BERLIN BLONDES were a post-punk band who formed in Glasgow during 1979.
The original line-up comprised of Steven Bonomi (vocals), Robert Farrell (guitar + synth), Jim Spender (keyboards + synth) and David Rudden (bass). But as the quartet signed to EMI in 1980, Rudden left to form ENDGAMES who signed to Virgin Records and went on to have a minor German hit ‘Waiting For Another Chance’ in 1983. Rudden’s replacement on bass was Nick Clark from THE CUBAN HEELS.
THE CUBAN HEELS were an offshoot of punk band JOHNNY AND THE SELF ABUSERS whose members included Jim Kerr and Charlie Burchill of SIMPLE MINDS; they famously split up on the day their debut single ‘Saints & Sinners’ was released!
BERLIN BLONDES only ever made one self-titled album, recorded at GARY NUMAN’s Rock City Studios in Shepperton and produced by Mike Thorne, best known for his work with WIRE, SOFT CELL and BRONSKI BEAT. This combination meant that not only was Numan’s Polymoog present on the record, but also the first version of the Synclavier which SOFT CELL later used to such great effect on ‘Non Stop Erotic Cabaret’ under Thorne’s direction.
As with many acts of the more artistically inclined post-punk period, ROXY MUSIC and Berlin-era DAVID BOWIE were both key influences on BERLIN BLONDES. They differed by using a drum machine, which gave them a stark rhythmic sound unusual at the time, as the acts they were often compared to like SPARKS, WIRE, MAGAZINE and SIMPLE MINDS used live drummers.
A meeting of synthesizers, art rock and obscure vocals, BERLIN BLONDES had the air of a Highland FAD GADGET, with a very European detached cool. Beginning the album with what was their second single, ‘Framework’ was the sort of syncopated futurist disco featuring crashing electronic beats and bursts of string machine that SPANDAU BALLET and DURAN DURAN were to initially make their fortune with.
Densely produced, it failed to be a hit and could be considered one of the great lost songs of 1980. But then in that same year, SIMPLE MINDS ‘I Travel’ and THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s reissue of ‘Empire State Human’ also failed to trouble the chart return shops, so even the best were having it hard.
BERLIN BLONDES’ debut 45 ‘Science’ was more in touch with new wave, although on the album rework, the addition of live drum beats from Danny Frankel and more prominent synths added some qualities that were absent from the original single version. The waltzy ‘Astro’ was entertainingly SPARKS-lite, reminiscent of ‘Falling In Love With Myself Again’ from ‘Kimono My House’, but coming over like a less accomplished version of SIMPLE MINDS’ similarly influenced ‘Kaleidoscope’.
Smothered in a macabre cocoon of intensity, ‘Romance’ made the most of its horror film soundtrack synths, chilling string machine and a brilliant bassline. Meanwhile ‘Trail To Istanbul’ with its John McGeoch-like guitar over a distorted mechanical backbeat provided a skeleton for Eno-esque guitar treatments to imitate bursts of sax.
The claustrophobia of ‘Secret Days’ recalled MAGAZINE coupled to elements of SIMPLE MINDS ‘Premonition’, while ‘Mannequin’ possessed some New Romantic swagger and swirling electronics, although things got a bit overbearing towards the end with cries of “dummy-dummy-dummy”! The over-driven drum machine and icy synths attached to a harsh arpeggio on ‘Neon Probe’ came over like John Foxx, while suitably eerie with doom laden bass guitar saw ‘Zero Song’ progressing into a steadfast easel of screeching synth.
BERLIN BLONDES had everything in place, a major label deal and a top producer directing the operation but with no hit singles, it wasn’t to be in terms of sales success. Shortly after the album’s release, Jim Spender reverted back to his real name McKinven and left the band to find fame and fortune with ALTERED IMAGES.
Meanwhile, BERLIN BLONDES left EMI and released a single ‘Marseille’ on the independent Scratch Records. But it sank without trace and the band were no more. Looking back, it’s easy to see how BERLIN BLONDES became lost among acts like WIRE, MAGAZINE and SIMPLE MINDS; while derived from the same school as Russell Mael and Howard Devoto, Steven Bonomi was less convincing vocally in an era where Bowie-esque mannerisms were almost compulsory.
It took several years for SIMPLE MINDS to make critical and commercial headway, so it would have been interesting to see how BERLIN BLONDES might have evolved. The original nine track debut album has now been reissued as a CD by Cherry Red Records as ‘The Complete Recordings 1980-1981’. The package includes eight bonus tracks to including ‘Marseille’, its B-side ‘The Poet’ plus an assortment of single mixes, extended remixes and instrumental versions.
‘Berlin Blondes’ wasn’t the greatest album of the period, but it had some cracking tracks. As a fascinating time capsule piece on how music north of Hadrian’s Wall was developing outside of the Glasgow School jangle of bands like AZTEC CAMERA, ALTERED IMAGES and ORANGE JUICE, the debut album from BERLIN BLONDES is an intriguing listen, a history lesson in the emergent synthetic sonics of the period within post-punk.
With Anni Hogan meeting Derek Forbes, one can only expect electrifying miracles.
Hogan, known for her collaborations with Marc Almond, Nick Cave, Barry Adamson, Robin Rimbaud, Rusty Egan and Wolfgang Flür, shares more than the love for the sci-fi of ‘The Zanti Misfits’ with bassist Forbes, who worked with SIMPLE MINDS and PROPAGANDA, and has recently been the recipient of the prestigious Ivor Novello Award.
As the explosive twosome joined forces some eighteen months ago to create a cinematic gem of their own, here comes the debut long player ‘Broken Hearted City’.
The album has been engineered by Ando Wright at Parr Street studios in Liverpool, with the writing, vocals and production shared equally between Hogan and Forbes. The resultant eight track LP is short and sweet, except it’s not sweet at all.
The opening ‘Scream Machine’ bursts out with entangled guitar, gritty synth, gentle piano and pretty much everything else in between, floating away with shreds of sound, to enter the much more subdued ‘Lonesome’.
The guitar is still the guiding light for the voices of Forbes’ and Hogan’s, creating an atmosphere of a Wild West ballad a la John Fryer’s BLACK NEEDLE NOISE creations. As they walk together into the sunset, ‘Will You Be Mine’ takes over with the grizzly musical elements intertwined with futuristic beats and sprinkles of bossa nova for an electric ballad all sealed with a cinematic stamp.
Hogan takes the vocal reigns on ‘Head Sounds’; a mid-tempo puzzler with background distorted vocals and simple melody.
‘Planet Sweet’ presents an easy listening duet, showcasing the intricacies of Forbes’ vocal, and a radio friendly, uncomplicated structure. It’s like a more grown up version of THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH. Meanwhile, the title track changes the feel instantly with delicate piano, laced with high pitched guitar, both achieving a near Lynchian effect.
