Electronic Sound issue 04

04
JOHN FOXX
“I’m not suitable
material for a rock star”
THE ORB
Alex Paterson talks dub
reggae and jazz cellars
POLLY SCATTERGOOD
Heartbreakingly
emotional electronica
GARY
NUMAN
2
Inside a broken mind...
The ‘Splinter’ interview
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.
.
BORIS BLANK BOOM BOOM SATELLITES CLARA HILL ULTRAMARINE
FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY IRMIN SCHMIDT TERRY FARLEY
SCHNAUSS & PETERS FINI TRIBE SIN COS TAN JACK DANGERS
.
.
.
.
.
WELCOME
Editor: Push
Deputy Editor: Mark Roland
Art Editor: Anthony Bliss
Artworker: Jordan Bezants
Contributing Editor: Bill Bruce
Assistant Designer: Ryan Birse
Contributors: Andrew Holmes, Andy Thomas, Bebe Barron, Bethan Cole, Chi Ming
Lai, Danny Turner, David Stubbs, Fat Roland, Gary Smith, George Bass, Grace Lake,
Heideggar Smith, Jack Dangers, Johnny Mobius, Jus Forrest, Kieran Wyatt, Laurie
Tuffrey, Mark Baker, Martin James, Neil Mason, Ngaire Ruth, Nix Lowrey, Patrick
Nicholson, Paul Browne, Paul Connolly, Rob Fitzpatrick, Sam Smith, Steve Appleton,
Tom Violence, Vader Evader, Vik Shirley
Sales and Marketing: Yvette Chivers
Published by Electonic Sound
© Electronic Sound 2013. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any way without
the prior written consent of the publisher. We may occasionally use material we believe has been
placed in the public domain. Sometimes it is not possible to identify and contact the copyright
holder. If you claim ownership of something published by us, we will be happy to make the correct
acknowledgement. All information is believed to be correct at the time of publication and we
cannot accept responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies there may be in that information.
WELCOME TO
ELECTRONIC
SOUND 04
Welcome to issue 4 of Electronic Sound. We’re leading with the second part of
our interview with Gary Numan, bringing us bang up to date with his career, and
giving us insights into the making of his new album and his relocation to America.
It’s really good to see ’Splinter’ exciting the mainstream music outlets in a way that
hasn’t really happened since Numan first cracked the music scene wide open back
in 1978.
It seems odd that bands that use guitars and bands that use synthesisers are often
somehow seen as being at odds. OK, most of the artists in Electronic Sound use
synths, but it’s perhaps worth remembering that Numan started out with a Gibson
guitar around his neck before he discovered synthesisers and chucked the axe,
only to pick it up again and fuse it into his electronic vision. You’d be hard pressed
to define the music he makes now as either rock or electronic music. It has Robert
Moog’s circuit boards at its heart and Les Paul’s pick-ups buzzing away there too.
It’s a powerful combination, one that Japan’s Boom Boom Satellites understand and
have used to great effect, and with their new album getting a proper UK release, it
seemed only polite to pop over to Tokyo and interview them. So we did. Another of our big features this issue is John Foxx, whose Ultravox
project was designed with guitars, only for the band to then dispense
with them after Foxx had left. And Foxx, of course, did much the same
himself with his first solo album. More than 30 years later, Foxx is
putting out more material than ever before, and his career has seen him
use pretty much any instrumentation that suited his needs. What these
people have in common is less the devices they use to make music –
although they’re all very interested in those – and more their approach
to creating music, and their willingness to explore and experiment.
We suppose that’s how we define Electronic Sound – and that’s why
we’ve chatted to artists as diverse as Polly Scattergood, Alex Paterson,
Boris Blank, Front Line Assembly, Clara Hill, Terry Farley, Fini Tribe,
Ultramarine, Schnauss & Peters, Irmin Schmidt and Sin Cos Tan this
issue. Sonic adventurers every one, and we’re looking forward to
covering more like them in the magazine, some of whom we all know
and love already, and others who haven’t yet made their first album.
Electronically yours,
Push and Mark
WHAT’S
INSIDE
FEATURES
GARY NUMAN
‘Splinter’ is his most
anticipated LP for years. The
Numanoid gives us the inside
story on the new album, and
talks about his move to the US
and his film soundtrack
POLLY
SCATTERGOOD
It’s emotional, lump-in-the-throat
stuff. It’s also sparkly, life-isgreat pop music. “I have a big,
weird imagination,” says Polly.
Not ‘arf
ALEX PATERSON
JOHN FOXX
BOOM BOOM
SATELLITES
BORIS BLANK
ULTRAMARINE
FRONT LINE
ASSEMBLY
The huge, ever-growing,
pulsating brain behind The Orb
reveals the influences that have
shaped his world – from dub
reggae to ‘Blade Runner’ to
Alice Cooper
We’re in Tokyo, in a heatwave,
to speak to Japan’s top
electronic rockers. Not that
Michi and Masa do a whole
lot of speaking
The masters of chilled
electronica are back with their
first album in 15 years. Here’s
what happened when we
snuck into their Essex hideaway
and left a tape running
Foxxy reflects on his Ultravox
days and how he came to
make one of the best records of
2013. Oh, and what he learnt
from sitting in on Bob Marley’s
‘Exodus’ sessions
The one and only – and there
is no stopping the man from
Yello. “When I’m laying in
my coffin, I’ll be sampling
the sound of the nails being
hammered in,” he says
We meet electro industrial
pioneer and FLA main man Bill
Leeb for lessons in chaining
and ducking, plus some chat
about dubstep
UP THE FRONT
TIME MACHINE
HEADLINES
Boy’s Own guv’nor TERRY
FARLEY talks acid house and
remembers how SHOOM
and SPECTRUM
transformed
London clubland for ever
PULSE:
SIN COS TAN
The Finnish duo are
gearing up to release their
second album in under a
year, this time with a little
help from Casey Spooner
CAN box up their back
catalogue, THE SOUND
OF BELGIUM movie
comes to the UK,
BLANCMANGE tour,
and PERC remixes
NEUBAUTEN
ANATOMY
Everything that you ever
wanted to know about
the cover artwork of
ORBITAL’s ‘In Sides’
album. Don’t read if you’re
alone in the house
FAT ROLAND
COLUMN
PULSE: LAUGH
CLOWN LAUGH
The strange tale of the
minimal synthpoppers who
have taken no less than 30
years to finish their debut
album
FACTORY FLOOR
NYPC
THE FIELD
MARCEL DETTMANN
Davy Miller recalls the
making of ‘Detestimony’,
FINI TRIBE’s Balaeric
anthem, and how the group
got banned from venues
across Scotland
ULRICH SCHNAUSS
and MARK PETERS ask
each other three questions
about ‘Tomorrow Is
Another Day’, the pair’s
latest collaboration
PULSE:
CLARA HILL
Shadowy, fractious and
folky electronica. If you’ve
heard Clara’s previous
stuff, this will come as a
surprise
CHVRCHES
VILE ELECTRODES
JESSY LANZA
GIORGIO MORODER
In praise of Dutch
electronics pioneer HENK
BADINGS and his mates at
the PHILIPS RESEARCH
LABORATORY
LANDMARKS
DUOPOLY
You know how FRONT
242 are huge fans of ‘Last
Of The Summer Wine’?
Oh, so you hadn’t heard
about that?
JACK
DANGERS
SYNTH TOWN
RALF HUTTER builds
a robot to battle with
MECHA-NUMAN, but
it looks like FLORIAN
SCHNEIDER’s mannequin
on wheels...
SPOTLIGHT
Can man IRMIN SCHMIDT
discusses his filmsoundtrack
work, his ‘Villa Wunderbar’
retrospective set, and the
new projects he’s got
coming up
ARP
RALPH MYERZ
PETER VAN HOESEN
SCHNEIDER TM
TRENTEMØLLER
POLICA
ANAMANAGUCHI
MAX & MARA
AND LOADS MORE..
NEWS
HEADLINES
NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF ELECTRONICITY
CAN MEGA VINYL BOX SET
Can are releasing a bumper
box set on Spoon/Mute at the
end of the year. The ‘Can Vinyl
Box’ features all of the band’s
albums remastered on vinyl for
the first time, including 1978’s
ultra-rare ‘Out Of Reach’, a
record which has effectively
been disowned by the Can camp
in recent years. The collection
also boasts a live disc from
1975, which will not be available
elsewhere, alongside a booklet
with exclusive photographs and
sleeve notes by Scottish novelist
Alan Warner. Warner is a longtime Can fan and dedicated two
of his books to members of the
band (‘Morvern Caller’ and ‘The
Man Who Walks’, dedicated
to Holger Czukay and Michael
Karoli, respectively). The ‘Can
Vinyl Box’ set follows on from
last year’s ‘The Lost Tapes’ triple
CD and the recent Cyclopean
EP, featuring Can founders Irmin
Schmidt and Jaki Liebezeit, and
is scheduled for release on 2
December.
PERC LAUNCHES NEW LABEL WITH NEUBAUTEN EP
Perc Trax, the acclaimed techno
and tech house label, have
launched a new imprint called
Submit, which will be dedicated
to raw electronics. A statement
from the label says: “Submit
will focus on experimental,
DIY music, taking in noise and
industrial influences but by no
means boxed in by the aesthetic
blueprints that define these
genres. The music will be loose
and free-hand, frayed at the
edges but with an honest feeling
at its core.” The debut release on
Submit is a one-off collaboration
BLANCMANGE REWORK ‘HAPPY FAMILIES’
Blancmange have re-recorded
their 1982 debut album, ‘Happy
Families’, and will be selling
copies of the updated version
on their November UK tour. The
reworked album is called ‘Happy
Familes Too…’. It comes with new
artwork and will be a numbered
limited edition. There are plans
for a full release at some point in
the future, but for the time being
you will only be able to get the
album on the tour, for which
the band will be performing
‘Happy Families’ in its entirety.
The tour starts on 3 November
in Clitheroe. The full list of dates
are: Darwen, Library (4 and 5
November), Manchester, Sound
Control (6), Newcastle, Think
Tank (8), Southampton, The
Brook (9), Brighton, Concorde
2 (10), Wolverhampton, Robin
2 (11), Nottingham, Rescue
Rooms (12), Liverpool, Erics
(13), Wakefield, The Hop (14),
London, The Garage (15) and
Cardiff, Ifor Bach (16). Tickets
available via
www.blancmange.co.uk.
between Perc Trax boss Ali
Wells, aka Perc, and German
industrial pioneers Einstürzende
Neubauten. The ‘Interpretations’
EP features four Perc reworkings
of dub mixes from the group’s
seminal 1981 album ‘Kollaps’,
a record Perc has often cited as
an influence on his trademark
metallic sound. The EP is
Neubauten’s first release since
2008.
SKAM TECHNO 10-INCH PROJECT
Skam, the respected Manchester
label who put out early
recordings by Boards Of
Canada, is lining up a series of
interesting releases on 10-inch
vinyl. The records will appear on
the label’s sister imprint, Kasm,
and are intended to celebrate
techno with fresh material from
familiar artists and also some
unknown names. The first release,
Kasm 1, will be Mark Broom and
James Ruskin recording under the
name The Fear Project, Kasm 2
will be new material from Meat
Beat Manifesto (pictured), and
Kasm 3 is being put together by
808 State’s Graham Massey.
Label boss Andy Maddocks,
who founded Skam in 1990, tells
us that the 10-inch records will
come in a house bag, a first for
the imprint, and each will have
its own label image featuring
“some kind of insulation – to fill
the Kasm…”.
WARP REISSUE ENO NEW AGE CLASSICS
Warp Records are about to
embark on a major reissue of
many of the records originally
released on Brian Eno’s All Saints
label. The first releases come
from the new age innovator
Laraaji, who Eno discovered
busking in a park in New York
in 1978, playing a zither which
had been customised into an
electronic instrument. Laraaji’s
‘Ambient 3: Day Of Radiance’
was the third in Eno’s famous
Ambient Series. The first Warp
DICK RAAIJMAKERS, 1930 − 2013
Dutch electronic music pioneer
Dick Raaijmakers, aka Kid
Baltan, has died at the age
of 83. A classically trained
pianist, Raaijmakers worked
in electro-acoustic research at
the famous Philips Laboratory
in Eindhoven in the 1950s,
during which time he teamed
up with fellow researcher Tom
Dissevelt and began producing
electronic treatments of popular
songs of the day. The pair
released an album called ‘The
Fascinating World Of Electronic
Music’ in 1958 under the name
Electrosoniks, for the purposes
of which Raaijmakers was
credited as Kid Baltan. He
later set up a studio with Jan
Boerman in The Hague, which
was incorporated into the city’s
Royal Conservatory in 1966.
Raaijmakers subsequently taught
electronic and contemporary
music at the Royal Conservatory
until he retired in 1996. He also
continued to produce a huge
volume of music of his own, much
of it for theatre productions. Dick
Raaijmakers died in his sleep on
3 September.
release of Laraaji’s music is
‘Celestial Music 1978−2011’, a
retrospective compilation. Also
on the way over the next few
weeks are ‘Essence/Universe’,
a reissue of a rare 1987
original on the Audion label,
with the vinyl version limited
to 500 copies on clear vinyl.
There’s also a double Laraaji
CD scheduled which will bring
together two albums, ‘Flow Goes
The Universe’ (1993) and ‘The
Way Out Is The Way In’ (1995).
NEWS
‘THE SOUND OF BELGIUM’ COMES TO THE UK
‘The Sound Of Belgium’, a
fascinating documentary
detailing the history of the
Belgian electronic scene, will
be screened in the UK for the
first time as part of the Belgium
Booms Festival, which takes
place in London in October. The
film will be shown several times
during the festival, including a
free screening at Cafe 1001 in
Brick Lane on 11 October. Other
events during the week include
an opening party at Corsica
Studios on 5 October featuring
original new beat DJs Eric Powa
B (ex-Boccaccio resident) and
Dikke Ronny (ex-Cafe D’Anvers).
‘The Sound Of Belgium’, which
is directed by Jozef Devillé and
features the likes of Joey Beltram,
Jade 4U (pictured), CJ Bolland,
Eddy de Clercq and Sven van
Hees, has also been selected
for the 2013 In-Edit International
Music Documentary Festival,
which takes place in Barcleona
from 24 October to 3 November.
For details of these and other
screenings, visit www.tsob.be.
‘SOLARIS’ SOUNDTRACK VINYL RELEASE
Cliff Martinez, the man
responsible for the synthpop
moods on the cult movie
‘Drive’, has his soundtrack for
Stephen Soderbergh’s ‘Solaris’
released on vinyl for the first
time by Invada Records on 18
November. Invada, which is
owned by Portishead’s Geoff
Barrow, is making the album
available in three editions
– “customised” black vinyl,
white vinyl and picture disc.
Soderbergh’s film, a remake
of a 1972 original by Russian
director Andrei Tarkovsky,
was released in 2001 and
starred George Clooney as a
psychologist on a mission to
investigate the crew of a space
station who are apparently
going insane. Martinez began
his music career as a drummer
and was once a member of
the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as
well as having drumming stints
with Captain Beefheart and
Lydia Lunch, and his ‘Solaris’
score is a mix of orchestral and
electronic atmospheric ambient
textures.
MORODER AND SPARKS REISSUES
Repertoire Records, the
specialist reissue label, have
re-released Giorgio Moroder’s
‘E=MC2’ album from 1979
and two Moroder-produced
Sparks albums, ‘No 1 In
Heaven’ (also from 1979)
and ‘Terminal Jive’ (1980).
‘E=MC2’ was dedicated to
Einstein on the centenary of his
birth and dubbed the first “live
to digital” recording. With
‘No 1 In Heaven’, Moroder
helped redefine Sparks’ sound
and the album gave the band
two massive hit singles, ‘The
Number One Song In Heaven’
and ‘Beat The Clock’, as well
as being a major influence
on many of the then emerging
synthpop acts, particularly
The Human League. Repertoire
have also reissued a second
volume of ‘Schlagermoroder’,
which unearths many of
Giorgio Moroder’s ultracommercial but long-lost
German pop records from the
late 1960s and early 70s, and
two further Sparks albums,
‘Angst In My Pants’ (1982) and
‘In Outer Space’ (1983).
Pic: Gered Mankowitz
GARY NUMAN BOOK IN PDF VERSION
‘Gary Numan – Backstage’,
the lavish oral history hardback
book written by Stephen Roper
and published last year, is
now available as a PDF via the
Electronic Sound PDF shop. The
digital version features new
photographs and colour versions
of many of the black and white
images in the hardback, which
is almost sold out and is unlikely
to be reprinted. The book is a
collection of firsthand accounts
of Gary Numan’s 1978-1981
touring heyday from the people
who were there, including
band members Rrussell Bell,
Chris Payne and the late Ced
Sharpely, as well as luminaries
such as Jerry Casale of Devo,
Andy McCluskey of OMD
and Numan himself. The book
gives an intimate glimpse into
the eye of the electronic storm,
and includes sketches for stage
shows, tour itineraries and other
rare artefacts. You can purchase
the PDF version at https://
electronic-sound.dpdcart.com
NEWS
THE EARLY
DAYS OF
ACID HOUSE
Back to
when thin
gs
weren’t ho
they are now
w
Fresh from compiling ‘Acid Rain’, a fantastic CD box set of early
house music, TERRY FARLEY remembers SHOOM, SPECTRUM
and how smiley culture revolutionised London’s clubland
T
he guys making the early house
records had no idea anyone
would want to buy them outside
of Chicago. In fact, outside of about
four record shops in Chicago. ‘Acid
Tracks’, the first record with the acid
bassline, was made for just one DJ, for
Ron Hardy, by some kids who went
to his club. Their only ambition was
to get Ron to play it. That’s all they
wanted. The track wasn’t even pressed
up, they just took a cassette of it to the
club, and the story I heard was that
Ron was having one of his moments
and couldn’t DJ that night, so Robert
Owens was standing in for him, and
Robert played it two or three times that
night, four of five times depending on
who you’re talking to, and the crowd
went mad. The track had no name, but
because half the club was on acid and
it sounded great on acid, they called it
‘Ron’s Acid Tracks’. Then Trax Records
put it out as ‘Acid Tracks’ and it goes
all around the world.
CHICA
G
RON HA O HOUSE LEG
RDY, W
E
ITHOUT ND
WHOM...
As more of the Chicago records came
over to London, you’d hear them
at clubs like Delirium and Pyramid.
Frankie Knuckles had a residency
at Delirium, which was Noel and
Maurice Watson’s club. There were
also sound systems playing house, like
Shock, which Ashley Beadle was part
of, and DJs like Kid Bachelor, Mr C
and Jazzy M, who had a pirate radio
show called ‘The Jacking Zone’. But it
lacked anything other than the music.
What changed things was Ibiza.
People talk about Danny [Rampling]
and Oaky [Paul Oakenfold] bringing
acid house back from Ibiza in 1987,
but a lot of kids had been out there
the year before and they’d seen what
was going on at places like Amnesia
and Glory’s, with the ecstasy and the
trance dance and the fashion, which
was hippy stuff mixed with old clothes
from the casual era. As soon as all
that came back, acid house was a
whole scene you could jump into. You
didn’t need to know too much, you just
needed to get the look, pop a pill, and
off you went.
The first acid clubs in London were
Shoom and Future. Danny started
Shoom, Oaky started Future. The first
time I went to Shoom was in February
1988, but there’d been a couple of
nights before Christmas. A lot of the
crowd were younger than me – 18, 19,
20 – but they’d already been around
for a while. They’d been the youngsters
in the shadows at things like Special
Branch [Nicky Holloway’s club], but
they’d grasped the nettle and now they
were the faces, and everyone was
looking at what they were wearing and
how they were dancing and how long
their hair was. I remember seeing this
girl I knew at the first Shoom I went to
and she said to me, “You’re too late,
you should’ve been here in December,
it was much better then”. That sort
of set the tone for the next 25 years.
Clubs are always better just before you
start going to them.
Shoom and Future basically played
Alfredo’s record box [Alfredo was the
DJ at Amnesia in Ibiza]. There were
other DJs too, like Johnny Walker and
Steve Proctor, and they started adding
their own tastes, then the second wave
of DJs came in, like me and Andy
Weatherall, and we were finding other
things that fitted in. Weatherall was
a big indie record collector and he
was saying, “OK, if you’re playing
The Woodentops” – which was one
of Alfredo’s records – “then I’ve got
all these records you’ve never heard
of”, and he was dropping bombs
and sending people crazy. Suddenly
people’s minds were open and lots of
records – Chris & Cosey’s ‘October
Love Song’, Pete Wylie’s ‘Sinful’, just
so many great records – took on an
almost magical quality in this E haze of
what was going on.
When Oaky opened Spectrum at
Heaven on Mondays, I was DJing in
the VIP room. On the first night, I think
there were more people in the VIP
than in the main club. They had 120
people in the club altogether and the
place held 2,5000. Everyone was
from Shoom or Future, everyone was
personally invited, everyone who came
through the door got a pill. And the
sound system at Heaven was so good.
It was based on a club called The Saint
in New York and it was brilliant. Six
weeks later, they were still only getting
another 50 people in there and I’m led
to believe they’d run up huge debts
with the club, who were about chuck
the whole thing in. Then suddenly, on
the sixth or seventh week, there were
about 400 people queueing to get
in. We were all like, “Fuck, what’s
happened?”. The next week there were
1,000 people queueing, the week after
there were 2,000, the week after that
we had 1,000 people locked out.
That was it. Bang! There were so
many people flooding into the West
End of London for this thing. And
on a Monday. On a Monday night.
The enthusiasm was ridiculous. The
people who went to Shoom had said,
“Don’t tell anyone about this”, but we
did. Of course. Everyone was like a
little disciple, running around London,
telling anyone who’d listen about acid
house, the clothes, the dance, and it
spread like wildfire. That summer, we
used to go out every night of the week
– The Limelight, The Wag, all the after
parties. Everyone was on a wave of
energy. It got dark later on, when the
big raves started up and it became all
about money, and the gangsters got
involved and the police got involved,
but for a good while there it really was
amazing. Absolutely amazing.
‘Acid Rain: Definitive Original Acid &
Deep House 1985-1991’ is released
on Harmless Recordings
JACK DANGERS
JACK
DANGERS’
SCHOOL OF
ELECTRONIC
MUSIC
The Meat Beat Manifesto man digs through his crates of early
electronic music. This issue, he talks about Dutch composer
HENK BADINGS and his contemporaries at the
PHILIPS RESEARCH LABORATORY
I picked up a copy of Henk Badings’
‘Cain And Abel’ seven-inch single in
an Amsterdam record shop, along with
another of his singles. Henk Badings
was a Dutch composer and one of the
first people in the Netherlands to make
electronic music, working at the Philips
Research Laboratory in Eindhoven.
Every record of his I’ve got I really like.
They’re all utterly unique.
‘Cain And Abel’ is from 1956. It
came with the in-house magazine of
the Philips record label. It’s a really
interesting piece based around a series
of notes on a piano, which Badings sent
through ring modulators and different
filtering devices, and then made up a
bigger piece of music out of this one
small phrase. It’s fascinating to hear the
progression. Badings started out doing
chamber music and he went back to
that after his electronic music period.
When I listened to ‘Cain And Abel’,
I was pretty surprised to realise that
it had been sampled and used by
Cabaret Voltaire on ‘Voice Of America’.
I heard ‘Voice Of America’ on John
Peel in 1980, which was when I first
got into Cabaret Voltaire, and I always
wondered what one of the sounds on
the track was. To me, it sounded like
someone moving chairs around in a
school assembly room and the legs of
the chairs were banging on the floor. I
don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s on
‘Cain And Abel’, and I couldn’t believe
it when I heard it. I remember thinking,
‘Oh my God, that’s Cabaret Voltaire!’.
The engineer on most of Badings’
records was a guy called Dick
Raaijmakers, who worked under the
pseudonym Kid Baltan, and it was
Raaijmakers’ techniques that gave
this material its sound. The sound of
this record is exactly the same as the
stuff Raaijmakers later did with Tom
Dissevelt, which was another project
altogether but it was also with the
Philips Research Laboratory. It was
a commercial exercise – electronic
‘popular’ music – and it’s really good.
These guys were really skilled at
controlling and moulding sound. They
did a lot of soundtracks for Philips
demonstration films. Ten years later,
the BBC Radiophonic Workshop based
their sound on what these guys were
doing. Dick Raaijmakers sadly died just
a few weeks ago.
The ‘Cain And Abel’ single is really
hard to get hold of, but it’s on a CD
collection which came out on a Dutch
label called Basta a while back. It’s
called ‘Popular Electronics – Early Dutch
Electronic Music’ and it features pieces
by Henk Badings, Dick Raaijmakers
and Tom Dissevelt. The CD has a
booklet which includes a programme
that came with the 1958 World’s Fair
and the programme has notations from
Henry Jacobs. I talked about him in
my last Electronic Sound column. If you
ever come across this Basta CD set,
pick it up. It’s amazing. Most of the
stuff on there goes up to 1960. It’s all
really early, groundbreaking electronic
music from one of the most interesting
countries that was making electronic
stuff at this particular time. I think the Philips electronic stuff really
stands out, especially during this period.
Henk Badings did some of the music
for the 1958 World’s Fair, which took
place in Belgium, and there was a lot
of electronic music at that particular
World’s Fair. It was quite an event.
They built the Atomium at the site
and Le Corbusier designed
a big pavilion for Philips.
The pavilion was a
really weird and ornate
structure with 64 speakers
embedded in the walls
through which they played
this really cool, avant
garde, sometimes really
noisy electronic music by
the Greek composer Iannis
Xenakis.
Below is the full seven-inch version of
‘Cain and Abel’. Audiophiles beware
– there’s a bit of fried chicken in there!
The Cabaret Voltaire sample comes in
at around seven minutes.
THE VERY BEST
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SIN COS TAN
TRIGGY
DISCO
Take Jori Hulkkonen, the John Foxx and Tiga collaborator. Add Juho
Paalosmaa from synthpoppers Villa Nah. The result is SIN COS TAN,
one of Finland’s finest musical exports
Words: CHI MING LAI
Pictures: LAURI HANNUS
Asynthesised duo of great promise,
broken dreams and long nights,
Finland’s Sin Cos Tan are about to
unleash their second album, ’Afterlife’,
less than a year after their impressive
eponymous debut. Comprising
producer Jori Hulkkonen, noted for
his work with John Foxx, Tiga and
Jerry Valuri (teaming up with the latter
as Processory), and vocalist Juho
Paalosmaa from Helsinki synth outfit
Villa Nah, the pair became firm friends
after Hulkkonen had co-produced Villa
Nah’s ‘Origin’ album.
bring a bit more light in this time,”
agrees Paalosmaa.
“It’s by far the poppiest track we’ve
done,” notes Hulkkonen.
Not that the moodiness of ‘Sin Cos
Tan’ has held the duo back in any way.
The album’s key track, ‘Trust’, was a
superb 21st century answer to ‘Enjoy
The Silence’ and was described by
Hulkkonen as “disco you can cry to”.
The rhythmically off-kilter ‘All I Ever
Dream Of’ and the chilled Nordic r&b
of ‘Book Of Love’ were other highlights.
Hulkkonen was pleased with the overall
result, but he admits that he never
actually listens to his own records.
The speed with which ‘Afterlife’ has
followed ‘Sin Cos Tan’ is partly due to
the group having quite a lot of material
left over from the recording sessions for
the first album. And as the pair point
out, with songs already partly in the
can, it wouldn’t have made any sense
to hold off putting together the second
album any longer.
“There was no good reason for us not
follow up as soon as possible,” says
“We have good chemistry and a
Hulkkonen. “Why wait if we had the
healthy working attitude in the studio,”
“I have heard the songs while playing
songs and the drive? There were a
says Paalosmaa. “That partially explains live, though, and I really like all of
few songs that never made it on our
why we’ve been this productive.”
them,” he adds. “There’s a sense of
first album, even though they had a
passion, eagerness and excitement one lot of potential. For some reason, we
“In a way, living in different cities
would expect from a couple of 20-year- never quite managed to finish them.
helps,” notes Hulkkonen, who is based
olds – which we’re not, by the way! And Taking a few months off gave us a new
in Turku, around 100 miles from
I do believe we’ve managed to maintain perspective on what to do with them.
