Yesterday’s vinyl haul! This treasure trove came from Philadelphia’s Noise Pollution Records, which I am pleased to report is more or less my ideal vision of what a record store ought to be like. It’s small and cramped, cluttered with stacks of media, and smells like stale cardboard. It’s also reasonably priced for used vinyl and full of some relatively obscure and underrated masterpieces, although a lot less now that I’ve walked out the door! Lord knows I will be back again to get my fingers dirty. Reissues are well and good for some people, but I like the antiques, and I like the stories that they tell. (Like how “Enter the Angel” has an old price sticker on it that’s crossed out, and it used to be a dollar and change...talk about a “who the hell is John Foxx?” price, hahaha.)
Arguably the greatest tragedy in the history of electronic music is the fact that the legendary Kraftwerk seemingly disappeared by the mid-1980s, just as the world finally seemed ready for the synthesiser sound. Except for the fact that classic lineup member Karl Bartos has blessed up with some excellent solo albums, of course! 2003′s Communication is everything you could want, in terms of being a Kraftwerk album rooted in the Internet age. (Full transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! This time, I’ll be discussing Communication by Karl Bartos, first released in 2003.
Karl Bartos is undoubtedly most famous as one of the members of the classic lineup of Kraftwerk--and that’s the kind of thing you don’t easily live down as a music artist! But, it must be said, Bartos has arguably done a more admirable job trying to than anybody could have expected. In 1991, he released his first new work after leaving Kraftwerk, Esperanto.
Music: “TV”
Esperanto is an album that feels like a dogged effort to do something bigger, better, and more contemporary than Kraftwerk did, but it also feels like it’s constantly in the shadow of Bartos’s Kraftwerk years, and compelled to address it and react to it in various ways. It’s a tension that continued to dominate much of Bartos’s solo work--he comes across as someone who, despite his apparent maltreatment by other people in the group, still wants to believe in at least some of their grand ideas about music, though maybe not all of them. The emphasis on mechanized percussion, blasting synth, and samples and vocoders merging with more traditional singing makes it easy to hear a consonance between Esperanto and Bartos’s earlier work, but the album’s perspective on technology seems much more pessimistic. “TV,” in particular, presents us with a nightmarish, yet familiar world in which people are pacified by overstimulating entertainment, including romanticized imagery of the past. Where Kraftwerk tracks like “Computer Love,” “Europe Endless,” or “The Telephone Call” saw technology as a way to bring people together and help them understand each other, “TV” portrays it as a force to tear people apart and keep them misinformed. Communication is similarly concerned with technology, though it’s much more of a “concept album,” with a clear focus on the titular topic.
Music: “I’m the Message”
Perhaps the most immediately striking quality about Communication is the way that it sounds--there’s a full and unrestrained quality to its hyper-digital instrumentation, which fully embraces the possibilities of music technology that continued to advance outside the walls of Kling Klang. I owned a copy of this album on CD back in the 00s, and much like many recordings from that era are accused of, it was extremely loud and sonically compressed. Many music critics are quick to disdain this era for its so-called “Loudness Wars,” and they might have a point when it comes to music made chiefly with traditional instruments--I don’t listen to that stuff, so I have no opinion. But with Communication, I think this effect actually works, and it adds a lot to the album! It’s insistent, overbearing, and pushed to its limit, in a way that feels like it might be intentional, even if it isn’t.
It makes sense that Communication comes across as overwhelming, because it’s an album about the explosion of information technology happening at the time. The early era of the Internet might seem quaint to us today, but it’s worth remembering that it was still shocking to people at the time, and represented a huge leap forward in technology that affected people’s daily lives very deeply. While a lot of works tackling this subject can come across as a bit simplistic or heavy-handed, Communication skirts a lot of the “put your phone away and play outside” cliches of this genre. “I’m the Message” stands out for the way that it assumes the voice of, well, information itself. Kraftwerk did a number of songs from the perspective of machines, most notably “The Robots,” but “I’m the Message” is both an homage to that style as well as a subversion of it--one that seems to suggest that in the 21st Century, the physical devices that deliver information are less revolutionary than the glut of information itself. “Look at me,” implores the narrator, demanding of our attention in much the way that an onslaught of data might. Likewise, the track’s screeching hook seems designed to force us to listen. Another take on the alluring, yet dangerous attraction of information is to be had on “The Camera.”
Music: “The Camera”
While somewhat similar in its premise, and its heavy use of vocoder to convey the internality of the inanimate, “The Camera” does at least return us to a physical object being personified. The threat presented in “I’m the Message” seems a bit vague--the narrator’s insistence on our attention is ominous, but what consequences it has for us are unclear. “The Camera,” however, is probably the most overtly moralistic track on the album, making it clear that a reliance on staged images of the world around us rots our relationship with reality; hence, the camera becomes one’s “best friend.” It’s a message that’s only more relevant now than it was in 2003, in a world where everything from social media updates to pornography feels increasingly fake and out of touch with what’s real. Other tracks on Communication shift the focus more towards the effects of information overload rather than its mechanism of action, as in “15 Minutes of Fame.”
Music: “15 Minutes of Fame”
In “15 Minutes of Fame,” we hear Bartos’s real voice for a change--and it seems like a nice fit, given the song’s emphasis on human beings rather than machines. However, we are also talking about celebrities, who in this day and age are people who tend to be experienced through mechanical reproduction of their image, thoughts, and actions. Is there not something ironic in the notion of a relatively famous person performing a catchy pop song, all about the short-sighted, petty, and fickle nature of stardom? I think it’s no coincidence that “15 Minutes of Fame” is arguably the most accessible and pop-oriented of any of the tracks on Communication. Despite Bartos’s somewhat deserved reputation as the member of Kraftwerk who brought the most pop sensibility to the group, this album is mostly full of grating, distorted soundscapes that call to mind Radio-Activity above all else. Does “15 Minutes of Fame” represent a genuine rejection of celebrity from Bartos, or is it perhaps an expression of “sour grapes,” that all these decades later he knew he’d come short of being a household name? It’s hard not to think that there isn’t at least a little something personal, or confessional, in this song--and the same is true of its other pop-oriented cut, “Life.”
Music: “Life”
“Life” is arguably even more of a pop song than “15 Minutes of Fame” is, packing an equally memorable hook as well as the more affable subject of a romantic relationship. “15 Minutes of Fame” has a sneering or condescending feel to it, coming across as not only dismissive, but perhaps even legitimately bitter. “Life” has a certain negativity to it, since it is a break-up song, but it also comes at the subject with a certain sense of hope: the narrator is the one leaving the relationship and moving on to greener pastures, and in that sense, it’s somewhat triumphant. Even the fact that the title is “Life” seems suggestive of a glass-half-full approach, and an emphasis on the new life to come and not the losses of the past. However, while it may appear to be a fairly straightforward break-up song on the surface, “Life” also has a hidden meaning which will stand out to some of the more astute fans of Kraftwerk: the break-up can be interpreted as not a romantic one, but rather the one that occurred between Bartos and the rest of the band. There are a few hints to be had, but perhaps the clearest one is the reference to the narrator’s name being forgotten; Kraftwerk frontman Ralf Huetter famously flubbed this in an interview and referred to Karl Bartos as “Klaus.” Ouch!
On the cover of Communication, we encounter some of the most familiar glyphs of everyday life in the modern world: symbols for a pedestrian crosswalk, a public telephone, a handheld camera, and an aeroplane, rendered in the familiar “Swiss style” made popular throughout the world in the Midcentury. Presented in a simple black-and-white colour palette, the cover is almost prosaic in its portrayal of these signs. Two of them, the phone and the camera, are clearly tools of information technology, and hence directly related to the album’s central theme, but the other two, the pedestrian and the plane, relate to transportation, which is not really referenced in the music. While transportation was a major theme in the oeuvre of Kraftwerk, they were most famous for portraying automobiles and locomotives, and the two modes of transportation referenced by Communication are conspicuously absent from anything of Kraftwerk’s. Conversely, the camera gets its own track on this album, as discussed earlier, and “The Telephone Call” was one of the most clearly Bartos-driven compositions to be published under the Kraftwerk name.
While Karl Bartos’s solo career has given us many more new compositions than any of his fellow “music workers” from Kraftwerk, he really hasn’t been that prolific an artist in the grander scheme of things. Since the 2003 release of Communication, he’s only released one additional album, 2013’s Off the Record. It’s probably my overall favourite work of his, moving away from the “concept album” feel of Communication and most Kraftwerk albums, and projecting a more pop-oriented feel without completely abandoning an interest in electrifying experimentation. While I think Off the Record is a masterpiece on its own terms, it still retains a sense that Bartos is continually haunted by his Kraftwerk past, most notably on “Without a Trace of Emotion.”
Music: “Without a Trace of Emotion”
My favourite track on Communication is “Electronic Apeman.” It’s a bit of an oddball, and a track that certainly grew on me with repeated listens. Besides combining elements of the album’s more pop half with a strong sense of the ostentatiously weird, it also stands out for its perspective. “Electronic Apeman” seems uniquely concerned with those who feel left behind by ongoing technological progress--a process that the song insists occurs “while we’re doing other things,” and hence can sneak up on us when we aren’t prepared. Is it an expression of sympathy for others, or perhaps a confession of Bartos’s own feelings about living in a future that even Kraftwerk couldn’t have imagined? That’s everything for today, thanks for listening.
I don’t often devote entire videos to EPs, but in this case it felt like the thing to do. Futurisk were a synth-punk band from Florida, of all places, and in the span of their incredibly brief career, they only produced a single album: the 1982 EP Player Piano. Find out what makes it tick and why it gave this short-lived group a slice of immortality. (Full transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! While I don’t often discuss shorter works like EPs in this format, I’ll be making an exception in the case of Futurisk’s Player Piano, first released in 1982.
The main reason I’ve chosen to highlight Player Piano is that it’s the closest thing to a full-length release that Futurisk ever got to make. They were a remarkably short-lived outfit, defunct by the mid-1980s after releasing only Player Piano in ‘82 and one seven-inch single in 1980.
Music: “What We Have to Have”
The ostensible A-side of Futurisk’s lone single, “What We Have to Have” is perhaps the track that most betrays their obvious influences. Clocking in at exactly two minutes and jumping right into the fray, “What We Have to Have” is a perfect punk song, right down to the way vocalist Jeremy Kolosine skips right over those “H’s” like a smooth stone on a still pond. Despite the perhaps overbearing British influence on their work, Futurisk actually hailed from America--South Florida to be precise. In a lot of ways, it’s perhaps unsurprising that their days numbered so short: both brashly neurotic synth as well as punk *qua* punk were enjoying their brief moments of wider popularity in the early 80s, and those flickers of interest proved even shorter among American audiences. While it’s easy to imagine a more traditional version of “What We Have to Have,” dispensing with the electronics in favour of guitars, the single’s flip side, “Army Now,” is a track that I think really uniquely benefits from its infusion of synthesiser sensibility.
Music: “Army Now”
With a longer runtime and more complex structures and textures, “Army Now” is a work that feels a bit more substantial than “What We Have to Have,” but it retains a lot of the lovably punk aggression and vitriol of the A-side. Though “What We Have to Have” is a bit more bubbly, musically, the two tracks share a certain sense of irony. It’s particularly affecting on “Army Now,” which is almost like a depraved hymn to the horrors of war, sung by a zealous victim of propaganda. As I suggested earlier, I think the use of electronics really pushes this track over the top, reminding us of how increasingly sophisticated technology has resulted in increasingly devastating armed conflicts; its sudden and frightening synth blasts seem to portray missiles whistling in the air and then exploding. But I also can’t neglect the vocals on this track, which seem to grow progressively fractured, almost quavering on later repetitions of its refrain, as though the veil of propaganda is finally shattering for its narrator. With that out of the way, let’s get into how Futurisk expanded upon these ideas for their second and final release, the EP Player Piano.
Music: “Meteoright”
The femme fatale figure at the core of “Meteoright” is implied to be a spy, with her pillow talk overtly compared to “propaganda,” which makes the track feel cut from a similar cloth as “Army Now” in terms of its pervasive Cold War paranoia. But this interpretation is by no means necessary to enjoy “Meteoright.” It, and *Player Piano* as a whole, are arguably geared more towards a synth-pop direction, with less guitar and more emphasis on bright and rather hooky synth lines. While a certain aura of punk attitude still remains here, it’s also quite possible to appreciate “Meteoright” as simply a great minimal synth tune. The “femme fatale” theme seems to have been one Futurisk were somewhat invested in, given that they tackled it once again on another Player Piano track, “Poison Ivy.”
Music: “Poison Ivy”
Despite having a similar theme to “Meteoright,” “Poison Ivy” seems to take it in a fairly different musical direction: where “Meteoright” seeks to dominate our attention with its siren-like synths, “Poison Ivy” is lighter and more playful. While the subject of “Meteoright” comes across as genuinely threatening and ominous, the title character of “Poison Ivy” could be interpreted as simply flirtatious, and only dangerous in a metaphorical and unserious fashion. It’s also worth noting that she’s a named character, albeit with a tongue-in-cheek epithet, whereas the subject of “Meteoright” is never truly given a name. I think this choice makes “Poison Ivy” feel more like ribbing somebody familiar, and “Meteoright” a bit more like describing something eldritch and unknown. While “Poison Ivy” is only a bit over the two-minute mark, it still manages to fit in a rather compelling instrumental bridge, hinting at a level of musicianship in Futurisk that perhaps belies their allegiance to down-and-dirty punk song structures in some of their other work.
Another track that seems to highlight this side of the group is the lone instrumental of Player Piano, and hence their career, “Push Me, Pull You.” With a striking use of ABA form, it feels like the track on the EP with the most ambitions beyond pop.
Music: “Push Me Pull You”
The cover design for Player Piano is fairly minimalistic, featuring a streaking shooting star in a somewhat on-the-nose reference to the aforementioned track “Meteoright.” Above this device, we see the name of the group written in a prototypical “Space Age” typeface, with letters arranged in varying heights against a backdrop of five horizontal lines, perhaps suggestive of musical notation. With its simplistic black-and-orange colour scheme, Player Piano’s cover appropriates Midcentury Modernist graphic design, much like many other underground artists were doing at the time--I’m tempted to compare this one in particular to the iconic art for the Human League’s single “Being Boiled,” which also made heavy use of this lurid, burnished orange colour.
The album’s title is a reference to one of the earliest electro-mechanical musical instruments, the player piano or pianola. Player pianos were essentially pianos that played themselves--they were fed “programming” of music to play on perforated sheets, not unlike early computing punchcards. Peaking in popularity in the 1920s, the player piano was often used as a metaphor for the increasing automation of human life, particularly for the poignancy of how it replaced the creative and interpretive work of a performing musician. I think Futurisk’s use of the term shows a certain self-deprecating sensibility about their use of synthesisers; while music synthesisers of the kind they used are much more complex creative tools than player pianos, there remains a stigma surrounding them as inferior instruments, or tools that remove the human element from the creation of music.
As I mentioned earlier, Futurisk’s career was extremely short, and they never managed to produce any sort of follow-up to Player Piano--not even a 21st Century reunion album, as many rediscovered stars of “minimal synth” would eventually get to do. Futurisk’s musical afterlife began in the year 2010, when an expanded re-release of Player Piano became the twenty-third release on Veronica Vasicka’s influential Minimal Wave record label, which specializes in resurrecting hidden gems of early electronic music. Besides simply being more available and readily accessible, Minimal Wave’s version of the album is essentially a complete compilation of all of Futurisk’s work, including the tracks from their original 7” single as well as some earlier, rougher cuts of the same tracks. Given that this is a band whose entire discography can be taken in in under an hour, I’d recommend listening to this if you’re at all curious about the group. Even though I personally prefer the more polished versions of the songs, the more raw cuts are still extremely interesting for comparison.
Music: “Meteoright” (Early Version)
My personal favourite track on Player Piano is “Lonely Streets.” Earlier, I argued that the EP as a whole seems pushed in more of a synth-pop direction, and I think this track is probably the closest Futurisk ever really came to that ideal. The protagonist of “Lonely Streets” is not quite the femme fatale of “Meteoright” and “Poison Ivy,” but rather a somewhat distant and mysterious figure, admired from afar. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
Depeche Mode’s early work is a bit rough around the edges--or, perhaps, a little too smooth, and syrupy-sweet. But in 1983, they finally put their classic lineup together, adding Alan Wilder to the team for their third LP, Construction Time Again. It’s arguably their first great work, as well as their most political, and the closest they came to fully embracing an “Industrial” sound. (Full transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! In this installment, I’ll be discussing the third album released by Depeche Mode, and the first one to feature their classic lineup: 1983’s Construction Time Again.