Hogan takes the singing reigns on ‘Paris Vortex’, with its luminous grace and magical soundscapes, while the SIMPLE MINDS legacy shines through on the closing titles with ‘Universe Of Love’. This super chilled track has the power to relax and fulfil dream-like fantasies all at the same time. Its floaty textures ebb away with a single line “where do you go?” before it dissipates to nothingness.
It’s not surprising that ZANTi provides a plethora of musical knowhow, what with the pioneering legends’ involvement from Hogan and Forbes.
‘Broken Hearted City’ is grown-up music for grown-up listeners, presented in a modestly served parcel that comes packed with some seriously good material. It is indeed an outstanding song collection, superb!
What do DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL, BLANCMANGE and THE THE have in common?
They all appeared on the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ which acted as a springboard for their fame and fortune.
But the silent success story of the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ has to be Paul Statham; while his band B-MOVIE with Steve Hovington, Rick Holliday and Graham Boffey were unable to achieve a foothold in the mainstream like The Big Four, the guitarist later found considerable success as a songwriter and producer.
Working with personalities as varied as Peter Murphy, Jim Kerr, Billy Mackenzie, Dido, Dot Allison, Sarah Nixey, Kylie Minogue, Lisa Scott-Lee, Tina Arena and Rachel Stevens, Statham’s credits also include groups such as THE SATURDAYS and RIGHT SAID FRED.
Statham was also a member of cult electropop trio PEACH with Pascal Gabriel and Lisa Lamb, whose song ‘On My Own’ from their only album ‘Audiopeach’ featured during a key scene in the Gwyneth Paltrow movie ‘Sliding Doors’.
Although B-MOVIE reformed in 2004, Statham has continued his songwriting and production career in parallel. More recently, there has also been his dark country project THE DARK FLOWERS, while he has also been releasing a series of ambient electronic albums, as well as establishing his own label Loki Records.
Paul Statham kindly took time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about his career outside of B-MOVIE…
What has motivated you to start Loki Records in the current climate?
Well, exactly the words “current climate”! I did approach some leftfield labels, but the response time was tragic! Also as a long standing writer through Warner Chappell, there is always the thought that the song has to be commented on or is specifically ‘aimed’ at something , even going through an experimental label. So setting up my own label means I can go sit in the woods filming the moon all night, then decide that will be the video as it was for the track ‘Who Won’t Wait’! Of course who sees the video is then down to you endlessly trying to put links up!
After years of songwriting, how did this move towards more experimental music come about?
I have been involved in writing or creating pieces of instrumental music since 2002 through an art curator friend Victor De Circasia to run alongside writing more commercial music. My project THE DARK FLOWERS put a small element of experimental into traditional song using backdrops of wind or recorded atmosphere behind tracks, but my favourite album is Brian Eno’s ‘Another Green World’ and also I love reading about his compositional practice.
Your third ambient release is ‘Asylum’, how does this differ in concept from your first two releases of this type ‘Ephemeral’ and ‘Installation Music 1’ which were given away on Bandcamp?
I did plan to do it this way. The first two are unaltered pieces that were actually used in two installations, ‘Installation Music 1’ is very specific to a sculpture ‘Diving Woman’ by Sottish artist David Mach. ‘Asylum’ took some installation music from the Asylum Chapel in Peckham and simply used it as the starting point to create an album that was added to and experimented on over time.
What do you get out of this more experimental direction that you wouldn’t get from writing pop songs?
Total Freedom. A real journey from going out and exploring sounds in the outside world to developing artwork / films and setting out and letting the unfolding music direct where it heads to with no thought of who may like this. That’s why sometimes I’ll give them away for free!
Any thoughts about trying to compose hour long pieces like Brian Eno has done?
I already have a 28 minute piece that was used in an installation. It involved 28 pieces of thirty seconds long, starting with one then adding to it the next piece every 30 seconds to create a collage of found sound, then after 28 minutes it reverses. I will locate it and put it out for free on Bandcamp now you have reminded me! It was accompanied by painter Daisy Cook’s series of 28 small paintings of the Australian landscape but taken from the air. We made a film but I’ve since lost it!
The B-side to B-MOVIE’s ‘Marilyn Dreams’ was ‘Film Music Part 1’, what ever happened to Part 2 and is composing film music a direction you would like to head in?
That was written by Rick and I really like it! I think it was Rick, although Steve wrote most things back then! Film music is something I would love to do and would offer the music for free to any budding or low budget film in need!
After B-MOVIE first ended, you started to work with Peter Murphy in 1988 and continue to do so today, how would describe your creative dynamic?
Slow development! No, it’s completely different than my usual co-writing and has been long distance, with us rarely or actually ever sitting down in the same room and writing anything together. ‘Love Hysteria’ was me sitting in his attic with a four track and a few instruments, then leaving it with him. ‘Deep’ was similar but in a studio room, with Peter adding stuff once I’d put any sort of sketch down. After his move to Turkey, I would visit Ankara but again go into his studio room alone and sketch ideas, whilst he would then go in after me later at night and really shape them up. Since the internet, we simply share files. Some people find this dynamic difficult but after such a long time, I find it easy to send him anything I feel will intrigue.
Photo by Pete Walsh
In 1996, you formed PEACH who you described as “ABBA Meets THE KLF”? What inspired this?
Hahahaha! That was meeting Pascal Gabriel who produced the Murphy album ‘Cascade’. After the ‘Holy Smoke’ album, Peter dropped THE 100 MEN (band) and I went back to co-writing the whole album via sketches and lots of different styles, but with a more electronic feel.
We all went to Spain to record, Peter, Pascal and myself and it was fairly high pressure. On returning to London, I began to hang out with Pascal and he suggested that we form a very up dayglo electronic trio… very different to my Murphy work and at the time, it was something I definitely needed to do.
How did getting signed to Mute come about? It appeared to happen quite quickly…
We signed to Daniel Miller’s Mute label after playing him two demos in his office with no singer and Pascal sorting of humming vocal ideas. I really respect Daniel Miller and how he got what we were trying to do immediately and offered us a deal on the spot! I will always be grateful to Pascal as he gave me studio keys and access to all these incredible synths and recording gear and simply let me learn my way around it, whilst we simply began recording with no agenda, other than kicking electropop tunes!
While your first single ‘On My Own’ wasn’t a UK Top 40 hit, it attracted positive responses…
It was a hit in the States and reached No 11 on the radio charts and also was a pop Top 40 hit. It was No 1 in Canada, Israel and bizarrely Singapore where Lisa Lamb and myself headed out to play the city’s 33rd birthday celebrations…v v odd!
