David Bowie had famously dropped in to see THE HUMAN LEAGUE at The Nashville in late 1978 and hailed them as “the future of rock ‘n’ roll”.
But it was TUBEWAY ARMY fronted by Gary Numan who beat THE HUMAN LEAGUE to the top of the UK singles charts in Summer 1979 with Are Friends Electric?’ while just a few weeks earlier, SPARKS had been become willing conspirators with Giorgio Moroder on ‘The No1 Song In Heaven’ to effectively invent the synth duo.
Although it was the dawn of synth, 1980 was a transitional time when the synth was still the exception rather than the rule. The landscape was changing and the seed of what became the New Romantic movement had been planted.
Following the critical mauling he received for his 1979 album ‘Lodger’ but aware of his burgeoning influence in these futuristic sounds, Bowie headed down to The Blitz with RCA assistant and club regular Jacqueline Bucknell to cast extras including the late Steve Strange for the video of his new single ‘Ashes To Ashes’. It hit the top of UK charts and confirmed that once again “There’s old wave. There’s new wave. And there’s David Bowie…”
While Bowie’s was not an electronic artist in the way some of the next generation of artists had declared themselves, he couldn’t resist a sly dig at the acts that he’d inspired, using the line “same old thing in brand new drag” on the track ‘Teenage Wildlife’ from his next album ‘Scary Monsters’. And he was eventually to beat previous winner Gary Numan to the year’s ‘Best Male Singer’ accolade at the BBC endorsed British Rock & Pop Awards.
Belatedly looking back to 42 years ago before automatic stations came, here are 20 albums which ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK sees as contributing to the electronic legacy of 1980. They are listed in alphabetical order with a restriction of one album per act.
BUGGLES The Age Of Plastic
Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes met while working with Tina Charles and her producer Biddu. Together they would go on to form BUGGLES and score a No1 with ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’. From the parent album ‘The Age Of Plastic’, ‘Astroboy’ developed on the duo’s sonic adventures while ‘The Plastic Age’ and ‘Clean Clean’ provided further if minor hits. Horn would go on become a top record producer.
Before OMD, the electronic duo on The Wirral was DALEK I LOVE YOU. However, by the time their debut album ‘Compass Kum’pas’ was released, OMD were having hits and keyboards man Dave Hughes had left to join their live band. Although Alan Gill’s vocals could polarise opinion, ‘Destiny’ was their most immediate song with a precise percussive appeal while ‘The World’ was eccentric and retro-futuristic.
The success of the singles ‘Back To Nature’ and ‘Ricky’s Hand’ attracted a loyal fanbase, so a FAD GADGET album ‘Fireside Favourites’ was eagerly anticipated. Developing on the minimal industrialism of the singles, the superb ‘Coitus Interruptus’ was a cynical commentary on casual relationships while offering his own brand of romantic macabre in the fear of the imminent nuclear apocalypse was the neo-title song ‘Fireside Favourite’.
On the ULTRAVOX! debut,John Foxx announced “I want to be a machine”. On signing to Virgin Records as a solo artist, he virtually went the full hog with the seminal JG Ballard inspired ’Metamatic’. ‘Underpass’ and ‘No-One Driving’ were surprise hit singles that underlined the dystopian times while the fabulous ‘A New Kind Of Man’ and the deviant ‘He’s A Liquid’ were pure unadulterated Sci-Fi driven by the cold mechanics of a Roland Compurhythm.
‘Metamatic’ is still available via Metamatic Records
Having worked with Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching, drummer turned keyboard player Harald Grosskopf took the plunge to go solo with the mind bending album ‘Synthesist’. A work comprising of eight instrumentals that blended a sonic tapestry of synthesizer soundscapes with drumming that provided colour as opposed to dominance, it musically followed in the exquisite tradition of his Berlin electronic friends.
With THE HUMAN LEAGUE learning lessons from their debut ‘Reproduction’, ‘Travelogue’ had more presence by creatively utilising the harsh screeching frequencies from overdriving their studio desk. ‘The Black Hit Of Space’ had its surreal Sci-Fi lyrics while ‘Dreams Of Leaving’ was a fantastically emotive slice of prog synth. There were glorious cover versions in ‘Only After Dark’ and ‘Gordon’s Gin’. While it was a breakthrough, all was not happy…
‘Travelogue’ is still available via Virgin Records
Dropped by Ariola Hansa, JAPAN found a refuge at Virgin Records. The bossa nova driven ‘Swing’ explored exotic grooves while the haunting ‘Nightporter’ was the ultimate Erik Satie tribute. An interest in Japanese technopop produced the brilliant ‘Methods Of Dance’ and saw leader David Sylvian collaborate with YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA’s Ryuichi Sakamoto on ‘Taking Islands In Africa’.
While not strictly an electronic album in full, half of ‘Closer’ was dominated by polyphonic synthesizers. Featuring an ARP Omni and an early version of Simmons drums, ‘Isolation’ was the most electronic track JOY DIVISION ever recorded. On the second side, ‘Heart & Soul’, ‘The Eternal’ and ‘Decades’ provided the solemn but beautiful Gothic backdrop producer by Martin Hannett for Ian Curtis’ elaborate musical suicide note.
LA DÜSSELDORF were fronted by the late Klaus Dinger of NEU! There was a greater presence of electronics and the first half of ‘Individuellos’was dominated by variations on ‘Menschen’, a grand statement sounding like a blueprint for Phil Lynott’s ‘Yellow Pearl’. ‘Dampfriemen’ was a quirky slice of synth oompah with comedic chants and a kazoo section while the piano laden ‘Das Yvönnchen’ provided a beautiful closer.
Time has shown that Tony Mansfield and NEW MUSIK with their strummed guitar alongside pretty synth melodies were underrated. Featuring the hits ‘Living By Numbers’, ‘This World Of Water’ and ‘Sanctuary’ as well as ‘On Islands’ which was later covered by CAMOUFLAGE, the band were dismissed as a novelty act due to the silly voices in their songs. Mansfield went on to produce A-HA, NAKED EYES and VICIOUS PINK.
The negative side of fame got into the psyche of Gary Numan and his new songs took on a more personal downbeat nature away from the Sci-Fi dystopia of his previous work. ‘This Wreckage’ and ‘Please Push No More’ summed up the self-doubt but while ‘Remind Me To Smile’ could have been a single, ‘Telekon’ suffered from not having the hit single ‘We Are Glass’ and ‘I Die: You Die’ included on the original LP release.
OMD released two albums in 1980 but their self-titled debut captured Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys using the most basic equipment, the duo not even having a polyphonic synth at the time. With energetic post-punk synth numbers such as ‘Electricity’ and ‘Bunker Soldiers’, on the other side of the coin were ‘Almost’ and ‘The Messerschmitt Twins’. An early version of ‘Messages’ pointed to a future with hit singles.
Although rooted in the blues via his previous band VINEGAR JOE, Robert Palmer took an interest in synths having become a fan of Gary Numan. That led to two collaborations including a version of ‘I Dream Of Wires’ released before Numan’s own recording and the Eastern flavoured ‘Found You Now’. The electronic centrepiece was the beautifully world weary ‘Johnny & Mary’ while ‘Looking for Clues’ added synthy art funk to the mix.
‘Clues’ is still available via Island Records / Universal Music
Following the acclaim for THE NORMAL, Daniel Miller undertook a new project SILICON TEENS as a fictitious synth group where rock ’n’ roll standards such as ‘Memphis Tennessee’, ‘Just Like Eddie’, ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ were enjoyably reinterpreted in a quirky synthpop style with Miller adding his deadpan monotone vocal. Frank Tovey aka FAD GADGET played the role of lead singer “Darryl” for videos and press.
