The concept of the single in the past has been to present an artist’s most immediate work for mass consumption and appreciation, often as a trailer for an album or compilation.
Like it or not, many acts’ best songs have been released as singles. They often reach an audience who would not normally be interested in the tribulations of a much longer journey.
Looking back throughout pop history, many pinnacles of a group’s career have been exclusively single releases; THE WALKER BROTHERS ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’, THE BEATLES ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, IAN DURY & THE BLOCKHEADS ‘Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick’ and THE JAM ‘Going Underground’ are a number of examples.
Today’s culture of individual track downloading now makes virtually every song in existence a single. However, a fair number of recordings which have become standards within live sets and have become a key part of a band’s history have never been accorded a single release. Such were some bands’ standings in their heyday that many were potential hits.
So here are 25 synth friendly songs which ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK felt should have been given singular status. Listing tracks not released as 45s or CD singles in the UKwith a limit of one song per artist moniker, they are arranged in chronological and then alphabetical order.
GARY NUMAN Metal (1979)
With Minimoog riffage in abundance, ‘Metal’ would have made a perfect follow-up to ‘Cars’ and in hindsight, been less of a public anti-climax than the brave, but misguided release of ‘Complex’, as great a song as it is. Full of dystopian resignation with references to “liquid engineers” and chilling vox humana courtesy of the Polymoog, ‘Metal’ was Sci-Fi musicality at its best. Even NINE INCH NAILS covered it and nearly 35 years later, it is still part of the Gary Numan live set.
“I want to be a machine” cried JOHN FOXX as far back as 1977 on the first ‘Ultravox!’ album. Starting off side two of ‘Metamatic’, the former Dennis Leigh realised his mechanised JG Ballard inspired electro theories and went up to the next level with ‘A New Kind of Man’. Is it about genetically modified humans or homo superiors? Who knows? But the chilling Elka string machine and frightening detuned synthetics made it a distinctly new kind of song in a brave new world.
Available on the JOHN FOXX album ‘Metamatic’ via Edsel Records
JAPAN found a refuge at Virgin Records who released their fourth album ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’. One of its best numbers was ‘Swing’ which combined David Sylvian’s muzak travelogue with Richard Barbieri’s Oriental synth textures. It was probably one of the last times JAPAN were fully as one. Guitarist Rob Dean made a full contribution before being forced out while the rhythm section of the late Mick Karn and Steve Jansen were amazingly fluid over the drum machine bossa nova.
OK, so JOY DIVISION never took singles from their albums but what if they had? This would have been a contender. Featuring an ARP Omni and an early version of the Simmons drum synthesizer, ‘Isolation’ was the most electronic track JOY DIVISION ever recorded although Hooky’s bass ensured there was a gritty punk rock edge. When NEW ORDER reformed for the first time in 1998, a drum ‘n’ bass flavoured rework of ‘Isolation’ was part of the live set.
Available on the JOY DIVISION album ‘Closer’ via WEA Records
THE HUMAN LEAGUE The Things That Dreams Are Made Of (1981)
Optimistic and aspirational, ‘The Things That Dreams Are Made Of’ is the key song from ‘Dare’ and was a metaphor for THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s then pop ambitions. Gloriously spacious and delightfully catchy, each synthesizer voicing has its place while Phil Oakey gives full justice to Adrian Wright’s shopping list of life’s pleasures to a perfect Linn Drum clap track. It certainly deserves to be played live more often… “New York – ice cream – TV – travel – good times”
Available on THE HUMAN LEAGUE album ‘Dare’ via Virgin Records
Hooky, catchy and futuristic, ‘Computer World’ with its Speak & Spell voices and infectious four note theme was an ideal KRAFTWERK single if ever there was one. However, the perky and novelty laden ‘Pocket Calculator’ was chosen to trail the parent album. It is unlikely ‘Computer World’ could have hit the top of the charts like ‘The Model’ did, but such was the song’s popularity, the native variant got released as a limited run remixed maxi-single in Germany.
Available on the KRAFTWERK album ‘Computer World’ via Mute Records
It was a tricky call between ‘She’s Leaving’ and ‘Radio Waves’, but the North-by-North West melancholy of the former won over the upfront Germany Calling salvo of the latter. A wonderful synthetic cross between JOY DIVISION and Paul McCartney, ‘She’s Leaving’ was pencilled in as the fourth single from OMD’s huge selling ‘Architecture & Morality’ but was vetoed by the band. However, when ‘She’s Leaving’ did come out as a single in the Benelux region, it flopped.
As proven by their covers of ‘Tainted Love’, ‘What?’ and later on during their 21st Century comeback ‘The Night’, SOFT CELL always had a love of the UK’s Northern Soul scene. Its influence would seep into their own compositions like ‘Secret Life’. Marc Almond’s narrative on a philanderer’s hypocrisy was an apt reflection of suburban life while Dave Ball’s solid use of keyboards provided a suitably accessible but gritty sub-Tamla soundtrack.
The perfect balance between art and pop, ‘New Religion’ was a key highlight from DURAN DURAN’s ‘Rio’ album. “A dialogue between the ego and the alter-ego”, Simon Le Bon’s conflicting schizophrenic voices added tension in the bridges before a classic Duran chorus. With an ambient intro that JAPAN would be proud of, it then moved at breakneck speed through the quintet’s other influences like Bowie, Roxy, Moroder and Chic with speed being the operative word.
Available on the DURAN DURAN album ‘Rio’ via EMI Records
A huge song with two drummers drumming as well as lashings of Jupiter 8 and a marvellous bass engine, ‘New Gold Dream’ and its parent album highlighted an ambitious streak in SIMPLE MINDS akin to their Virgin label mates THE HUMAN LEAGUE when they released ‘Dare’ the year before. Already six minutes in length, an extended mix was released as a 12 inch single in Italy while as a sample on URSURA’s ‘Open Your Mind’, ‘New Gold Dream’ became a club hit in 1993.
Available on the SIMPLE MINDS album ‘New Gold Dream’ via Virgin Records
With its heavy metronomic beat sans hi-hats, ‘The Anvil’ was Steve Strange’s tale of a night out in New York’s notorious club of the same name. But that wasn’t all, Billy Currie’s screaming ARP Odyssey and Dave Formula’s brassy synth riff completed the excursion. Rusty Egan said: “For me, ‘The Anvil’ was the lead track, ‘The Anvil’ in German (‘Der Amboss’), the 12-inch remixes, all that which I did with John Luongo was for me, the single. But the record company didn’t support that!”
Available on the VISAGE album ‘The Anvil’ via Cherry Pop
Showcasong one of the best Alison Moyet vocals, Vince Clarke’s minimal programmed backing gave her plenty of space to let rip with raw emotion on ‘Midnight’ . Back in those days, Mute Records usually only took two singles from an album so with ‘Only You’ and ‘Don’t Go’ already accorded singular status from ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’, a 45 was never likely. But it sort of belatedly became a single when it was sampled and manipulated by REX THE DOG for ‘Bubblicious’ in 2008.
Originally the B-side to ‘Waves’, ‘Game Above My Head’ signalled the more disco based direction Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe later trod on ‘Blind Vision’ and ‘That’s Love, That It Is’ with American producer John Luongo. Merging the busy Linn Drum patterns that characterised BLANCMANGE’s debut ‘Happy Families’ with a funkier outlook, ‘Game Above My Head’ was included on their second LP ‘Mange Tout’. Today, the song remains a constant in the live set.
Available on the BLANCMANGE album ‘Mange Tout’ via Edsel Records
HEAVEN 17’s most underrated track and referencing The Doomsday Clock, ‘Five Minutes To Midnight’ followed on from ‘Let’s All Make A Bomb’ to highlight the absurdity of Mutually Assured Destruction. Using and abusing the Fairlight CMI, the ‘Protect and Survive’ styled civil defence announcements, deathly whoops and a doomy orchestral crescendo bring a frightening finality as the song suddenly stops… “Hot as a furnace – wing to wing contact! AARGH!”
Available on the HEAVEN 17 album ‘How Men Are’ via Virgin Records
‘Equality’ exploited new MIDI technology like the Prophet T8 and Yamaha DX7, combining it with a Jupiter 8 and Pro-One; “it was one of those ones that really suited my live rig” said Howard Jones With its poignant human rights message, whether ‘Equality’ would have made a better single than ‘Pearl in the Shell’ is a moot point, but the song was released as a single in South Africa as a commentary about Apartheid.
Available on the HOWARD JONES album ‘Human’s Lib’ via Cherry Red Records
Despite their use of synthesizers, it was rare that ULTRAVOX went the whole sequencer route. They did so with this song about the impending 1997 handover of the British Colony of Hong Kong to Red China. The lyrics captured a sense of pessimism over a bouncy electro disco soundtrack influenced by ‘Blue Monday’. Slated for release as a single in the UK, ‘White China’ had a special extended mix prepared but Chrysalis Records preferred the more obvious ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’.
Available on the ULTRAVOX album ‘Lament’ via EMI Records
A-HA were perceived as a teenybop group in their heyday, but their Nordic melancholic depth was apparent even on their only UK No1 ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’. “Cut my wrist on a bad thought” is a superb piece of second language expression that no native speaker could have come up with. Morten Harket veers from a semi-spoken growl to a full voice salvo for the terrific chorus while Pål Waaktaar’s twanginess adds some edge to Magne Furuholmen’s glacial synthetic atmospheres.