How did you feel when ‘On My Own’ featured in the film ‘Sliding Doors’?
I remember being very excited, especially meeting Gwyneth Paltrow at the aftershow of the London premiere. Also seeing your name come up at the end of the film credits was worth it!
‘From This Moment On’ is a timeless pop tune…
I wrote the majority of that alone, picturing a sort of ABBA / ACE OF BASS crossover with a different rhythmic feel than the rest of the more uptempo songs.
I started with the sequencer and then went back and wrote this long intro as I may have discovered a jazz chord or two from some book! Lyrically, I just liked the sound of the words / sentiment without it being particularly about anything! I don’t normally write lyrics, perhaps you can see why!
The eventual ‘Audiopeach’ album was one of the last recordings that the late Billy Mackenzie contributed to. His ad libs on ‘Deep Down Together’ are so unmistakable, how did you know him and what was he like to work with?
Billy Mackenzie was a friend of Pascal’s and I was a HUGE fan of ASSOCIATES. It was shortly before he committed suicide and he arrived very down to earth and humble with a few cans of beer. He simply opened his mouth and that voice exploded. I loved it so much, I owned a DAT tape of him simply singing his vocal line unaccompanied, it was so pure with such a range. He also sang on ’Give Me Tomorrow’, replacing the high sampled opera vocal. I have read ‘The Glamour Chase’ biography twice now and recently have started listening to him a lot.
By the time ‘Audiopeach’ came out in 1998, the momentum appeared to have stalled, what happened?
Basically we didn’t all get on. Lisa proved difficult at the time, while Pascal and her were complete ‘Polar Opposites’ in just about everything. I think Lisa herself will admit she found it difficult and although we had success, our vision of what PEACH should sound like / appear like were pulling in two very different directions. I was sad as I had left a long running collaboration with Murphy, found success with this pop / electronic vibe, signed to Mute and then walked away from it all.
Photo by Joe Dilworth
PEACH supported ERASURE in London but did not play live much, could this have been a contributory factor?
I loved playing live, especially after some amazing live shows around the world with Peter Murphy, who was and is a great frontman and thrived on chaos. Pascal wasn’t so much a live musician and Lisa just got more outrageous, so it wasn’t really a live show at all, just playing a few chords over a backing track. We played three shows with ERASURE in London and before that, two in Hamburg. The German shows were a real success and very enjoyable, but somehow we’d lost enthusiasm by the time we played London!
PEACH appeared to help kickstart your next phase as a pop writer with artists like Kylie Minogue, Rachel Stevens and Lisa Scott-Lee?
Yes, that was only due to the fact I signed via PEACH to Warner Chappell and became great friends with my A&R man Mike Sault who began getting us co-writes with other artists and also, the great work that Sandy Dworniak at TMT Management did as Pascal’s and my manager.
Some might say your best known song is ‘Here With Me’ which you did with Dido, how do you look back on it?
It was so good as Dido had no expectations on her and I loved her voice; as a person and collaborator, she was great fun and wrote quickly and strongly in terms of her lyrics / melodies. We wrote quite a lot of songs and I remember vividly writing ‘I’m No Angel’ with her in about two hours!
So how would you approach a song for a singer, as opposed to artists like Dido, Sarah Nixey or Dot Allison who are more involved in the composition side? Is there a brief from the label?
Yep, sort of. It’s always strange as they give you a reference video by another artist, then the artist plays you something different and the management tell you they want something off the wall and different, so I just try and write the most interesting music I can and see where it goes. It’s so hard to get these things right and you end up with literally hundreds of very very good songs, but then so does everyone else who co-writes with them. It’s frustrating going back and seeing a huge iTunes library with lots of songs that you feel could be hits if the artist / A&R / manager had chosen to go with the song you co-wrote!!
You also worked with Jim Kerr on ‘Return Of the King’, a tribute to Billy Mackenzie for his LOST BOY solo project and subsequently, ‘Kill Or Cure’ for SIMPLE MINDS, what was that like?
Fantastic! I saw SIMPLE MINDS four times in one year when I was a teenager and was a HUGE fan of the first four albums. Not so much ‘New Gold Dream’ onwards, but ‘Reel To Real Cacophony’ and ‘Empires & Dance’.
So writing with Jim Kerr in my small bedroom sized home studio was one of those moments you think if I could have told my 18 year old self that, he wouldn’t have believed me! Also we share a lot of great music references in Bowie, Bolan, Roxy and certain literary styles / books. Jim is a very optimistic and supportive friend, he encouraged THE DARK FLOWERS and we have written a lot of material that may or may not see the light of day!
So what’s happening with THE DARK FLOWERS, which has featured Jim Kerr, Peter Murphy and Dot Allison amongst others?
I have all the music… it’s like herding cats trying to get a song or two from each person as they are all involved constantly in their own work. However I’m getting excited about the second album as its shaping up well… darker in tone than the first (deliberately) and featuring David J as well. Lloyd Cole was interested and started a track, but as of yet???!!!!
In all, are you quite happy with how your music career has turned out in its various guises?
I’m very happy… more so than ever. I re-signed to Warner Chappell in January and balance my week with running a course at BIMM in London once a week and heading up the songwriting workshops at Solent University (sixth year now) once a week too. This leaves me plenty of time to work on my own stuff and collaborate with long standing friends / artists
What’s next for you in whatever guise?
– THE DARK FLOWERS 2
– The continued release of experimental music via Loki Records
– AFTER THE RAIN (my new sample / DJ Shadow style project)
– New B-MOVIE album
– New Peter Murphy collaborations
– A new KRAFTWERK / vaporwave project with film composer Magnus Fiennes out in LA
– And continued co-writing via Warner Chappell’s, particularly with electro R‘n’B singer Billie Black.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its grateful thanks to Paul Statham
Zeus B Held is the veteran German producer and remixer who has been a key presence in the development of electronic pop music.
Making his name as a keyboard player in the progressive rock band BIRTH CONTROL, he later progressed as a session musician, solo artist and producer. His vocoder layered cover of THE BEATLES’ ‘Fool On The Hill’ became a favourite of Belgian sibling duo SOULWAX.
His production breakthrough came from working with GINA X PERFORMANCE in 1979 when the single ‘No GDM’ became an underground club favourite. As a result, he worked with the likes of FASHION, DEAD OR ALIVE, DIE KRUPPS and John Foxx while also remixing ALPHAVILLE, SIMPLE MINDS and Gary Numan. Other acts who benefited from his musicality and sound design were MEN WITHOUT HATS, SPEAR OF DESTINY, TRANSVISION VAMP and Nina Hagen.
Later, Held moved into more jazzy grooves and while resident in Australia, he led a World Music collective featuring Aboriginal musicians and released an album called ‘Digital Dreaming’. He returned to electronic music in 2015 with the release of ‘Logic of Coincidence’ via Les Disques du Crépuscule, a largely ambient imaginary film soundtrack.