Tours opening for Gary Numan and Peter Gabriel took SIMPLE MINDS around Europe to experience Cold War tensions at closer hand. Their wired mood was captured on ‘Empires & Dance’. With its speedy Moroder-esque influence, ‘I Travel’ was a screeching futuristic frenzy and ‘Celebrate’ brought some industrial Schaffel to the party. ’30 Frames A Second’ took a trip down the autobahn but ‘Twist / Run / Repulsion’ messed with the headspace of listeners.
Following the Giorgio Moroder steered album ‘No1 In Heaven’, SPARKS were despatched by Virgin Records to record a swift follow-up. Although Moroder was still nominally at the helm, Harold Faltermeyer took the majority of production duties on ‘Terminal Jive’. ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll People In A Disco World’ seemed to reflect the confused direction but ‘When I’m With You’ was a massive hit single in France, leading to the Mael Brothers’ relocation.
After experiments with vocals on ‘Cyclone’ and live drums on ‘Force Majeure’, with the recruitment on keyboards with Johannes Schmoelling to fill the difficult to fill void left by the departure of Peter Baumann, Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke got back on track, combining a more immediate sequencer drive with the melodic New Age resonances on the two part ‘Tangram’ set that would characterise TANGERINE DREAM’s later work.
The second TELEX album ‘Neurovision’ continued with the trio’s tradition of deadpan electronic covers and a gloriously metronomic take on ‘Dance To The Music’ showcased their penchant for mischievous subversion. But this mischief came to its head with their lampooning self-composed number ‘Euro-Vision’, a bouncy electropop tune which they actually entered for 1980 Eurovision Song Contest, coming seventeenth!
Following the first VISAGE sessions, Midge Ure was invited to join Billy Currie, Chris Cross and Warren Cann in ULTRAVOX. Providing a sonic continuity from the John Foxx-led era was producer Conny Plank while the robotic spy story ‘Mr X’ voiced by Cann provided another link. Opening with the mighty instrumental ‘Astradyne’ and closing with the synthesized heavy metal of ‘All Stood Still’, the ‘Vienna’ album was a triumph.
Formed as a reaction to the shortage of new electronic dance music to play at The Blitz Club, ex-RICH KIDS members Midge Ure and Rusty Egan recruited its figurehead Steve Strange to front the project under the name of VISAGE. Billy Currie, Dave Formula, John McGeoch and Barry Adamson joined later and captured a synthesized European romanticism that boasted the German No1 ‘Fade To Grey’ as well as two other hits in ‘Mind Of A Toy’ and the eponymous title track.
‘Visage’ is still available via Rubellan Remasters
Midge Ure celebrates his 70th birthday and a life in music this Autumn with a special concert at The Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday 4 October 2023.
The start of his career included a spell as a teen idol in SLIK, embracing punk in its offshoot PVC2 and a doomed attempt to cross THE SEX PISTOLS and BAY CITY ROLLERS in the power pop of RICH KIDS with Glen Matlock, Steve New and Rusty Egan. But the demise of the latter coincided with the wider emergence of electronic music such as KRAFTWERK, LA DÜSSELDORF and YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA which inspired Ure to buy his first synthesizer, a Yamaha CS50.
Licking his wounds, Ure went on to help pioneer the sound of the New Romantics in VISAGE with a collective project inspired by an idea from Rusty Egan and fronted by Steve Strange, the face of The Blitz Club. Another involved in VISAGE was Billy Currie and at his invitation, Ure joined him, Chris Cross and Warren Cann in the classic line-up of ULTRAVOX in 1979; the quartet had an impressive run of hit singles and albums with their unique brand of symphonic electronic rock which has since been borrowed and taken into the stadiums of the world by MUSE.
With a successful solo career that has included several No1s around the world, the lad from Cambuslang near Glasgow can also add his central role in BAND AID as well as collaborations like ‘Yellow Pearl’ with Phil Lynott, ‘After A Fashion’ with Mick Karn and ‘Dark Dark Night’ with Moby to his name.
This is all without mentioning a number of adverts including original music for ‘Levi’s’ in their iconic ‘Rivets’ campaign and the title song from his 1996 album ‘Breathe’ soundtracking a memorable Swatch campaign in Europe; more recently ‘Fade To Grey’ which Ure co-wrote with Billy Currie and Chris Payne has featured in reels for fashion houses Chanel and Dior. Meanwhile, there have been a number of key TV synchronisations, one of the most notable being the use of ‘Vienna’ during the final episode of the unsettling 2017 Netflix series ’13 Reasons Why’.
Midge Ure spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about his recent live tours, his back catalogue, music technology, collaborating with a former member of KRAFTWERK, his upcoming 70th birthday concert and his future plans…
You are fresh off the back off the ‘Voice & Visions’ tour and had the ‘1980’ tour before the pandemic, has the success of these tours surprised you?
Yes! I won’t lie! I really wasn’t sure how things would pan out. The thing about the music business is it’s like riding a rollercoaster. Sometimes it takes you to the heady heights of fame, the other times it takes you to almost obscurity.
I just consider myself a working musician, it’s all to do with perception. There are people out there who given the opportunity of finding that you’re playing somewhere, will come and see you because they bought the records or followed you for “X” amount of years. But they get side-tracked with family or whatever; then they’re off the radar and don’t know what you’re doing because they don’t go to venues, they’re not on social media, they don’t look at posters, they don’t buy music papers (if there is such a thing anymore), all of that stuff!
So it was a new young agent who came along and said “you’re missing out on a lot of people here” and he was brilliant at marketing. When we did the ‘1980’ tour, I was stunned at the amount of people who said “Wow! Are you still touring?”… WELL YEAH! CONSTANTLY! But I could be playing down the road from you and you wouldn’t know! *laughs*
It’s just how it works so it’s been a lot of that. The ‘1980’ tour was great and I had trepidations about the ‘Voices & Visions’ tour not being able to stand up next to it… but I think it’s superceded it, I think it got better so yeah, I’m very pleased that was the case 😀
Your audience generally doesn’t appear to like standing up and dancing much?
You have to understand the demographic you know, there’s a lot of the audience who do want to stand up but a lot of the theatres and venues that you play don’t want people standing up for whatever reason! I mean, they’re hardly the age group that’s going to start trashing the joint!
But a lot of venues, when you do see people standing up to have a little dance or try to get into the aisle or come down the front, you’re not allowed to do it. Also, there is an element of the audience who can’t, they want to sit down… I’m sure they’d love to be able to get up and do whatever but it doesn’t work that way, a lot of venues just won’t let them do it and physically they can’t.
In an ideal world, you’d have a venue that has a seated upstairs and a standing downstairs, that would appeal to everybody but it’s just one of those things, we can’t control that. So usually at the end of the set, I’m sure you’ve seen it, in the last couple of songs, I say “Right! Stand up, it’s too late to throw you out so get up!” and they do.
Yes, the ones they do always seem to get up for are ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’ and ‘All Stood Still’, two songs about nuclear Armageddon which does have a sort of amusing irony about it… *laughs*
That IS an amusing irony about it, I hadn’t thought about that! *laughs*
But it’s probably more to do with the fact that we’re doing slow atmospheric tunes… normally when you build a set, you would finish with the last 5 or 6 songs all up there like ‘Hymn’, ‘Dancing…’ and ‘If I Was’. You stack it full of things so that people don’t get a chance to sit down, that’s how you would do it. But in true ULTRAVOX form, we ended up finishing with ‘Visions In Blue’ and coming back on to try and build it all back up again, making it difficult for ourselves! *laughs*
Your pal Glenn Gregory once said to me that HEAVEN 17 has three distinct audience types, the loyal fanbase, those who only like the first two albums and those who only like the hits, have you worked out your audience demographics?