Mistakenly announced as a new single on ‘The Tube’, ‘Tonight Is Forever’ is one of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s best early compositions. From its blipping intro with an odd starting snare drum to the magnificently euphoric chorus, it captured the excitement of a fleeting romance on a night out in clubland. With its sombre synth brass riff and a wonderful middle eight, it was later covered by Liza Minelli in an orchestral arrangement for her PET SHOP BOYS produced album ‘Results’.
Available on the PET SHOP BOYS album ‘Please’ via EMI Records
‘Your Silent Face’ may be one of NEW ORDER’s best songs, but it was unlikely to have got radio play as a single with its “why don’t you p*ss off?” quip! Meanwhile, ‘Mr Disco’ was the club friendly Mancunians in their Italo prime, complete with holiday romance lyrics and tongue-in-cheek syndrums. Some fans were dismayed by its resemblance to PET SHOP BOYS, but Bernard Sumner went and founded ELECTRONIC, aided and abetted by Messrs Tennant and Lowe!
Available on the NEW ORDER album ‘Technique’ via WEA Records
One of DEPECHE MODE’s greatest moments, Alan Wilder said: “From memory, the drums were sampled from LED ZEPPELIN’s ‘When the Levee Breaks’ (but secondhand from a rap record)… For the end choruses, there are some string samples which I think were derived from Elgar. One of my techniques is to find sections of classical strings and transpose / stretch these, then add my own samples, in order to formulate new and unusual arrangements”.
Available on the DEPECHE MODE album ‘Violator’ via Mute Records
Undoubtedly, ‘Kissing The Machine’ is Andy McCluskey’s finest song without Paul Humphreys as an OMD band mate. It also featured one of Karl Bartos’ greatest melodies. Recorded for his first project after leaving KRAFTWERK, Karl Bartos said “He suggested we do something together and I was up for it… We picked some cassettes and finally I found the opening notes of ‘Kissing The Machine’. A month later he sent me a demo…He wrote the whole song and the lyric and the robo voice”
Available on the ELEKTRIC MUSIC album ‘Esperanto’ via SPV Records
The closing track on the ‘I Say I Say I Say’ album produced by HEAVEN 17 and BEF’s Martyn Ware, ‘Because You’re So Sweet’ was a pretty ballad representative of the maturer approach taken by Andy Bell and Vince Clarke for their seventh long player. Featuring ERASURE’s trademark sequences, there was also the self-imposed restriction of no drum machines being used, so that all the album’s percussive templates were created using synths and driven by sequencers.
There were eight singles from 1999’s ‘Play’ but for 1995’s ‘Everything Is Wrong’, Mute Records were more restrained with just five! Surprisingly, this vivid instrumental missed out on singular distribution. One of the highlights from the genre hopping MOBY long player, the looping bass sample of ‘First Cool Hive’ was like an update of ‘Empires & Dance’ era SIMPLE MINDS while female voice samples and beautiful synth strings gave it a mysterious ENIGMA-tic touch.
‘Mu-tron’ may have opened the LADYTRON debut album ‘604’ but the pulsating salvo at the start of ‘Discotraxx’ signalled the album’s intent… the return of the synthesizer as an instrument of value and integrity, not as a novelty to mock the past. From the moment Mira Aroyo deadpans in Bulgarian and Helen Marnie’s sweet but resigned voice kicks in about “the boy I know”, a new dawn is heralding for electronic pop.
Available on the LADYTRON album ‘604’ via Nettwerk Records
The surreal concept was Kate Bush does THE HUMAN LEAGUE on this buzzy percussive extravaganza, one of the more under rated songs in Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory’s canon. The sub-TOM TOM CLUB meets PRINCE electrofunk is aided by Charlie Jones’ treated bass runs over the zooming synth hooks and chunky riffs. Interestingly despite its immediacy or maybe because of it, ‘Lovely 2 C U’ has rarely made it into the GOLDFRAPP live set.
Available on the GOLDFRAPP album ‘Supernature’ via Mute Records
Renowned remixer Mark Reeder’s first flirtation with near fame was when he was in punk band THE FRANTIC ELEVATORS with SIMPLY RED’s Mick Hucknall.
In 1978, he moved to Berlin and became Factory Records German representative in Germany while also working in the studio with bands such as all-girl avant noise terrorists MALARIA! who he co-managed and DIE TOTEN HOSEN.
In 1981, Reeder formed post-punk duo DIE UNBEKANNTEN while in 1983, he helped put together the Berlin Special of ‘The Tube’ TV music show which featured acts such as DIE ÄRTZE. Later on, DIE UNBEKANNTEN changed their name to SHARK VEGAS and toured Europe with NEW ORDER.
In 1990, Reeder established his own electronic dance music record label Masterminded For Success (MFS) and discovered Paul Van Dyk who he guided into becoming an internationally famed DJ and recording artist. His passionate approach and highly respected reputation for care and attention in all areas including concept, artwork, PR and sound gained many notable admirers within the music industry. So when Reeder focused on remixing in the late noughties, he was given the opportunity to work for a number of major artists including John Foxx and PET SHOP BOYS.
He also collaborated with popular German dance duo BLANK & JONES on a musical restyling project entitled ‘Reordered’ which featured among its vocalists NEW ORDER’s Bernard Sumner, Robert Smith from THE CURE, Steve Kilbey of THE CHURCH and Claudia Brücken. Its highlights however were probably the ‘This Time Of Night’ aping Alone In The Dark Mix of ‘Loneliness’ sung by Bobo and the Save Yourself Mix of ‘Manifesto’ featuring Vanessa Daou.
Reeder is about to release his brand new labour of love entitled ‘Five Point One’. It is a dream compilation album of new, rare and unreleased remixes by his own hand of established heavyweights such as DEPECHE MODE, PET SHOP BOYS, BLANK & JONES and BAD LIEUTENANT alongside cult favourites DIE TOTEN HOSEN and Anne Clark plus comparative newbies like MARSHEAUX, MAY 68, NOBLESSE OBLIGE and ELECTROBELLE.
Comprising of a deluxe DVD and 2CD package, the DVD is remastered in Dolby 5.1 surround sound to create a listening experience to enhance the depth and radiance of the original stereo mixes. What shines through particularly is Reeder’s intuitive approach which adds a developmental enhancement to proceedings while retaining the all important compositional essence of the originals.
Mark Reeder kindly spoke about ‘Five Point One’ and added a few thoughts about the welcome return of the song in modern electronic pop plus some stories about his days with Factory Records… “anything can happen in the next half hour…”
Photo by Katja Ruge
What was your inspiration particularly for this compilation?
I’ve always been a fan of surround technology and love the idea of multi-dimensional cinematic wrap-around sound. Although I’ve never owned a Quad system I have Quad versions from the 60s and 70s of ‘Switched-On Bach’ by Wendy Carlos (she was called Walter back then) and ‘Quadrophenia’ by THE WHO and I released a couple of B.A.S.E super spacial stereo and surround albums on my MFS label too.
So making my own 5.1 album was, I suppose, a natural process. I confess, I was definitely inspired by the 5.1 releases of PINK FLOYD, DAVID BOWIE and DEPECHE MODE, which I immediately snapped up.
However, making a 5.1 mix is a complex and expensive undertaking. I first made a 5.1 mix for my remix of ‘German Film Star’ for The PET SHOP BOYS and Sam Taylor-Wood and one for ‘Sink or Swim’ for BAD LIEUTENANT and then ‘Underpass’ for John FOxx, then followed MARSHEAUX and we just went from there. The idea that the album was to have some of my all-time fave bands and all my remixes for them together on one 5.1 surround album just started to happen. It was initially intended to be an audio only album, but when John Foxx said I could use his original 80s video, then we also had a visual element to the album too.
You’ve remixed the songs in DVD 5.1 Surround sound for one disc, how did you the motivate yourself for this endeavour?
The motivation was the challenge. Micha Adam, my studio partner and I wanted to see if we could do it. We wanted to push our own boundaries and test our abilities. Our aim was to re-remix our remixes in 5.1 surround and hopefully release them on one album. Most people, especially in the music industry, currently can’t see the reason behind making a 5.1 album, but that is because there is not that much 5.1 music about and nothing to really compare it with and therefore no visible market for it. That’s most probably because of the cost involved, not only in making a 5.1 mix, but for the consumer too.
It is early days still and just a matter of time. Once the technology gets cheaper and 5.1 becomes easier to make then more music will emerge. It took stereo over 30 years to reach the household in the late 60s and when 5.1 systems eventually become cheap and affordable, then people will also want something to play on them.
Also new and futuristic technological developments aim to make 5.1 available on every mobile phone too. That was another inspiration. Once we all have the 5.1 DolbyMobile chip in our smartphones then we will want to hear music in 5.1 too, which was a further driving force for us. This special chip means that you can listen to music in 5.1 on your phone, on normal stereo headphones, albeit in simulated 5.1, but if you connect your phone to a real 5.1 sound system, it will play back in true 5.1 surround. Fascinating!
Making the actual 5.1 remixes was the real challenge though, as it is all about getting the balance right so that the mix sounds like the original remix, but the music comes from all around you, just like in the cinema. That was the thrill. Yet, mixing an album in surround is not as easy as you might think and the end result will probably sound a bit different to everyone, especially considering that each home system is set up individually to taste. By the way, mixing a track in stereo is much easier too, as you can layer and hide things within the mix, whereas surround is much more revealing.