Almost simultaneously, he teamed up with former TANGERINE DREAM member Steve Schroyder to form the appropriately named DREAM CONTROL. The pair are releasing their first album ‘Zeitgeber’, a largely uptempo electronic record that could potentially satisfy the headspaces of proggers and the feet of clubbers.
While in the UK on a short promotional trip for ‘Zeitgeber’, Zeus B Held kindly stopped for coffee to chat to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about DREAM CONTROL and his vast production portfolio.
You took a break into jazz and world music, what has brought you back into working in electronic pop again?
After I left England in 2003, I did a few different things like working around the ZKM Karlsruhe on more theoretical aspects of music and teaching. Call this lecturing “transfer of knowledge” which is ok and I still do it, but I am more interested in making music. In 2013, I had four weeks in Japan where I locked myself away with a couple of synthesizers; I really enjoyed that and rediscovered that it was the core of what I do best and what I want to do. This is what became ‘Logic Of Coincidence’.
Did the improvements in digital technology make your return much easier?
Not really, because the actual physical hands-on experience when you work with sequencers, moving sliders and twiddling knobs is a much more sensual action than if you programme it or do it with a mouse. I think there’s a big difference, like between virtual and real action-response.
I started the album with lots of virtual instruments, a master keyboard and a Moog Source. Then I replaced them slowly and as I was doing this, it confirmed my thoughts about the differences between the virtual and real thing.
I remember a time when I was a bit tired of those sounds, not realising that these sounds were the signature of what I’ve been doing! And it took a few years for me to realise those are my tools! And that’s what happened in the solitude of my Japanese hut…
What synths do you have?
I still have a Minimoog, Moog Source, Prophet VS, Oberheim 4 Voice, PPG wave, Korg Prophecy and through Steve, I got access to the Memory Moog which is an amazing machine. I also have a collection of rack mounted synths including a Nordlead and an Oberheim DBX1. But there are some instruments which I sold – that I shouldn’t have, but there you go…
Which ones do you regret selling then?
Oh, the Polymoog and the ARP 2600 which I am looking to getting back, or something similar. I went to this year’s Superbooth in Berlin and I could see there is a new wave of old style analogue synths coming up from all over the world; it’s been a really good experience to meet so many other synthesizer freaks.
What is the direction you are taking in DREAM CONTROL, how different is it from ‘Logic Of Coincidence’?
It was amazing that Steve’s and my life were running parallel without us ever meeting each other and incredibly, he also lives in Freiburg, streets away where I am now. So it happened to be another ‘Logic Of Coincidence’ *laughs*
On our first studio session, we played around with some chords and rhythms – I played various synths and piano, added some sequences and experimented with vocoder lines. It all fitted and we both really enjoyed this new form of jamming and improvising on the spot, sometimes being amazed how our individual music and sound became one… you listen, you play and you answer, you throw a ball in, it’s just playing and responding. And that is something me and Steve can do on all kind of electronic instruments. When you create music, it should be playful.
How would you describe the sound of ‘Zeitgeber’, given Steve’s history with TANGERINE DREAM and your own background?
This album has a lot of energy in it, definitely not just a dreamy ambient album. Steve introduced me to the natural law of the “Cosmic Octave”, which is a different approach to frequency and rhythm definition.
After I experienced the difference to the standard concert pitch, I was happy to do the entire ‘Zeitgeber’ album with this method. And yes, you can hear the difference. Overall it is an instrumental album with a good deal of vocoder. There is also assorted overtone singing and some other vocal elements by two female singers.
Because of our name and history, we decided to rework one TANGERINE DREAM song and one BIRTH CONTROL song ‘Gamma Ray’, although later we dropped the TD track from this album.
Is ‘Kant Can Dance’ representative of the album?
I would say yes and no! It is the existing link to my ‘Logic of Coincidence’ album, but it’s in the spirit of us both. ‘Gamma Ray’ and ‘Kant Can Dance’ are the more accessible tracks of the album. The other tracks, like for example ‘Tomaga’ are deeper journeys into sound and unknown spaces.
Although you served your apprenticeship with BIRTH CONTROL, you went solo…
BIRTH CONTROL was a progressive rock band, doing lots of gigs all over Europe, but mainly in Germany. I was always doing my 15 to 20 minute keyboard solo which actually became my first solo album! *laughs*
Slowly I was moving more into electronics, away from the EMERSON, LAKE & PALMER and DEEP PURPLE thing. By pure coincidence, I became neighbours with Conny Plank’s studio and I realised that you can do different sound work in the studio and that’s how I did my solo stuff; I discovered the vocoder which made me develop my own singing approach – and guess, I was glad not to have to deal with a singer’s ego! *laughs*
With electronic pop producers of the era like yourself, Mike Howlett, Trevor Horn, Stephen J Lipson and Steve Hillage, there appears to be this connection with progressive rock?
I am sure there is a theoretical connection, the spirit of the time. But for me, it was my own development from thinking in chords, melodies and the traditional compositional building blocks to learn how to work with sequencers, machines and multi-tracks; I remember very well when I did this 2 minute track ‘M.P.C.’ on BIRTH CONTROL’s ‘Rebirth’ album, by discovering the Mellotron. I spontaneously put strings, flute sounds and choir together and played an impressionistic piano on top, all in an hour, while the other guys were having lunch. I got so inspired by sounds and multi-tracking, I learned to understand the studio as an instrument.
You became more widely known in the UK for producing GINA X PERFORMANCE and ‘No GDM’, what was the creative dynamic between you and her?
I wanted to make an album with vocoder, drums and only synthesizers and I wanted to make it really cold, no bluesy chords or melodies, no guitar and nothing rocky. I had in mind science fiction inspired tracks, also possible songs for the ROCKETS next album. Gina was an art student and was really into cutting edge art and music.
We became a creative unit and I invited her into the studio, maybe to put some spoken words on the recordings – she developed from this, her own way of singing. With ‘No GDM’, she wrote the lyrics in the café upstairs of the Cologne Studio Am Dom after she saw the ‘Naked Civil Servant’ film; so when she stepped in front of the microphone she transformed herself as well as the track. She put that particular life into my music, effortless and free of clichés.
What were peoples’ reactions to what you both did?
It was an amazing experience for both of us, but at first, nobody was interested because this was a non pigeon hole-able unheard music. I’ll never forget when this studio mastering engineer in Cologne put the ‘Nice Mover’ album on the spectrum analyser and said “Look here at the frequencies, this can’t work! Nobody wants to listen to that!”*laughs*
But we found a little label and suddenly people started to like it. It came from three places where we had the best feedback; there was Rusty Egan and The Blitz Club, Austrian main radio where it entered the charts and Canada… this all took about a year to happen.