Not really, I suppose the majority of the audience will be people who bought the ‘Vienna’ album and all of that stuff in the first place, so they’re kind of revisiting their youth. They’ve probably never gone away as such as music lovers, but there’s maybe an element of the whole retro thing about it, everyone would like to be 18 again and relive the folly of what they were up to and re-wear the clothes and still have the hair they used to have, all of that stuff!
But there’s also people, a much smaller element, who have just discovered you though a sync on movies or Netflix series or video games or whatever, they’ve discovered you through an entirely different route and in a retrospective way, they hear a track they find interesting and then look you up to find a world of music they didn’t know existed and they work backwards. That’s great that it happens so there’s them and people coming back reliving their retrogressive thing. It’s a bit of a mixed audience, but I can’t categorise them all lie that. I’ve got solo fans who won’t necessarily like ULTRAVOX and vice versa.
Were there any particular of those ULTRAVOX and VISAGE songs which you played on those two tours that have you rekindled a love for?
Yeah, I absolutely loved doing ‘Rage In Eden’ which is a lovely one to do. I love that little textural section we did in the middle of the ‘Voice & Visions’ show where is all kind of calmed down and got moody and all simplistic. I love doing that stuff as much as strapping on a guitar and making all the noise. I don’t get the opportunity to do that often, to delve back in and pull things out.
In the same way on previous tours, we rediscovered ‘I Remember (Death In The Afternoon)’, we rediscovered ‘Lament’, you kind of forget about them. You categorise them in your brain and go “that was then, I’ll do other things now” and then you play it out of the blue and it just comes back again, the reason that you liked it and the feeling you got from playing it all comes flooding back… it’s not gone away, I’ve pushed it away, put it in a cupboard and locked it. But now I’ve opened up the cupboard again, it’s the exact same thing! It’s fantastic there are many songs that still lend themselves to live performance.
One non-single track that found a place on both tours is ‘Astradyne’ which is still mighty after all these years; I was saying to Vicky Harrison of POLYCHROME at the Cambridge gig about how the synthwave scene seems to think the soundtrack of ‘Drive’ and other synthwave instrumentals are The Bee’s Knees, but I always throw ‘Astradyne’ at them! *laughs*
Yeah, it seems to work, it works on many levels for me having just sung on stage for an hour and a half, it gives me a 6 minute respite, a chance to catch my breath and let the vocal chords rest a bit. By the time I’ve done ‘Astradyne’ which was the first track in the encore, I’ll be screaming my head off doing ‘Dancing’ and ‘All Stood Still’ on top of having just done the main show. So in that respect, it’s good for me, it paces me and it gets me ready for the last couple of songs.
As a piece of music, ‘Astradyne’ still works, it’s incredibly simplistic and it takes me right back to what it was like in that rehearsal room with ULTRAVOX and we started throwing our ideas round for the ‘Vienna’ album. I remember distinctly prior to the album coming out in America when I was there to do some promo and when they thought we were going to be huge there, they had me in a limousine with a couple of record company bods. We were driving to Long Island to do WLIR which was one of the New Wave radio stations that would play us and the record company bods wanted listen to the album. So I put this cassette on and you could see their faces drop a minute in when realised there weren’t any vocals! They asked “Is this is the first track?”, I replied “Yup! This is the opening track” and they were telling me “you can’t use that!” *laughs*
It worked for us and it brings back good memories.
Was ‘Himmelblau’ by Wolfgang Riechmann an influence on ‘Astradyne’ at all?
I’m not sure, but Riechmann was one of the artists that Rusty Egan used to play at Billy’s and The Blitz Club. It was probably more CAN, NEU! and eventually LA DÜSSELDORF, all that kind of melodic German stuff. The idea for the melody, I did that and I have no idea where it came from, it’s probably subliminal, there’s probably snippets of styles and elements that I’d heard in the club. It’s not a melody as such because I’m not a keyboard player, it was something that just came up with my natural sense of melody. Of course, Billy was doing that lovely piano thing underneath it all and it made it all move, it was great. I love doing it.
‘Fade To Grey’ continues to have a life of its own and has been used recently in those stylish Gris Dior and Coco Chanel Crush adverts… have you seen them and how well do you think they’ve used the music?
I think they’re re-recordings aren’t they? Or is one of them an original?
They both sound original, especially the Coco Chanel Crush one…
It’s a very dodgy area, I know some adverts use the original recording but since Rusty and Steve Strange tried to get together in 2011 to do a VISAGE Part 2, they opened up a nest of worms and certain people were allowed access to the songs! There are some very good copies out there that sound very much like the original that Steve sang, so it’s very difficult to tell what the original one is! These programmers just do an amazing job and copy it note-for-note, then the original recording doesn’t have to be paid for or whatever. So there’s a way round the whole sync thing and the cost of putting originals on commercials and films!
A lot of artists do it and re-record their own songs note-for-note and try to make it sound like the original so that when they’re asked for example, a ‘Vienna’ or whatever, you’ve already done a brand new ‘Vienna’ that sounds exactly like the old one and then you get all the money… but I couldn’t think of anything worse, I’d rather go to the dentist and have my teeth pulled out than go back and try and recreate something that you’ve done! *laughs*
Talking of VISAGE, ‘The Anvil’ album is in my opinion, one of your most underrated bodies of work and it didn’t get included as part of the ‘Voice & Visions’ tour?
It didn’t and that’s simply because if you start cherry picking and looking at the stuff AND things people would expect to hear, you’d be on stage for 3 hours, it would have been crazy!
Yes, there was something quite grown-up about that record I think. The first VISAGE album was done in a very sporadic way, it was grabbing moments of studio time, and it was rare there was more than two people from VISAGE in the country at the same time! It was spread out like over a year or so, a pocket of time here and a pocket of time there. So it was a very broken up project.
When it came to doing ‘The Anvil’, it was more succinct, you could get together and go write, get a studio in London. The first VISAGE album was done in Martin Rushent’s studio before he had even built it, in his hut at the bottom of his garden; the facilities weren’t great but we still managed to pull it off.
So there’s something more coherent about that second album and it had moved on from just the electronics, there was Gary Barnacle and his sax on ‘Night Train’. Is it overlooked? I don’t know, a few people cite that as one of their favourite albums, maybe because it was a bit more “human”, more “soulful” than the first, and maybe because a bit more time was spent on it, rather than scattering seeds to the four winds you know…
You are celebrating your 70th birthday at the Royal Albert Hall, will this be an all-encompassing career show or will it mostly centre around the BAND ELECTRONICA format which you have had since 2017? Are you planning any special guests, is there anything that you can talk about?
Anything I can talk about? That I know about of course! *laughs*
No, not that I know of! When I did the Albert Hall in 1991 under my own steam, I had a gospel choir, guests like Paddy Moloney from THE CHIEFTAINS, all these people coming on and I’ve kind of done that. The speculation online is just rife, like “ULTRAVOX are back!”, “there’s going to be a choir”, “there’s going to be an orchestra” and “the full ‘Orchestrated’ album is going to be performed”… AAARGH! I’m not sure!