Helsinki. “We both come up with ideas that for the second album as well.”
Also, we had this idea about how our
constantly and we send them back and
second album should sound. The end
forth. But when Juho comes over to
Jori Hulkkonen first found fame during
result is actually somewhat different
Turku, we make the best of the one or
the electroclash days, when he teamed
from the initial plans, but that’s the
two days that we have and it seems to
up with Tiga as Zyntherius and recorded beauty of the process. Once we were
work very effortlessly. On the best of
a cover of Corey Hart’s ‘Sunglasses At
writing these new songs, the whole
days, we’ve written half a dozen new
Night’. Interestingly, another notable
concept of ‘Afterlife’ sort of emerged.”
songs from scratch.”
personality from the electroclash scene
makes appearance on ‘Afterlife’. ‘Avant Paalosmaa describes the new record as
Functionally, Sin Cos Tan are a classic
Garde’ features Casey Spooner from
“more vibrant, more adventurous” than
pop pairing, with Paalosmaa all intense Fischerspooner on guest vocals, which
its predecessor. He’s right. What’s more,
and highly committed, while Hulkkonen is quite a thrill for Juho Paalosmaa.
the group hope to be embarking on
is more laid-back and unassuming. They
further adventures with a series of live
seem to have combined their roles for
“Having Casey along for ‘Avant Garde’ dates very shortly.
‘Afterlife’, though.
raised the bar for me personally,” he
says. “I’ve been a big Fischerspooner
“That is the plan anyway,” says
“On our debut, Juho was responsible for fan since their debut in 2001, so it was
Hulkkonen, who prior to Sin Cos
all the lyrics, but this time I’ve written a
a very cool honour.”
Tan usually only made personal
few songs as well,” explains Hulkkonen.
appearances as a DJ.
“And vice versa too, as Juho had much
Another track the duo are particularly
more input in the production, which has excited about is the album opener,
“I can’t wait to play the new tracks live,”
brought a certain organic element to the ‘Limbo’, which has also been released
adds Paalosmaa. “It’ll be a blast.”
record, with more guitars and live bass
as a single.
in there. With ‘Afterlife’, we’ve loosened
That’s pretty much a certainty.
up and I think that shows because the
“It represents such a musical shift from
album is maybe not quite as dark.”
our previous stuff that we pretty much
‘Afterlife’ is released by Solina in
knew we could go in any direction with
Europe and Sugarcane for the rest of
“Our first album was consciously very
the rest of the songs,” says Paalosmaa.
the world
nocturnal in tone, so we wanted to
ANATOMY
Someone’s
been through
the YO! Sushi
bins again
Fact: if you
performed
the Heimlich
maneuver on
Phil from Orbital
after midnight,
this is what voms
out of his gob
hole
MC Hammer said you
can’t touch this. Thanks
to these rubber gloves,
now you can
The devastated entrails of
SpongeBob SquarePants.
Turns out Patrick the Starfish
was quite the psychopath
This bit is
actually edible
Insert coin
here
We’re not quite
sure what this is,
but it just blinked
We think this is
a DNA strand,
but it got
contaminated
in the lab when
Paul had a cold
We’re pretty
sure if you turn
up with this to
a barbeque,
you’ll need
to keep it
away from
the vegetarian
side of the grill
It’s a well known fact that all record sleeves have hidden meanings
to do with the occult. Apart the ones that don’t have hidden
meanings to do with the occult. Anyway, luckily, FAT ROLAND knows
everything there is to know about record sleeves, especially SOFT
CELL’s ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’…
Stare at this
shape for 60
seconds. Then
close your
eyes. I just
robbed your
iPhone
Discovered
down the
back of an
armchair,
hence the
phrase
“armchair
techno”. Also
found: remote
control, 17
pence, the
hoover
What dubstep
would be like
if it were made
from plasticine
and/or brains
When
designing a
techno album
cover with
the brief of
“northern and
industrial”, do
not spill your
dinner on the
notes halfway
through
Pigmented with
the tears of Neil
Buchanan from
‘Art Attack’
Morph? Is that
you, Morph?
Someone call
an ambulance.
No, seriously.
Why are you
just standing
there? You’re
a monster. A
MONSTER
Not actual size
LANDMARKS
DETESTIMONY
The bells! The bells! DAVY MILLER remembers the making of
‘Detestimony’, FINI TRIBE’s clanging and clattering Balearic
anthem
‘D
etestimony’ first came out in
1986 on a Glasgow label
called Cathexis. It was Fini
Tribe’s second release. We’d put out
‘Curling And Stretching’ in 1984 and
done a John Peel session in 1985.
‘Detestimony’ was part of a big
project, which was moving away from
the idea of normal gigs, in the sense
of having guitar, bass and drums, and
doing a performance piece, a more
theatrical thing. The track was on
an EP [‘Let The Tribe Grow’] and the
cover had a picture of Chris [Connolly]
standing up, completely naked apart
from a white nappy. The image
was part of the performance, which
included ‘Detestimony’ as the climax.
The original EP also had ‘Draw Hearts’
and ‘Adults Absolved’ on it, and it all
merged into one long track when we
played live. It was a statement piece.
What it meant, I have no idea. You’d
have to ask Chris.
We first did this piece in the Assembly
Rooms in Edinburgh. We were
subsequently barred from there
because we destroyed their parquet
flooring with emulsion paint. We had
bags of paint hanging from the ceiling
and we were cutting ourselves open –
this was long before Richey Manic did
it – so there was blood mixing in with
the paint. It was a very ritualistic, tribal
performance. I broke my ribs during it.
It was a mammoth thing. The one after
that was in Glasgow, at the Third Eye
Centre. We actually set the place on
fire, so we got barred from there too.
We found it quite hard to get gigs for
some reason. In fact, we were heavily
criticised up here in Scotland for
what we were doing. People thought
we were incredibly pretentious and
arrogant, which we were. Edinburgh
had a good scene in the early 80s,
with bands like Josef K and The Fire
Engines, but then that stopped and
there was a vacuum in the mid-80s.
There was just a whole load of indie
bands and we stuck out. We were not
fashionable at all. We just didn’t fit in.
And I suppose we strove to not fit in.
We quite liked it.
We were using an Ensoniq Mirage
sampler, a keyboard sampler. When
we got that, we really did lay down
our guitars and decide we should
take a different approach. There were
various artists and records at the time
that pushed us towards it. There was
the Test Department side of things,
where we took our tribal drumming
ideas from. We did hit a bit of metal
now and again. The whole Sheffield
thing too, with Cabaret Voltaire and
Chakk and Hula. Strangely enough,
Madonna’s ‘True Blue’ album came
out about that time, and if you listen to
‘Open Your Heart’ you can beat match
it with ‘Detestimony’. Chris and I were
living in a big flat in the New Town in
Edinburgh, and that album was on for
about a year and a half constantly.
So it was a mixture of influences,
of finding a sampler and finding
technology, and then thinking what it
could do for you in a really interesting
way and getting into that process.
When ‘Detestimony’ was released, it
sold out very quickly. It seemed to stay
with people and lots of people referred
to it, but we moved on and let it go.
Actually, we fell apart. The record
disappeared and we forgot about it,
and then James Brown [NME writer]
and Stephen Pastel [from The Pastels]
came up to us when we were in Leeds
and said, ‘Do you know this record is
huge in Ibiza?’. They told us about acid
house and about how Paul Oakenfold
and Danny Rampling had discovered
this Balearic scene in Ibiza, where
it was OK to play any record at any
time at any place, and our record had
found its way out there and become
one of the main records in those clubs.
It was bizarre to us, because we
weren’t aware of dance music as a
scene. We were aware of Madonna
and disco, but not acid house and
squelchiness. But by this time, Chris
had moved to America [to join the
Ministry/Revolting Cocks crew], Fran
and Andy had left the band, and
I’d gone to work for Rough Trade. It
marked the end of a time for Fini Tribe.
‘Detestimony’ was the final stand for
the band as a six-piece. original line-up, as the six of us. At
the point we did that, we were really
together and we were quite big in
Scotland, we were enjoying ourselves
and putting an awful lot of time and
effort into being creative. We were
obsessed with it – making films and
exploring what you could do with
music and how you could merge that
with art. We could quite happily spend
an afternoon covering ourselves in
plaster and making casts of our bodies. But the track allowed us to maintain
a presence and gave us a certain
creditability. And then it came out
on the ‘Balearic Beats’ compilation,
which launched it again in 1988. It’s
an absolute bastard of a track, though.
The bells melody is a nightmare
to work with. We’ve been having
some remixes done for a reissue and
everyone has had a hard time with it.
It’s not an easy track to listen to, either.
It’s not very melodic. It’s a clumsy
anthem, it’s discordant and difficult, but
it has something. People keep coming
back to it, we keep coming back to
it. For me, it’s about Fini Tribe as the
It was a great time, and it meant
something to all of us, and that’s why I
wanted to reissue the record with these
remixes. John and I didn’t speak for
about 10 years and it’s only recently
we’ve got together again. We’re now
looking at a new project, with the same
kind of way of working, but under a
different name. I want to do an album
of reproduced versions of certain Fini
Tribe tracks next year and then John
and I will be working on something
completely new after that. Exciting
times ahead.
‘Detestimony’ will be reissued with
new mixes and sleeve notes by Irvine
Welsh at the end of October
CLARA HILL
NATURE
GIRL
German soundscaper CLARA HILL returns after a four-year
hiatus with a fascinating new album of dark, fractious, folky
electronica – and Schneider TM on board
Words: MARK ROLAND
Pictures: ANDREA VOLLMER
C
lara Hill’s new album, ‘Walk The
Distance’, her fourth, underpins
its dark folkiness with unsettling
field recordings and an often-present
electronic fractiousness. It’s a rather
lovely creation, but her last album was
almost six years ago, which begs the
question, why has it been so long?
“I didn’t really realise it’s been six
years,” she says. “My last album was
in 2007, but it was the winter of 2007.
So I always felt it was springtime
2008. I did take
a long break after it, which was
necessary to reset myself. I needed to
balance what is important and what is
not, personally and music-wise. I also
wanted to change my label.”
Clara was previously signed to
Sonar Kollectiv, a Berlin label set up
by Jazzanova and known for slick
production work. The relationship
was fairly long-standing. “But I was
tired of the polished and flat sounds
of the past,” she notes. “I needed
a new space for open ideas and
experimentations. For ‘Walk The
Distance’, I was searching for a new
label which fitted with my music.”
And so she signed to Tapete,
another German imprint, having first
approached its smaller subsidiary,
Bureau B, who have been responsible
for a slew of essential krautrock rereleases and fresh material from some
of those artists, alongside new signings
that often share the experimental
and sonic aesthetics of the motorik
pioneers. “I thought Bureau B would be
a good place for me,” says Clara. “But
in the end, it was decided I should go
with the bigger label.” Like one of her collaborators on ‘Walk
The Distance’, Dirk Dresselhaus, aka
Schneider TM, Clara has slipped
further leftfield as the years have
passed, but she’s always been
immersed in Berlin’s underground music
scene. Also like Schneider TM, she has
been emphasising sound itself in her
music, especially in tracks such as ‘Lost
Winter’ and ‘Glacial Moraine’, which
feature field recordings by UK sound
artist Simon Whetman.
“For me, it was a challenge to combine
sounds and field recordings with my
music, with my voice,” she explains. “I
always want to create soundscapes in
my music because I am very often
out in nature. I want to reflect the
relationship between the human being
and the changes around us. ‘Lost
Winter’ is not an easygoing song
lyrically, as it more reflects the climate
change. With the track ‘Walk The
Distance’, I also went back to early
sound experiments that I did in my
childhood. I wanted to go back to the
feeling of experimenting without any
limitations. I value the time I spend
in nature because it gives me so
much power and balance. Ideas and
inspirations while walking through
fields and forests are infinite.”
drummers]. I tried to contact Stones
Throw [Bumps’ label] several times to see
if I could use this sample part, but they
didn’t answer. So I decided to replace
the sample by re-playing it with new
drums. I think we did three sessions, but
I didn’t like it. In the end, I asked Stefan
Leisering from Jazzanova if he could try
to program the sample part, which he
did, and I also worked with him on the
bass part. After that, I was happy with
the result, although the final song has a
The explosive rhythms of ‘Lost Winter’
different atmosphere than the sketch. If I
provide one of the album’s more
excitable moments and is a centrepiece ever should reach Stones Throw, I’d like
to someday release the sketches from the
of sorts. How did that come about?
whole album. That would be fun.”
‘That was one of the first song sketches
We hope Peanut Butter Wolf is reading
that I did for the album, but it was
the last song to be finished. I did the
this and picks up the phone to give Clara
the go ahead. In the meantime, she’s
primary sketch at home with the guitars,
Omnichord and a mini drum sample
playing a handful of dates around the
part from the album ‘Bumps’ by Bumps
world and a tour is being organised for
[an album of beats made by Tortoise’s
early 2014. “I’m about to play a gig at Ausland
in Berlin with Schneider TM and
[Japanese dancer] Tomoko, which
will be a project,” she says. “I will
also be at the 2013 Madeiradig
Festival on the island of Madeira in
December to present my new album
live with [drummer and electronic music
producer] Hanno Leichtmann. This will
be the international record release
party!”
We can think of worse places
than a warm island in the Atlantic
Ocean to encounter Clara Hill’s dark
soundscapes. But if you can’t afford the
flight, get the album.
‘Walk The Distance’ is released on
Tapete Records
FAT ROLAND
FAT
ROLAND
BANGS ON
Someone on our Facebook page recently called our resident
columnist “stupid and infantile”, which sounds about right.
This issue, he’s going on about ELEPHANTS
H
owever you’re reading this word
vomit, whether it’s on an iPad
or an abacus or it’s tattooed
onto Pete Burns’ lips, there’s one thing
you can count on: every tap, every
swipe, every word you read is being
recorded.
The system is called Prism and it’s
apparently a way for the security
services to poke into every crevice
of your pie-addled body – and not
in a good way. They’re monitoring
you now. Elephant. They know you
just read the word “elephant”. And
that word “elephant”. And that one
too. They’re searching your synapses,
like those squid scanner bots in ‘The
Matrix’, only less underwatery and
more akin to office workers called
Kevin.
Being a man of modern electronic
music, I should probably be rather
against data-mining. But I’ve not been
this excited since I saw a cloud in
the shape of a Minimoog. Snooping
is a brilliant idea because we need
a nanny. The best-selling UK single
this year may well turn out to be that
paean to date rape, ‘Blurred Lines’.
Britney Spears is rapping in a fake
English accent for no good reason.
Maroon 5 are still alive. So who’s
buying this tepid snot? If we could
monitor, we would know. And then we
could electrocute them.
I want to find out everything about my
heroes without buying 42 copies of
Heat magazine in the vague hope of
seeing a photo spread of Aphex Twin’s
acne. Which is where spying comes in.
Spying is quick and easy. Deadmau5’s
Google history would be a treat. You
know Front 242 watch a lot of ‘Last Of
The Summer Wine’, don’t you? I bet
Gary Numan gets Tesco deliveries. The
truth is out there.
Now I try not to rip music because (a)
I’m not a thief and (b) last time I tried
it, I got something called the Dale
Winton virus. I can’t expand on that for
legal reasons. So this means I spend
money on my mp3s, and, as a paying
consumer, it’s very important for me
to know which member of Orbital has
a fetish about Barney the Dinosaur
(obviously Paul) and how many
members of The Human League are
addicted to biscuits.
Monitor me. Scan me. Barcode my
nether regions. Nipple clamp me to a
weird squid bot. Elephant. Let’s plug
ourselves into the system: we owe it to
each other.
This column will self-destruct unless it is
screen captured, retweeted or tattooed
all over Pete Burns’ face.
FAT ROLAND
Illustration: STEVE APPLETON
DUOPOLY
SCHNAUSS
PETERS
To get under the skin of the new ULRICH SCHNAUSS and
MARK PETERS album, ‘Tomorrow Is Another Day’, we invited
them to ask each other three questions. They tell us about
Pink Floyd, Cabaret Voltaire, therapy and taking the piss
Pictures: Al Overdrive
DUOPOLY
MARK PETERS ASKS
ULRICH SCHNAUSS…
Peters: “What two records – the earliest and the latest –
have had the most profound effect on you?”
Schnauss: “The earliest is the easier one. It’s Pink Floyd’s
‘Wish You Were Here’. I think I’ve told you this story before,
probably a couple of times even… I had back problems
when I was six years old and I had to attend therapy
because of it. The instructor played the intro part to ‘Shine
On You Crazy Diamond’ to calm us kids down during the
exercises. It completely blew me away. I had never heard
anything remotely like it before. After a couple of days of
begging my parents, they finally gave in and bought me a
copy on cassette. I still have that tape. For the latest record to
have an effect on me, well, I’ve recently started listening to a
lot of Cabaret Voltaire again. I’ve always admired Richard H
Kirk’s tastefully reduced arrangements and razor-sharp sound
design, but I was surprised how much I enjoyed 1990’s
‘Groovy, Laidback And Nasty’. I expected it to sound a bit
dated because of its strong dance flavour, but the Chicago
influence actually makes it quite timeless.” Peters: “What technological advancement in recent years
has had the most significant effect on your music making?”
Schnauss: “I still think granular synthesis is probably one of
the most exciting of the developments in the last few years,
although it’s admittedly not really that new anymore. It’s nice
that there’s now a few hardware synths out there that utilise
its unlimited potential. I’ve recently had a great time using the
Graintable oscillators of the Virus TI.”
Peters: “You and others use Ableton Live to keep a
performance-based aspect in your live shows. Have you got
any ideas about how electronic music could or will progress
in the live field?”
Schnauss: “As you know, I’ve never been someone who has
had a particular interest in the latest gadgets just for the sake
of fetishising technology. In many ways, my set up is quite
old-fashioned, actually. In each section of a song, I’m running
16 tracks with 16 different elements permanently, and I use
those to build an arrangement on the spot, pretty much the
same way that dub reggae was done in the 1970s, so it’s
hardly cutting edge or groundbreaking. However, I do hope
faster processors and stronger software will continue to give
us even more options to treat and manipulate pre-recorded
material, opening the doors for greater emphasis on the
improvisational aspects of performing live.”
ULRICH SCHNAUSS
ASKS MARK PETERS…
Schnauss: “When we were recording ‘Bound By Lies’, we
had added some solos that we couldn’t figure out what to
do with. It turned out that neither of us was keen on them
and we felt much better leaving them out completely. I think
we agreed they added a dangerously tacky, humorous
element. Do you generally feel humour is a problematic
element in music, or are there cases when you appreciate
it?”
Peters: “There are a few cases when I appreciate it, but
even then it is usually more irony than typical comedic
humour. I’m not referring to the solos we had in ‘Bound By
Lies’, which came across possibly as mocking or childishly
ironic. I think bombast can be enjoyable if it’s knowing.
For instance, a wailing guitar solo over a stadium-type
arrangement is egotistical or overblown, whereas a breathy
vocal implies something along the lines of ‘These are
internalised emotions, but I feel them strongly and although
I realise there’s something ridiculous about it, I’m going to
wholly indulge myself’. I think a lot of great records are
based on that idea. Parody can sometimes be enjoyable too
if done well. I admit to employing it sometimes, but wouldn’t
like to say where in case I haven’t pulled it off successfully!”
Schnauss: “I don’t seem to ever get tired of a solid, pure
piano sound. How do you feel about the guitar? Does a
pure, untreated guitar sound still do it for you?
Peters: “Yes, I love a pure untreated sound. For a long
time, I’ve made music where playing or composing guitar
parts well hasn’t been top of the list of priorities because
sundry amazing effects can always transform something
mundane into something great. I still even come up with
parts that are intentionally simplistic so that effects can be
applied to them, but these days I’m always planning these
things to be a backdrop rather than a central or melodic
part. I suppose part of this is ego based, the hope you
might create something as intricate or intelligent as the
records you love and the players you respect. This frame
of mind can lead to showy self-indulgence, but at the same
time, while tones of untreated instruments are great, the
simple enhancement of natural resonances have a more
long-lasting appeal than an effects-laden sound.”
Schnauss: “We both recently agreed that we don’t enjoy
programmed drums as much as we did in the 1990s.
These days, it’s either played, nicely recorded drums or, if
programming is involved, more abstract rhythmical patterns
that don’t necessarily utilise bass drums and snares in a
traditional sense. Why do you think our perception of drum
loops has changed?”
Peters: “Time doesn’t stand still, does it? Some
programming that sounded new and revolutionary in the
90s now has a slightly flabby and harsh aspect to it to my
ears. It’s going to be a challenging time for musicians over
the next few years, I think. Electronic music is one of the
most successful genres at the moment and every stadium act
has a life as both a teen-friendly indie band and a club act.
It’s a shame that four-to-the-floor is often seen as moronic,
but when it’s married to a lighter anthem it can be quite
awful. I think this association is where the problem lies for
me. Loops don’t sound edgy or exciting like they once did.
The futuristic hypnotic beats of early house music seemed
really powerful and, like all great pop music, a flick of the
V’s to the establishment. But now, as unfortunately as when
punk stylings are appropriated by high street brands, major
labels know that dance music plus power ballads will fill
arenas.”
‘Tomorrow Is Another Day’ is released
on Bureau B Records
SYNTH TOWN
By STEVE APPLETON and
BEBE BARRON
Welcom
e
Twinne to Synth Tow
d with
Moog v n
Popula
ille
Mayor: tion 303
D
Please aniel Miller
drive c
arefully
LAUGH CLOWN LAUGH
MERRY
PRANKSTERS
Minimal synthpoppers LAUGH CLOWN LAUGH have
taken an astonishing 30 years to finally finish their debut
album. You really don’t get much more cult than this
Words: PUSH
Picture: DOMINIC BROWN
H
ere’s a heartwarming story for
you. We’ll pick it up one night
in 2011, with Dominic O’Brien
tapping “Laugh Clown Laugh” into
Google. It was the name of the synth
band he’d been in with his old mate
Sam Findlay during the early 80s,
when they were in their late teens. He’d
tried hunting for stuff about the duo
on the internet before, but he’d never
found any reference to them anywhere.
Not once. Not ever. But seeing as
how Laugh Clown Laugh were only
around for 18 months and they barely
made it beyond the confines of their
small home town, Frome in Somerset,
he didn’t really expect to. On this
occasion, however, Dominic did turn
something up. In fact, he turned up a
stack of things.
“I couldn’t believe it,” he says, nursing
his pint in a sleepy Somerset pub.
“There were several blogs writing
about the band and each one I looked
at led me on to another one. I was up
half the night reading it all.”
“We were even on YouTube, weren’t
we?” says Sam Findlay. “Three
homemade videos put up by three
different people. Incredible.”
What the bloggers and YouTubers had
picked up on was ‘Feel So Young’, the
one and only track Laugh Clown Laugh
had recorded at a proper studio. It
had appeared on a little-known 1984
compilation album called ‘Abstract’
(15 have this, 82 want it at discogs.
com). A few months on, Dominic and
Sam were contacted by Medical
Records, a Seattle label specialising
in reissuing electronic cult classics in
the US (recent releases include Gina
X and Dalek I), asking if they had any
other old material they might want
to put out. After much searching in
garages and lofts, they found a dusty
cassette of some tracks they’d recorded
in Dominic’s parents’ living room, but
the quality was terrible. A little later,
though, they found the TEAC reel-toreel machine they’d used for gigs – and
it still had their live backing tape on it.
“The machine was rusty and wouldn’t
work, which was actually a stroke of
luck,” says Sam. “We were later told
that the tape would almost certainly
have stuck to itself and been ruined the
first time we played it. You apparently
have to bake the tape and incubate it
to dry it out, and even then you pretty
much have only one chance to play it
and digitise it.”
– and how they’d love to have made
it onto ‘Top Of The Pops’ back in the
day. They can’t hide their excitement
at releasing an album after all these
years – and rightly so. It’s a fantastic
achievement. As DIY bedroom bands
go, Laugh Clown Laugh were positively
way-up-there-in-the-attic. They never
played in London. Their biggest gig
was in Bath, at a place called Moles.
Having digitised the tape with
specialist help, the pair were delighted
to find around a dozen backing tracks
on there. Using this material as a
foundation, Sam recreated the missing
lead keyboard lines in Logic and
Dominic recorded the vocals with the
help of a battered exercise book full
of lyrics. It was the first time he’d sung
in nearly 30 years. The result is ‘Laugh
Clown Laugh’, an album of blippy
and jerky minimal synth stuff, the
arrangements sometimes off-kilter, the
vocals occasionally not very tuneful,
but the melodies always incredibly
catchy, especially ‘Feel So Young’ and
‘Face To Face’. It’s terrific stuff and
if it sounds like it was recorded in a
cheap studio in the early 80s, well,
that’sbecause the bulk of it was.
“We did get booked to play a pub in
Bristol once,” remembers Sam. “As we
were unloading the gear, the landlord
came out, looked at the synths and
said, ‘Do you play Beatles songs?’. We
said, ‘Er, nooooo’. So he said, ‘You’re
not bloody coming in here then’. So we
went home again. Apart from the Bath
gig and one in Shepton Mallet, we just
played around Frome.”
“We were surprised at how much was
on the backing tape,” notes Sam. “We
could have souped it up, pushed the
bass, put some reverb on there, but
we resisted that because we wanted
something that sounded authentic. In
a way, we didn’t want it to sound too
good. That would have been wrong.
It was all a very weird experience,
though. It was like playing with ghosts
of ourselves.”
“The album was effectively recorded
by two 19-year-olds and two 49-yearolds,” says Dominic. “The way that I
see it, it was a project we started in
1983 and finished in 2013.”
As the pints keep going down, they talk
about their fondness for the first Human
League and Depeche Mode albums,
about what they’ve been doing for the
last three decades – “working, getting
married, having kids, just normal stuff”
Were you popular in Frome, then?
“Good God, no.”
“Most people here just thought we
were odd,” says Dominic. “We got
threatened a few times because of how
we dressed. ‘Look at those weirdos.
Must be on drugs. Must be gay.’ We
got that all the time. It was standard
stuff if you lived in a small town in the
70s and 80s and you looked different.”
“Trench coats versus farmers,” chuckles
Sam.
“But with this album coming out, I
suppose I feel sort of… vindicated,”
adds Dominic. “And it’s made me feel
like I’m a little bit more important than
I was before. Not in an arrogant way,
just in a nice and warm way, a way
that helps me feel better about myself.
That’s good, isn’t it?”
Yeah, that’s good. That’s definitely
good.
‘Laugh Clown Laugh’ is out on
Medical Records
SPOTLIGHT
IN THE
SPOTLIGHT
Can man IRMIN SCHMIDT talks about his film
soundtrack work and his forthcoming careerspanning ‘Villa Wunderbar’ collection
Words: GARY SMITH
Picture: STEVE GULLICK
T
he imminent release of Can founder
Irmin Schmidt’s double CD set ‘Villa
Wunderbar’ marks the latest phase
in a relentless six decade career, one
that has been characterised by a motorik
work ethic remarkably similar to the Jaki
Liebezeit-generated rhythms that were
one of Can’s many legacies to modern
music. Since the legendary group split,
if Schmidt wasn’t working on a solo
project, you could be sure that he was
holed up in the studio peering at a TV
screen, composing a film score. And
in fact, his life was ever thus. Schmidt
started composing music for films while
still at university, studying under KarlHeinz Stockhausen in the early 60s, and
today remains as inspired, passionate
and busy as ever. Lined up after ‘Villa
Wunderbar’, there’s a 180g vinyl box set
of the Can back catalogue scheduled
for the end of this year, a box set of
Schmidt’s solo works in 2014, and a
two-book release through Faber & Faber
in 2015.
What was the first film or visual
sequence that you scored?
“It was a short film in the 1960s, a sort
of cultural bulletin/public information
film that was part of a typical evening
at the cinema in Germany back then.