You are featuring several new acts on ‘Five Point One’ such as MARSHEAUX and NOBLESSE OBLIGE alongside established luminaries such as PET SHOP BOYS, DEPECHE MODE and John Foxx. I can see the newer artists being very co-operative but how straightforward was it to persuade the established acts to allow you to rework their material with your instrumentation and methods?
Yes, I’ve tried to create a balance between the more established acts and a crop of newer artists. Some of which have their debut on ‘Five Point One’. I thought this way I could bring them to a wider audience.
Generally, I think I’ve been very very lucky, as it wasn’t really all that difficult for me to obtain the clearances, as it might have been for other people. The artists that I have initially done the remixes for know who I am and obviously respect me and my work and my idea. They appreciate the amount of time, dedication and creativity that has gone into preparing this project. I guess they know I would also try and do my best and that I would take great care remixing their song. They also know the kind of music that I make.
Mind you, remixing a well-known and legendary song like ‘Underpass’ was still very nerve wracking. I’ve always loved this song and getting the chance to remix it for the first time after 30 years was such an honour. At first I was elated, then came the feeling of fear! Naturally, I wanted to do it justice without destroying it too much, as these days it seems so simple to take a great track, whack it into Ableton and strip it of all its atmosphere and identity, then add a techno beat and scatter a sprinkling of the original vocal over it, so it becomes totally unrecognisable and in most cases, disappointing.
I really don’t make my remixes like that. I’m old school. I like to still be able to hear the song, but give it my own signature and atmosphere, while at the same time use as many of the original elements as possible.
Luckily, John really liked my ‘Underpass’ remixes and he was very cooperative. In fact all the artists and labels were. Making a remix for a well-known song though is definitely much more daunting than making a remix for a new song. The obvious comparison aspect is overwhelming and the expectation is so great.
Obviously, I know I could never ever better the original and I don’t try to, I just make my interpretation. I also understand that my remixes won’t appeal to everyone, but I really only make a remix in the hope the artist themselves will like it and I suppose in the end, it’s for all those people who do actually like it. If you don’t like it then that’s fine too, just don’t listen to it. I always strive as much as I can to at least give the song I’m going to remix, the respect it deserves, regardless of its status.
Remixing ‘Sweetest Perfection’ was also very precarious. Daniel Miller gave me the chance to remix ‘Sweetest Perfection’ for the last DEPECHE MODE remixes album, but due to family problems I was unable to complete it on time. So I asked if I could use it on my own remixes album. My DEPECHE MODE remix actually took the longest to clear, simply because EMI / Mute were in the process of releasing their own DEPECHE MODE remixes album.
You also feature cult singer/songwriter Anne Clark who worked with John Foxx in 1985. For those who have not heard of her, how would describe her music and why do you like it?
It is quite interesting the threads between the artists on the album, in some obscure way they are all connected. I think Anne is very unique. She is a poet, who sets her poems to music. Although she is from England, she is probably more well-known outside of the UK. Her legendary status was formed in the early 80s and her brilliant song ‘Sleeper in Metropolis’ was huge in the new wave clubs across Europe at that time. It eventually became a Goth anthem and inspiration for many to follow. Its analogue synth sequencer sounds have never been bettered. Of course, her music today is very delicate but still powerful and anyone who has seen her perform live, knows exactly how beautiful her music is. I remixed two of her songs off ‘The Smallest Acts of Kindness’album which I really liked. I was inspired. They were intended for a remixes album, but that album hasnt yet materialised and so they are now on mine. I really like this spoken word matched with music idea.
You’re credited with introducing Bernard Sumner to Giorgio Moroder and Italo disco through the cassettes you used to send him from Berlin. How do you feel about his more rocky material with BAD LIEUTENANT? And is featuring remixes of them a way of you putting Bernard back into that electronic dance thing that he does so well but rarely touches now?
Well, I know Bernard is still very much into electronics and club music and he promised there will be more to be heard on the next BL album, but he wanted to show a different side with BAD LIEUTENANT and distance his band from NEW ORDER, which is understandable. I thought their album was really excellent. I’m not just saying that because Bernard is a friend, but because I really think it is. It is a bit of an unpolished jewel. Anyway, I played it to death. I think it was a very optimistic album and if you give it the chance, it gets better every time you play it.
Anyway, Bernard asked me to film some sequences for their ‘Sink Or Swim’ video and then I was asked if I wanted to do a remix for it too. I thought there are probably a few fans out there, like myself and Micha, who would also like to hear a more electronic, dancier type version of the song. So I made one. The same goes for my remix for the PET SHOP BOYS. They also wanted a more traditional PSB sounding remix without having to return to that style themselves.
Then Bernard asked me if I could do a quick remix for ‘Twist of Fate’, which was a track I also really liked and wanted to remix. I made two variations, one is a heavy-ish sounding half tempo mix with a pulsating bass and the other is a more uptempo dance mix variation. Both mixes are featured on ‘Five Point One’. I thought Steve Young made a truly brilliant sci-fi puppet video for that track too, with very scary looking puppets. You can see the love, care and dedication he has put into making this Gerry Anderson inspired video and I wanted to applaud his work and so we feature the video on the DVD too. He was kind enough to recut his video and add newly created footage just so that it would fit to my 5.1 remix.
Making these BAD LIEUTENANT remixes was much more difficult than we had imagined, as all the songs were played-in live by the band and there was lots of natural speeding up and slowing down within the track, which you don’t usually get with a precise timed 4/4 techno record. I had a great time with Micha making these two remixes, as we had to slice every single word and every note of every instrument and move them into position by hand to make them still sound organic, which took forever. It was good practise, as it turned out, because the BAD LIEUTENANT remixes were still easier than making the DEPECHE MODE or TOTEN HOSEN remixes.
Your Lange Hosen remix of DIE TOTEN HOSEN’s ‘Disco’ was very interesting. You go back a long way with them. They are known as being a punk band, but when did it occur to you that their material could be tailored for the dancefloor?
Actually, I realised that their music could be tailored for the dancefloor back in the 80s with ‘Hip Hop Bommi Bop’, which they made with legendary New York rapper Fab Five Freddy.
We used to listen to a lot of disco music on tour mixed in with AC/DC and plenty of punk classics. It just seemed natural to me that their track ‘Disco’ should have a real Italo-rock-disco-esque sounding remix.
As usual, I wanted to retain as much of their original song as possible though, so that it is still recognisable as a TOTEN HOSEN song. So the guitars and vocals are all in there. I’ve just changed the tempo and groove and added a straight driving bass guitar and pulsating synth so it can be played in a proper disco type of disco.
You’ve worked with MALARIA! in the past and there was a collaboration with CHICKS ON SPEED a few years back of 1981’s ‘Kaltes Klares Wasser’. Could their material work on the contemporary dancefloor and have you ever considered remixing them?
Yes, I did briefly consider it, but then again I didn’t just want to have a kind of oldies only album. I wanted a mixture of established artists and new ones. I wanted to give the unknown artists the opportunity to be on an album with some very well-known ones.
Was there any track that you really wanted on ‘Five Point One’ but were unable to use due to the usual contractual stuff?
Yes, there was. I really wanted to include my remix of ‘A Forest’ on ‘Five Point One’ that I made for the ‘Reordered’ album. In fact, I already made a 5.1 mix of it in the hope that I could use it, but unfortunately, BLANK & JONES said they couldn’t license it to me due to their strict contractual obligations with Robert Smith. So that particular remix remains exclusively available on ‘Reordered’ in normal stereo.
Are there any particular favourites for you on this compilation?
Yes, tracks 1-25.
Who do you hope ‘Five Point One’ will appeal to?
I guess it’s for all those people who like the artists featured on the album and wish they were all on one album. Now they are. Then it is also for those who enjoy this kind of retro sounding synthpop style of music and its especially for all those with a thirst for 5.1 Dolby digital surround sound. For the moment, it seems only major label artists like DEPECHE MODE, KING CRIMSON, DAVID BOWIE, PINK FLOYD or THE MOODY BLUES have been able to release surround albums.
I thought why can’t my favourite artists also have a 5.1 release too? I wanted to put all my own remixes for some of my favourite bands together on one 5.1 album. After all, who wouldn’t like an album that featured new mixes for legends like DEPECHE MODE and PET SHOP BOYS as well as John Foxx and Anne Clark all together on one album and all in 5.1? I certainly would.
How do you think electronic pop music has been developing over the years and where do you see it heading in the future?
After 20 years of electronically driven techno, trance and the many derivatives spawned from it, I feel that the current style of electronic pop music is quite refreshing. Of course, club music will always be there in one form or another and DJs and dancing will never go out of fashion. But for myself, I’m really enjoying hearing artists making songs again. Maybe in the future the synthpop sound will finally have its renaissance, one that it so rightly deserves. It seems more and more people are yearning for it. After all, the 80s appear to represent a time not only of political balance and security but of experimentation in fashion and music.
Back in the 80s, synth music was mainly European and futuristic sounding, but the overwhelming influence of major label funded American rock music was able to stamp synthpop into the ground. Also the synth technology sadly had its limitations too, I remember back then our Moog and Korg synths were terribly temperamental when it came to temperature or humidity change.