It’s like when you have a new record coming out and you’ve just started it, you’re doing interviews about it and people ask “what’s it called?”… well, I’ve got no idea, it will be called something when I’ve finished the album *laughs*
So I’ll know what will be in the show when I’ve formulated those ideas, because it’s still very fresh… when you get the Albert Hall, you have to tell people it’s going to happen and then figure out how you’re going to fill it and what the content is going to be. But I’m already formulating a few little things, but I don’t want to throw the kitchen sink at it because that can just detract from what it is. It’s a celebratory thing, I will cherry pick songs in various formats that I think were important during those 70 years I’ve been breathing oxygen. I still haven’t figured out how I’m going to do it, but the basis of it will be the BAND ELECTRONICA basis because we’re up and running, we’re hot just now and we have to consolidate what we have already to be sensible about it.
Have you ever thought about doing ‘Rivets’ live, perhaps as an intro into another song like how you did with ‘Yellow Pearl’ in your various show?
I haven’t! BUT IT’S NOT A BAD IDEA!
But then again, you’d have to figure out where you would do something like that. Doing that in front of your own audience is fine, but doing that in the ‘Let’s Rock’ and ‘Rewind’ Festival things, people are still scratching their heads as to why I’m playing the ‘Top Of The Pops’ theme because the majority there, they’re not your audience! *laughs*
My audience, there’s a very good chance they will know that ‘Rivets’ was a piece of music that I did with Chris Cross… it’s certainly food for thought, I’ve never played it live so it would be interesting! *laughs*
Of course, what became ‘Love’s Great Adventure’ was intended as music for a Levi’s advert? What happened there?
The ‘Rivets’ thing was very last minute, I got a phone call from one of the guys at Chrysalis saying he was on this board and he saw this big budget Levi’s commercial that was filmed by one of the Scott brothers, it had gone right up to the line. It was shown at this big premiere in Stockholm and someone at Levi’s said they didn’t like the music! This person said he needed something that was rousing and atmospheric like ULTRAVOX. So this Chrysalis guy said he knew me and I got the call a few days later. I saw the clip in the afternoon and wrote the ‘Rivets’ piece of music that night. I recorded my parts in the studio but then did the mix with the ad agency and the Levi’s people which was a pain in the backside because all they did was talk through it and I was getting fed up. I was telling them “This is your piece of music, do you want it good or do you want it bad? If you want it good, don’t talk, get out and leave me alone! Let me do the music”.
They had no time to sit and think about it, so they put it on and they loved it. It got a fantastic response so 6 months later, they come back to me and said “we’re doing a follow up called ‘Threads’”, because it was all about the rivets before, but now it was threads! So this ad had been filmed in Mexico, there’s this guy fishing for marlin, there’s all these marlins jumping out of the water, it’s a man in the sea against beast type of thing and he’s fighting and then he cuts the line and the line disappears through the water and you zoom in on the line and you see it’s a Levi’s thread to show you how strong it is!
I thought great but this time, they said they wanted it more rhythmic and for me not to do anything melodic, they wanted this pounding thing. So I went off, got my little sampler and banged a garage door again like I did on ‘The Chieftain’, I hit everything and made this very Burundi style rhythmic metallic sounding beast of a thing! I thought it was fantastic and that they’d love it. 3 weeks later, they said “there’s not much tune!”… but they asked for something with no melody or tune! “Oh but we need a melody, we need something that people can sing…” 🤦♂️
So OK, I watched the film again and I saw the marlin jumping up and I came up with this triumphant ‘633 Squadron’ type thing with this stomp. I took it to them and told them “this really works well”… 3 weeks later, I get the phone call, “Umm, can you put more bass on it?” and I was like “do you mean bass guitar or bass drum or bass synth or overall bottom end, more body?”. Then this is the straw that broke the camel’s back, they said “we want it to sound like the feel of Formica!”. At that point, I asked them to give me the music back, I gave them back their money and that was that.
I think they got Jeremy Healey of HAYSI FANTAYZEE to do some music, I took the track back and Billy Currie put various bits on it, I wrote some lyrics, a topline and turned it into ‘Love’s Great Adventure’. Their advert failed miserably, it goes topped and a month later, they had to put on ‘Rivets’ again as they had all these bookings in the cinemas around the world for this ‘Threads’ advert! It was an interesting thing but it wasn’t my planet!
You’re known for guitars and also for synths, so you combined the two when you got a Roland GR700 guitar synthesizer in 1984 and demonstrated it on ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’, how did you find using it and why do you think they never really took off in the way say wind synthesizers did?
They probably did, they’re much better now than they were back then, they didn’t track very well. A keyboard, unless you actually press a key down, you don’t get a note from it. If you touch the strings on a guitar synth, it triggers the synthesizer! So just by scratching the strings (which is all part of the sound of normal guitar playing), there’s a sound. So you have to play a guitar synth with kid gloves, you had to be really careful how you played things!
We used it on stage with ULTRAVOX, I can’t remember what we used it on but it was on a couple of things, it was just so volatile and not user friendly. You would have to use it in the studio and it wouldn’t do things that a guitar would do, you can dub strings on a guitar or a violin, but you couldn’t really dub stings on a guitar synth because the synth sound would still come out whether you were holding the strings down or not. So it was a very different way of playing.
They are much better than they were, I’ve got a synth controller guitar here in the studio and it seems to work incredibly well. But technology then hadn’t yet caught up with the idea, so it went the way of many things…
Did you have a favourite keyboard-based synthesizer?
I liked the PPG Wave because it was a hybrid of analogue front end with rotary controls and digital internal. So it was one of those synths that you think you know what kind of sound you are looking for, but on the way to that sound, you create something better or more interesting, this leftfield that’s gone off on a tangent.
A major part of the end of ULTRAVOX and the beginning of the solo stuff, a lot of sounds that are very definable that weren’t presets, that were my sounds, are from that. It was a good instrument to do that with. But you end of getting rid of all the hardware and you end up with software instruments and you’re back to square one *laughs*
Your most recent new track in 2021 was ‘Das Beat’ which you co-wrote with Wolfgang Flür who was in KRAFTWERK, does collaborating with other electronic trailblazers interest you at all?
I wouldn’t have done this had Wolfgang not asked, he came to see me in Germany doing the ‘1980’ tour and we met backstage. He said he was doing an album and he’d love me to be part of it. I thought “great” but it was a matter of what, when and how. The next day on the bus, this thing kept going around my head, ‘Das Boot’ the Wolfgang Petersen movie and then I was thinking ‘Das Beat’ because Wolfgang is the maestro, he’s the electronic rhythm guy, he was the guy we all listened to, the master of “Das Beat”… it tied in so well but he wasn’t too keen on the title until I found out it doesn’t mean anything in German! *laughs*
Wolfgang said it should be “Der Beat” as the correct way of saying it but of course, me not speaking German, I thought ‘Bas Beat’, you are the guy, THE BEAT! He wasn’t keen and I think he wanted to try his hand at his own lyrics. I said that there was no reason why we can’t do 2 versions, so he did his own thing on his eventual ‘Magazine 1’ album although he kept the chorus that I’d written with my vocal and I had my own BAND ELECTRONICA single.
But it was great fun delving back into the influences that sparked me off down that particular route, the sounds and the style and writing something in the vein of a very catchy pop version of KRAFTWERK. When I heard him half speak / half singing his lyrics and stuff, I thought “My God, it’s so good, it sounds brilliant!”
I never plan collaborations, they come about just because you meet somebody that you like and they like you, they like what you do and you like what they do. Low and behold, you end up doing something, otherwise, it’s a bit like hard work… you mean you want me to go and write something? *laughs*
What’s next, is a ‘Lament’ + ‘The Gift’ tour a possibility in the future?