So this led to you coming to the UK and working with Birmingham band FASHION?
What also led me to FASHION was my vocoder production for a French / Italian band called ROCKETS. I went to the Midem, the annual music event in Cannes, to sell my first solo album and I passed this stand where I saw a video with five silver painted guys playing a slightly futuristic rock song ‘Future Woman’ using a voice box.
I thought “this would be so much better with a vocoder” and I asked to speak to their manager – after he heard my stuff, I was in. A week later, I was in Paris recording a cover of CANNED HEAT’s ‘On The Road Again’ and it became the ROCKETS’ big European hit.
FASHION heard this and also liked GINA X PERFORMANCE – so eventually a guy from Arista Records asked me to listen to their demos and I liked it. I particularly liked it because Dee Harris, the main songwriter and front man, also played a wicked Roland guitar synth in a slightly jazz-funky way; in those days the only other guitar synth player I knew was Pat Metheny on his group’s ‘Offramp’ album. The ‘Fabrique’ album was recorded in Cologne, Paris and London, it was nicely developed over six months.
You also worked on the next FASHION album ‘Twilight Of Idols’ which closed with the brilliant instrumental title track…
Well… ‘Twilight Of Idols’ was FASHION Mark 2, it’s OK, but for me it was a compromise. The second version of FASHION with Alan Darby on guitar and vocals and songs like ‘Hurricane’, for me, it was stylistically too close to the overcrowded field of mainstream rock.
FASHION’s first album with Dee Harris was his subtle funk and jazzy chord structures, influenced by American songwriting and this particular mixture of electronics from me applying my Germanic sequencers. Lately, 35 years after its making, I have been asked to overhaul ‘Fabrique’ with Dee Harris, so I can assure that we’ll eventually be working on that.
At one point, FASHION were rated higher than DURAN DURAN on the Birmingham scene but of course, it was DURAN DURAN who broke big, what’s your take on it?
In Birmingham, FASHION and DURAN DURAN were rehearsing in the same building when I got involved. DURAN DURAN were already ahead in the game, having a few singles out with EMI while FASHION were just entering the major pop arena. As much as I like Mr Simon Le Bon, I think Dee Harris was a different calibre as a vocalist – but there you go, the DURAN DURAN guys just went a fair bit faster, were better managed and they administered one hit after another!
Unfortunately after ‘Fabrique’ was finished, some chemical reaction in certain brains caused the ‘Fabrique’ line-up to collapse and the album had to be buried by Arista. Their German and American labels hugely believed in the group and things could have been different, but FASHION didn’t really enter the league they should have been in.
How did working with John Foxx on ‘The Golden Section’ come about?
I was a big fan of John’s ‘Metamatic’ album. He had the same publisher as Gina X who also was his manager. John had been working with Mike Howlett, but it wasn’t working out for various reasons… and he had discovered THE BEATLES! I told John that it should be more about sound and noisy abstract tunes but he wanted melodies with second and third harmonies. *laughs*
We were working in his studio The Garden in Shoreditch and it was his solo album, so I was there to make his vision happen. I guess our collaboration was not a very successful one as he pulled too far away from his roots, something that he later realised “ooops”! I helped him but I was torn, I had to make the best out of it.
I wanted to bin songs and put more sequencers on others as it would have been more suitable and appreciated by his existing fan base, but he galloped into ‘The Golden Section’. John is a multi-talented, very intelligent artist and we met at an interesting moment in our lives, but we didn’t make the kind of mutual masterpiece which we could have done.
You then went on to producing DEAD OR ALIVE, your work with them had an amazing rhythmic element to it, how did you achieve that?
They loved Patrick Cowley and Sylvester, that uptempo HI-NRG gay disco. I often went to the Heaven club during those days and listened to that music, I really liked this irresistible drive and energy. They brought many of those elements to the table themselves. We started to work on ‘Sophisticated Boom Boom’ with Wayne Hussey on guitar, thus getting a slightly gothic element which I quite liked.
But Wayne and his guitar were sacked relatively early during the production, you can hear his guitar best on the first single ‘Misty Circles’. For me, producing DEAD OR ALIVE was a mixture of sound-styling as well as making sure Pete Burns’ mighty vocal performance had the right backing. We got on fine, but there were moments when we argued about what’s best for the arrangement and dynamics. Sometimes I offered ten ideas and they’d take one and a half… I guess that’s part of the producing process…
So in DEAD OR ALVE, had the sequence programming been done by Tim Lever and you were sweetening it for the final recording, or were you redoing it?
It was a bit of both, some tracks came with some basic sequences to start with, others we started from scratch. I brought along my Moog and ARP 2600 to fill up the space. For drums we used mainly the Oberheim DMX, a Linn Drum and sounds from the Akai S1000. We also had a Korg drum machine but they didn’t like the TR808; it’s funny, when I worked with KILLING JOKE, they hated the 808 as well.
After all these British artists, what was it like to work with a German act like DIE KRUPPS in 1985?
With John Foxx and DEAD OR ALIVE, we had more open ended concepts. DIE KRUPPS were more German, much more “korrekt” and “…it’s all been worked out!”*laughs*
They pretty much had worked out how their tracks should be structured but by playing around with the Fairlight, we found space for new ideas and sounds. In the end, a lot of the ‘Entering The Arena’ album was Fairlight based. Listening back to it now, I feel we were close to a real classic. And somehow we wanted to hold our own against PROPAGANDA, but this was tricky because PROPAGANDA’s production budget was in a different range. We had a limited budget and the LP was released by the Virgin sub-label Statik, whose claim to fame was MEN WITHOUT HATS who I later worked with.
How did you find the move into the world of the Fairlight and digital in general?