Today synth music is much easier to produce. We are living in that future, now. So why not make 80s sounding futuristic music? What I find interesting today is the current mixture of retro sounds of old synths being played in a contemporary way. I suppose the availability of new software for long forgotten analogue synths and the amazing technical plug-ins which have been getting better and better, all help to form the current sound of the music. All I know and care about really, is that there have been some great songs and cool new artists emerging recently and that is very inspiring.
Is there a favourite story you can tell from your days as Factory’s German representative?
Many. I remember Rob Gretton sent me a huge roll of posters to promote the first NEW ORDER album in Germany. To save on postage because the roll was so bloody big and heavy, he sent them by land and not airmail… well, they eventually arrived, three months later!
There are many funny stories and this interview would be longer than my Myspace page if I told them all. What many people don’t realise is that it was very difficult trying to promote Factory’s records in Germany back in the late 70s and early 80s. No one really wanted to know. This was due to the fact that Germany was rediscovering its own musical ability and creating its own new wave scene.
Early German punkbands like TEMPO, PVC or DAF had been fuelled by the UK punk movement, they in turn paved the way for the alternative avant-garde like MANIA-D, P1/E, DER PLAN or EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN and later, the more commercial new wave pap like NINA HAGEN, SPLIFF or IDEAL. No one was particularly interested in a small indie label from Manchester and certainly not in a miserable sounding band called JOY DIVISION.
Sure, there was some interest from the dedicated anglophiles but it was very small and it appealed to a few. Of course, this attitude changed somewhat when Ian died.
Have you heard SECTION 25’s new single ‘Colour, Movement, Sex And Violence’ which is released on Peter Hook’s Fac51 The Haçienda label? What do you think of the spirit of Factory Records being kept alive and kicking?
Yes, I have heard it and I think it’s a great tune. Love it. Very Manchester. I’ve always enjoyed SECTION 25 and this song is one of their best in ages. The spirit of Factory will be kept alive by the numerous fans of the sound the label had and by the new fans who are discovering it for the first time. Without Factory, the Manchester music scene wouldn’t be what it became and is today and most boys would probably still not know how to dance. In Germany, Strut have just released a new ‘Factory Dance’ 12″ double CD compilation, which introduces some of the lesser known Factory dance artists together with a few better known ones. It has very striking looking artwork and is a must-have for any Factory fan.
What are your own upcoming plans after Five Point One?
I plan to release a remastered version of DIE UNBEKANNTEN’s ‘Don’t Tell Me Stories’ album finally on CD, this might include some SHARK VEGAS tracks too and also in 2012, I hope to release a deluxe version of DIE VISION’s ‘Torture’, the last album to be recorded in communist East Berlin that I produced there in 1989. As for my own projects, now that would be telling wouldn’t it?
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Mark Reeder
‘Five Point One’ is released on 25th November 2011 by Kennan Limited and distributed in Germany by Rough Trade Deutschland.
For more information on Five Point One including the full tracklisting and how to order this deluxe 2CD/DVD set, please visit http://www.five-point-one.co.uk/
In 1977, Stephen Morris answered a small ad for a drummer placed by a punk band named WARSAW. The story goes that when he met Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook outside Strangeways Prison, he thought Hooky was Sumner’s dad!
They soon changed their name to JOY DIVISION and influenced by THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, Iggy Pop and David Bowie, refined their sound into a more intense industrial art rock that all but invented Goth. Under the management guidance of Rob Gretton, they soon came to the attention of Tony Wilson, TV personality and impresario of Factory Records after Curtis called him a c*** before one of their gigs!
JOY DIVISION’s first album ‘Unknown Pleasures’ was released in 1979 and gained plaudits the world over with many hailing it as one of the best debut albums of all time. Although largely a guitar based record produced by the wayward genius of Martin Hannett and seasoned with his AMS Digital Delay, it was also notable for Morris’ use of electronic percussion effects on tracks such as ‘Insight’ and ‘She’s Lost Control’. “I’d always wanted to be a drum machine” said Morris, commenting on his very clean and precise drumming style.
Developing at a ferocious rate and adding further layered grandeur, the glorious ‘Atmosphere’ showcased an increasing interest in synthesizers and technology which then deeply coloured their 1980 follow-up ‘Closer’. However, the world knows what happened next and the haunting delivery of Ian Curtis matched with the beautiful sonic architecture of ‘Closer’ only substantiated the eventual myth and legacy of JOY DIVISION. Reconvening in late 1980, Morris, Hook and Sumner chose the name NEW ORDER as a symbol of their fresh start
After deciding against recruiting a new vocalist, they took turns at singing in rehearsals. Interestingly, it was Morris’ voice that was considered the best but with his distaste for singing drummers like “Phil Collins and him out of The Eagles”, duties initially fell to both Sumner and Hook. To complete the line-up, Morris’ girlfriend and later wife, Gillian Gilbert was recruited on keyboards and guitar. Around this time, Morris also took to playing synths himself.
Although already fans of electronic music through Ian Curtis’ love of KRAFTWERK’s ‘Trans-Europe Express’, horizons were expanding in many ways for NEW ORDER with exposure to the New York dance scene, Giorgio Moroder and Italo disco. Morris purchased his first drum machine and used it to pulse the sequencer-like patterns that dominated their transitional singles ‘Everything’s Gone Green’ and ‘Temptation’.
But it was the necessitated replacement of all their original equipment after it was stolen in 1982 during a tour of America that the technical dance revolution began. Into the synthesizer arsenal came the Prophet5, its corresponding Polysequencer with its mini cassette data dump and the Emulator sampler while most crucially on the percussion side came the Oberheim DMX digital drum computer.
It was while they were getting to grips with this incumbent technology and driven by the need to compose a track which could play itself for encores that ‘Blue Monday’ came about. Based on an earlier 20 minute composition entitled ‘Prime 586’ (later released as ‘Video 586’) which was used on the opening night of Factory’s iconic club The Hacienda, its rhythmical stutter was the accidental result of Morris trying to recreate the drum patterns of Donna Summer’s ‘Our Love’ on the DMX! The resultant seven and a half minute track which John Peel dubbed “Pink Floyd go disco” was housed in a stark Peter Saville designed sleeve based on the 5 inch floppy disc used by the Emulator. It became the biggest selling 12 inch single of all time.
The rest as they say is history and NEW ORDER’s contribution to electronic dance music continued with singles such as ‘Confusion’, ‘Thieves Like Us’, ‘The Perfect Kiss’, ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ and ‘Round & Round’. The ‘England’s Dreaming’ writer Jon Savage said “it was incredible that this very dark gloomy gothic rock group became disco divas”.
However, during a hiatus between the ‘Technique’ and ‘Republic’ albums, Morris and Gilbert embarked on their own project, ironically named THE OTHER TWO in response to Sumner’s ELECTRONIC and Hooky’s REVENGE. Their 1991 debut single ‘Tasty Fish’ was a wonderful slice of female fronted electropop but the failure of Factory Records to get the CD single into the shops despite radio airplay contributed to the song stalling at No41. What was not known at the time though was that Factory was on the brink of collapse so THE OTHER TWO’s first long player ‘And You’ wasn’t released until late 1993 as part of the deal which saw NEW ORDER sign to London Records.
Morris and Gilbert married in 1994 but there was a long break before NEW ORDER got back together in 1998 for some triumphant comeback shows at Manchester Apollo and the Reading Festival which also featured JOY DIVISION numbers such as ‘Heart & Soul’, ‘Atmosphere’ and ‘Isolation’. THE OTHER TWO released a second album called ‘Superhighways’ in 1999 but not long after, Gillian Gilbert formally left NEW ORDER for family reasons. The remaining trio continued but after two primarily rock based albums ‘Get Ready’ and ‘Waiting For The Sirens’ Call’, NEW ORDER appeared to have called it a day for good.
Hooky has since taken ‘Unknown Pleasures’ out on a live tour of the world while Sumner has formed BAD LIEUTENANT with Morris joining him on the drum stool. Meanwhile, following all the renewed interest in JOY DIVISION from the Anton Corbijn directed biopic ‘Control’, Morris has also been involved in the remastering process for the lavish vinyl boxed set ‘+- : Singles 1976-1980’.
Continuing ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK’s series of interviews with drummers involved in the development of electronic pop music, Stephen Morris gives a fascinating and amusing insight into how he harnessed new technology with not just one but two of the most important bands from the post punk era. He also adds his thoughts on the disastrous NEW ORDER deluxe remasters, the state of the music industry and the possibility of Susan Boyle covering JOY DIVISION!
What inspired you to get your first synth drum?
Getting the first synth drum, it was a bit of confusion actually! *laughs*
On the cover of the British version of CAN’s ‘Tago Mago’, behind the drummer there’s this thing which I now know is an amplifier! But when I was young, we used to wonder what this was before we knew how groups worked and what gear was. We thought about it and we came up with the conclusion that it must be a drum synthesizer because that must be how Jaki Liebezeit got those sounds. That’s what convinced me that I must have one.
When I actually saw one, I think it was a Synare I in a music shop in Manchester. What I really liked about it was that it had a handle… it was like a suitcase and the fact that it had a handle, I thought that was cool because you could carry this thing about. When I actually got a drum synthesizer, it was the Synare III.
Is that the one in Kevin Cummins’ book?
Yes, and it just made disco sounds… y’know “booo-booooo”! *laughs*
I used that sound on ‘Insight’ and spent a lot of time trying to find other sounds that you could get out of it! It was alright but it was quite difficult to twiddle the knobs and play drums at the same time. And also, I didn’t quite understand how a Moog ladder filter worked which is why when you listen to bootlegs of ‘Insight’… basically you’d krank the resonance up and it would turn into tweeting birds for these weird freak out breaks but of because of this filter, the volume went up by 10!