While today, Depeche Mode are best known for their string of successes spanning from the mid-80s to the early 90s, the band was first formed in 1981--the first musical project of Vince Clarke, who would go on to more acclaim as a member of synth-pop duos Yazoo and Erasure. Though Clarke left Depeche Mode after their first album, Speak & Spell, their follow-up as a trio, 1982’s A Broken Frame, was largely an attempt to duplicate the brighter and often more upbeat sound of their debut. It wasn’t until the addition of a new fourth member, Alan Wilder, that the group’s more recognizable sound would start to coalesce.
Music: “Get the Balance Right”
The first track to include contributions from Wilder, “Get the Balance Right” is a bit of a “transitional fossil” in the group’s career. It is perhaps the first Depeche Mode single to feel like a “proper” Depeche Mode single, with a gloomy atmosphere, a needling synth riff, and lyrics that describe the struggle to be seen as a respectable member of society. Well, if you listen closely, anyway--it’s also perfectly possible to take the injunction to “get the balance right” as an invitation to dance without missing a beat. At the end of the day, another part of sounding like a classic Depeche Mode tune is achieving that kind of accessibility and broad appeal, winning the admiration of many listeners who are otherwise not typical “Depeche Mode types.” Though “Get the Balance Right” was released as a non-album single, it would largely prefigure the sound of the LP that followed it, Construction Time Again.
Music: “Everything Counts”
Peaking at #6 in the singles charts, “Everything Counts” was swallowed even more readily by mainstream audiences, and would be tied with “See You” as the most successful single the group had released thus far. The 1980s were, of course, an era noted for the brazen advancement of rightism, and the political moves of Margaret Thatcher laid the groundwork for a number of increasingly politically-conscious pop hits. That said, many of the most successful of these opted to portray the lives of the rich and powerful in a glamorous and pseudo-aspirational mode, hiding behind irony in a fashion that made their works appear subversive and inoffensive at the same time. It’s thanks to this kind of double-dipping that we can still hear the Pet Shop Boys’ “Opportunities” in television advertisements. The elegiac “Everything Counts,” however, is not that kind of song. If anything, it might be a bit too on-the-nose for its own good, with its frightful description of “grabbing hands” bearing a closer resemblance to Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax than Madonna’s “Material Girl.” Perhaps there are some occasions in which it’s better to be too direct than not direct enough? That aside though, “Everything Counts” is also a track which is sonically rather similar to “Get the Balance Right.” Other tracks on Construction Time Again would push those boundaries further, such as “Pipeline.”
Music: “Pipeline”
Where “Everything Counts” is more of a top-level critique of capitalism, disparaging the executive who sponsors atrocities “with a suntan and a grin,” “Pipeline” looks at the same sorts of problems from the bottom up, adopting the persona of the worker who is exploited to build the titular pipeline. But this, of course, is far from the most interesting thing to say about “Pipeline”! This track stands out for its anemic soundscape, consisting of little more than a repetitive mechanical hum that functions as a drone, some vaguely melodic metallic tinkling, and, of course, the commanding voice of frontman Dave Gahan. The use of more sophisticated music synthesisers, with the capability of sampling such real-world noise and turning it into music, was one of the biggest innovations instigated by the aforementioned Alan Wilder, and while it textures most tracks on the album to a degree, it’s certainly the most noteworthy on “Pipeline”. I’d also be remiss not to mention the admitted influence of pioneering industrial acts like Einstuerzende Neubauten, who would become Depeche Mode’s labelmates on Mute Records. While there are many diehard rivetheads who will disavow any comparison between Depeche Mode and industrial music proper, their shared DNA is undeniable, and I don’t think the fact that Depeche Mode were able to translate some of these ideas into music that also had mass appeal should be held as some kind of strike against them. As desolate as “Pipeline” may be, something else worth noting about the album is that it isn't without a sense of hope. After being taken through the condemnations of tracks like “Pipeline” and “Everything Counts,” we end on the somewhat reassuring track “...And Then.”
Music: “...And Then”
Like many acts collocated somewhere in the goth or industrial spheres, Depeche Mode are preceded by a reputation of producing “depressing” music. There is some truth to this, of course, but I think what makes Depeche Mode as interesting (and popular) as they are is that there’s usually a glimmer of light in their work somewhere--the crack that lets the light in, to paraphrase the late Leonard Cohen. “...And Then”, with its vision of a better tomorrow created by children who might learn from the mistakes of the past, serves as a light at the end of the tunnel for the entire album, a break in the clouds created by the rest of its tracks. But at the same time, the track is not itself as cheerful as that description might imply--it’s still in a minor key, of course. The lyrics, as well, seem to show cracks of darkness in its prevailing optimism: the suggestion that people of the future couldn’t do any worse than those of the past certainly paints our current world as an especially bleak one, and the notion of “putting it all down and starting again” might be taken to imply an unquiet, perhaps even apocalyptic, end to the current order. Another thing that casts a shadow over “...And Then” is the opening track of the album, and its arguable corresponding bookend, “Love, In Itself.”
Music: “Love, In Itself”
At first listen, “Love, In Itself” seems almost strikingly similar to “...And Then”, at least from a musical standpoint. They have a similar sort of plodding, stately tempo that gives them a kind of dour gravity. Whenever I get one of these songs stuck in my head, it tends to get mixed up into the other along the way. Lyrically, however, the two seem to make opposite arguments: whereas “...And Then” seems to believe in the goodness of humankind and trusts that people in the future will correct our world’s mistakes, “Love, In Itself” can be taken to suggest the opposite, i.e. that “love” and other such positive feelings are not enough to create a better world. But that’s a very contextual reading of the text--outside of the context of the album, “Love, In Itself” seems unrelated to the problems with capitalism, and sounds more like an age-old lament of a dejected lover, swearing off their search for another relationship and proclaiming their disillusionment with the concept of romantic love. It seems likely that this quality may be why “Love, In Itself” was chosen as the album’s second and final single--even though the heavy-handed “Everything Counts” doesn’t seem to have been held back from success by its subject matter.
Perhaps the first thing one notices about the cover of Construction Time Again is its use of colour: the saturated blue of the sky contrasts with the orange-ish skin of the figure, and this pairing of complementary colours does a lot to create visual interest. Besides just looking striking, the sense of dichotomy between figure and background also underscores the idea of man and nature as forces in opposition to one another, who have become mortal foes in the ongoing depredation of the Earth’s resources for short-term human gain. While the worker figure is clearly engaged in the act of swinging his hammer, there is actually nothing in front of him that it seems logical to hit. Rather, a trick of perspective makes it seem that he is knocking on the mountain in the background, perhaps cutting it down to size. This is another element of the idea of man vs. nature, of course, but also perhaps an ironic expression of it, one that implies that in his struggle to conquer the natural world, man is limited in his sight, and doesn’t truly understand what he is doing. After all, the mountain is not really being stricken! It’s also worth noting that the figure is wearing an impractical, and perhaps sexualized, version of work attire, which exposes the side contour of his pectorals as well as the muscles of his upper arms, and adds a subtle eroticism to the image. His face is largely covered, partly by his arm and partly by shadow, which seems to make the image recall other familiar pseudo-anonymous homoerotic portrayals of men under the male gaze, such as those of the graphic artist Tom of Finland. Or perhaps it’s merely a suggestion of the effacement of identity suffered by the exploited worker?
The title “Construction Time Again” is taken from the opening lines of the aforementioned track “Pipeline.” While the announcement of “construction time” points quite directly to the album’s themes of post-industrial capitalist life and the struggle of the working man, I think the most interesting word in the title is actually “again.” The idea that it is construction time again puts emphasis on the constant grind of labour, and its tight grip on the timeframes by which we live our lives. We work again and again and again, tediously, until it wears us down. We get a brief respite from work, but soon enough, our intrusive alarm clocks remind us that it is construction time, again.
While Construction Time Again is, in many ways, the first true Depeche Mode album, it wouldn’t be the one that truly kick-started the peak of their international success. That honour would go to their 1984 follow-up, Some Great Reward. While this album would largely feature similar instrumentation to Construction Time Again, with tinkling samples and metallic percussion, it also mostly abandoned the more intense and overt political themes of its predecessor, in favour of more emphasis on the time-honoured topics of sex and romance--which would, of course, help them become so successful in the mainstream. Still, it seems doubtful they would have ever gotten here if it weren’t for Construction Time Again starting them on the path that it did--after all, their famous hit “People Are People” isn’t too far off from the simple and pointed grievances of “Everything Counts.”
Music: “People Are People”
My personal favourite track on Construction Time Again is “Two Minute Warning.” Another common political topic in music of this era is, of course, the Cold War, and the ever-present fear of a nuclear holocaust. “Two Minute Warning” is a song on this theme that feels like a worthy follow-up to the earlier Depeche Mode tracks that dealt with the same subject, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” and “Leave In Silence,” but it’s got more of a stark, mournful tone suffused with inevitability, and less of the heightened emotional drama of these earlier works. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
By the mid-00s, things weren’t looking quite so great for the Pet Shop Boys, who followed up an ill-conceived album of guitar ballads with a greatest hits compilation and a retrospective documentary. But rather than throwing in the towel as some fans feared, they re-emerged with one of their most daring works yet: the icy and pointedly political Fundamental. (Full transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. This time around, I’m looking at one of the less discussed albums in the Pet Shop Boys catalogue, but the one that’s always been my personal favourite: Fundamental, first released in 2006.
In the early 00s, things were looking surprisingly bleak for the Pet Shop Boys, an act that we tend to think of nowadays as a sort of pop institution. In 2002, they released their first major LP of the 21st Century, entitled Release, and it was, and still is, considered by many to be among their worst efforts. With a strong emphasis on guitar-based ballads, it comes across as a deeply uncharacteristic album from them, and a sort of failed experiment with where their sound could go.
Music: “I Get Along”
In 2004, the Pet Shop Boys followed up Release with a new greatest hits compilation and a documentary looking back on their career, which spurred the fansite rumour mill to assume that after a solid twenty years, the two might finally be calling it quits. But, thankfully for us, they would return in 2006 with Fundamental, an album which felt like a cathartic course correction.
Music: “The Sodom & Gomorrah Show”
Confident and commanding, “The Sodom & Gomorrah Show” was evidently considered for release as a single, but concerns over its provocative title evidently kept it as an album track. This track is a bit like an inversion of the classic Pet Shop Boys hit, “It’s a Sin”--its narrator experiences an awakening of queer consciousness, but here, the occasion is joyful and perhaps even ecstatic, with little trace of guilt or self-doubt. “The Sodom & Gomorrah Show” is probably the most cheerful and uplifting track to be had on Fundamental, which is chiefly in a more downbeat mood, and yet at the same time, it’s not all sunshine and roses. After all, it deliberately invokes the myth of Sodom and Gomorrah, casting a shadow over this gleeful spectacle that suggests the possibility of external condemnation. Musically, it’s worth noting the contributions of producer Trevor Horn, who brings his signature orchestral bombast to this album much as he did for artists like ABC in the 20th Century--not to mention the earlier Pet Shop Boys hit “Left To My Own Devices.” In contrast to the guitar-centric palette of Release, Fundamental strikes a compelling balance between the pomposity of big string and brass sections, as well as the signature synthetic sound of the Pet Shop Boys. Another track that exemplifies this instrumental balancing act is “I’m With Stupid.”
Music: “I’m With Stupid”
“I’m With Stupid” was an actual single, the third to be released from the album, and seems to be at least as solid of a choice. If I were to compare this one to a hit from earlier in the Pet Shop Boys’ career, I’d pick “How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?” from their 1990 album Behaviour, which has a similar disconcerting dissonance between a winsome, catchy pop hook and a sardonic mood with cynical and bitter lyricism. The real irony of this comparison, though, is that the whole point of “Seriously” is how pathetic it appears when pop stars attempt to make grand political statements, and “I’m With Stupid” actually *is* a grand political statement--though it may not seem that way on the surface. While its narrative can be interpreted as a standalone love story, the group’s frontman and lyricist Neil Tennant has made it clear that it’s intended as an allegory for the relationship between UK prime minister Tony Blair and US president George W. Bush, with the former bending to the latter’s political whims, and hence proclaiming, “I’m With Stupid.” The Bush and Blair angle of the song is certainly interesting to think about, but I’m not sure I think it’s really the best part of the song. Put simply, I don’t think I would enjoy it as much if it didn’t also read so well on the surface, as its own sort of dark love story.
And make no mistake--“I’m With Stupid” certainly is a love story. It’s actually one of the few overtly queer romances the Pet Shop Boys have ever written, with its narrator questioning if their partner is “Mr. Right.” Most of their lyrics have historically hidden behind an ambiguously gendered “you,” a gambit that has allowed them to appeal to mainstream audiences in ways few queer artists could dream of, but for whatever reason, “I’m With Stupid” is an exception to that pattern--perhaps simply because there’s not a convenient way to phrase this line in a gender-neutral manner. Putting it all into context, I actually think there may be a sort of unintended consequence to all of this, in that “I’m With Stupid” could be interpreted as using queerness itself as an insult, as though the suggestion of same-gender romance is included as an angle of mockery. Dismissing George Bush as “stupid” was certainly a common low blow of 00s political discourse, and put next to that, an extra scoop of playground mockery based on the ancient custom of calling anything you don’t like “gay” wouldn’t be surprising to hear--though, again, this is obviously entirely unintentional. Overall, Fundamental is by far the most political work the Pet Shop Boys have made to this day. Take, for instance, “Integral.”
Music: “Integral”
Released as the album’s final single, “Integral” was promoted with a music video that prominently featured QR codes, and a large QR code served as the only adornment of the album’s physical single release. While they’re pretty common nowadays, this was actually the first time in my life I can remember ever seeing one, and it certainly had a whiff of the futuristic at the time, even before we knew that this particular prediction would come true. Likewise, the track itself remains a highlight, closing out the album with perhaps its most intense musical moment. “Integral” is anthemic and grandiose, spoken from the mouthpiece of some future authoritarian state. But it’s not necessarily a declaration of their current power, so much as it is the state persuading the listener to submit to their will--it frames the terror of dystopia as something that we need to be worried about now, lest we bring it about through our own action or inaction. Now that Bush and Blair have been out of office for many years, the more overt references to high politics in “I’m With Stupid” might seem a bit outdated, but the do-or-die urgency of “Integral”’s call to resistance is as relevant now as it was in 2006. Another track that I think has transcended its own era is “Luna Park.”
Music: “Luna Park”
While I’ve focused on some of the flashier numbers so far, *Fundamental* shines just as well when it comes to these slower-paced tracks as well. “Luna Park,” much like the album’s lead single “Numb,” is all about the desire to retreat from the problems in the world, tuning out or escaping from the stress of knowledge--a temptation that only grows greater as the 24-hour news cycle and awareness of global-scale problems encroaches upon our daily lives more and more. Much like the lotus-eaters of Greek myth, the inhabitants of Luna Park are distracted by pleasures and diversions, though the lyrics also imply that their ignorance cannot protect them forever. While “luna park” is sometimes used as a generic term for amusement parks, the original park by that name opened in 1903, and it helps give the song a bit of an “old-timey” flair, as though the residents are perhaps trying to retreat to a perceived simpler time in the past--another motif that reverberates in contemporary culture as well.
The unassuming and minimalistic cover of Fundamental is almost entirely black, with a diminutive presence of the band members as their faces look out into the void. It recalls the cover of their very first album, 1986’s Please, on which a claustrophobically cropped image of the pair is centered in a stark sea of white. But here, they gaze out from the side--no longer the center of the pop landscape, but rather aged and cynical bystanders. The world around them has shifted from the innocence and purity of white to the abyssal pessimism suggested instead by black, the colour of death and mourning in the West. The only source of light in the image comes from neon signs that spell out the names of group and album in the other corner; the only light of hope in this landscape is the harsh and artificial light of neon.
Given the political undercurrents of the album, it’s easy to interpret the title of “Fundamental” as a reference to the “fundamentalist” ideologies making waves in the world at the time. It’s also been interpreted as a suggestion that the album’s contents are “fundamental Pet Shop Boys,” a sort of roots-check for the band after the poorly-received wanderings of Release. I’m not sure I could agree that the album’s sound represents their “fundamental” core, however--surely the tinny drum machines of Please at its most low-budget, down-and-out moments reflect that more than the often ostentatious flair provided by Horn and his orchestra. That aside, on tracks like “Psychological,” the album seems interested in probing the innermost instincts of the human mind, and perhaps provides a “fundamental” look at human nature.
