Electronic pop music laid slightly wounded in 1985.
It was a year of transition as DEPECHE MODE did not release a new album, but consolidated with a handy compilation ‘The Singles 81-85’ although its very weak new track ‘It’s Called A Heart’ was thankfully not a sign of things to come.
Meanwhile after the critical acclaim with their debut single, the Bobby Orlando produced version of ‘West End Girls’ in 1984, PET SHOP BOYS were struggling to gain traction despite signing a deal with EMI with their first single for the label ‘Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots Of Money)’ which stalled on its first release at No116; but a re-recorded version of ‘West End Girls’ produced by Stephen Hague issued towards the end of 1985 would change fortunes in time for the start of 1986.
One of the key singles of 1985 was ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ by Grace Jones; wonderful, sun-kissed funky pop in its radio version, producer Trevor Horn took the multiple remix approach he had piloted with FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD to its zenith with the parent album. Having worked endlessy to come up with the perfect version and therefore different approaches, rather than actually do a collection of songs, why not do an album that was effectively multiple remixes and interpretations of one song?
The rise of FM synthesis, sampling and computer controlled systems during 1984, sidechained to the success of more guitar driven acts such as U2 and THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS in America, meant that traditional instruments and realistic presets were now the new badge of honour as music made with the inventive electronic sounds prevalent during Synth Britannia faced a backlash. EURYTHMICS moved away from synths to a more conventional band sound while THE SMITHS would continue to be held up by the music press as purer flagbearers of “real music” with Morrissey having already declared “there was nothing more repellent than the synthesizer…”
An early indicator of where things were heading came when ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ was released by SIMPLE MINDS in February 1985 in the US as the theme to a new teen angst movie ‘The Breakfast Club’. Written by Steve Schiff with Keith Forsey who already had co-writes for ‘Flashdance’ and ‘Never Ending Story’ to his name, Radio1’s Richard Skinner called the song “bland” but highly FM radio friendly, it was an American No1 before the start of the Summer and was one of centrepieces of the US leg of Live Aid at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. The event coincided with an explosion in corporate rock and “DDD” music made for the up-and-coming CD format by the likes of DIRE STRAITS.
This more rock-infused but technically polished new wave sound would be key to TEARS FOR FEARS’ huge success across the Atlantic with their second album ‘Songs From The Big Chair’. It saw bands like VITAMIN Z adopting that style and they even went as far as hiring Ross Cullum who co-produced TEARS FOR FEARS debut to helm their first album ‘Rites Of Passage’; despite a UK tour opening for Midge Ure, although sales were not forthcoming, singer Geoff Barradale would later use his experience to great effect when he managed ARCTIC MONEYS and took them to stardom.
The most disappointing record of 1985 was ‘Crush’ by OMD; while producer Stephen Hague made their sound more palatable for Trans-Atlantic consumption with more guitars, piano and acoustic drums as exemplified by the uninspiring single ‘So In Love’, the inner sleeve credit of “electronic keyboards” instead of individual synths as on ‘Dazzle Ships’ and ‘Junk Culture or “synthesizers” as on previous albums was a pointer to the blanding out of this once great band for a wider audience in the US.
Despite synths being less desirable in terms of Trans-Atlantic marketability in the move away from cooler European artistry, ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK has been able to assemble a list of 20 albums seen as being part of the admittedly weaker electronic legacy of 1985. Listed in alphabetical order, there is a restriction of one album per artist moniker.
ABC How To Be A Zillionaire!
After the rockisms of ‘Beauty Stab’, the third ABC album sprung a major surprise in its New York electro flavoured lead single ‘How To Be A Millionaire’. “We saw it happening in Times Square, there were B-Boys doing that whole thing to KRAFTWERK which was just amazing. The minute the Emulator II came out, we bought one. No need to pay a Fairlight programmer £750 a day!” said Mark White; ‘Fear Of The World’ would later be sampled for the ELECTRONIC B-side ‘Lean To The Inside’.
Despite being labelled a teenybop group, from the beginning A-HA were always so much more than just the catchy pop of ‘Take On Me’. Containing another three hit singles, there was the wistful ‘Hunting High & Low’ title song while ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ revealed a lyrical darkness as the combination of synths and edgy guitar put them in the same league as ULTRAVOX and ASSOCIATES. But ‘Living A Boy’s Adventure Tale’ was the track that outlined A-HA had longevity.
In response to THE POWER STATION, ARCADIA was Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor’s attempt to be JAPAN, smothered in an esoteric pond of lush arty indulgence. ‘Election Day’ featuring Grace Jones could have been a DURAN DURAN song, as could ‘The Flame’ which bore a resemblance to ‘A View To A Kill’. But ‘Goodbye Is Forever’ was art funk that pointed to where DURAN DURAN would head with ‘Notorious’.
With the departure of Alan Rankine after ‘Sulk’, Billy Mackenzie recruited Martyn Ware and Martin Rushent on its follow-up ‘Perhaps’. Although more glossy in sound, the Rushent produced ‘Waiting For The Love Boat’ could have easily come off ‘Sulk’ while ‘Those First Impressions’ produced by Ware narrowly failed to crack the UK Top40. But the epic string laden drama of ‘Breakfast’ helmed by Rushent was possibly Mackenzie’s greatest single moment.
Despite good crossover songs such as ‘Why Don’t They Leave Things Alone?’ and ‘Lorraine’s My Nurse’, with synthpop now no longer in-vogue, there was a lukewarm reception for the third BLANCMANGE album ‘Believe You Me’. With a proclamation from Neil Arthur that “I feel like I’m losin’ my mind” in the electro-funk of ‘22339’, it led to him and Luscombe calling it a day in order to protect their friendship after a show at the Royal Albert Hall.
Produced by Walter Becker of STEELY DAN, the influence of his band on ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ resulted in much more of a live soulful feel with the contribution of accomplished session musicians while Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon focussed on the songwriting. Classic CHINA CRISIS songs like ‘Black Man Ray’ and ‘King In A Catholic Style’ secured two UK Top20 hits from a single album for the first time.
DEAD OR ALIVE looked like they’d missed the boat when their rivals FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD reached No1 with ‘Relax’. Having heard ‘You Think You’re A Man’ by Divine, Burns recruited the song’s production team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman to work on ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’ which hit the top of the UK singles chart. The eventual ‘Youthquake’ album was a mixed bag, but included another hit ‘In Too Deep’ and the gothic funk epic ‘It’s Been A Long Time’.
Andy Bell and Vince Clarke’s debut album ‘Wonderland’ was not an instant hit. The lead single ‘Who Needs Love (Like That)?’ was mistaken by some to be an unreleased YAZOO recording. Among the album’s highlights were the joyous ‘Reunion’ and the funky ‘Push Me… Shove Me’ . The record’s HI-NRG centrepiece ‘Oh L’Amour’ flopped as a single but undeterred, ERASURE toured the college circuit to build up a new fanbase from scratch.
After JAPAN, drummer Steve Jansen and keyboardist Richard Barbieri formed a new creative partnership. ‘Worlds In A Small Room’ was an instrumental suite commissioned by JVC to accompany a documentary about the Space Shuttle Challenger. ‘Breaking The Silence’ was a beautiful opening piece with elements recalling Ryuichi Sakamoto while the more structured ‘Moving Circles’ had a Jansen vocal added for the Japanese release’s bonus song ‘Move In Circles’.
Thanks to the success of his debut album ‘Human’s Lib’, the follow-up ‘Dream Into Action’ was written by Howard Jones on the road by necessity; “I was writing in dressing rooms on an Akai 12 track recorder…” he said, “we were experimenting a lot so it’s a much more complex record”. There were hopeful anthems in ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ and ‘Life In One Day’ while the plaintive ‘No One Is To Blame’ would become a huge Trans-Atlantic hit in a new version produced by Phil Collins.
‘Low-life’ saw for the first time, a single ‘The Perfect Kiss’ taken from a NEW ORDER album as a compromise following a new US deal with Qwest Records. ‘Low-life’ featured several other highlights and opened with the Country ‘n’ North Western ghost story ‘Love Vigilantes’. The mighty ‘Sunrise’ was another number in the tit-for-that exchange with THE CURE which was clearly influenced by ‘A Forest’ while the brilliant ‘This Time Of Night’ exuded a throbbing post-punk growl.
Co-produced with PPG operators The Wave Team, ‘The Fury’ was the best Gary Numan album since ‘Telekon’. Although very much with the times and in line with acts like FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD and DEAD OR ALIVE, the hard but bright digital sound complimented Numan’s downbeat lyrical outlook. Among the highlights were ‘Call Out The Dogs’, ‘Tricks’ and ‘Miracles’ while the haunting closing track ‘I Still Remember’ was a vocal reimagining of the 1979 instrumental ‘Random’.
PHILIP OAKEY & GIORGIO MORODER Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder
After the worldwide success of ‘Together In Electric Dreams’ and the lukewarm response to THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s ‘Hysteria’ in 1984, Virgin Records swiftly despatched Philip Oakey to record an album with Giorgio Moroder. ‘Now’ was Oakey’s heartfelt commentary on economic corruption while the thumping side one segue of ‘Why Must The Show Go On?’, ‘Good-Bye Bad Times’ and ‘Take A Chance’ was a thrilling train ride.
