“Put simply, Futurism means hate of the past. Our aim is to energetically combat and destroy the cult of the past” FT Marinetti
How music promotion has changed over the decades… the mid-60s saw the advent of the non-album single with THE BEATLES being particular exponents.
By the early 70s, PINK FLOYD and LED ZEPPELIN refused to even release singles, focussing only on albums. With punk and new wave, acts like THE JAM brought singles back so by 1981, THE HUMAN LEAGUE released four singles from ‘Dare’ while between 1982 to 1984, Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ milked it even further by taking six, thereby turning the album effectively into a greatest hits!
Zang Tuum Tumb was a label financed by Island Records and named after FT Marinetti’s sound poem. Its arch strategist Paul Morley talked gleefully of his belief in “the beauty of the pop single”. Together with his ZTT partners-in-crime producer Trevor Horn and manager Jill Sinclair, they became key to a marketing strategy that changed the course of pop music.
Starting with FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD in 1983, the original 16 minute ‘Sex Mix’ of ‘Relax’ on the 12 inch drew a large number of complaints because it was so radically different from the 7 inch single. Eventually, a more conventional extended version (also confusingly entitled ‘Sex Mix’) was issued.
Aided by the BBC ban, the public lapped up the song in all its various versions and ‘Relax’ was in the charts for over a year. An idea had been hit on and the next single ‘Two Tribes’ saw a new remix released every four weeks to keep it in the Top 40 for as long as possible. The multiple remix, sometimes in a version that bore little or no relation to the original track played on the radio could at times be a rewarding but also frustrating experience. FGTH’s bassist Mark O’Toole summed things up in a 1986 edition of International Musician and Recording World when he snorted “A punter wants to buy a single and there’s half a dozen mixes of it… it’s a pain in the arse!”
But new sampling keyboard computers such as the Fairlight CMI with its ‘Page R’ sequencer gave producers, programmers and musicians the opportunity to construct multiple arrangements of songs that only a few years previously would have needed hours in the studio with endless cutting of tape and real time overdubbing as exemplified by Martin Rushent’s work on THE LEAGUE UNLIMITED ORCHESTRA’s ‘Love and Dancing’.
In advertently helped by the then low sampling rates of these very expensive machines, sounds could be manipulated and distorted into something that was totally unreal, creating a new and original instrumental palette. And now, the two influential ZTT acts that are forever associated with this pioneering phase of electronic music have new deluxe packages available.
THE ART OF NOISE were named after the futurist essay ‘The Art Of Noises’ by Luigi Russolo.
Consisting of engineer Gary Langan, Fairlight programmer JJ Jeczalik, musician/arranger Anne Dudley, this was the team that worked with Trevor Horn on Malcom McLaren’s ‘Duck Rock’ and ABC’s ‘The Lexicon Of Love’. In addition to Trevor Horn, THE ART OF NOISE also boasted as a member Paul Morley who masterminded the group’s faceless image and post-modern manifesto as well as contributing song titles.
‘Influence’ collects together singles (mostly in bite size 7 inch edits for the beginner) from the ZTT era and post Horn/Morley period on China for the first time, along with some previously unreleased material.
From the off, THE ART OF NOISE were rattling cages. ‘Beat Box’ was the track which scared KRAFTWERK enough for them to delay the release of their ‘Technopop’ album and rework it as the poorly received ‘Electric Cafe’. The crazy staccato sample cacophony of ‘Close (To The Edit)’ which was later borrowed by THE PRODIGY for ‘Firestarter’ sounds as fresh and mad as ever, who can forget Smash Hits actually publishing the lyrics as if to declare they were also in on the joke!
And ‘Moments In Love’ heralded a new age in ambient mood music. Such a beautiful piece was always going to become ubiquitous and it ended up in a variety of TV commercials for products such as Brylcreem. It was even played at Madonna’s wedding to Sean Penn.
Photo by Peter Ashworth
Despite the success, all was not happy among the troops. Jeczalik indicated that he and Morley did not get along and felt his writing was pretentious. Morley said to The Guardian in 2002 “I loved the name THE ART OF NOISE so much that I forced my way into the group. If over the years people asked me what I did in the group, I replied that I named them, and it was such a great name, that was enough to justify my role. I was the Ringo Starr of THE ART OF NOISE. I made the tea!”
Unhappy with their lot, Dudley, Jeczalik and Langan took their talents to China Records in 1985. Continuing their influence but in what some would perceive as a more of a novelty manner, their technologically enhanced covers of ‘Peter Gunn’ and ‘Kiss’ brought special guests Duane Eddy and Tom Jones to a brand new audience. The more soundtrack orientated work like ‘Dragnet’, ‘Ode To Don Jose’, ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (not included on ‘Influence’) and the theme to ‘The Krypton Factor’ were enjoyable, but perhaps not as immediate to some ears. But whatever, THE ART OF NOISE had acquired fans in the jazz and hip-hop fraternities, such was their appeal.
The group disbanded in 1990 but in 1998, Anne Dudley, Trevor Horn and Paul Morley discussed the original intent of THE ART OF NOISE. As a result they reformed, adding 10CC’s Lol Creme to the line up although JJ Jeczalik and Gary Langan were absent. The resulting album ‘The Seduction of Claude Debussy’ was partly inspired by Trevor Horn’s epic PET SHOP BOYS production ‘Left To My Own Devices’ and its unforgettable line “Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat” – With a mix of ambient, rap, classical, opera, drum’n’bass and John Hurt, tracks such as ‘Metaforce’ and ‘The Holy Egoism of Genius’ ably delivered the concept.
The second CD of ‘Influence’ contains interesting fragments of THE ART OF NOISE’s history for fans and completists. Various takes and variations of ‘Moments In Love’ appear including an ‘Anne To Tears Mix’ which was rejected by Anne Dudley with the note “I never want to hear this track again!”.