After Fundamental, the next major studio LP from the Pet Shop Boys would be 2009’s *Yes.* While Yes contains some very approachable and affably Pet Shop Boys singles such as “Love, Etc.” and “Did You See Me Coming?”, it’s also full of some of the most striking and experimental tracks in the entirety of their catalogue--and certainly by the standards of the work that made it to their mainline LPs. While Fundamental feels more consistent in its blending of the hooky and the esoteric, Yes seems to sift this mixture into two parallel streams, accomplishing both well but rarely attempting both at once.
Music: “Building a Wall”
My favourite track on Fundamental is “Minimal,” which was the album’s second single. What’s not to love about a joyful, but also slick and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, ode to sleek and minimal modern design? While its unique refrain, featuring the spelling of the title letter by letter, is perhaps its most immediately appealing characteristic, what really wins me over here is the track’s bridge, a surprisingly vulnerable and delicate-sounding moment that suggests at least some of the admiration for beauty here may not be entirely ironic. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
The first album Bill Nelson made after departing Be-Bop Deluxe, and the only one to ever bear the moniker of “Bill Nelson’s Red Noise,” 1979′s Sound-On-Sound is a thrilling look at the future, with generous lashings of punk aggression and synthesised frippery. Largely rejected in its time, its acclaim has only grown since. (Full transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! In this installment, we’ll be looking at one of the most remarkable and well-known albums of Bill Nelson’s very long career: Sound-On-Sound, first released in the year 1979.
Sound-On-Sound would be the first work Nelson completed after disbanding Be-Bop Deluxe, the outfit he had fronted for much of the 1970s. Despite their name, Be-Bop Deluxe were, in practice, a rock group, though not without a fair bit of experimentation in the mix, including elements of what we might term progressive rock. The final release from Be-Bop Deluxe, 1978’s Drastic Plastic, is in some ways a bit of a transition point for Nelson’s style, with tracks like “Electrical Language” that hint at how much further he would ultimately take the mild science fiction themes explored during this era.
Music: “Electrical Language”
Reminiscent of Kraftwerk’s “Antenna,” “Electrical Language” deals playfully with the subject of futuristic communication technology, with an atmospheric, almost lulling quality to its slow-paced composition. On Sound-On-Sound, the theme of technology would remain a strong presence, and arguably even the unifying theme of the album as a whole, but this time, Nelson would paint it in a much darker light--not to mention change his musical approach to match.
Music: “Stop / Go / Stop”
In contrast to the levity of “Electrical Language,” Sound-On-Sound tracks like “Stop / Go / Stop” seek to portray a dystopian future for humanity, where the sophisticated technology of the future is used to control, surveil, and brainwash. Setting aside the lyrics, though, the difference in the music is perhaps even more striking. Sound-On-Sound is a veritable sonic assault, more closely related to punk than it is to prog, full of chugging, jagged guitar and egregious, intrusive whirligigs of analogue synthesiser. After leaving Be-Bop Deluxe behind, Bill Nelson decided to avoid entering into another traditional “band” arrangement, choosing to assume full creative control for himself and employ session musicians for the rest. It’s not a stretch to say that he enjoyed pushing the boundaries of doing more or less whatever he wanted on this record, which resonates in its sense of indulgence in the over-the-top.
Perhaps what is most remarkable about “Stop / Go / Stop,” compared to the rest of the album, is its choice of narrative perspective. Rather than portraying the victims of its oppressive regime, “Stop / Go / Stop” seems to come from the regime itself, almost gloating about their ability to dominate their subjects--subjects addressed directly, in the second person! The visual identity of Red Noise during this period would also lean into this idea, with Nelson and friends donning militaristic uniforms to perform. But not all tracks on the album would follow this template--take, for example, “Atom Age.”
Music: “Atom Age”
The narrator of “Atom Age” is, of course, a “citizen of the Atom Age,” an ordinary civilian. As in much of Nelson’s work, there’s a substantial note of retro-futurism here: people alive today already are living in an Atom Age, where atomic weapons and nuclear power already exist, but the evocative term still conjures up for us the “world of tomorrow.” The narrator seems to strongly identify with their place in history, expressing pride at their own modernity--almost as if being modern has become its own kind of nationalism. But much like nationalism can be, this feeling is not without internal conflict, and doubt at just how great the future seems. Something else that stands out about “Atom Age” is that it’s the only track on Sound-On-Sound to feature a proper guitar solo. Given Nelson’s outsized reputation as a virtuoso guitarist, the lack of solos on this album is a fairly surprising move, and another feature that makes it feel further away from the progressive rock ideal.
People often position progressive and punk rock as some sort of natural enemies of one another, even going so far as to say that punk “killed” prog at the end of the 70s, whatever that means. But I’ve never been one to buy it. After all, there are many artists who worked in both styles to some degree, including Bill Nelson, and there are even a few stylistic elements they do have in common. As someone less interested in the history of rock *qua* rock, what really stands out to me is the extent to which both prog and punk-related movements like “New Wave” both advanced the use of synthesisers in popular music, albeit in different ways, and that’s certainly something that I think ties together Nelson’s work during this period. While we could interpret Sound-On-Sound as an album that leans into punk motives, perhaps attempting to keep up with the times, it’s also clearly rooted in Nelson’s prior work as well. Besides, not every track is quite as aggressive as “Stop / Go / Stop”--sometimes we get a relative reprieve, like “For Young Moderns.”
Music: “For Young Moderns”
Another relative commonality between punk and progressive rock is that both of them often pursued high-concept lyricism, stepping away from the traditionally romantic themes of pop. That’s true about many of the tracks on Sound-On-Sound, but not entirely so with “For Young Moderns,” whose verses seem to analogize falling in love with another person with entering the “brave new world” of the future. Both are new experiences, full of discovery, and while they can be exciting, they also leave us vulnerable to tremendous harm if things go wrong. The allure of the future might be like the bewitching glance of someone we want to get to know, even if it isn’t good for us. As far as narrative perspective is concerned, it’s actually somewhat ambiguous in this case. Is the narrator considering themself within the group of “young moderns,” or are they passively looking on at the follies of youth, from someone who comes from outside the group in question? I think the latter possibility is probably the more interesting one, and one that fits with Nelson’s position as an artist who cut his teeth earlier in the 1970s, and has now found himself in a very different musical landscape. The clearest commentary on that situation, though, is probably the track “Revolt Into Style.”
Music: “Revolt Into Style”
“Revolt Into Style” was the second single released from Sound-On-Sound, though neither it nor the album as a whole were initially successful. Boasting one of the more gripping refrains on the album, as well as a whimsical bridge that highlights the flamboyance of the synthesiser, it’s as good an introduction to the album as any. But its thesis is really a fairly cynical one: no matter how you might try to rebel against the status quo ante, the capitalists will always find a way to transform the tokens of that rebellion into the must-have microtrends of tomorrow’s fashion catwalks, hence turning “revolt into style.” It’s a poignant message coming on the heels of punk, and one that only grows moreso, the more times it keeps happening. But is Nelson ruing the fate of punk, or rather that of the glam rock he started out making? It’s also worth mentioning “Revolt Into Style”’s stunning psychedelic outro, which barges in at the last moment to whisk us away somewhere very different than most tracks on Sound-On-Sound are going--and somewhere much more similar to the aforementioned “Electrical Language.” In this way, the track itself turns the “revolt” of its punk-like structure into this spacy, mannered “style,” cleverly recapitulating its thesis in musical form. It’s also the final track on the entire album, suggesting a firm end to this era of Nelson’s sound not even forty minutes after it began!
On the famous cover of Sound-On-Sound, photographed by Bishin Jumonji, we see a robot rising from bed in order to answer her telephone--or, perhaps, picking it up to place a call of her own. Muted in its colour scheme and with little other background to distract from its central scene, this image comes across as somewhat droll or banal, despite the striking appearance of its mechanical protagonist. Its apparent theme of domesticity and the everyday dovetails nicely with the way the album likes to treat technology: chiefly as something that affects ordinary people and alters the quotidian tasks of life. Note also the beautiful decorative typeface used to render the name of “Red Noise,” which appears to be written out in colourful electronic cables and circuits. It seems to really steal the show in this composition, concentrating almost all of the colour in the image as well as taking up a disproportionate amount of space, and seems to hint at both the significance of electronics on the album as well as its somewhat unhinged or eclectic style.
Much like the epithet of “Red Noise,” which proclaims boldness as an antidote to the palliative of “white noise,” the album title “Sound-On-Sound” suggests sound which is multiplied or intensified, as though there is so much of it, at such intensity, that it must be squeezed into the container we see it in. Sound on top of sound, sound in competition with sound, sound against sound--this title might contain, or imply, all of these, and it pleasingly reflects the album’s insistence and intensity.
As mentioned above, Sound-On-Sound proved to be a flop in its own era, creating no buzz in the music charts and ultimately getting Nelson dropped from his recording deal with EMI. In subsequent years, though, it’s received a substantial reappraisal from many critics. Nelson’s follow-up to it would be 1981’s Quit Dreaming and Get On the Beam, an album more fully of the “New Wave” era. I’d characterize it as a sort of Hegelian synthesis of the ideas expressed earlier in Nelson’s career: rock, electronics, urgency, and fantasy. The first single from Quit Dreaming and Get On the Beam, entitled “Do You Dream In Colour?”, is a well-loved Nelson track, and perhaps the blueprint for many of his singles in the 1980s: singable, but not without a sense of whimsy and wonder.
Music: “Do You Dream In Colour?”
My favourite track on Sound-On-Sound is “Furniture Music,” which was the album’s lead single despite, in my opinion, feeling like one of the more obtuse or esoteric tracks on offer. The term “furniture music” was coined by the composer Erik Satie to describe music to be enjoyed in the background of other activities, subtly decorating space the way one “furnishes” a home. As you might imagine, Nelson’s “Furniture Music” is an ironic upheaval of this concept, with a reckless candor and an almost brutish sense of creativity. While rough-edged guitars carve out a harsh space like a Modernist high-rise, the song’s narrator expresses their desire to make changes to their interior--and hence, perhaps, to their state of mind, and who they are. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
It’s finally time to take a look at one of the greatest synth-pop classics, and an obvious favourite on Passionate Reply: Ultravox’s Vienna! Much more than just its famous title track, Vienna is actually one of Ultravox’s most eclectic albums overall, featuring some surprising star turns from its instrumentalists. (Full transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. This time around, we’re looking at Ultravox’s beloved Vienna, first released in 1980.
Vienna was technically the fourth LP to be released under the Ultravox name. In the 1970s, they were fronted by John Foxx, who’s well-known nowadays for his extensive body of solo work, and whose vision for Ultravox maintains a cult following. While many may find their combination of glam rock and ostentatious synthesiser solos quite charming, Foxx’s Ultravox never quite broke through into mainstream acclaim.
Music: “Quiet Men”
In 1979, Foxx, as well as the group’s lead guitarist, Robin Simon, would leave Ultravox behind. You’d be forgiven for betting on the frontman with the striking looks to succeed, and presuming that his apparent backing band would fade into obscurity. But that’s the exact opposite of what happened: Foxx’s solo work would be appreciated chiefly by in-the-know connoisseurs, despite many apparent overtures to the pop charts, and it would be Ultravox who became a widely successful act. Hope may have seemed scarce, but the three remaining members of the group would quickly revive the name, accompanied by a new frontman and lead guitarist, Midge Ure. The rest, as they say, is history.
Music: “Vienna”
The title track of Vienna is one of those singles that only the early 1980s could love, with obtuse lyrics, a viola solo, and a brooding pace that builds to a stupendous climax. Buoyed in part by an elabourate, cinematic music video, it famously reached #2 in the UK singles charts, though it never did defeat Joe Dolce’s novelty smash, “Shaddap You Face.” The sort of *de facto* rivalry between Dolce and Ultravox is an oft-repeated bit of trivia about this song, though I’m not sure I sympathize with the sentiment as much as others seem to. Setting aside the issue of using ethnic differences as a source of humour, it isn’t particularly easy to write a good novelty song, no moreso than it is to write baroque pop like “Vienna,” and I see no reason why Dolce’s achievement in a parallel field deserves any less acclaim. Comedy is art, too--even Shakespeare enjoyed a dirty joke--and even if I personally prefer “Vienna,” it seems needlessly harsh to condemn “Shaddap You Face” for the crime of pleasing people and making them laugh. The title track was one of four singles released from the album, none of which matched its outstanding success.
Music: “Sleepwalk”
“Sleepwalk” was the first single released from the album, and looking over the track listing again myself, it seems like a logical enough choice. It’s high-energy, with a pogo dance-friendly rhythm, and the kind of subtly ominous and violent lyrics that tend to skate by your conscious mind through your first few listens. Aside from their shared dark mood, “Sleepwalk” and the title track of Vienna couldn’t be further apart, musically; the gulf between “Sleepwalk”’s punk provocation and the latter’s meandering avant-gardism is a bit surprising! More than anything else, I like to think of Vienna as an album composed of many disparate parts, less cohesive than Ultravox’s later works, but also, perhaps, more exciting and unpredictable. Maybe it’s the natural result of the band members coming together again with renewed energy, eager for another chance to put something on wax. Or perhaps it stems from each individual member having something unique to say, and looking to stake their claim in a yet-uncertain hierarchy within the group. That certainly seems to be the case with “Mr. X,” the pet recording of percussionist Warren Cann.
Music: “Mr. X”
Inspired by Kraftwerk tracks like “The Hall of Mirrors,” “Mr. X” is immediately distinguished by Cann’s ultra-bass vocals. Despite the aurora of reverb surrounding it, his mildly rhythmic speak-singing is actually quite clearly enunciated, putting the spotlight on the eerie tale he has to tell about a mysterious stranger. The track’s pointy synth riff creates a lovely sense of anything-could-happen unease, and it also features its own extravagant viola part that gives it a climactic tension. Like the one on the album’s title track, this solo is performed by Billy Currie, who, besides his classical training on this instrument, also served as the group’s lead synthesist, and provided many equally chromatic and scene-stealing solos on the synthesiser as well. While Cann left his signature on Vienna with “Mr. X,” it seems likely that Currie made a similar attempt with the album’s instrumental opener, “Astradyne.”
Music: “Astradyne”
Ultravox’s catalog doesn’t feature many instrumentals, least of all on their major LPs, which makes “Astradyne” all the more stunning. It is “Astradyne,” and not any of the album’s more marketable, single-friendly tracks, that opens Vienna, and that boldly kicks off our sonic journey in a progressive, cosmic mode. Where “Mr. X” paid tribute to Kraftwerk, “Astradyne” nods to the Berlin School, bringing the album’s unabashed Teutonic influence full circle. Much as Currie’s show-stopping solos distinguished so much of Ultravox’s work, “Astradyne” plays the part of an extended, seven-minute odyssey of a solo that gets to be its very own track, eschewing subordination to any radio-friendly verse and chorus. Really, I can’t think of a clearer example of the ways in which Vienna is more than its famous single than “Astradyne.”
The famous cover of Vienna is stark and striking, a potent symbol of the stylish but often austere aesthetic of the so-called “New Romantics.” The members of the band are posed in a nearly empty, desertlike landscape, whose smooth forms suggest the modernist emphasis on the geometric. It’s difficult to assign any overt narrative to the scene, as the band members’ poses are ambiguous and almost directionless. The exception, however, is Ure, who, at far right, seems to be walking towards the edge of the pictorial space, as though he sees something there that we are barred from seeing--a suggestion of possibility over the horizon that the ordinary could not fathom? The image of the band is boxed in by the overall composition and takes up only the lower register of the design, which emphasizes the horizontal expanse of its wasteland setting. I’d also be remiss not to mention the beautiful typeface in which the title and band name are rendered. With an insistence upon rectilinear lines and strong use of diagonals on letters like “V” and “A,” it adds an extra dose of arch modernity to this iconic design.
Although Ultravox would never have another single that did quite as well as the title track of Vienna, they would remain a force in the charts and adapt with the times up through the mid-1980s. Their follow-up to Vienna was 1981’s Rage In Eden, which doubled down on gloomy ambience as well as the use of rock guitar. In hindsight, it may well have been a smart move for them, seeing as their second biggest hit would be 1984’s “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes,” not coincidentally the most rock radio friendly single they ever produced.