Düsseldorf’s PROPAGANDA were dubbed “ABBA in Hell”! The magnificent film noir of ‘Dr Mabuse’ was their opening salvo produced by Trevor Horn. The producer’s helm was handed over to engineer Stephen J Lipson for the album ‘A Secret Wish’. ‘Duel’ exuded an accessible ice maiden cool while the Teutonic ‘P.Machinery’ was full of state of the art technical tricks. With the lengthy and poetic ‘Dream Within A Dream’, the listener was taken on a massive sonic adventure.
The first major label SCRITTI POLITTI LP ‘Cupid & Psyche 85’ contained the 1984 Arif Mardin produced hits ‘Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)’ and ‘Absolute’, the latter also seeing input from Gary Langan and JJ Jeczalik of THE ART OF NOISE. Green Gartside embraced of mainstream dance pop and state-of-the-art studio production with new song writing partner David Gamson. Meanwhile self-produced reggae inflected ‘The Word Girl returned to sound of earlier Scritti.
After the harder new rock sound of ‘Sparkle In The Rain’ produced by Steve Lillywhite, SIMPLE MINDS brought the synths back in, albeit with a Trans-Atlantic sheen helmed by American production heavyweights Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain. Despite the modern FM rock bombast which even included a rhythm n blues flavour on ‘Sanctify Yourself’, ‘Alive & Kicking’ saw Mick McNeil’s Gaelic accordion virtuosity applied to electronic keyboards for a huge hit in the US and Europe.
DespiteTEARS FOR FEARS adopting more guitar compared to its predecessor ‘The Hurting’, the more band oriented ‘Songs From The Big Chair’ were still characterised by electronics and rhythm programming in its backbone. Cold War angst provided the tension to ‘Shout’ and the big American driving hit ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ while ‘Head Over Heels’ with its blistering synth solo was another Stateside hit, later in the 2001 psychological thriller ‘Donnie Darko’.
Produced by Alan Rankine, ‘Theoretically Chinese’ was as much of an electronic pop departure for Winston Tong from TUXEDMOON as Robert Görl’s ‘Night Full Of Tension’ was from DAF. The era’s inherent Cold War tensions also loomed large on the fine pulsing opener ‘Big Brother’ as well as an excellent uptempo cover of Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Broken English’ while ‘Reports From The Heart’ provided an elegant sweeping ballad.
Midge Ure finally took the solo album plunge with ‘The Gift’. Songs like ‘When The Wind Blows’, ‘That Certain Smile’ and the title track sounded like ULTRAVOX enough to potentially worry his bandmates. But ULTRAVOX would never have covered JETHRO TULL’s ‘Living In The Past’ or recorded the lovey-dovey UK No1 single ‘If I Was’ which was rescued from the unreleased vaults of MESSENGERS whose instrumentalist Danny Mitchell was Ure’s main collaborator on this great adventure.
‘The Gift’ is still available via Chrysalis Records
‘Stella’ was the first album YELLO made without founder member Carlos Perón; Boris Blank and Dieter Meier headed towards a more cinematic style of experimental pop, making greater use of the Fairlight and digital synths. It included the delightful ‘Vicious Games’ featuring vocals by Rush Winters but the album’s biggest track was ‘Oh Yeah’ which ended up in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, ‘The Secret of My Success’ and ‘The Simpsons’.
1984 saw FM synthesis, sampling and computer controlled systems taking a more dominant role in not just electronic music making but within mainstream pop as well.
The ubiquity of the Yamaha DX7 with its realistic sounds and the dominance digital drum machines meant that inventive electronic sound design would take a backseat. This meant that the otherworldly fascination that had come with Synth Britannia was now something of a distant memory. But despite the popularity of the Emulator at this time for its factory disk derived symphonic strings, brass and choirs, the Roland Jupiter 8 remained the main analogue synth for the likes of THE BLUE NILE and TALK TALK as well as Howard Jones.
While Trevor Horn and his team were well equipped with all the state of the art equipment money could buy for the ZTT releases of THE ART OF NOISE and FRANKIE GOES HOLLYWOOD, OMD and HEAVEN 17 were among those who purchased the Fairlight Series II. SOFT CELL and Gary Numan chose the PPG system while THE HUMAN LEAGUE opted for the Synclavier II.
However, despite all the high tech, the most disappointing record of the year was undoubtedly ‘Hysteria’, THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s lukewarm follow-up to ‘Dare’ which departed from the supreme synthpop formula of its predecessor. ‘Dare’ producer Martin Rushent had left the troubled sessions following disagreements with the band but as the recording continued to be prolonged, his replacement Chris Thomas soon followed him through the door. Hugh Padgham who had worked with Phil Collins on his key hit recordings was drafted in to finish the record.
Although the excellent ‘Louise’ saw the estranged couple from ‘Don’t You Want Me?’ cross paths again a few years on, the laudable attempt at political observation and guitar-driven dynamics ‘The Lebanon’ confused fans. Meanwhile the remainder of the album was underwhelming, with the reworked version of ‘I Love You Too Much’ sounding a poor shadow of the dynamic Martin Rushent original which had premiered on the Canadian ‘Fascination! EP in 1983.
Those pop acts who had topped the UK charts in 1983 like CULTURE CLUB and SPANDAU BALLET also suffered from lacklustre follow-ups and were superseded by the rise of WHAM! Despite the absence of a new studio album, DURAN DURAN managed to score a No1 with ‘The Reflex’ and a No2 with ‘The Wild Boys’, both in a creative union with Nile Rodgers while making an impact in 1984 was Nik Kershaw.
The split of YAZOO the previous year led to Alison Moyet issuing her first solo album ‘Alf’ but the new Vince Clarke project THE ASSEMBLY lasted just one single ‘Never Never’ featuring the vocals of Feargal Sharkey. Comparatively quiet in 1984, NEW ORDER released their most commercial single yet in ‘Thieves Like Us’.
With bands like A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS, THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS and U2 having achieved success in North America with a more rock derived template, the lure of the Yankee Dollar steered SIMPLE MINDS towards that less artful bombastic direction with the ultimately flawed ‘Sparkle In The Rain’. The purer synthesizer sound was now less desirable in terms of Trans-Atlantic marketability and pressure was put on acts to use more guitar and live drums, something that would become even more prominent in 1985.
So until then, here are 20 albums selected by ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK seen as contributing to the electronic legacy of 1984. Listed in alphabetical order, there is a restriction of one album per artist moniker
ALPHAVILLE Forever Young
Fronted by Marian Gold, German trio ALPHAVILLE broke through in the UK with a Zeus B Held remix of ‘Big In Japan’ and while that particular version is not included on the ‘Forever Young’ album, the original mix held its own alongside songs like ‘Sound Like A Melody’ and ‘Fallen Angel’. Meanwhile, the poignant title song has since become an evergreen anthem borrowed by the likes of THE KILLERS and JAY-Z!
From the off, THE ART OF NOISE were rattling cages. ‘Beat Box’ was the track which scared KRAFTWERK enough for them to delay the release of their ‘Technopop’ album and rework it as the underwhelming ‘Electric Cafe’. The crazy staccato sample cacophony of ‘Close (To The Edit)’ which was later borrowed by THE PRODIGY for ‘Firestarter’ still sounds as fresh and mad as ever while ‘Moments In Love’ heralded a new age in mood music.
On the back of hit singles in ‘Blind Vision’, ‘That’s Love That It Is’ and ‘Don’t Tell Me’, the brilliantly titled second BLANCMANGE album ‘Mange Tout’ became their biggest seller. Another surprise came with a melodramatic cover of ABBA’s ‘The Day Before You Came’; considered an odd but daring decision at the time, it was something of a cultural prophecy with ABBA now fully reabsorbed into mainstream popular culture.
Glum Scottish trio THE BLUE NILE had an innovative deal with Linn, the Glasgow-based high quality Hi-Fi manufacturer where their crisply produced debut ‘A Walk Across The Rooftops’ as used by dealers to demonstrate the sonic range of their products. ‘Tinseltown In The Rain’ and ‘Stay’ got BBC Radio1 airplay and while they were not hits, the artful album became a favourite among the cognoscenti and other musicians.
When BRONSKI BEAT first appeared, they were nothing short of startling, thanks to their look, melodic synth sound and Jimmy Somerville’s lonely earth shattering falsetto. ‘The Age Of Consent’ used their position as openly gay performers to make important statements such as ‘Smalltown Boy’, ‘Why’ and ‘Need A Man Blues’ as well as the anti-consumerist ‘Junk’ and the self-explanatory protest song ‘No More War’.
Featuring the blissful ‘Sensoria’, the second Some Bizzare long playing adventure of CABARET VOLTAIRE saw Stephen Mallinder and Richard H Kirk at possibly their most accessible yet while still remaining alternative. With a Fairlight CMI now taking over from the previous tape experiments alongside the punchy rhythmic backdrop, tracks like ‘Do Right’ and ‘Slammer’ exemplified their alternative club direction.
