes the band’s debut two singles with additional material from that era. This is where I came in having heard the cover of the Donovan hit ‘Colours’ in my local record shop (remember those?) one rainy afternoon and being taken by the spin on a song which I was all too familiar with.
Also featured here is the wonderful ‘Days in the Trees’ in various guises. A staple of Tim’s solo shows to this day, this is still one of Bowness’s finest vocal recordings and includes some wonderful early guitar work from Wilson. ‘Heartcheat Pop’ and ‘Kiss Me Stupid’ are also on this disc, both great slices of pop with a darker edge and even at this point, interesting instrumentation to make them stand out. That instrumentation is further augmented by Ben Coleman’s violin which at times is driving on these songs and at other points haunting as a counterpoint to the upfront beats offered.
Disc 2 is an expanded version of the full debut album ‘Loveblows & Lovecries’. In this remastered state, the album is returned to, I feel, its rightful place as not only a evergreen NO-MAN release but also an essential 1993 cut, acting as counterpoint to the grunge overload of the part of the decade. Coleman instrumental workout ‘Loveblow’ segues into the single ‘Only Baby’ which gives more than a passing nod to the Moroder produced Donna Summer who Wilson is such a fan of. This really is a great slice of pop which deserved so much more exposure than it received back in the day.
Casual readers of ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK will have their interest piqued by the track ‘Sweetheart Raw’ featuring as it does JAPAN members Mick Karn on bass, future Wilson bandmate Richard Barbieri on keys and drum programming by Steve Jansen. Once again presented in remastered form which has breathed new life into this whole album, it allows the listener to be immersed in the true depth of the soundscape offered by the musicians here and is a piece you will find yourself returning to again and again as Bowness flexes those wistful vocal chords to fabulous effect.
There is so much to enjoy on this album, from the beautiful ‘Housekeeping’ to ‘Break Heaven’ and ‘Babyship Blue’ from the ‘Heaven Taste’ compilation alongside songs like ‘Tulip’ and ‘Painting Paradise’. This album in reworked form would be worth the price of admission alone but there is more to savour in this set and savour we must.
Disc 3 entitled simply ‘Singles’ pulls together the orphaned tracks not featured thus far and, as a collection works well as a standalone album in its own right, which is a testament to the writing and performing of the core members of the band and their invited guests. ‘Swirl’, an early NO-MAN track, features at its close a sample from the 1971 movie ‘Klute’ which starred Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda so elevates this already great track to essential listening in my eyes / ears. This sample augments a building evolving arrangement that rewards repeat listening.
Also included is the aching ‘Long Day Fall’ and the 20 minute plus closer ‘Heaven Taste’. Once again featuring the trio of JAPAN alumni mentioned above, this is a piece full of twists and turns that demands a listen with headphones. ‘Heaven Taste’ also acts as a suitable off ramp to the next part of this set, a remaster of ‘Flowermouth’.
‘Flowermouth’ has been an album I have returned to over and over since I specially ordered it from that local record shop more years ago now than I care to mention on its original release. The musical ideas, execution and production on ‘Flowermouth’ make it one of those long players I tell folk who will listen that they should have in their collections and I make no apology for evangelising as such.
Is this new remaster worth the time to listen? The answer is a resounding yes. Opening with the ambitious ‘Angels Get Caught in the Beauty Trap’, this is perhaps what listeners of later NO-MAN albums will find more familiar ground. The track rises and falls, leaving you emotionally drained and there’s more to come!
The funky workout that follows in the shape of ‘You Grow More Beautiful’ once again showcases one of no-man’s biggest strengths and that is the vocal of Tim Bowness. Alongside TALK TALK mainman Mark Hollis and Paul Buchanan of THE BLUE NILE, he is one of the few singers with the ability to emotionally charge the seemingly simplest of songs. Every track on this album highlights this wonderfully.
There is so much here to revel in, from the treated rhythms of ‘Soft Shoulders’ to ‘Shell of a Fighter’ with yet another wonderful violin performance to the driving programming on ‘Teardrops Fall’. Closing this disc is perennial favourite ‘Things Change’ which is one of a number of tracks that has not only benefitted from a remaster polish but also a slightly revised mix. ‘Flowermouth’ is a classic and in this guise cements that claim with a sparkling remaster that sounds fresh and vital.
The fifth and final disc in the set fills out an already bursting at the seams collection with a number of Radio Sessions from 1992-1994. Like much of the output from Bowness and Wilson, these songs really come alive when performed live. Augmented across the various sessions by guest musicians, the most interesting cuts are from BBC Radio’s Hit the North featuring as they do those pesky JAPAN chaps that have popped up time and again on this set. The version of ‘Days in the Trees’ from this session in particular is wonderful with the tightest of tight Jansen drumming allowing the much missed Mick Karn to duck and weave around Tim’s vocal. A taste of what might have been…
Other tracks here feature PORCUPINE TREE alumni Chris Maitland and Colin Edwin to offer sufficiently different spins on familiar tracks to command repeat listening. This disc elevates an already great set above a mere quick buck compilation, proving this has been properly curated, something many could learn from. To underscore this even more, the set is rounded out by the inclusion of a hardback book designed by Carl Glover featuring essays from NO-MAN All The Blue Changes blog author Matt Hammers, Tim Bowness and Steven Wilson along with rare photos and memorabilia.