Music: “The Voice”
My personal favourite track on Vienna is “Western Promise.” Full of squelching synth textures and a gamelan-like rhythm, “Western Promise” is a daring musical standout, but it’s also one with a striking theme, sardonically adopting the persona of Western neo-colonialism. While many artists of this period became preoccupied with the perceived allure of the Orient, Ultravox opted to portray the crushing force of capitalism as a brutal, unstoppable machine--an idea reinforced by those aggressive, charging electronics. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
An album lost in time! Signals From Afar by the Shortwave Mystery was recorded in the mid-1980s, but wasn’t mastered and published for all to hear until 2011, during the “minimal synth” revival, giving it a sound unlike anything else. Sadly, within a few years, both the frontman of the group and the label that released it would be no more. (Transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. Today, we’ll be looking at a relative curiosity: Signals From Afar by the Shortwave Mystery, initially recorded between 1983 and 1985, but not properly mastered and released until 2011.
The Shortwave Mystery were one of the innumerable music groups that sprung up for a few years, and left behind little more than a self-released 12” single by the time they broke up. It’s a common fate for small-time acts, but in some sense, they may actually have been better off in the 20th Century than they are now. A contemporary artist might leave only digital files, vulnerable to data losses like the one suffered during Myspace’s failed server migration in 2018. The Shortwave Mystery were at least kind enough to give posterity a single physical artefact of their existence, in the form of their 1985 single, “Pilots.”
Music: “Pilots”
While “Pilots” shows a lot of promise, with its insistent wall of hammering synth, it also seems to lose quite a bit from its very muddy vocals. As far as I can tell, this effect seems unintentional, and merely a byproduct of amateurs’ inability to access superior recording equipment. It’s worth noting that *Signals From Afar* also features a new version of “Pilots,” which does away with this completely, and provides a higher-fidelity vocal track, for better or for worse. Warts and all, “Pilots” won some underground club play, eventually becoming an item of substantial interest during the rediscovery and revival of so-called “dark wave” or “minimal synth” music in the 21st Century, which was (and is) quick to hail similarly obscure or semi-anonymous works as gems worth preserving. It was in this context that the Shortwave Mystery were re-discovered, and the other assorted demos they recorded during the mid-1980s were finally given a proper production treatment, and released to the world.
Music: “Special Girl”
Tracks like “Special Girl” are dominated by a throbbing, incessant synth backing, which is satisfyingly similar to what we hear on “Pilots.” The combination of 80s recording and 10s mastering gives this album a mesmerizing and unique effect: all the brazenness of the simplistic and primitive early synthesiser, combined with the crispness and precision of sophisticated digital production. “Special Girl” in particular has a relatively simple compositional structure, and one which I think really lets the sonic qualities of Signals From Afar shine. It has a straightforwardness, or perhaps a single-mindedness, that feels direct and concise--a quality which I think is often found in the works of entirely unprofessional or amateur musicians. The gothic dread of “Special Girl” is uninhibited, perhaps even indulgent in its fullness. It’s also not the only track on the album to deal with dark themes--take for example, “Turn Time Away.”
Music: “Turn Time Away”
“Turn Time Away” portrays people who have lost love, and hence retreated from society. This is no ordinary bout of depression, but rather something implied to have a supernatural dimension to it--something that exiles its sufferers outside the boundaries of time and space. This is, of course, quite fitting for an album which is also, in its own way, “outside of time.” Also fitting is the track’s sense of atmosphere: while it retains the harsh, bright synth textures heard on “Special Girl,” its vortical runs give it an unnerving sense of high tension, and contrast with the slower-pace motif that introduces the track. Still, not everything on *Signals From Afar* is so steeped in gloom and doom. A number of them are actually quite playful, such as “Scuby-Ruby.”
Music: “Scuby-Ruby”
With rubbery synth and hints at a pentatonic scale, “Scuby-Ruby” sounds a bit like the seminal work of Yellow Magic Orchestra. Childlike samples take the place of lead vocals in this track, and they seem to add a note of naivete or innocence. Unlike many instances of sampling, which serve to make us re-evaluate cinematic dialogue or the content of some politician’s speech, there is no apparent significance to the syllables being said, aside from a brief instance of “I love you” which is a bit buried. Much as “Special Girl” is nakedly gothic, reveling in the pure fun of making something spooky, “Scuby-Ruby” is up-front about its trifling nature. It is, undoubtedly, one of the album’s more experimental tracks, conceived before sampling had penetrated mainstream music to a heavier degree, but it doesn’t come across as “challenging” or “difficult.” It sounds like something made for the joy of making it, and this sense of joy is an infectious one. Still, there’s a certain provocative element to “Scuby-Ruby” as well--note the apparent sample of a sneeze! While “Scuby-Ruby” combines sampling with a fairly accessible, bouncy melody, there are some less friendly sample-heavy tracks, such as the album’s opener and title track.
Music: “Signals From Afar”
I’m not sure whether the title of “Signals From Afar” had been decided upon back in the 1980s, or was assigned to it in the 2010s with a knowing note of irony, but either way, I quite like it. Regardless, the track of the same name is a satisfying combination of the sample-oriented structure of “Scuby-Ruby” and the melancholia of “Turn Time Away.” Unlike the more quotidian sounds of “Scuby-Ruby,” the title track prominently features samples of Franklin Delano Roosevelt denouncing war. Framed between two major instances of sampling, the music itself seems to take the form of a kind of broadcast intrusion. Is it a signal emerging from a sea of noise, or an ungainly interruption of the signals of real importance? While it’s subtle in the context of the mix, you can also pick out the use of telegraph sounds at times, adding to the overall theme of telecommunication. Overall, the mood of the title track seems ambiguous, especially compared to the other tracks: the vocals are downbeat, but also somewhat wistful.
The cover of Signals From Afar is ambiguous and open to interpretation as well. It shows a woman operating a telegraph, with half of her face covered ominously in shadow. Her expression seems neutral, or perhaps a bit stiff, but we might read into it a sense of trepidation or seriousness. Might she be delivering bad news to someone, or perhaps receiving it? The pins on her collar seem to suggest she is a member of a military organisation, which could make the significance of her message all the more grave--could she be reporting on the loss of some battle, a terrible massacre, or the threat of an incoming bomb? She is also surrounded by darkness, with no apparent background to speak of--a decision that puts all the more emphasis on her expression, and what it might say about her internality in this critical moment. Tantalizing in its incompleteness and suggestion of a greater narrative, this image deals in similar themes as the album does: communication, technology, and despair.
The Shortwave Mystery were one of many groups who created unrealized music, one of many groups whose works were rediscovered and made available by diligent enthusiasts decades later, and, ultimately, one of many groups who used this period of tremendous archival re-releases to attempt to kickstart a new career. In this case, it was that of Gregory Windrum-Scoggin, who, as far as we know, was the chief creative contributor behind the small “Shortwave Mystery” catalogue. In 2012, he released a new composition: the single “Sarah Good’s Lament,” based on the fate of one of the victims of the infamous Salem “Witch Trials.”
Music: “Sarah Good’s Lament”
Ultimately, though, the cult following of minimal synth caught up with Windrum-Scoggin just a little too late, as he would perish before his time in a tragic motorcycle accident in 2014. What else he might have accomplished, upon re-entry into a brand new musical world, we’ll never know. The label that did the re-mastering and releasing of *Signals From Afar,* and which also published “Sarah Good’s Lament,” was not long for this world either. Unlike many of the labels that started during this era and are still going strong, like Minimal Wave and Dark Entries, the California-based “World Service Collective” appears to be defunct, with its official website cited on Discogs.com apparently up for sale. World Service Collective never released anything else, aside from these scant few items directly pertaining to the Shortwave Mystery. The Roman poet Juvenal famously asked, “who will guard the guards themselves?” The dead end of this sorry tale asks us a similar question about art: When the archivists have gone, who will be left to archive their stories?
To close on a lighter note, my favourite track on Signals From Afar is “Segue.” You might assume that an instrumental track called “Segue” will be nothing more than a seconds-long jingle dividing one major composition from another, but “Segue” is anything but! It’s a well-formed instrumental track, and I think that the instrumental context goes a long way to show off what the Shortwave Mystery really did best: those big, pounding synth arrangements. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
Ah, OMD--one of the most iconic groups of the early days of synth-pop. They got their start back in 1980 with this self-titled debut LP, but it might surprise you just how little of an impact it had in the charts. (Transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, we’ll be looking at the 1980 debut album of one of the biggest names in early synth-pop: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, better known as simply “OMD.”
1980 was a hell of a time to be getting into the business of electronic music--a time when it remained, for just a brief while longer, the stuff of tomorrow, and not today. Much like self-driving cars or lab-grown steaks do today, the possibility of a musical epoch defined by the impact of music synthesisers felt very plausible, but at the same time, far enough out of reach that it could not be taken too seriously in the present day. It was into this strange moment, this turning point of not only a new decade but a new musical order, that OMD would make their first appearance.
Music: “Electricity”
While the members of the band have jokingly dismissed “Electricity” as merely a sped-up version of Kraftwerk’s famous “Radioactivity,” the fact remains that a lot of good art consists of knowing what to steal, and stealing from Kraftwerk has proven to always be a good idea. It’s easy to see why “Electricity” has become a sort of anthem of the dawn of the synth-pop era. Thematically, it exalts electricity itself as a subject worthy of its own paean, with its hymn-like qualities enhanced by the subtly organ-like texture of its chords. Like God, electricity is invisible, omnipresent in the universe, and capable of phenomenal feats--but unlike God, electricity is made to please humankind, rather than the other way around. Still, there’s a sense of danger about it, expressed by the plaintive and almost eerie qualities of its main melody. But all this conceptual richness ended up not doing much for “Electricity”’s success in the charts: despite a whopping three releases as a single, it never got anywhere near the UK top 40.
Overall, OMD’s debut LP was nowhere near as commercially successful as their later work, despite being remembered with as much fondness as anything else. While it remains a great song, it’s almost revisionist history to make “Electricity” into a symbol of this period. It wasn’t what people were buying and listening to at the time. We might say the world wasn’t “ready” for it yet. Perhaps its inanimate subject matter was part of the problem--after all, it wasn’t until synthesisers became an acceptable medium for love songs that synth-pop would fully take over the charts. But there are also tracks on this album that tackle more traditional themes, such as “Almost.”
Music: “Almost”
Despite its more quaint lyricism, “Almost” still feels like less of a single than “Electricity” does, with a dirge’s pace and less of the frenetic, well, energy that “Electricity” offers. Whatever appeal it might make to our emotions in the verses is drowned out by its strange refrain, which consists not of words, but rather a strident and perhaps plangent blast of synth. A similar conceit of form is made by many of OMD’s other tracks, perhaps most notably the first major hit of their career, “Enola Gay,” but here on “Almost,” it seems to hold more weight as its own artistic choice, as if the level of sorrow it represents is greater than anything mere words could have expressed. Deliberate though it may be, there’s a brazenness about this choice that seems to cast the entire track into a cloud of questionable taste--an almost punk aura of purposeful outrageousness, a desire to push the synthesiser to the very limits of acoustic tolerability. While not “experimental” per se, OMD’s debut, like many debuts, is often inchoate and roughshod, though in a manner that is not without its own sense of charm. Bridging the gap between the personal and the mechanical is the album’s final single, and its biggest success: “Messages.”
Music: “Messages”
Peaking at only #13, “Messages” was a modest success compared to what OMD would see in the future, but it was still much more than this album’s other singles would achieve, and it’s arguably the most accessible track on the album. “Messages” winsomely combines a timeless tale of lost love, and subsequent enmity, with the complications brought about by the modern ease of communication. If you listen closely, it becomes clear that the titular messages are probably paper letters, since the narrator mentions the possibility of burning them. It’s a lot harder to “block” someone who is sending you paper mail, but the song’s central theme, being haunted by the remnants of one’s correspondence with an ex, is perhaps even more poignant nowadays, in today’s world of persistent digital temptations. “Messages” is a sort of “soft science fiction” story, in which the focus is less on technology itself as its own subject, but moreso on the impact of technology on people, and it admirably balances that with an equally strong sense of the futuristic, which arises naturally from its synth-hook-as-chorus, sounding not unlike a desperate message of its own, spoken in Morse code. That said, accessibility isn’t everything in art, and particularly tends to take a back seat when looking back at a much earlier work. If you want something a little more out there, look no further than “Julia’s Song.”
Music: “Julia’s Song”
Propelled by a slinky bass ostinato, “Julia’s Song” seems to revel in the gothic, in an almost sardonic manner. Lyrically, it’s a sort of oblique memento mori, but I think it gains a lot from being opaque--a kind of mystique. It’s a song that almost challenges you to make sense of it and figure it out, like a deadly sphinx. Like many of the other early OMD tracks, “Julia’s Song” lacks a conventional chorus, but this time, instead of an instrumental hook, the closest thing we can find is lead vocalist Andy McCluskey stretching and distorting the final vowel of each of its verses. As with “Almost,” there’s a sense of provocation behind this, an aesthetic audacity that embraces that which may seem painful or grating to listen to. It’s moments like “Julia’s Song” that make this debut album feel so at odds with the rest of OMD’s classic albums to me. Even *Dazzle Ships,* so famously esoteric, rarely feels as aggressively, subversively uncouth as “Julia’s Song.”
This album received a number of varying cover designs across releases, but most of them revolve around this grid-like pattern of capsule shapes. This wall of geometric perfection suggests the orderliness of modern life, and the enforced, inhuman symmetry of a planned community. In its classic colour palette of orange and grey, it reminds one of industrial signage, like one might see at a construction site. This core design was redone in a variety of colour combinations, all of which were created by pairing an inner layer of one colour with an outer layer of the other, the latter of which would then be die-cut with the pill-shaped openings, revealing the inner layer underneath. Designed by the great Peter Saville very early in his career, it would be his first foray into the potential of die-cut album sleeves, and he would later use this technique to great effect for other artists, most notably New Order.
As far as the album’s title is concerned, I might venture that “Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark” is actually a much better name for an album than it is for a band. It’s an easy name to make fun of, after all, being ungainly and awkward despite how memorable it is. But despite being the sort of thing that isn’t so great for branding as an act, I think that as an album title, it does what it’s supposed to: it’s flowing, evocative, and intriguing. Much like it doesn’t need to stick around and be an anchor for a decades-long career, the name also doesn’t have to make perfect sense, in this context--it just has to get you interested enough to see what it’s all about. The way this name thumbs its nose at logistics and common sense could be said to parallel the apparent pugnaciousness of some of its musical content.
After their initial debut, OMD would, of course, go on to tremendous success in the pop charts, and their second LP, Organisation, was the first step in that direction for them. Organisation has gone down in history as “the album with ‘Enola Gay’ on it,” at least partly because no other singles were released from it. But I think it’s a somewhat underrated work of theirs, and is probably worth a listen for fans of their debut. Aside from its one big hit, Organisation often feels more related to their first album stylistically than it does to what came afterward: thin, synth-heavy compositions, with a chiefly melancholic atmosphere.
Music: “The Misunderstanding”
My favourite track on this album is “Red Frame / White Light,” which was released as its second single, but, like “Electricity,” made hardly any impact in the charts. Focusing on a telephone booth, several years before Kraftwerk released “The Telephone Call,” “Red Frame / White Light” takes the starkly mechanical focus of “Electricity” and infuses it with an infectious and surprisingly upbeat energy. Equal parts brash and playful, “Red Frame / White Light” has a “hit single” feel to it, despite the evident unkindness of the charts at the time. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
Stan Ridgway is best remembered as the guy from Wall of Voodoo, and Wall of Voodoo are best remembered as the guys from “Mexican Radio.” But there’s a whole lot more to Ridgway’s solo career, which began with 1986′s The Big Heat--Americana, epic narratives, and a whole lot of digital synth. (Transcript below the break!)
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, we’ll be looking at an often overlooked solo debut: Stan Ridgway’s The Big Heat, first released in 1986.
Stan Ridgway is best remembered as the original frontman of Wall of Voodoo, and Wall of Voodoo, in turn, are best remembered for the single “Mexican Radio,” a landmark bit of New Wave eclecticism that became an unlikely hit thanks in large part to heavy rotation on MTV. That said, like a lot of ostensible “one-hit wonders,” the span of Ridgway’s artistic career is quite a bit more varied and more interesting than this solitary recording might suggest. While I don’t believe that “Mexican Radio” is simply a novelty song that can easily be dismissed, I will set it aside for the time being, because any attempt to cover the rest of Stan Ridgway’s work is probably better off without worrying about it. Instead, let’s take a look at his first bona fide solo release: the 1983 single, “Don’t Box Me In.”