So yeah, in a lot of bootlegs, that’s all you can hear! I cringe nowadays but I could only turn one knob. I couldn’t turn up the resonance and turn down the volume so I was hoping someone else would turn it down!
Photo by Kevin Cummins
Was it your synth drum that made those quite vicious Native American attacks on tracks like ‘Interzone’ and ‘The Sound Of Music’?
No! That’s Ian making those noises! They were Ian’s vocal techniques! The unusual noise that I like the best is on ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. By then, I had a Synare III and a Simmons SDSVI so we got the Synare out and put it through this horrible fuzz box… we used to do a track of stuff and not listen to the music. There’s noises like a pig being slaughtered… that was me!
The two versions of ‘She’s Lost Control’ are quite different, but both their rhythmical templates were quite significant in the development of the JOY DIVISION sound. So how did your percussion parts on the ‘Unknown Pleasures’ version come about?
That was using the Synare to do the “tschak-tschak” noises and it was supposed to be like a Phil Spector thing, not playing a snare drum like a snare drum. That’s what the idea of that one was.
Are those electronic toms or was that your acoustic ones being put through one of producer Martin Hannett’s boxes?
The idea with Martin with drums was he just wanted complete separation because he wanted to process every bit of the drum kit separately. That’s why he made you play every drum one at a time. The Marshall Time Modulator was what we used a lot to make them not really sound like toms, it kind of sounded really dead like “plomp-plomp-plomp” noises!
How did you find working with Martin Hannett? Did he really ask you to play “faster but slower”?
Yes! You just get used to it, you have to be in a kind of ‘Zen’ frame of mind! *laughs*
With our stuff, it was ok because I knew what I was doing and that was alright. But I did a session with him for John Cooper-Clarke and it was the same sort of deal.
Because I didn’t know what the hell I was supposed to be doing, I just got really frustrated… I just kept breaking sticks, drumheads and everything because it was “what the hell does he want me to do now?”, I just got really angry! Not with Martin, but you start hitting things very hard and vent your spleen! He wasn’t impressed!
Why did you record a second version of ‘She’s Lost Control’?
Why did we re-record it? Because the thing at the time was the 12 inch disco single, which sounds daft when you say it now. But it was a thing in itself and you could make the record really loud and dynamic. That was what we wanted to do with ‘She’s Lost Control’, but we had ‘Atmosphere’ on the other side which spoiled it because that has to be the most un-disco song going! But that was the idea of doing a 12 inch. It was kind of a really big drum fest thing and it’s all real drums as in the Synare did most of it. And the aerosol…
So the clip in ‘Control’ depicting you and the aerosol can during the recording of that is true?
Yes, that was a true story… that one actually happened! *laughs*
It was absolutely stupid like, because it’s just playing one of those “tschak-tschak” Synare parts and Martin made me go into a vocal booth with a can of tape head cleaner which is highly flammable and poisonous! So I’m in this confined space that’s slowly filling up and I come out of it in completely dazed… if I’d had lit a cigarette, that whole place would have gone up!
The influence of CAN’s Jaki Liebezeit is quite apparent in JOY DIVISION but on ‘Closer’, things like ‘Isolation, ‘Decades’ and ‘The Eternal’ had quite electronically derived rhythms. How did the shift take place and how involved were you in creating those sounds?
‘Closer’ is the album where I think I’m probably most proud of the drumming because it’s really good, that is what I wanted to do. On ‘Unknown Pleasures’, it was a bit of a punky crossover thing on it. When we did ‘Closer’, I found my niche… it was kind of a disco tribal thing, really happy with the drumming on that. I would have loved to have done more of it because when we got to NEW ORDER, I made a conscious decision not to do that anymore! *laughs*
We had Martin’s ARP2600 and the sequencer that goes with it on ‘The Eternal’, there’s a f*** up in the middle of it and you couldn’t drop in so we left it and it sounds like I’ve done it but was a machine!
And there was our CR78 nightmare… have you ever tried programming one? Me and Martin, we were very keen on smoking pot and we hired one in for ‘Decades’. There was this very small black rubber pad, you put that into the programming thing, “press programme switch while holding… “, it’s just a mad Roland thing and it doesn’t make any sense! We spent the best part of a day trying to programme this bloody thing… I couldn’t do it and he couldn’t do it. In the end we just used the bossa nova thing on it. It wasn’t fun, but I think it was the only time I’ve seen Martin as baffled as me! *laughs*
Photo by Anton Corbijn
Do you think JOY DIVISION would have ended up sounding how NEW ORDER eventually sounded?
To a certain extent, yes. We were going down that road with ‘Closer’ because we were using a lot more synthesizers and using them in a more rhythmic way. It would have been like that, but possibly not quite as disco!
Was that Bernard with his Italo disco records?
It was all of us. The NEW ORDER Italian disco thing, it was a friend of Bernard’s, because everybody did cassettes. We’d drive in the car listening to these cassettes and it was either Kiss FM from New York or these bloody Italian disco things! We thought it would be great to do something like this, but we’d no idea how to go about it. *laughs*
What was your first drum machine?
It was just after ‘Closer’ that I got the first affordable programmable drum machine, the Boss Dr Rhythm DR55 and that was on the early NEW ORDER stuff like ‘Truth’… I think there’s even a version of ‘In A Lonely Place’ we did with the drum machine, it didn’t work out too well *laughs*
I really liked the sound of drum boxes like the Minipops, the CR78 and the old Wurlitzer ones. They make you think of a weird place; it’s not quite science fiction, it’s not disco, they’re old but new! It’s a bit like a 1950s film, the vibe I get off them. I love the ones that don’t sound like drums, I like their crude attempts at Latin percussion.
You started playing keyboards around this time. What inspired you to do this, were you getting bored of drums at this point?
I wasn’t bored, it was that we had to be different. The hardest thing in the world is to be different, it’s not easy! The thing about NEW ORDER is we never know what we’re doing, but we know what we don’t want to do. It’s by avoiding other things you don’t want to do, that you end up at what you do want to do!
Did I want play keyboards? I’m the world’s most reluctant keyboard player, I didn’t really want to but it happened early on because there was just the three of us. It just happened that Bernard can’t sing and play guitar at the same time, Hooky can’t sing and play bass, and I just can’t sing playing anything!
So I ended up playing keyboards. We got the ARP Omni towards the end of JOY DIVISION for ‘Closer’ after using an ARP Solina earlier. So I ended up playing that with the drum machine on top. So there was me playing keyboards and switching patterns on the Dr Rhythm and they laughed at me for saying I should write down these patterns on a piece of paper… they didn’t know what was coming a few years down the line!
Was it this drum machine that clocked into the ARP to get the pulsing thing you had on ‘Everything’s Gone Green’?
That’s right, although there wasn’t much potential of that with the Omni, it was when we got the ARP Quadra that you could do that. It was taking the trigger out of the drum machine and bunging it into the ‘trigger in’.
Did you design a circuit box to step up the pulse in order to do that?
No, it was just plugging a lead in! Eventually we did with other equipment and a lot of that stuff. We were lucky because Martin had a friend, Martin Usher who was an electronics genius, he was absolutely fantastic. Whenever he was around, nothing would ever break down.
At one point, we took him to Australia just in case the gear broke down and it never did. But as soon as you sent him away, it broke down again! He helped a lot. He sorted out the box to step it up when we moved on after the Dr Rhythm. There was a home organ company called Clef in Bramhall down the road who had a thing called a Master Rhythm which was a rip-off of the Dr Rhythm! We got that modified so you could get a separate audio out of each sound and we needed that box to step it up to trigger. It had loads of switches on it so you could switch the triggers on and off.
Everyone talks about ‘Everything’s Gone Green’ being a sequencer number but it wasn’t really?
No, with ‘Everything’s Gone Green’, you had a Moog Source doing a 1/16th pulse and the Quadra doing the “da-dah, da-da-dah”. Then what you’d do is take the ‘CV’ out of the Quadra and take that into the Moog so that the Moog is playing a different rhythm but following the pitch of the other thing. That’s what we used for ‘Temptation’ as well.
So the track that eventually became ‘Video 586’ was your turning point into actually using a sequencer?That’s right, Bernard and Martin Usher built a Powertran 1024 Sequencer. The Powertran Transcendent 2000 was the first JOY DIVISION synth; fantastic kit synth, there’s a guy in Australia started doing a rack mount of them, but he’s never finished it.
I’d love to get one of them, I keep checking on his website… it’s Chris Huggett, the guy who went on and did EDP who made Wasps and had some vague EMS connection in the dawn of cheap British synthesizers! Have you ever seen the sequencer? You’ve got two rows of knobs which have got numbers on which come up in a numeric display.
You used the knobs to put in the start / stop addresses and they’re all in kind of decimal. And then you’ve this LED thermometer-like display which I eventually worked out was actually showing what the pitch was, but in hexadecimal… we used to have these stoned conversations about what hexadecimal meant!! The thing was you had to be very precise about what you put in the start / stop addresses because if you got it wrong, you got a completely different tune! And we got a few tunes that way! *laughs*
It was absolute murder to use live, you couldn’t see! It was like cracking a safe! God knows how Gillian and Bernard did it but it was clocked off the Master Rhythm. We went through a few synths; there was the Powertran, we used a Pro-One for a bit and then later got the Moog Source which was the ‘Blue Monday’ bass.