The importance Tim Bowness has had on independent music distribution with Burning Shed cannot be overstated, giving many acts that would struggle to find a route to market exactly that, a true outlet run by artists for artists. That is before we consider his excellent body of solo work.
In turn the impact that Steven Wilson has had across the musical landscape in the last decade plus cannot be underestimated from PORCUPINE TREE to solo work through the remasters of acts as diverse as KING CRIMSON, XTC, TEARS FOR FEARS and ULTRAVOX, oh and tours, further no-man releases and production work, the man clearly never sleeps… that’s before we take into account their always listenable and enjoyable podcast ‘The Album Years’. True music fans.
And all of the above had its seeds in these early NO-MAN releases. Whether you are new to this early work, revisiting after a few decades break or a long-term fan, there is much here to recommend ‘Housekeeping’, the first indispensable release of 2024.
Tim, if you are reading this can we please get the rest of the back catalogue given the same treatment?
Following his history of space travel concept opus ‘Technology For The Youth’ in 2022, Peter Fitzpatrick has landed back on earth and returns as CIRCUIT3 with ‘Louder Than Words’.
Featuring the tasty sounds of a Minimoog Model D, Sequential Prophet 10, Roland Juno 106 and Oberheim OBX-8, the synth-obsessed Irishman has headed down to the disco for a glitterball pop groover unlike any of his previous works. This CIRCUIT3 track is an exclusive which forms part of a new AnalogueTrash Label Sampler which also features SPRAY and VIEON. ‘Louder Than Words’ also comes with a striking visual accompaniment generated by AI.
Peter Fitzpatrick chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about the making of ‘Louder Than Words’ and the impact of technology for the middle aged man…
‘Louder Than Words’ is a disco song, is this signs of a new direction?
I’m getting braver I guess. Over the last 2-3 years I’ve listened to a lot of current and legacy dance music. I can’t dance so it’s a little perverted that I dare try this. Feeling a burst of new creative energy after what was a challenging year health-wise, it’s going to come out in some form or another. Somehow I doubt I’ll be able to just ‘do’ dance tracks and there’ll have to be an element of classic synth pop miserable-ism in there. The title and lyrics came from my regular writing partner Brian McCloskey (host of the Smash Hits blog ‘Like Punk Never Happened’). When I started to put my own spin on his lyric the imagery which came to mind was the Silence=Death Project. “Silence has spoken…. Louder than words”.
The music came from a host of new instruments in my studio including the classic Minimoog and an OBX-8. Someone at the label said “ohh that solo is like CHROMEO”. Loved hearing that as I do like to listen to funk and sometimes late at night in the studio, I pretend I can play it.
You did the video using AI, how did that come about?
In my day job, I’ve been learning how to apply Generative AI and naturally instead of doing actual work, I was exploring how I might apply it to my music. Using a commercial Generative Video AI service, I learned in a few hours that I loved doing this. I’ve always enjoyed making video but I’m a frustrated visual artist. My prompts to the AI toolset allowed me use various models and piece together over a few evenings the video you’re sharing now. The technology is really enabling for me.
There’s a bit in the middle with the car which appears to be very Jack Vettriano in imagery, what that part of the brief you’d instructed?
Well spotted! Until I started playing with the AI toolset, I had no idea who Mr Vettriano is. With AI it can create a model based upon certain style or content. On my request, the tool created a section which used the style of Jack Vettriano. All I saw were some visual options I could use and I liked how it looked. After you pointed it out, I went back and indeed that’s the style of the model I chose.
Dunno about you, but I’m getting sick of these one minute reels that are passing for videos on socials appeasing listeners with low attention spans when those us with a bit more focus want a full length visual presentation… so with AI, musicians have no excuse not to make videos, discuss 😉
The dumbing down continues. When a 4 minute video is considered long-form, I think we’re in trouble! AI is another tool for musicians. For this video I chose to do it entirely using an AI toolset but my preference would be to use it to enhance other video content. In fact I’m working on making an AI model of myself with a view to creating hybrid real-life / AI video. Watch out though because there’s about to be a lot of really sh*t video created.
What is next for CIRCUIT3? I’m getting tired of the single track release strategy used by many acts to max the Spotify algorithm, are you going to join in on that one or will it be an EP, mini-album or full length long player for you?
I’m back writing and demo’ing across 3 different projects right now. One of them will be a Dystopian Disco building up on this first track ‘Louder Than Words’. The other 2 could not be further away from anything I’ve done before. My live show has been revamped to become more interactive and inventive. I’m working on a niche project which was offered to me by someone on the night of the Vince Clarke live show in the London School of Economics in late 2023 which signals the direction of that endeavour.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Peter Fitzpatrick
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