Music: “Don’t Box Me In”
“Don’t Box Me In” was a collaboration between Ridgway and percussionist Stewart Copeland, then known chiefly for his work with the group The Police. While Copeland is now fairly well known for his work composing scores for cinema and video games, this was one of his first forays into that field: the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of Rumble Fish. Based on a novel by S. E. Hinton, most famous for The Outsiders, Rumble Fish was actually a tremendous flop for Coppola, perceived to be a bit too avant-garde for its own good, and Copeland’s percussion-led score for the film, experimental in its own right, certainly didn’t help that perception. Despite all of this, “Don’t Box Me In” managed to do fairly well for itself as a single, achieving substantial alternative radio play purely on its own merits. And merits it has, weaving together the experience of a fish trapped in a tiny bowl with a more universalized sense of human ennui, being overlooked and underestimated by everyone around you. Not to be underestimated himself, Ridgway has not only written these evocative lyrics, but delivers them in a manner that shows a complexity beyond his semi-affected Western twang, conveying fragility and uncertainty alongside indignation and determinedness. This is also the version of Stan Ridgway whom we meet when we listen to The Big Heat.
Music: “Camouflage”
Despite being the very last single released from The Big Heat, the eerie war yarn “Camouflage” would go on to be the most successful track from the album, and Ridgway’s best-known hit as a solo artist. Perhaps surprisingly, the single was largely snubbed in the charts of Ridgway’s native USA, becoming a much bigger hit throughout Europe. While playing the harmonica and sporting a bolo tie, Ridgway seems to almost play the character of the quintessential American, and perhaps it’s that quality that’s caused this apparent rift. Is it necessary to analyze his art through the lens of exoticism in order to find it appealing?
It’s a hard question for me to answer, personally--I might be from the US myself, but at the same time, the vast majority of the music I listen to is European, as a natural consequence of being chiefly a devotee of electronic music. There is still a sort of novelty factor I find in Ridgway’s work. I remain in awe of the fact that a musical genius exists who uses a hard R, and says “huh?” instead of “pardon me?” But, of course, I am amazed by this moreso because it makes me feel “represented,” for once, in a musical tradition which is important to me. If people from Britain’s crumbling industrial centers like Sheffield and Manchester have made great electronic music, then surely synthesisers can also tell the stories of the American Rust Belt, where I come from? For that, we’ll have to step away from the sort of typified narrative of “Camouflage,” and take a listen to the album’s title track.
Music: “The Big Heat”
“Camouflage” told us a tale as old as time, in which a benevolent ghost offers one last act of aid to a vulnerable human being. The album’s title track, on the other hand, alludes to a particularly 20th Century form of storytelling: the detective drama and film noir, as hinted at by its allusion to the classic Fritz Lang film of the same title. Ridgway assumes the perspective of the hardboiled detective, hot on the trail of some mysterious quarry, and it is the innocent passers-by he seeks information from who respond with the song’s banal refrain: “Everybody wants another piece of pie today.” For as much as people have mocked Ridgway’s singing style over the years, you’ve got to appreciate his lilting delivery of this line here in the first verse, where it comes from the mouth of a female character.
It’s easy, of course, to see such apparent non sequitur lyrics in Ridgway’s oeuvre as merely ridiculous, as many quickly do with the likes of “Mexican Radio,” but the more you listen to him, the more his style begins to make sense. The instinct to find humour in things is deeply connected to the feeling of being surprised, and encountering the unexpected. Ridgway happens to be all about delivering the unexpected, and it’s precisely the surface-level absurdities and surprises his lyricism offers that make us think more deeply about the stories he tells. The title track of The Big Heat isn’t about pie, but rather the fact that everybody its characters encounter appears to be grasping for more out of life, and hungry for something else. It’s what drives criminals to transgress against the law, and it’s also, perhaps, what drives the detective to devote himself to the pursuit of the abstract principle of “justice.” To both the villain and the hero of this story, the civilians they brush past are little more than means to an end, despite their display of greater wisdom and insight into these issues than anyone else. Ridgway excels at conveying this sort of saintly everymannishness, and does so with similar gusto on the track “Pick It Up (And Put It In Your Pocket)”.
Music: “Pick It Up (And Put It In Your Pocket)”
“Pick It Up (And Put It In Your Pocket)” was actually not released as a single, which is perhaps surprising given its hooky quality and sprightly synth backdrop. While “Camouflage” is assembled chiefly from traditional instruments, with only a subtle intrusion of Yamaha DX-7 to remind you that it came out in 1986, many of the other tracks, like this one and the title track, are willing to double down on electronic influences, and ride the wave of “peak synth-pop” that was easily cresting by the mid-1980s. That aside, the central theme of “Pick It Up (And Put It In Your Pocket)” is the quotidian avariciousness one encounters among ordinary folk, and the psychological effects of living in a “mean world.” While the text mostly revolves around the idea of living in fear, and the paranoia of knowing that “everything changes hands when it hits the ground,” it reaches a climax by showing us an actual situation where this occurs: the pathetic figure of a filthy old man who finds a small bill in the road, and, in a fit of folk superstitiousness, is said to “thank the street.” The song’s tension lives between the bustle of the jealous ones, and the reality of life for those desperate enough to pick up money from the street. Like many of Ridgway’s greatest works, this track simultaneously portrays the mentality of the common man in a direct and serious manner, but also opens up room for it to be criticized. This everyman bystander persona is assumed more directly in the track “Drive, She Said.”
Music: “Drive, She Said”
While the album’s more electronic elements are its main draw, in my eyes, there are still a number of tracks that remain dominated by traditional instruments, “Drive, She Said” being a prime example of them. While narratives are always at the center of Ridgway’s work, “Drive, She Said” moves us away from omniscient narration like that of “Pick It Up (And Put It In Your Pocket)” and back into the mind of a specific and individualized narrator--in this case, a cab driver who somewhat reluctantly transports a bank robber, with whom he might also be falling in love. While it doesn’t have the supernatural implications of “Camouflage,” the two stories do seem to have much in common: an ordinary person meets someone who quickly reveals their extraordinary nature, and despite the brevity of their encounter, the protagonist is deeply affected, and perhaps changed, by the events. Much as “Pick It Up (And Put It In Your Pocket)” sees fit to shatter its apparent main premise, with an interlude that shifts the tempo of the music as well as introduces the contrasting figure of the old beggar, “Drive, She Said” introduces an interlude of its own: the driver’s reverie, in which he runs away with his enigmatic passenger. As in many of Ridgway’s tales, we must consider both the beauty of a wonderful dream, and its sheer impossibility.
On the cover of The Big Heat, we see a portrait of Stan Ridgway looking glum, which is not itself terribly unusual for an album cover, though the fact that he’s behind a metal fence certainly is. The main focus of the image seems to be Ridgway’s environment, a bleak industrial setting full of towering machinery, and no other traces of human beings. The absence of other figures in this scene draws attention to the scale of the machines, as well as the fact that in many parts of the US, including my own, it’s very common to see equipment like this that’s fallen into disuse and disrepair. Much as ruined aqueducts and palaces mark the places in Europe where the Roman Empire had once held fast, these sorts of derelict manufacturing facilities are a common sight in America, and serve as reminders of the squandered “American Century.” While many album covers have shown me places I like to imagine myself visiting, I don’t have to imagine what being here might be like, having grown up in a place whose pride left soon after the steel industry did. It strikes me as exactly the kind of setting that Ridgway’s narratives ought to take place in: dirty, simple, well-intentioned, doomed, and all-American.
Ridgway’s follow-up to The Big Heat would be 1989’s *Mosquitos,* an album that largely abandons the many synthesiser-driven compositions found in his earlier work. It’s hard to fault him for this decision, given how much the mainstream appeared to be souring on synth-pop and electronic rock by the end of the decade, but it does mean that this album offers little I’d want to listen to recreationally. That is, with the exception of its third and final single, “Goin’ Southbound,” a practically epic drama of small-town drug smugglers trying to survive, and one that fires on all cylinders when it comes to fiddles dueling with digital synths. This track feels like it would fit right in on The Big Heat, so if you’ve enjoyed this album, don’t miss it.
Music: “Goin’ Southbound”
My favourite track on The Big Heat is “Salesman,” which, to my surprise, received a small advance promo release without ever becoming a true single. The titular character, an unctuous but insecure traveling salesman, is as rich a narrating persona as any of the many in Ridgway’s catalogue, and I love the way the refrain just feels like a song you might make up while idly doing something else, silly and yet primal at the same time. It captures the feeling of living “on the edge of the ball,” enjoying the freedom of spontaneity, but also, perhaps, suffering for its enforced sloppiness. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
Kraftwerk are best known for being innovative pioneers in the field of electronic music, but by 1981, the rest of the world was finally catching up to them. Faced with living in the future they’d helped create, they released their last truly great album, Computer World, as a sort of reaction to the times. Find out more in my video, or by reading the transcript below the break.
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. Today, we’re talking about Kraftwerk, and what is perhaps their last truly “great” release: 1981’s Computer World.
Kraftwerk were, of course, one of the first groups to popularize the creation of music through chiefly electronic means. From their icy and robotic onstage demeanour to their stiff-shirted sense of style, just one look at them makes it clear the outsized influence that Kraftwerk have had on the genre we now think of as “electronic music.” While, at times, their significance can be over-emphasized, and I’ve always been critical of the way that the discourse on this all-male quartet has often squeezed out even earlier electronic pioneers like Wendy Carlos and Delia Derbyshire, it isn’t all for no reason. While Kraftwerk’s actual music often comes across as more accessible than experimental, the fact that they were doing it in the 1970s, long before synthesisers became a commonplace sight in popular music, should fill anyone with the sense that they were architects of the future.
Music: “The Model”
While “The Model” first debuted on Kraftwerk’s 1978 LP The Man-Machine, it was re-released as a single in 1981, where it saw substantial success in the charts. In those few short years, the musical landscape had changed, with younger artists like Gary Numan and OMD making headway in the charts with similarly synthesiser-centered songwriting. For almost the entirety of the 1970s, Kraftwerk had been contentedly putting along, secure in the knowledge that they represented the future of music. But now, as the 80s began, they were finally living in the world that they had made possible. The future had arrived for them--so what were they possibly going to do now? I think the best way to frame Computer World, and perhaps what makes it such an interesting album for me, is that it represents a reaction to the ways that the landscape of electronic music had shifted around the artists in these intervening years. On Computer World, Kraftwerk would both reflect as well as critique what younger artists inspired by them had started doing. It’s the first Kraftwerk album that seems to represent a true challenge being posed to these by now august and illustrious pioneers, forcing them to respond in new ways.
Music: “Pocket Calculator”
In many ways, “The Model” is a pop song--compared to most previous Kraftwerk compositions, it’s heavy on lyrics, and focused, surprisingly, on a human being, and a love story involving her. But I think the Computer World single “Pocket Calculator” is almost as good of a pop song as “The Model” is. Highly melodic, and almost candy-coated in its simpering exuberance, it has perhaps the hookiest hook anywhere in the Kraftwerk discography. I’m tempted to compare it to similarly bright and upbeat tracks from Yellow Magic Orchestra, such as “Ongaku”--particularly since it was also released in a Japanese-language version, as “Dentaku,” for that market. Still, there’s no avoiding that the subject matter of “Pocket Calculator” has taken a sharp turn back towards an iconically Kraftwerk subject matter: the inner life of the titular machine. While the narrator of the lyrics announces themself as “the operator” with the titular calculator, it’s also possible to interpret the lyrics as the voice of the machine itself. “I am adding and subtracting, I’m controlling and composing”--but who, indeed, is really performing these tasks: the operator, or the calculator itself? Perhaps a stronger example of Kraftwerk gone pop is “Computer Love.”
Music: “Computer Love”
Melodic, but also balladlike, “Computer Love” is an unambiguous return to the traditional pop theme of romantic love, absent from the asexual and perhaps childlike glee of “Pocket Calculator.” Its more plaintive hook is also an easy one to appreciate, and its theme is perhaps more universal: while listeners at the time may not have necessarily owned rapidly miniaturizing digital technology, surely, all of us have, at some point, felt lonely. “Computer Love” doesn’t just connect to that feeling, but it also offers us hope, in the form of an almost magical, futuristic solution for finding love. I think it’s the internal balance of “Computer Love” that makes me find it so captivating: it’s a song about despair at being alone, perhaps even intensified by the alienation of modern society in particular, but it’s also suffused with the romantic dream of computerized matchmaking services, which might, like so many other technological developments, tremendously improve one’s day-to-day life. In “Computer Love,” the machine is only a tool, a small piece of the overall human picture, and not the chief focus of the work--much as the camera for which “The Model” was posing was little more than a prop in that love story. But despite this optimism about online matchmaking, other tracks on the album seem more skeptical about our computerized future, including the opener and title track.
Music: “Computer World”
While Kraftwerk are best remembered as utopian thinkers, many of their compositions hint at the potential downsides to technological advancements, albeit subtly. Much like *The Man-Machine* alluded to works like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Karel Čapek’s R.U.R., the title track of *Computer World* prominently notes organizations like Interpol and Scotland Yard among those who may benefit from computers, hinting at fears of oppressive techno-surveillance expressed by works like Philip K. Dick’s “The Minority Report.” With its slinking rhythm and overall ominous feel, this track implies that we should be apprehensive, without necessarily stating what to fear, and I think that’s part of why it’s remained resonant. In today’s world of deepfakes and location tracking, we’re constantly vigilant over the nameless potential dangers presented by the machines in our pockets and handbags, even when we couldn’t explicitly state what they are. Our increasing distance from the album, in both time and technological progress, may present an obstacle to appreciating it as art. While it’s easy for me to get into the mindset of computers as something newfangled and exciting, having grown up earlier in the personal computer age and able to recall the way they were advertised and talked about in the 90s and 00s, I do wonder how this album sounds to my younger peers. At any rate, “Numbers” is the track that I think sounds the most like it could have been on any Kraftwerk album, and not just this one.
Music: “Numbers”
A classic example of how a simple conceit can fill a whole composition to its brim, “Numbers” remains one of Kraftwerk’s most iconic tracks. Nowadays, it might be best known for how heavily it’s been sampled by later artists, and the influence it’s had on hip-hop, that nephew of electronic music that is nowadays, somewhat arbitrarily, considered a separate genre unto itself. But ultimately, “Numbers” and its famous beat stand up perfectly well on their own. As a cosmopolitan panoply of languages recites the names of the numbers, we are reminded of the ways in which mathematics is a universal language. Not only does it unite mankind, but many have also wondered if it might someday be the key to communicating with people from beyond the stars--an honour also bestowed upon music itself. Structurally, “Numbers” is the second-to-last song on the album’s first side, and like many earlier Kraftwerk albums, it transitions directly into another part of a larger “suite,” connected both musically and thematically. “Numbers” becomes “Computer World 2,” which is not simply a reprise of the title track, but a sort of medley which also incorporates the whispering vocoders of “Numbers.” While in many ways, Computer World feels like an attempt by Kraftwerk to keep up with the times, the overall structure of the album maintains a sense of continuous, symphonic composition, not unlike the seamless “transfer” between “Trans-Europe Express” and “Metal on Metal” some years before.
The cover design of Computer World is another in the long list of the aesthetic triumphs of Kraftwerk, which, I maintain, are perhaps as important and influential as their music itself. Its bright yellows and greens remain eye-catching, as does its portrayal of the band members’ portraits, rendered on a computer terminal. Despite seemingly now only existing in cyberspace, their faces remain in the position we saw them in on The Man-Machine, projecting their beatific gazes towards the leftward horizon of the future. The struggle between the reality of a human being, and that which is affected by their simulacrum, is a strong theme throughout Kraftwerk’s discography, stretching back, at least, to “Showroom Dummies,” and the cover of Computer World seems to take it another step further. Now, we don’t even contend with the idea of physical replicas of humanity, in the form of trudging robots or glib mannequins, but rather with the idea of an ethereal, holographic doppelgaenger. With its title, the album asks us not only to consider computers as technologies in and of themselves, but about an entire new era, and a new way of being, which is brought about by their arrival and proliferation. In many ways, this way of thinking about the future was more correct than perhaps anyone knew at the time, and I think it’s this sense of vision that makes Computer World remain a vital artwork as opposed to a curiosity.
As I said in the beginning, Computer World is often considered to be the last great album Kraftwerk made, putting an end to their streak of classics that began with 1974’s Autobahn. Their follow-up to it was the troubled and controversial Electric Cafe, released in 1986, which attempted, unsuccessfully, to add more dance influences and samples with the textures of more traditional instruments into their sound. While I think Electric Cafe is an album not without its merits, it is certainly a substantial departure from the Kraftwerk sound we’ve gotten familiar with so far. I might characterize it as an album that perhaps went too far into the territory of attempting to keep up with the times, extending Computer World’s lunge for more accessible, lyrical pop further than it could reach. Whatever the motivations, it’s hard to hear Electric Cafe tracks such as “Sex Object” without being at least a bit startled at the group’s willingness to tackle the topic of sex so frankly. It might be the only Kraftwerk song in which being like an object or a machine is portrayed in an unambiguously negative light.