I wanted to master the Fairlight and luckily enough, Octave Hire, a London rental company based in the Docklands, left one with me at my basement flat in Earls Court when it wasn’t being used. I spent days and nights on end to dive into this new world of sampling and sequencing. I’ll never forget how I once got stuck and someone suggested to phone this guy Hans Zimmer who was also working with one and had a studio in Fulham called The Snake Ranch. He came to my house and showed me a few tricks. When he spoke in his Bavarian accent, I realised there was another “Deutsch Musik Mann” in my London hood! *laughs*
I used the Fairlight on the last Gina X album ‘Yinglish’ and it was here when I met JJ Jeczalik, a real expert on the CMI. We made a deal: I’ll get him a few studio gigs, teach some musical basics and give him sounds and samples which went into his library – some of them ended up on the first record by THE ART OF NOISE. But at one point, Pete Burns walked into Olympia Studios and shouted “ZEUS! YOU B*STARD, I HEARD MY VOICE ON THE ART OF NOISE, I KNOW IT’S ME!”… I replied “it’s impossible”, but thought to myself “oh sh*t, it could well be!” *laughs*
You had a bit of a remix period, one was ‘Big In Japan’ by ALPHAVILLE…
ALPHAVILLE used an edit of my 12 inch remix for the normal 7 inch… I mixed it at a studio in Queensway with the engineer Femi Jiya, who later worked with PRINCE. This music wasn’t exactly funky and so we worked with repeat echoes and dropped in a fretless bass sound from a Roland D50. Next door was ASWAD, the reggae band – you could smell it… so I asked them to come in and played the mix to them, they gave it the thumbs down! *laughs*
On your remix of ‘Ghostdancing’ for SIMPLE MINDS, you gave space to the rhythm section…
SIMPLE MINDS then had a drummer I did some studio work with before, Mel Gaynor… he also played on an unreleased track I produced with Ian Burden from THE HUMAN LEAGUE, called ‘She’s Always On The Dancefloor’. I studied the parts and played around with the drums because I really enjoyed what Mel Gaynor did. He was a timing and groove master who beat every drum machine.
How did you feel when you were asked to do the ‘E Reg remix’ of Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’ in 1987?
I was a big Gary Numan fan, I saw him in 1980 in Düsseldorf at the Philipshalle… guess who was the support act? SIMPLE MINDS and they played on about four square feet of stage because Gary Numan had such a huge stage set up!
Beggars Banquet asked me to remix ‘Cars’ and I was already booked and had to squeeze it in. So I worked 20 hours non-stop on it. This was when the Roland D50 came out and if you listen to my remix, it’s full of those sounds! I enjoyed doing it because it’s a great song, I love his voice, the dynamics of the sounds work brilliantly with Gary’s melodies. I saw my job to get more excitement and shape into the track as well as doing an extended version. Armand Van Helden actually sampled parts of my remix for ‘Koochy’!
Four weeks later it was out, doing really well and I was invited to a Gary Numan concert, I sat next to his dad… I looked on stage and there were five D50s! *laughs*
Your work with TRANSVISION VAMP was fascinating in that you used technology to make an album sound punk…
I worked closely with their label and they wanted a record, like you could have a cup of tea to… well, they didn’t actually say that but it was how I translated it, “pop punk”. The first album ‘Pop Art’ took nearly two years and the band grew during its making; they had started to work on demos with Duncan Bridgeman who also did most of the pre-production; after a few tracks into the actual recording sessions, I was asked to revisit the production and arrangements.
I got a chance to enrich the sounds and take care of the mixing. A few tracks I did from scratch and started with an electronic song frame. Especially ‘Tell That Girl To Shut Up’, I’ll never forget when I was doing the arrangement, Wendy James walked in and screamed at me “THAT SOUNDS LIKE F*CKING HOWARD JONES, I HATE IT!” and she stormed out of the studio. I yelled “wait, we’re going to stick the guitars on and it will work!” which is exactly what happened. So yes, in the end most of the album sounded a good mixture between electronic versus rough and punk.
Of course, this was in the days before Melodyne and Autotune… when Wendy sang the soul out of her guts and it wasn’t quite right, we would have to record up to thirty tracks of vocals and do compilations of the takes – and in the end it sounded like one convincingly performed take, which would have to grab the listener. She sold that band!
Before that, there was the aborted Clare Grogan album that you did, what happened there?
With Clare, we were forced for too much in a little amount of time. I couldn’t really open her up musically, it was like being whacked in with the record company watching… before I could sit back and analyse, it was all finished. It was done in a rush, that was a pity. With her voice, we should have done something a bit more whacky, something more off the wall.
I had the same experience when I was paired with Annabella Lwin from BOW WOW WOW. It could have been brilliant but it was squeezed into three weeks trying to record ok songs. I couldn’t find her best musical language, you need time when you develop something new. With TRANSVISION VAMP, we had eighteen months and it grew. It all started when Nick met Wendy and said “do you want to be a rock star?”, she said “yes” and they worked on it.
This record company pressure would drive any normal person crazy?
Yes, there’s a danger, you’d better have strong nerves and a good sense of humour… and you have to avoid ending up doing paid crap!
Is that why there has been such a big gap in your production work after Nina Hagen in 1991 ?
It coincided with a breakdown of my private life. Whether it was too much time spent in the studio or a typical mid-life crisis, whatever! It happened! So I had a desire to be free, travel the world – I ended up in Australia, doing music there with Aborigines and playing concerts in the middle of nature. That’s when I recorded my “audio postcard of down under” called ‘Digital Dreaming’. All in all I took ten years off and then I didn’t come back easily. I did film and ad music and that didn’t really satisfy me.
So I had a rethink, did workshops and coaching, gave lectures – call it “knowledge transfer” – but again, this was not what I wanted to do. I realised I feel most comfortable doing music in the studio or on stage. And by now, as much as I’m an optimist, I have given up on the idea of immortality *laughs*
I would love to do more DREAM CONTROL concerts, events and festivals. I still want to play and entertain people – their ears, their eyes and their imagination. In the studio I would like to do more songwriting and remixes; in an ideal world I’d always work with new inspiring equipment and learn how to master it.
I always enjoy listening to music but I am a difficult consumer. For pleasure I’m often listening to more jazz based music, but occasionally, a mega exciting track by the likes of Justin Timberlake or Justin Bieber will knock me out and I applaud. Apart from a song’s composition, I always want to know how it is done the way it sounds – from the musical & frequency arrangement to the immaculate mastering.
Music doesn’t stop… music keeps me alive
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK give its grateful thanks to Zeus B Held
While acts like THE ART OF NOISE and DEPECHE MODE pioneered the use of sampling found sounds to use as new virtual instrumentation, eventual improvements in the technology meant whole recognisable phrases could be cut, manipulated and looped to create new compositions and arrangements.
For those on a budget, some of the samples would have been replayed as a way of saving money and not having to pay mechanical royalties to the original artist.
Previously incongruous genre blends were now more straightforward for producers and DJs as easy listening and AOR would end up sitting on top of house tracks while significantly, a number of acts who made their name during Synth Britannia would feature in R’n’B and hip-hop.
So ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK has put aside some of its snobbery to seek out 25 of the most inventive, and some would say, sacrilegious uses of classic synth samples in popular music. However in a wider context, this diverse selection of tracks acts as a popular culture record of Synth Britannia’s influence in particular, especially when the Musicians Union attempted to ban the synthesizer from studio work and live performance in 1982.