Everything is possible in the future, I said many times prior to this ‘Voice & Visions’ tour about how difficult it was fiscally, because we’d agreed costs and fees back in 2019 and the cost of doing it in 2023 was horrendous. I kept saying this was unsustainable, you cannot keep doing this and do this at a loss. The days of record company advances and people buying large amounts of your records are well and truly over. So you have to try and make it work, fiscally as well as musically.
I think the bottom line is we scraped through by the skin of our teeth on this one without having to raise ticket prices… I’m not saying it’s always going to be like that, but you have to figure it all out. You have to think “X” amount of people will want to see you, it costs “X” amount to do the show, “X” amount to pay the crew, the buses, the trucks, the lights etc. And people expect high quality performance, they want to see the great light show, they want to have the atmosphere there. I’m loathed to say we have to stick a fiver on the price of a ticket to make that happen! The end result was great, the response we got from the tour was fantastic.
Being able to do the Albert Hall is phenomenal and I expect next year, there will be plans… we haven’t got anything in place right now for something, but whether I carry on with the two albums retrospective thing or not, I really don’t know. There may be some time out there for some solo stuff, do some of the solo stuff that doesn’t get an airing very often! *laughs*
You recently sold your back catalogue, what will this give you as an artist, is it financial security for yourself and your family?
Well, my family more than anything… I’m a fairly basic character these days, I think I learned humility with the demise of ULTRAVOX and the beginning of BAND AID. I don’t need a lot, I’m fairly satisfied with what I have. But the music industry is such a complex thing, my kids aren’t part of the music industry, they would never understand where money comes from or where you would go to get it that’s your royalties. It’s so complicated because labels sell on to other labels. You find releases that you didn’t even know were coming out but you are still on the royalties for it and you have to find these things.
It took years to try and sort it out and tie it all up with one big ribbon. A lot of artists are doing the same thing. I mean, if I’m not around, nobody is going to know where this is and it always goes into a big black hole and disappears. So it was the sensible thing to do to get your ducks in a row before you sing your final note…
What has been your artistic career highlight? How do you look back on getting a solo No1 in ‘If I Was’, something which was cruelly denied to ULTRAVOX?
There are loads and it’s not usually the big things, the No1s or whatever! I suppose it’s the collaborations, the buzz you STILL get from meeting someone you respect and admire, and THEY know who you are! You can’t buy that! That’s just crazy, there’s still that kid walking around Cambuslang in awe of everybody else and then you find you are stomping the same stage as them.
Those moments were great, playing guitar with Eric Clapton one-on-one, the duet with Kate Bush or being on stage with Peter Gabriel, whatever it happens to be. They’re the moments that success brings you, not owning the fleet of cars or a boat or whatever, those things are transient.
But the other stuff is real and that’s just amazing! So if you could tie all those up in a documentary, I’d sit and watch it! *laughs*
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Midge Ure
With the success of his ‘1980’ tour celebrating ULTRAVOX’s ‘Vienna’ album and his work as a member of VISAGE, Scottish music veteran Midge Ure finally got his long awaited ‘Voice & Visions’ adventure on the road.
Delayed in the wake of the worldwide pandemic, the second leg of the tour which had originally been arranged as the first part has been playing to appreciative crowds at packed theatres throughout the UK. Midge Ure will be 70 this coming October but he has shown no sign of wavering with his voice remaining intact, save a few very high notes which are discreetly worked around. Meanwhile, he continues to play guitar and keyboards with an enthusiasm that is obvious for all to see.
The concept of the ‘Voice & Visions’ tour was to air material from ULTRAVOX’s second and third Ure-era long players ‘Rage In Eden’ and ‘Quartet’; the former was the product of three months spent in the isolated countryside studio of German legend Conny Plank near Cologne, while the latter was a comparatively brighter affair with THE BEATLES producer George Martin at the helm which included a mixing sojourn in sunny Monserrat. These two very different approaches netted six Top 20 single in the UK. “This is the logical and emotional follow up to the 1980 tour” Ure said.
After a number of years performing acoustically and solo, Midge Ure introduced his Band Electronica concept in 2017 to perform full-fat renditions of the key milestones of his glorious musical career, some for the first time since the classic ULTRAVOX line-up reunion with Chris Cross, Warren Cann and Billy Currie that thrilled fans between 2009 to 2013. The format also provided another opportunity to hear some of best electronic pop of the Synth Britannia era in a live context.
With the live band comprising of long standing drummer Russell Field and the talented multi-instrument duo of Cole Stacey on bass, keyboards + guitar and Joseph O’Keefe on keyboards + violin, it was this trio who opened proceedings with a selection of songs that the two youngsters have recorded as INDIA ELECTRIC CO.
Presenting a modern take on traditionally-derived music forms, songs such as ‘Only Waiting’ and ‘Heimat’ showcased Stacey’s earnest vocal style and O’Keefe’s emotive violin playing with Field providing a variety of acoustic percussive colours. An enjoyable cover of Bruce Springsteen ‘I’m On Fire’ sprung a surprise with Stacey using mini-keys and Field taking to penny whistle while O’Keefe displayed another string to his bow with some six string dexterity.
The elegant ‘Parachutes’ had touches of folk and Americana while at the other end of the scale, ‘Lost in Translation’ saw synths and electronic arpeggios brought into the spritely equation. To close the INDIA ELECTRIC CO support set, ‘Statues’ brought mandolin loops, funk, jazz, classical and synth into an unusual but engaging hybrid of styles.
With an impressive 20 minute turnover time, Stacey, O’Keefe and Field returned to the stage to set the scene for Midge Ure’s arrival. Taking full advantage of their presence, the ULTRAVOX Mk2 front man launched into impassioned rendition of ‘Dear God’; the song he premiered at Wembley Stadium for the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute concert in 1988, its call for peace and unity was particularly poignant in relation to current world events.
Maintaining momentum, the rousing ‘If I Was’ was a reminder of his 1985 solo UK No1 single while the evergreen ‘Fade to Grey’ was another of his No1s, albeit in West Germany where the VISAGE song became the Bundesrepublik’s biggest selling single of 1981.
Ure’s solo career actually began in 1982 with a cover of Tom Rush’s ‘No Regrets’; originally an acoustic number by its author, it was a comeback hit for THE WALKER BROTHERS in 1976. While just simply a great song, his cover of a cover still possesses an icy resonance to compliment the bittersweet lyrics.
However, the audience at Cambridge Corn Exchange were there to hear ULTRAVOX songs and Ure duly delivered. There were the hits ‘The Voice’, ‘The Thin Wall’ and ‘Reap the Wild Wind’ but there was also ‘We Came to Dance’ which had not included in any of the 21st Century ULTRAVOX reunion shows. But many were there for the album highlights from ‘Rage In Eden’ and ‘Quartet’; ‘We Stand Alone’ was enhanced by Joseph O’Keefe’s chilling synth stabs while ‘I Remember (Death in the Afternoon)’ saw a THIN LIZZY style of twin guitar interplay between Ure and Stacey.
‘Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again)’ recalled the claustrophobic intensity of the ‘Rage In Eden’ album while on the atmospheric title song, Cole Stacey impressively nailed the Middle Eastern toned “noonretfa eht ni htaed… rebmemer i ho” phonetics of its haunting chorus. From the ‘Quartet’ album, the synth rock of ‘Mine For Life’ made its return since that particular tour which was preserved on the ‘Monument’ live artefacts.