First there was the news [something like
Pathé News], then a short film, then the
main feature. The subject of the first film I
did was the water tower in Bochum and
after that I did around 50 of them. By the
time I was working as Kapellmeister in
Aachen, I also got to score a couple of
full-length movies. It was obviously very
handy in terms of earning a bit of extra
cash, but it also allowed me to learn the
craft without too much pressure. Scoring
that second feature film marked the first
time I worked with Jaki Liebezeit, who
at the time was drumming in Manfred
Schulze’s free jazz group. Manfred also
appeared on that score playing trumpet
and he has since played on several of
my solo records.”
How did Jaki end up in Can?
“When we recorded the film score, I was
working in the theatre. On the evenings
when there was no production, Jaki,
Manfred and I used the space to work
out the parts, and we got on very well,
but there was no thought of us playing
together regularly. When I knew that
I was going to be forming Can, I told
Jaki that I was going to be working
with Holger Czukay, and asked him if
he could recommend a drummer. We
were having a meeting a few days later,
so I told him that if he knew someone
suitable, to ask them to come along. We
were absolutely not expecting him to turn
up, but he did – and he made it clear
that he really wanted the job.”
How was ‘Villa Wunderbar’
curated? What do you think
of the pieces chosen by Wim
Wenders?
“I chose all the solo material myself. For
the film music, it was sort of a joint effort
with Wim. He made a list of the tracks
he wanted to be included, and happily
there were several that I would have
chosen myself, and only one that I really
didn’t feel was right. Perhaps the most
interesting aspect of the selection process
was that his choices were generally
rather more approachable than the ones
I would have made. Then, when it came
to putting together the running order,
I found that I really liked the sequence
that he’d suggested, and that’s the one
we went with. To be honest, if it had
been just me, it would have been more
experimental, but Wim’s way of doing it
makes more sense.”
After ‘Villa Wunderbar’, you
have a slew of releases coming
up over the next two years.
What can you tell us about them?
“The Can vinyl box set is mastered and
produced to the very highest standards,
using virgin vinyl. We’ll be doing some
social networking around it, plus I’ll
very probably be doing some shows,
DJing and appearing at a few key music
conferences in support of the release. As
it’s vinyl, it’s really hard to quantify what
the demand might be. But after all this
time, I don’t let my expectations get out
of hand, while of course hoping for the
best. Alongside the 12-CD compilation
of my solo work planned for next year,
I’ll also be completing my sixth album of
film music, so we’re planning a new film
music compilation too.”
And your project with Faber &
Faber?
“It’s going to be a high-end coffee table
set containing two books. One will be a
history of Can written by Rob Young and
the other will be a kind of symposium
curated by me. It will contain a selection
of documentation and interviews taking
Can as a starting point, but also looking
at the relationship of composers like
Stockhausen and Ligeti to contemporary
music, and setting up conversations
between, for example, a musician and
a writer, a painter or a sculptor, to get
some cross-disciplinary insight into Can’s
legacy. I’ll be chatting with some of
my favorite modern musicians too and,
of course, it will include some elements
of the Halleluhwah! exhibition about Can
held in Berlin in 2011 at the Kunstlerhaus
Bethanien.”
‘Villa Wunderbar’ is released on
Spoon/Mute Records
GARY NUMAN
The
anti-social
network
Last time we were here, we spoke to
GARY NUMAN about the Tubeway Army
years. In the second part of our interview,
Numan reflects on his new life in America,
his ambitions to become a film music
composer and, crucially, his long-awaited
new album, ‘Splinter
Words: MARK ROLAND
GARY NUMAN
T
hings are a little peculiar here.
Over my right shoulder, out of
my field of vision entirely, a small
camera crew lurks, filming Gary
Numan being interviewed by me.
It’s a kind of media hall of mirrors.
Numan is being shadowed by the
makers of ‘Android In La La Land’, a
documentary due for release next year,
date yet to be announced (“When it’s
finished,” says the director). They’re
following him around, from London
to Los Angeles and back again,
charting the Numanoid’s transition from
recovering synthpop megastar turned
leather-clad synth-rocker stalking the
grey streets of London, to LA-dwelling,
swimming pool-owning celeb. Judging
by the clips that have sneaked out
onto YouTube, the film looks like it’s
going to be a candid, emotional and
hilarious record of a pretty intense
journey of endurance and redemption.
And looking at Gary Numan himself –
chatty, smiling, healthy of complexion
and fixed of teeth – it seems his recent
move to Los Angeles is agreeing with
him.
David Bowie lived in LA for a while
and spent the entire period in a “state
of psychic terror”. He left (for Berlin)
saying “the fucking place should be
wiped off the face of the Earth”. He
was, of course, consuming his own
body weight in cocaine most days
of the duration of his stay there,
something Numan isn’t likely to
start doing any time soon, and was
surrounded by the very worst (and
best) that LA had to give. “So far it’s been a fantastic
experience,” he says. “I really feel
settled in. I’m settled enough that I’m
building up friends, but it still feels
exciting. I’m trying to keep on that
knife edge. I want it to be reasonably
familiar, but I always want it to feel
different too.”
I can’t pretend that’s not slightly
disappointing.
“I haven’t been offered drugs once,”
says Numan. “It’s not as if it’s on
every corner and everyone who turns
up at your house flops it out on the
table. The reputation of it, you know,
drugs falling out of people’s pockets
as they’re walking down the streets…
absolutely not at all. Actually, it’s quite
the opposite. I’ve been to a number of
big gatherings of music people and
expected to see all kinds of nonsense
going on, but there’s been nothing.
People aren’t even drunk. It’s borderline
boring. Maybe when I’ve been there a
year, I’ll get accepted into the club…”
“Everyone’s got kids, everyone’s just
working,” he shrugs. “We hang out
with quite a few people in bands that
have had ferocious reputations in the
past. But there’s none of it. They just
work all the time. In a way, it’s made
me feel guilty. I’m actually quite lazy
compared to them, but I’m beginning to
work much harder since I got there. I’m
churning stuff out now.”
It doesn’t even sound like the legendary
vacuousness of LA life is intact.
“No, it’s just very hard working, very
creative, very ambitious, and all
done in a brilliantlypositive way,” he
enthuses. But the work ethic aside – something
that Numan has himself always valued
and practised, despite his claims of
laziness – isn’t the bullshit quotient on
the high side?
“A lot of things that you talk about with
people don’t happen, but some of them
do. So I don’t think it’s bullshit, I think
it’s just people with ambition trying to
get things going. I had a meeting with
a film director the other day and we
went through lots of ideas with her.
Then you realise that you’re just one of
the many, many pieces she’s trying to
put together, that it’s not an ongoing
project, but if it happens, well, I’m part
of it. But you don’t really expect it to.
All these people are sincere, though,
and they are trying to do something,
no one’s fucking you about and
everyone is nice about it, so it’s a very
friendly and positive vibe to be in.”
GARY NUMAN
GARY NUMAN
G
ary Numan has relocated to
America for several reasons.
The idea that he was planning
to quit the UK in a fit of pique brought
on by the riots of 2011 gained some
traction for a while, but it was never
terribly convincing. On the career
front, it’s about a desire to start making
the gradual shift into writing music for
film soundtracks. After all, his pal Trent
Reznor didn’t do too badly when he
knocked out a handful of dark synthy
tunes for David Fincher’s ‘The Social
Network’.
“There’s only so long left of doing
albums and tours,” he says. “There
are certain exceptions, like The Rolling
Stones, and I’d love to be touring for
another 20 years… but I’ll be 75 then,
so it seems unlikely. The end is a lot
closer than the beginning. It’s not a big
deal at the moment, but what happens
when this part is over? Creatively, I
see film music as just as exciting as
what I’ve been doing. It isn’t something
I want to do today or tomorrow, but
later on maybe, which is why I think
America is the obvious place to be.” Just don’t ask him to do the music for
‘The Social Network II – This Time It’s
Twitter’.
“I do tweet a bit, but I don’t want to
interact,” he says. “I went on Facebook
yesterday – there’s an official page,
but I don’t have anything to do with
it – and I started my own personal
Facebook with the sole intention of
letting my mates in the UK know what
I’m doing now I’m living in America.
I had a nightmare with it. Gemma
[Numan’s wife] said I was moaning
and groaning, ‘No! I don’t want it
to do that! Friends of friends? NO!
ONLY ME!’. It’s more like the anti-social
network with me. And as I’m sitting
there, trying to get my privacy sorted
out, she’s posting all this stuff about me.
I think I’m going to pack it in. I said to
her, ‘I’m going to give it a week, then
I’m deactivating it’. I don’t want people
asking to be my friend. I don’t want to
have to say yes or no to people. That’s
a social pressure and that’s what I’m
trying to avoid!”
Actually, since this interview, Numan
has rather taken to Twitter. He tweeted
his family holiday, signing off each
tweet with GN, a bit like when a mum
says ‘Lot of love, Mum’ when leaving
a voice message. And the tweets were
hilarious and moving: “Day 9. Family
holidays, a parents perspective: Tiny
moments of joy lost amongst an endless
sea of misery. Did my parents feel like
this? GN”; “Day 20. Echo just threw
Raven’s shoe out the window. Forget
the cinema, I’ll show you World War
Z. GN”. And then he tweeted about
his wife’s Gemma’s health scare, a
suspected brain tumour. The CT scan
came back clear, and Numan tweeted
about his tears and his love for his
wife. He isn’t, it turns out, the alienated
android of our fictional projections, like
a character from a particularly chilling
Philip K Dick novel. OK, so we’ve
known that for some time, but still,
the idea of Gary Numan, contented
family man, sitting by a swimming
pool, smiling indulgently as his three
delightful kids splash about under the
blue Californian sky, is a little hard
to square with the guy on the cover
of ‘Replicas’, lit by a solitary naked
lightbulb, staring out of the window
at the sinister-looking park filled with
machmen and rape machines, a man
in a dark grey overcoat lurking in the
shadows. Listening to Numan’s forthcoming
new album, which is remarkable for
many reasons, but most of all for the
unadorned vocals (particularly on
the song ‘Lost’), you can hear this
humanised Numan – and it’s the most
affecting he’s ever been. One of the
accusations levelled at him by many of
his harsher critics over the years has
been that his persona was charmless,
but the new songs would seem to have
addressed that. And some.
GARY NUMAN
Numan duets with Little Boots on
an extended version of ‘Are ‘Friends’
Electric?’ in 2009. “I listened to a lot of
his albums and he influenced the sound I
make,” Little Boots told The Guardian
If the casual observer needed evidence
that Numan’s resurrection was
complete,this 2011 collaboration with
Warp Records’ hipster math rockers
Battles was it GARY NUMAN
T
he new album is called ‘Splinter
(Songs From A Broken Mind)’.
It comes after a bit of a lay-off
and is Gary Numan’s first long player
since ‘Jagged’ in 2006. Did you start it
before moving to the US?
“It was well under way by the time
I got to America,” he says, clearly
enthusiastic to talk about the project.
“I think I wrote three or four songs for
it in the US, but it feels like that was
the last little bit. Most of the work had
been done beforehand. Not in the
terms of the songs, but in the amount
of development in the production style
and the sound we were going for, so
by the time it came to me working on
those last few songs, even though it’s
a third of the album on paper, it’s not
at all. I gave Ade [Fenton, Numan’s
long-time collaborator and producer]
those four songs and he just did them
really quickly, whereas the first four
took a long time. We kept going
backwards and forwards, arguing
about stuff, trying to find the sound we
were looking for, trying to find the right
thing.”
Originally, Numan had a typically
singular vision for the album.
“I wanted it to be one riff monster after
another, one huge song after another,
a relentless onslaught of hugeness,”
he laughs. “Which is pretty onedimensional when you think about it.
But it’s not like that at all.” ‘Splinter’ does start with a largebooted kick to the head in the shape
of ‘I Am Dust’, which is all dirty
electronics, Hollywood serial killer
stuff, and then positively ignites into
a Numan hook so pleasing that the
only rational reaction is to punch
the air and headbang furiously. The
same goes for ‘Here In The Black’,
the second track. But the album’s
strength – and this is probably his
strongest set since ‘Telekon’ – is in
its ability to move between moods
sonically and emotionally, while all the
time maintaining Numan’s trademark
intensity.
“It’s a lot more varied,” he explains.
“One song on there has a vocal and
a keyboard and that’s pretty much it.
It’s me on me own, no effects, just raw.
Then it goes from that to a full-on riff
monster. The variation wasn’t planned,
it was something we decided to do
along the way. A lot of that came from
the ‘Dead Son Rising’ album. I really
enjoyed doing that and it made me
think that the initial idea I had for this
new one was flawed quite badly, and
that had a big impact on the things I
wrote from then on. And I’m really glad
of that. I think if I’d have done what I’d
originally planned, it might have had
a lot of big songs, but it wouldn’t have
taken people to different places and
explored different moods.”
There does seem to be a lot more
attention to Numan’s voice on this
album, allowing its frailty to come
through. It’s a welcome change,
particularly on ‘Lost’ and the equally
lovely ‘My Last Day’. Joyously, the latter
also hints at ‘Replicas’-era Numan.
“I sing with the same amount of care
as ever, but because I don’t have a lot
of confidence in my voice, I’ve tended
to smother it in effects,” he says. “I
was trying to make it sound better to
my ears, thicker. On this album, there’s
almost nothing. It’s either absolutely
dry, or close to it, and it’s louder in the
mix. I usually tend to bury my voice in
the mix. This is something that Ade’s
really been pushing for, that I should
be more proud of it. But I’m not. I
wasn’t having any of it to start with. It
was only within the last three or four
weeks that I’ve agreed we’ll do it that
way. I began to hear how it worked
in the songs, the clarity for expression
it gave is much better. If you’re doing
something when your voice is breaking
and trailing off and has two dozen
effects all over it , then you lose a lot
of that subtlety. We’ll have to see how
it goes…”
So are you feeling anxious about the
critical reaction? “I don’t care in the sense that it’s not
going to change what I do, it won’t
make any difference at all to what kind
of album I make next, but it’s always
nice to hear good things. I’ve had
some dreadful reviews over the years
and it hasn’t changed my direction one
degree. I try to turn criticism into an
anger, rather than sadness or regret.
I don’t get crushed. I go, ‘Fuck off!
I’ll fucking show you!’ and off we go
again. But I’ve not had to do that for
such a long time. The media reaction
to what I’ve been doing for the last 10
or even 15 years has been so much
more positive than it was for the first
10 or 15, when it was often pretty
unpleasant.
out, I like it, fuck knows if anyone else
will, and it’s lovely if they do. If they
don’t, make another one. There’s no
need to get crushed by it. Too many
people turn to drink and drugs because
they can’t handle reviews. That’s
mental, man.”
“It’s even got to the point where
the critics have been going back to
old albums and re-evaluating them.
‘Pleasure Principle’ was mercilessly
slagged into the ground when it came
out, but one of the magazines that said
that has now called it a revolutionary,
groundbreaking album. I genuinely
don’t have a chip on my shoulder
about it, I really don’t. I think the
comments that people made at that
time were genuine. If they didn’t like
it, fair enough. The only thing I think
was unnecessary was the amount of
personal hostility. At the time, it was
a different kind of music, so a lot of
people weren’t going to like it. I don’t
feel vindicated, I’m just really glad
that it’s changed and the attitude is so
much more positive than it was before.
I’m not sitting here going, ‘Told you so,
told you it was great’, because I never
thought it was anyway. I put something
As the interview draws to a close, I
ask Gary Numan if he thinks he’ll ever
come back to live in the UK now he’s
found sunny nirvana in Los Angeles.
“I can’t see it,” he replies. “No, it will
become the children’s life and their
country. There’s so much for me there,
so much for all of us, the opportunities
really are phenomenal.”
So does embracing the Californian life
mean we can expect a new Numan in
2014, with Beach Boys harmonies and
songs about surfing?
“Oh, I’m not going to go that far in,” he
chuckles. “Whatever little black hole I
write from is still intact!”
‘Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind)’
is released on Mortal Records
POLLY SCATTERGOOD
FROM
THE
ATTIC
TO
THE
STARS
Lump-in-the-throat stuff, life-is-great stuff, it’s-notwhat-it-seems stuff. It’s all there on ‘Arrows’, the
fab new album from POLLY SCATTERGOOD. She’s
got some explaining to do…
Words: NEIL MASON
Pictures: FRANK BAUER
POLLY SCATTERGOOD
We are, it has to said, a little worried about Polly Scattergood.
The video for ‘Cocoon’, taken from her second album, ‘Arrows’, tells an all-is-not-what-it-seems
Victoriana tale of two sisters. In one scene, the sister played by Ms Scattergood sneaks up on
her sibling – a little too eagerly – clutching a shiny silver letter opener behind her back. Does
she, we wonder, have a real life sister?
“I don’t,” she says, much to our relief.
As that news sinks in, the scene’s sinister sheen parks itself in a dark corner of our mind,
where it continues to give us the twitches. It’s fighting for space though, because the rest of
Polly’s new album seems to like that particular corner too.
Y
ou may already know Polly
Scattergood from her eponymous
debut on Mute Records. Released
in 2009, it was a curious, fragile
collection of essentially pop songs that
she’d written in hotches and potches
during her teens. Lyrically, it concerned
itself with broken relationships. In fact,
not just broken, but put through the
mincer. Twice.
“I kind of just wrote about anything
and everything,” she says when we
express our concern about her, erm,
mental wellbeing. “I also have a
bit of a big, weird imagination, so
everybody who knows me knows what
I’m like. I don’t think they were too
worried.”
As lump-in-the-throat as the subject
matter was and as pop fuelled as the
tuneage was, it was Polly’s voice – a
whisper of insecurity, half waif, half
psycho – that slayed. You suspect the
demos were quite something.
“I had no money, so I wrote a lot of
the first album on a little keyboard in
my flat in the attic of a house,” she
explains. “It was before I had a laptop,
so I would record demos on MiniDisc
and send them to my manager in the
post.”
Mute helpfully stepped in and stuck
her in the studio with producers Simon
Fisher Turner and Gareth Jones for
company. It proved to be something of
an epiphany.
“I learnt so much from making that
album,” she says. “I’m quite a geek,
so when I went into the studio for the
first time and there was this world of
gorgeous analogue synthesisers and
beautiful keyboards, the kind of things
you see in museums, it was right up my
street. I like that ‘no rules’ thing about
synthesisers. We used a Minimoog a
lot and they’re quite temperamental.
You can have a great sound and press
a button or twizzle something and
all of a sudden that sound’s just gone
forever.”
So how much of a geek is ‘quite a
geek’? Can you quote names and
models and numbers and everything?
“I have the worst memory in the
world,” she laughs. “I’m not very good
with names and numbers and stuff,
so not a fully-fledged geek yet… but
working on it.”
POLLY SCATTERGOOD
F
ast forward four years and
‘Arrows’, her second outing for
Mute, is finally about to see
the light of day. It’s quite an outing.
Everything is bigger and brighter and
better. Sure, the lyrics are still jamming
hearts through the mincer, but the
music is no longer peering out of a
skylight in a lonely attic room. Instead,
this is an album lying on a beach at
night, sucking up the stars. So what
changed?
“When the record label said, ‘Where’s
the second album?’, I was still living
in that attic flat, but nothing was
coming out how I wanted it,” she says.
“My mum is an artist and she always
swears by a change of scenery, so
she suggested getting out and writing
in different places. I also decided I no
longer wanted to write songs on my
own, I wanted to work with someone
else, so I went on a bit of a journey
searching for a co-writer.”
Taking mum’s good advice, whenever
Polly tried out a potential writing
partner she would go over to their
house rather than invite them into
her attic. Eventually she met Glenn
Kerrigan, who was working with Emmy
The Great. Kerrigan was not only up
for going to different places, he also
had a mobile studio and he could set
up literally anywhere. So from Norfolk
to Berlin with a bit of France and
plenty of London thrown in along the
way, that’s exactly what they did.
“Where we’ve got to now is the place I
wanted it to be,” notes Polly. “It took a
while to get there, but the whole album
is all about a journey. I struggled when
I was in the attic flat because my head
just wasn’t in the right place. The funny
things is, ‘Arrows’ started in that attic
with ‘I’ve Got A Heart’, the last track
on the record but the very first track to
be written. It goes ‘I’ve got a heart / I
think it’s bigger yours / Because it lets
people in / Who constantly disappoint
me / And I’ve got a soul and it’s as
sad as they come / Because it used
to feel everything / And now it’s just
numb, numb, numb’.”
Heck.
“The first album marked the end of
a chapter in my life,” she continues,
choosing her words carefully. “So I
got out of my house and I got out of
a relationship and just started afresh.
‘I’ve Got A Heart’ was the last song
I wrote about that chunk of my life.
After that, I made a conscious decision
to move away from that… general
sadness. I wanted to move on with my
life, keep looking forward, and create
something that made me happy. A lot
of the new album is still quite reflective,
but the reason it’s called ‘Arrows’ is
because it pointed me in the direction I
needed to go.”
T
he first fruit proper from the new
album was ‘Disco Damaged
Kid’, a track that came out back
in January. It was something of a
shot across the bows. It not only
showcased the new and improved Polly
Scattergood sound, but acted as a
reminder she was still here. It also hinted
that what was to come was really going
to be worth the wait.
Musically, ‘Disco Damaged Kid’ was
leaps and bounds ahead of anything
on Polly’s first album, although the intro
might have fooled a few into thinking
not much had changed. Boy, had much
changed. Give the track 30 seconds
and a swirling bright twinkle of a
keyboard surfaces, another 15 seconds
and there’s an insistent kick drum, one
minute in and it bursts into life – serving
up warm, glittery, deep disco, no less.
Digging further into ‘Arrows’, there’s
something very human about it all.
Even with its delicious undercurrent of
electronic blips and beeps, it sounds
like it was made by people. Take the
swollen strings of ‘Colours Colliding’ or
the low rumble on “Machines”. These
days string sections are conjured up
with the press of a button, right?
“I’m not a purist in terms of
production,” declares Polly. “You
can make the most incredible tracks
using software, but it’s not the sound
of the strings that’s incredible, it’s the
atmosphere around it. If you just use a
computer, you don’t get those little bits
of magic, like hearing a bow knock
against a cello. I love those little things,
those little textures.”
What’s more, for every track that’s
packed full of sounds, there’s a little
something stripped to the bone. ‘Miss
You’ is a killer – and it’s just a piano
and Polly. Listen carefully and you
almost hear tears.
“I think there actually was a little tear
on ‘Miss You’,” she admits. “It breaks
my heart every time I sing it. I wrote
it on the piano and it just… I couldn’t
add anything more to it. It’s never a
conscious thing, but there are a few
tracks where my voice is a little bit
wavery. Each one of these songs is a
little journey really, so they’re like 10
different worlds. And when I’m in the
studio, I just shut my eyes… I never
think people are going to listen once
it’s done.”
It’s all part of the charm, we offer.
“That’s how we felt,” she agrees.
A
long with everything else there
is to love about ‘Arrows’, you’ve
got to enjoy the track sequence,
the running order. The penultimate
song, ‘Wanderlust’, is a full-on life-isgreat moment. It’s fit to bursting with its
thrummingly retro ‘Cars’-like growl and a
vocal so full of cheer it could be Christmas
in disguise.
“I wrote ‘Wanderlust’ when I was in this
wonderful euphoric place,” says Polly. “It
was like that feeling when you first fall in
love and you think, ‘This is the happiest I
am ever going to be’. It’s the most literal
track in explaining the album as a whole.
It’s about moving on, moving forwards…”
And just when you start to think all is
well in Pollyworld, you are taken down
at the knees, your legs swept from
underneath you, with the album closer,
the aforementioned ‘I’ve Got A Heart’.
“It was so difficult choosing the track
order,” she protests. “Even when I
listen to it now I think, ‘Oh shit, should
I have put ‘I’ve Got A Heart’ at the
beginning?’. But then if I’d put it at the
beginning, it would have given the
wrong impression and it wasn’t where I
wanted to begin the story. For me, ‘I’ve
Got A Heart’ is like looking back to see
how far you’ve come after the story has
finished.”
You get the feeling this particular story
is nowhere near finished, though. In
fact, it’s only just starting. So what’s
next? Third album on the way?
“I write constantly,” says Polly. “I can’t
not. It’s like an addiction. So, yes, I’ve
already started the third album.”
With the interview wrapping up, we
tell her we think ‘Arrows’ is a fantastic
record. Tell her how it has got right
under our skin. Not just lyrically, but
musically and – with that ‘Cocoon’
video and the devilishly clever
‘Wanderlust’ video – visually too.
Does it affect her in the same way, we
wonder?
“It’s been my life for the last three
and half years and it’s been a bit allconsuming,” she says.” It does definitely
affect me, but it’s nice to know I’m not
the only one.”
‘Arrows’ is released on Mute Records
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
under the
influence
To celebrate the release of THE ORB’s superduper ‘History Of The Future’ retrospective box set,
ALEX PATERSON talks about the places, people
and sounds that have fed the huge, ever-growing,
pulsating Paterson brain
Words: ANDREW HOLMES
DUB REGGAE
N
ot a surprise. My interest
in the dub reggae scene
came about through
the punk nights. By 1978, I was
completely immersed in it. At 16
or 17, I’d be going to see Jah
Shaka, King Tubby’s Sound System
and the Saxon Sound System at
Dingwalls. This was when dub
reggae was at its height. I was
an avid collector and one of the
first dub albums I ever bought was
‘African Dub Chapter 3’ by Joe
Gibbs, then ‘Majestic Dub ‘by Joe
Gibbs, and after that the floodgates
opened… Scientist, Prince Jammy,
King Tubby… They were what you
needed in your record collection as
far as I was concerned.
I soon started learning how this
music was made, because when I
began working with Killing Joke,
well, basically half of those guys
were playing in a dub band before
Killing Joke were formed, so I started
to learn a lot about echo loops and
stuff like that. The ‘African Dub’
albums had things like doorbells and
chickens on the tracks, which ended
up being a direct influence on The
Orb. There you go, something new
for you there.
Have I kept up with dub? Hmm, has
dub kept up with us is more to the
point. A lot of people in the know
think Jamaica is a bit sour now, but
it probably isn’t, it’s just that the
whole seven-inch dubplate culture
has collapsed. Nobody’s buying
records any more. When we had
the riots a couple of years ago, the
rioters decided to burn down the
joke shop next door to Dub Vendor
in Clapham Junction and all the
records melted because of the heat.
So Dub Vendor closed and had to
go online. Which is really sad. It’s
not the same.
I’m a really old-school person who
likes to go into a record shop and
look at the vinyl and smell it. Well,
maybe not so much smell it but, you
know… It’s that trainspotter attitude,
I suppose. We were pulling out from
a railway station the other night, I
think we were up in Newcastle, and
there were loads of blokes standing
there looking at the numbers of all
the trains, and I thought, “How sad”.
And then I thought, “Wait a minute,
I kind of do that with records, so let
them get on with it if that’s what they
want to do”.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
T
he first time I ever went to Berlin
was in 1980 and it was a 24-7
city even then. The future in
Europe. It was pretty safe because it
had a big wall around it. You didn’t
expect much trouble – it wasn’t like
going round Harlem in the 1970s –
and it was a big musical city.
Hans-Joachim Roedelius, who was
part of Cluster, set up this club in
Berlin called the Zodiak Club in
the 1960s. It was like the krautrock
100 Club. It was what The Roxy
was to the punk movement, only
to European music. And this was
all the music that I liked… Cluster,
Harmonia, Kraftwerk – obviously –
and Popol Vuh. All that music was
a huge influence on me so being in
Berlin was amazing – especially at
night, when you’d go into a German
disco and they’d all be dancing to
Kraftwerk like robots. We are the
robots!
Killing Joke recorded at the studio
where Bowie and Eno did ‘Low’ and
‘Heroes’ [Hansa Tonstudio], so I spent
about three months there doing ‘Night
Time’ with them, then went back the
next year to the same studio to do
‘Brighter Than A Thousand Suns’. So
even though I never lived in Berlin,
I spent three months at a time there.
People say they lived there for three
months, so I say I stayed there for the
summers of ’84, ’85 and ’86.