With Pete Burns now looking more and more like Gina X, it was no big surprise that her producer Zeus B Held was helming DEAD OR ALIVE’s electronic disco direction. An energetic cover of KC & THE SUNSHINE BAND’s ‘That’s The Way’ was the hit breakthrough but there was also mighty sequencer dance tunes such as ‘Misty Circles’ and ‘What I Want’, as well as the Morrissey fronting ABBA serenity of ‘Far Too Hard’.
Despite more adult songs with S&M metaphors about capitalism and doubts about religion, ‘Some Great Reward’ was the last innocentDEPECHE MODE album. With Gareth Jones now taking on a co-production role with Daniel Miller, the sampling experimentation was honed into the powerful metallic pop of ‘Something To Do’, ‘Master & Servant’, ‘If You Want’ and ‘Blasphemous Rumours’ while there was also the sensitive piano ballad ‘Somebody’.
FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD Welcome To The Pleasure Dome
The Trevor Horn produced ‘Welcome To The Pleasure Dome’ was a double album that should have been edited down to a single record but that would have missed the point. Featuring three supreme UK No1 singles in ‘Relax’, ‘Two Tribes’ and ‘The Power Of Love’, FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD had their place cemented in musical history, regardless of the radio bannings and controversial marketing stunts.
With songs like ‘Playtime’ and ‘Love In Mind’, Robert Görl took a cool escapist journey into synthpop on ‘Night Full Of Tension’ dominated by digital drum machines and sequencers. In a volte face from the DAF drummer, he exuded a relaxed English vocal style in the manner of Bryan Ferry and David Bowie. There were also additional vocal contributions from Annie Lennox on ‘Charlie Cat’ and the duet highlight ‘Darling Don’t Leave Me’.
The success of ‘The Luxury Gap’ brought money into HEAVEN 17 and this was reflected in the orchestrally assisted Fairlight jamboree of ‘How Men Are’. “I think it’s an underrated album and that was when we were probably in our most daring and creative phase” said Martyn Ware and that manifested itself on the sub-ten minute closer ‘And That’s No Lie’ and the outstanding Doomsday Clock referencing opener ‘Five Minutes To Midnight’.
Having been an early adopter of the Fairlight CMI on ‘Magnetic Fields’, Jean-Michel Jarre utilised it further to create an instrumental palette sampled from 25 spoken languages on ‘Zoolook’. It also saw the use of notable musicians including Marcus Miller, Yogi Horton, Adrian Belew and Laurie Anderson who lent her voice to the delightfully oddball ‘Diva’. The magnificent highlight was the 11 minute ‘Ethnicolour’.
‘Human’s Lib’ was the beginning of Howard Jones’ imperial phase, with four hit singles ‘New Song’, ‘What Is Love?’, ‘Hide And Seek’ and ‘Pearl In The Shell’ included on this immediate debut. But there was quality in the other songs with ‘Equality’ sounding like an arrangement blue print for A-HA’s ‘Take On Me’ and the title song about Ruth, David and Dennis touching on the complexities of love triangles!
‘Human’s Lib’ is still available via Cherry Red Records
After the jazzier overtones of ‘Warriors’, ‘Berserker’ was conceived as “a science alternative album” by Gary Numan and therefore much more of an electronic proposition. Dominated by the PPG Wave system which had been the heartbeat of FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, ‘My Dying Machine’ pumped like ‘Relax’ while the rhythmic title song and the exotic ‘Cold Warning’ provided other highlights.
With its embracement of calypso, reggae, indie and mainstream pop, ‘Junk Culture’ was perhaps even more experimental than ‘Dazzle Ships’ and took OMD outside of the Germanic sound laboratory they had emerged from. Known for two slightly inane hits, ‘Locomotion’ put them back into the UK Top5 while ‘Talking Loud & Clear’ only just missed out on the Top10. However, the best single from the album ‘Tesla Girls’ stalled at No21!
Co-produced by Bernard Sumner of NEW ORDER, ‘From The Hip’ followed founder member Larry Cassidy’s statement that “you can’t be a punk all your life”. Recruiting vocalist Jenny Ross and keyboardist Angela Cassidy, ‘Looking From A Hilltop’ with its clattering drum machine, pulsing hypnotism and ominous synth lines was the album’s standout while ‘Program For Light’ explored further electronic territory.
If ‘The Art Of Falling Apart’ was the difficult second SOFT CELL album, ‘This Last Night In Sodom’ was an even more challenging proposition with some tracks even mixed in mono! The thundering percussive cover of ‘Down In The Subway’ was a metaphor for Marc Almond’s mental state while ‘L’ Esqualita’ provided some fabulous gothic menace alongside the frenetic rush of ‘Soul Inside’, all aided by Dave Ball and his PPG Wave 2.2.
Now a trio, the second TALK TALK album saw them work with producer Tim Friese-Greene who would also have a songwriting role alongside Mark Hollis. Still reliant on synthesizers for its aural template, the initial five song sequence from ‘Dum Dum Girl’ to ‘Tomorrow Started’ was superb, taking in the title song, the magnificent ‘Such A Shame’ and the emotive ballad ‘Renée’. It sold well in Europe but was largely ignored in the UK.
Following their breakthrough record ‘Quick Step & Side Kick’, ‘Into The Gap’ was the most commercially successful THOMPSON TWINS studio album, putting the quirky trio into the US Top10. With Tom Bailey now taking on a co-producer role alongside Alex Sadkin, it featured the megahits ‘Hold Me Now’ and ‘Doctor Doctor’ while the neo-title song ‘The Gap’ offered an Eastern flavoured take on ‘Trans-Europe Express’.
With self-produced sessions in the Musicfest home studio of Midge Ure, there were more obviously programmed rhythm tracks than previously while tracks ranged from the earnest rock of ‘One Small Day’ to the sequencer-driven ‘White China’. The apocalyptic Michael Rother influenced ‘Dancing With Tears In My Tears’ that gave ULTRAVOX with their biggest hit since ‘Vienna’ although the Celtic overtures of ‘Man Of Two Worlds’ was the album’s best song.
Celebrating the 40 years since ‘New Song’ was released as his debut single, High Wycombe’s most famous son releases a career spanning boxed set ‘Celebrate It Together’ to gather “The Very Best Of Howard Jones 1983-2023”.
Released on Cherry Red Records, ‘Celebrate It Together’ has been personally curated by Howard Jones into four categories: “Popular Hits”, “Electro”, “Chill” and “Curiosities”; it’s a mix and match of hits, remixes, album tracks, live versions and alternative recordings but with running order very much in mind. The set also comes with a fully illustrated booklet featuring a new interview with Howard Jones reflecting on his four decade career.
The “Popular Hits” are all present and correct, with reminders that catchy numbers such as ‘New Song’, ‘What Is Love?’, ‘Pearl In The Shell’, ‘Like To Get To Know You Well’ and ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ were many a young music fans entry point into the world of synthpop.
While ‘Look Mama’ is an example that not everything he did was of an equal standard, ‘Always Asking Questions’ which was initially the new track inclusion on ‘The 12” Album’ EP in late 1984 is an enjoyable curio from the ‘Human’s Lib’ era. Meanwhile from 1989’s ‘Cross That Line’, the reggae-inflected ‘Everlasting Love’ deserved a higher UK chart placing than No62.
From his most recent long player ‘Dialogue’, ‘Celebrate It Together’ is bouncy and immediate but 2005’s ‘Just Look At You Now’ with its ‘New Song’ lyrical references is superb and shows that Howard Jones’ songwriting abilities did not diminish over the years.
‘No One Is To Blame’ and ‘Hide & Seek’ are naturally popped onto the “Chill” volume and are among Howard Jones’ best ballads, but 2022’s ‘Formed By The Stars’ gives them a run for their money with its absorbing cacophony of electronics. The reflective ‘Will You Still Be There?’ from 1986’s Arif Mardin produced ‘One To One’ album is a welcome addition as an often overlooked item in the HoJo canon while ‘Sleep My Angel’ and ‘Someone You Need’ represent the sensitive piano side.
The “Electro” collection provides an opportunity for those who loved ‘Human’s Lib’ and ‘Dream Into Action’ but perhaps left the fan fold when Howard Jones began tailoring his sound for Trans-Atlantic audiences, to catch up with his recent electronic work such as ‘The One To Love You’, one of three collaborations from 2019’s ‘Transform’ with noted veteran dance producer BT.
The superb 2005 club-flavoured ‘Revolution Of The Heart’ from the album of the same name is undoubtedly a highlight while another is ‘Eagle Will Fly Again’ from ‘Transform’. ‘The Human Touch’ from 2015’s tech-themed ‘Engage’ captures a stomping synthetic spike that perhaps wasn’t so apparent in Howard Jones’ imperial phase while 2022’s ‘Who You Really Want To Be’ is similarly energetic.