Presented in chronological and then alphabetical order with a limit of one track per artist moniker, here are the names that have gone on the list…
NEW ORDER Blue Monday (1983)
Once you delve into the background behind NEW ORDER’s ‘Blue Monday’, you will see that it is a real Frankenstein’s monster of a track including a sample of the neo-robotic Vako Orchestron choir sound from ‘Uranium’ by KRAFTWERK. And although not sampled, ‘Blue Monday’ took direct influence from a variety of sources including Ennio Morricone, Sylvester, Donna Summer and Klein + MBO.
Available on the NEW ORDER album ‘Singles’ via WEA Records
Mirroring the way in which KRAFTWERK had entered the urban community’s consciousness via Electro and Breakdancing, Thomas Dolby helped write and produced the single ‘Magic’s Wand’ for the Brooklyn hip-hop duo WHODINI. Centering around a superb synth riff and vocodered vocals, the track stood out from some of its contemporaries due its electronic production and TMDR himself ended up reworking elements of the song for himself on his own track ‘Puppet Theatre’.
Available on the THOMAS DOLBY album ‘The Flat Earth’ via EMI Music
One of ERASURE’s best known songs, ‘Blue Savannah’ had originally been inspired by Roy Orbison and for its single release, Mute Records commissioned a plethora of remixes. ‘Der Deutsche Mix I’ by Gareth Jones and leftfield house trio FISCHERMAN’S FRIEND took the novel step of using KRAFTWERK samples from ‘Computer World’ and ’Tour De France’ but in a more obvious fashion, as opposed to a few blips as THE KLF had done on ‘What Time Is Love?’.
Available on the ERASURE boxed set ‘3’ via Mute Records
BOMB THE BASS mainman Tim Simenon loved the Synth Britannia era, later working with John Foxx and DEPECHE MODE. ‘Winter In July’ featured a sample of the atmospheric Roland System 700 synth FX used in the intro to ‘Ghosts’ by JAPAN, while the rhythmic backbone of the track also owed a lot to the drum pattern from ‘Visions of China’. The song caught the eye of Sarah Brightman, who did her own cover for the ‘La Luna’ album in 2000.
U.S.U.R.A.’s ‘Open Your Mind’ centred around the opening polysynth part of SIMPLE MINDS ‘New Gold Dream (81 – 82 – 83 – 84)’ and took its title from a dialogue sample from the Kuato character played by actor Marshall Bell in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film ‘Total Recall’. The Italian dance trio responsible for the frantic club track also used a short female “oh” voice sample from Ashford & Simpson’s ‘Solid’ in this fast and furious techno romp as well.
Available on the USURA single ‘Open Your Mind’ via Deconstruction Records
UTAH SAINTS were serial samplers with Annie Lennox and Kate Bush being the dominant voices on their first two singles. ‘Believe In Me’ used significant chunks from THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s ‘Love Action’ as well as Sylvester’s ‘Do You Wanna Funk?’ and CROWN HEIGHTS AFFAIR’s ‘You Gave Me Love’. Central to the track was Phil Oakey’s mid-song chant which helped propel this immensely catchy club stomper to number 8 in the UK charts in 1993.
Available on the UTAH SAINTS album ‘Utah Saints’ via FFRR Records
Pivotal in pioneering the Big Beat genre, THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS looped a short section from the vocodered intro to KRAFTWERK’s ‘Ohm Sweet Ohm’ track for ‘Leave Home’. Aside from the beginning of the piece, the sample doesn’t appear elsewhere and the track relies more on the “Brothers gonna work it out” vocal by American singer / songwriter Willie Hutch and a live bass part played by John ‘Segs’ Jennings of the punk band THE RUTS.
Available on THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS album ‘Exit Planet Dust’ via Virgin Records
This big beat duo of Paul Daley and Neil Barnes were said to have been one of the loudest live acts ever. At Brixton Academy in 1996, the sound system caused dust and plaster to fall from the roof. For ‘The Beach’ soundtrack, LEFTFIELD contributed a thumping instrumental track for the beginning of the film. However, on closer scrutiny, the basis of ‘Snakeblood’ appeared to be the melody line from OMD’s ‘Almost’! When challenged, the duo fessed up amicably.
Available on the LEFTFIELD album ‘A Final Hit’ via Sony Music
Using a repetitive scratched one bar loop from Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’, ‘Koochy’ was one of several tracks around this period which sought influence from the synth icon. Also featuring a robotic KRAFTWERK-inspired vocal and 808 cowbells, the track went Top 5 in UK national charts, despite it frankly being a bit of a mess and unfufilled in its potential. It helped prompt the steady rebirth of the former Gary Webb.
Available on the ARMAND VAN HELDEN album ‘Killing Puritans’ via Southern Fried Records
Along with ‘Koochy’, ‘Where’s Your Head At?’ certainly did no harm in helping to rehabilitate the faltering career of Gary Numan; using the sped up central Minimoog bass riff of ‘M.E.’, the song also cleverly incorporated elements of ‘This Wreckage’ too. With a brilliant video to match, the song showed that it was possible to create a synth-oriented dance track that wasn’t cheesy and almost had a punk aesthetic to it.
Available on the BASEMENT JAXX album ‘Rooty’ via XL Records
FELIX DA HOUSECAT featuring MELISTAR Harlot (2001)
Blatantly sampling the rhythmic elements of THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s ‘The Sound Of The Crowd’ without acknowledgement, nonchalant vocalist Melistar joined Felix Stallings Junior to ironically wax lyrical about the joys of using feminine charms to get by in life! With some great analogue riffage on this bridge linking past, present and future with an icy detachment, Stallings was very forward thinking and knew she was a feline… the European female’s here!
YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA’s hit cover of ‘Firecracker’ forms a significant element of this single by the actress / singer /dancer /model from The Block. Interestingly Mariah Carey made an enquiry to use the sample first for her song ‘Loverboy’, but as a result of involvement from her ex-husband and Sony label boss Tommy Mottola, the riff ended up with Lopez instead, prompting a war of words between the two parties.
Available on the JENNIFER LOPEZ album ‘J.Lo’ via Sony Music
‘Shoot the Dog’ was the late Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou’s protest song directed at the so-called special relationship between George W Bush and Tony Blair. Appearing a few years before PET SHOP BOYS’ ‘I’m With Stupid’, the more veiled ‘Shoot The Dog’ used the middle eight section of ‘Love Action’ by THE HUMAN LEAGUE including Phil Oakey’s vocal, while also borrowing from ABC’s ‘Be Near Me’ and his own ‘Fast Love’
Available on the GEORGE MICHAEL album ‘Twenty Five’ via Sony Music
GIRLS ON TOP mash-up merchant and producer Richard X dropped Adina Howard’s R’n’B number over ‘Are Friends Electric?’ by TUBEWAY ARMY as a bootleg. A crossover hit was waiting to be unleashed but Howard refused permission for her vocal to be used; enter SUGABABES, modern pop’s equivalent of ‘Charlie’s Angels’. This Diabolus In Musica urban hybrid helped bring Gary Numan to a curious new young audience.