After that, I had a three-year break, but
then I met Thomas [Fehlmann, Alex’s
current Orb cohort] and went back
for the summer of 1989. I was DJing
out there the weekend that the Berlin
Wall came down. Now, that really was
amazing, seeing two sets of the same
people finally coming together again.
We actually saw the wall coming
down, and then a Japanese TV crew
arriving late and asking them to put it
back up again so they could film what
they’d missed. And they complied!
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
BERLIN
ALICE COOPER
T
he best drum break in the world
is off Alice Cooper’s ‘Halo Of
Flies’ [sings the drum break].
That’s the drum break off ‘Halo
Of Flies’, mate. What caught my
eye about him? The ‘School’s Out’
album. And then people started
playing me ‘Killer’ and ‘Love It
To Death’, the albums preceding
‘School’s Out’. Then ‘Billion Dollar
Babies’ came out and within the
space of two years I was devouring
and enjoying these albums –
immensely. They suited the dark
teenage years, when you wanted
everything around you to die, very
slowly.
Alice was basically the 1970s
version of Nirvana, especially with
‘I Love The Dead’ [recites lyrics
from ‘I Love The Dead’]. He was
dangerous. He was dangerous for
adults because he was influencing
teenagers in dark satanic ways, but
he was doing it with a humorous
approach, where he’d be pretending
to eat babies and cut chickens up
on stage. He was doing all the stuff
that Black Sabbath were going to be
doing a couple of years later. And
the psychedelic light shows were
something that The Orb were going
to be doing 20 years later – a big
backdrop with a film on it.
It wasn’t just me he had a profound
effect upon. I think he had a
profound effect on a lot of young
men at the time, but we kind of grew
out of him from 15 to 16 onwards.
Let’s be honest, Led Zeppelin blew
him out of the water in many ways.
Marc Bolan was another one. I
mean, I’ve picked Alice Cooper, but
I could quite easily have said Marc
Bolan. First record I ever bought was
T-Rex’s ‘Ride A White Swan’. And
my first album was ‘Electric Warrior’.
Second album was ‘In The Court Of
The Crimson King’ by King Crimson.
At the school I went to, where I met
Youth and Guy [Pratt], every house
had a Jazz Cellar. It was a music
room, but we called it a Jazz Cellar
to make it sound hip. After prep,
we’d take records down there, so
the word on good music would get
round quite quickly. Alice Cooper,
Marc Bolan… Budgie lasted six
months. ‘In For The Kill’ is quite good
but the rest of it was shit. But then
you got Jethro Tull, which nobody
would touch with a bargepole,
and then Roxy Music came along,
Cockney Rebel came along… God,
it was all in the mix.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
I
must explain that I didn’t have a
dad. My mum basically let my
brother, Martin, become my legal
guardian, so I was living with him
by the age of 12. He played me Led
Zeppelin when I was 10 and he got
me into Bob Dylan. There are a couple
of Dylan songs that are very poignant
for me. They remind me directly of
being in a house full of smoke and
grown-ups during a Christmas party,
and wanting to go to sleep, and
my brother picking up a guitar and
playing ‘Tambourine Man’ to get me
to sleep.
Before anything else, Martin was a
major influence on me, because I was
his little brother and whatever he did I
wanted to do, and he was a musician
so… Hello? Here I am. If it wasn’t for
him, it would be quite simple. I would
have ended up trying to play football
and running around on the terraces,
getting in with all the wrong people.
He looked after me. He took me to
my first gig when I was 12. I don’t
know really, it’s just a very odd thing.
We gelled. And the older we got, the
more we gelled. We both became
DJs. We were kind of like Orbital in
many ways, though we never thought
of being in The Orb together. Having
said that, he did come and play
harmonica on ‘Towers Of Dub’ on the
second Orb album.
He went off after that. He was working
with the Mutoid Waste Company. He
was in Italy for the last part of his life,
doing sculptures and parties out there
and playing the drums. He died of
cancer in 2001, a little while ago now,
but still only a momentary lapse in
some time zones. He’s sorely missed.
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
MY BROTHER MARTIN
BLADE RUNNER
T
his one’s a bit obvious. I don’t
want to be obvious, but I might
have to be because it sprang
to mind straight away. Why ‘Blade
Runner’? It’s the history of the future
right there, isn’t it? It’s an amazing
story about androids that are
basically far superior to humans,
and the blade runner is a person
who’s sent out to look for androids
and destroy them. I saw the film first,
but I’ve read the book it was based
on, ‘Do Androids Dream Of Electric
Sheep’ [by Philip K Dick], several
times since. In fact, Thomas and I
did a piece of music with Roedelius
from Cluster, a few tracks actually,
one of them being ‘DADOES’, which
stands for ‘Do Androids Dream Of
Electric Sheep’. A little-known fact
for you there.
The ‘Blade Runner’ film very much
reminds me of being in Japan.
When I was out there once, they
had this completely white dressing
room, and they pulled this huge
white screen out of the side of
the wall, pressed a button, and a
projector came out of the ceiling,
and the whole of one side of the
room became ‘Blade Runner’. We
spent all of that afternoon watching
the film over and over again. And
being in Japan as well… It was like
watching ‘Blade Runner’ and being
in ‘Blade Runner’ at the same time.
I mean, what can you say about
that film? It’s mad. It’s got such mad
moments. I love the toymaker, the
guy who fixes all the machines,
and the mechanical owl and stuff,
which is much more of a feature of
the book, to be honest. Oh, and the
soundtrack as well. The soundtrack
is great. By Vangelis. Vangelis!
There you go, who’d have thought,
eh?
The Orb’s ‘History Of The Future’
box set is on Island Records
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
UNDER THE INFLUENCE
“
My advice to all Numanoids,
and anybody with an interest
in the history of modern music, is
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JOHN FOXX
ULTRAFOXX
JOHN FOXX, the quiet pioneer of electronic music,
reflects on his Ultravox days, his early solo work, and
how he came to make one the best albums of 2013
Words and Pictures: MARK ROLAND
JOHN FOXX
I
n a basement studio in Hoxton,
London, John Foxx arrives. He’s
a bit late, operating on French
time, apparently. He divides his life
between France, London and Bath,
he explains. He’s full of apologies,
but unflustered and looking hella
cool in black. The studio belongs to
Benge, Foxx’s collaborator on the
John Foxx And The Maths project,
and the place is heaving with antique
modular synthesiser systems which
dwarf the dozens of only slightly less
exotic machines that fill every other
available space. This is where Foxx
and Benge have made their last three
albums together. Their partnership
started after Foxx heard Benge’s
‘Twenty Systems’ album, a collection
of recordings Benge made as a kind
of aural document of the development
of electronic sound creation via his
own synth collection, organised
chronologically, and starting in 1968
with the Moog Modular IIIC.
boy from Chorley in Lancashire called
Dennis Leigh, who created a new,
more edgy, pan-European persona
which then haunted popular music,
always just on the periphery, and
sponged up the cultural spills of the
In 1968, Benge was one year old. John era and re-presented them in mutated
Foxx was at art school, listening to The forms, like an outsider Bowie. Beatles and The Velvet Underground,
“You can invent this other person
preparing for post graduate study at
the Royal College of Art where, as the
and temporarily banish all your
inadequacies and your weaknesses,”
1970s started to unravel the idealism
says Foxx of his own transformation.
of the 1960s, he created a band as
a college-sanctioned art project. Art
“That was a part of my mission. The
school set the tone for the rest of Foxx’s old one wasn’t up to the job at all, the
lad from Chorley, bless him. He wasn’t
career, both as a musician and as an
artist and teacher. He is the classic,
a bad kid, but I had to give him the
unexpected by-product of the British art sack for a while.”
school system of the 60s and 70s; a
British pop star with brains. He was a
Ultravox’s
‘Hiroshima
Mon
Amour’
from ‘Ha!
Ha! Ha!’
(1978)
T
alking to John Foxx gets you
many tantalising glimpses of
the inner workings of London’s
various 70s music scenes. When I
ask him to remember his time at the
Royal College of Art, where he first
started to work on what he calls the
“design” of a music group, he mentions
Brian Eno appearing in the college
canteen, where he would meet with
his then-girlfriend, now well-known
ceramicist Carol McNicoll. “I don’t
think I hallucinated it, but I’m sure he
appeared one day in the outfit with all
the feathers,” says Foxx. “It was the
days of Andrew Logan’s Alternative
Miss World, so it was a very
flamboyant scene at the RCA, very
camp and very glam.”
There’s another slice from a few years
later, when Foxx and Billy Currie,
now in Ultravox and signed to Island
Records, would go and hang out at
one of Island’s studios. “They had a
studio in Basing Street, near Portobello
Road,” he says. “We’d drop in and
there’d always be someone interesting
working. It was a sociable thing. I
remember going there one night and
Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry was recording Bob
Marley. You’d walk in, shake hands,
and get social…” He laughs at the
memory and the euphemism. The idea
of the almost fantastically beautiful
young boy Foxx was in those days, the
slender aesthete and graduate of the
Royal College of Art, future architect of
icy synth minimalism, sitting in on the
ganja-infused sessions for what must
have been the ‘Exodus’ album, almost
beggars belief. But there you have it. It
really happened. “I learned masses just
from watching that operation,” he says.
“What Perry was doing with a studio
was revolutionary in those days.”
is partly why he quit Ultravox in 1978
and also had something to do with him
leaving the music scene altogether in
1985.
In John Foxx, then, the unlikely
inspiration of dub reggae and the
possibly more expected influences of
Eno and 20th century art movements
collide. He’s a Renaissance man whose
chosen artform happens to be music,
but who describes the experience of
playing live as making him feel as if
he’s “dispersing, flying apart”, which
“I suddenly get this perspective of
being in outer space,” he explains. “I
get moments like that. I’m not suitable
material for being a pop star of any
kind. You hear of people going on
the road for two years… you’d have
to carry me away on a stretcher. I
couldn’t do it. That’s why I like studios
so much. I can survive studios. I know
lots of people who go nuts in studios,
but I love it, no problem at all. The
live stuff is OK for four or five gigs,
then I can feel the effects. I don’t want
to exaggerate it, I’m aware of it, and
I was aware of it with Ultravox, but
I was a bit cheesed off that I didn’t
want to be a pop star. I had to own
up, to myself, and after I’d designed a
band and got everyone involved, I felt
terrible. When you’re in that position,
there’s only one thing you can do,
which is to clear off and let everyone
else get on with it. Which is fine.”
JOHN FOXX
A
ll this is delivered in a selfeffacing, always amusing
manner, and a thoroughly intact
Lancashire accent. Ultravox, the band
Gary Numan says were one of his
greatest influences but who somehow
didn’t look like they sounded, made
three albums before Foxx scarpered –
‘Ultravox!’, ‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ and ‘Systems
Of Romance’. Numan might have put
his finger on something there. While his
one-dimensional but precise take on the
future of music lacked Foxx’s breadth
and depth, Ultravox was a band in
search of an identity, which somehow
remained elusive.
he didn’t like Eno, he just didn’t like
art rock,” claims Foxx – and a singer
prone to dissipating while performing,
the writing was on the wall for Foxx’s
designer art rock band. “On ‘Systems Of Romance’, there were
things like ‘Dislocation’ and ‘Just For
A Moment’, which I was aware didn’t
need the whole band to play on, and
I was more interested in that kind of
stuff,” says Foxx. “I’d realised that if
you used synths, it was best to take
a minimalist approach. I got really
excited listening to dub records that
stripped everything down to one sound
per moment and gave it the whole
The group’s first three albums are all
space, which was really revolutionary
interesting and in there somewhere are
then, because everything else was
several blueprints for what was to come, kitchen sink production – everything
often in the space of a couple of tracks. in. The rock world was geared to
‘Ha! Ha! Ha!’ in particular, released in
having a big sound, whereas dub was
1977, moves from taut punkish gems like clearing the air out. Everything would
‘ROckWrok’ [sic] to the electronic torch
have its moment, you had a bass drum
song ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’, which
filling two speakers with nothing else
combines drum machines with reverbed there, or a bass that would come in
sax, while ‘Distant Smile’ splits from
behind it, you had this universe of
its avant-Bowie intro into a breakneck
sound you’d never heard before. Plus
rock-out before collapsing into an
you had people like Kraftwerk who
atonal finale of oddness. But when the
were stripping things out as well,
times caught up with what they were
from a different angle. Between those
doing, Ultravox had become identified
two poles, I was really excited by
with a previous era. Too glam to be
the possibilities I was hearing. On
punk, too leftfield to be mainstream,
‘Systems’, I was beginning to be able
too mannered to be weird, it was left to to do more of that. I wanted to mess
the likes of Magazine to pick up where
about with electronics, really. And I
they left off. With no hits, a record label didn’t want to be in a band anymore,
that didn’t understand them – “Chris
not because of the people, but because
Blackwell didn’t like Roxy Music at all,
of what it was doing to me.” John Foxx’s
‘Underpass’
– with some
handy
subtitles
(1980)
The narrative that played out next
was an echo of what was going to
happen when The Human League
split the following year, with the smart
money going on Heaven 17 to be
the hit makers. Ultravox without Foxx
seemed like a bust flush, especially
when Foxx signed a solo deal with
Virgin Records and made ‘Metamatic’,
which came out in January 1980.
The remaining members of Ultravox,
however, managed to hold it together.
They recruited Midge Ure and, six
months later, they released ‘Vienna’, an
album which outsold the entire Ultravox
back catalogue and Foxx’s ‘Metamatic’
album in the space of a few months.
Foxx has a typically objective view of
that experience.
“It’s a double-edged sword isn’t it?
You’re thinking, ‘Oh, the bastards!’, but
also, ‘Well, it was a good design, it
works’ – and it worked for me as well.
The whole entity functioned. Personally,
I wouldn’t have done what they did
with it, but it was good to see someone
else put their own things into it and
it still work, because that meant the
fundamental premise of it was strong
enough to survive inputs from other
sources. To some extent, it adjusted
those inputs a little. It felt like, the way
I’d set up the scaffolding, no matter
what was built on it, it came out with a
certain kind of integrity.”
‘M
etamatic’, then. The album
was originally going to
be called ‘Fusion/Fission’,
but ended up being named after the
artist Jean Tinguely’s self-destructing
sculptures. Both titles fitted nicely into
Foxx’s sense of falling apart, or more
accurately, exploding into space.
“Jean Tinguely’s machines would pull
themselves apart eventually, they had
a sense of humour, and I thought that
was a pretty good description
of what I was like,” he says. The
album gave him a mini-hit in the shape
of what is now his signature tune,
‘Underpass’.
“The single was meant to be ‘A New
Kind Of Man’,” he explains. “This was
in late 1979. The single was pressed
up, but I hadn’t finished making the
album, and a short while after that I
did ‘Underpass’. When the label heard
it they said, ‘This sounds great, this
should be the single’. In the end, we
waited until January 1980. I’m glad it
wasn’t the last record of the 70s, that it
was the first record of the 80s instead.
It set things up for the next 10 years,
but I don’t mean it in a vain way. I
mean it was like a fresh start, a new
decade, and it was the first record of
it.”
‘Metamatic’ gave Foxx the momentum
to get through the first half of the
1980s. There were several more
albums – ‘The Garden’, ‘The Golden
Section’ and ‘In Mysterious Ways’ –
John Foxx And
The Maths’
‘Evidence’ live
at Cargo in
London (2012)
each of them a distinctive piece of
work, but not notable for a careerist
impulse driving their production. They
were the kind of records you’d expect
from an artist, rather than a pop star;
records of ideas and designs being
explored.
And then, in 1985, Foxx took a musical
hiatus for 12 years. There were a
couple of releases with Bomb The Bass
man Tim Simenon as Nation 12 in the
early 90s and he directed a music
video for LFO, but mostly John Foxx
was replaced by Dennis Leigh, art
school lecturer and graphic artist to the
book publishing industry. Novels by
Jeanette Winterson, Anthony Burgess
and Salman Rushdie, among many
others, boast cover art by Dennis Leigh.
“I did drop John Foxx,” he says. “I kept
him in the fridge for a bit. I wanted
to prove that I could make the Dennis
Leigh bit work on its own terms, as a
graphic artist, which is part of what I’d
set out to do a long time ago. Mainly,
it was because I thought the 80s
was a duff period musically. I didn’t
like what I was doing and I thought
it was a dead end. I needed to get
out, otherwise I thought I’d go down
with the ship. So I legged it – and
I’m glad I did. It was good for me
psychologically, for my health, and
it gave me a lot more confidence in
myself because I managed to succeed
doing what I had jumped shipped to
do.”
JOHN FOXX
T
he defrosted Foxx has been
steadily upping his output since
his return in the late 1990s,
producing an eclectic mix of electronic
and ambient recordings, and lately
his collaborations with Benge as John
Foxx And The Maths has seen his
profile reach levels not seen since the
days of ‘Metamatic’. The pair originally
got together with the intention of
making some experimental music with
Benge’s analogue studio. It became
a partnership which has produced
three albums so far and seems to be
strengthening as time passes.
“It wasn’t expected,” notes Foxx. “We
were listening to things like Cluster and
other German stuff from that period.
We started off with tracks like that
and then I thought, ‘Hold on, there’s
a song in there…’. We ended up with
this album that had songs on it and
we never intended it to happen like
that. We both like songs – a lot of
my primary influences are pop songs
and it’s the same for Benge. There’s
that rhythmic nature of sequencers
which I find as soon as Benge works
out a sequence on here [indicates a
big modular] and I immediately get
a vocal melody out of it because it’s
got everything – rhythm, harmony, a
sequence of notes that repeats – and
it’s immediately like a springboard to a
song. You almost can’t escape it. I have
to stop myself singing along. One day
we will do that minimalist album, it just
means I have to shut up.”
Most exciting about the place Foxx is
now inhabiting is the role that Benge’s
studio is playing. It’s become a hub
for electronic music, with the likes of
James Murphy, Soulwax and Jarvis
Cocker passing through, not to mention
the numerous projects Foxx and Benge
are instigating. It’s something Foxx has
seen before.
Foxx And The Maths album that is
definitely a career high-point, suggests
that there’s plenty more to come from
this quiet man of electronic music. We
talk briefly about his 2006 project,
‘Tiny Colour Movies’, a collection of
music written for “found” short films,
which blurs the line between fact and
fiction, much like the invented persona
that Foxx is himself. “It was Conny Plank’s idea to make his
studio a place where you could go a
little bit mad in a safe environment and
he’d record everything. So it wasn’t
just a studio. This studio is one of those
places. When you’ve seen one or two
before, as I have, you get to recognise
the symptoms, and you think, ‘I know
this, I want to get involved here’.”
“I got a great education about whether
things are true or not when I had
kids,” he says when I ask how real
the fabulous stories behind each film’s
creation were. “When he was little, my
son John said, ‘Dad, does Superman
exist in the real world?’. I thought
how I should deal with this and I said,
‘Does that comic book exist in the real
world?’. He said, ‘Yeah’, so I said, ‘Is
Superman in that comic book?’, and he
said ‘Yeah,’, so I said, ‘Well, Superman
exists in the real world, doesn’t he?’.
Simple! So it satisfied both of us. All of
it is true, to some extent, it’s just that the
words are in a different order.”
Foxx’s recent release with Jori
Hulkonnen, the frankly gorgeous
‘European Splendour’ EP, which comes
hot on the heels of ‘Evidence’, the John
John Foxx And The Maths’ ‘Evidence’
is available on Metamatic. John
Foxx & Jori Hulkonnen’s ‘European
Splendour’ EP is on Sugarcane
BOOM BOOM SATELLITES
OUT OF
F SPACE
We’re in Tokyo, in the middle of a heatwave, to
talk to Japan’s electronic rock perfectionists
BOOM BOOM SATELLITES about their first UK
album for a decade. Not that Michi and Masa
are much into talking, mind
Words: MARK ROLAND
BOOM BOOM SATELLITES
I
n 1997, R&S Records put out the
debut single by a Japanese band
called Boom Boom Satellites. From
its bleeping intro, through its insistent
technoid rattle via a series of intricate,
almost breathtaking breaks, ‘4 A
Moment Of Silence’ was a tour de
force. It was tooled with such precision
and with a kind of ruthlessness that
it led Melody Maker (or, for people
who’d like a more macro view of
things, me) to declare that they were
taking The Chemical Brothers and The
Prodigy to school. This was the new
generation of post-modern breakbeat,
a kind of furious, pre-millennial techno
spliced with electro, with jazz, with
punk, with hard rock – a myriad of
influences vacuum-packed into vinyl.
And when Boom Boom Satellites came
to London and played their first show
at a tiny Camden pub to a hundred or
so intrigued punters, it was like they’d
set off a hand grenade in the place.
The word is impact.
The band (or rather Sony, their major
label workplace in Japan) smartly
parlayed that early underground
London buzz into a hefty following in
Tokyo. Boom Boom Satellites spent the
rest of the 20th century touring Europe
and America, and were remixed
by or did remixes for Jack Dangers,
Howie B, Garbage and a host of other
luminaries. But by the time the 21st
came around, they were focused on
Japan and they gradually slipped off
the radar elsewhere. It’s not been easy to find BBS records
outside of Japan in recent years, but
the band’s new album, ‘Embrace’,
is being released in the UK by JPU
Records, so I’m in Tokyo reacquainting
myself with vocalist and guitarist
Michiyuki Kawashima (Michi) and
bassist and programmer Masayuki
Nakano (Masa). They don’t appear to
have changed much since I last saw
them in 1999. They’re still impossibly
youthful, although they’re both in their
40s now. They laugh off my suggestion
that they’re big rock stars these days,
but it’s true. Earlier this year, they
played the Budokan, the huge indoor
arena in central Tokyo, and not many
bands can pull that off. Especially since
the gig took place just a few months
after Michi was diagnosed with a
brain tumour. The guitarist received
his diagnosis around the time of the
Japanese release of ‘Embrace’ and
had to undergo major surgery, which
meant that the band’s original 23-date
tour to promote the album had to be
cancelled.
None of this has punctured Boom
Boom Satellites’ high profile status in
their home country, though. As we
talk, ‘Embrace’ is still riding high in the
Japanese charts many months after its
domestic release, and this at a time
when the listings are largely dominated
by J-Pop, making BBS a rare leftfield
outsider outfit who enjoy mainstream
success.
I
’m sitting opposite Michi and Masa
in a room at the Sony office in
Tokyo. There are five other people
hovering around, three of them from
Sony and two from
the UK record label. Your music has
always been pretty intense, I tell the
pair
through an interpreter. Are you intense
people?
“He is,” says Michi, speaking in
English, pointing at his bandmate. “I’m
more laid-back and relaxed.” Do you argue?
“Often,” says Masa. “About music.
And personality.”
Is Michi too relaxed?
“Yes.”
Does he turn up to the studio on time?
“Er, yes.”
Boom Boom Satellites are taciturn, to
say the least. It’s a Japanese trait, to
be sure. Your average Brit is a voluble
gobshite by comparison. To describe
BBS’s Japaneseness as an essential
part of their sound – specifically, the
fact that they live in Tokyo – might
be dealing in easy stereotypes, but if
there’s a band that sounds like they
are soundtracking this peculiar, vast,
shifting beast of a city, then here they
are.
Take my attempt to find the building
where this interview is happening.
The Sony building doesn’t have an
address you would really recognise,
unless you know that Tokyo addresses
don’t have street names, just strings
of numbers. So I spent an eternity
staggering around (in quite astounding
heat, it turns out – a heatwave is
afflicting the city, with temperatures of
38 degrees, turning Japan’s Summer
Sonic festival into a sauna with the
added distraction of live music) through
streets of high-rise ugliness, each block
blandly tiled and glassed, each utterly
indistinguishable from one another,
until I accidentally noticed the correct
logo for the place I was looking for.
Tokyo is a place that assails the
outsider with its complexity – and it’s
a place that somehow lives inside
Boom Boom Satellites’ music. In their
studio technique, you might discern the
seeds of dubstep’s intricate mentalism;
the slicing of beats and sounds into
fractions, the recursive freak-out of
fractals, the blink-and-you-miss-it fury.
It’s this attempt to synthesise what
life is like in one the world’s most
bewildering cities and translate it into
a coherent soundtrack that makes
BBS so interesting. It even comes
with an emptiness, although not the
hollow meaninglessness of dubstep,
which all too often comes across like
the electronic music equivalent of
some teenaged prodigy pointlessly
fret-wanking their way through a
Yngwie Malstreem cover version. BBS’s
emptiness is positively existential, a
howl of partially formed emotion, man
and machine in conflict, flesh versus
steel, the Tokyo bedsit crammed with
technology and cup noodles and a
super-fast internet connection.
BOOM BOOM SATELLITES
BOOM BOOM SATELLITES
B
ut while it’s clear that the music
of Boom Boom Satellites is very
much a product of Tokyo, it seems
that some aspects of the city’s culture
and subculture are alien even to them.
“Maybe the subculture we have in
Tokyo right now is pretty crazy – the
idoru/otaku scene, I mean,” says
Masa, referring to the phenomenon
peculiar to Japan of bedroom-locked
young and not-so-young men who
obsess over pop idols (idoru) and who
would probably be diagnosed with
Aspergers Syndrome if they lived in the
UK. “I feel less inspiration from those
kinds of cultures in Tokyo compared to
how it was back in the 1990s, when
the underground music scene was
happening, but what we are really
interested in is what’s next.”
Circulating around the planet in an
orbit that is increasingly unique to
them, BBS are now setting their own
agenda, and they’re seemingly doing
so outside of the usual constraints and
demands of successful major label
bands. One of the tracks on the band’s
new album which may well lift a few
eyebrows in the UK is their reworking
of The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’.
Covering The Beatles is generally a
risky business, but taking one of the
Fab Four’s heaviest songs, a song that
is possibly the blueprint for heavy
metal itself? It’s proved irresistible for a
number of artists – U2, Oasis, Siouxsie
And The Banshees, Aerosmith and
many others have had a go at it – so
what made BBS want to try to tackle it?
“I think we were definitely putting
ourselves under pressure by covering
The Beatles,” acknowledges Masa.
“They’re mainstream – and we’re not.
It’s like a game with the listeners, with
music lovers, to show our style using
mainstream music.”
You mean that it’s a kind of joke?
“No, it was more like we were showing
our guts, showing how we could deal
with it.”
But why that particular song? It’s
probably The Beatles at their most
overtly rock, is that it?
“Yes. And it was a good challenge
because a lot of people have covered
that song.”
Do you like the Beatles?
“It’s not easy to say we’re fans of The
Beatles, because they are so big.” Apart from the retooling of The
Beatles, the ‘Embrace’ album seems
to wear its influences a little more
candidly than the band’s past
releases. The opener, ‘Another Perfect
Day’, a song written as a message
of hope in the aftermath of the 2011
earthquake and tsunami which
devastated Michi’s home town, is
underpinned by a big techno backing
track. ‘Disconnected’ meanwhile
recalls the accelerated bpms that led
to the nihilistic electropunk of gabba
and ‘Drifter’ employs the sort of
straight four-to-the-floor beat that will
put those of us who can remember it
into an early 90s dancefloor state of
mind.
“We’ve loved that music since we
were teenagers,” smiles Masa. “It’s
psychedelic.”
“That’s our roots,” mulls Masa. “So
it’s kind of natural for us to come up
with that kind of beat. Those beats are
not old and they’re not new anymore,
they’re just there. Like a rock beat. The
trends repeat themselves, they go and
they come back, so it’s hard to say if it’s
new or old or traditional.”
In the end, that might be the best way
to describe Boom Boom Satellites, as
a kind of dark, electronic psychedelia,
a mish-mash of rapidly shifting images
and sounds, purposely designed to
mess with your head. It’s good to have
them back.
Another track on ‘Embrace’ is an
instrumental called ‘Things Will Never
Be The Same’, which has guitars coming
on like those Bowie/Eno albums. It
possibly also has a hint of My Bloody
Valentine about it. It’s a cracking tune,
filled with dread and yet thrilling too.