Among the “Curiosities”, many will delight in the previously unreleased medley collage ‘Overture 2’, the self-explanatory ‘Havana Version’ of ‘Collective Heartbeat’ and the stark piano cover of David Bowie’s haunting epitaph ‘Lazarus’ recorded live at Siyan. Meanwhile 1997’s ‘Angels & Lovers’ from the Japanese only release of the same name is a good song that is deservedly rescued and if there is the desire to hear Howard Jones pay homage to STEELY DAN, that comes with a fairly identikit but enjoyable cover of Donald Fagen’s ‘IGY (International Geophysical Year)’.
With his continued optimistic worldview, Howard Jones remains a distinctive and recognisable artist with a wide range of styles and these are all represented on ‘Celebrate It Together’. If you have enjoyed any of his work over the past 40 years, there is something for you here. And even if you don’t like everything compiled in this set, what cannot be denied is the quality of this anthology.
In the booklet message to his fans, Howard Jones says: “I hope you enjoy this journey through the different phases of my career. Thanks for sticking with me throughout them and for being so open-minded and enthusiastic. There’s much more to come. I’m nowhere close to being done yet!”
Howard Jones 40th Anniversary 2023 UK tour with special guests BLANCMANGE includes:
Leicester De Montfort Hall (6 October), Birmingham Symphony Hall (7 October), Cambridge Corn Exchange (9 October), Manchester Bridgewater Hall (10 October), York Barbican Centre (11 October), Glasgow Royal Concert Hall (13 October), Newcastle City Hall (14 October), Cardiff St David’s Hall (16 October), London Palladium (17 October), Southend Cliffs Pavilion (18 October)
It was hoped to be a year of positive electricity but with the oddball burst of negative waves, 2022 was summed up by the title of its best album.
The product of Finnish duo SIN COS TAN, ‘Living In Fear’ captured the anxieties of living with The Bear Next Door in a post-pandemic world. With billionaires taking over social media with the intent of allowing the extreme right wing an increased voice, it was as if the lessons of Trump and Bolsonaro had not been learned.
‘The Wolves Are Returning’ warned xPROPAGANDA on a track from their excellent album ‘The Heart Is Strange’, the message coming from two Germans whose grandparents’ generation “did nothing” and had made the mistake of opening up the door to the Nazis was extremely poignant.
It was as if The Cold War had never ended; the poetry of one who has escaped ethnic genocide and been separated from next of kin as a refugee has substance. So for Alanas Chosnau on his second album with Mark Reeder, this was ‘Life Everywhere’ and provided a deeper statement on life during wartime. Meanwhile China’s STOLEN presented their ‘Eroded Creation’ and explained ‘Why We Follow’.
Battles both worldwide and personal were being reflected in music everywhere with ‘War’ by I SPEAK MACHINE being another example. Things did not get much cheerier with Rodney Cromwell whose long-awaited second long player ‘Memory Box’ provided commentary on a sadly post-truth world, the so-called “alternative facts” as Donald Trump’s extremely dim advisor Kellyanne Conway liked to put it.
Meanwhile, MECHA MAIKO maintained it was still ‘NOT OK’, I AM SNOW ANGEL felt it was now a ‘Lost World’ and Swedish duo SALLY SHAPIRO made their comeback by reflecting on ‘Sad Cities’.
As sardonic as ever, DUBSTAR presented their second collection of kitchen sink dramas since they reconfigured as a duo with ‘Two’ and reunited with producer Stephen Hague for their most acclaimed record since their 1995 debut ‘Disgraceful’.
On a more optimistic note, Italians Do It Better brought their cinematic world to London with headline shows by DESIRE and MOTHERMARY who each had new long form releases to air, while shyness was nice for the most promising breakthrough act of the year Gemma Cullingford who got all ‘Tongue Tied’ on her second long player. Meanwhile DAWN TO DAWN, ULTRAFLEX and H/P offered electronically escapist solutions to the year,
But KID MOXIE was happy to ‘Shine’ with the best video of 2022 while CZARINA got mystical with ‘Arcana’, Karin Park looked back at her ‘Private Collection’ and Patricia Wolf explored ambience on ‘See-Through’. Other female talent that shone brightly in 2022 included Norway’s SEA CHANGE, Sweden’s Hanna Rua, Alina Valentina from The Netherlands, Mexican Valentina Moretti and Anglo-French avant songstress Julia-Sophie but sister / brother duos MINIMAL SCHLAGER and SPRAY proved siblings could continue to work well together in synth.
40 years after the release of their debut album ‘Happy Families’, BLANCMANGE returned home to London Records for a ‘Private View’ while mainman Neil Arthur was keeping himself busy with FADER too. Having being shelved for 30 years, the second ELECTRIBE 101 album ‘Electribal Soul’ finally saw the light of day. And some 39 years after it was first conceived, the lost Warren Cann and Hans Zimmer opus ‘Spies’ was released in a new 21st Century recording by the HELDEN Project’s lead vocalist Zaine Griff.
Although PET SHOP BOYS celebrated their career with the magnificent ‘Dreamworld’ tour for the best live event of 2022 and joined SOFT CELL in the ‘Purple Zone’, Marc Almond and David Ball presented the disclaimer ‘*Happiness Not Included’ before announcing that they would be performing at a run of outdoor events in 2023 despite having stated their 2018 O2 extravaganza would be their last.
Also having declared a final album in 2014, RÖYKSOPP returned with the triple volumed ‘Profound Mysteries’ that featured Susanne Sundfør and Alison Goldfrapp.
Veterans Howard Jones, William Orbit, Jean-Michel Jarre and Wolfgang Flür as well as long-standing Nordic combos LUSTANS LAKEJER and A-HA released new albums but while the quality across the releases was mixed, fans were loyal and happy. After various trials and tribulations, TEARS FOR FEARS returned with ‘The Tipping Point’ and erased memories of the lacklustre 2004 comeback ‘Everybody Loves A Happy Ending’, but the duo were unable to capitalise when the majority of the UK concert tour of stately homes was cancelled due to an unfortunate accident that befell Curt Smith.
Creating a dehumanised technologically dependent Sci-Fi world, DIE KRUPPS opted for more machine than metal under their EBM pseudonym DIE ROBO SAPIENS. With NASA making its first steps back to the moon with the Artemis project, fittingly Italian producer EUGENE spent ‘Seven Years In Space’ and Ireland’s CIRCUIT3 looked back at space travel’s past on ‘Technology For The Youth’. Back on earth, THE WEEKND was still being accused of stealing from synthwave while coming up with the song of the year in ‘Less Than Zero’. In the meantime, having infuriated audiences by saying “f*ck that ‘synthwave’ stuff as u name it” in 2018, KAVINSKY was ‘Reborn’ with a second album that had much less of the wave and expanded into broader electronically generated templates with the occasional funkier overtones.
Celebrating ‘40 Years Of Hits’ on a sell-out arena tour and issuing a new album ‘Direction Of The Heart’ which featured a guest appearance by Russell Mael of SPARKS on the single ‘Traffic’ with the obligatory ‘Acoustic Mix’, as the excellent book ‘Themes For Great Cities’ by Graeme Thomson highlighted, the best years of SIMPLE MINDS are now well behind them. They are a poor facsimile of the great band they once were and as a special Summer concert in Edinburgh in honour of ‘New Gold Dream’ proved, Jim Kerr and Co can’t even play their best album properly.
Music-related books continued to be popular with Martyn Ware and Karl Bartos respectively writing their memoirs ‘Electronically Yours Vol1’ and ‘The Sound Of The Machine’. In a wider historical context, that crucial 1978-1983 period where electronic pop was more or less invented got documented in the encyclopaedic ‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’ by Richard Evans.
2022 saw several prominent figures depart for the jukebox in the sky; Vangelis, Manuel Göttsching, Angelo Badalamenti, Julee Cruise, Dave Smith, Herb Deutsch, Terry Hall, Robert Marlow and Andy Fletcher will be sadly missed but ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK was particularly devasted by the passing of German electronic legend Klaus Schulze only 4 days after he gave a rare interview to the site.
Meanwhile Dave Gahan and Martin Gore announced yet another tour of underwhelming arena shows plonked into stadiums for an as-yet-unfinished album that at least had a title ‘Momento Mori’. Ticketscalper took advantage with so-called dynamic pricing (or legalised touting) as hapless Devotees were fleeced thousands of dollars in North America… all this just to see a continually ungrateful frontman (who didn’t even sing is own words on a DEPECHE MODE song until 2005) gesture with a microphone in the air on a catwalk rather than actually singing on it and to possibly hear a pre-1985 song performed that will inevitably ruined by The Drumhead and The Noodler!
As Juls Garat of Massachusetts goth band PILGRIMS OF YEARNING observed via social media: “If you’re spending a kidney on DEPECHE MODE tickets and not attending a local show this weekend, I don’t wanna see you complaining that there’s no scene, local venues or new music anymore”. With the lack of curiosity amongst audiences who were content with nostalgia and the like, it was a difficult year for independent acts.