As well as that, there’s ‘Beep Beep’ which is an early version of ‘(Who’s Afraid Of) The Art Of Noise?’ and the lovely ‘The Invention Of Love’ which samples from ‘Moments In Love’ and neatly bookends THE ART OF NOISE story. Meanwhile in the ZTT Building, Düsseldorf’s PROPAGANDA were the proto LADYTRON or ABBA in Hell!
Photo by Anton Corbijn
They boasted within their ranks Ralf Dörper and Michael Mertens along with two mini Marlene Dietrichs in Claudia Brücken and Susanne Freytag. The magnificent Fritz Lang film noir of ‘Dr. Mabuse’ was their opening salvo.
Produced by Trevor Horn, the success of FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD however meant a delay to the follow-up and the producer’s helm being handed over to engineer Stephen J Lipson although Horn was later involved in the final mix.
The avant pop of that 1985 follow-up ‘Duel’ is still genius, ice maiden cool yet full of pentatonic warmth and boosted by a funky rhythm section. Its crazy piano solo is just one of those great moments! And the vicious industrial dub variation ‘Jewel’ was its naughty dominatrix sister. Both were included on the eventual album ‘A Secret Wish’.
Of the other tracks, the slap heavy attack of ‘The Murder of Love’, the deadpan drone cover of JOSEF K’s ‘Sorry for Laughing’ and the mechanised beauty of ‘P.Machinery’ all still possess the Teutonic edge and the charm of the then state of the art technical tricks that made it such fascinating listening first time round.
With the lengthy ‘Dream Within A Dream’, the listener is taken on a massive aural adventure. It was this epic journey that prompted SIMPLE MINDS to initially recruit Stephen J Lipson for their ‘Street Fighting Years’ album which Trevor Horn also worked on. To the chagrin of Paul Morley, hippy Lipson brought in YES guitarist Steve Howe for a spot of soloing. But it worked, with Howe coming over a bit like ASHRA’s Manuel Göttsching whose album ‘New Age of Earth’ successfully mixed progressive six string indulgences with Germanic electronica.
Other musical notables were also listening to ‘A Secret Wish’. John Taylor of DURAN DURAN made it his album of the year. DEPECHE MODE’s Martin Gore declared it one of his major influences; ‘Black Celebration’ and ‘Music For The Masses’ are testament to that. And Michael Jackson’s producer Quincy Jones wanted to license ‘A Secret Wish’ for America. As Trevor Horn remarked: “If you listen to Michael Jackson around that time, he started to sound a lot like Propaganda. A lot of industrial sounds… “
The deluxe remaster features a directors cut with restored full length versions including a different mix of ‘Dream Within A Dream’ and a 10 minute ‘Dr. Mabuse’ although the shorter original ‘analogue variation’ is present and correct if that all proves a little too much. On the bonus CD are various rare rarities including the 20 minute cassette megamix ‘Do Well’ which features no less than five takes of ‘Duel’ plus unreleased mixes such as Paul Morley’s 10 minute Unapologetic 12 inch of ‘Sorry for Laughing’ and the Goodnight Mix of ‘The Chase’.
Another added treat is the percussive slaughter of ‘Thought I’, a harsh instrumental cover of THROBBING GRISTLE’s ‘Disziplin’ which in demo form was the track that got PROPAGANDA signed to ZTT.
As with THE ART OF NOISE, Paul Morley was at the heart of the dissent inside PROPAGANDA with accusations of favouritism towards his then-wife Claudia Brücken. The band left ZTT but reappeared in 1990 with just Michael Mertens and featuring new vocalist Betsi Miller plus ex-SIMPLE MINDS members Derek Forbes and Brian McGee for the album ‘1234’ on Virgin.
Claudia Brücken remained with ZTT and formed ACT with Thomas Leer, releasing an excellent album ‘Laughter, Tears and Rage’.
While the 1998 reformation of THE ART OF NOISE yielded an album, the PROPAGANDA reunion during the same period wasn’t so smooth and the tracks that were laid down in those sessions remain unreleased.
Photo by John Stoddart
Both ‘Influence’ and ‘A Secert Wish’ capture the essence of a gloriously adventurous time in electronic music as it moved into the digital age. While their contemporaries were hacking through Yamaha DX7 presets and ending up all sounding the same or sampling whole phrases of other people’s songs, the gang at ZTT were creating a new sound and a new art form that totally encompassed the true challenging spirit of Futurism.
THE ART OF NOISE’s ‘Influence’ and PROPAGANDA’s ‘A Secret Wish’ are available as deluxe 2CD editions via Salvo Records
Claudia Brücken is the undoubted queen of electronic avant-pop.
Her distinctive ice maiden cool vocal delivery with hints of classic Marlene Dietrich and wispy Nico more than suited the glorious European film noir sound of PROPAGANDA, the Düsseldorf quartet with Susanne Freytag, Michael Mertens and Ralf Dörper in which she first came to prominence.
Together, their songs such as ‘Dr. Mabuse’, ‘Duel’ and ‘P.Machinery’ were fine examples of how new digital technology could be utilised to produce accessible neo-industrial pop music with a chilling edge. Their 1985 ZTT album ‘A Secret Wish’ gained a legion of prominent fans including DEPECHE MODE’s Martin Gore and Michael Jackson’s producer QuincyJones who borrowed their influential sound for the ‘Bad’ album.
Despite the acclaim, PROPAGANDA split. Remaining with ZTT, Claudia formed ACT with early electro pioneer Thomas Leer and released an album ‘Laughter, Tears and Rage’ in 1988 which featured an array of lush synthetic dynamics glossed with a touch of starlet glamour. Not one to rest on her laurels, she released her only solo album so far ‘Love: And A Million Other Things’ in 1991 on Island Records before taking a career break to bring up Maddy, her daughter with then husband Paul Morley.