‘Embrace’ is released on JPU Records
SYNTH JOURNEYS
SYNTH
JOURNEYS
From making basic tape loops using bongos and an
unstrung guitar to designing his own music recording app,
it’s been one heck of a synth journey for BORIS BLANK,
the legendary YELLO man
Words: BILL BRUCE
SYNTH JOURNEYS
T
here have been plenty of electronic
music duos over the years, but
none of them compare to Yello. The
innovative Swiss pair – Dieter Meier
and Boris Blank – operate more like
Renaissance painters than conventional
rock or pop musicians and they’ve
created some of the most luscious, quirky
and inspirational music of its genre – if it
even has a genre.
With their unique audio-visual flair and
child-like sense of fun, Yello challenge
all the stereotypes of electronic music as
cold, robotic and emotionless, producing
wonderful titles such as ‘Oh Yeah’,
‘Pinball Cha Cha’ and ‘La Habanera’.
If Orson Welles, Fritz Ferleng and Mel
Brooks had formed a band, it might
have resembled Yello. Which isn’t to say
Dieter and Boris don’t take their music
seriously. They just don’t take themselves
seriously.
“The Fairlight was the first machine
that made it easy for me to explore the
world of sound,” says Boris. “It’s like
a microscope, where you are able to
go further down into the sound, and
create new overtones and new sounds.
I still have my Fairlight, although these
days I don’t use it much. It has 32MB of
RAM, but to load one bank of sounds
can take 30 minutes. However, many
of the sounds are still very good, so I
have sent it to Mr Vogel [Peter Vogel,
co-founder of Fairlight CMI] and he is
going to archive the Hard Disk Drive
for me, and let me have my sounds
back as .wav files.”
“Sometimes… but very rarely,” he says.
“What put me off a lot of digital synths
was how complicated they’d become.
Too many matrixes and sub-folders. I
never used instruments like the Yamaha
DX-7 because ultimately the basic
sound of it didn’t appeal to me enough
to put up with its complexity.”
W
“Today, there are better machines
and everything can sound better, but
I don’t really use machines the way
most other people do,” he says. “I am
not really a musician, I am more like
a painter. I take the sounds and I mix
them together to create a picture. There
are so many ideas in each track,
enough for 10 other tracks, but I keep
decorating the song” – a pause and a
smile – “like a Christmas tree. When I
listen back to our music, I’d say 90 per
cent of it I still like. But there are some
things, if I did them today they would
sound different, because my process of
working is different. Using the Yellofier,
for example.”
ith this move to virtual
recording and synthesis,
Boris’ musical set-up has
become more compact and is currently
being rebuilt at his home in Zurich.
He says he’s sold most of his old
“In the beginning, we were often
analogue equipment, although he still
compared to Kraftwerk as pioneers
has some of his classic synths, like his
of electronic music,” recalls Boris.
ARP Odyssey. And while Boris isn’t
“However, I always felt Yello were the
dismissive of modern synthesisers, he’s
complete opposite of Kraftwerk, although less interested in those with no intrinsic
we were both working with mostly
musical value to him.
analogue synths. Kraftwerk wanted to
be dominated by the machines, to be
“I have been doing this for more than
machines. I was always trying to keep
34 years now and I can tell quite
quickly if an instrument or a plug-in is
the warmness of the analogue synth, to
something I can work with.”
bring out the soul of the machine.”
In the early 80s, a machine came along
that had a profound influence on the
Yello sound.
Do you ever read the manuals?
With so many advances in music
technology since the early days of
Yello and with Boris being a selfconfessed sonic perfectionist, I wonder
if he sometimes wishes he could go
back and re-record any of the old Yello
tracks?
Ah yes, the Yellofier. In 2012, Boris
Blank began working with Stockholmbased record producer Håkan Lidbo,
programmer Jonatan Liljedahl and
designer Håkan Ullberg to develop
the Yellofier app for iPhone and iPad.
Easy to use, regardless of musicial
training, the Yellofier is part sequencer,
part sampler and part synthesiser. It
also contains a library of Yello sounds,
which users can remix or adapt for
their own use. Several other artists
have contributed sounds to the app,
including Orbital, The Orb, Matt
Johnson from The The and Trentemøller.
“As I mentioned, I’m not like other
musicians. I don’t complete a dozen
tracks and put out an album. At the
moment, I have about 70 Yello tracks
“We had a mutual friend, Ian
at various stages of completion. Of
Tregoning. He mentioned this guy had
those, five or six are finished, all
an amazing, beautiful voice and it
created on the Yellofier, and will
would work well with our music. Billy
appear on our next album, which we
was afraid of flying, but he came out to are planning to release in January.
Zurich and he was just this very quiet,
shy guy. When I first heard his singing, “But we work the same way as always.
I was totally blown away. He had so
The music is about 98 per cent me
“Working now with the technology
much emotion in his voice. It was a
and two percent is Dieter, but Dieter
is much more comfortable,” says
great time. Even now, I find myself in
is a good protagonist because he
Boris, explaining the rationale and
the studio sometimes talking to Billy,
works fast and he says his role is to
philosophy behind the app. “The
saying ‘Hey Billy, listen to this track...’” go walking through the sound houses I
Yellofier costs the price of a cup of tea,
have created, these buildings made of
it fits in your pocket and you can get
Outside of what he dubs “the
sound, and inhabit them like an actor.
the same results in 10 minutes that used Yelloverse”, Boris has recently worked
Working with this app, I think we’ve
to take me a whole day in the studio.
with Malwai-born, London-raised
captured a little of our craziness – we
Forty years ago, I began making
jazz singer Malia on an album called
were always like children playing in
music by cutting up analogue tape
‘Convergence’, which will be out next
the studio, even at the very beginning
into loops, all the same length, and
year. It’s his first collaboration since
– so I guess you could say we’re going
splicing them together. That was my
Billy Mackenzie’s ‘Outernational’
back to our roots.
first step sequencer. I can do the same
album. Boris also works as a film music
things now with the Yellofier, taking a
composer and is about to release
“My ultimate hope is I can keep doing
fingerprint of a natural sound and then a triple album of film music entitled
what I do for as long as possible,” he
applying effects and a synthesiser to it. ‘Avant Garden’. Film-makers and
adds. “Dieter says that even when I
You can compose music anywhere, on animators are being invited to make a
am dead and I am laying in my coffin I
a plane, on holiday, er... on the toilet.” video for any of the 15 featured tracks. will be sampling the sound of the nails
The winning entries will be featured on being hammered in.”
a future album release.
t one point during the interview,
Boris notes my Scottish
With so many projects on the go, I
Film-makers and animators wishing to
accent and recalls the late
wonder when we can expect any new
make a video of one of Boris Blank’s
work from Yello?
Billy Mackenzie, the mercurial lead
‘Avant Garden’ tracks should contact
singer of The Associates, a frequent
[email protected]
collaborator with Yello and a good
The closing date for submissions is 30
friend. I ask Boris how they first met
November
A
and for a moment his characteristic
cheerfulness is replaced with a certain
wistfulness.
ULTRAMARINE
OUT OF
THE BLUE
To mark the release of the first
ULTRAMARINE album since 1998, we
visited Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond
at their Essex hideaway, switched on
the tape recorder, and left the room.
Here’s what was on the tape when we
got back…
Pictures: EMILY BOWLING
ULTRAMARINE
ON THE NEW ULTRAMARINE ALBUM, ‘THIS TIME LAST YEAR’
Ian: “It’s been 15 years since the last
Ultramarine album and we both now
have regular day jobs, so does this
mean our approach has been different
to previous albums?”
Paul: “It has and I think the time
constraints have had a beneficial
effect. We designed a workflow for
making new tracks and that process
was in mind of having less time and
also not wanting to spend a lot of time
programming and tweaking… to make
it a more performance-based thing.
When we started working together
again about four or five years ago,
the initial purpose of it was to play live
and work up a new live set using what
was, to us, new technology. So when
we restarted after the break, it was
more about performing the music and
improvising with it, both old material
and new. As a result, I think our whole
approach to writing and to production
has become much looser and this is
obviously aided by technology or
software that didn’t exist when we were
last working together.”
Ian: “With the increased focus on
performance, is that the reason why
it’s been so much fun working on ‘This
Time Last Year’?”
Paul: “Yes, because there are more
surprises and there’s more intuition in
the music. We’re not thinking about
every single pattern and sound we’re
making. It’s not all stuff that we’ve
consciously or meticulously crafted or
shaped. We’ve been able to capture
tracks quickly rather than building them
up in a more programmed way, as we
would have done before. This keeps
our interest longer because there’s
more mystery involved.”
Ian: “What makes something feel like
an Ultramarine track?”
Paul: “I suppose a lot of it is determined
by production standards and knowing
when something sounds right from that
point of view. But also that it’s working
in terms of the arrangement, that there’s
a kind of logic to it and a kind of
narrative to the arrangement.”
Ian: “I think there’s been a conscious
decision not to necessarily explore all
the avenues that each track suggests
– something we might have done
previously – and to try to retain the
performance.”
Paul: “I think we’ve been quite
disciplined about deliberately
restricting the time we work on
certain things. One problem we had
before, because we had more time,
was that certain tracks spawned so
many versions or sections within the
arrangements that we’d produce three
tracks for every one we finished, and
probably lost the original focus of some
songs as a result.”
ON POST PUNK AND JAPANESE JAZZ
Ian: “Between the two of us we’ve
got a broad interest in different styles
of music. What’s been the richest or
most constant source of inspiration or
influence for you?” Paul: “I think we’d probably agree
that our big early influence was
post-punk… A Certain Ratio, Cabaret
Voltaire, 23 Skidoo, the music on Les
Disques du Crépuscule and Factory
Records, electronic and experimental
music of the early to mid-1980s. The
attitude of that period has had a
lasting influence on me; not necessarily
the music itself but the DIY approach,
the romanticism of a lot of that music
and the experimentation. What I take
from that time is the feeling that there
are endless variations and routes to
follow in music.” Ian: “You’ve been running the label
Real Soon for over 10 years and you
have had much more exposure to new
electronic music and dance music than
I have. How has that influenced you?” Paul: “It’s made me understand how
difficult it is to make good electronic
and dance music. There is so much of
it around, but it takes a subtle touch to
make it effectively – to make it work
on vinyl, to make it sound good in a
club, and for it to have something that
is distinctive with genuine character
or feel to it. Doing the label has been
good for me musically because it’s
been about listening to, appreciating
and understanding other people’s
work. I think it’s quite healthy as a
musician or producer not to make
music for a while and just to absorb
and enjoy what other people are
doing. You and me having a long
break from working together has
also given me a greatly renewed
enthusiasm for it. What sort of music
do you mainly listen to now? Jazz?” Ian: “Yes, for the last six months I’ve
been mining the Japanese jazz scene,
especially early 1970s stuff, which has
been fantastic and quite revelatory. I
also still listen to a lot of dub music, a lot
of Brazilian music and to what I’d call
regular contemporary guitar music.” Paul: “Is there something that turns you
off listening to contemporary electronic
music? I think there is for me a little bit,
maybe because we make it ourselves.
In a way, I find listening to electronic
music harder than listening to other
types of music.” Ian: “Perhaps that explains why, on the
new material, we’ve looked beyond the
computer set-up and got out some of
the old effects pedals and machines,
and we’ve been routing things in a
different way, just to see what else is
possible. I think we know there are
huge amounts of potential two clicks
away on a computer, things that sound
polished and fantastic, but we also
know they’re the same sounds that
anyone can use.” ULTRAMARINE
ON PLUGGING STUFF IN AND LOOPING THINGS UP
Ian: “We’re sitting in a studio
surrounded by a fair amount of leads
and boxes – some plugged in, some
half plugged in… with no idea of
where some of them go anymore – and
it doesn’t feel a million miles away how
the inventors of this kind of approach
would work, people like King Tubby
and Scientist. It feels like there’s a
connection to that way of thinking, of
making the most out of machines that
weren’t necessarily designed to do
what we’re asking them to do. It’s
fascinating to genuinely have no idea
of what you’re going to end up with.” Paul: “It’s also where we started. If you
think about our first records in 1984
and 1985 [when Paul and Ian were in
A Primary Industry], half of those tracks
were versions of songs. We went into
the studio with one song for each of
those two records and came out with
four other tracks that were live studio
dubs or remixes.” Ian: “I think there was an arrogant
assumption that it was always going
to be possible to do that! On those
occasions, there were some new toys
in the studio and we were with creative
engineers. It was great to be exposed
to that way of working so early on.” Paul: “We started out as a five-piece
band with conventional instrumentation
and switched to an electronic way
of working at the core of the set-up
after our first album [‘Folk’]. Can you
remember what inspired that and how
deliberate the switch was?” Ian: “A lot of it was to do with our
discovery of the Akai sampler and
starting to find out just what loops
could do. That was the time of the
first De La Soul record, ‘3 Feet High
And Rising’. It was very inspirational
to suddenly hear music being looped.
It’s strange, it seems so basic now,
but it suggested a whole new way
of listening to music and sound. That
was when we started buying loads of
secondhand records and looping up
things that had been left on the musical
scrapheap – unfashionable 70s soft
rock, country and folk. It was hugely
exciting and I suppose a band was
surplus to requirements, although we
still wanted to have people playing on
the records.” Paul: “The sampling on ‘Every Man
And Woman Is A Star’ was definitely
influenced by De La Soul and A Tribe
Called Quest and their approach to
using samples. ‘United Kingdoms’
took it a stage further. Although it’s
less immediate, I think the sampling
was more creative in a way; more
textural and using the samples as
sound sources rather than loops. My
first memory of realising the potential
of a sampler was in about 1987. We
were in a studio that had the first
commercially available Akai sampler,
the S612, and were listening to the
first Young Gods album, which used
samples in a rock setting and sounded
incredible. There was other slightly
industrial music around at the time, like
Revolting Cocks and, of course, Meat
Beat Manifesto, who we had a strong
connection to. It was a very inspiring
time, feeling this new technology
coming in and starting to shape the
music.”  ON THEIR FAVOURITE LIVE PERFORMANCES
Ian: “We have had mixed feelings
about playing live in the past, but there
have been some very enjoyable shows
over the years. Do any particular gigs
stand out for you?” Paul: “I think our best gig – to date! –
was at Heaven in London in December
1993, immediately after we’d finished
the American and European tours
supporting Björk. I think it was one of
Rob Deacon’s Trans Europe Express
nights. Mickey Mann was doing the
sound and there was a massive PA.
There was a threat of violence at the
end, which added to it. The whole
thing felt a bit untamed; the band were
really good because we’d just done a
big tour and it just felt really powerful
on stage. And Annie Nightingale and
Nikki Sudden came to our dressing
room! What about you?”  seeing together, especially jazz. It’s
difficult to find the right way of doing
it, but I think the guiding principle for
our new work has to be that it contains
an element of improvisation because
performance has been such a large
part of the making of ‘This Time Last
Year’. So it feels right that we present
that as part of a live show. It’s good
to challenge ourselves too.  But I
don’t think we should feel under any
compulsion to replicate the recorded
tracks. And because of the fluid and
varied way that people consume
music nowadays, I think there’s much
Paul: “How important do you think
less of a demand from the audience
an element of improvisation is in live
electronic music? Is it difficult to render for a conventional live rendering
of the record. In fact, it’s possibly
our music live?” the opposite. I think, increasingly,
people value something different and
Ian: “As you said earlier, when we
restarted working on Ultramarine it was performance-specific.” 
all about exploring the idea of playing
live and that was largely driven by
‘This Time Last Year’ is released on
some of the live music we’d been
Real Soon Records
Ian: “One gig that always sticks in
my mind was in Chicago, on the last
night of the Communion Tour in 1992
with Orbital and Meat Beat Manifesto.
We got a fantastic response from the
audience as soon as we went out. They
were such a friendly crowd and that
carried us. Another was the show we
put together at the Astoria in London in
1993. It was our first proper headliner
and we were supported by Lol Coxhill
and Mixmaster Morris playing as an
improv sax/DJ duo!” FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY
FU
FRON
Electro industrial pioneer and FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY
main man Bill Leeb talks about chaining, ducking,
dubstep and the new FLA album, one of the very
best records in the group’s 25-year history
Words: DANNY TURNER
ULL
NTAL
FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY
I
turn left out of Highbury & Islington
tube station and there’s an old
familiar friend across the street – The
Garage, a landmark London music
venue, although you wouldn’t think it
from the outside. It looks grim despite
its relatively recent £1m refit. At the
rear of the building is a large white
tour bus, driver at the wheel. Entering
midpoint through a small door, I see
the tall, elegant, seated figure of Bill
Leeb, original member of Canadian
electro-industrial pioneers Skinny
Puppy and founder of the legendary
Front Line Assembly.
scene, it’s not like the indie rock scene
or techno.”
Some people are saying ‘Echogenetic’
is one of the best albums of your
career. How do you feel about that?
“We put this record out and we’re
getting nine out of 10, 10 out of
10, and people are saying this is
maybe the best record we’ve ever
done, definitely since ‘Tactical Neural
Implant’. I don’t know how that stuff
works, whether music is a circle,
because most of the people that are
into this are young people. Our prior
Leeb is in London for a gig to promote
record, ‘AirMech’, did really well. It
Front Line Assembly’s ‘Echogenetic’
was our first adventure into the dubstep
album. FLA’s history is long and fruitful area, as well. A few people were like,
and littered with classic albums, albeit
‘Yeah, fuck Bill Leeb, I’ve had it with
mainly from their formative years:
him’, but 99 per cent love it, so that’s
‘Caustic Grip’ (1990), the breakthrough what you want, right?”
‘Tactical Neural Implant’ (1992), the
industrial-metal crossover ‘Millennium’
One presumes, with certain
(1994), and the highly underrated
inevitability, that fanatics of industrial
‘Hard Wired’ (1995). Subsequent
music will regard the presence of
releases comprised the sort of naff-todubstep as anathema, but with
nuanced rollercoaster that any band
‘Echogenetic’ its expression is prescient
would experience over a 25-year
but by no means overbearing,
career, but ‘Echogenetic’ is a startling
complementing the album’s complex
success, revitalising every aspect of
song structures.
FLA’s sound and, to some extent, a
tired and formulaic genre.
“Yeah, it’s not like we’re Skrillex or
something. I said to the guys, ‘We’d
It’s a sunny day and Leeb invites me
better be careful now… In our world,
into the humid, cramped tour bus,
now that we’ve made a sort of classic
leading me up the tiny staircase, on
record, the next two or three are going
which my large moulded boots can
to be compared to this one’. That’s the
barely make secure footing. One
only downside to having a successful
wonders how people can sleep in
album. It’s the best seller on Metropolis
such an environment – particularly, as
Records’ whole label.”
Leeb informs me, with sleeping areas
divided into who can snore the least
he “guys” that Bill Leeb refers
loud. In light of the almost uniform
to include keyboard player and
positivity for ‘Echogenetic’ from a
programmer Jeremy Inkel (working
receptive media, I ask Leeb how that
alongside Sasha Keevil) and guitarist
has translated to the tour itself.
Jared Slingerland (in tandem with
Craig Johnsen). Leeb maintains full
“Yeah, this time around the crowds
control of Front Line Assembly, but has
are almost doubled everywhere,” he
always been receptive to the inclusion
says. “It’s exciting and we’re a little
taken aback by it. Last time we played of new members. So how was the
workload on ‘Echogenetic’ divided up?
Hungary, we had 500, but we had
1,200 this time. It’s hard to even get
“‘AirMech’ and ‘Echogenetic’ were
400 or 500 people to come out, as
the first two records where we had
our music scene is not the biggest
T
the luxury of having two camps, with
me in the middle jumping between
both,” explains Leeb. “Everybody
was creating music. We got together
every two weeks and ran the tracks
in front of each other, then file shared
them. In the old days, it was either
just me and Rhys (Fulber) or me and
Chris (Peterson), so five versus two is
a huge difference. I just sort of made
a plan with everybody, I said, ‘Let’s
take 18 months off, not tour, and make
a bunch of music every day’. We had
the blueprint because ‘AirMech’ was a
great warm up. It was like training for
the Olympics – we were gear fit and
everybody was in the groove. Also,
with a lot of people working on stuff, it
raises the bar for everybody and adds
a friendly, competitive environment.
It pushes everybody, right? If you’re
doing it all by yourself, it’s really
hard to pull that off; are you pushing
yourself hard enough? But when you’ve
got five people competing to get their
songs on this tiny little disc, then it’s
game on.”
Were they doing melody parts or
rhythm parts?
“Everything, although I’d come up
with the basic structure for a song. For
a lot of this record, we were doing
side-chaining and ducking, which is
kind of the new way of doing basslines
instead of the old 80s, 90s way. I
don’t really know who invented it, but
in some ways dubstep in itself is drum
and bass, but half-time. When you’re
programming, you’re chaining the
beats with your drums and your bass,
and drawing the lines on the computer
to create an ongoing flow tone. It’s
hard to do when you’re changing key
and it also changes the timing, so you
can’t sing on the exact beat. It limits
you in some ways and is a bit of an
experiment.”
Leeb is also quick to give credit to
engineer and producer Greg Reely,
whose association with FLA stretches
back to 1990.
“Again, you’re only as good as the
people around you. Greg won’t let
anything slide; it’s more about quality
versus quantity. Greg’s always been the
unsung hero. He could have moved to
LA and made a lot of money but that’s
not who he is. Once we’d got all the
parts written, we’d send all the files to
him to start mixing. With the vocals, it’s
just me and Greg recording them in the
studio. He’s got the world’s greatest ear,
so he’s intrinsic. Kind of like the sixth
member.”
FLA have always been at the forefront
of technology, pushing the envelope in
terms of electronic sound and finding
expressive ways to programme.
How much of that is inspired by new
software?
“Oh yeah, especially with all the virtual
stuff. Jeremy and Jared are always
online and sharing stuff with other
friends. It’s like a whole network now.
The virtual synths are pretty much as
good as the originals. There was a
time when you could tell the difference
between outboard gear and inboard,
but the new MS20 is MIDI, it saves
its sound, it uses your mouse, and
compared to the one outside the box,
there’s no difference.”
Do you also look outside of technology
for influences, either within the electroindustrial genre or elsewhere?
“The song ‘Prototype’ was kind of
inspired by Amon Tobin, it was just the
way he tweaked the sounds. We listen
to a lot of new stuff now and don’t even
listen to music in our genre. Jared loves
modern hipster music, and he turned
me on to Purity Ring and all this kind
of stuff, so I think those elements are
coming into FLA and giving us a new
angle.”
really tough sounding record without
guitars, because you throw those on
and you’ve filled up a whole vortex. I
noticed a lot of people haven’t really
mentioned that we took all the guitars
out, so I think it was kind of smart on
our part because it does sound really
electronic.”
H
Do you see the guitar element as
something that’s been overexposed in
industrial music?
aving had ‘Echogenetic’ glued to
my ears for the best part of two
months, an attribute that stands
out is the production and how every
sound has a distinctiveness and clarity.
Many artists will cover up mistakes by
dubbing over them, drowning out the
production with guitar riffs, or simply
don’t have the confidence to allow
their music to be dissected. Does that
come with maturity or is Leeb simply a
perfectionist?
“I think the main aspect of it is the
songwriting, but when you’re chaining
stuff and walking the tightrope between
the dub and electro world, you can’t do
superfast beats, it just doesn’t work very
well,” he says. “The song ‘Blood’ was
truly the prototype for the album. When
Jared came up with the idea, I just said,
‘That’s the record’, and from then on we
followed suit, and thank God for that.
One of the first things I adhered to was
saying let’s do the whole record without
guitars. As shocking as it may be,
because we’ve been using guitars since
‘Millennium’, that alone would change
the sound of the album and the band.
I think it’s definitely harder to make a
“Well, I think it’s been done for so many
years, right back from the first industrial
music to the Wax Trax series to Ministry.
Industrial and metal really crossed
when we first started working with Fear
Factory. I think it had a huge moment,
but it’s not a new sound anymore and
there’s more technology stuff to be
excited about. But it’s always easy to
go back to that. I mean, we still play a
few of the classics live. It’s great to have
those in your resume, but we’ve really
diversified now. We’re not so worried
about trying to rip everyone’s heads off
for an hour and a half.”
How would you say technology
is moving forward, or has it hit an
impasse?
“Well, I guess that’s sort of the six
million dollar question,” he laughs.
“How far do you want it to go? Do
you want it to go so people don’t
have to park their own cars anymore,
the computer parks it for you, or the
computer flies planes? Do you want
FRONT LINE ASSEMBLY
the computer to write your songs for
you – where you just think it and it
virtually spits it out? You’d think that
we’ve almost reached a point where
we’re gonna max out, but I still think that
when an individual walks into a room,
like Adele, and just sings a song at the
piano, to me that has more power than
a million synthesisers. If they can emulate
the human emotion, then we’re in
trouble, right? It’s still about the feelings
of a person and a good voice is so
distinguishable. No two people agree on
the same singer or lyricist being great.”
For some, perhaps, a minor bugbear
on previous FLA albums has been the
lyrical content and its clichéd man versus
machine themes, with little variation. But
on ‘Echogenetic’, Leeb appears to have
mellowed somewhat, portraying a more
vulnerable, searching side.
“Usually, I’ve always gone back to
technology – we’re damned with it
and we’re damned without it. Most of
the lyrics this time are about mortality.
Y’know, I’m getting older and looking
at life a little different now. Is what I’ve
done going to be enough? Do I still
wanna do more? I’ve always been
very afraid to – because it might sound
cheesy – let myself out. I guess that’s
what makes guys like Robert Smith or
Ian Curtis legends, because they’re not
afraid to sing about love or what gets
to them, and people really respond to
that, whereas other singers put up a wall,
especially in this genre. You don’t wanna
be depressing people, but trying to find
that melancholy middle ground.”
I thought with industrial music you could
be as depressing as you want.
“Yeah, well, that’s what critics kind of
tried to get rid of initially, saying that
industrial is depressing and dark. Look
at ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. It’s dark, but
poetic justice.”
T
hose who have followed the
career of Bill Leeb know that he is
not defined by Front Line Assembly
alone. Over the years, a wealth of side
projects, from Noise Unit, Equinox and
Intermix to Cyberaktif, Synaesthesia
and Delerium, have cut a swathe
through his discography. Despite many
of these sharing similar traits with the
FLA sound, Leeb has bounced between
ambient techno and electronica, while
Delerium, initially a breeding ground
of dark ethereal landscapes, has
flowered to become an ambient house/
worldbeat act that has far superseded
FLA in terms of sales. So where does
Leeb feel most comfortable?
“I need both,” he says. “I find that
after doing this for a while, it takes a
lot out of you. It has an aggression, so
for two months I just love to sit there,
have serenity kick in and go down a
different path. It clears my head and
inspires me to do the other again.”
And a remix of ‘Echogenetic’ too, I
hear?
“Greg Reely did a remix of ‘Killing
Ground’ which has been circulating
in all the clubs and we’re also gonna
do a full remix of the entire album,
but not dance remixes per se, we’re
going to have one artist do each song
because I think reinterpretations will
be more interesting. Rhys Fulber has
already done a really great mix of
‘Killing Ground’ and we’re getting
some interesting artists that are not
part of the industrial scene, like Sonic
Mayhem, Cookie Duster, Tweaker and
some other leftfield artists. I think we
want that out early next year, because
the way this tour is going we’ve been
offered more great slots and festivals.”
So has ‘Echogenetic’ rekindled your
passion for FLA?
“Well, it’s truly rekindled my passion
regarding everything that’s happened
Having said that, I understand there’s
in this short period of time. I don’t know
going to be another Noise Unit album
if it’s a little oasis in the big picture but,
shortly.
yeah, it’s definitely made everybody
wanna make one more record like
“We have a whole bunch of sketches
this and maybe make it better. Who
and I think everybody’s firing on all
knows, it’s weird when you’ve been
cylinders right now. Again, we’ll surprise around for so long in a scene where
people with that one because it’s going not many bands have really gained
to be nothing like the old Noise Unit
major fame. We’re kind of in this
stuff. I think we want to do a double
pocket and it feels like there’s no way
disc, one really tripped out, a sort of
out, but with ‘Echogenetic’ at least
Boards Of Canada spin-off, and on the we feel like we’ve made an artistic
other something way more upbeat, kind statement. I think with the next one, we
of ‘Echogenetic’ meets ‘AirMech’, but
should take a real chance and go more
without vocals obviously.”
off the deep end, because what do
we have to lose? I think we’ve proven
we’re not sell-outs and have pushed the
genre. Every time you start something,
it’s a big wall and a big task. I think
we’re still evolving and the best record
will be the next one, because we have
really just found our footing.”