There is no easy answer and as the old saying goes, you can take a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink. But one promoter that did hit on an innovative idea was Duskwaves who came up with afternoon synth gigs. Hosted at various locations in the South East of England with the aim of drumming up daytime weekend business at venues, events started at 2.00pm and ended by 6.00pm to allow for an easy journey home or possibly dinner afterwards. Artists such as YOUNG EMPRESS,INFRA VIOLET,STRIKE EAGLE and AUW joined in the family friendly fun and while the concept was unusual, with classic synth audiences not getting any younger, it has potential.
While the worldwide situation remains uncomfortable and unsettling, for The Cold War generation, it all seemed strangely familiar. As Jori Hulkkonen of SIN COS TAN said in an interview with ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK recently: “It feels kind of comfortable to be back in that same state of mind that you grew up in!! It’s like you grew up in not a nice place, but you get 20-30 years out of it and then you get drawn back into The Cold War state of mind. It’s where I come from and there’s nothing good about it, but somehow feels very familiar so you can handle it in a different way”.
The Cold War inspired songs such as ‘Enola Gay’, ‘Fireside Favourite’, ‘All Stood Still’, ‘Let’s All Make A Bomb’, ‘I Melt With You’, ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’ and ‘Five Minutes To Midnight’ which encapsulated the nuclear paranoia of the times. So if the current tensions go on any longer, how will artistic expression be affected and driven?
But as Synthesizer Patel actor Sanjeev Kohli wittily remarked of the UK’s 41 day Prime Minister aka Mad Lizzie following her successful leadership bid: “Liz Truss has now been trusted with the nuclear button. I honestly wouldn’t trust her with the bossanova button on a broken Yamaha keyboard”.
In a year which saw the bizarre scenario of a black vicar worshipping Enoch Powell on the repulsive gammon TV channel GB News and the truth about Tory PPE scandals becoming clearer, Richy Sunak, Ugly Patel, Cruella Braverman and Krazi Kwarteng continued to be the ultimate race traitors in their Westminster tribute band A FLOCK OF SIEG HEILS. Failing to look in the mirror, their role as collaborators was all as part of a wider self-serving mission to help keep the whites Reich and line the pockets of their already loaded banker mates instead of paying nurses a fair wage. Nurses are for life and not just for Covid. So what did happen to that £350 million promised for the NHS by that pompous lying posh boy Boris Johnson if Brexit happened? As Tim Burgess of THE CHARLATANS summed it all up rather succinctly on Twitter: “Worth remembering that the real enemy travels by private jet, not by dinghy” ✊😉
‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’ is a new book that tells the story of the Synth Britannia generation, an unlikely melange of outsiders, pioneers and mavericks who took advantage of affordable music technology to conquer the pop charts in the UK, Europe and even America.
Written and assembled by Richard Evans, his high profile roles have included the establishment of the This Is Not Retro née Remember The Eighties website and working with ERASURE on their internet and social media presence.
He has conducted years of extensive research to document the synthpop revolution that began from a British standpoint in 1978 with THE NORMAL and THE HUMAN LEAGUE before TUBEWAY ARMY took this futuristic new sound to No1 with ‘Are Friends Electric?’.
Using the subtitle ‘Inventing Electronic Pop 1978 – 1983’, while the book primarily sources period archive material, additional input comes from Neil Arthur, Dave Ball, Andy Bell, Rusty Egan, John Foxx, Gareth Jones, Daniel Miller and Martyn Ware. Meanwhile, Vince Clarke contributes the foreword while a third verse lyric from the ULTRAVOX song ‘Just For A Moment’ provides the book’s fitting appellation.
A conversation between two kindred spirits, Richard Evans and ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK spent an afternoon talking by the window as the light fades about electronic pop’s musical impact and enduring cultural influence, despite the massed resistance to it back in the day.
For this book, you’ve focussed on 1978 to 1983, some might say it should be 1977 to 1984?
I knew roughly what I wanted to cover and my lofty ambition for the book was to create a document of all the most important records, artists and events that created this shift in pop music. Until this specific generation of people started messing around with keyboards without any musical knowledge, adopting that punk rock attitude with this new instrument, it wasn’t until that point that I felt that this story really started.
I looked at all the records I wanted to talk about and at the beginning, there’s relatively few. But the important ones for me were THE NORMAL ‘TVOD’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’ and THE HUMAN LEAGUE ‘Being Boiled’. In fact, ‘Being Boiled’ was my key one and an early version of the book had the subtitle ‘From Being Boiled To Blue Monday’; I thought that sounded quite snappy and explained what the book covered. But then Daniel Miller said to me “You do know ‘TVOD’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’ came out before ‘Being Boiled’?”*laughs*
So the book had to be specific and start around 1978. Then at the other end, it was because of ‘Blue Monday’. By the time late 1983 comes around, the electronic pop that I have been writing about over this 5-6 year period starts to become indistinguishable from everything else in the charts. All the pop stuff, all the soul stuff, all the American stuff that was coming in, it all had the same sequencer and drum machine sounds, the same production techniques… you could almost not quite work out what was electronic and what wasn’t electronic anymore and ‘Blue Monday’ worked well as a track that was pointing forwards to everything that came next.
By starting at 1978, you are specifically highlighting the start of that British wave because before that, it’s international with bands like KRAFTWERK and SPACE as well as Giorgio Moroder and Jean-Michel Jarre…
That’s absolutely right. There is a brief section at the beginning within the context of the whole book that joins together some of the dots, things that people were taking in their early electronic experiments. Things that Vince Clarke was listening to like SPARKS, things that OMD were listening to like Brian Eno, things that THE HUMAN LEAGUE were listening to like Giorgio Moroder.
Although punk was a driving force for this, the actual punk music wasn’t that interesting to any of them because it felt like music they already knew, whereas they felt these new sounds were something that were unknown to them at that point. The tapestry of their influences was so broad that they would bring in elements of progressive rock, Jean-Michel Jarre and even ELP, putting that in with disco, the German stuff and even the quirky little novelty records like ‘Popcorn’, to create this whole new melting pot.
I’m old enough to have lived through this era, what about you?
This was the first music that felt like it was mine. I grew up in a household where there wasn’t any music, my parents weren’t fans of pop music at all. In a way, that was really important because any music that I found was mine, it wasn’t handed down to me or curated for me. I am the oldest of my siblings so I didn’t have anyone playing stuff in their room that I could hear. Sometimes I would find stuff that was terrible because you make those mistakes.
I started senior school in 1979 so it was really at that point where I became aware of music and its possibilities. But earlier than that in 1977, I was brought up in Chelmsford in Essex and I can remember being in town on a Saturday, seeing the punks hanging around in the shopping centre and I thought they looked brilliant. It was so exciting, they were like scary but otherworldly and I thought they were amazing. When I started senior school, some of those punks were in my school, they were actually kids… in my perception, they weren’t that and were completely ‘other’! I realised I was not so distant from these things *laughs*
You’ve mentioned ‘Being Boiled’, ‘TVOD’ and ‘Warm Leatherette’, but which was your epiphanal moment were you realised you were an electronic pop fan? For me although I had bought ‘The Pleasure Principle’ by Gary Numan as my first album, it wasn’t until I heard OMD ‘Messages’ that I considered electronic music to be my thing…
I don’t know if I have an actual moment to be honest… I realised quite late that I’ve never particularly characterised myself as an electronic music fan, certainly not in the 80s. Looking back, I can see that the things I was listening to and responding to, always had a really strong electronic core. Even if they were rock things like ’Owner Of A Lonely Heart’ by YES which was produced by Trevor Horn, I was obsessed. I was listening to things like ‘The Message’ and that sort of hip-hop stuff… it wasn’t quite electronic music but it had element of precision running through it. Everything I was liking had this common electronic genesis.
One thing that your book does unashamedly focus on which I am pleased about, is that it focusses on the “pop” in electronic pop… other books about electronic music in the past have been a bit “too cool for school”…
Absolutely, that’s completely true. I find it really strange because only quite recently has it been ok to be into “pop music”. Like you say, there’s a stigma towards it, that it’s not “proper music”, that you are not a proper music fan if you listen to it, but a victim of some sort of a commercial heist! *laughs*
I think that electronic pop in this period is so crucial in the development of music, and it was just time for someone to tell the story. I’d been working on the book for a few years and the whole time I thought “someone is going to do this, someone is going to do this before me!” *laughs*
With this book, you opted to reference archive material rather than talk to the stars of the period in the present day?
My idea for the book was to tell the stories of all the bands and releases of that synthpop generation who took music in a whole new direction. Because of what I do in my working life, I am very fortunate in that I have access to a lot of people who were the original protagonists in this story. So I thought I could get in touch with them and job done. I also have a shelf full of music autobiographies and I’m sure you have too! *laughs*
There are loads out there but it was while reading those that made me realise that those stories didn’t always quite marry up. There are two reasons for it; one is this period started 45 years ago, you’re not going to remember these details. Two, these stories have been told so many times that they lose their resonance and the facts just change a little bit to make everything look better or to fit with someone else’s narrative.