Meanwhile the more frenetic ‘Serenade’ was another welcome inclusion as a song that had never been performed live until this ‘Voice & Visions’ tour. Finishing the main part of the set with ‘Hymn’ and ‘Visions in Blue’, the end of show crescendo may have been better served if the order of those two songs had been the other way around.
For the four song encore, there was the unexpected inclusion of the mighty electro-prog instrumental ‘Astradyne’ and of course ‘Vienna’ with duel ivories from O’Keefe and Stacey to provide a continuous piano passage that, due to physical practicalities, would have to be interrupted during ULTRAVOX renditions of “The Greatest No2 of All Time” as voted by BBC Radio2 listeners.
Concluding the evening with ‘Dancing With Tears in My Eyes’ and ‘All Stood Still’, this pair of cheerful ditties about Mutually Assured Destruction reflected the Cold War paranoia during which they were created in; as with ‘Dear God’ at the beginning of the set, that angst has scarily returned to today’s uncertain world. Critics used to consider ULTRAVOX pretentious and pompous but they offered intelligent and thoughtful real life observations and concerns.
A triumph all around, the ‘Voice & Visions’ show was complimented by a straightforward but very effective light show and crystal clear sound. This revisiting of Midge Ure’s back catalogue has got potential to run even further and ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK has its fingers crossed for a ‘Lament’ to ‘The Gift’ 1984-1985 based tour in the not too distant future 😉
And for those waiting for the DEPECHE MODE dig, to the idiotic Devotee who said that Martin Gore was a better guitarist than Midge Ure… err, no! 🤣
With thanks to Cole Stacey
ULTRAVOX ‘Rage In Eden’ + ‘Quartet’ are available via Chrysalis Records as deluxe boxed sets
Midge Ure 2023 festival appearances include:
Middlesbrough Let’s Rock the North East (10 June), Let’s Rock Leeds (17 June), Let’s Rock Scotland (24 June), Let’s Rock Exeter (1 July), Let’s Rock Shrewsbury (15 July), Forever Young 2023 (16 July), Rewind Scotland (23 July), Wickham Festival 2023 (6 August), Chepstow Castle (18 August), Let’s Rock Norwich (19 August), Oostende W-Festival 2023 (25 August)
INDIA ELECTRIC CO will be touring later in 2023, dates include:
Deepdale Festival (24 September), Manchester Band On The Wall (17 October), Glasgow Glad Cafe CIC (18 October), Cambridge Junction 2 (24 October), London Kings Place (25 October), Aylesbury Waterside Theatre (26 October), Totnes Barrel House (27 October), Lyme Regis Marine Theatre (28 October)
Best known as one half of the Greek synthpop duo MARSHEAUX, Sophia Sarigiannidou launched her solo project ASPRA in 2022
Her first single was ‘Velvet’, an electronic rework of the 4AD cult shoegaze duo THE BIG PINK while on the flip was another cover in ‘Anoint’, a song originally by John Peel favourites THE FIELD MICE. While these choices were unexpected, it did point to Sarigiannidou’s own leftfield tastes. There was also two fabulous collaborations with veteran electronic composer Lena Platonos, prosed unexpectedly en Français.
“I started going to the neighborhood record store and asking them to write me tapes. I bought the ‘Machines’ compilation LP. The disc starts with ‘Messages’ by OMD. What a shock that was… within 3 minutes so many different tunes alternated, one better than the other.” she said, “Through this record, I discovered Fad Gadget, Gary Numan and John Foxx! That afternoon the living room of the house in Thessaloniki was transformed into a window into a future era! It was written everywhere that ‘the synthesizer is the sound of the future’. Mine certainly was!”
Compiling a collection of rare and less obvious post-punk and synth tracks in the spirit of ‘Machines’ from 1977-1985, ‘ASPRA presents: Play For Tomorrow Vol.1’ sees Sarigiannidou offer a snapshot into her creative outlook with songs that four decades on have shown themselves to be “timeless jewels that you can play for today or play for tomorrow…”
While OMD are among the better known acts in the selection with the wistful ‘Of All The Things We’ve Made’ along with ULTRAVOX’s superb ‘Just For A Moment’, the others are more obscure but no less essential. Complimenting these two choices, ‘Karussell’ by Michael Rother of NEU! highlights the German musician’s influence on the aural aesthetics of both.
With wispy vocals and joyfully handled keys, Chris & Cosey’s wonderful ‘October (Love Song)’ was the antithesis of their parent group THROBBING GRISTLE and covered by MARSHEAUX in Greek for their debut album ‘E-Bay Queen’ in 2004. Another highlight is the TB303 driven cinematic synthpop of ‘Mystery & Confusion’ by TUXEDOMOON leader Blaine L Reininger which exudes a Eurocentric spirit as per its title and deserves wider recognition.
But the collection begins with the spacey avant folk of ‘UFO Report No.1’ by THE GADGETS, a track recorded in 1979 and featuring a very young pre-THE THE Matt Johnson. Despite its dour vocal delivery, 1982’s ‘Love Disgrace’ from Italian duo AMIN PECK is immensely catchy with its pulses, chops and glorious synth lines. Meanwhile New Zealand’s CAR CRASH SET earn their place with ‘Fall From Grace’ where deep sombre vocals contrast with a sparkling but gritty mechanical roll over 8 minutes.
Mute Records founder Daniel Miller finds two of his productions included; the dystopian minimal synth of ‘Music To Save The World By’ was the B-side from a one-off single on Cherry Red Records by the little known Alan Burnham while planting the seed of KOMPUTER, ‘Still Smiling’ by I START COUNTING has an innocent charm with those distinctive metallic tinges circa 1985. From that same year, French trio RUTH are eccentric but stylish on their debut single ‘Polaroïd/Roman/Photo’ crossing the detached with the playful while another curveball is thrown when the muted brass kicks in.
Α new wave duo with hints of THE VELVET UNDERGROUND but with a heated Italian vibe rather than the Götterdämmerung of Nico, CHRISMA’s ‘Black Silk Stocking’ was a 1978 single was produced and co-written by Vangelis’ brother, Nikko Papathanasiou. THE BUGGLES maybe best known for ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’ but the duo of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes actually made a second album ‘Adventures In Modern Recording’ in 1981; from it, ‘On TV’ is enjoyably oddball while employing exotic Eastern flavours not unlike LANDSCAPE.
Last but not least THE ELECTRONIC CIRCUS’ spirited anti-war anthem ‘Direct Lines’ is sadly still relevant 42 years after its release. In what turned out to be a one-off project led by Gary Numan keyboardist Chris Payne, the resigned hopelessness is captured by the vocals of Penny Heathcote, frontwoman of Brighton band CORVETTES who themselves only issued one single.
‘Play For Tomorrow Vol.1’ is a superb compilation that will appeal to long standing music fans who love discovering music from the imperial pioneering phase of electronic pop that may have fallen under the radar back in the day.
Sophia Sarigiannidou has done a fantastic curation job and it will be interesting to see how these influences might permeate into the soundscapes of the eventual debut ASPRA album.
Cherry Red’s ‘Musik Music Musique’ series now reaches its third volume and 1982 when there was “Synth Pop On The Air”.
From the team behind the ’Close To The Noise Floor’ compendiums, the excellent ‘Electrical Language’ set but also the rather confused ‘Music For New Romantics’ box, this 3CD collection documents the year after SOFT CELL hit No1 with ‘Tainted Love’ in the summer of 1981 while THE HUMAN LEAGUE did likewise with ‘Don’t You Want Me?’ to bag that year’s Christmas topspot. 1982 began with KRAFTWERK belatedly reaching a No1 too with ‘The Model’, a track from 1978’s ‘The Man Machine’.