Can you envision still making this sort
of music when you’re 65?
“Y’know, at 65, I definitely think so.
Unless your health fails you… But I
really try to look after myself and live a
good, healthy lifestyle. I don’t know if
I could do it on stage, maybe it would
be weird. Maybe one day I’ll be a
company. I’ll give them the name and
take a small percentage, and the guys
I’ve been working with for 10 years
can continue, because it’s way harder
to start a new project now than it is to
continue something that’s established.”
But it wouldn’t be the same without
you, Bill.
“Well I could still be part of it… In
the background, but maybe not at the
front of it. I’ll be the old man shaking
my stick, ‘Don’t turn that up, that’s too
loud’.” He pauses and laughs. “Food
for thought, right?”
‘Echogenetic’ is available on
Dependent
ALBUM REVIEWS
Morris, who helped draw attention to the
band by remixing them and describing
them as “unsettling disco”. They’re pals
with Throbbing Gristlers Chris and Cosey,
with whom vocalist Nik Colk Void has
collaborated on several occasions, most
notably on the Carter Tutti Void album
‘Transverse’. There are stories in the name
Factory Floor too, in the aesthetic of the
factory and all its associations. The noise
of machines. The sweat of the workshop.
The relentless turning of cogs and wheels.
The oiling of shafts. The alienating effect of
FACTORY FLOOR
Factory Floor
DFA
The sweat of the workshop meets
the sweat of the dancefloor
Elton John told the NME he thought it
was “punishing, in a good way”. Now
there’s an endorsement if you ever needed
it. So is the fact that they’re signed to
James Murphy’s DFA label, possibly the
hippest record company on the planet.
This is the album the nation’s electronic
hipsters have been waiting for. Yes, more
than the Chvrches one. Of course, more
than the bloody Chvrches one. The thing is
though, and here might be a problem that’s
been lurking in the background of the very
long genesis of Factory Floor’s debut, is
how does an ever-shifting, often improvised
and spontaneous music, generally created
on the fly from a central set of strictly held
tenets, go about becoming something as
fixed and invariable as an album? Maybe
you do what Miles Davis used to do. What
Can used to do. What Cabaret Voltaire
used to do. You record what you do and
then you edit what you recorded. And in
that editing, you create the document of
where your art was at that moment. Then
you put it out and you let it go, because
you’re already working on the next one.
Factory Floor’s friendships tell the stories.
They’re pals with New Order’s Stephen
mechanisation and technology on the human
spirit. The 20th century concept of the death
factory. The remorseless processing, whether
it’s making tin cans or killing people, or even
churning out music which is, at one and the
same time, a critique and a celebration of
the dehumanisation. And dare we mention
Factory Records too? There you go.
What does ‘Factory Floor’ sound like? Here’s
how that goes. Until the fifth track, ‘Two’,
which is a one-minute interlude of a guitar
being mangled, it’s all staccato rhythm. The
synthesisers judder in sequenced insistence
– short attack, no sustain, mixed in with
the drum machine, everything as dry as
a bone except for Nik Colk Void’s vocals,
which are constantly running through various
treatments and are sopping with reverb and
echo, turning them into textures, reducing
words to quasi-chants that float across the
never-less-than 120 bpm four-to-floor kick
drums. Melody has to be inferred from
within the clatter of the beats. Or does it?
Everything is a beat – strobing, confusing,
alarming, but ultimately seductive. At times,
especially in the segue between ‘How You
Say’ and ‘Two Different Ways’, you get
a few frames of memory which might be
from an experience at a club or maybe a
festival, the memory of a new bassline or a
new melody gradually emerging from the
euphoria of the previous climax, and how
that sends a new wave of the drugs you
took hurtling up and down your spine.
What Factory Floor have done is to take
elements of the early industrial noiseniks – the
obsessions with rhythm, noise and texture,
and the sense that there is beauty to be found
in the organisation of unattractive tones –
and spliced it with the equally peculiar and
equally British obsession for getting off your
tits and dancing for hours to the sounds of
machines disconnected from the traditional
notions of bands and melody and structure.
You want the feelings that the music creates to
never end. That’s what ‘Factory Floor’ sets out
to do – and that’s largely what it achieves.
It’s what you wanted New Order to do when
they went to New York to record with Arthur
Baker in 1983, but they came back with
‘Confusion’ instead. It’s what you wanted
Front 242 to be, but they never were. It’s
what you actually wanted Throbbing Gristle
to be too, but they never were either.
GRACE LAKE
ALBUM REVIEWS
of the Numan sound. Numan promised an
album that would be “very aggressive, very
heavy and very dark” and with ‘Splinter’
there’s no chance of him being done under
the Trade Description Act. I can’t recall the
last time a record put so much strain on my
sub-woofer. Despite the presence of Nine
Inch Nails and Guns N’ Roses axeman
Robin Finck, the guitars seem less prominent
than on Numan’s last few releases and
each track is instead dominated by thick
layers of electronic sound and texture.
The opening salvo, ‘I Am Dust’, features big
GARY NUMAN
Splinter (Songs From
A Broken Mind)
Mortal
The dystopian themes are familiar,
but there’s a fresh sense of vigour
in this sterling set of songs
Gary Numan isn’t one for sitting idle. Aside
from 2011’s ‘Dead Sun Rising’, a cleaning
out of his musical closet comprising of
reworked demos and discarded tracks,
he has spent the best part of the last
decade touring and taking advantage of
renewed interest in his work. If his recent
decision to relocate to the United States
closes the most recent chapter of his
remarkable career, then ‘Splinter (Songs
From A Broken Mind)’ offers an exciting
glimpse of where he may go next.
At first, it doesn’t seem radically different
from the direction he’s pursued since the
excellent ‘Pure’ album in 2000 – dark
and heavy industrial goth rock, delivered
via a seemingly limitless number of floorquaking, guttural synth riffs. But ‘Splinter’ is
almost certainly Numan’s most consistently
excellent collection of new songs for
some time. Indeed, I’d stick my neck out
and say it lacks a single duff track.
Sonically, Ade Fenton’s production is dense
and yet surprisingly uncluttered, all sinew
and bone, and achieved by the simple
combination of a few classic raw ingredients
slashes of bass-heavy synth, punctuated with
that unique voice, all adenoidal half-spoken
verses followed by a piercing chorus; a
curious mixture of agonised howling and a
defiant call to arms. Then again, he’s always
been blessed with the uncanny ability to
deliver an anthem – the sort of thing that
marked him out from his arty, experimental
peers early on and turned him into electronic
music’s first superstar. Numan remains a
rocker at heart. There is enough here to get
fists and hearts pumping in equal measure.
Only a handful of electronic artists can
actually make music worthy of stadiums, and
tracks like the sinister industrial blast that is
‘Here In The Black’ and the head-nodding
goth nihilism of the title track remind you
that Numan belongs to that select group.
Some tracks are inevitably stronger than
others. ‘Who Are You’ feels a tad slight,
but maybe only because it’s shoe-horned
between the apocalyptic electro-blues of
‘We’re The Unforgiven’ and the spinetingling final track, ‘My Last Day’, which
is haunting and elegiac, rising and falling
around a simple piano figure. ‘Love Hurt
Bleed’ is a catchy, lively, floor-pounding
belter, despite the gawd-awful title. The
atmospheric ballad ‘Where I Can Never
Be’, with its booming Hans Zimmer-style
drum rolls and faintly Arabic string motif,
bodes well for Numan’s stated intent of
doing more soundtrack work in the future.
As soon as I’d finished listening to ‘Splinter’
for the first time, I had it straight back on
again – and that pretty much says it all.
In any given year, the number of albums
provoking that sort of reaction from me could
be counted on the fingers of an inept sawmill
worker. Openly critical of newer artists who
look at electronic music’s past for inspiration
– thereby missing the point – it is to Numan’s
credit that he has always ploughed his
own furrow, even when it has resulted in
critical and commercial opprobrium.
‘Splinter’ is further proof of this. It’s a gutsy,
vital slab of stone cold electronic dread
that should have artists a third of his age
questioning why they’re making 10th rate
variations of ‘Down In The Park’. It’s easy to
create electronic music that appears ominous
and oppressive, but which is ultimately
soulless, ponderous and drab. This album
might be dark and gloomy, depressive even,
but it’s also full of truly epic songs. Even
if, like me, you consider yourself merely
a casual Numan fan, the songwriting on
‘Splinter’ is so consistently strong you won’t
be able to stop yourself getting sucked in.
Go on, I say, embrace the dark side.
BILL BRUCE
where Marcel Dettmann is concerned, good
wasn’t good enough. We wanted great. We
had, in many ways, been conditioned to
expect great. Where the hell was our great?
Answer: here, on the second album.
Things start awkwardly. His debut had a
couple of clunky transitions, and at first it
sounds as though Dettmann, despite his
DJ prowess, still hasn’t learnt to piece his
tracks together. The ambience of ‘Arise’
leads nicely enough into ‘Throb’, but
when that closes there’s a rather awkward
MARCEL
DETTMANN
Dettmann II
Ostgut Ton
Can the Berghain king shake up the
techno firmament?
As resident DJ at Berlin’s Berghain, the
biggest techno club in the world, Marcel
Dettmann can lay claim to being one of the
genre’s grandest grand pubahs. Yes, it’s rank
hyperbole to suggest that on his shoulders
rests the future of the sound, but it’s also
not entirely untrue. In 2008, his entry in the
Berghain mix series, ’Berghain 02’, was
hailed as something of a manifesto – and
with just cause. Mixing old and new, much
as he does in his sets, the distinctly chiseljawed German wrested techno from the
icy ambience of dub and the cul de sac of
minimal. He did it not by discarding what
had come before – nobody was going to
describe his Berghain stylings as busy, and
it wasn’t like minimal fans ran screaming,
their Richie Hawtin fringes flapping in the
wind – but by building on it. His success
lay in restoring a much-needed boom to
the sound without skimping on the detail.
Two years later came his first proper album.
Rather portentously titled ‘Dettmann I’, it was
a fine debut: a little one-dimensional perhaps,
like Dettmann was holding back, but a
decent first effort. Stars out of five? Three.
Marks out 10? Seven. The trouble was that
sound break before ‘Ductil’ begins. In
fact, if it wasn’t for one important factor,
you’d be forgiven for thinking Dettmann
had dropped the ball completely. The
important factor being that ‘Ductil’ is a
tremendous track – a bed of white noise,
a thundering kick drum – and the first clue
that what we have here is a narrative
which gains momentum as the album
progresses. Where ‘Dettmann I’ never quite
developed, moving from one frustratingly
restrained track to the next, ‘Dettman II’
finds its feet and glides through the gears.
What’s more, Dettmann sounds like he’s
relaxing at last, having fun. On ‘Lightworks’,
Detroitian sci-fi chords overlay cavernous
drum work, and so what if ‘Soar’ sounds
a little formulaic – perhaps a nod to his
well-documented old skool leanings –
because it acts as a curtain-raiser to a
truly excellent second half. Beginning with
‘Seduction’, which thanks to Emika’s drifting
vocals sounds like a futuristic reworking
of the ‘Dirty Harry’ theme, it slips into the
stunning one-two of ‘Radar’ and ‘Corridor’:
thick slabs of techno – club bangers, you
might even say – unyielding yet elegant,
bruising but beautiful. As with the rest of
the album, the key to their dual appeal
lies in the low end detail, and it’s this that
makes the set seem to completely inhabit
its space. You think of being enveloped by
electronic music; with a sound this vast, you
seem to be absorbed by it. And even as
‘Aim’ lifts you from the album’s embrace,
you find yourself eager to experience it
again – a quality previously lacking.
‘Dettmann II’ is that rarest of beasts, a
sequel that outstrips the original. Its creator
has made his ‘Bourne Supremacy’. The
Berghain empire has struck back.
ANDREW HOLMES
ALBUM REVIEWS
IRMIN SCHMIDT
VILLA WUNDERBAR
Spoon
A compilation of the Can founder’s
various outputs makes for a
fascinating musical journey
Before he put Can together, Irmin Schmidt
had a burgeoning career as a classical
composer and conductor. When he arrived
in New York in the mid-1960s for a
classical music competition, he encountered
first-hand the febrile experimentation in the
city’s underground music scene. The Velvet
Underground, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, La
Monte Young; Schmidt met them, played
with them, and went back to Germany with
the new ideas that eventually led to Can.
Can was just an experiment in Schmidt’s
eyes, a series of musical ideas and
concepts being played out in what looked
like a rock band, but was really a vehicle
for spontaneous composition by a motley
collection of maverick talents. They
scored quite a few TV shows and movies
during their existence, and Schmidt has
carried on composing for the screen since
the band’s demise, his output quickly
outweighing the work he did with Can (in
numbers anyway). He has enjoyed a long
association with Wim Wenders – and it’s
Wenders who curates much of the film
music on this collection. His anecdote in the
liner notes about how he first encountered
the group at a late night and typically
impromptu recording session, where
they knocked out the score for his howlow-can-you-go budget film ‘Alice In Den
Städten’, is a vivid account of a young,
skint and starstruck film maker witnessing
Can magic unfolding before his eyes.
As Wim Wenders says: “You have
learned everything from this man, whether
you’re called Tricky or King Crimson or
Radiohead, Sonic Youth or Joy Division,
Brian Eno or David Bowie or even
Portishead.” Few of them would disagree.
Another of Schmidt’s important
collaborators is Duncan Fallowell, lyricist
for many of the pieces here. Fallowell
is an English writer, a one-time Melody
Maker hack and one-time rock critic
of The Spectator. When Damo Suzuki
suddenly quit Can in 1973, Fallowell
MARK ROLAND
was offered the job. He turned it down
for a life of louche decadence, if his
outré literary fiction and travel writing is
to be taken at anything like face value,
and his input lends many of these tracks
an attractive literary decadence. This is
especially true of the opener, ‘Dreambite’,
which features Fallowell complaining
amusingly about being frozen out of
what might be a menage-a-trois.
For a disparate grab bag of work that
covers soundtracks, solo outings and
a couple of previously unreleased Can
remixes – ‘Last Night Sleep’ and ‘Alice’ –
this double CD is a surprisingly coherent
and enjoyable experience. There are many
great moments, several of them coming
out of the juxtaposition of styles that not
only happen between tracks, but within
them too. Only a musical mind as widely
travelled and rigorously trained could come
up with the lush stringed and operatic
‘Fuschia’s Song – Rainbow Party’ (from
his ‘Gormenghast’ opera project, with a
libretto by Fallowell) and then plunge the
same female voice into a proto drum ’n’
bass duet which includes a full orchestra
(‘Ensemble – Joy’), and get away with it.
There’s a sizeable sense of humour at play
here too, from the collection’s title track, its
bossa nova inversion an exercise in laidback easy listening, to the Kurt Weill-esque
‘Le Weekend’, but Schmidt’s breadth as a
composer is further evidenced by his ability
to create 11 minutes of cinematic tension
with the taut ‘Burning Straw In The Sky’.
than to say that it must be something to
do with context, but here it’s much more
dramatic, more weighty, and it really does
set the mood perfectly for what follows.
Many of the tracks here are about loss
and the heartache that comes with it, but
there are always glimmers of hope too,
little red glows in the embers that you feel
could suddenly spark up at any moment.
‘Machines’, for instance, which is not
how you might imagine from the title. It’s
got nothing to do with mechanisation or
technology. Like pretty much everything here,
POLLY
SCATTERGOOD
Arrows
Mute
Dangerously catchy pop songs
and a hefty dollop of heartache
I’ve been in two minds about Polly
Scattergood. Her ‘Wanderlust’ single is
one of my favourite records of the year.
I love the the big, sweeping, swelling
synths and the way they give the track a
swaying, rolling, ship-at-sea motion. I also
love the clever video, which builds and
builds through a series of increasingly
entertaining recursive sequences. I wasn’t
crazy about Polly’s version of ‘The Look
Of Love’ on Martyn Ware’s new BEF
album, though. I haven’t been crazy about
‘Cocoon’, the follow-up to ‘Wanderlust’,
either. It just seemed to be a bit of a nothing
song and a strange choice for a single.
‘Cocoon’, as it goes, is the opening track of
‘Arrows’. And here’s a weird thing. The first
time I played the album, I got to the end of
the third track, ‘Machines’, more of which
shortly, and I found myself wanting to go
back to the beginning of the record to hear
‘Cocoon’ again. So that’s what I did. And the
second time I got to the end of ‘Machines’, I
felt compelled to go back yet again. Because
‘Cocoon’, while I’m still not convinced that
it stands up as a single, is a fantastic way
to start ‘Arrows’. I can’t explain this, other
this is a deeply personal song. As the strings
pile in and Polly sings of walking away
from the source of her hurt, her declaration
that “We are not machines / There is blood
beneath our skin” feels like a victory, and
actually quite a significant one. At other
points, most notably with ‘Miss You’ – a
piano, a voice and, er, that’s it – and ‘I’ve
Got A Heart’, her voice quivers and cracks,
and it sounds like she’s going to fall apart
at any moment. ‘I’ve Got A Heart’, the
closing track, is extremely poignant, almost
desperately so. Honestly, you’d have to
be made of iron not to be moved by it.
‘Disco Damaged Kid’, ‘Subsequently
Lost’ and ‘Wanderlust’, by contrast, are
swirly pop tunes, although that’s not to
say there aren’t little sprinkles of lyrical
angst in there too. The first two of these
are dangerously catchy and I’m sure I’ll
never tire of ‘Wanderlust’, especially the
bit where Polly stops singing and suddenly
says, apropos of nothing as far as I can tell,
“In the background, on the battlefield, I can
hear a synthesiser and I can hear drums…”.
Her voice, so vulnerable in the downbeat
songs, is strong and powerful when it
needs to be, and that’s especially true on
‘Colours Colliding’, which comes across as
a centrepiece for the whole album. It’s epic
and cinematic and thoroughly absorbing.
The music makes my heart soar and the
lyrics – “Where, where do you go from
there / With all your questions and colours
and words shaped like arrows / Turning
from seconds to decades before you know
/ How to just let go” – make my head spin.
I don’t expect ‘Arrows’ is going to be
everyone’s cup of tea. It’s not an easy
listen, it’s raw and emotional and heavy
stuff, and it demands your full attention.
It got mine and I don’t think it’s going to
give it up for a while. I’m not in two minds
about Polly Scattergood anymore. I’m
sold. Completely, utterly, irrevocably.
PUSH
ALBUM REVIEWS
just two singles, appear to have handled
the hype with admirable insouciance.
It’s probable that their label would have
preferred their debut album to have been
released closer to the year’s first quarter
than to its fourth, worried that they were
not alone in detecting the whiff of missed
opportunities in the air. After all, the band
have now released four singles and none
of them have penetrated the Top 40.
Chvrches have not bought into myth making,
either. The two male members, Iain Cook and
Martin Doherty, have not tried to mask their
CHVRCHES
The Bones Of What
You Believe
Virgin/Goodbye
The expectations are high, so can
the much vaunted Glaswegian
electropop trio deliver?
The weight of hype squats heavy on many
new acts. Recent pop history is cluttered
with those broken by expectation’s portly
frame. Whither, for example, Clare Maguire
or Spector, both much touted at one time?
Glaswegian electropop trio Chvrches, who
stumbled into 2013 laden with plaudits after
previous careers in a slew of Third Division
indie guitar combos. Similarly, lead singer
Lauren Mayberry has not concocted some
fantastical backstory. Instead, she’s been
quite candid that, like many 20-somethings,
she has struggled to find her feet posteducation. She can be certain that she’s
found her feet with Chvrches, however.
‘The Bones Of What You Believe’ is far
better than most observers dared to hope.
It’s perhaps wise here to emphasise that
Chvrches do not deal in innovative,
barrier-breaking electronic music. Although
they are regularly compared to Com
Truise and Purity Ring, they share only the
former’s fascination with 80s and 90s film
soundtracks and the latter’s pure-voiced
female fronting synth slapping lads band
dynamic. As Cook has admitted, “Purity
Ring are a lot more obscure in terms of their
melodies, whereas we want our melodies
to be upfront and immediate”. Chvrches,
rather hearteningly, are unabashed about
being a pop outfit. Why bury great tunes?
What on earth would be the point of that?
Satisfyingly, there’s almost a surfeit of
sumptuous tuneage here. The current single,
‘The Mother We Share’, with its spastic,
off-beat rhythm and plump clouds of synth,
initially seems to be endowed with the
album’s most comely melody but, several
listens in, other candidates emerge. ‘We Sink
In’, with its bubbling river of electronica,
judicious peppering of expletives and
euphoric chorus, for instance. Or the bristling
homage to Madonna’s ‘Into The Groove’
that is ‘Gun’. Or the wistful, lovelorn haze of
‘Tether’. Or maybe ‘Recover’, a twitchy pop
rush. All are notable, but the real glories are
unfurled towards the album’s close. ‘Science/
Vision’ has a Giorgio Moroder-esque throb
underpinning an almost absurdly epic electro
anthem, ‘Lungs’ deals in luscious r&b-inflected
elegance, and ‘By The Throat’ somehow
manages to overcome an intro that brings
to mind David Christie’s 1982 schlocker,
‘Saddle Up’, to wallow in opulent electronic
melancholia. It’s all quite, quite glorious.
Downsides? Well, there is little in the way
of innovation and there are nods aplenty
to 80s and 90s dance music. Also, two of
the album’s finest songs, ‘Under The Tide’
and ‘You Caught The Light’, do not feature
Mayberry’s crisply emotional voice, but
Doherty’s dull indie-boy groan instead. It’s
an inexplicable, unfathomable decision, one
that might have completely derailed a less
accomplished album. That this misjudgement
is only a minor irritant rather than a ruinous
flaw serves to emphasise that ‘The Bones
Of What You Believe’ is up there with
Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’
as one of the pop albums of the year.
PAUL CONNOLLY
finding their niche at Paul Oakenfold’s Land
Of Oz club at Heaven in London, where
they provided the perfect head music and
ambience for coming down clubbers.
THE ORB
History Of The Future
Island
A bumper box set to celebrate 25
years of Dr Alex Paterson grooving,
noodling and bamboozling
The contents of The Orb’s ‘A History Of
The Future’ are something to behold.
There are four discs – one of singles, one
of remixes and rarities, another featuring
live performances from Copenhagen and
Woodstock, and finally a DVD of promo
videos and live snippets. It’s a luxurious
collection and a varied assortment of treats.
It’s nice just to take a moment to run your
eyes over the tracklisting and let anticipation
build, before the audible devouring begins.
This astounding body of work, concentrating
on their first two decades, is being released
to celebrate The Orb’s silver jubilee. Dr
Alex Paterson has been the one constant
throughout the years of an ever changing
line-up. Thrash (Kris Weston) and Thomas
Fehlmann have been his principal partners,
with The KLF’s Jimmy Cauty and Killing Joker
Youth (Martin Glover) also playing key roles.
Noted as the inventors of ambient house
and part of what Simon Reynolds called the
“white punks on E generation”, Paterson likes
to think of The Orb as “a reggae-influenced
house band who try to expand ideas of
rhythm and sound”. Coming out of the late
80s, ecstasy fuelled dance music explosion,
they were the pioneers of the chill out room,
The singles disc is an impressive ensemble.
The seminal euphoria and madness starts in
1990 with ‘A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating
Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The
Ultraworld’, a track that was later recorded
for a John Peel session and immediately
became the most requested track in the
show’s history. The epic, blissed out ‘Little
Fluffy Clouds’ follows, with its unforgettable
Ennio Morricone harmonica intro and the
voice of Rickie Lee Jones wistfully reminiscing
about the beautiful Arizona skies of her
childhood. The psychedelic reggae of
‘Perpetual Dawn’, the Jah Wobble bass
saturated ‘Blue Room’ (not the original 40
minute version, mind), and the 1997 stomper
‘Toxygene’ are also highlights. ‘Once More’,
with vocals by Aki Omori, and ‘Ghost
Dancing’, featuring the wonderful Nina
Walsh, add further dimensions and textures.
The remixes and rarities CD includes some
astounding remixes by Andrew Weatherall
and Mark Pritchard among others – the
‘Another Live’ mix of ‘Assassin’ is simply
immense – while the material recorded in
Copenhagen and Woodstock provides
some startling live ambient selections and
gives a proper flavour of an Orb gig circa
1993-1994. It seems it would have been
a lot like being on another planet, with
or without the drugs. Each track is like a
trip in itself and they all sound completely
different to the original studio versions. The
DVD disc is fun too. The promo video for
‘Pomme Fritz’ is surreal and ‘Toxygene’,
directed by Ben Stokes, is aptly set in a
lunatic asylum. It also contains two ‘Top
Of The Pops’ appearances, including The
Orb playing chess during their legendary
avant garde performance of ‘Blue Room’.
‘History Of The Future’ is a stunning testament
to the creative work of Alex Paterson and a
sterling way to mark 25 years of The Orb.
An essential anthology of this extraordinary
period, it will delight both hardcore fans
and first time ambient adventurers alike.
VIK SHIRLEY
ALBUM REVIEWS
‘Shulamith’ opens with ‘Chain My Name’,
the second single, an upbeat voltaic tapestry,
with questioning lyrics full of intrigue. At
times, Channy’s ethereal, processed vocals
shape-shifts into what seems to be another
programmed texture. Metallic, high pitched
noises – digital strings and bell-like rhythms
– cut through the bass, and a pleasing array
of beats welcomes you into this intricate
world. ‘Vegas’, which was written in Las
Vegas, manages to sound like a city – a big,
American, sleazy city at that. With a lazy,
downtempo feel, a heavy rolling bassline
POLIÇA
Shulamith
Memphis Industries
A second set of atmospheric
and edgy songs from the highly
acclaimed Minneapolis combo
Poliça are a refreshingly unique entity.
From Minneapolis and originally born
out of Gayngs, Ryan Olson’s sizeable
musical collective, Poliça’s first album
was released to much critical acclaim
last year. Recorded in just two weeks
and lyrically inspired by vocalist Channy
Leaneagh’s marriage breakdown, ‘Give
Up Your Ghost’ created worldwide interest,
resulting in the likes of Bon Iver, the
SXSW Festival and Jay-Z (of all people)
championing them as the New Best Thing.
Originally hand-picked by Olson for the
project, Poliça are Channy Leaneagh, Chris
Bierden on bass, and Drew Christopherson
and Ben Ivascu on drums (two drummers,
always a winner!). Olson, the producer who
doesn’t tour live with the band, contributes
programming and electronic beats. Now
one year on from their debut, this follow-up
album appears on the Memphis Industries
label and is named after women’s rights
activist Shulamith Firestone. An engaging,
arresting and incredibly well produced
record, it’s made up of intensely atmospheric
songs set against a groove-based wall
of digital and handmade sounds.
and warped synth sounds, the dynamics
bring weight to this absolute gem. The
lyrics are slightly edgy and ambiguous, as
always with Poliça, and the hooky chorus
effortlessly hits the spot. Experimental
ambient washes at the end add the perfect
finishing touch to this gleaming track.
The menacing intro of ‘Very Cruel’ takes the
listener somewhere darker and deeper still.
The low, fluid bassline is hypnotic and bright,
audible fireflies dart in and out, like flashes
of feelings or memory. Desire and yearning
run throughout this distorted, opaque
synthetic dream. The repeated words “You’re
so, you’re so” bring to mind some kind of
twisted ‘You’re So Vain’. ‘Tiff’, which was the
first track released from the album earlier this
year (accompanied by an extremely violent
and controversial video), is truly captivating,
a dense ocean awash with melody. Featuring
Justin Vernon from Bon Iver, it’s easy to
see why they selected this as a single. It
is wholly mesmerising and draws you into
the illuminating shadow that is Poliça.