During this period, she only recorded occasionally with guest contributions for acts including SPIRITFEEL, THE BRAIN and OCEANHEAD. In the latter half of the 90s, PROPAGANDA reformed and although material was written and demoed, no album was released. Around this time, a friend at German label Logic Records suggested Claudia should work with Paul Humphreys of OMD. First touring the US together in 2000 before eventually becoming ONETWO, they released an EP ‘Item’ in 2004 and then the excellent album ‘Instead’ in 2007 via their own There (there) label.
Simultaneously, Claudia also worked with BLANK + JONES, APOPTYGMA BERZERK and Andy Bell as well as releasing ‘Another Language’, an album of stripped down cover versions with her former ZTT label mate Andrew Poppy.
With new deluxe 2CD reissues of ‘A Secret Wish’ and ‘Love: And A Million Other Things’ hitting a variety of retail outlets, Claudia Brücken invited ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK down to ONETWO’s London studio to chat about her career and her upcoming musical retrospective which is expected to feature the mouth watering prospect of some unreleased tracks and new remixes.
Who were your original influences?
There were people like THE VELVET UNDERGROUND and PATTI SMITH, I thought she was wonderful. I was completely mesmerised by David Bowie and I also liked Klaus Nomi. And then KRAFTWERK came along. It just questioned everything that came before because with ‘Autobahn’, you were wondering “what kind of sound is that?”. It was just so revolutionary at the time!
Of the electro stuff I was into, there was early HUMAN LEAGUE, CLUSTER, MALARIA! and NEU! I loved LA DUSSELDORF, DAF and also DER PLAN, they were completely arty and had these tiny electronic keyboards and they dressed up in these really weird costumes.
And I was also very much into the very first Nina Hagen album amongst other things. I’ve never been into one specific musical direction only; I was like a sponge soaking everything in from when I was 15. I drew from so many other sources. This would have been the time I was in a band with Susanne. There came a point where it seemed that everyone wanted to be in a band.
The Düsseldorf scene was very small. There is a street in Düsseldorf called Die Ratinger Strasse and there was a club called Ratinger Hof where a lot of bands and students from the University of Art would mingle. All the bands and people from the art school or university would all meet around there. There was this interaction between art and music happening and everyone kind of knew one another.
With ‘A Secret Wish’now receiving the deluxe remaster treatment, what are your immediate memories of that period on ZTT and the recording of that album?
Working with Stephen Lipson really. There were four studios in Sarm West, ZTT was upstairs at that time and there was also a flat where PROPAGANDA were staying at the very top. It was this place of creativity so there were these rooms where PROPANGANDA were programming in, FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD were in Studio1 and THE ART OF NOISE in another.
We were in a little studio for recording which we called ‘The Spaceship’, a tiny little room with lots and lots of lights and electronic equipment. And for me, it was one of the most creative times in my life. I don’t really dwell on the bad bits.
Stephen J Lipson’s production on ‘A Secret Wish’ proved to be highly influential on variety of people; DEPECHE MODE, SIMPLE MINDS and QUINCY JONES to name but three. What sort of technology were you using on the album?
We had the PPG in Düsseldorf so we worked with that. I had moved to London but I was flying back and forth so we would be doing lots of writing on the PPG. We also worked with a Linn Drum and our data was recorded onto floppy disks as far as I can remember, which we then would give to Stephen… but I’m not really the one to talk technical here, that would be a question for Michael.
Most of the PROPAGANDA sounds were actually from the PPG. It had a really great identity that PPG, I could identify it immediately like “oh, that’s a PPG sound”… it just had something that was different and distinct about it.
The Fairlight we only used on ‘Dr. Mabuse’ as far as I remember because JJ Jeczalik who operated it was part of Trevor Horn’s team and Trevor produced the song. When it was decided that Stephen would produce the album, it was mostly the Synclavier that was being used. I think at the time there were only three Synclaviers in the world and Trevor had one of them. Stephen did all the Frankie songs using the Synclavier, he was one of the few engineers who knew how to use it! *laughs*
Photo by Peter Brown
How did you find working with Trevor Horn?
Trevor has his own way of working because when we worked with Stephen, Trevor was the executive producer and he’d go “ok, play me what you’ve done” and go “ok, I think that’s not working yet”. So he would check in every night to give us his comments and walk out again. We’d meet the next day again, that’s the way he worked.
And Trevor, he can take a lot of time for one thing only to come back to the very beginning to say this is what he wanted! But he goes through all these alternative ways to realise this was the best idea. Extremely time consuming and costly but that’s what you get when you work with Trevor, that’s his way. Someone told me the other day that Robbie Williams gave Trevor his entire album and said “Trevor, see you in six months, do with it as you wish!” and came back six months later and just absolutely loved what he did.
Was it quite interesting for you to hear the PROPAGANDA sound on say, a Michael Jackson record like Bad? Or did it not register at the time?
It really didn’t… Trevor mentions this on the new sleeve notes and I was very flattered, that’s just brilliant. I remember hearing QUINCY JONES wanting to licence ‘A Secret Wish’ but I didn’t realise that it had captured his imagination so much. So that’s validation isn’t it? It’s wonderful!
PROPAGANDA could be considered a forerunner to the modern female fronted electronic acts like LADYTRON, GOLDFRAPP or CLIENT. Were PROPAGANDA ahead of their time?
Yes, I think what was interesting for us was we fitted into Paul Morley’s avant-garde vision of ZTT. There was the pop act he wanted which was FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD but he also wanted something which was edgy and different, and we kind of fitted in with that picture. Susanne, Ralf, Michael, Andreas Thein and I, because we were five at the time, we had that essence. What was magical about it was that we were given this opportunity.
It is interesting what happens when you put five industrial bashing experimentalists like us into this playground where we can work with the best musicians, the most amazing equipment and an absolute stunning producer… what happens if? You couldn’t have predicted what it was and this came out of it. I think you can hear that in the music. People were saying “have a listen to this” and “why not try that?” and it all just came together. And it then created this very special album. But PROPAGANDA wasn’t so easily digestible at the time, we confused the hell out of people who just thought “who are they?”… we didn’t fit in really!