The acquisition of your first digital drum machine in the beloved Oberheim DMX of course gave you ‘Blue Monday’. It must have been like night and day compared with your Boss Dr Rhythm but how was it trying to synch up this state of the art technology with the Polysequencers in those pre-MIDI days.
It was fine, I never had a problem with syncing it up because it was just a clock really. I have honestly come full circle and getting back into it again now. I’m just rediscovering the joys of sending a 1/16th pulse from here, you can’t go wrong with a 1/16th pulse; a nice little square wave… that just drove everything. It’s hard to explain to people but roadies used to get it wrong: “all you’ve got to do is take this lead here, plug it into that hole there and I press this button and it all just works”… never did!
So DMX versus the LinnDrum, why did you go for the DMX?
It was cheaper! LinnDrums were a couple of thousand pounds!
I’ve just been going on about how great old drum machines that don’t sound like drums were, but the thing that sold me on the digital drum machine was a thing on ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’ when it was Stevie Wonder, I can’t remember what he was doing… the double album?
It was him in the studio programming the LinnDrum and it was fantastic, really funky! I thought “bloody hell, I have to get one of those!” There were two; the LinnDrum was more expensive and you couldn’t tune the bass drum on it. Whereas the DMX was less reliable in every respect, but you could tune the bass drum! And that was my justification! It was absolutely a nightmare the first DMX! *laughs*
It got you that stutter on ‘Blue Monday’…
… oh yeah, that was another accident because you’ve just got the 3 levels of velocity and I programmed it. I just hung this riff and programmed it in using the same dynamics as I heard it. In the end, I got so frustrated and put everything in on the loudest one, and they all went “That’s it! That’s it!”… I didn’t think it would turn into a trademark.
You once tried to sell your drum kit during a Radio1 interview in 1983 and declared drums “a bit redundant”. What was your mindset then towards how electronic instrumentation was developing at that time?
I was probably very paranoid, I think I was fearing for my job but I might have been joking as well *laughs*
From what you’ve been telling me about the amount of kit you were getting through, technology was moving at a phenomenal pace. Then early 1985 in ‘Electronics & Music Maker’ magazine, NEW ORDER said they hoped to get either a Fairlight or Synclavier to get round the issues of having to actually connect equipment together for live work?
Yes, that’s right.
Are you glad didn’t get either of those two white elephants? What circumstances allowed you to by-pass the Fairlight / Synclavier thing which your contemporaries were later stuck with?
I think basically they let Bernard and Hooky try it out! *laughs*
There used to be this synthesizer place in London called Syco Systems. I used to go there and ogle at technology. What we used to do was take the Pro-One, because you could get a fantastic bass sound out of it. We’d go to the poor guy with the PPG Wave 2.3 and get him to make it sound like a Pro-One!
I’d go “that sounds nothing like it” and they’d keep putting reverb on it because everything sounds better with reverb… I’d be going “Turn the reverb off! Turn the reverb off!”*laughs*
Why did we never get a Fairlight or Synclavier? They were far too expensive to really justify it plus of course, we had The Hacienda! *laughs*
That was the big thing at the end of the day that was one of Martin Hannett’s disagreements. He wanted to buy a Fairlight, everyone else wanted a club so there you go, you can’t have both!
As NEW ORDER became more successful, you and Gillian started getting involved in soundtrack work?
How we got involved was NEW ORDER had agreed to do the music to this programme ‘Making Out’ which was when we were doing ‘Technique’. While we were still doing the album, what would happen was the programme makers would go “we need the music”, so me and Gillian set up in a little room at Real World and started cutting up bits of ‘Technique’, taking bits off the sequencers and locking it up to the pictures and all that. We decided that ‘Vanishing Point’ had to be the theme. We’d never done it before and really enjoyed it.
I did find working with pictures very liberating. It’s fantastic how you can write a piece to music to pictures, and then when you take the pictures away and listen to the music again, it turns into something else. So NEW ORDER were too busy and you just couldn’t do it with four people. When you do music for TV, it’s all tight deadlines which is like, not the way NEW ORDER work! *laughs*
We got into the habit of writing stuff, even though they were just like a load of riffs. You’d spot where you wanted the bits and slot them in, then watch it back, think that its great, record it and add a little production. Eventually it became obvious it wasn’t NEW ORDER doing it and it took a while to persuade people to have our name on it and not NEW ORDER’s… not because we were blowing our own trumpet, but it was Trade Descriptions Act.
And the ‘Reportage’ Theme turned into ‘World In Motion’?
Yes, the opening music for ‘Reportage’ became ‘World In Motion’. I really enjoy doing soundtrack stuff, but now it’s become very overpopulated because everyone realises it’s quite a good thing to do and now, there’s no money in it!
Did it inadvertently make it more difficult to get back together as NEW ORDER after ‘Technique’ for what became ‘Republic’?
There was never any question of the soundtrack work being a reason for us not getting back together, because the number of things I turned down because I had to do NEW ORDER… to the detriment of myself.
The soundtrack stuff mutated into THE OTHER TWO?
Yeah, we’re doing another one now… they’re all got this same gestation process in that they start off as these things for TV, you get really attached to them and you twist one or two of them into being songs. Some of them never turn into songs, but you get persuaded by the record company or someone that you have to get a singer! So we tried to get a singer and then Gillian ended up doing it which is great, she’s really good at it.
THE OTHER TWO’s ‘Tasty Fish’ and ‘Selfish’ are two of the greatest lost pop singles? Discuss…
I think so… the ‘Selfish’ remix on YouTube, I was astounded at the number of hits that got! And I’m thinking “Bloody hell, did we do this?”*laughs*
‘Tasty Fish’… we were terribly sh*t at titles!
I loved the title… it was really funny and I remember seeing the fish ‘n’ chip shop in Stockport that you got it from. I thought it was going to be a hit, but you couldn’t find the CD single in the shops!!
No, you couldn’t! But there you go!
Was it a Factory thing?
Yes, it was a bit. I’m not bitter about Factory at all and I’m not going to moan about it, because it was fantastic. But at that particular time, the money wasn’t going in the right way!
Do you think if you and Gillian had done THE OTHER TWO full time, you could have been as successful as say SAINT ETIENNE or DUBSTAR?
No, we’re completely the wrong kind of people! I’ve tried but it never works! *roars of laughter*
We’ve got a track on THE OTHER TWO’s website called ‘Sawdust’ which is ‘Movin’ On’ remixed by Moby. I was talking to him and I said “imagine if KRAFTWERK had been a country and western band, think about that” and he did this remix of it which was only half finished. I thought it was fantastic and the record company said “it needs a bit more work”, smelling a hit. We went and did a bit more work on it, thinking “fantastic, it could be a hit” and Gillian just said “No way! I’m not going on ‘Top Of The Pops’ with a pig under my arm!” So there you go, we’d never be popstars *laughs*
You know how tapes disintegrate? I thought DATs would last forever, they’re the worst! So I’ve got this on / off project transferring all the old DATs and TV stuff that we did. When you go through it, it has to be from beginning to end. And you have to get the tracking right and hope it stays in… there goes 2 hours of your life! Some of the stuff that never came out, I’m just using it as a vehicle to put on this website and I’ve got to put some more on.
So there’s a new EP from THE OTHER TWO?
Yes, we’re doing the EP at the minute, but there’s three things going. The first, how the hell this has happened I don’t know but it’s a typical cart before the horse thing… we have a sleeve but no record! Peter Saville and his partner Anna did this exhibition in France and wanted some music. He wanted it to sound like a club in the next room! So we did this track and he had a sleeve, but they were only on sale at the exhibition. Now that’s over, I can finish it. When you put it on your record player, you’ll think there’s something really wrong with your stereo! *laughs*
That’s turning into EP No1 and it’s called ‘Swing’. That should be out in the next couple of months. Then there’s THE OTHER TWO album, but I don’t really like saying that I’m doing an album as it takes a year out of your life.
I think artists are put under too much pressure to do albums…
Yes, I do… CDs didn’t help because when you did CDs, you had to do like, 15 tracks! And it’s just too much. So this is probably going to be in blocks of 4s or 5s, that’s the plan at the minute.
You played your comeback show at Manchester Apollo in 1998, I made the journey from down south specially and it was all quite emotional…
…you must have been the only person there we didn’t know then!
The return of NEW ORDER saw the band head back into a more guitar dominated rock sound with ‘Get Ready’. What drove that and did you ever miss working with the computers and the synths?
That’s the bloody odd thing, there’s probably more computers on that!
It’s crazy but I’m getting into doing electronic music again, but not on computers. Because nowadays, it’s just chopping up, using the computer to record live drums on and getting them to sound fantastic. They’re a great tool, I’m not knocking computers but there’s not much room for serendipity, for something to happen immediately.
It’s not impossible, it does happen occasionally but you just get locked into that looking at a screen thing and not listening to it. There’s too much information, too many ways of doing stuff. They’re not inspirational although I find Ableton Live software quite inspirational because of the stuff you can do with that. It’s nearly the exception to the rule. Most things are linear and you get into that way of writing with beginning-middle-end and you want it all to look nice and neat. I never used to, but I do get quite obsessive now. It’s not a great way of doing music. But that’s what everyone does.