Infectious and impossible to pigeonhole,
the haunting heaviness of ‘Shulamith’ will
resonate through the soul of anyone with
a pulse. The band’s compelling sound,
combined with Channy Leaneagh’s
distinctive vocals and enigmatic lyrics,
ignite both interest and passion. Poliça
stand out for their rare ability to both
soothe and unsettle, and successfully
find a place right under your skin.
VIK SHIRLEY
BOOM BOOM
SATELLITES
Embrace
JPU
A welcome return for the Japanese
electronic rock monsters
Boom Boom Satellites are back! The
Japanese metal-beat mechanics whose late
90s releases on R&S made a considerable
splash around these parts actually never
went away, though. They just became
huge in Japan and stayed there. Most Euro
listeners would likely have lost transmissions
from this particular satellite around 2001’s
‘Umbra’, which featured a collaboration with
Public Enemy’s Chuck D and was, along
with the the likes of ‘Brand New Battering
Ram’, an excursion into wild jazz anger
hacked with electronic power and hard
rock. Now, however, the small Japanophile
UK label JPU has picked up what is the
eighth BBS studio album, ‘Embrace’.
So what’s happened in the interim? ‘Umbra’
was a chaotic and uncompromising album.
It gave no quarter in its sharp collisions of
metal and electronics. Its cut-up structures
seemed like a reassembly of sounds
motivated by rage. Twelve years on and
‘Embrace’ shows a distinct softening of that
iron in the soul. It’s still dark and in some
turmoil, but there’s a new emphasis on
melody and vocals. Beat-wise, there are less
pyrotechnic displays of virtuosity. In fact,
the album often references what are now
traditional dancefloor beats, especially in
‘Broken Mirror’, with its four-to-the-floor verses
and regular outbreaks of Nine Inch Nails
metal, and ‘Snow’, which is a huge room
tune in the key of “epic” with conspicuous
house hats on every offbeat. It’s a hybrid
of early acid house, hard rock and an
Underworld-esque air-puncher, the sort of
tune that has opening ceremony attenders
wiping away a tear while feeling Olympian.
Boom Boom Satellites have honed their sound
for their audience and that audience is now
very big indeed, so the sonic motivation has
been externalised and written large. This is
massive tuneage designed to hit hard in a
mega-venue and take the packed crowd on
an emotional journey. You could say that
the likes of Coldplay do much the same,
and it’s what Oasis did, and it’s what Nine
Inch Nails do. And Muse. And Numan.
What we have now with BBS is an intense
electronic music stadium rock experience,
but one which swerves out of control more
often than most, like when ‘Disconnected’
piles all manner of moaning guitars and
screamed vocals onto the breakneck beat,
only to suddenly implode into a beautiful
piano interlude which lasts just a few bars.
Possibly the most interesting track here
is ‘Things Will Never be The Same’,
an instrumental that chugs along at a
relatively sluggish bpm and leans on
some of that 1970s Fripp/Eno guitar
texture, and at one point starts to come
on a bit My Bloody Valentine. It serves a
reminder of Boom Boom Satellites’ ability
to create thrilling soundscapes out of
uncarved blocks of noise. It also shows
that, despite all the crowd pleasing of
the big tunes (the title track is virtually
a ballad whose climb into widescreen
grandeur is so over-the-top it’s almost
comical), the dark intensity which always
made the group so compelling is intact.
HEIDEGGER SMITH
FRONT LINE
ASSEMBLY
Echogenetic
Dependent
The electro-inductrial pioneers
flirt with dubstep and deliver
their best album in years
Front Line Assembly first emerged from the
improbably busy and influential Canadian
wing of the electro-industrial 80s music
scene, alongside Skinny Puppy, whose
gnarled, dystopian approach to synths and
microphone they shared – FLA founder Bill
Leeb had once been a member of Skinny
Puppy himself. Back in the late 80s, there
was still an impressive, angst-ridden air
about such groups, as if, like the emissaries
sent back from the future in ‘The Terminator’
series, they were warning of some machinedriven catastrophe to occur around the year
1997. There was a paradox about FLA
and their ilk – they embraced electronics
far more enthusiastically than the majority
of their still nervously hidebound trad rock
and Luddite contemporaries, and yet their
music seemed to describe and foretell a
terrible tussle between man and machine.
Front Line Assembly felt ahead of their
time but, as is sometimes the fate of such
groups, they only gained major success in
the wake of those who came after them –
Nine Inch Nails, Amon Tobin and so forth.
There’s also a danger, as the decades pass
and electronica develops, of going from a
phase of being ahead of your time to being
conspicuously date stamped. Certainly,
Leeb’s lyrical approach, delivered as if
the mic is wrapped in gauze, is familiar
to old fans. “I feel the sadness / I feel the
madness,” he typically declares on the title
track of this album. The difference today is
that Leeb’s anxieties are not those of angry
youth, but those of middle age as the flesh
decays. However, ably assisted by long-time
producer and engineer Greg Reely, FLA have
admirably succeeded here in overhauling
and upgrading their fabric, incorporating
new elements in a way that doesn’t feel
embarrassing or bandwagon jumping.
The variety of the backdrop of ‘Echogenetic’
is huge – the charred dubscapes of
‘Heartquake’, the Young Gods-like epic
clambering of ‘Resonance’, the tobogganing
sequencer overdrive of ‘Blood’. But it’s the
piledriving, juddering, maxi-bass dubstep
component that’s most striking on the album,
on ‘Levelled’ and ‘Killing Grounds’ in
particular. ‘Echogenetic’ tells dubstep things
about itself and its potential that it didn’t
previously know, synthesising it with the
electric visions of decades past, harnessing
its sometimes aimless and oppressively
arbitrary energy. Much of the brilliance of
‘Echogenetic’ is revealed in the rhythmical
moorings, in the whiplash, ectoplasmic
beat of “Exhale”, or the colossal pillars
of “Prototype”, a veritable bass index –
coiling, mutating, engorging, redounding.
It’s the 21st century and Front Line
Assembly are here. They did warn you.
DAVID STUBBS
ALBUM REVIEWS
odd given that Willner is back to creating
and arranging alone, and the trademark
white album covers have been swapped
to “hermetic black”. Yet there’s a sense of
self-awareness, an undercurrent of reviewing
the space that The Field previously occupied,
and of forging a path to the future for the
benefit of both the artist and the listener.
In this sense, perhaps we are rewarded
with a more revealing self-portrait.
THE FIELD
Cupid’s Head
Kompakt
Another change of tack for
Sweden’s Alex Willner –
with remarkable results
“When I started to work on ‘Cupid’s Head’,
it was quite awkward,” says Axel Willner,
aka The Field. “I felt that I had nothing to
put into a new album, plus I was listening
to more slow jams – ambient and drones
– so it all felt a bit off-kilter initially.”
Axel Willner has been swathed in critical
accolades since his 2007 debut release as
The Field, ‘From Here We Go Sublime’, which
sliced minute sections of well-known pop
songs and stretched them out over 10-minute
expanses, sluiced with percussive loops
and a haze of soft techno. The follow-up,
‘Yesterday And Today’, adopted a different
approach, with unlikely punk enthusiast
Willner limiting the use of laptops in favour
of real instruments, while the conspicuous
guitar riffs and tribal rhythms of 2011’s
‘Looping State Of Mind’, exemplified in the
percussive glory of ‘It’s Up There’, developed
the organic feel further. It appeared that
Willner had at last found a home and The
Field was now a collaboration of artists
concocting modernity from the traditional.
And so to ‘Cupid’s Head’. Kompakt
Records claim that this album is “more
open than hermetic”, which sounds a little
The opener, ‘They Won’t See Me’, starts
with a reflective guitar riff that suggests
a strong connection to previous albums.
Thereafter, it becomes apparent that this
is generational baton passing rather than
any attempt to set the tone for the six tracks
on ‘Cupid’s Head’. Loops of electronica
appear to a greater degree here, the latter
half of ‘They Won’t See Me’, for example,
becoming a saturating atmosphere of shuttling
percussion, opaque church organ chords and
incorporeal vocals. It’s difficult to describe
it as anything other than magnificent.
‘No. No…’ is said to have shaped this
album, the micro vocal sample that grounds
the track no doubt a safe haven from which
to overcome artistic awkwardness. The way
Willner uses voices is intriguing. He’s on
record as saying he’s not particularly fond
of the sound of singing, preferring to use the
voice as a programmable instrument, so his
decision to slice vocal samples to singular
note length is a logical one. ‘No. No…’
typifies this approach, although having
fully deconstructed the vocal, the micro is
made macro as the sample is repeated and
echoed to embody a sense of the choral.
Elsewhere, the potent juxtaposition of rolling
ambience and pulsing minimal techno is
superbly enacted by the Cain and Abel of
‘Black Sea’, which having bathed in the
oceans of universal well-being for nearly
seven minutes, unleashes a gloriously
dark, percolating bassline, summoning the
waves of night and the curiosities that lurk
therein. In favour of techno, the album’s
title track presents a suffocating, sweatsoaked rush on a half imagined dance floor,
while ‘A Guided Tour’ keeps the scales
balanced with soft sunlight and revolving
thoughts, lost in the embrace of the there
and then, forgetful of the here and now.
‘Cupid’s Head’ is a remarkable mix of
lamentation and celebration. A strange
sadness exists in this body of work, but
it’s a disconnected, remote sadness, an
acknowledgement of the human condition
rather than a sense of surrendering to it.
The Field borrows from the notion of the
universe, its manifest hugeness expanding
from a singularity, a dot, a virtual nothing.
Applied to music, the snippets of samples
become precursors to the vast expanses
of subtly beautiful sounds that emerge.
Axel Willner has returned with the intimate
portrait of a man contemplating all that
has gone before. The party muted, the
intensity of his exploration of mortality
creates a truly visceral sense of the grand.
‘Cupid’s Head’ is excellent.
VADER EVADER
PETER VAN
HOESEN
Life Performance
Tresor
One of techno’s finest follows last
year’s tremendous ‘Perceiver’ with…
well, with something different
Three or four listens into ‘Life Performance’,
having belatedly read the press release
and taken note of the title in an altogether
new light, the penny finally drops. The
reason this sounds so unlike previous Peter
Van Hoesen incarnations – or, rather, the
reason this sounds like a steroid-injected
version of previous Van Hoesen incarnations
– is that it’s a live album. A live album
on Tresor, no less, with all the attendant
muscularity implied by the association. In
short, Peter Van Hoesen is here to rock.
He joins us with two superb long players and
a reputation under his belt. Busy releasing
experimental works as Object and Vanno
since 1993, it wasn’t until 2010 that Van
Hoesen started to blip a little more urgently
on the radar. That year’s ‘Entropic City’
album saw his emergence into a world that
was hailing new techno heroes in Marcel
Dettmann, Actress, Ben Klock and Shed,
and still had room for more. It made the
Belgian a 10-year overnight sensation,
propelling him into the big leagues.
‘Entropic City’ and its follow-up, last
year’s ‘Perceiver’, followed similar routes.
Betraying his background in abstract
electronica and sound design, Van Hoesen
began by deploying spacious incorporeal
sounds, building them into a journey to the
dancefloor, the bpms rising from practically
zero right the way up to headnod. Along
the way, he showed an exceptional
command of bass and a superb line in sonic
manipulation. It’s unbelievable that people
still wring their hands over the viability
of techno in the long playing format, but
they do, and Van Hoesen was proving
himself a master of the form. These were
not so much albums as techno feasts.
So. A live album. Recorded at Tresor – the
club – in July of this year. The first thing to
say is that this is all new material. Second,
it’s a heads down experience. After a
brief bit of scene setting, the Tresor crowd
are given what a Tresor crowd wants:
a stripped-down banging affair. In fact,
what ‘Life Performance’ most resembles is
a DJ set, seeding ideas with the opening
‘Hyperion’, then bedding listeners in with
the early section and building the tension
before a hoped-for onslaught of fireworks.
In terms of making you wish you were there
with the crowd in the club, it’s peerless.
However, as the tracks transition into one
another, the album’s limitations are revealed.
It resembles a DJ set, but isn’t one. And thus
it loses the sense of change and evolution
that’s key to the DJ experience. The constant
kick drum, no doubt thrilling in the darkness
of Tresor, becomes enslaving when pressed
into album duty, and while Van Hoesen
rightly aims for a feeling of an overall
journey, without a little light and shade in
the individual tracks, the effect is muddy.
It’s also sad to report that things never quite
get to the firework stage, the darkness and
edge of ‘Deceive/Perform’ proving to be
something of a false dawn in that regard.
A complement to the work of Van Hoesen,
then, is what you can say about this,
rather than a full course. You really
had to be there, in other words.
ANDREW HOLMES
NYPC
NYPC
The Numbers
A fresh start for the onetime Pony Clubbers – and
it’s largely to the good
It’s tough to escape the “new rave” label that
so many unsuspecting artists fell into during
the mid-2000s. While some embraced the
genre by turning up to gigs with glowsticks
and neon vests they’d nicked from building
sites, others were branded new rave simply for
having fast-ish beats and a Moog. That’s what
happened to NYPC – and it’s stuck with them
ever since. A bit like falling into quicksand,
whether you sink or struggle, not many have
made it out of new rave alive. At least the
steady and powerful movements of their
new album show that NYPC are strugglers.
They’re doing a damn good job of it too.
Previously going by the name New Young
Pony Club, they’re now trading under the
NYPC acronym that most people used
when talking about them anyway. With
this scaled back guise, they’re also scaling
back on almost everything else. Now a duo
consisting of vocalist Tahita Bulma and multiinstrumentalist Andy Spence, they’ve gone to
the effort of creating an album that sounds
just like that – an album that’s completely the
work of two people. They make the stripped
down line-up work really well, focusing on
melody and grooves rather than spending
time filling every nook and cranny with noise.
ALBUM REVIEWS
‘Sure As The Sun’ and ‘L.O.V.E.’ show
this off wonderfully. Both share the sort of
big, beefy basslines that would put hair on
your chest and Bulma’s emotive and fairly
nonsensical vocals, but the other elements
feel finely selected. Bespoke bells, whistles
and handclaps colour ‘L.O.V.E.’, giving it the
feeling of distant loneliness that I do actually
often associate with love, but that might be just
me. The weird clicks peppering ‘Sure As The
Sun’ work hard to make it danceable, with
siren wails and little bursts of sampled vocals
rounding out the mix. These songs are simpler
than you’d expect if you’re familiar with
NYPC’s first two albums, ‘Fantastic Playroom’
and ‘The Optimism’, but their dance-punk
heart still beats, if a little slow at times.
At only one point does ‘NYPC’ flirt with
becoming languid, though. ‘Play Hard’ sounds
very similar to every song by The XX, a feat
made possible by every XX song sounding
exactly the same. Based around an incredibly
minimal 808 beat and standard guitar lines,
at first it seems like they’ve stripped away too
much. Luckily, Bulma’s vocals cut through this
drowsy haze like a bloody katana and, as
we all know, samurai swords will liven up any
party. She has a brilliant ear for melody and
catches it quickly, being bright and chipper
one moment, drawling the next, and letting
loose a terrific wail when she needs to. I
couldn’t begin to understand the meaning of
her lyrics, which is the story for most of the
material here. They live somewhere between
obscure narrations and nonsense poetry,
but this doesn’t take anything away from the
songs at all. Sometimes mystery is better.
If you’re worried that perhaps NYPC have
lost the bite they had on ‘Fantastic Playroom’
and ‘The Optimism’, there is no need to be
alarmed. They’ve softened their touch overall,
but there are still some tracks on ‘NYPC’
that pack a hell of a wallop. ‘Hard Knocks’
kicks in with deliciously deep oscillations,
building up with fancy drum loops and bell
chimes until it pops. ‘Overtime’ sounds like
something 1970s Kate Bush might have
made if she’d had access to all the equipment
that’s around now. It’s a spotlight for Bulma’s
unique voice to show off, to become the
entire song rather than one part of it, and
Spence’s production work, constructing
the most complicated walls of sound on
the album with her singing, is cracking.
NYPC still keep their rough edges proudly
displayed, don’t trouble yourself about that.
As a way out of the new rave quicksand pit,
NYPC’s newest release is a sturdy jungle
vine hanging above the bog. All they need
to do now is pull themselves up. In the event,
they’ve got out relatively unscathed. Not
once did I feel like they were slipping back
into bad habits and not once did I hear a
cheesy Casio keyboard pre-set making some
ridiculous honking noise. Which is nice.
SAM SMITH
JESSY LANZA
Pull My Hair Back
Hyperdub
Gloriously emotional vocal pop from
the renowned London bass imprint
There must be something in the drinking
water in Hamilton, Ontario, for Jessy
Lanza and Jeremy Greenspan to live so
close together. She’s a classically trained
vocalist, he’s an 808 synth wizard better
known as half of the Junior Boys, and
together they arrange silky r&b signatures
through which Lanza filters her shimmering
voice, like Jessie Ware dipped in liquid
nitrogen. Lanza’s debut album of sleek,
slow tunes might seem like a commercial
move for bass label Hyperdub, but unfolds
as a Detroit techno-edged love letter to
modular synths and fragile emotions. If
Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’ left
you feeling half full, prepare for the best
possible coffee and mints – and one of
the best vocal LPs on Hyperdub to date.
Anyone who caught Lanza on Ikonika’s
‘Beach Mode’ will know how well she can
sing to the chunkiest of backing tracks and
Greenspan meets her with a stripped-back
sound after his melodic indulgences with
Junior Boys. Not wishing to tread on her
range, he supplies crisp, minimal beats
and delicate hi-hats, but enough oomph
to guarantee some daytime radio play.
‘Keep Moving’ takes chattering 80s funk
and edges it from the ‘Airwolf’ credits to
falsetto pop, complete with piano, guitar licks
and Lanza’s tales of dancefloor seduction.
‘Giddy’ wraps fluttering pads around warm,
bubbling bass and diced-up, high-pitched
vocals. Despite the futuristic arrangements
(particularly the bass – this is a legitimate
Hyperdub record), there’s a comforting feel
to the songs. In places, the focus moves from
beats to a more outright cinematic sound,
such as the breathy disco of ‘Against The
Wall’, where the keyboards are tweaked
until they resemble dolphin speak.
There are no shortcuts taken between
Lanza and her co-writer. ‘Kathy Lee’, the
first single from ‘Pull My Hair Back’, is a
bold choice, stacking laser disco synths,
trance pads and a click track into a verseverse-chorus pattern. ‘5785021’ and its
syncopated snares push Lanza’s voice
from its usual edge-of-orgasm territory to
somewhere icier, the queasy, calming blocks
of keyboard echoing labelmate Laurel Halo.
No sooner has it changed shape than it
starts to become rigid again – a mix of
clattering slabs and bass that feels like the
bones of some techno arrangement – and
then the album wrongfoots you with more
mischievous numbers, such as the deep
drone of ‘Fuck Diamond’, which slips into
a 4/4 beat. Clearly there was as much
fun planning these tracks as there was
getting Lanza to hit those high notes.
When heard in its entirety, ‘Pull My Hair
Back’ shows just how well Lanza and
Greenspan balance, and how both have
carefully honed their sound to travel between
the club and the living room. The album
builds to a sublime finale with ‘Strange
Emotion’, where John Carpenter-esque chords
brood behind Lanza’s pleas to her lover: “It’s
one o’clock / Baby, where’ve you been”.
It’s a perfect way to wrap up this emotional
and intelligent collaboration that’s good
for many months’ worth of repeat listens,
proving what a bed of talent Hyperdub is at
the moment. This year alone we’ve had 80s
synth fantasies, dubstep, techno and pumpedup, beat-heavy 8-bit. Now the London label
have pulled off a more poetic sound, one that
shows what happens when machines and
angels go into the studio and concentrate.
GEORGE BASS
GIORGIO
MORODER
E=MC2
Repertoire
A special re-release of the
mustachioed maestro’s
electronic dancefloor classic
Moustache? Check. White jacket with
the sleeves pushed back to reveal
preternaturally hairy arms? Check. Weird
sort of robot innards print T-shirt? Check.
A synthesis of disco, funk and electronic
music that took the pulse of international
pop at the end of the 1970s and came
up with a blueprint for production
techniques for mainstream music for
the 80s? Check. It can only be Giorgio
Moroder, one of electronic music’s least
pretentious pioneers and his 1979 album,
‘E=MC2’, dedicated to Albert Einstein
on the centenary of his birth and now
reissued by those fine folk at Repertoire.
Moroder was never one for making
cerebral music with his machines, despite
the Einstein nod. The Space Lab approach
he left to Kraftwerk, although in 1979
he did also produce Sparks’ ‘No. 1 In
Heaven’ album, which took him a tad
further left of the field than he was usually
found. Moroder was more excited by the
white stilettoed weekend dancers and their
chums who flocked to the pleasure palaces
of the late 70s in the wake of ‘Saturday
ALBUM REVIEWS
The overall mood is evocative of lying in
a meadow on a summer’s day, watching
wisps of cloud drift o’er head. It’s a distinctly
mid-70s, ‘Ommadawn’ vibe, with the title
track and the closing number, ‘There‘s
Always Tomorrow’, featuring guitar work
reminiscent of Mike Oldfield’s double-tracked
vibrato tone. Amidst the push and pull of
Peters’ rippling, looping guitar lines and the
trance-like electronica, there are plenty of
light, airy melodies, all perfectly conducive
to clamping on the headphones, shutting
your eyes, and skimming off across some
Night Fever’ taking disco to the masses
and upturning the rock hegemony. That
explains the multi-layered falsetto vocals.
The album’s major boast, made both at the
time and again now, is that ‘E=MC2’ is the
first ever “live to digital” recording made,
but that isn’t so interesting unless you’re
particularly focused on the nuts and bolts of
music making. But what is truly fascinating
about it, is its energy and its prescience.
The energy is in the hustle of the disco beat
and the super funky synth work, all staccato
chops and bouncing basslines, and in its
playfulness. It’s a pretty joyful collection,
evidenced in the saucy ‘I Wanna Rock You’.
No one rocks anyone to a beat like Giorgio
Moroder, the old goat. The prescience is in
the sound. It positively pulses with signals
caught from the future, an impressive,
glistening clarity in the pre-digital synths,
while pushing the classic Moroder ‘I Feel
Love’ analogue feel into a brand new era.
The best bit of ‘E=MC2’, besides the super
catchy and kitsch opener ‘Baby Blue’ (it
was the single), is the title track, in which
Moroder freestyles through a vocoder.
Well, I say freestyles, it’s more him reading
out the sleeve credits over a robotnik beat,
namechecking the studio, the synths, himself,
the first assistant engineer… It’s my guess
that he’d run out of lyrics and needed to
put this live-to-digital project to bed so he
could get on with his massive to-do list. It’s
wonderfully silly, in a way that no one really
would think of being these days, with the
exception of Daft Punk, who clearly had this
in mind with their Moroder collaboration
on ‘Random Access Memories’.
Well over three decades on, this album
still ranks among Giorgio Moroder’s best
works. Its importance in the development
of electronic pop and dance music
culture is immeasurable. And it’s a
damn funky party record to boot.
MARK ROLAND
ULRICH
SCHNAUSS
& MARK PETERS
Tomorrow Is Another Day
Bureau B
The dreamscaper and the shoegazer
get together for a second volume
of pastoral electronica
There was a time when musical
collaborations required both parties
hunkering down in some detritus covered
recording studio for three weeks solid,
bashing the requisite number of songs
into shape via jamming, sketching and an
inevitable series of bitter disagreements.
Zoom forward to the present day and,
thanks to the gee-whiz of modern
technology, musical collaborators needn’t
even meet to make their contributions.
Now for all I know, Ulrich Schnauss –
established spinner of colourful dreamscapes
– and Mark Peters – of shoegaze outfit
Engineers – spent many hours cooped up
together to forge this album. But somehow
I doubt it. ‘Tomorrow Is Another Day’,
the follow-up to last year’s ‘Underrated
Silence’, feels like it’s been created as
an exercise and at a distance. So rather
than warm and fuzzy, we get precise and
clinical. That isn’t to say it isn’t stunning,
because for the most part it is, but there
is an air of detachment that means it
takes a few listens before it clicks.
astral plain in your mind. ‘Additional Ghosts’
recalls M83’s soundtrack to ‘Oblivion’, but
without the bombast and ubiquitous Hans
Zimmer-esque dustbin lid percussion, while
the delicate ‘Das Volk Hat Keine Seele’
is the sound of travelling with your face
pressed close to a rain-streaked window.
There are times when I can’t help thinking
that it sounds like the hold music you get
when you phone up to complain about
your gas bill, however. In other words,
a form of superior muzak. ‘Inconvenient
Truths’ certainly sails dangerously close
to this. The mood is further broken by
‘Walking With My Eyes Closed’, which
feels outright incongruous, not just because
of the inclusion of lyrics and a vocal, but
because the Pink Floyd-ish title is mirrored by
heavily-effected keyboards and guitar that
verge on Gilmour & Co gone OTT. It’s as
if someone said, “Nice album, but where’s
the single?”. Things thankfully get back on
track with ‘Rosmarine’ and ‘Bound By Lines’,
which return to the pastoral, almost folksy
electronic jaunt of the majority of the record.
‘Tomorrow Is Another Day’ is
largely a success then, but it’s an
album that may require time and
context to be fully appreciated.
BILL BRUCE
VILE ELECTRODES
The Future Through A Lens
Vile Electrodes
The Sussex duo parlay their fetish
imagery and analogue synth sound
into a debut album that delivers
Had Baron Frankenstein spent less time
sewing together assorted cadavers and
focused on stitching together the perfect
electronic pop group, his creation might
have resembled Vile Electrodes. Is that a
bit of Gary Numan sticking out? Surely that
arpeggio came off John Carpenter? A sublime
patchwork of Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode, Soft
Cell, Roxy Music, The Knife… the list goes on.
Vile Electrodes aren’t merely pedalling other
people‘s sounds, though. Instead, they’re
the very epitome of a successful modern
electronic pop band. Growing their reputation
and audience using all the tools of the social
media age, they’ve teased together ‘The
Future Through A Lens’ in bits and pieces
over several years. That they have breathed
freshness into familiar tracks and kept
everything cohesive is a testimony to both their
tireless work ethic and the underlying strength
of their songwriting. The melancholic ‘Deep
Red’ and ‘Proximity’, practically a blueprint
for perfect synthpop, still sound thrilling, even
though neither has undergone radical surgery
since their original versions were posted
online. ‘Empire Of Wolves’, on the other
hand, benefits from a beefier, more techno-ish
production. When Anais Neon does her little
vocal whoops at the end, it’s enough to get the
hairs on the back of your neck creeping up.
The opening cut, the title track, is an
instrumental. Who does that these days?
Who has the balls? Bear in mind we’re
talking about pop music here. What’s more,
it’s probably the best instrumental opener
since Ultravox‘s ‘Astradyne’. It has the sort of
melodic synthesiser string lines and throbbing
bass you thought even synthpop’s progenitors
couldn’t do anymore. When we get to vocals
and lyrics, they range from the softly menacing
to the lip-smackingly erotic, yet Anais Neon’s
mannered, half-spoken twang recalls the biting
electro-poetry of Anne Clark more than the
outrageous leer of Marc Almond. Restraint, in
every sense of the word, seems to be order
of the day. Conversely, ‘After The Flood’, a
beautifully atmospheric, Joy Divison-esque
song, demonstrates how beautiful her voice is
when holding longer, layered, sustained notes.
It’s just a shame it isn‘t unleashed more often.
On ‘The Leopard’, Anais might be role
playing the timid prey yearning to be at the
mercy of a more experienced vamp – “I will
be the centrepiece / Of her sapphic feast”
she demurs over racing electronic drums and
pervsome purring synth lines that the early
Human League would have crawled over
broken glass for. ‘Tore Myself To Pieces’ is
meanwhile the sound of a Eurythmics biopic
directed by Tim Burton and designed by HR
Giger, with the Viles as the leads and some
added sizzle supplied by a Morodor-ish
disco beat. The chiming sequencer sway
and hypnotic nihilism of ‘Nothing’ and the
nagging psycho-technological paranoia of
‘Damaged Software’ are less about computer
love and more an examination of human
frailty in a technology-obsessed society.