Photo by John Stoddart
How do you look back on being part of that whole remixing, multi-formatting marketing machine of ZTT? As a non-native English speaker, how did you find trying to understand Paul Morley’s sleeve notes?
Well, I did have to get the dictionary out at times! Obviously the Nietzsche quotes I could understand as a German so I had no troubles there.
But some stuff was like “Hmmmm! Where’s this coming from?”. The thing with Paul, and that’s what attracted me to him, was we had a very similar way of thinking and approaching things so we were talking the same language although I did have difficulties with the English language at the time.
Paul would have an idea like “let’s remix this song”… there would be a house engineer available, a downtime studio free so let’s use it rather than have it standing empty, let’s do something and be creative. That was Paul’s energetic spirit, we were all kind of rebellious and driven. We weren’t really questioning things too much, we were just doing. I was 19-20, you don’t question everything you do at that time… you do it when you’re older… sadly. *laughs*
When was the first time you actually dreamed in English?
I don’t know. I cannot answer that question because I can’t remember that moment. Now I think and I find it much easier to write in English. I find it really hard sitting there and construing a sentence in German because the grammar is probably completely the opposite to the English language. So I find it much easier and I think now after 25 years, I feel more Anglified and I feel really kind of English.
Photo by Patrick Lichfield
What caused the eventual PROPAGANDA split and to you forming ACT with Thomas Leer?
Well, it was the deal that we signed. I always say we had a management which wasn’t really management in a sense that it was divisive towards the band! I wouldn’t class them as good managers, a good manger knows how to pull things together and make them happen. In this case, yes, we did have a bad deal. But I remember Jill Sinclair, ZTT’s label manager didn’t want to lose PROPAGANDA, she already had lost Frankie. She loved what we did, she was very proud of this album and what it had achieved at the time. And she did not want to see another band of hers go. So she said “come to me and negotiate” which I later did.
But I was in a tricky position because I wanted to work with Paul, I loved working with Trevor and I loved working with Stephen. Obviously, my loyalties were with my husband also and I knew what he had done for PROPAGANDA. He would have done so much more for us, but it was the others who wanted to leave. I know how the album was made so I knew you couldn’t put that kind of team together on another record company. I very much knew that.
It was a magical team, I do always believe it’s all in the team that you’re working with. When you have that, why give up something that works? It was the decision that the others took. I really didn’t want to leave them but I just didn’t want to go to a different major company either.
What would a second PROPANGANDA album on ZTT have sounded like if the team has stayed together to follow-up ‘A Secret Wish’?
Much like ‘A Secret Wish’, very much so… I think it would have been a very natural progression of what we had written and recorded before.
Do you think you’d have got artier and avant, or do you think you could have gone the way ‘1234’ sounds, dreamy but almost with a mid-Atlantic pop accessibility?
I personally would have liked to have explored a similar direction to ‘A Secret Wish’. For me it was a perfect marriage of pop accessibility and the arty avant side of us. There was a rebellious side to Susanne and me and although we love pop music, there was a dark and a bit disturbing side to us as well and we wanted to combine these two sides. We were a band full of contrast, light and dark, dreamy and nightmarish. The combination of the two was what intrigued me.
Also musically, Stephen picked up on that. The voices would be very soft and the backing would be very hard. And then if I’d go really really hard, the music would sometimes become very soft so it was just this interplay. Yes I think we could have made a great second album on ZTT.
Photo by Patrick Lichfield
Do you think it could have turned out how the ACT album sounded?
No, that was a different vision altogether. For ACT it was all decadence and glamour. And we wanted the drama of it all and we moved kind of politically further. We’re now in ’87 and it was the decline of Thatcher’s Britain and we just had a completely different message altogether. It was a lot more theatrical and spielerisch, which is kind of more playful in a sense. It left aside the dark side, the Teutonic-ness. But also musically, Thomas was such a different kettle of fish altogether.
Do you think the UK didn’t get ‘Snobbery & Decay’ then?
No, sadly they didn’t *laughs*
Unfortunately they didn’t, or perhaps it was just not the right moment for this song… I do think it’s such a great song. Thomas wrote me an email the other day and he does think that perhaps we were ahead of our time. But also what happened was ZTT at the time changed companies to work with so they went from Island to Warners. And when that always happens, and we were just right in the middle of all that, the MD who takes over is often not that interested to take on what he’s been given, he has a complete different vision about what should be. So it’s sad because it happened to me again with my 1991 album ‘Love: And A Million Other Things’. The MD and the team you work with change and the artist is no longer a priority. The artist gets caught in record company politics.
When I was doing ‘Love: And A Million Other Things’ with Pascal Gabriel, we were working in the studio on the last two songs of the album and the MD from Island suddenly left and all the people who worked on my album left as well. A new guy came in and already I could sense what would happen so Pascal and I decided to get really experimental and we did so on the song ‘Surprise’ with THE BOW GAMELAN ORCHESTRA who were using fire and huge pipes to create sound. We realised we’d have trouble selling this album now. It had nothing to do with the artist or the content of the album.
‘Love: And A Million Other Things’ is being reissued by Cherry Red. You must be very pleased that this is fully available again and able to be re-evaluated because it’s very under rated?
Yes, maybe this time people can get the feel of it. At the time, I didn’t get much promotion.
I understand there may be a Claudia Brücken compilation in the offing with some unreleased songs and remixes as well as collecting together material in all your various guises?
Yes, it’s going to be called ‘Combined’. I’m hoping that it will be released on Union Square as well, because it’s a licensing nightmare *laughs*
There’s so many other record companies involved and I don’t necessarily have the knowledge of how to do this. In this particular instance, I went to Union Square and said it would be great if they could get that together for me because they do this all the time. And it will make things easier.