It was as if the world had caught up with the sound of the synth. The period was also notable for affordable silicon chip based polysynths such as the Roland Juno 6 and Korg Poly 6 entering the market. In tandem with the improvement in quality of cassette-based 4-track Portastudios, electronic music became more accessible with basic home studios now a hive of musical creativity.
While the big hitters such as SOFT CELL, OMD, BLANCMANGE, THE HUMAN LEAGUE and ULTRAVOX are represented by album tracks and B-sides alongside breakthrough singles by NEW ORDER, FASHIØN and HEAVEN 17, the curiosity value of ‘Musik Music Musique 3.0’ is boosted by a greater proportion of lesser known tracks and acts compared with the first two compendiums.
Often dismissed as a MOR act thanks to the Giorgio Moroder produced ‘Take My Breath Away, BERLIN are provided a platform for the provocative and more classically Moroder-esque ‘Sex (I’m A….)’. Meanwhile with a not dissimilar throbbing template, DEAD OR ALIVE’s ‘What I Want’ in previously unreleased demo form captures the band in transition from proto-goth to HI-NRG disco and sounding like both simultaneously.
Wonderful lost synthpop jewels include the melodramatic ‘Juliet’ from PASSION POLKA and the bouncy SPANDAU BALLET inspired instrumental ‘Profile Dance’ by SERGEANT FROG, an early alias of PWL mixmaster Phil Harding. Echoing the slightly overblown vocal styles of the period, ‘Future Shock’ by COMMUNICATION falls under the spell of ASSOCIATES while both ‘Climb Down’ from THIRTEEN AT MIDNIGHT and ‘Instant Feeling’ by AERIAL FX are percussively anxious.
The two best rare highlights both come with links to Glasgow; fronted by David Rudden, ENDGAMES played with a brand polished synthpop funk of which ‘First Last For Everything’ is a good example. Meanwhile, LEISURE PROCESS were the duo comprising of Ross Middleton and Gary Barnacle whose small portfolio of singles were all produced by Martin Rushent; although the vocals were virtually unintelligible over the clattering Linn Drum, pulsing synths, squawky guitar and sax, ‘Love Cascade’ remains a cool dancefloor friendly number reflecting the decadent spirit of the times.
The underrated COLOURBOX are represented by the 1982 single version of ‘Breakdown’ while DRINKING ELECTRICITY’s ‘Good Times’ explores a synth art funk hybrid that threatens to turn into ‘The Locomotion’. An actual cover version, JULIE & THE JEMS take on ‘1-2-3’ is a reflection of how commercial pop had become synthed up, especially when it is learnt that front woman Julie Harris was part of the line-up of TIGHT FIT that got to No1 later in 1982 with ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’; incidentally that rework was produced by Tim Friese-Greene who later became Mark Hollis’s writing partner in TALK TALK who themselves are represented on ‘Musik Music Musique 3.0’ by their slightly underwhelming debut single ‘Mirror Man’.
There is a surprise in that Arthur Brown of ‘Fire’ fame with his synth experiment ‘Conversations’ and it is suitably crazy and enjoyable in the manner of early FALCO. The late Austrian himself is represented by ‘Maschine Brennt’ while German neighbours DIE KRUPPS’ ‘Goldfinger’ is a welcome inclusion that exposes their more DAF-like origins.
Adding a less confrontational continental tone, ‘Par Hasard’ by MIKADO is a slice of delightful electro-lounge, while Belgium’s TELEX bring swing into the mix with ‘Sigmund Freud’s Party’ and Switzerland’s YELLO exude their quirky playfulness on ‘Heavy Whispers’, albeit with a darker disposition.
It is interesting to look back at the lesser remembered Kim Wilde single ‘Child Come Away’ and Toyah’s 1982 re-recording of ‘Ieya’ which were both synth dominated but failed to crack the Top 40 despite the sound being ubiquitous on the airwaves. There was the beginning of a notable synth backlash after the triumph of 1981 and DEXY’S MIDNIGHT RUNNERS fiddly ‘Come On Eileen’ becoming the best-selling UK single of 1982 was a surefire sign. And that was without the Musicians Union motion to ban synths from recording and live performance.
Cult acts of the period FAD GADGET, THE PASSAGE, FIAT LUX, SECTION 25 and POEME ELECTRONIQUE along with the two Thomases, Dolby and Lang don’t miss out on the party, but notably absent are bands who had been part of earlier sets such as NEW MUSIK and VISAGE whose 1982 albums have worthy material to mine.
Closing with OMEGA THEATRE and the quite bizarre but entertaining ‘Robots, Machines & Silicon Dreams’, its classic pop theatrics are not entirely surprising as its creator John Carter co-wrote the 1970 Eurovision runner-up ‘Knock, Knock Who’s There?’ for Mary Hopkin, ‘Let’s Go to San Francisco’ for THE FLOWER POT MEN and ‘Beach Baby’ for THE FIRST CLASS.
However, as before, there are minor quibbles; while the correct 1982 versions of NEW ORDER’s ‘Temptation’, TEARS FOR FEARS ‘Pale Shelter’ and Paul Haig’s ‘Justice’ feature, ‘European Son’ by JAPAN comes in the earlier John Punter B-side version rather the snappier 1982 Steve Nye single remix. And then having mentioned in the booklet that OMD’s ‘She’s Leaving’ was released as a slightly remixed 1982 single in Benelux territories, the compilation goes with the familiar 1981 ‘Architecture & Morality’ album cut. Meanwhile the inclusion of ‘Sex Dwarf’ from 1981’s ‘Non Stop Erotic Cabaret’ is a head scratcher when the 1982 SOFT CELL B-sides ‘Insecure Me’, ‘….So’ or ‘It’s A Mug’s Game’ would have been more interesting.
Lessons have still not been learnt from previous booklets with photos of OMD from 1984 and DEAD OR ALIVE from 1985 appearing. Again, the booklet notes are a mixed bag; why bother to bang on about the John Foxx-era of ULTRAVOX with the limited word count when by 1982, the Midge Ure-led version were an established hit machine? Also, why does the story of JOY DIVISION need to be repeated ad nauseam in the context of NEW ORDER?
Meanwhile, DRAMATIS (who are represented by their best single ‘The Shame’) returned to being Gary Numan’s live backing band in 1983, not 1982! Then with the biggest gaff in the TEARS FOR FEARS section, Curt Smith played bass NOT guitar and vice versa for Roland Jaime Orzabal de la Quintana to give his full name!
So full marks for the amount of lesser known material gathered on ‘Musik Music Musique 3.0’, but please get the accompanying booklet sorted out for ‘Musik Music Musique 4.0’ as there have been enough opportunities now to get that side of the operation right. Roll on 1983…
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Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes met while working with Tina Charles and her producer Biddu. Together they would go on to form BUGGLES and score a No1 with ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’. From the parent album ‘The Age Of Plastic’, ‘Astroboy’ developed on the duo’s sonic adventures while ‘The Plastic Age’ and ‘Clean Clean’ provided further if minor hits. Horn would go on become a top record producer.
Before OMD, the electronic duo on The Wirral was DALEK I LOVE YOU. However, by the time their debut album ‘Compass Kum’pas’ was released, OMD were having hits and keyboards man Dave Hughes had left to join their live band. Although Alan Gill’s vocals could polarise opinion, ‘Destiny’ was their most immediate song with a precise percussive appeal while ‘The World’ was eccentric and retro-futuristic.