There’s finally an album that takes futurist pop
back to its literary roots, to the works of JG
Ballard and Philip K Dick among others.
Could ‘The Future Through A Lens’ do with
a touch more humour, or at least a little light
and shade, a tad less Teutonic straightness?
Undoubtedly, but at least it isn’t trying to be
arch or camp or ironic. After several flawed
high-profile electronic debut albums in recent
years, it’s a relief to hear one that gets pretty
much everything right. The true brilliance of
Vile Electrodes is that they’ve risen above the
herd of synthpop soundalikes and found their
own voice. In other words, they have their
cake and they eat it too. Clever bastards.
BILL BRUCE
ALBUM REVIEWS
Thankfully, the duo’s spirit lived on through
Hammond’s excellent Real Soon label
and following a mere 13-year sabbatical,
two Ultramarine singles popped up in
2011, their first fruit since 1998’s ‘A
User’s Guide’. In the grand scheme of
taking your sweet time, a further two-year
wait for this new album is small beer.
Continuing the rather pleasing current thinking
for firing up olden days kit, Ultramarine have
dusted down their vintage drum machines and
analogue synths and recorded the tracks on
‘This Time Last Year’ as live performances in
ULTRAMARINE
This Time Last Year
Real Soon
It’s been some 15 years since
their last album and we’ve sorely
missed their ambient loveliness
Back in the day, Ultramarine seemed like
something of a best kept secret – albeit one
that their peers, the likes of Björk and Orbital,
did their best to shovel in the direction of
the mainstream by enlisting them as tour
supports across Europe and America. Anyone
revisiting the back catalogue of the Essex duo
(beginners should start with 1992’s critically
acclaimed downtempo opus ‘Every Man
And Woman Is A Star’) will find it hard to
fathom why they didn’t make it Orbital big.
Surprisingly, ‘This Time Last Year’ is their sixth
long playing outing, the other five being
spread evenly across the 90s, which makes
this their first album in a decade and a half.
A decade and a half? What kept you?
Ian Cooper and Paul Hammond’s thing, in
a nutshell, revolves around a fascination for
stacking traditional sounds, either straight up
or sampled and manipulated within an inch of
their lives, against mostly mellow electronica
backdrops. Early doors, some bright
spark called it “folktronica”. Folktronica?
Honestly. Here was a band pushing at the
boundaries, and with an album every other
year for an entire decade, those boundaries
moved at quite the lick. But mud sticks.
Folktronica, right? Take a listen, will you?
their secluded studio in the Essex marshes, the
tracks then getting reworked with all manner
of blips, bleeps, effects and samples getting
in on the act. And what an act. The shimmery
brightness of ‘Sidetracked’ has a slightly
off-centre dubbyness about it, the warm keys
and crisp groove of ‘Passwords’ display
an urgency more usually found in uptempo
housey tunes, and there’s something of the
Steely Dans about the thrum of ‘Sidetracked’,
which comes on like a ghostly castback to the
Robert Wyatt co-writes on ‘United Kingdoms’,
Ultramarine’s eclectic 1993 album.
With adventures of this kind, it’s all too easy
to take your eye off the clock, only to find that
you’ve suddenly crashed through seven, eight,
nine minutes. Not here. Ultramarine are firmly
from the pop school of ambient loveliness and
everything is meticulously trim. Not once do
you feel a track outstays its welcome. More
than once do you wish the locked down
grooves and swaying cornucopia of sounds
would carry on a little longer. The most
indulgent they get, timewise, is the gentle,
deep, bassy swoop of ‘Decoy Point’, which
comes in at a little under six minutes, and
the measured build of the almost floorfilling
closer ‘Imaginary Letters’ at a little over five.
In short, Ultramarine have gone and made
a gloriously warm summer’s day of record,
one you hope it won’t take them 15 years
to follow up. Folktronica? Do me a favour.
NEIL MASON
ANAMANAGUCHI
Endless Fantasy
Alcopop!
Chiptune lunacy from the
’Scott Pilgrim’ computer
game soundtrackers
From Tokyo’s Yellow Magic Orchestra
to Las Vegas’ The Killers, from Chicago
house, through Sheffield bleep techno,
to the east London grime scene, chiptune
has always been flipping everywhere. The
8-bit blips harvested from computer game
consoles of yore, your Ataris, Commodores,
Gameboys and the like, has spawned a
genre that seems to touch almost everything
yet manages to retain its modesty, not to
mention its underground credentials.
New York four-piece Anamanaguchi
popped up on my radar back in 2010
when showing off their own brand of
chiptune punk-pop thanks to the excellently
daft comic-book-brought-to-life flick,
‘Scott Pilgrim Vs The World’. Loved the
film, but the music stopped me fair in
my tracks. Scored by Nigel Godrich,
performed by the likes of Beck, Cornelius
and Kid Koala. So I had to check out the
computer game soundtrack by newbies
Anamanaguchi. One listen, totally hooked.
Strangely, having scored a computer game
for a major film studio, Anamanaguchi found
themselves turning to Kickstarter to fund this,
their second long player (third if you count
and square waveforms render it virtually
timeless. ‘Face To Face’ is catchy in a
slightly annoying, get-out-my-head way and
‘This Side Of Heaven’ already sounds like
a lost synthpop classic. The bouncy ‘Give
It Back’ puts the Silicon Teens to shame.
the ‘Scott Pilgrim’ game soundtrack). They
bagged $277,399 in a month, hitting their
original goal of $50,000 before lunchtime
on the first day. In fact, theirs is the second
most successful music project to be funded by
Kickstarter, pipped only by the ever inventive
Amanda Palmer. So the cash not only paid
for ‘Endless Fantasy’, but allowed much
arsing around. Want to see a slice of pizza
in space? Check out the video for the title
track. Money well pledged if you ask me.
‘Endless Fantasy’ came out Stateside
earlier in the year and now gets its full UK
release thanks to indie pop label Alcopop!
(motto: “Fuckin’ Indie”). Clocking in at
a mammoth 22 tracks, the album takes
a while to warm up and by the end you
feel thoroughly battered with bleeps,
but when it hits the mark… oh boy. The
thrillers include ‘Viridian Genesis’, with its
pumped up chromium tinkles and twinkles
and its frankly preposterous chorus – if
instrumentals have choruses – and the
magnificently bonkers ‘Meow’, which
made me laugh out loud when the ultrahelium “meow meow” refrain kicked in.
But head and shoulders, it’s the hands-in-theair ‘Prom Night’ that’ll leave you drooling.
Anamanaguchi up the ante by chucking in
a vocalist and the whole thing gets lifted
to another level as a result. Anyone who
thinks chiptune is some sort of cheap gag is
so wide of the mark, as one listen to ‘Prom
Night’ will attest. It’s got Daft Punk written
all over it. You try telling me the French
duo aren’t just chiptune with knobs on.
In short, ‘Endless Fantasy’ is all such stupidly
good fun, you’ll need a heart of steel and
dancing shoes of concrete not to enjoy it.
NEIL MASON
The overwhelming vocal trend in the early
80s was to sound like an ambivalent alien or
a sinister robot – honestly, everyone was at
it – and Laugh Clown Laugh are no different.
There are hints of the playfulness of Soft
Cell in the music, and a more charismatic
and distinctive vocal performance would
LAUGH CLOWN
LAUGH
Laugh Clown Laugh
Medical
Obscure early 80s DIY synthpoppers
get a 21st century dusting down
How many great tracks do you reckon
slipped by before the internet arrived to
democratise music and turn every bedroom
recording studio into a proto-record label?
OK, so we’ve also been spared a lot of
self-indulgent, amateurish dreck, but the
fact that it’s now fairly easy to find your
audience, no matter how tiny, has spurred
a lot more DIY synthpoppers to success than
back in the old days, when you needed
30 grand before anyone would consider
you’d made a proper record. Laugh Clown
Laugh are from those old days. Not that
they spent 30 grand on these 10 tracks,
the raw basis of which are essentially
home demos recorded in 1982-83.
The production of ‘Laugh Clown Laugh’
is remarkable, especially considering the
technological limits to home recording
at the time and the comparatively simple
range of synthesisers and drum machines
available to the band. ‘Feel So Young’, the
only track by Laugh Clown Laugh to get
anything approaching a proper release
prior to this album, is the standout. The
dry boom-tish of its Roland TR-66 drum
machine and barely adorned sawtooth
have given the band a better sense of
their own identity. It also doesn’t help that
the vocals and some of the synths have a
fairly casual attitude towards tuning and
pitch. The only other criticism is something
that remains common amongst nascent
bands. Their name is bloody awful.
That said, what passes for amateurish
now was probably intentional then, and
the naivety and lack of polish will provide
a lot of the charm and appeal for many
listeners. Anyone who enjoys the electronic
synth-poetry of Anne Clark’s ‘Hopeless
Cases’ or I Start Counting’s ‘My Translucent
Hands’ debut will find much to like here,
even if it’s considerably more pop and
less experimental. With most tracks barely
scraping three minutes, nothing outstays its
welcome. A few days in an big recording
studio would arguably have taken off the
rough edges, but equally would have
robbed these songs of their cult potential.
A lost gem evoking the golden days
of trench coats, Doc Martens and flat
tops – and worthy of finding a more
fashionable modern audience.
BILL BRUCE
ALBUM REVIEWS
animals, as an entire electronic jungle
chirps and slithers around them.
SCHNEIDER TM
Guitar Sounds
Bureau B
This ain’t rock ’n’ roll, this is
the guitar getting the musique
concrete treatment
Guitars and pianos were, of course, among
the first instruments to be combined with
electricity to create completely unheard
of sounds. However, while the keyboard
was to morph ultimately into the ideal
controller for the synthesiser, the purely
tonal qualities of the guitar have arguably
been overshadowed by its role as an “axe”
in the hands of virtuoso rock musicians.
Dirk Dresselhaus’ previous album as
Schneider TM, 2012’s ‘Construction
Sounds’, updated the concept of musique
concrete, creating fresh sounds from the
noises of the building site. For ‘Guitar
Sounds’, Dresselhaus applies the same
philosophy to the plucks, twangs, rumbles,
scratches and overtones of the guitar, to
create a unique re-interpretation of the
instrument as a whole. ‘First Of May’,
for instance, sounds like someone putting
The Red House Painters through a mangle
– and I mean that with no disrespect to
either artist. It’s just surprisingly refreshing
to hear relatively familiar techniques
going off in unexpected directions. My
favourite track is ‘Elefantenhaut’, which
is punctuated by percussive booms,
reminiscent of the stomping of large
‘Guitar Sounds’ is a cerebral listen, then,
rather than an album to get the party started.
If I had to make comparisons, I’d offer up the
likes of Spacemen 3, Mogwai, soundtrack
composer Cliff Martinez, and even the later
Talk Talk albums, particularly ‘Laughing
Stock’, where the atonality of an instrument
is every bit as important as melody in
contributing to the overall mood. So it’s all
about the atmosphere rather than rocking out,
with every potential sonic avenue pursued,
from the percussive whomps that come from
tapping on the quietly humming electric
body to long sustained drones. It’s a largely
improvised work, created in the moment, with
the addition of effects on tracks like ‘Teilhard’
creating loops that crash like waves.
For Dresselhaus, the guitar is his primary
focus but, as the title of this album suggests,
he’s more interested in exploring the
variety of organic tones and textures of
the instrument than noodling away on
interminable solos. It’s nice to be reminded
from time to time that the guitar is every bit
an electronic instrument in its own right, even
if this potential is often sadly neglected by
the mainstream. Maybe if more guitarists
came to the instrument via Link Wray rather
than Jimi Hendrix, the history of rock music
would have been a whole other story.
BILL BRUCE
MAX + MARA
Less Ness
Dark Entries
It’s ominous and it’s menacing,
but it’s pretty damn glorious
You could file most of the releases so far
from Dark Entries next to Veronica Vasicka’s
Minimal Wave label. Josh Cheon’s San
Francisco imprint recently celebrated
four years by releasing similarly obscure
electronic music from the 1980s by
Eleven Pond, Dark Day and Nagamatzu.
What all these artists had in common
was an austere but soulful electronic
pulse that reverberated with the restless
discontent of the post-punk period.
So listening to the first analogue hooks
of the opening track of ‘Less Ness’, it
would be easy to think Dark Entries had
uncovered another lost LP. It is, in fact, the
work of two of the most interesting artists
of the new electronic underground – Mara
Barenbaum, aka Group Rhoda, and Max
Brotman from industrial duo Brotman &
Short. And it is the coming together of
the shimmering pop sensibilities of Group
Rhoda and the hard-edged electro funk
of her US collaborator that colours this
album. It’s what a studio session between
Das Ding and Antena might have sounded
like had they met back in the 1980s.
Another synth duo from that golden period of
European electronic music comes to mind on
the opening track. Deux’s minimal pop classic
‘Paris Orly’ could well have been the starting
point for ‘Hands’, albeit channelled through
Section 25’s ‘Looking From A Hilltop’. But
despite these influences, Max + Mara are
in no way weighed down by the past and
‘Less Ness’ is firmly in step with the times.
‘Rest In War’ is an ominous slab of electronic
dub, full of dissent. “In the name of the Lord,
in the name of the Prophet, competition,
entitlement and dominance,” sneers Mara as
analogue shards shatter all around. A similar
darkness runs through ‘Another Cop’, a
paranoid piece of gothic pop whose menace
is countered by the beauty of its synth lines.
Talking about her own Group Rhoda project,
Mara once said: “It is an effort to negate the
sound of safety, control, wastefulness, weak
mirroring, transparent shadowing… and
follow a path reflective of my own fabricated
inner environment and imagination”. And
that could apply as much to ‘Less Ness’
and the space between light and dark that
it inhabits. Just listen to ‘Lake’, where a
children’s day trip eating ice cream becomes
something rather unsettling as Mara asks:
“How far is it to the bottom of that lake?”.
But at least we have the post-Moroder
waves of ‘Concrete Lines’ to save us from
this undercurrent of suburban disquiet
and round off an astounding album of
electronic music for the body and the head.
ANDY THOMAS
from ‘From A Balcony Overlooking The Sea’
on ‘The Soft Wave’, a track so drenched in
whimsy that you needed a change of clothes
after hearing it. However, Georgopoulos
has stripped back the production so much
on ‘More’, it’s hard to work out if we’ve
been handed an unfinished demo by
mistake. The incomplete stop-start of ‘HighHeeled Clouds’, for instance. Think dated
Elvis Costello. ‘Gravity (For Charlemagne
Palestine)’ meanwhile piles up the layers
without reaching the top. It’s no match
for the richness of ‘Pastoral Symphony’,
ARP
More
Smalltown Supersound
Goodbye organic trance,
hello proper songs – but
that’s not a good thing
Alexis ‘ARP’ Georgopoulos’ experimentalism
can be found prowling the catwalks
of Chanel and spilling into the ears of
fashion magazine buyers in the form of
limited edition flexi-discs. It’s an impressive
crossover considering his reliance on the
obtuse. Old cassette decks and pulse
machines, for example. After the organic
trance of his 2010 ARP album, ‘The Soft
Wave’, Georgopoulos enjoyed dalliances
with architects, artists and dancers in
an almost ADHD skittishness. He’s now
planning an album of Moog and violin,
along with a couple of concept sets
focusing on samples and analogue synths.
But first, we have the new ARP set.
For ‘More’, Georgopoulos has picked up a
battered guitar and recorded a collection of
pop songs. Proper songs. It’s more Donovan
than drone. More Simon & Garfunkel even.
The baroque and oh-so-choral ‘A Tiger In The
Hall At Versailles’ will have you reaching for
the 1960s, passing The Polyphonic Spree
on the way, and ‘Light + Sound’ relies on the
simplest building blocks in instrumentation
and melody amid its lulling “da-da-da”-ing.
The album is certainly a sensible progression
the opening cut of ‘The Soft Wave’.
So much here misses a trick. The dreamy
ebb and flow of ‘Daphne & Chloe’ makes
up for its minimal vocal, which is like a
vanilla slice with all the cream sucked out
of it. There are attempts at lo-fi indie pop
with ‘Judy Nylon’ and ‘Persuasion’, the
latter’s vocal-free fuzzes finding melodies
that are missing elsewhere on the album.
The most successful moment is perhaps the
lonesome Hammond organ of ‘More (Blues)’,
but you show me a Hammond that doesn’t
twang your heartstrings until they snap.
Maybe ’More’ is making a statement.
Maybe it’s a pop art piece that belongs
in an installation. But this is the guy that
brought us the cluttered disco of Tussle,
whose psychedelia bridged krautrock and
!!!. Honestly, we deserve something less
forgettable than this. Does ARP stand for
Alexis Ruined Pop? I wish it were that potent.
JOHNNY MOBIUS
ALBUM REVIEWS
Dream U Can Feel’, which has contributions
from bad boy New York rap duo Da
Youngfellaz and rapper/vocalist K-Quick.
‘Supersonic Pulse’ was trailed by one of
the year’s best singles, ‘Take A Look At The
World’, something of a Norwegian electronic
power anthem, having been penned and
performed by Annie (DJ Annie Strand)
alongside production flourishes courtesy
of Røyksopp. It’s a gorgeous electro-disco
travelogue that wouldn’t have sounded out
of place on St Etienne’s last album, but here
signals yet another shift in direction towards
RALPH MYERZ
Supersonic Pulse
Disco Piñata
The Norwegian producer
and his superstar pals mix
electro, funk and hip hop
Having forged a reputation in Los Angeles
as a producer of choice for some of the
biggest names in US rap, most notably
Snoop Dogg, Ralph Myerz (aka Norwgian
Erlend Sellevold) has raided his contacts
book to put together an astonishing list
of contributors – including Snoop, Diana
Ross, Røyksopp and George Clinton – for
his third solo album. Admittedly, some
of this input amounts to little more than
a cameo, for instance Clinton’s suitably
“living legend” intro to the shimmering
funk “love bomb” of ‘Welcome On Board’,
but it is such a melting pot of talent you
can’t help but come away impressed.
With this many collaborators from across
the spectrum of electronica, hip hop, funk
and soul, ‘Supersonic Pulse’ inevitably plays
more like a mixtape than an overarching
musical vision. From track to track, it seems to
jump between Bergen (Myerz’s home town),
New York and Los Angeles. It’s as if Myerz
wouldn’t be confined to one genre and has
decided on using them all. Contrast, for
example, the downtown grit and pounding
beat of ‘So Romantic’, featuring a nononsense vocal from David Banner, with
the laid-back, creamy hip hop groove of ‘A
lush Europop. Myerz succeeds in following
that tough act with ‘Something New’, which
boasts none other than Diana Ross & The
Supremes. Ross’ vocal is more sweet Philly
soul than Motown, but it sounds fantastic
against a bouncing elastic bassline.
It may be no coincidence that the cover
artwork resembles one of the ‘Grand Theft
Auto’ computer games and it’s not hard to
imagine this album as the soundtrack to a
similar nighttime urban-noir fantasy, replete
with gangbangers, cops, clubbers and
fast cars. Having initially gained attention
outside Europe via a contribution to ‘GTA’
back in 2008, the imagery and the tone
seem appropriate in summing up Myerz’s
meteoric rise on both sides of the Atlantic.
BILL BRUCE
HENRIC DE
LA COUR
Mandrills
Progress Productions/Border
Superb retro electronica with a
big dollop of gothy weirdness
It says something for the current quality
of Scandinavian electronica that Henric
de la Cour is seen as little more than
a curious oddity in his native Sweden.
Perhaps it’s his past life in two very fine
but underperforming rock bands, Yvonne
and Strip Music. Maybe it’s his more-goththan-Manson stage personae. It could even
be due to the fact that de la Cour suffers
from cystic fibrosis (the Swedes don’t like
to feel they’re patronising people). But he’s
really not taken at all seriously. Which
is baffling because ‘Mandrills’ is just a
slender mascaraed eyelash away from
being a masterpiece of retro electronica.
And retro it most certainly is. The shadows
of Ultravox, The Cure, OMD, early New
Order, Depeche Mode, even Frankie Goes
To Hollywood all loom large on de la Cour’s
second solo album. The Ultravox shades
are first to flit across the production on the
opening title track, analogue pulses and
chiming bleeps heralding de la Cour’s
sonorous, multi-layered vocal melodies,
which never quite mesh into a satisfying
chorus. ‘Chasing Dark’, however, begins
a run of six peerless songs. Its chunky intro
former Cabaret Volatire man Chris Watson.
brings to mind none other than A Flock Of
Seagulls and its melancholic undertow is
decidedly Mode-esque, the sinuous melody
an early signifier of de la Cour’s prime
strength. On ‘Grenade’, the intro this time a
dead ringer for Visage’s ‘Fade To Grey’ (is
he trying to rehabilitate every maligned 80s
electronic act?), his way with a tune is more
prominent still. He’s so confident in his ability
to mesmerise, he refuses to rush, preferring
instead to unfurl the chorus in slow motion,
like a mighty, transcontinental banner.
But it’s the two subsequent tracks, ‘Hank
Psycho’ and ‘Shark’, that provide the
melodic core of this album. ‘Hank Pyscho’
kicks off with bubbling, urgent, DAF-like
synths, before de la Cour’s voice comes
in, surprisingly light and, whisper it, even
sun-drenched. Then, as the chorus hoves
into view, the vocals change pitch and
suddenly they’re darker, graver, instantly
reminiscent of Bernard Sumner’s dry tones
on New Order’s debut single, ‘Ceremony’.
And ‘Shark’ is, remarkably, almost joyous.
This time, de la Cour’s endlessly malleable
voice sounds like Robert Smith. A lovelorn
duet with his guitarist Susanna Risberg
bouncing along on puppy dog synths,
it’s hugely and immediately addictive.
‘Mandrills’ sounds like it’s buried deep in
early 80s pop, but somehow Henric de la
Cour does manage to clamber over the
corpses of his influences. He may look like
Marilyn Manson’s genuinely deranged
cousin, he may sing of blood, shit, Satan
and doomed love, but his tunes are often
so effortlessly effervescent, his voice so
lovely, it’s impossible to categorise him. The
man’s a one-off. He should be cherished.
PAUL CONNOLLY
At some points, ‘Walk The Distance’ sounds
like melancholic soundtrack snippets from
‘The Wicker Man’. It’s certainly redolent
of that small window in the early 1970s of
post-acid, dark, comedown folk music made
by long-haired psychedelic adventurers
who were getting older and pained by the
failure of their revolution. ‘Led Zeppelin
III’ might be a reference, especially the
folksy wistfulness of ‘Friends’ (which ends
in a synth drone, as all you psyche rock
fans already know) or ‘Gallow’s Pole’. But
CLARA HILL
Walk The Distance
Tapete
German songstress swaps
her Jazzanova roots for
a folktronic future
German singer Clara Hill is jettisoning her
past and taking a fresh look at what she
wants to do with herself in music. Her past
wasn’t half bad, mind. Her records with
Jazzanova’s Sonar Kollectiv label were
some hella slick and brilliantly produced
soul-jazz electro grooves. They were
idiosyncratic enough to mark her work
out from a rather densely packed field of
sophisticated soundtracks for post-club
lovers, a genre unfortunately blighted by
second-rate quasi-Sade coffee table muzak.
Hill’s work always had edgy electronics at
the fore, and the rhythms had interesting
levels of movement and invention and rarely
slacked off, and the vocals… well, the vocals
were gorgeous – multi-layered and powerful
at one moment, frail and heartbreaking
the next. This was music that had one foot
firmly planted in the experimental and the
other in the mainstream. Quite a feat. But
with ‘Walk The Distance’, she’s left Sonar
Kollectiv, ditched the clever jazz chords and
that whole urban, young upwardly mobile
vibe, and embraced an underground, almost
avant garde DIY sound. She’s also found new
collaborators like Schneider TM and Simon
Whetman, a sound artist in the mould of
what Clara Hill has, that Page and Plant
et al didn’t, is 40 years of electronic music
development. Because underpinning this
haunting album and its acoustic guitars
is a constant thrumming of electricity.
Whether it’s in the synths or the sounds
recorded by Simon Whetman, the fabric
of these songs is stretched by subtle
manipulations in the production which
reveal unexpected shapes that you often
don’t hear until the third or fourth listen.
The emphasis remains on melody and on
Hill’s voice, though, which is gentle and
less acrobatic than previously, and is all
the more alluring because of it. ‘Dripsong’,
which stands out for its simple retro drum
machine beat and stabbing cheap keyboard
chords, could have been made by Stereolab.
There are other intimations of leftfield
leanings in ‘Lost Winter’, with its charming
indie guitar strumming and its dramatic
drumming, and the minimalist ‘Konvex’.
What’s that? Why, it’s the sound of a
thousand Clara Hill fans spitting their
coffee across their stylish apartments as
they discover their favourite high-concept
electronic soul singer has stripped off the
gloss and abandoned the fashionable in
favour of the authentic expression of self. It’ll
be fascinating to see what she does next.
HEIDEGGER SMITH
ALBUM REVIEWS
bass grunt and eventual electronic intensity
of ‘Gravity’, voiced by Jana Hunter, while
bigger beats start in earnest with ‘Still On
Fire’. Its trance-like qualities would sound
similar to Ferry Corsten’s ‘Sublime’ were it
not for the rockier inflections. Elsewhere,
psychedelic overtones dominate ‘Candy
Tongue’ and there’s the Turkish flavoured
electro spy drama of ‘Constantinople’, which
has an organ solo aping The Doors. But
while technology merges with guitars, full-on
dance friendliness is pushed off the agenda
in preference to downtempo haziness,
TRENTEMØLLER
Lost
In My Room
Depeche Mode meets Death In
Vegas meets, erm, The Doors
Anders Trentemøller made a name for
himself when he remixed Depeche Mode’s
‘Wrong’ in 2009. He succeeded in not
only stamping his own mark with a far
superior interpretation but, more significantly,
highlighted the then shortcomings in DM’s
production and arrangement department.
Having recently also played support slots
with Basildon’s finest, the scene is now
set for his own work to be recognised.
While primarily known as a dance
producer, Trentemøller’s previous two
albums, ‘The Last Resort’ and ‘Into The
Great Wide Yonder’, showed the Dane
to be highly capable of mixing organic
instrumentation with electronics. ‘Lost’
is a combinational development of its
predecessors, but with a greater emphasis
on songs. This is particularly evident with
his hip cast of guests, including Low, Ghost
Society, Kazu Makino (Blonde Redhead),
The Raveonettes, Jana Hunter (Lower
Dens), Marie Fisker and The Drums.
Positively nocturnal, with smatterings of
Lynchian guitar and mechanised beats, ‘Lost’
begins with the meditative slowcore of ‘The
Dream’, which is fronted by Low. The album
is quickly jolted from this sedate start with the
particularly with the processed chill of ‘Come
Undone’, angelically sung by Kazu Makino,
and the chilling atonal bells of ‘Morphine’.
The mutant jazz of the latter has a distinct
‘Twins Peaks’ meets Nordic noir vibe.
The standouts of ‘Lost’ are much more
rhythm-based, though. The muted synth
trumpets and spacey swirls of ‘Deceive’ are
driven by an incessant drum machine and
the result comes over like Death In Vegas
in Depeche Mode mode. The epic ‘Trails’,
with its conventional bass and guitars,
meanwhile takes a visceral approach that
oozes a sickly, claustrophobic feel, before
the track erupts into a more electronic and
percussive second half. There is certainly no
shortage of ambition here, as proven by the
deviant nine-minute drone ‘n’ bleep fest of
‘Hazed’ and the hidden piano piece after.
Add in the frantic Ghost Society assisted
‘River Of Life’, with its aggressive arpeggios
and raw feedback, and ‘Lost’ is an adventure
in sound that will reward repeated listens
simply because it sounds different with
each play. It will win Anders Trentemøller
plenty of admirers for its rugged, cavernous
production style. And to think that Depeche
Mode’s perfect producer has been sitting
under the band’s noses for over four years.
Trentemøller’s multiple texture blend would
work tremendously well for DM. After all,
he’s pulled it off once already with ‘Wrong’.
CHI MING LAI
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