Will this include stuff like the BLANK + JONES, OCEANHEAD, THE BRAIN and APOPTYGMA BERZERK collaborations?
None of those, but there’s going to be all the singles that I’ve made. So it’s going to be three PROPAGANDA tracks, two ACT tracks, two from my Island days. There’s going to be a new electro version of ‘Sequential’ on it, Paul Humphreys has done a really good version of that. ‘Delicious’ with Andy Bell of ERASURE is going to be on it and so is ‘Cloud 9’. All in all there will be 14 songs on ‘Combined’. There’s two tracks that I’ve done with Stephen Hague called ‘Thank You’ and ‘Night School’, they’re completely new and I wanted to find a home for them.
Also I want those two songs to promote the album so I’m hoping to make videos etc. We haven’t decided which one we should put out as a single so we may make two.
Will any of the unreleased PROPAGANDA material from the late 90s reunion be included?
No, we’re not going to put that on. I didn’t want to go there.
Is there any possibility of the four of you working together again?
Actually I’ve been working with Michael, Susanne and Ralf again, we’ve written one song and I like it a lot. I’m really happy with the song. Now we just have to find the best way of releasing it. I think it’s a song that’s very suitable for the Olympics actually! Maybe we’ll get it out by 2012, hopefully before, we just have to see. But it’s written, it’s recorded and almost produced… in my view it sounds really fresh and very much like PROPAGANDA.
But a few years ago when we tried this, Ralf was absent. What was really essentially missing for me was Ralf because he has a way of saying things with words and he also formed PROPAGANDA with Andreas and Susanne. And he had a good vision about the band, what it stood for intellectually and so on. It felt more right when we wrote together again about a year ago; I’m comfortable with that format. That is PROPAGANDA, the four of us.
Photo by Hege Saebjornsen
How did you come to work with Paul Humphreys?
For a few years I was a bit lost, unsure of what to do next musically… I’ve always been reliant on working with other people, I don’t really work that well on my own. I do like to have other people’s input. So Paul and I started working together when he asked me to do this 2000 tour in America *laughs*
That’s when Paul and I discovered that we work well on stage together. Again, with Paul, it’s brilliant because we are very playful, we are not too precious.It doesn’t have to sound like OMD or PROPAGANDA. We can take elements if we wish but we’re not labouring over it.
How are plans coming together for the next ONETWO album?
We are writing and we’ve started. I’m hoping we can put something out by April 2011. That’s what I would like to do, that’s my plan! But you know, sometimes things take a little longer but we’ve made a good start.
‘Instead’ was very well received, but what are your reflections on the album now?
I think we did really well. The other thing that I now think about the album is I wish we’d have gone out with it live before because we’ve got Philip Larsen who adds a lot of electronic blips and also James Watson who’s such a great musician. So because we did all the gigs with ERASURE and THE HUMAN LEAGUE and we added things on, I would have liked to have gone in the studio now and recorded it because it would have got another bite to it and a bit more aggression behind it.
It’s a little bit like making a wine, the sediment has to go down and settle… it’s the same kind of thing with music. We’ve grown into a really good live band now that we know what we’re doing and now we can play around with all the parts as well. So I would have liked to have gone back and now recorded the album and I think it would have sounded more electro and energetic. But that’s something we’re now aware of and we’re thinking with the next songs that we’re writing, with the next ONETWO gigs that we have, to take them out and rehearse them live, then record them later.
Photo by Hege Saebjornsen
Who do you think makes up the ONETWO audience? Are they mostly your fans or OMD fans? Or are they new fans who are not necessarily aware of you and Paul Humphreys’ history?
I think all of those. To be honest, when we did THE HUMAN LEAGUE and ERASURE gigs, I think people had no idea who we were and then they realised when we were playing ‘Messages’ and ‘Duel’… “Oh, it’s them!”
We were something new and how do you get to know a band like ONETWO if you don’t have any radio or TV and only a few people who write about you?
We had to start at the beginning and I’m just really pleased that THE HUMAN LEAGUE and ERASURE gave us a platform for more people to discover us.
Before ONETWO, you were not really known as a live performer but it’s like you tour like mad now. You recently appeared live with HEAVEN 17 too performing ‘These Boots Are Made For Walking’. It was on TV, how do you think it went?
I haven’t seen it because I never watch my own performances. I got the live bug I guess, I just really like singing. In a studio environment, it’s all so controlled… but I’ve just become this live singer! Teaming up with Paul Humphreys, he made me discover that when I was doing a tour with him in 2000 and I thought “this is good fun”. And then I realised singing PROPAGANDA songs, how well people responded when they got a chance to hear them. Now I just want to spread the word because they are great songs, they are part of my past and I’d like people to hear them.
Is a solo concert ever going to be a possibility?
My plan for ‘Combined’ is to make a special evening with special friends, so I’m trying to pull as many people who are on this album to appear with me. I’m trying to get Susanne, Michael and Ralf in, I’ve invited Thomas and I hope he’ll be able to join me.
I’m hoping Andy Bell can do it. I’m sure I couldn’t get Martin Gore… but Glenn Gregory I think I could get; we keep on helping each other out. If he’s around, he probably will do it.
I will ask everyone who’s been involved to join me, it could be great night….let’s see!
You do seem to have worked with quite a few legends from the ‘Synth Britannia’ era.
One special thing about ‘A Secret Wish’ was that it has opened a lot of doors for me. I’ve got so much respect from fellow musicians, people just kind of go “Claudia, I want to work with you, can you do this?”. That’s pretty much how all of my collaborations came about.
Is there a stand-out memory from any of these collaborations?
It was amazing when David Sylvian came in. On ‘P-Machinery’, there is this line he wrote on a little keyboard that he brought in, it’s that theme which is also ‘Thought II’ from the bonus CD.