Were you quite happy with the more guitar driven sound?
It was something different because we’d been away for a bit. It was really working with Steve Osborne, he did a really great job on that because he twisted it so it was more guitary but it wasn’t kind of a rawk thing… he did something really clever with it. It was a bit difficult because it’s like what I was saying about being different… it’s very hard to know.
I honestly think it’s not a good idea to say “Right, I’m going to be different”, but it’s just the NEW ORDER way… “we can’t do that again”!
Are you sad NEW ORDER ended the way it did? Did it finish on a satisfactory note for you?
I never say never really. I personally after ‘Republic’, I thought that was it, I really did. And then something happens and all of a sudden, you’re back doing it again for another 10 years! *laughs*
I had all that in the 90s about when people asked whether NEW ORDER would get back together again. I said “No, that’s it” and you just feel bloody stupid when you do! It’s something I don’t really like in bands, it makes me think they’re terribly indecisive when they can’t decide whether they’re alive or dead. Maybe we should call the next album ‘Schrödinger’s Cat’! *laughs*
I’ve heard that NEW ORDER have got an album’s worth of material in the can, is that true?
Not an album’s worth but we’ve got 7 songs left in various states of assembly. And they’re pretty good. Doing an EP of them will be a great thing to do. It will happen one day, I’m sure it will. It’ll keep the record company going on…
Another boxed set? *laughs*
Yeah, I love boxed sets… I’ve just bought a Robert Wyatt one. It’s a terrible addiction! All my money’s going on boxed sets!
Did you get the KRAFTWERK one?
Yes, that’s over there… I smell it frequently! *chuckles*
NEW ORDER’s back catalogue was reissued as deluxe editions by Warners, but many fans were unhappy about the quality of the remastering, particularly the bonus material. What are your thoughts on that?
Oh Christ! *sighs*
How many cock-ups can a record company make? And you thought Factory were bad? It’s not just the record company, it was a recession led cock-up, the remasters. Originally, the record company wanted to remaster certain recordings, I think they wanted to do 2 or 3 and we said “NO, DO THEM ALL!” but they said no. So we said “DO THE FACTORY ONES!” and they begrudgingly said yes.
Basically, it was just as the recession hit and what happened was the albums got done by John Davies at Alchemy but they folded. All the mastering rooms in London went, I think there’s only Metropolis left. They were halfway through and had done the albums, but not the bonus discs. We were trying to put the bonus discs together and the record company ended up finding any old studio, I think it was somebody’s shed! They did it off really old Sony 1610 digital tapes on badly maintained 1610 players. Unless they are properly maintained, they just kick and add noise etc and that’s what happened.
It was just terrible which is a shame, I wasn’t happy with the whole thing! It was just a f***ing disaster! And we’d been told the tape library was a nightmare and tapes didn’t exist so we went down and had a look. Sure enough, there are all the bloody tapes! “So why didn’t you use the proper analogue tapes?”
Anyway, no use crying over spilt milk. But when we got in, got our hands dirty and started sorting it out, it was perfectly straightforward. It’s the old thing of “if you want something doing, do it yourself”! Somebody else wouldn’t know what the ‘spaghetti western’ version was, because the titles don’t make sense to the untrained observer. So you’ve got to know a bit and be able to decipher the code! *laughs*
But it was a really good experience. We went through loads of tapes, started sorting it out and we kind of fixed all the bonus discs, but then they cocked up sending people the fixed bonus discs, so that was a waste of time! *laughs*
It wasn’t really, because it gave me an idea of what was where, plus what you could do and what you couldn’t do.
Photo by Anton Corbijn
Was your direct involvement in remastering the ‘+-‘ JOY DIVISION box set prompted by this sorry episode?
Yes, I quite enjoyed doing it, but it was more of a nostalgia thing. I’m sure people think it’s us wanting to do these bloody JOY DIVISION boxed sets, because I thought ‘Still’ was enough.
All this “oh, we want to do a JOY DIVISION singles boxed set” and there’s me going “RIGHT! WE’LL DO THIS ONE!”
How do you feel about the music industry in general?
I find it a bit depressing really because of the state that the record companies are in. The internet is great and it’s probably going to be its saving grace, but they’ve just let the boat sail.
I had late night rants with people from Warner Brothers and asked them what they were going to do about the internet and they said “oh, we’ve got the best copy protection money can buy!”… THERE IS NO COPY PROTECTION, what are you on about?
I hated copy protection; it made your CDs jump which cheesed me off!
It was just boll*cks! How do you think copy protection is going to help you? It will hinder you and people will just get round it anyway! You’re thinking about it the wrong way!
You’re part of BAD LIEUTENANT with Bernard Sumner but appear to have a lower profile involvement. Is that a deliberate strategy?
BAD LIEUTENANT? I have a job explaining this to people! At the start, it was Bernard, Jake Evans and Phil Cunningham. They did a bit of writing early on, but I couldn’t do it so they went off and did the record. Then when they came to do some gigs, they asked if I’d do some drumming. So I said I’d do it, I’ve only turned down the odd TV thing. Fortunately, they seem to think because I keep turning up for these things, I’m part of the act now… speak to BAD LIEUTENANT!! *laughs*
What are you up to at the moment?
As well as THE OTHER TWO album, we’re writing the BAD LIEUTENANT album at the same time.
What are your favourite pieces of work from your career?
‘Closer’! On that to be specific, ‘Colony’ and probably ‘Atrocity Exhibition’. Of THE OTHER TWO, ‘Tasty Fish’ because it should have been a hit. And NEW ORDER, I really like the B-side of ‘Temptation’ which was called ‘Hurt’ but because I’ve got all these live videos of us… we used to do it and it went on for ages. After ‘Video 586’, ‘Hurt’ was when we got into the extended electro jam thing and some of the versions of that are fantastic. The single doesn’t really do it justice!
Now, I read this in your interview with GQ… so is it true that Susan Boyle is going to do a JOY DIVISION cover?
That’ll be ‘Atrocity Exhibition’!
IS THAT FOR REAL?!?
IS IT? OF COURSE IT ISN’T TRUE!! IT’S BOLL*CKS! *laughs*
It’s a nice idea, it’s because her album’s called ‘The Gift’ and I thought “bloody hell, Susan Boyle’s done ‘The Gift ‘by THE VELVET UNDERGROUND! That’s pretty wild, I wonder if she’d be interested in doing ‘Atrocity Exhibition’”… obviously it’s not THE VELVET UNDERGROUND’s ‘The Gift’, it’s another one! *laughs*
… although she did ‘Perfect Day’!
Yeah, I’ve not heard that! *laughs*
Are you still collecting tanks?
I would if I had any more room, I’ve got 4, I can’t squeeze anymore in. I’ve got loads of outstanding tank jobs to do and time’s running out!
Is that for those re-enactments?
Oh, those things are wild. Those re-enactment people? Oh no, I’m not one of those… I’ve seen it and observed it from the periphery. Historical re-enactment societies, it’s a bit like The Sealed Knot where you do the English Civil War. It’s great that some people like that; I’m not going to knock it. What’s different makes the world go round but I can’t see it myself. And I just worry about the mindset you’ve got to have to start dressing up as the Waffen SS, it’s not good!
I’ve heard all sorts of stories about things like that. They sent it up on ‘Peep Show’…
… yes, that’s what it’s like!
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Special thanks to Rebecca Boulton at Prime Management and John Saunders
JOY DIVISION ‘+- : Singles 1976-1980’ is still available as a 10 x 7 inch boxed set or as a download album
Kevin Cummins’ photobooks ‘Joy Division’ and ‘New Order’ are available through a variety of retail outlets
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With Minimoog riffage in abundance, ‘Metal’ would have made a perfect follow-up to ‘Cars’ and in hindsight, been less of a public anti-climax than the brave, but misguided release of ‘Complex’, as great a song as it is. Full of dystopian resignation with references to “liquid engineers” and chilling vox humana courtesy of the Polymoog, ‘Metal’ was Sci-Fi musicality at its best. Even NINE INCH NAILS covered it and nearly 35 years later, it is still part of the Gary Numan live set.
“I want to be a machine” cried JOHN FOXX as far back as 1977 on the first ‘Ultravox!’ album. Starting off side two of ‘Metamatic’, the former Dennis Leigh realised his mechanised JG Ballard inspired electro theories and went up to the next level with ‘A New Kind of Man’. Is it about genetically modified humans or homo superiors? Who knows? But the chilling Elka string machine and frightening detuned synthetics made it a distinctly new kind of song in a brave new world.
JAPAN found a refuge at Virgin Records who released their fourth album ‘Gentlemen Take Polaroids’. One of its best numbers was ‘Swing’ which combined David Sylvian’s muzak travelogue with Richard Barbieri’s Oriental synth textures. It was probably one of the last times JAPAN were fully as one. Guitarist Rob Dean made a full contribution before being forced out while the rhythm section of the late Mick Karn and Steve Jansen were amazingly fluid over the drum machine bossa nova.
OK, so JOY DIVISION never took singles from their albums but what if they had? This would have been a contender. Featuring an ARP Omni and an early version of the Simmons drum synthesizer, ‘Isolation’ was the most electronic track JOY DIVISION ever recorded although Hooky’s bass ensured there was a gritty punk rock edge. When NEW ORDER reformed for the first time in 1998, a drum ‘n’ bass flavoured rework of ‘Isolation’ was part of the live set.