Ah yes, legend now accepted as truth like Wolfgang Flür saying OMD came backstage to meet KRAFTWERK in 1975 when they didn’t actually exist at the time…
It’s really easy to say in 2022 that DEPECHE MODE were always going to be a huge band, but in 1981 when there was none of the weight of that knowledge. They were a brand new thing being judged entirely on their first forays into electronic music, it’s a very different way of looking at the music and the people who made it. I realised it wasn’t going to be particularly useful to go to the original people and say “tell me that story again” because they’ve told it that many times that they probably aren’t really feeling it and it gets reshaped over the tellings.
So what I decided to do was go back to the music press of the day. I went to The British Library which is a fantastic resource, it’s one of my favourite places. I looked at all the NME, Sounds, Melody Maker, Record Mirror, Smash Hits, The Face, New Sounds New Styles from 1978 to 1983, everything I could lay my hands on that was music or popular culture related.
I went through all these things, page after page after page and every time I saw something that I attained to this story like a news item, review or interview, I took a photo of it on my phone. I ended up with thousands of photos and it was like a box of jigsaw pieces. Each of these photos was part of a story. Then the writing bit came in stringing these things all together and turning them into this story from all those different perspectives layered on top of each other. Hopefully, that would give it a rounder and more accurate picture because they were the opinions of the time and what the people who made the music were saying about it, without the weight of history that they carry today.
What this book captures and reminds people of, is the viciousness and hostility towards electronic pop from the music press during the period, which perhaps contradicts the rose-tinted view that some fans have of the time now…
It’s really quite strange to read through these original accounts of what was happening, but it’s not so strange in retrospect. At that point in time, punk had just happened and had been quite profitable for the music industry and press, the whole black and white aesthetic fitted very well with the way they presented their material.
There was also this new generation of journalists like Nick Kent and Julie Burchill who were quite vicious with this punk rock attitude which was probably quite exciting at the time. Punk was a very short-lived thing, so they found themselves having to move in different directions and I think there was a resentment that it happened from the media. I think there was a snobbishness which we’ve already touched on that this really wasn’t “proper music” because it was machines, these bands hadn’t paid their dues, they hadn’t picked up the guitar, they hadn’t done the toilet circuit playing to 3 people and a dog, being spat on and having their van stolen, all that kind of thing that supposedly makes you a worthy musician.
So none of these things had quite happened with these electronic pop bands and the music press didn’t know what to make of it. So they could choose to either embrace it as the next big thing, or they could reject it, and many rejected it roundly so…
Can I tell you some irony about Nick Kent’s then-stance? His son is PERTURBATOR, the synthwave star!! But in amongst all this journalistic antagonism, there was one bright light and that was Beverley Glick who wrote as Betty Page in Sounds, a female journalist championing the likes of DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL, DURAN DURAN, SPANDAU BALLET, VISAGE and JAPAN in a male-dominated profession…
She absolutely was and she was the voice that was the breath of fresh air throughout all of this. She was young and she interested in “the new”. In the same way the older journalists were looking for something to call their own, so was she; but her frame of reference was markedly different from theirs. She found it in what they were rejecting and it probably didn’t do her many favours within the profession to be this person until the tipping point happened. The success started to happen with people going “oh, all the Betty Page bands ARE the new wave, they ARE the new pop royalty…”
I hope it was a nice moment for her. In 1982 I think, she changed papers and went to the short-lived Noise magazine and then Record Mirror… hopefully, that was in recognition of her being a leading light in this particular movement.
You’re right to say she was probably among the first journalists to talk to DEPECHE MODE, certainly one of the first to talk to SPANDAU BALLET, to SOFT CELL and JAPAN… she was very vocal and very reasoned. Also reading her, I liked her… I’ve never met her or anything but I liked her style, she wrote a lot like a fan so she wasn’t out there grinding her axe in attempts to look clever, lofty and intellectual. She was reporting the way she was responding to the things she was exposed to and that felt much more interesting and real to me.
The SPANDAU BALLET versus DURAN DURAN thing has been well documented, but what about SOFT CELL versus DEPECHE MODE? They were both on the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ but in 1981, SOFT CELL were rated higher than DEPECHE MODE, any thoughts?
The ‘Some Bizzare Album’ was incredibly prescient and also not quite, because in the increasingly chaotic and strange world of Stevo who was behind it, he was very opinionated but also very passionate. He was playing these sorts of records before anyone else, he was pre-Rusty Egan in terms of the electronic records on the decks. He was interested enough to start his Electronic Party nights at the Clarendon in Hammersmith, putting on people like FAD GADGET.
So he came up with this idea to do the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ and reached out to 12 bands; his hit rate was so great, he had DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL and BLANCMANGE on there, the three of them alone were enough to shape the new generation.
I think SOFT CELL had more of an edge, their image was a lot more together, they looked meaner and a little bit more credible I suppose. Because they had a more credible background and came from art school, in that journalistic way that you have to pay your dues, you have to go through a cycle of things before you’re allowed to call yourself an artist, I think SOFT CELL had more of that. They had more of a concept, they were more artistic and harder edged. DEPECHE MODE came along and were err, just quite sweet…
Yeah, well, they’d just come from Christian camp… apart from Dave! *laughs*
That’s right, their Boys’ Brigade uniforms were probably still hanging in their wardrobes when they were off to do ‘Top Of The Pops’! So they had come from a very different place, they were a little bit younger, they didn’t have that art school background, they’d met at school and messed around in bands. Vince Clarke decides he wants to put this band together who would be a bit like THE CURE, and when Vince starts to put together the bones of what becomes DEPECHE MODE, it seems he’s incapable of writing songs like THE CURE; his aesthetic and musical vibe is entirely pop so he churned out what people termed “bubblegum”.
This term “bubblegum” is in almost every review of DEPECHE MODE’s early works, especially the ‘Speak & Spell’ album. Because of that, they appealed because they were SO pop, but because they were SO pop, they weren’t in the same credibility bracket as someone like SOFT CELL.
Talking of “synthesizer image”, was that important to you as in the equipment that was used and the way it looked on ‘Top Of The Pops’, like when John Foxx appeared with four Yamaha CS80s for ‘No-One Driving’ or ULTRAVOX doing ‘The Thin Wall’ with two Minimoogs, an ARP Odyssey, an Oberheim OBX and much more or Gary Numan’s first TV performances? This was a thing for a while although there would be a backlash later on, like when OMD appeared with a double bass, sax and xylophone for ‘Souvenir’!
I think it was, but in a different way to you. I’m much less technology focussed, I don’t play music, I’ve never picked up a synthesizer, I don’t know my Korg from my Moog from my Wasp. I could never do Vintage Synth Trumps for example *laughs*
Having said that, the aesthetic was really important to me because it felt so different and new. It surprised me in the preparation for this book when looking at the line-ups for ‘Top Of The Pops’ around this period and seeing how unbelievably straight and staid and dull so many of the bands that were coming through from the 70s still were… glam rock aside, they were almost imageless…
Like RACEY and THE DOOLEYS? *laughs*
Yes! Lots of terrible clothes, bad beards and long hair, it all seemed very soft and safe! Now when the electronic bands started coming through, they came with this aesthetic with the keyboards and it looked fantastic. But they also had this new look, they were smarter, had these interesting haircuts and they looked so different. For me, the thing that was most marked about their performances was the sound itself. It was something that I’d never heard before, those noises were SO new and SO modern!
One of the best things about this era was how these weird avant pop songs could enter the charts, they were classic songs but presented in a strange way with these sounds and boundaries were pushed… as much as I embrace this period of music, I always felt when it all crossed over into the mainstream in 1981, I don’t think it was on the cards and kind of a fluke…
I don’t think it was on the cards either… I think everyone was surprised and backfooted by it, particularly the major labels who struggled to keep up with it, in exactly the same what they had struggled to keep up with punk! They came to the party too late and signed all the wrong bands and were saddled with this legacy that they had an obligation to support what was going on, and that’s the point when everything started to become much less interesting.
In terms of the avant pop, I think it was to do with perspective. I think being of the generation that we are of, I think because we were coming of age at that time, it felt we were like a new generation and new things were happening at the time, not just in music but also politically and technologically with computers. So all of these things were happening at once and suddenly the future felt possible and then this music happened at kind of the same time and it felt like the perfect soundtrack to this possible future.
So, I’m going to throw a controversial question at you, in the context of 1978-1983, which is the most important record label out of Virgin and Mute? *laughs due to pause*
… I think creatively, it’s Mute but commercially it’s Virgin.
When I get into this discussion with anyone, I always say Virgin because although they were more established and successful commercially later in this period, they did actually take chances with acts like THE HUMAN LEAGUE, JAPAN and SIMPLE MINDS…
They were both incredibly important and I wouldn’t know who to back in a fight! *laughs*
This is why I wanted to talk about this in the context of 1978-1983 because thanks to some of the business choices that Richard Branson has made over the years which have upset people, the Virgin name has been tarnished as far as their contribution to music is concerned. Meanwhile history has seen Daniel Miller come out smelling of roses. An interesting thing about Virgin in 1980 was that they were close to bankruptcy.