Photo by Anton Corbijn
Is that David Sylvian I can hear on the middle eight of P-Machinery?
That’s just the girls. The “calm but steady flow, our strength is running low” bit, that’s me! But I tell you who does the backing vocals in ‘Duel’… it’s Trevor!
What did parts did Glenn Gregory do on ‘A Secret Wish’?
Glenn did the shouting on ‘Jewel’. It was me, Paul Morley and Glenn!
‘Don’t Stop’ was your most recent recording in collaboration with German dance duo BLANK + JONES. You also recorded a marvellous song with them called ‘Unknown Treasure’ in 2003. How did those songs come together and how much input were you able to contribute to the final results?
With ‘Unknown Treasure’, that was quite magical really because Piet Blank and Jaspa Jones sent me a basic groove.
And onto this groove, I wrote the melody and all the words. Paul Humphreys was brilliant, he helped me to record the voice and edit it. He’s so patient with editing vocals and putting it all together. It’s a very time consuming process. So we sent them the entire vocal track and two weeks later, they sent me a CD back and to my delight they had turned it into this beautiful song, it was just this lovely journey. And I think they did such a great job, a real collaboration. Don’t Stop was in reverse, they gave me all the music and then I did the words and sent it back to them. And this is how these two songs came together.
Is there any reason why ‘Unknown Treasure’ is not on ‘Combined’?
It’s not on ‘Combined’ because ‘Kiss Like Ether’ is on, and ‘Kiss Like Ether’ is very much in same the vein as ‘Unknown Treasure’. Before, ‘Combined’ was a double CD and pretty much everything I ever did was on it *laughs*
And then it was like, we’re only doing one CD. And then I had to put some songs aside. So with ‘Unknown Treasure’, I really wanted it on but I wanted ‘Kiss Like Ether’ instead. Tempo wise, it’s very similar so it had to go… it was a tough decision!
You’ve done quite a few cover versions in all your guises as well as doing the ‘Another Language’ covers album with Andrew Poppy. Are there any other songs you’d like to do?
There’s so many great songs, I’m a singer and I like good tunes. ‘Duel’ for example is one of my favourite songs because it’s a singer’s song, composed for my voice. I love Motown stuff but at the moment, I’m singing ‘Plastic Palace People’ by Scott Walker. I’m pretty random with my choices that I like to sing. I love electro and I love heavy industrial stuff. I love Chanson and drama. When I grew up, my grandma listened to Lotte Lenya and Bertholt Brecht. I think you can put me in any kind of musical outfit really and I can make it work in my own style.
What did you think of Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s and Mandy Smith’s covers of ‘Duel’?
I like Sophie’s and Mandy’s versions of ‘Duel’ and I’m glad that they’ve picked our song as they make other people aware of PROPAGANDA’s music.
Personally, when I do covers I like to put the songs I chose in a very different light to the original. In that way they become my own interpretations. My approach is more similar to SUSANNA & THE MAGIC ORCHESTRA or the way Martin Gore works on his ‘Counterfeit’ albums.
Photo by Peter Brown
The Mandy Smith one was done by Stock Aitken & Waterman so they obviously are secret PROPAGANDA fans!!
It’s very funny but on the sleeve notes of ‘A Secret Wish’, Paul Morley was saying that when Trevor Horn was not available to be producer anymore because of FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, he wanted David Sylvian.
Meanwhile Jill Sinclair wanted Stock Aitken & Waterman!! That would have been a wrong choice, nothing against them! *laughs*
Have you heard that track by HURTS called ‘Wonderful Life’ which sounds a lot like PROPAGANDA?
I think that track is really beautiful; I can really hear how PROPAGANDA influenced it musically, especially from the middle bit onwards because it goes into that dreamy motion until the end and the choice of instruments used remind me a bit of ‘A Dream Within a Dream’.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
My daughter gives me songs to listen to, so I don’t lose connection. I’ve been listening to BEACH HOUSE, NITE JEWEL, THE RAINCOATS, SUSANNA & THE MAGIC ORCHESTRA and the new ARCADE FIRE album. You have to discover acts yourself now, I preferred the old-fashioned way of listening to the radio.
Another truth installed by the machine…
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Claudia Brücken
Gary Langan, along with JJ Jeczalik, Anne Dudley, Trevor Horn and Paul Morley is one of the founder members of THE ART OF NOISE.
He cut his teeth in music working as a tape op with renowned producers Mike Stone and Roy Thomas Baker for QUEEN.
He later progressed to being assistant engineer for THE BOOMTOWN RATS. In 1979 he met Trevor Horn, then of BUGGLES and engineered their album ‘The Age Of Plastic’ which featured the No1 single ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’.
One of the drummers on those BUGGLES sessions happened to be electronic music pioneer Richard James Burgess who later demonstrated his brand new Fairlight CMI to Horn and introduced his trainee programmer JJ Jeczalik who had originally been Burgess’ roadie. Continuing to work with Horn on his productions for ABC’s ‘The Lexicon Of Love’ and Malcolm McLaren’s ‘Duck Rock’ along with Jeczalik, Langan met Horn’s orchestral arranger Anne Dudley. The team ended up working with YES and the rest, as they say is history.
Langan is also a producer in his own right and his varied credits have included ABC’s ‘Beauty Stab’ and ‘Traffic’, SPANDAU BALLET’s ‘Through the Barricades’ and ‘Heart Like A Sky’, PUBLIC IMAGE LIMITED’s ‘Happy’ and THE ALOOF’s ‘Seeking Pleasure’. More recently, he has discovered a passion for front of house at live performances, looking after the sound on the Jeff Wayne’s ‘The War Of The Worlds’ tour and ABC’s performance of ‘The Lexicon Of Love’ at the Royal Albert Hall in 2009 where the incumbent BBC Concert Orchestra was conducted by Anne Dudley.