The success of the singles ‘Back To Nature’ and ‘Ricky’s Hand’ attracted a loyal fanbase, so a FAD GADGET album ‘Fireside Favourites’ was eagerly anticipated. Developing on the minimal industrialism of the singles, the superb ‘Coitus Interruptus’ was a cynical commentary on casual relationships while offering his own brand of romantic macabre in the fear of the imminent nuclear apocalypse was the neo-title song ‘Fireside Favourite’.
On the ULTRAVOX! debut,John Foxx announced “I want to be a machine”. On signing to Virgin Records as a solo artist, he virtually went the full hog with the seminal JG Ballard inspired ’Metamatic’. ‘Underpass’ and ‘No-One Driving’ were surprise hit singles that underlined the dystopian times while the fabulous ‘A New Kind Of Man’ and the deviant ‘He’s A Liquid’ were pure unadulterated Sci-Fi driven by the cold mechanics of a Roland Compurhythm.
Having worked with Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching, drummer turned keyboard player Harald Grosskopf took the plunge to go solo with the mind bending album ‘Synthesist’. A work comprising of eight instrumentals that blended a sonic tapestry of synthesizer soundscapes with drumming that provided colour as opposed to dominance, it musically followed in the exquisite tradition of his Berlin electronic friends.
With THE HUMAN LEAGUE learning lessons from their debut ‘Reproduction’, ‘Travelogue’ had more presence by creatively utilising the harsh screeching frequencies from overdriving their studio desk. ‘The Black Hit Of Space’ had its surreal Sci-Fi lyrics while ‘Dreams Of Leaving’ was a fantastically emotive slice of prog synth. There were glorious cover versions in ‘Only After Dark’ and ‘Gordon’s Gin’. While it was a breakthrough, all was not happy…
Dropped by Ariola Hansa, JAPAN found a refuge at Virgin Records. The bossa nova driven ‘Swing’ explored exotic grooves while the haunting ‘Nightporter’ was the ultimate Erik Satie tribute. An interest in Japanese technopop produced the brilliant ‘Methods Of Dance’ and saw leader David Sylvian collaborate with YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA’s Ryuichi Sakamoto on ‘Taking Islands In Africa’.
While not strictly an electronic album in full, half of ‘Closer’ was dominated by polyphonic synthesizers. Featuring an ARP Omni and an early version of Simmons drums, ‘Isolation’ was the most electronic track JOY DIVISION ever recorded. On the second side, ‘Heart & Soul’, ‘The Eternal’ and ‘Decades’ provided the solemn but beautiful Gothic backdrop producer by Martin Hannett for Ian Curtis’ elaborate musical suicide note.
LA DÜSSELDORF were fronted by the late Klaus Dinger of NEU! There was a greater presence of electronics and the first half of ‘Individuellos’was dominated by variations on ‘Menschen’, a grand statement sounding like a blueprint for Phil Lynott’s ‘Yellow Pearl’. ‘Dampfriemen’ was a quirky slice of synth oompah with comedic chants and a kazoo section while the piano laden ‘Das Yvönnchen’ provided a beautiful closer.
Time has shown that Tony Mansfield and NEW MUSIK with their strummed guitar alongside pretty synth melodies were underrated. Featuring the hits ‘Living By Numbers’, ‘This World Of Water’ and ‘Sanctuary’ as well as ‘On Islands’ which was later covered by CAMOUFLAGE, the band were dismissed as a novelty act due to the silly voices in their songs. Mansfield went on to produce A-HA, NAKED EYES and VICIOUS PINK.
The negative side of fame got into the psyche of Gary Numan and his new songs took on a more personal downbeat nature away from the Sci-Fi dystopia of his previous work. ‘This Wreckage’ and ‘Please Push No More’ summed up the self-doubt but while ‘Remind Me To Smile’ could have been a single, ‘Telekon’ suffered from not having the hit single ‘We Are Glass’ and ‘I Die: You Die’ included on the original LP release.
OMD released two albums in 1980 but their self-titled debut captured Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys using the most basic equipment, the duo not even having a polyphonic synth at the time. With energetic post-punk synth numbers such as ‘Electricity’ and ‘Bunker Soldiers’, on the other side of the coin were ‘Almost’ and ‘The Messerschmitt Twins’. An early version of ‘Messages’ pointed to a future with hit singles.
Although rooted in the blues via his previous band VINEGAR JOE, Robert Palmer took an interest in synths having become a fan of Gary Numan. That led to two collaborations including a version of ‘I Dream Of Wires’ released before Numan’s own recording and the Eastern flavoured ‘Found You Now’. The electronic centrepiece was the beautifully world weary ‘Johnny & Mary’ while ‘Looking for Clues’ added synthy art funk to the mix.
Following the acclaim for THE NORMAL, Daniel Miller undertook a new project SILICON TEENS as a fictitious synth group where rock ’n’ roll standards such as ‘Memphis Tennessee’, ‘Just Like Eddie’, ‘Let’s Dance’ and ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’ were enjoyably reinterpreted in a quirky synthpop style with Miller adding his deadpan monotone vocal. Frank Tovey aka FAD GADGET played the role of lead singer “Darryl” for videos and press.
Tours opening for Gary Numan and Peter Gabriel took SIMPLE MINDS around Europe to experience Cold War tensions at closer hand. Their wired mood was captured on ‘Empires & Dance’. With its speedy Moroder-esque influence, ‘I Travel’ was a screeching futuristic frenzy and ‘Celebrate’ brought some industrial Schaffel to the party. ’30 Frames A Second’ took a trip down the autobahn but ‘Twist / Run / Repulsion’ messed with the headspace of listeners.
Following the Giorgio Moroder steered album ‘No1 In Heaven’, SPARKS were despatched by Virgin Records to record a swift follow-up. Although Moroder was still nominally at the helm, Harold Faltermeyer took the majority of production duties on ‘Terminal Jive’. ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll People In A Disco World’ seemed to reflect the confused direction but ‘When I’m With You’ was a massive hit single in France, leading to the Mael Brothers’ relocation.
After experiments with vocals on ‘Cyclone’ and live drums on ‘Force Majeure’, with the recruitment on keyboards with Johannes Schmoelling to fill the difficult to fill void left by the departure of Peter Baumann, Edgar Froese and Christopher Franke got back on track, combining a more immediate sequencer drive with the melodic New Age resonances on the two part ‘Tangram’ set that would characterise TANGERINE DREAM’s later work.
The second TELEX album ‘Neurovision’ continued with the trio’s tradition of deadpan electronic covers and a gloriously metronomic take on ‘Dance To The Music’ showcased their penchant for mischievous subversion. But this mischief came to its head with their lampooning self-composed number ‘Euro-Vision’, a bouncy electropop tune which they actually entered for 1980 Eurovision Song Contest, coming seventeenth!
Following the first VISAGE sessions, Midge Ure was invited to join Billy Currie, Chris Cross and Warren Cann in ULTRAVOX. Providing a sonic continuity from the John Foxx-led era was producer Conny Plank while the robotic spy story ‘Mr X’ voiced by Cann provided another link. Opening with the mighty instrumental ‘Astradyne’ and closing with the synthesized heavy metal of ‘All Stood Still’, the ‘Vienna’ album was a triumph.
Formed as a reaction to the shortage of new electronic dance music to play at The Blitz Club, ex-RICH KIDS members Midge Ure and Rusty Egan recruited its figurehead Steve Strange to front the project under the name of VISAGE. Billy Currie, Dave Formula, John McGeoch and Barry Adamson joined later and captured a synthesized European romanticism that boasted the German No1 ‘Fade To Grey’ as well as two other hits in ‘Mind Of A Toy’ and the eponymous title track.
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