Music: “Sex Object”
I think my favourite track on Computer World is its closing track, “It’s More Fun To Compute.” With a straightforward repetition of the title as its sole lyrical content, and a brazen, strident synth blast propelling it forward, it’s another one of those simple, but utterly compelling tracks that Kraftwerk seem to have been full of. Despite the way it flips into something much more melodic later on, it’s the tumult of the opening bars that really sells me on “It’s More Fun To Compute.” I think the textural qualities are almost a bit reminiscent of the grating oscillations of their often overlooked earlier album, Radio-Activity. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
This week on Passionate Reply: We all know “Don’t You Want Me,” but the early Human League is a totally different beast, featuring a different line-up, and songs about killer clowns and wanting to be a skyscraper, on their debut LP, 1979′s Reproduction. Transcript below the break!
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums. In this installment, we’ll be investigating one of the most surprising debut LPs around: The Human League’s Reproduction, first released in 1979.
Pretty much anyone with a general understanding of Western pop will already know the name of the Human League, and associate them, rightfully, with their early 80s hits like “Don’t You Want Me.” For many, the Human League were the first genuine synth-pop that they had ever heard, and their work in the 1980s has been immeasurably influential in bringing the notion of electronic pop into the mainstream. But before they were hitmakers and game-changers, the Human League were a very different band.
Music: “Being Boiled”
“Being Boiled” was the first thing the Human League would ever press to wax, way back in 1978. In most respects, this track is everything that “Don’t You Want Me” is not: its pace is languid, its structure is shapeless and meandering, and rather than a simple and relatable love story, its lyrics offer us a strange and opaque condemnation of the tortures endured by silkworms during textile production. While fascinating, and endearing in its own morbid way, “Being Boiled” does not exactly scream “hit record.” The Human League were not only a different band in a stylistic sense, but also with respect to their personnel, driven by a creative core comprised of budding synthesists Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. Prior to the release of the breakthrough album Dare, Marsh and Ware would abandon the group over creative differences, and go on to form Heaven 17 instead. It was vocalist Phil Oakey, and producer Martin Rushent, who would create the sound that their name is now so strongly associated with, and this early incarnation of the group is probably best thought of as an entirely different entity. This album, Reproduction, was their first full-length release, and is perhaps the best introduction to their pioneering sound.
Music: “Circus of Death”
“Circus of Death” had appeared as the B-side to “Being Boiled,” and was included once more as the second track on *Reproduction.* It has a lot in common with the other track it accompanied: a plodding pace, a dark and obtuse lyrical theme, and a sparse, fully electronic instrumentation. The Human League were among the first British groups to utilize a totally electronic sound, devoid of any traditional instruments besides the voice, though in this underground and more experimental context, it doesn’t present a threat to the status quo of pop the way that Dare would a few years later. Alongside fellow proto-industrial acts associated with "the Sound of Sheffield," like Clock DVA and Cabaret Voltaire, they dwelt on the fringes of good taste, crafting subversive music for subversive people. “Circus of Death” introduces us to a demonic figure called “the Clown,” who controls, and torments, human beings by use of a drug called “Dominion,” in a scenario that sounds a bit like Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s worth remembering that while younger generations are quick to think of clowns as icons of evil and terror, clowns were unironically beloved as bringers of joy for most of the 20th Century, and these early portrayals of clowns as killers were indeed shocking at the time. Preceding “Circus of Death,” and opening the album, is “Almost Medieval,” a track with some similar themes, but a rather different composition.
Music: “Almost Medieval”
While “Circus of Death” is slow and dirgelike, “Almost Medieval” showcases the more aggressive side of *Reproduction.* It opens the album with a starkly simplistic tick-tocking beat, reminiscent of an unaccompanied metronome, before bursting into its punk-like sonic assault--a musical representation of how seemingly predictable and deterministic machines can also create something outrageous and unexpected. The lyrics of this track seem pointed towards the past, with the narrator exclaiming that they “feel so old,” and as if they’ve died many times before. Juxtaposed against the thoroughly modern setting of an airport with tarmacs and jet engines, it might be taken as an expression of the horror a person from the past might feel if they were shown the world of the future, created by capitalism and high technology. While it isn’t very accurate, we have a tendency to think of the “Medieval” world as a barbaric, unclean, and uncivilized era, full of witch hunts, chastity belts, and the deliberate erasure of “ancient wisdom.” “Almost Medieval” turns that idea on its head, suggesting that perhaps our world is the one that’s truly barbaric. The image of its narrator, “falling through a rotting ladder,” can be taken as a rejection of the notion of a “ladder” of progress. Similar themes of open-ended symbolism, and the sorrow of modernity, can be found on “Empire State Human.”
Music: “Empire State Human”
Like “Almost Medieval,” “Empire State Human” is lively and faster-paced, with driving percussion. With its straightforward rhymes and repetitive structure, it readily encourages the listener to sing along, almost as if joining in some sort of ritual chant. It’s an idea that Marsh and Ware would return to in their Heaven 17 days, with tracks like “We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thang.” “Empire State Human” was the album’s only single, and thanks to this exposure, and its (relative) palatability compared to the rest of their catalogue, it remains one of the best known tracks from the early Human League. “Empire State Human” makes its concept pretty clear, with less ambiguous lyrics and an easy to follow mix that brings Oakey’s voice to the fore: the narrator wishes to become a building, and a mighty skyscraper no less, which might rival the achievements of the Pyramids of the ancient Egyptians. While it is clear that that’s what the song’s about, what we do with this once again high-concept subject matter is up to us. I like to think that this is some kind of perverse commentary on the unnatural and alienating experience of urban living, which may come with the feeling that the concrete and rebar structures that surround us are more significant to our lives than the people who may live or work in them. City life is addressed more directly by the track “Blind Youth.”
Music: “Blind Youth”
“Blind Youth” is probably the most “grounded” track on the album, in terms of its theme, making pointed remarks about “dehumanization” and “high-rise living.” It’s tempting to think of it as a sort of parallel to “Empire State Human,” with a broadly similar musical backdrop, and a more literal expression of the theme hinted at more obliquely by “Empire State Human.” With its focus on the experiences of the titular “youth,” “Blind Youth” can also be contrasted with “Almost Medieval,” whose narrator keens about feeling old. Where “Almost Medieval” deals with the disgust an older person feels at the decrepit state of the human race, “Blind Youth” shows the demented, unthinking joy of the youth, who have grown up in an industrialized and urbanized world, and don’t know different--or better.
While there have been many classic underground albums whose covers aimed to shock and displease polite society, the cover of Reproduction is one of the few that I feel would still be seen as offensive, over 40 years later. It was allegedly the product of a miscommunication between the group and the illustrator commissioned to create it; the band requested a scene in which people are dancing above a ward of babies in glass-topped incubators, and the striking angle, which seems to show people crushing infants underfoot, is an unintentional aspect of the design. Unintentional or not, this crudely violent aspect dominates the final composition, and lends it vileness and immediacy. Like the lyrics of many of the songs, the combination of the cover and title can be interpreted a number of ways. Perhaps it’s a glib commentary on human reproduction as fun and games: we partake in the “dance” of courtship and sexuality, and babies drop beneath our feet. Or perhaps it suggests a contrast between life’s enjoyments, like dancing, and its stressors, like the responsibilities of parenthood. It’s hard not to see so many crying, seemingly distressed infants without becoming upset oneself, and I think the deep instinctual revulsion that this piece inspires is part of why it’s remained so resonant in its subversiveness.
As I mentioned in my introduction, the Human League have gone down in history chiefly for the music they made later, which has largely buried this early period as part of their legacy--at least in the public eye and outside of the dedicated diggings of motivated enthusiasts. If you’re a fan of what you’ve heard from this album, you’ll probably enjoy their 1980 follow-up Travelogue, as well as their EP, Holiday ‘80. Given the emphasis on long-form albums among music aficionados, EPs and their exclusive tracks are quite frequently missed, but Holiday ‘80 is a gem from this short-lived line-up, featuring the fragile “Marianne” as well as a cover of the stadium favourite “Rock ‘N’ Roll,” made famous by Gary Glitter. Thumbing its nose at everything the culture of “rock and roll” stands for, and transposing this hymn to its greatness into an abrasive and sterile lunar landscape of synths, this is one of my favourite covers of all time, and seems to prefigure how a very different Human League would later become the archnemesis of all that rock fans held holy. It was also one of very few tracks to be performed on Top of the Pops, and subsequently see not a rise, but a drop in the singles charts!
Music: “Rock ‘N’ Roll”
My favourite track on Reproduction is one that appears on its second side, unlike the other tracks I’ve talked about so far: “Austerity / Girl One.” Side Two of Reproduction is mainly focused on longer and more narrative-driven tracks, and this is no exception. Like the opener of the second side, “Austerity / Girl One” is a medley, albeit one of two pieces that are original compositions and not covers, as medleys usually are. This track’s story is both timeless and modern, a bit like a contemporary King Lear: the “Austerity” half deals with an aging father, incapable of understanding his children, dying alone and ignored, while the “Girl One” half puts us in the mindset of his daughter, a New Woman whose life is hectic, but also bleak. It’s a story that many of us will relate to, about people who try their best with what they’ve got, but still feel as though they’ve failed in life. Its simple, but effective musical backdrop of wan synth pulses allows the narrative, and Oakey’s evocative portrayal of it, to take center stage. That’s everything for today, thanks for listening.
This week on Great Albums: lots of people love Gary Numan. But they tend to love his very early work, and his very recent work, without a whole lot vouching for the stuff in between. My favourite work of Numan’s is 1984′s Berserker, a true gem buried in the sands of many, many mediocre albums. Find out what makes it so great by watching my video, or reading the transcript below!
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! This time around, we’re looking at a fairly famous artist, and at one of his not-as-famous works: Gary Numan’s Berserker, first released in 1984.
For the most part, if you’re a fan of Numan, you’re either a fan of his earliest work, and/or, his recent work since the 1990s, and there’s a substantive slump in between these two. In 1979, the artist made a tremendous splash with his initial hits “Cars” and “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?”, but after the release of his second solo LP, Telekon, only the following year, the public rapidly began to sour on Numan’s android antics. While his early work is held in high regard, and perhaps even unassailable for synth fans, most of his other work in the 1980s is met with a lot more scrutiny.
Numan’s bad days arguably came to a head with 1983’s Warriors. Warriors was initially meant to have been produced by the great Bill Nelson, whose work Numan evidently much admired. However, the artists’ clashing personalities allegedly made it impossible for them to work together, and Nelson left the project and had his name removed from it. Besides this period’s poor aesthetic decisions, showcasing Numan with blond hair and head-to-toe leather like a very sorry Billy Idol clone, Warriors feels like a mess of disjointed sonic ideas, losing the nucleus of what had made Numan special.
Music: “Sister Surprise”
Like most of Numan’s work from this period, Warriors was not only a flop in the eyes of critics, but also an arguable commercial failure. It would go on to be the final record he released on the Beggars’ Banquet label; after its release, he decided to take matters into his own hands and start an independent label, Numa Records. This is where Berserker comes in, having been the first independent release Numan got to make. And I think it shows, in that the album comes across as extremely focused in its themes, as well as very willing to do things that are more novel and unique.
Music: “Berserker”
The album’s title track was its lead single, as well as its opener. As it opens the album with the line, “I’ve been waiting for you,” I can’t help but feel that I, too, have been waiting for Gary Numan, whose true genius lay dormant for some years, like the fabled king under the mountain. The title track’s screeching guitar is, perhaps ironically, more reminiscent of Bill Nelson’s famous guitar work than anything on Warriors. Overall, I can’t help but feel it resembles the general template of Numan’s celebrated later work, with its emphasis on jagged electronic textures rather than traditional instruments, as well as its lyricism, portraying an abstractly menacing narrator who seems as inscrutable and inhuman as they do dangerous. In that sense, it’s a bit of a glimpse into Numan’s future. Still, one can’t deny that Berserker remains an album that feels “of its time,” take it or leave it, as on the second and final single, “My Dying Machine.”
Music: “My Dying Machine”
“My Dying Machine” seems to revolve around its woodsy, sample-based percussion track, perhaps reminiscent of Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s work with gamelans and jegogs for the soundtrack of the famous film Akira, later in the 1980s--albeit less organic and more precisely mechanical. It’s a sound that I can’t get enough of, personally, but it’s also something that springs directly from the advancements in sampling technology that were becoming more accessible by this time. The use of female backing vocalists, heard on many tracks throughout the album, is another touch that grounds Berserker in a mid-80s context, as it was a fairly common trend at the time. But I’d argue that the employment of this technique enriches the album: Numan’s backing choir seem no less haunting than he does, surrounding him like sirens on a desolate crag, harrying us with hooks that in the past might have been played on an early synthesiser instead. The contrast of these female voices also helps highlight the greater vocal range that Numan himself attempts on this album. Squawking at higher pitches had been serviceable earlier in his career, when he remained more indebted to punk, but on Berserker, we really get a lot of his chest voice, and he proves himself to be a surprisingly competent vocalist on tracks like “Cold Warning.”
Music: “Cold Warning”
Earlier, I argued that Berserker’s title track prefigured Numan’s later albums, but I was mainly comparing lead singles to lead singles. “Cold Warning,” I think, sounds a lot like the typical album track on a recent Numan album: slower-paced, somewhat atmospheric, and ominous in a more moody and subtle manner as opposed to directly threatening. Note also its intro, with its prominent use of a viola, which really stands out against Berserker’s overall more electronic soundscape. By this point, Numan had been no stranger to incorporating traditional instruments; earlier in his career, he’d been impressed by the work of Billy Currie of Ultravox, who played not only synthesisers, but also string instruments like viola, in the context of a rock group. Numan had gone as far as to hire Currie to perform on his 1979 LP The Pleasure Principle, and its accompanying tour. Still, I think “Cold Warning” reminds me less of The Pleasure Principle, and more of Numan’s more recent efforts--particularly his 2021 album Intruder, which features Gorkem Sen playing the yaybahar, a novel string instrument of the latter’s own invention. Still, for as much as Berserker stands out as one of the least commercial endeavours from this period of Numan’s career, it’s not totally devoid of pop influences. Take, for example, the track “This Is New Love.”
Music: “This Is New Love”
From its title alone, “This Is New Love” seems to announce itself as something more conventional and accessible, and indeed, its lyrics are more straightforward than what you’ll find elsewhere on Berserker. Those omnipresent backing vocalists are given a pleasingly hooky assignment here, and the instrumental arrangement, dominated by that oh-so-80s slap bass, is also less abrasive, and an apparent nod towards pop. If this track were also a scrying crystal, I’d say it looks ahead to Numan’s near future, and lighter, more funky tracks like “Your Fascination.”
Of course, I can’t do Berserker justice without talking about the visual side of this period in Numan’s career. Front and center on the cover of the album, as well as contemporary supplemental releases like singles, we see Numan in the distinctive makeup associated with this era: solid white skin, with striking, solid, deep blue hair, eyes, and lips. On one hand, his appearance here shares a lot in common with where he got started, generally painted white with a lot of dark eyeliner, but there’s also an element of newness about it, in the use of that brilliant blue. Visually as well as musically, Berserker feels to me like the ideal thing for an artist to be doing by the time of his eighth major release: whittling down to the very best elements that defined their initial work, while incorporating and experimenting with new ideas at the same time. The last time we saw a headshot of Numan on the cover of an album was the aforementioned Telekon, but in contrast to the ambiguous and perhaps diffident expression Numan had there, on the cover of Berserker, he seems much more sure of himself. Staring directly forward, with perhaps a hint of anger suggested in his brows, he seems to regard us with confidence, and a certain single-mindedness.
Taken together, Berserker is an album that “convinces,” expressing a clarity, certainty, and cohesiveness of creative ideas. Like the savage and frenzied warriors of the Old Norse skalds, Berserker comes after us relentlessly, invoking something otherworldly as it does so.