I have heard that and was aware that Virgin did have all sorts of money problems at that time.
One of the things that irked Branson in particular was how OMD were the biggest selling act in the Virgin group in 1980 via the Dinsdisc subsidiary. This had embarrassed him so ultimately he was keen to see Dindisc fall apart so that he could get OMD for the parent company…
Yes, this situation impacted on the bands that we are talking about, there were pressures on people to be more commercial when one of the reasons that they were attracted to Virgin in the first place was so that they could be less commercial should they choose to be.
But then, those pressures were happening within the bands themselves, THE HUMAN LEAGUE are a great example of this. They went in to be wilfully uncommercial and yet they always had that commercial edge, they stated their intent to be a combination of disco and KRAFTWERK. Although they loved being the conceptualists and the renegades with their Machiavellian feeling that they were infiltrating the music industry from the inside, they were starting to feel dissatisfied that their efforts so far hadn’t really crossed over in the way they felt that they deserved to.
So the two things in tandem, the bands wanting to make more of a mark and wanting the recognition that came with that, plus Virgin’s financial situation which meant they needed bands to step up and start making more commercial records, was actually a very powerful moment in shaping some of the most important records in Virgin’s catalogue I would say.
In this 1978-1983 period which you cover in the book, is there a favourite year and if so, why?
Good question! I don’t specifically, it hadn’t occurred to me until you asked, but I think from a writing point of view, the earlier years were the most interesting to me because in 1978, I was 10 so I wasn’t really aware of these things. Lots of these records, I didn’t really hear until later and some much later… one or two of them, and I’m not confessing which ones, I didn’t even listen to until I started writing the book.
So from my point of view as a fan of this music, then 1978 would probably be the most interesting year because it provided me new material to listen to that I hadn’t heard before.
The book talks about a lot of acts who are basically canon now and many of them are still performing in some form or another. But is there an underrated act for you from this period?
For me, I would say YELLO; they were making really challenging and innovative records, they were visually interesting, they had all the bases covered. They gave great press but for whatever reason, it took quite a long time for them to break through into the mainstream and even then, it was only because their music was used in other contexts like films. They were a band who I had underappreciated previously, but have got to know much better through the course of writing the book. They should have been much bigger than they were.
Your book cuts off at 1983 and that’s for the context reasons rather than stopping liking music. But Simon Reynolds said in ‘Synth Britannia’ that it was Howard Jones that made him feel that electronic pop was now no longer special and part into the mainstream… was there a moment when this music changed for you?
I don’t think I have a moment for that, my musical church is quite broad and I’ve never been very over-intellectual about my music tastes, it’s like “I do or I don’t”.Howard Jones came in with a different take on the form and actually, I loved Howard Jones so from my point of view, my love of electronic pop did continue. It blurs and like we talked about earlier, lots more things were interesting in different directions and also taking some of this electronic sensibility into it. They may well have been more interesting to me at the time. However, I was perfectly prepared to accept Howard Jones and the later electronic acts.
After 1984 and then into the new decade, a lot of people were trying to kill off electronic pop, especially around Britpop but was there a point later, and this might tie in with Remember The Eighties, when you thought “this stuff has value and people are liking it again”, that there might actually be a legacy?
You are kind of right that the start of Remember The Eighties came from that. The site was born of a conversation I had with an 80s artist; in my working life, I build fan bases and work for bands, I’ve done this for quite a long time. This artist came to me and said “I’m thinking of doing some new material but I don’t know if I have an audience anymore. If I do have an audience, I don’t know how to reach them”… the reason I’m saying “an 80s artist” is I felt that this particular person didn’t really have an audience anymore, and to find that audience if it was there at all, would be very time consuming for very limited return.
But I started thinking “wouldn’t it be great if there was one place that people could go, people like me who remember the 80s (*laughs*) fondly and could find out what all these people are doing today?”. The strange thing was I was never really interested in it being retro, it was always about today’s news from those bands, I thought “that’s a good idea”. I was learning to build websites at the time and it was early days in all that. I had some time so I just decided to do that, put up some stories and waited to see what happened.
It became something quite successful and partly that was because the whole 80s rediscovery hadn’t happened. Like you said, the 80s came with a bad rep at that point in time and imploded quite messily with lots of non-credible aspects emerging and dominating it. It had eaten itself almost. But the timing just happened to be right and all of a sudden, there were PR companies coming to me saying “Thank goodness you’re there!” because they had nowhere to go with these artists they were representing. So they were asking if I would like to interview then and I was like “Yeah! Great!” *laughs*
That was how the website started so yes, I guess that was the moment for me in 2001-2002. It suddenly felt like these bands had a new cache. I’d invested so much of my myself and spent so much of my money in my teens in their music, that it wasn’t such a big jump to continuing that support of them 10-15-20 years later. The investment was already done, it was more like picking up the story.
For me, it was like 1998, DURAN DURAN had the ‘Greatest’ CD out and were touring, OMD had a new singles compilation and CULTURE CLUB had reformed for shows with THE HUMAN LEAGUE and ABC supporting… but I think it took a long time for something to develop. I don’t think it was until DURAN DURAN reformed the classic line-up with the three Taylors in 2004 and then the OMD classic line-up reunion in 2007 that things got properly kick started… I think it took a while because of the age of the audience, people had mortgages and kids in primary school!
You’re right, it was like a stage of life, you need time to reconnect with the person you used to be.
Your book captures a period, I don’t know if you listen to much modern day pop, but do you think there is an electronic pop legacy today, whether direct or indirect from this 1978-1983 era? The act I’m going to highlight is THE WEEKND…
I definitely do think there is a legacy. I’m not great on contemporary electronic music, the things I hear about, I tend to hear about from ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK and that’s fantastic. I use Spotify a lot and the suggestions function is quite powerful as well. From a sonic musical point of view, I can totally see these bands are referencing things that happened during the period I have written about in the book.
Everything seems to go on cycles but at the moment, in the last year or so, it feels like there’s been a return to a starkness, a certain simplicity of sound. I’m not denigrating it because I think it’s a very effective way of presenting sound. It feels there’s been a period where everything and the kitchen sink has gone into electronic music and its gradually being pared away to a point where the instruments and sounds are getting a bit of space to breathe. It feels like the same sort of sounds that I started responding to on ‘Top Of The Pops’ when we first saw DEPECHE MODE and SOFT CELL.
Although THE WEEKND isn’t strictly an electronic pop artist and more of a one man compilation album who dips in an out of styles like Ed Sheeran (whose own synthpop track ‘Overpass Graffiti’ incidentally is very good even though it rips off ‘The Boys Of Summer’), there was this song THE WEEKEND did called ‘Less Than Zero’ which is exactly what you’ve just described. We mentioned underrated bands and I would say this track sounds like NEW MUSIK…
That’s a great choice actually…
NEW MUSIK have been popping up on these Cherry Red boxed set collections and its obvious now with the passage of time that they were pretty good! They were dismissed as a novelty act back in the day because they had silly voices in the songs, but there’s a crucial connection with that track by THE WEEKND in that there’s gently strummed guitar alongside all the pretty synth stuff. NEW MUSIK’s leader Tony Mansfield went on to produce most of A-HA’s debut album ‘Hunting High & Low’… although A-HA are outside of the scope of your book, they can be seen as the bridge between your book and modern electronic pop like THE WEEKND’s ‘Blinding Lights’…
That’s true, I think A-HA are a really important band and yes, they are not in the scope of the book but if they could have been, I would have been delighted to include them because their canon is quite ambitious and wide-ranging.
Is there another book of this type to cover the later period on the cards at all?
No, I don’t have another book project at the moment. I only actually finished writing this book in July. Naively, I thought you just hand your book in and six months later they hand you a copy. But the process of going through all the edits, the photos, getting the artwork and style right, it’s been quite intense. It’s been quite a challenge to balance it with what I’m doing workwise.
Are there any ideas for a future book?
There are a couple of people who I have come to recognise that they played much bigger roles in this story and in some other stories as well than they are given credit for. But it’s going to take a bit more research in those directions to find out whether there’s a book’s worth of material.
Is an ERASURE book an ambition?
Obviously I work with ERASURE and individually or together, they are probably approached by publishers 2 or 3 times a year with offers to write or be involved in books. At this point, neither Vince nor Andy feel it’s the right time for them to be telling their story. I think they feel so much of what they have to say is already available and they don’t necessarily want to talk about the things that aren’t, because they are the personal things. So at this point, there is not a specific plan. If at any point, there is an official ERASURE book, then I hope I would be involved in some way.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Richard Evans
Special thanks to Debra Geddes at Great Northern PR
‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’ is published by Ominbus Press, available from the usual bookshops and online retailers, except North America where the book will be on sale from 26th January 2023
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After the rockisms of ‘Beauty Stab’, the third ABC album sprung a major surprise in its New York electro flavoured lead single ‘How To Be A Millionaire’. “We saw it happening in Times Square, there were B-Boys doing that whole thing to KRAFTWERK which was just amazing. The minute the Emulator II came out, we bought one. No need to pay a Fairlight programmer £750 a day!” said Mark White; ‘Fear Of The World’ would later be sampled for the ELECTRONIC B-side ‘Lean To The Inside’.