With the release of the new ‘Influence’ collection, ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK caught up with Gary Langan to go back down the avenues of history for an insightful interview that cleared up a few of the myths that have arisen around THE ART OF NOISE.
Photo by Peter Ashworth
How do you remember the genesis of THE ART OF NOISE?
It happened because of a happy accident. I’d been working with Anne Dudley and JJ Jeczalik, we were like Trevor Horn’s backroom boys/girl’ working on an album with YES that spawned ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ called ‘90125’. Because I was the engineer, I was the curator of a tape that had a track recorded at the famous Air Studios that YES had scrapped but the drum sound was just absolutely incredible.
I surreptitiously hid it amongst all the other tapes which I thought at some point in my life, I was going to get round to using one way or another. Fast forward a month or so, we were at Sarm Studios and everybody had gone and left me and JJ with the Fairlight CMI. He said “Let’s go” but I said “No, we’re going to stick around for a bit… I’ve got this idea!” And my idea was to sample the whole drum kit and put it into the Fairlight which nobody had really thought about doing. Everybody at that stage was sampling bits and bobs of the drum kit. I said to him “No, I want to put this whole drum kit into the Fairlight” and JJ kind of gave me this gazed look like I was mad… I said “bear with me”!
So I gave him this mono mix, he plugged into the Fairlight and I asked him to sample me a bar because we only had one and a half seconds of sample at the time, so I reckoned we could just about get a bar in. And JJ, bless him, not being very musical made a happy accident of hitting the ‘go’ button on beat 3 and not beat 1 of the bar! So when he played it back to me, I now had this drum groove that was effectively backwards, it was going “3-4-1-2-3-4-1-2” and I said “you’re a genius!” He looked at me again and said “what do you mean?” and I said “you’ve got it wrong but it’s brilliant!” *laughs*
And I said “OK, now let’s put some of those wacky things that we’ve sampled from when the Fairlight was living round at my house” because JJ used to rent a room from me. The sounds happened to be a guy trying to start his VW Golf and other bits that we’d had a go at sampling. So we stuck around that night and did the demo that became ‘Beat Box’.
A couple of weeks later I was driving Trevor around, he’d been asked to start this label by Chris Blackwell of Island Records and he’s looking and searching, thinking in his head “what am I going to do as a first signing?”. So I played him this demo that JJ and I had done in the car. He went nuts and gave it to Chris Blackwell, he took it to New York that weekend and played it out in a few clubs. He came back and said to Trevor “You’ve got to do something with these guys, this is where you start!”. So that was the manifestation, that was the beginning!
‘Beat Box’ was the song that scared the life out of KRAFTWERK wasn’t it?
Well it did, but I was actually a bit of a KRAFTWERK fan to be honest so there are influences in there obviously. I think it scared them but they just didn’t have the equipment that we were privy to. But if it wasn’t for JJ being the operator and Trevor buying the Fairlight, I don’t think it ever would have happened.
Photo by Peter Ashworth
What was the collaborative dynamic between you, JJ Jeczalik and Anne Dudley musically? Did you attain specific roles or did you yourself also get involved in programming the Fairlight for example?
No, we had very definite roles. I was Trevor’s engineer, JJ was the master of the Fairlight and Anne was the master of melodies.
And none of us crossed over and that’s how the chemistry of the three of us worked.
How did Trevor Horn and Paul Morley eventually fit into all this? Obviously Trevor was the producer…
Well, he wasn’t the producer!! I’m going to put the history straight there… we were the producers!! If I’m being really honest, we were a little naive. Anne, JJ and myself really had no intention of forming a band, it was as I said, a very happy accident. So when we signed to ZTT, we needed somebody to do all the artwork and how it was going to portrayed which was really down to Paul and Trevor. So out of a sort of a friendship thing, we said “you might as well be part of the band”.
I have to say that it was Paul who came up with the name, and it was Paul who did all the artwork and copy that went on the subsequent albums. The idea of the fantastic photographs taken by Anton Corbijn, that was all totally Paul. Trevor, he really wasn’t the producer, we were. He came up with a few ideas that we then explored, but because it was his label and everything, we then became a band of five. But Trevor and Paul were never in the studio. As far as studio work went, it was always Anne, JJ and myself.
Do you think if Trevor and Paul hadn’t been there with ZTT, that the demo of ‘Beat Box’ may not have got anywhere?
It wouldn’t have gone anywhere without a doubt! That whole ZTT scenario was absolutely amazing. The cogs were all falling into place and fitting very well together so the pair of them, Paul brought an awful lot to the project and Trevor oversaw the whole thing but we really were left to our own devices.
It was exciting time for all but what was the straw that broke the camels back when you, JJ and Anne decided to leave ZTT?
It was politics and money which is usually the driving force behind anybody jumping ship from a project whether it be music or a day job. It usually comes down to those two things, it was clearly obvious that our relationship with ZTT had actually sadly in some respects come to an end.
Photo by Peter Ashworth
But you had the last laugh when ‘Peter Gunn’ was a hit with Duane Eddy on board and won a Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance? How did you meet Duane?
It was a bit of a full circle because when I started in the studio as a tape op/assistant tea boy/runner, whatever you want to call it, one of the first people that I was in the studio with was Duane Eddy. But you’re going back to 1973-74! Fast forwarding, we left ZTT and signed with Derek Green and China Records.
Derek was also very astute and realised that one of the ways forward for this band was to have collaborations. So it was Derek’s idea that we do a version of ‘Peter Gunn’. We sent a demo to Duane and he obviously said yes and at that point we were recording in Anne’s house in Sarratt, Hertfordshire. There wasn’t really a studio area, she just really had a small control room because everything we did was via the Fairlight or synthesizers and things like that.
It was in the winter and Anne, being a bit on the tight side wouldn’t put on the central heating during the day. So Duane turned up and stayed in a local B+B believe it or not! I set him up in Anne’s living room and Duane stood there in this huge sheepskin fur coat, a Fender Twin and this beautiful Gretsch guitar with this rhinestone guitar strap and did what Duane did! He played the riff on the two bottom strings of this Gretsch.