But as much as Berserker seems like such a determined statement, Numan never necessarily made an album that was exactly like it. He seems to have a relative soft spot for it, in that he still performs tracks from this album in live sets despite largely snubbing the rest of his 80s output, but Berserker didn’t exactly revolutionize the way he approached music at the time. For Numan, the 1980s were largely a time of throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, and, as mentioned above, we know he wouldn’t find what stuck for him until a decade after the release of Berserker. If you’re looking for more of this sound, your best bet might be the 1985 single “Change Your Mind,” a collaboration between Numan and Bill Sharpe of the jazz-funk outfit Shakatak. While combining Numan’s sound with funk may sound a bit strange, it’s something that many of the synth whizzes from earlier in the decade had started doing to remain relevant in the mid-to-late 1980s, and at least on this cracking single, it seems to come together pretty well.
Music: “Change Your Mind”
My favourite track on Berserker is “The Hunter.” While I’ve emphasized the extent to which Berserker is a forward-looking album for Numan in a sea of mostly forgotten mistakes, “The Hunter” is the track that feels the most to me like it could be a classic Numan work, and I can easily imagine a lower-tech version of it appearing on Telekon. Just listen to that delightful air-raid siren synth rendition of the main vocal hook, and I’m sure you’ll agree! That’s everything for today, thanks for listening!
This week on Great Albums: one of very few albums that I think is truly perfect. John Foxx’s second solo LP, The Garden, is a masterpiece of Medieval mysticism, romantic longing, and modern electronics. Transcript below the break!
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! In this installment, I’ll be looking at a classic sophomore album, and one which epitomizes the principle of taking one’s sound in a different direction the second time around: The Garden by John Foxx, first released in 1981.
While The Garden was Foxx’s second release as a solo artist, it’s also his fifth LP overall, as he had spent the late 1970s fronting the original incarnation of Ultravox. Foxx’s Ultravox was an eclectic mix of influences from glam, punk, and, of course, electronic pioneers like Kraftwerk, but it would be the latter of these ideas that dominated Foxx’s solo career. His 1980 solo debut, Metamatic, is some of the purest, starkest, and harshest minimal synth around, and remains one of the most iconic early works of the subgenre.
Music: “Underpass”
If you want more like Metamatic from Foxx, you’ll want to skip ahead to the 1990s, because he turned his back on this thin and aggressively inorganic sound remarkably quickly. While he would produce several more LPs in the 1980s, the group of them seems to grow progressively lighter and softer, with less blistering analogue synth, and more radio-friendly love themes. But while Foxx’s third and fourth efforts are often panned, The Garden has actually won nearly as many fans over the years as Metamatic, proving itself to be powerful in its own ways, despite its radically different aesthetic. Where Metamatic dealt in brutalist city blocks and Ballardian psycho-sexuality, The Garden takes place in moldering cathedrals, embracing Gothic splendour and (imagined) Medieval emotionality.
Music: “Europe After the Rain”
“Europe After the Rain” opens the album, and also served as its lead single, becoming a relatively minor hit in the charts. As we hear it, we immediately become aware that Foxx has abandoned the instrumental palette of Metamatic, made almost exclusively with an ARP 2600 synthesiser, in favour of something more lush. On “Europe After the Rain,” traditional instruments like acoustic guitar and piano are impossible to ignore, though the constant bass synth ensures we never forget Foxx’s roots either. It also seems to be a major thematic leap away from Metamatic, with its tender and romantic feel. Still, that may not necessarily be all there is to it--the song is presumably named after a famous painting of the same title, by the Surrealist Max Ernst, executed in the early 1940s as World War II was first beginning. Ernst’s painting is a sort of apocalyptic vision, in which crumbling structures are overtaken by vegetation, and two figures wander through it, seemingly passing by one another. Perhaps Foxx’s “Europe After the Rain” is also a theme for a devastated landscape, its lovers meeting again the last survivors of some nuclear holocaust? Maybe it isn’t too far away from the themes of crushing modernity employed on Metamatic after all.
Note, as well, the emphasis on “Europe,” conceptually--The Garden is, at least partially, a sort of search for a new European cultural identity. The Garden fuses electronics, and hence Europe’s characteristic technological achievements, with a love of more traditional European cultural ideals, namely, the aesthetics of Medieval Christianity. For evidence of that idea, look no further than its most obvious apotheosis, the track “Pater Noster.”
Music: “Pater Noster”
“Pater Noster” is, of course, a setting of the Latin-language translation of the so-called “Our Father” or Lord’s Prayer, one of the most popular and well-known texts in Christianity. “Pater Noster” is the album’s most obvious love letter to the Middle Ages, but an informed listen will show that it has little to do with actual music from that era--I actually could forgive the synthesisers, which might be analogized to the role of church organs, but the percussion-propelled nature of the track is what really makes it feel ahistorical to me. Despite the religious themes of The Garden, Foxx always averred not being any sort of authentic believer in religion or God, and maintained that he was interested in the traditions of the Church purely on aesthetic grounds. Whether you think this sort of appropriation is appropriate and respectful or not, it’s certainly one of the album’s prominent themes, and part of what makes it feel as unique as it does. While I’ve emphasized the themes of romanticism and religiosity, it’s also worth noting that The Garden is not a complete break from Foxx’s earlier works, and in its return to a more guitar-driven sound, it often winds up riffing on something not unlike punk.
Music: “Systems of Romance”
Astute followers of Foxx will have already noticed that the track “Systems of Romance” shares its title with the third and final LP he released with Ultravox, in 1979. Apparently, it was written that much earlier, though it wouldn’t be seen to completion until several years later. Combining a hard-driving guitar, played by Foxx’s Ultravox bandmate Robin Simon, with the inscrutable, sensual, elemental lyricism Foxx employs throughout his mid-80s oeuvre, the track “Systems of Romance” really feels like a bridge between 70s art rock and 80s avant-synth-pop, moreso than anything else on the album. Much as “Systems of Romance” extracts a certain prettiness from punk, so does the aesthetically-oriented “Night Suit,” which plays with appearance, deception, and masculinity.
Music: “Night Suit”
“Night Suit” is the track on The Garden that I feel is the most exemplary of its own time period, a mysterious ode to a mystical garment that could almost feel at home on an album by Visage. The Garden is interested in “romantic” themes, but “Night Suit” truly feels at peace among the New Romantics. It’s got some of the most “believable” rock influences, with a prominent guitar riff from Simon, and yet its emphasis on the power of fashion and appearances, destructive, and perhaps even supernatural, is hard to imagine in a genuine punk context. As it implores us to “be someone” or “be no-one,” it’s easy to fit “Night Suit” into one of the major themes throughout Foxx’s career: the tranquility and liberation of personal anonymity. Why is the “Night Suit” a suit in the first place? The song wouldn’t make sense if it didn’t deal with a garment that is also a non-garment, something to wear that feels default, neutral, and unassuming--not to mention classically masculine.
On the cover of The Garden, the main thing we see is, well, a garden. Despite Foxx’s more obvious personal presence on the albums before and after The Garden, it’s easy to miss him here, dwarfed by the scale of nature that surrounds him. It’s almost like the album is more meant to be about this place, and the concept of “the garden,” than it is Foxx as a person, or any particular perspective of his.
While the actual capital-R Romantics were deeply interested in the “sublime,” and the scenes and moments in which mankind faces its vulnerability and insignificance when compared to the natural world, it’s also worth remembering that a “garden,” by definition, is really not a natural space at all, but rather one which is arranged by human hands. Even if this composition resembles those of Romantic painters, I think it’s worth looking earlier in the European past to interpret this one. Gardens were one of the most prominent symbols in Medieval literature, and scholars have suggested that they serve as symbols for sensuality, romance, and the yoni itself. Through the association with the Garden of Eden, gardens often represent a sort of lost, but longed-for paradise, and a return to innocence which is as tantalizing as it is impossible. In particular, “Europe After the Rain,” with its theme of lovers meeting again after the passage of some time, seems to connect with this idea.
In hindsight, The Garden really stands alone in Foxx’s career, a masterpiece whose precise style he would never attempt again. We might say it became that Garden of Eden, to which the artist could never return. While Foxx’s interest in Medieval spirituality would return on ambient works like Cathedral Oceans, and he would occasionally return to love songs with an electronic backing, the precise combination of lovelorn bardistry with a flair for the baroque that appears on The Garden remains totally singular. Foxx’s follow-up to this album, 1983’s The Golden Section, narrows its thematic focus towards poppy love songs, and its instrumental focus, likewise, is that of a fairly unremarkable mid-80s synth-pop record. But at the same time, I like to think that tracks like “The Hidden Man” manage to maintain a sense of the mystical.
Music: “The Hidden Man”
My favourite track on The Garden is “Walk Away.” While it lacks the severe and tragic grandeur of the album’s title track, which closes the album on a lofty note, “Walk Away” shares some of its delicate qualities, reviving the soft piano that we heard on “Europe After the Rain.” Thematically, “Walk Away” seems to deal with fragility and transience, and the grave significance that a brief, passing moment may have--which makes that “delicateness” feel all the more poignant in context. Its call-and-response outro, featuring one of Foxx’s most anguished vocal performances, really makes it a stand-out. That’s everything for today--as always, thanks for listening!
This week on Great Albums: one of my favourite “hidden gems” of the mid-1980s, Blancmange’s *Mange Tout* is about as extra and in-your-face as it gets, full of dense arrangements, gender-bending bombast, and musical instruments from Southern Asia.
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! This time around, I’ll be taking a look at one of my favourite hidden gems from the mid-1980s, the sophomore LP of Blancmange, entitled Mange Tout.
Despite their relative obscurity today, particularly in comparison to many of their contemporaries, Blancmange weren’t total strangers to the pop charts. Their first full-length LP, 1982’s Happy Families, would yield the biggest hit of their career: “Living on the Ceiling,” which peaked at #7.
Music: “Living on the Ceiling”
While it never got to be a chart-topper, “Living on the Ceiling” is still an unforgettable track in its own ways. Perhaps its most distinctive feature is its use of the traditional Indian instruments, the sitar and tabla. While 80s synth-pop is certainly full of Orientalism, most of the references you’ll find are pointing to the Far East, and the perceived aesthetic sophistication and techno-utopian futurism of China and Japan. Aside from certain works of Bill Nelson, Blancmange were pretty much the only ones engaging with South Asian musical themes. Blancmange’s instrumentalist, Stephen Luscombe, grew up in London’s Southall neighbourhood, which had a high population of immigrants from Southern Asia, which led him to a lifelong interest in Indian music. Combined with electronics, it makes for a totally unique sound, which ends up sounding better in practice than it might in theory.
While any time White European musicians turn to alternative cultures as artistic tools, there’s a valid cause for some degree of criticism and concern, there’s also an artsy, left-field un-hipness about Blancmange, who seemingly drew from Indian music not only alone, but purely for sonic enjoyment. Unlike the exotic fantasies spun by groups like Japan, none of Blancmange’s songs seem propelled by any specific idea or ideology about India, but rather seem to tackle common pop themes of love and heartbreak against a seemingly *non sequitur* musical backdrop. While we, as listeners, might have strong associations with particular sounds, this is ultimately more cultural than innate, and there’s really no reason why a composition with Indian instruments must revolve around some theme of “Indian-ness”; it isn’t like people in India don’t also fall in love. However you feel about these influences, the role of Indian instruments is only increased on Mange Tout, where they appear on multiple tracks, including the album’s most successful single, “Don’t Tel Me.”
Music: “Don’t Tell Me”
On Mange Tout tracks like “Don’t Tell Me,” not only do the instruments return, but so do the session musicians who had performed on “Living on the Ceiling”: Deepak Khazanchi, on sitar, and Pandit Dinesh, on the percussion instruments tabla and madal. “Don’t Tell Me” is a track with a lot of pop appeal, lightweight and singable, which makes it a bit surprising that it was actually the final single released from the album. It certainly impresses me that Blancmange managed to create such bubbly and finely tuned pop, given that neither of their core members came from any formal or technical background: Luscombe had had a history in avant-garde music ensembles, and vocalist Neil Arthur became interested in music via the DIY culture of punk. Their first-ever release, the 1980 EP Irene & Mavis, sounds more like Throbbing Gristle than Culture Club, but they somehow managed to arrive at something quite sweet and palatable in the end. That said, it’s also possible for sweet to eventually become too sweet--and this line is provoked on the album’s divisive second single, “That’s Love, That It Is.”
Music: “That’s Love, That It Is”
In contrast to the lighter “Don’t Tell Me,” “That’s Love, That It Is” is utterly bombastic, with a vicious intensity. The instrumentation and production style is dense to the point of being borderline overwhelming. By this point in his life, Stephen Luscombe had recently discovered that he was gay, and his time spent in nightclubs that catered to the gay community provided another pillar of Blancmange’s signature sound: the influence of the queer disco tradition, which is almost certainly the source of this tightly-packed instrumental arrangement style. Blancmange never seem to be mentioned in the same breath as other stars of queer synth-pop like Bronski Beat, Soft Cell, and the Pet Shop Boys, presumably due to the combination of their overall obscurity and the fact that Luscombe was never the face of their band, but I see no reason not to include them in the same pantheon of camp. Speaking of queerness, it’s also worth noting how Blancmange played with gender, particularly on their cover of “The Day Before You Came.”
Music: “The Day Before You Came”
A solid eight years before Erasure’s iconic Abba-Esque, Blancmange offered their own interpretation of an ABBA classic with “The Day Before You Came.” In their hands, it’s a languid dirge, and a meditation on quotidian miseries for which the titular event seems to offer little respite. The unchanged lyrics, portraying the narrator working in an office and watching soap operas at night, are subtly feminine-coded, but the deep and unmistakably masculine voice of vocalist Neil Arthur seems to muddle those connotations. While it is a cover, I’m tempted to sort it into the same tradition as Soft Cell’s “Bedsitter” and the Pet Shop Boys’ “Left To My Own Devices,” as a work which musically elevates the everyday life of a campily self-obsessed character to the sort of melodrama the narrator perceives it to have.
I’ve spent a lot of time praising the instrumental side of their music so far, but it’s also true that Blancmange wouldn’t be Blancmange without Arthur’s contributions. The presence of his rough and untrained voice, with the added gruffness of a Northern accent, draws a line between these tracks and a typical pop production, and he sells us quite successfully on the gloomy, ominous feeling of tracks like “The Day Before You Came” and the album’s lead single, “Blind Vision.”
Music: “Blind Vision”
On the cover of Mange Tout, we find an assortment of seemingly unrelated items, which form a sort of graphic wunderkammer against a pale beige backdrop. Perhaps the best theme that could be assigned to them is that of travel--we see several means of transportation, such as a boat, a motorbike, and an airplane flying above a map, as well as items that can be taken as symbols of exotic locales, such as a North American cactus, and an elephant and Zulu nguni shield from Africa. Only the harp is clearly evocative of music itself--and this instrument won’t even be found on the album! The album’s title, “Mange Tout,” suggests that we are getting “full” Blancmange, or “all of” Blancmange. Taken together, the cover and title seem to imply that this album is stuffed to the brim, and contains a whole world of musical ideas. I would definitely agree that that’s a major motif of the album: it’s audacious, explosive, and free-wheeling. It very much feels like an album that was put together on the back of a first initial success, with a pumped-up budget and bold creative vision, and hence pulls no punches. Perhaps the most compelling feature of Mange Tout, and the primary reason I recommend this album so highly, is its unbridled enthusiasm for what it’s doing. Even in its ostensibly experimental moments, Mange Tout feels not like an album that is “trying” something, but rather one that boldly and assuredly proclaims the things it does, and embraces a kind of “more is more” maximalism.
In hindsight, it’s easy to see Mange Tout as the creative as well as commercial peak of Blancmange’s career. Their follow-up release, 1985’s Believe You Me, is far from the worst album I’ve ever heard, but it definitely doesn’t feel quite the same as the “classic” Blancmange works, adopting a more middle-of-the-road, radio-friendly synth-pop direction, with less of the South Asian influences and experimentation that really set them apart in the saturated synth-pop landscape. While not a work devoid of merit, Believe You Me was a relative commercial dud, and the duo would split soon after, chiefly citing personal and creative differences--though they did have a brief reunion in the early 2010s.
Music: “Lose Your Love”
My favourite track on Mange Tout is “All Things Are Nice,” which, alongside the neo-doo-wop “See the Train,” would be classed as one of the more experimental tracks on the album. Full of tension, “All Things Are Nice” alternates between eerily whispering vocals from Arthur, and a variety of samples from other media--which was still a relatively cutting-edge technique for the time. “All Things Are Nice” is almost certainly the most conceptual track on the album: as samples discuss world war, and Arthur whispers that “we can’t keep up with it,” the song is probably to be interpreted as a commentary on the runaway nature of technology and so-called “progress” in the modern age. The titular assertion that “all things are nice” seems to be ironic--or perhaps it embodies a sheer love of chaos and unpredictability, for their own sake, which would certainly fit the album’s mood. It also feels like it might be a sort of defense of the album itself: like I said, *Mange Tout* is serving us “all of Blancmange,” and isn’t it fun to get to have all of something? That’s everything for today--as always, thanks for listening!