Despite being labelled a teenybop group, from the beginning A-HA were always so much more than just the catchy pop of ‘Take On Me’. Containing another three hit singles, there was the wistful ‘Hunting High & Low’ title song while ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ revealed a lyrical darkness as the combination of synths and edgy guitar put them in the same league as ULTRAVOX and ASSOCIATES. But ‘Living A Boy’s Adventure Tale’ was the track that outlined A-HA had longevity.
In response to THE POWER STATION, ARCADIA was Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes and Roger Taylor’s attempt to be JAPAN, smothered in an esoteric pond of lush arty indulgence. ‘Election Day’ featuring Grace Jones could have been a DURAN DURAN song, as could ‘The Flame’ which bore a resemblance to ‘A View To A Kill’. But ‘Goodbye Is Forever’ was art funk that pointed to where DURAN DURAN would head with ‘Notorious’.
With the departure of Alan Rankine after ‘Sulk’, Billy Mackenzie recruited Martyn Ware and Martin Rushent on its follow-up ‘Perhaps’. Although more glossy in sound, the Rushent produced ‘Waiting For The Love Boat’ could have easily come off ‘Sulk’ while ‘Those First Impressions’ produced by Ware narrowly failed to crack the UK Top40. But the epic string laden drama of ‘Breakfast’ helmed by Rushent was possibly Mackenzie’s greatest single moment.
Despite good crossover songs such as ‘Why Don’t They Leave Things Alone?’ and ‘Lorraine’s My Nurse’, with synthpop now no longer in-vogue, there was a lukewarm reception for the third BLANCMANGE album ‘Believe You Me’. With a proclamation from Neil Arthur that “I feel like I’m losin’ my mind” in the electro-funk of ‘22339’, it led to him and Luscombe calling it a day in order to protect their friendship after a show at the Royal Albert Hall.
Produced by Walter Becker of STEELY DAN, the influence of his band on ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ resulted in much more of a live soulful feel with the contribution of accomplished session musicians while Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon focussed on the songwriting. Classic CHINA CRISIS songs like ‘Black Man Ray’ and ‘King In A Catholic Style’ secured two UK Top20 hits from a single album for the first time.
DEAD OR ALIVE looked like they’d missed the boat when their rivals FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD reached No1 with ‘Relax’. Having heard ‘You Think You’re A Man’ by Divine, Burns recruited the song’s production team of Stock, Aitken & Waterman to work on ‘You Spin Me Round (Like A Record)’ which hit the top of the UK singles chart. The eventual ‘Youthquake’ album was a mixed bag, but included another hit ‘In Too Deep’ and the gothic funk epic ‘It’s Been A Long Time’.
Andy Bell and Vince Clarke’s debut album ‘Wonderland’ was not an instant hit. The lead single ‘Who Needs Love (Like That)?’ was mistaken by some to be an unreleased YAZOO recording. Among the album’s highlights were the joyous ‘Reunion’ and the funky ‘Push Me… Shove Me’ . The record’s HI-NRG centrepiece ‘Oh L’Amour’ flopped as a single but undeterred, ERASURE toured the college circuit to build up a new fanbase from scratch.
After JAPAN, drummer Steve Jansen and keyboardist Richard Barbieri formed a new creative partnership. ‘Worlds In A Small Room’ was an instrumental suite commissioned by JVC to accompany a documentary about the Space Shuttle Challenger. ‘Breaking The Silence’ was a beautiful opening piece with elements recalling Ryuichi Sakamoto while the more structured ‘Moving Circles’ had a Jansen vocal added for the Japanese release’s bonus song ‘Move In Circles’.
Thanks to the success of his debut album ‘Human’s Lib’, the follow-up ‘Dream Into Action’ was written by Howard Jones on the road by necessity; “I was writing in dressing rooms on an Akai 12 track recorder…” he said, “we were experimenting a lot so it’s a much more complex record”. There were hopeful anthems in ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ and ‘Life In One Day’ while the plaintive ‘No One Is To Blame’ would become a huge Trans-Atlantic hit in a new version produced by Phil Collins.
‘Low-life’ saw for the first time, a single ‘The Perfect Kiss’ taken from a NEW ORDER album as a compromise following a new US deal with Qwest Records. ‘Low-life’ featured several other highlights and opened with the Country ‘n’ North Western ghost story ‘Love Vigilantes’. The mighty ‘Sunrise’ was another number in the tit-for-that exchange with THE CURE which was clearly influenced by ‘A Forest’ while the brilliant ‘This Time Of Night’ exuded a throbbing post-punk growl.
Co-produced with PPG operators The Wave Team, ‘The Fury’ was the best Gary Numan album since ‘Telekon’. Although very much with the times and in line with acts like FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD and DEAD OR ALIVE, the hard but bright digital sound complimented Numan’s downbeat lyrical outlook. Among the highlights were ‘Call Out The Dogs’, ‘Tricks’ and ‘Miracles’ while the haunting closing track ‘I Still Remember’ was a vocal reimagining of the 1979 instrumental ‘Random’.
After the worldwide success of ‘Together In Electric Dreams’ and the lukewarm response to THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s ‘Hysteria’ in 1984, Virgin Records swiftly despatched Philip Oakey to record an album with Giorgio Moroder. ‘Now’ was Oakey’s heartfelt commentary on economic corruption while the thumping side one segue of ‘Why Must The Show Go On?’, ‘Good-Bye Bad Times’ and ‘Take A Chance’ was a thrilling train ride.
Düsseldorf’s PROPAGANDA were dubbed “ABBA in Hell”! The magnificent film noir of ‘Dr Mabuse’ was their opening salvo produced by Trevor Horn. The producer’s helm was handed over to engineer Stephen J Lipson for the album ‘A Secret Wish’. ‘Duel’ exuded an accessible ice maiden cool while the Teutonic ‘P.Machinery’ was full of state of the art technical tricks. With the lengthy and poetic ‘Dream Within A Dream’, the listener was taken on a massive sonic adventure.
The first major label SCRITTI POLITTI LP ‘Cupid & Psyche 85’ contained the 1984 Arif Mardin produced hits ‘Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)’ and ‘Absolute’, the latter also seeing input from Gary Langan and JJ Jeczalik of THE ART OF NOISE. Green Gartside embraced of mainstream dance pop and state-of-the-art studio production with new song writing partner David Gamson. Meanwhile self-produced reggae inflected ‘The Word Girl returned to sound of earlier Scritti.
After the harder new rock sound of ‘Sparkle In The Rain’ produced by Steve Lillywhite, SIMPLE MINDS brought the synths back in, albeit with a Trans-Atlantic sheen helmed by American production heavyweights Jimmy Iovine and Bob Clearmountain. Despite the modern FM rock bombast which even included a rhythm n blues flavour on ‘Sanctify Yourself’, ‘Alive & Kicking’ saw Mick McNeil’s Gaelic accordion virtuosity applied to electronic keyboards for a huge hit in the US and Europe.
DespiteTEARS FOR FEARS adopting more guitar compared to its predecessor ‘The Hurting’, the more band oriented ‘Songs From The Big Chair’ were still characterised by electronics and rhythm programming in its backbone. Cold War angst provided the tension to ‘Shout’ and the big American driving hit ‘Everybody Wants To Rule The World’ while ‘Head Over Heels’ with its blistering synth solo was another Stateside hit, later in the 2001 psychological thriller ‘Donnie Darko’.
Produced by Alan Rankine, ‘Theoretically Chinese’ was as much of an electronic pop departure for Winston Tong from TUXEDMOON as Robert Görl’s ‘Night Full Of Tension’ was from DAF. The era’s inherent Cold War tensions also loomed large on the fine pulsing opener ‘Big Brother’ as well as an excellent uptempo cover of Marianne Faithfull’s ‘Broken English’ while ‘Reports From The Heart’ provided an elegant sweeping ballad.
Midge Ure finally took the solo album plunge with ‘The Gift’. Songs like ‘When The Wind Blows’, ‘That Certain Smile’ and the title track sounded like ULTRAVOX enough to potentially worry his bandmates. But ULTRAVOX would never have covered JETHRO TULL’s ‘Living In The Past’ or recorded the lovey-dovey UK No1 single ‘If I Was’ which was rescued from the unreleased vaults of MESSENGERS whose instrumentalist Danny Mitchell was Ure’s main collaborator on this great adventure.
‘Stella’ was the first album YELLO made without founder member Carlos Perón; Boris Blank and Dieter Meier headed towards a more cinematic style of experimental pop, making greater use of the Fairlight and digital synths. It included the delightful ‘Vicious Games’ featuring vocals by Rush Winters but the album’s biggest track was ‘Oh Yeah’ which ended up in ‘Ferris Bueller’s Day Off’, ‘The Secret of My Success’ and ‘The Simpsons’.
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