Optimistic and aspirational, ‘The Things That Dreams Are Made Of’ is the key song from ‘Dare’ and was a metaphor for THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s then pop ambitions. Gloriously spacious and delightfully catchy, each synthesizer voicing has its place while Phil Oakey gives full justice to Adrian Wright’s shopping list of life’s pleasures to a perfect Linn Drum clap track. It certainly deserves to be played live more often… “New York – ice cream – TV – travel – good times”
Hooky, catchy and futuristic, ‘Computer World’ with its Speak & Spell voices and infectious four note theme was an ideal KRAFTWERK single if ever there was one. However, the perky and novelty laden ‘Pocket Calculator’ was chosen to trail the parent album. It is unlikely ‘Computer World’ could have hit the top of the charts like ‘The Model’ did, but such was the song’s popularity, the native variant got released as a limited run remixed maxi-single in Germany.
It was a tricky call between ‘She’s Leaving’ and ‘Radio Waves’, but the North-by-North West melancholy of the former won over the upfront Germany Calling salvo of the latter. A wonderful synthetic cross between JOY DIVISION and Paul McCartney, ‘She’s Leaving’ was pencilled in as the fourth single from OMD’s huge selling ‘Architecture & Morality’ but was vetoed by the band. However, when ‘She’s Leaving’ did come out as a single in the Benelux region, it flopped.
As proven by their covers of ‘Tainted Love’, ‘What?’ and later on during their 21st Century comeback ‘The Night’, SOFT CELL always had a love of the UK’s Northern Soul scene. Its influence would seep into their own compositions like ‘Secret Life’. Marc Almond’s narrative on a philanderer’s hypocrisy was an apt reflection of suburban life while Dave Ball’s solid use of keyboards provided a suitably accessible but gritty sub-Tamla soundtrack.
The perfect balance between art and pop, ‘New Religion’ was a key highlight from DURAN DURAN’s ‘Rio’ album. “A dialogue between the ego and the alter-ego”, Simon Le Bon’s conflicting schizophrenic voices added tension in the bridges before a classic Duran chorus. With an ambient intro that JAPAN would be proud of, it then moved at breakneck speed through the quintet’s other influences like Bowie, Roxy, Moroder and Chic with speed being the operative word.
A huge song with two drummers drumming as well as lashings of Jupiter 8 and a marvellous bass engine, ‘New Gold Dream’ and its parent album highlighted an ambitious streak in SIMPLE MINDS akin to their Virgin label mates THE HUMAN LEAGUE when they released ‘Dare’ the year before. Already six minutes in length, an extended mix was released as a 12 inch single in Italy while as a sample on URSURA’s ‘Open Your Mind’, ‘New Gold Dream’ became a club hit in 1993.
With its heavy metronomic beat sans hi-hats, ‘The Anvil’ was Steve Strange’s tale of a night out in New York’s notorious club of the same name. But that wasn’t all, Billy Currie’s screaming ARP Odyssey and Dave Formula’s brassy synth riff completed the excursion. Rusty Egan said: “For me, ‘The Anvil’ was the lead track, ‘The Anvil’ in German (‘Der Amboss’), the 12-inch remixes, all that which I did with John Luongo was for me, the single. But the record company didn’t support that!”
Showcasong one of the best Alison Moyet vocals, Vince Clarke’s minimal programmed backing gave her plenty of space to let rip with raw emotion on ‘Midnight’ . Back in those days, Mute Records usually only took two singles from an album so with ‘Only You’ and ‘Don’t Go’ already accorded singular status from ‘Upstairs at Eric’s’, a 45 was never likely. But it sort of belatedly became a single when it was sampled and manipulated by REX THE DOG for ‘Bubblicious’ in 2008.
Originally the B-side to ‘Waves’, ‘Game Above My Head’ signalled the more disco based direction Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe later trod on ‘Blind Vision’ and ‘That’s Love, That It Is’ with American producer John Luongo. Merging the busy Linn Drum patterns that characterised BLANCMANGE’s debut ‘Happy Families’ with a funkier outlook, ‘Game Above My Head’ was included on their second LP ‘Mange Tout’. Today, the song remains a constant in the live set.
HEAVEN 17’s most underrated track and referencing The Doomsday Clock, ‘Five Minutes To Midnight’ followed on from ‘Let’s All Make A Bomb’ to highlight the absurdity of Mutually Assured Destruction. Using and abusing the Fairlight CMI, the ‘Protect and Survive’ styled civil defence announcements, deathly whoops and a doomy orchestral crescendo bring a frightening finality as the song suddenly stops… “Hot as a furnace – wing to wing contact! AARGH!”
‘Equality’ exploited new MIDI technology like the Prophet T8 and Yamaha DX7, combining it with a Jupiter 8 and Pro-One; “it was one of those ones that really suited my live rig” said Howard Jones With its poignant human rights message, whether ‘Equality’ would have made a better single than ‘Pearl in the Shell’ is a moot point, but the song was released as a single in South Africa as a commentary about Apartheid.
Despite their use of synthesizers, it was rare that ULTRAVOX went the whole sequencer route. They did so with this song about the impending 1997 handover of the British Colony of Hong Kong to Red China. The lyrics captured a sense of pessimism over a bouncy electro disco soundtrack influenced by ‘Blue Monday’. Slated for release as a single in the UK, ‘White China’ had a special extended mix prepared but Chrysalis Records preferred the more obvious ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’.
A-HA were perceived as a teenybop group in their heyday, but their Nordic melancholic depth was apparent even on their only UK No1 ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’. “Cut my wrist on a bad thought” is a superb piece of second language expression that no native speaker could have come up with. Morten Harket veers from a semi-spoken growl to a full voice salvo for the terrific chorus while Pål Waaktaar’s twanginess adds some edge to Magne Furuholmen’s glacial synthetic atmospheres.
Mistakenly announced as a new single on ‘The Tube’, ‘Tonight Is Forever’ is one of Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe’s best early compositions. From its blipping intro with an odd starting snare drum to the magnificently euphoric chorus, it captured the excitement of a fleeting romance on a night out in clubland. With its sombre synth brass riff and a wonderful middle eight, it was later covered by Liza Minelli in an orchestral arrangement for her PET SHOP BOYS produced album ‘Results’.
‘Your Silent Face’ may be one of NEW ORDER’s best songs, but it was unlikely to have got radio play as a single with its “why don’t you p*ss off?” quip! Meanwhile, ‘Mr Disco’ was the club friendly Mancunians in their Italo prime, complete with holiday romance lyrics and tongue-in-cheek syndrums. Some fans were dismayed by its resemblance to PET SHOP BOYS, but Bernard Sumner went and founded ELECTRONIC, aided and abetted by Messrs Tennant and Lowe!
One of DEPECHE MODE’s greatest moments, Alan Wilder said: “From memory, the drums were sampled from LED ZEPPELIN’s ‘When the Levee Breaks’ (but secondhand from a rap record)… For the end choruses, there are some string samples which I think were derived from Elgar. One of my techniques is to find sections of classical strings and transpose / stretch these, then add my own samples, in order to formulate new and unusual arrangements”.
Undoubtedly, ‘Kissing The Machine’ is Andy McCluskey’s finest song without Paul Humphreys as an OMD band mate. It also featured one of Karl Bartos’ greatest melodies. Recorded for his first project after leaving KRAFTWERK, Karl Bartos said “He suggested we do something together and I was up for it… We picked some cassettes and finally I found the opening notes of ‘Kissing The Machine’. A month later he sent me a demo…He wrote the whole song and the lyric and the robo voice” 
The closing track on the ‘I Say I Say I Say’ album produced by HEAVEN 17 and BEF’s Martyn Ware, ‘Because You’re So Sweet’ was a pretty ballad representative of the maturer approach taken by Andy Bell and Vince Clarke for their seventh long player. Featuring ERASURE’s trademark sequences, there was also the self-imposed restriction of no drum machines being used, so that all the album’s percussive templates were created using synths and driven by sequencers.
There were eight singles from 1999’s ‘Play’ but for 1995’s ‘Everything Is Wrong’, Mute Records were more restrained with just five! Surprisingly, this vivid instrumental missed out on singular distribution. One of the highlights from the genre hopping MOBY long player, the looping bass sample of ‘First Cool Hive’ was like an update of ‘Empires & Dance’ era SIMPLE MINDS while female voice samples and beautiful synth strings gave it a mysterious ENIGMA-tic touch.
‘Mu-tron’ may have opened the LADYTRON debut album ‘604’ but the pulsating salvo at the start of ‘Discotraxx’ signalled the album’s intent… the return of the synthesizer as an instrument of value and integrity, not as a novelty to mock the past. From the moment Mira Aroyo deadpans in Bulgarian and Helen Marnie’s sweet but resigned voice kicks in about “the boy I know”, a new dawn is heralding for electronic pop.
The surreal concept was Kate Bush does THE HUMAN LEAGUE on this buzzy percussive extravaganza, one of the more under rated songs in Alison Goldfrapp and Will Gregory’s canon. The sub-TOM TOM CLUB meets PRINCE electrofunk is aided by Charlie Jones’ treated bass runs over the zooming synth hooks and chunky riffs. Interestingly despite its immediacy or maybe because of it, ‘Lovely 2 C U’ has rarely made it into the GOLDFRAPP live set.
is still available as a 10 x 7 inch boxed set or as a download album
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are available through a variety of retail outlets
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