This week on Great Albums: Can you really try your hand at being a pop act with a name like “Severed Heads”? Despite a background in experimental, underground industrial music, these Australians made a pretty serviceable go at it. Find out more by watching the video or reading the full transcript below the break.
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! For today’s installment, I’ll be looking at Rotund For Success, first released in 1989 by the Australian electronic act, the Severed Heads. If you’re familiar with the Severed Heads, you might be aware that some people consider them to be an industrial band. But, as is often the case with such labels, it’s one that the artists themselves would reject--not to mention many listeners and fans, in turn. I, for one, have heard them described as the industrial version of “elevator music,” and while I find that hard to imagine, I can sort of see it. Wherever you might fall on this issue, there are certainly strong elements of both synth-pop and dance music in much of the Severed Heads catalogue--as on one of their best known tracks, “Hot With Fleas.”
Music: “Hot With Fleas”
First released on their 1987 LP Bad Mood Guy, “Hot With Fleas” won some club play in its own time and remains one of the best known Severed Heads tracks. Structurally, it’s a fairly typical Severed Heads composition, combining sample-heavy experimental percussion grooves with a slight hint of a playful melody. Despite its danceability, “Hot With Fleas” also betrays the group’s love for the vile and repulsive, chiefly in its imagery of being infested with itchy parasites. The sense of disgust, combined with the heavy, clattering percussion, together make the strongest case for an interpretation of the music as a part of the industrial tradition. But whatever we choose to call this style, the Severed Heads would take an increasingly pop approach on Rotund For Success--without losing all of those more subversive themes.
Music: “All Saints’ Day”
“All Saints’ Day” served as the album’s opening track as well as its second single. All Saints’ Day is, of course, a feast associated with historical observation of Halloween, which might serve to make the track come across as a little bit “spooky.” The use of squealing or screeching samples here may be an extension of that theme as well. Perhaps the most noticeable difference between “Hot With Fleas” and “All Saints’ Day” is that the latter is much more melody-centered; where “Hot With Fleas” was content to have its melodic hook either buried in the mix, stuttered into oblivion, or both, “All Saints’ Day” feels more like a pop song that happens to have an out-there percussion track. In addition to some fairly clean and pretty synth work, “All Saints’ Day” also seems to take a step back from some of the more perturbed lyricism from earlier in the Severed Heads catalogue, focusing on an individual who seems to struggle with issues of faith. The narrator feels unable to see themselves in the lives of the saints, but also asserts, in the song’s powerful refrain, that they are “willing to believe,” and strive for greatness nonetheless. While not preoccupied with “filth” as “Hot With Fleas” was, there’s still a sort of sinister undercurrent to “All Saints’ Day”: does it imply that the narrator’s faith is an impediment in their life, something that holds them back or prevents them from feeling confident? Religious faith is also the main theme of the album’s best-known single, “Greater Reward.”
Music: “Greater Reward”
Both in its actual chart performance, as well as in structure and style, “Greater Reward” is the closest thing to a pop hit that you’ll find on Rotund For Success. While it has a broad similarity to “All Saints’ Day,” it’s a bit like “All Saints’ Day” with all of its knobs turned up: brighter synth, more toylike percussion, and an enthralling, soaring refrain. “Greater Reward” feels captivatingly confident, almost swaggering--a real feat for Severed Heads vocalist Tom Ellard, whose distinctively thin or frail voice might be compared to that of Neil Tennant, of Pet Shop Boys fame. Another thing that “Greater Reward” seems to have escalated compared to “All Saints’ Day” is its lyrical subtext. Where “All Saints’ Day” portrays a struggling believer, the narrator of “Greater Reward” is perhaps a little too confident in their belief--so zealous that they seem to shun the earthly pleasures of love in favour of the titular “Greater Reward” of the afterlife. It’s easy to see how this track more clearly portrays religion as a net negative, even in the face of its simperingly cheerful melody. The track “First Steps” tackles the theme of religion in a more oblique manner.
Music: “First Steps”
The title of “First Steps” obviously implies the first attempts of a child to start walking, and the song’s remarkably slow, plodding pace also evokes the idea of a hesitant and clumsy attempt at something. It’s tempting to interpret the lyrics of the song as being things that might be told to children when they’re very young, particularly the refrain, “if you tell lies, an angel dies.” This line seems to give a third independent critique of religion: not only can it confuse those who want to do good, and cause people to neglect happiness during the one life they know they have, but it also plays a role in the indoctrination of young children, with this lyric portraying a spectral punishment that awaits wrongdoers. But the real reason people shouldn’t lie is that it harms other people here on Earth...right? In another “fairy tale” turn, the narrator suggests visiting “somebody where love is money,” only to conclude that “you can’t pay yourself, to fill yourself with desire for someone.” Perhaps this is a maxim or cliche, in some other universe. And perhaps it’s true--at some point, no matter what age we are, we have to learn that love isn’t a commodity, but rather a feeling, that can only be freely given. While I’ve emphasized the religious themes on this album a lot, not all tracks on Rotund For Success seem preoccupied with it. Take, for example, “Big Car.”
Music: “Big Car”
With the longest runtime of anything on the album, even without including a separate two-minute track that precedes it simply named “Big Car Intro,” “Big Car” certainly feels like something of a centerpiece for the album. It begins the second side of the LP, and it was released as a single, though to significantly less success than the others. Starting off with a frightful crash of breaking glass, “Big Car” is quick to introduce us to the Severed Heads’ hallmark hypnotic rhythm, and its plaintive, slightly nervous melody. The narrator of “Big Car” addresses someone who has perhaps done them wrong in the past, asking them to visit, and promising them that “never an unkind word need be said, about [their] life overhead.” If “Greater Reward” projected confidence, then “Big Car” suggests fragility, with a narrator who seems to be putting on a happy face to disguise their desperation. A more pop-minded listener might read this as a tale of a lover who’s been cheated on, crawling back to the person who betrayed them. But at the same time, there’s nothing that really suggests that this song is about a romantic relationship between the two. I think a lot of Severed Heads tracks fall into this musical “uncanny valley,” with elements of pop as well as more underground or experimental music, and perhaps to some extent what we choose to interpret in their work has more to do with us listeners than the Severed Heads. At any rate, though it may have some synth-pop DNA, “Big Car” is far from a typical pop song, with its meandering, mostly instrumental structure.
While earlier Severed Heads albums often featured grotesque and gruesome imagery, the cover of Rotund For Success eschews that in favour of an almost pithy or banal design, dominated by a large, floating pumpkin. While an argument could be made linking the pumpkin emblem with the theme of “All Saints’ Day,'' I'm inclined to interpret it as something created to be aggressively and offensively meaningless, like a corporate logo that’s been focus-groupped into a semiotic void. The album’s title perhaps also suggests a meaningless slogan for some useless product, with the word “success” serving as a stand-in for anything and everything that the consumer might desire. Much as the Severed Heads’ earlier work centered the grotesque, musically, lyrically, and visually, the move towards a cheekily trite cover and title mirror the way this album took their sound into a more subtly mocking direction. Overall, *Rotund For Success* is an album that snubs the gory details in favour of making a more abstract commentary, and I think the surface-level prettiness that this album offers makes it an enticing first look at an act with a very complex legacy.
While the Severed Heads enjoyed a perhaps surprising amount of mainstream acclaim with Rotund For Success, as well as a remix of their earlier track “Dead Eyes Opened" at around this same time, they would soon fade back into the obscurity that one generally expects of grotesque and experimental music. Their follow-up LP, the more guitar-curious Cuisine (With Piscatorial), failed to reach the same levels of crossover interest, and it would become their final release on Nettwerk Records before being dropped by the label.
Music: “Estrogen”
My favourite track from Rotund For Success is the enigmatic “LFM.” What does “LFM” stand for? Well, I’m really not sure, but the lyrics of this track suggest that we ought to feel “the power and the glory” of it. Given the religious themes of “All Saints’ Day” and “Greater Reward,” it seems possible that “LFM” is something to put one’s faith in even if we don’t understand it. But whatever it is, this track’s outro is positively sublime, with what sounds like a chorus of chirping birds to play us out. It’s rare that you hear such a nature-inspired sound in industrial music, but it really works well here, and reminds me a bit of Gary Numan’s “Engineers.” That’s all for today--thanks for listening!
This week on Great Albums: a stupendously underrated classic of queer punk meets synth sophistication, and an album without which we wouldn’t have Dare by the Human League: Homosapien, the 1981 solo opus of Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley. Find out more by watching the video, or reading the transcript below!
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be talking about one of those albums that isn’t necessarily the most acclaimed or best remembered work of its period, but nonetheless played an important role in history, and remains unrivaled for its uniqueness: Pete Shelley’s Homosapien, first released in 1981.
Shelley has historically been chiefly remembered as the frontman of the punk act, Buzzcocks. But, despite punk’s reputation for simplicity to the point of obnoxiousness, Shelley was one of many musicians to come from the punk scene with a penchant for experimental or otherwise ground-breaking music. His very first solo release, 1980’s Sky Yen, features little more than a brash wall of oscillating electronic noise, not unlike the earliest provocations of industrial artists like Cabaret Voltaire.
Music: “Sky Yen (Part One)”
Subsequent generations of critics have gone great lengths to coin and define terminology, in the hopes of breaking this period down into constituent parts, but the more I study it, the more I’m inclined to view it as just a huge soup. There was, quite simply, a lot going on in Britain’s underground in the late 70s and early 80s, and in practice, the lines between punk, post-punk, industrial, synth, noise, and other avant-garde miscellany are frequently illegible. As an artifact of this era, Homosapien resonates with all of the contradictions this melting pot would imply, fusing emotional rawness and pristine production in a way that never quite settles down and feels comfortable.
Music: “I Don’t Know What It Is”
“I Don’t Know What It Is” served as the opening track of the album’s second side, as well as its lead single. With a bona fide guitar solo as well as a propulsive, and truly soaring, chorus, it somewhat resembles that most 1980s of art forms, the power ballad. It is, ostensibly, a love song, and is revealed to be one quickly enough, but its portrayal of love is far from kind. While a real power ballad might take the concept of love for granted, “I Don’t Know What It Is” seems to portray it as something mysterious, inscrutable, and dangerous. And I can’t forget to mention just how much Pete Shelley stands out as a vocalist--his high-pitched, perhaps even fried or shrill vocals add a great deal to the song’s sense of unease, and really sell the idea of someone who’s being overtaken by an uncontrollable and dominating force.
Of course, perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Homosapien’s sound is its fusion of the hard, driving acoustic guitar of punk with the electronic sensibilities of its producer, Martin Rushent. I wouldn’t say this combination is ever terribly cohesive in its sound, but I think that’s why I find this album so interesting: there’s a tension that permeates each track, a feeling that things don’t fit together. While Homosapien is a pioneering work of electronic-centered production, enough of the pieces are still in place that you can certainly hear the shape of music to come as you listen to it. It’s not just the synthesisers, but also the use of electronic percussion here--it’s difficult to overstate the impact that so-called “drum machines” had around this time. While reviled by many, both then and now, rhythm machines were undeniably “instrumental” in changing what popular music sounded like. Even synthesiser-based electronic acts like Gary Numan, OMD, and Kraftwerk often relied on traditional percussion, so this genuinely was pretty shocking at the time.
Perhaps the most important element of the legacy of Homosapien is the fact that Martin Rushent would go on to use the skills he honed here to produce one of the most influential albums of the 1980s, and perhaps of all time: The Human League’s Dare, which would go on to cast an enormous shadow on nearly all popular music to come, after playing an enormous role in instigating an era of popular dominance of synth-pop. In that sense at least, Homosapien is certainly a very historically important album, and for that reason alone, I think it deserves a fair bit more attention than it gets. Still, for as much as the electronics might be the most forward-looking element of this album, one also can’t deny that it remains full of aggressive and perfectly punk overtones, as on the crass or perhaps dismissive screed of “Guess I Must Have Been In Love With Myself.”
Music: “Guess I Must Have Been In Love With Myself”
While Homosapien has many moments of seemingly being too thorny to get a good grip on, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t also times in which it can feel like a bit more than the sum of its apparent parts, as on its most narrative-driven track, “Pusher Man.”
Music: “Pusher Man”
“Pusher Man” is one of, if not the, most synth-centered compositions to be had on Homosapien, but its insistent pacing and neurotic portrayal of the “low life” theme of buying illicit drugs mean you’ll never confuse it for run of the mill synth-pop. Moreso than anything else the album offers, this track reminds me of the sort of “synth-punk” that American acts like the Units and Crash Course In Science would put forward at around the same time. “Pusher Man” was, at the very least, a sufficiently experimental track to earn the honour of being cut from the US release of the album in order to make room for some non-album A-sides, as happened to many albums at the time. But hey, that’s enough beating around the bush. Let’s talk about the real crown jewel of this album.
Music: “Homosapien”
If you’ve heard anything from this album before, chances are, it was probably the title track, which proved to be quite the commercial success--despite being banned by the BBC on account of its homoerotic content. Given that this very same year, they also came after OMD’s “Enola Gay” for its obviously nonexistent reference to homosexuality, one might be forgiven for thinking that a tune called “Homosapien” was simply misinterpreted. The title track isn’t terribly explicit material, but its clever wordplay nonetheless deals quite deftly with issues of sexuality and personal identity. In the earlier verses, Shelley introduces us to typified roles of gay male sexuality--the “cruiser,” the “shy boy”--only to seemingly doff them with the tune’s defiant refrain, asserting that the only truly important identity a human being has is that of “Homosapien.” Far from being an unfortunate coincidence, the similarity of “Homosapien” to “homosexual” is being employed here completely deliberately, particularly with it being mashed into a single word and thus gaining a greater resemblance to the word “homosexual” in print. It not only allows Shelley to belt out a borderline dirty word, but also creates a sort of unconscious syllogism, suggesting, in a sense, that homosexuals are people too.
With elements of both unapologetic pride in one’s own queerness, as well as the uncompromising assertion that humanity is something much deeper than that, the title track of Homosapien is one of the most fascinating and inspiring queer anthems of its time. Its artsy slipperiness has prevented it from feeling more shallow with time, and its straightforward or raw quality, intensified by that constant acoustic guitar, has kept it sounding equally sharp. It genuinely does surprise me that this album isn’t at least a little bit better remembered than it is. Outside of the title track, most of this album is currently not available on services like Spotify and YouTube Music at the time of this writing, and I actually struggled to present musical examples here. That’s really a pretty high level of neglect in this day and age, and I hope it can be rectified in the relatively near future.
It would be no exaggeration for me to say that Homosapien features some of my very favourite cover art of any album. Homosapien’s sleeve design sees Shelley occupy some sort of sleek, but hollow hyper-modernist office. Geometric forms suggest the world of the artificial or ideal. An Egyptian statue beside Shelley is a reminder of history, and the idea that even the greatest empires must eventually fall. Likewise, the telescope and early computer positioned nearer to Shelley are evocative symbols of science and technology--but in context they seem more sinister, being juxtaposed against a phrenology bust, which evokes the ways in which our attempts at science have caused misunderstanding and great human misery in the past. The central scene is framed in with large areas of black, which make the space feel even more claustrophobic and uninviting, and Shelley appears to be pushed into the background, almost belittled by the inanimate objects. Overall, I think it’s sort of funny that this album’s cover is perhaps more iconally “New Wave” than the music itself ended up being, particularly with Shelley clad in this somewhat foppish white suit and bow tie--certainly a big change of attire for a former punk!
Given the experimental nature of the collaboration between Shelley and Rushent, you might be surprised to learn that Homosapien actually wasn’t a one-off. Just two years later, Shelley would release a follow-up LP, XL-1, which was also produced by Rushent and largely continues the same ideas. While Shelley would never see the success of “Homosapien” again, the XL-1 single “Telephone Operator” would also chart to a lesser degree.
Music: “Telephone Operator”
My favourite track on Homosapien is “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça,” which closes out the first side of the album. If you’re familiar with my other work, you probably already know that I’m coming at this as someone chiefly interested in the electronic side of things, and I think that of everything on this album, “Qu’est-ce que c’est que ça” is the closest to being convincing as a synth-pop tune. With a bubbly, synth-dominant sound and lyrics that are more contemplative than aggressive, it’s much closer to the mould of what I usually listen to for fun than a lot of the other tracks are. That’s everything for today--thanks for listening!