Belgian domiciled Italian DJ Vito Lucente dabbled in house and Eurodisco. But his best known recording borrowed from the HI-NRG scene in New York, sampling ‘I’m So Hot For You’ by Bobby O that had borrowed its riff from THE HUMAN LEAGUE’s ‘Don’t You Want Me’, which itself was inspired by ABBA’s ‘Eagle’. In amongst all this, he somehow persuaded THE CURE’s mainman to contribute some of his afflicted gothique to proceedings.
Available on the JUNIOR JACK album ‘Trust It’ via Defected Records
No stranger to delving into the mine of THE HUMAN LEAGUE, Richard X started his career in the underground club scene creating mash-ups. ‘Finest Dreams’ with KELIS was a reworking of ‘The Finest’ written by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis which was made famous by THE SOS BAND. Using a similar trick to ‘Freak Like Me’, the musical structure was based around ‘The Things That Dreams Are Made Of’ and became a Top 10 hit in the UK.
SOUL MEKANIK are the duo of Kelvin Andrews and Danny Spencer. Probably best known for co-writing Robbie Williams’ ‘Rock DJ’, the pair took most of the instrumental elements of ‘Visions of China’ by JAPAN and used it as a soundbed for a new female vocal and some added portamento synths. Surprisingly successful in its conception, it was a shame this effectively well-worked track didn’t reach a wider audience.
Available on the SOUL MEKANIK album ‘Eighty One’ via Rip Records
Using a sample from SOFT CELL’s iconic cover of the Northern Soul favourite by Gloria Jones, ‘S.O.S.’ co-writer JR Rotem said “I heard ‘Tainted Love’ and wanted to take the bass line and update it with a new swing”. Utilising pitch shifted vocals worked with compression software to increase the tonal spectrum, ‘S.O.S’ was effectively a musical cry for help that was to become the Barbadian singer’s first big hit. Swathed in synth riffs and machine beats, she was to use a similar template for ‘Umbrella’.
As if in a tit-for tat response to Jennifer Lopez’s YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA-sampling ‘I’m Real’, THE PUSSYCAT DOLLS’ Nicole Scherzinger’s ‘Steam’ sampled the central riff from KRAFTWERK’s ‘Numbers’. Sounding rather out of place, after the first four singles from the planned ‘Her Name Is Nicole’ album flopped, Scherzinger shelved the project and the track did not actually see the light of day.
HILARY DUFF featuring THE PROPHET Reach Out (2008)
There was a period when DEPECHE MODE’s ‘Personal Jesus’ was either being covered by artists as diverse as Johnny Cash and Marilyn Manson or sampled for pop tunes by R’n’B starlets like Jamelia. Built around the voice samples, synth fuzzes and guitar riff from the original track, ‘Reach Out’ saw the one-time ‘Lizzie McGuire’ star attempt to sex up her previously goody two shoes image with an innuendo-laden Schaffel romp that included an obligatory rap as well!
Available on the HILARY DUFF album ‘Best Of’ via Hollywood Records
GZA featuring RZA & IRFANE KHAN-ACITO Life Is A Movie (2008)
Track number four in this listing that features a Gary Numan sample. This time WU-TANG CLAN member GZA takes elements from ‘Films’ off ‘The Pleasure Principle’ album and reworks it into a dark hip-hop track which recalled the vintage breakbeat of Da Clan. And it works largely thanks to the late Ced Sharpley’s live but solid drum breaks from the original, while Numan also makes a cameo appearance.
Available on the GZA/GENIUS album ‘Pro Tools’ via Babygrande
Former DEPECHE MODE member Alan Wilder occasionally relied on esoteric samples for his RECOIL project and on ‘Allelujah’, he paid homage to TANGERINE DREAM by using the hypnotic Moog sequencer pattern and electric piano part from ‘Rubycon’ for the second half of the nine minute track. Originally appearing on the ‘subHuman’ album, ‘Allelujah’ also featured as the B-side to the CD single release of ‘Prey’.
Available on the RECOIL album ‘subHuman’ via Mute Records
With the live reunion of Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke, there was a brief period in the late-noughties when the template for a modern girl group was to utilise a YAZOO inspired backing track. RED BLOODED WOMEN took that literally with a little help from cult electronic trio TRADEMARK on this interpolation of ‘Don’t Go’. The feisty trio lterally sounded literally like GIRLS ALOUD produced by Daniel Miller!
Available on the RED BLOODED WOMEN promo CD EP ‘4 Track Sampler’, never officially released
Jake Williams was REX THE DOG and made his name with some superb remixes for artists such as Robyn, THE KNIFE, CLIENT, SOULWAX, RÖYKSOPP, DEPECHE MODE and THE PRODIGY. Released during the year of the YAZOO reunion, ‘Bubblicious’ saw him recycling a whole chunk of ‘Midnight’ from their debut album ‘Upstairs At Eric’s’ and taking what was originally a sensitive synthetic torch song and turning it an uptempo banger.
At a time when the YAZOO songbook was being ripped left, right and centre, one pop act that became particularly joined at the hip with Vince Clarke were THE SATURDAYS. As well as lifting the synth riff off ‘Situation’ for their first single ‘If This Is Love’, Clarke remixed their third single ‘Issues’. And to cap it all, ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ was covered for Comic Relief as their fourth single release in 2009!
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featured during a key scene in the Gwyneth Paltrow movie ‘Sliding Doors’.
album on the spectrum analyser and said “Look here at the frequencies, this can’t work! Nobody wants to listen to that!” *laughs*
was finished, some chemical reaction in certain brains caused the ‘Fabrique’ line-up to collapse and the album had to be buried by Arista. Their German and American labels hugely believed in the group and things could have been different, but FASHION didn’t really enter the league they should have been in.
. John is a multi-talented, very intelligent artist and we met at an interesting moment in our lives, but we didn’t make the kind of mutual masterpiece which we could have done.
with Wayne Hussey on guitar, thus getting a slightly gothic element which I quite liked.
took nearly two years and the band grew during its making; they had started to work on demos with Duncan Bridgeman who also did most of the pre-production; after a few tracks into the actual recording sessions, I was asked to revisit the production and arrangements.
via WEA Records
via EMI Music
via Mute Records
via Camden Records
via Deconstruction Records
via FFRR Records
via Virgin Records
via Sony Music
via Southern Fried Records
via XL Records
via Emperor Norton
via Sony Music
via Sony Music
via Universal Music
via Defected Records
via Virgin Records
via Rip Records
via Def Jam
via Hollywood Records
via Babygrande
via Mute Records
via Hundehaus Records
via Polydor Records
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