Duane’s phrase “Hey, do you think I should do one more?” that was put on one of the 12 inch mixes of ‘Peter Gunn’ became a music industry in-joke didn’t it?
Yeah, I think we made lots of jokes at the time! *laughs*
I think the funniest thing was when Smash Hits printed the lyrics of ‘Close (To The Edit)’!
What did they print? *laughs*
It was “dum-dum, da-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum”!
*laughs*
But speaking of this “Hey, do you think I should do one more?” thing, do you agree with David Sylvian’s synopsis is that a recording is never actually finished, merely abandoned?
I sort of jump between two mountains if you like, I am a great believer of the first take. As a recording engineer, I truly believe and I could clarify this with loads of examples but I won’t… the first take is actually, if you’re dealing with someone who knows what they’re doing, the best.
We can run the 100 metres and get it done, and that would be the first take. Or we go and do the marathon. You can win both races but which route do you want to go?
We can do first take, or we can go round and round and round and I can guarantee you after you trying something for two more hours, I’ll play what you’ve just done and what you did two hours ago and there’s not going to be too much difference between the two performances. It was Duane saying it more out of politeness because as far as we were concerned, it was done! Bish-bosh-bash!
Was there any point with the endless remixes that you just thought “ENOUGH”?
Some of the time, after the third or fourth call for yet another remix, which is what ZTT were good at, of say ‘Moments In Love’, it was like “WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO NOW?” And the last version, I said “let’s just play it back at half speed and see what that does!”. You get pushed and we were always good to respond to a challenge.
But some of them worked really easily, sometimes it really was kind of like pulling teeth… “OH MY LORD!! 11 O’clock, we’ve been at this seven hours and got nowhere!” It was fun though, it was breaking new ground. Doing something that other labels weren’t really doing and then they jumped on the bandwagon.
THE ART OF NOISE had that quite staccato sound because of the short sample times and that was quite unique.
We were just limited by technology. Now, you can go to Currys or PC World and buy a Mac or a PC and I can get you a bit of software and interface and you can sample half an hour if you want! We were driven by the limitations of the technology which I always thought was really good. Sometimes I think now youngsters have too much choice. They don’t get the opportunity to really work something to its limit and really start squeezing it. And that’s when things start to happen.
That’s quite Eno-esque what you just said there
Well, it’s true, I like Brian Eno. We made an album together JAMES’ ‘Pleased To Meet You’, I got on well with him.
Photo by Peter Ashworth
You left THE ART OF NOISE in 1987 following working on SPANDAU BALLET’s ‘Through the Barricades’ album. Why did you leave and are there any regrets?
We had a difference of opinion which happens in every walk of life. We were offered a tour in America and the way our manager at the time wanted it, it was to do a college sit down audience tour. And I said “that’s rubbish”, I felt we needed to be more innovative when it came to touring.
So I suggested that it should be ‘THE ART OF NOISE Plays Manhattan’ and we should set up in a club called Danceteria and employ VJs and use ENG (Electronic News Gathering) cameras and microwave links so that we can actually play in four or five clubs at the same time. And what the VJs would be used for is they’d get camera shots of the audience in all the other clubs and we would make those people famous for five minutes. What I wanted to do was play on the Warhol thing of everybody will be famous for five minutes of their life, that would be groundbreaking. A sit down tour? Anybody can do that!
The other two were swayed in the other direction and I went “I don’t agree!”. At the same time, I was due to go off to Europe with SPANDAU BALLET for their ‘Through The Barricades’ tour. So we parted company at that point, although I did kind of come back and recorded a final concert at the Hammersmith Odeon or whatever it’s called! *laughs*
But no regrets. Sure, made some bad decisions, gone down some wrong avenues but as long as you learn from it, no regrets really.
‘Influence’ is an ideal way of re-evaluating the legacy of THE ART OF NOISE. What do you think the band’s ultimate contribution to music is?
I think in terms of contribution, what we showed was as long as you’re dedicated and passionate, you can do anything you want to do. I think we showed that to a lot of youngsters that came up after us like THE PRODIGY and 808 STATE, bands like that. Even when I listen to PROPAGANDA, I can hear influences form THE ART OF NOISE in their music.
Did you work on PROPAGANDA’s ‘A Secret Wish’?
Yes, I did! I did some low level engineering for them. It’s not credited, but the assistant that I trained Bob Kraushaar was the main engineer. It was low level stuff but because it was centred around the ZTT Building, then I’d dive in and help out. I did some remixes. The whole ZTT outfit was just one really big family and Trevor’s ethos behind it was he wanted to have something that was identifiable as ZTT like when you heard Tamla Motown… you didn’t know who the artist was but in the first twenty or thirty seconds you’d realise it had come out of Tamla Motown stable.
And what tracks hold the most affection for you?
Well, obviously the two early ones ‘Beat Box’ and ‘Close (To The Edit)’, ‘Moments In Love’ and then there was a track that Anne and I did that was called ‘Opus 4’.
We took this very famous poem November by Simon Armitage and I had this idea where we got Camilla Pilkington-Smyth from the Pilkington Glass family to read it three or four times. I took one line and said “that’s going to be my bass drum” and took another line and said “that’s going to be my snare drum” and I built up this whole track. I got Anne to do some fantastic melody stuff over the top. So those are the four tracks that really hold it for me.
Is Camilla the posh girl on ‘Close (To The Edit)’?
Yes, and she’s the girl that said “HEY!”
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Gary Langan
Special thanks to Richard James Burgess for the additional information
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THE ART OF NOISE were named after the futurist essay ‘The Art Of Noises’ by Luigi Russolo.
is reissued as a 2CD package by Cherry Red on 30th August 2010
is available now and released by Salvo/Union Square
will be released in 2011
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