Snooping the Bandcamp has never been easier. Between their articles, the new vinyl tab, and artist suggestions, it usually doesn't take much on my part (can't speak for Micah) to find some that's either new to me, or I love.
Swansea Sound (members of Heavenly, The Pooh Sticks and The Catenary Wires) recently posted their Bandcamp favorites. Rob Pursey's list does mention the great David Lance Callahan that was posted recently. But, Ian Button's list steered me in the direction of this reissue/issue from Thomas Leer and Robert Rental (Glasgow).
This is post-punk/electronic music from the late 1970s. If you've enjoy The Fall, or Grauzone (posted 3/10/21), or Chris Knox, there's definitely something here.
This is released by Mute Records (New York), which we've apparently never tagged. Hard to believe since this label also has releases from CAN, Phew, and The Pop Group.
Alright, that’s enough talking about albums people have heard of. It’s time for Great Albums to start getting obscure! Find out why Thomas Leer’s The Scale of Ten is the best industrial-sophistipop fusion album you’ve probably never heard of. Transcript below the break!
Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! So far in this series, I’ve talked about a lot of widely beloved and classic electronic albums. But I’ve always intended for Great Albums to encompass any and all albums that I, personally, consider “great.” Today, I’m going to be discussing a pretty obscure album and artist for the first time: this is Thomas Leer’s The Scale of Ten.
Thomas Leer got his start as an industrial musician--and about as close to the source as you get, releasing his first full-length LP on Throbbing Gristle’s private label, Industrial Records, in 1979. That album was The Bridge, a collaboration with Robert Rental, and its minimal, distorted drones sound like a lot of other 70s industrial.
Music: “Connotations”
Leer’s early work was underground, but by the time of The Scale of Ten, he had shifted directions, and was actually angling for mainstream pop success.
Music: “Heartbeat”
There are lots of artists who have attempted to make the leap from underground darling to synth-pop star, and Leer was probably one of the least successful at doing that. “Heartbeat” is dying to be a hit single, and it gets priority billing as the opening track of the second side. It’s this awkward breed of “industrial pop,” where a harsh, mechanical screech meets a basic love lyric. I’m sure it’s somewhat unintentional how strident the backing track for this song is, but while it makes the song impossible to parse as pop, I actually enjoy it and think it gives the track a lot of character. You often hear people say, “there’s no such thing as objectively bad music...EXCEPT for music that doesn’t achieve what is intended by the artist.” I have to disagree with that, because I think a track like “Heartbeat,” that fails at being a pop song in a unique and interesting way, is pretty enjoyable to listen to.
Part of the reason why tracks like “Heartbeat” do sound a bit more pop than The Bridge is actually technology. The Fairlight CMI, featured in full force on The Scale of Ten, brought synth and sampling to a wider audience with its relative accessibility, and its softer, more “breathy” sound is now strongly associated with the rash of very commercial synth-pop that came to dominate the charts in the mid and late 80s. Leer got his hands on this when it was new, before a lot of these trends had settled in, and he used this technology in uncanny and unprecedented ways.
Music: “Lust For Loneliness”
But not everything you hear on this album is so strongly dominated by electronics. The pseudo-title track “Number One,” a veritable “ear worm” if I’ve ever heard one, features an abundance of traditional instruments like horns and strings. They were actually arranged by Anne Dudley, famous for her work with the Art of Noise and other production work alongside Trevor Horn. Against this lush, orchestral backdrop, Leer is far from a suave crooner--instead, his thin, nasal vocals seem woefully inadequate to express what he’s getting at. But, as with “Heartbeat,” that incompetence makes this track interesting. I think Leer’s cracking, withered voice comes across as everymannish, and perhaps vulnerable, in contrast to these very slick sophisti-pop instrumentals.
Music: “Number One”
While the frailty of Leer’s voice in “Number One” seems to bring an unintended pathos to it, The Scale of Ten is not without more deliberately ironic compositions. “International,” not to be confused with the similarly-named B-side of Leer’s first single, “Private Plane,” delivers us a peaceful, dreamy soundscape. But taking a closer listen to some of its lyrics reveals that that ultra-polished sound conceals a darker secret: the narrator of this song appears to be smuggling drugs.
Music: “International”
The album title The Scale of Ten appears to be a reference to the lyrics of “Number One.” Given that that track is single bait, it seems plausible that the album was named after its secondary lyric chiefly for marketing purposes--though the fact that it also has exactly ten tracks is somewhat satisfying.
I was initially pretty unimpressed with the cover design. Leer is a good-looking guy and all, but this weird close-up of him staring at us seems like an odd choice. It’s kind of grown on me, though, in a “kitsch chic” kind of way. It wasn’t until I owned this album on vinyl that I realized there’s a bit of an old-fashioned television display effect overlaid onto this image, which does add some subtle, additional visual interest, and makes it feel like some sort of candid surveillance footage or something.
For all of its faults, The Scale of Ten hardly put an end to Thomas Leer’s pop ambitions, and his greatest success in this style was yet to come. Several years later, he would form a bona fide synth-pop duo, with Propaganda frontman Claudia Bruecken. As “Act,” the two of them achieved some minor success--more acclaim than Leer had as a solo artist, anyway.
Music: “Snobbery & Decay”
Following the Act era, Leer would retire from making music for the next several decades. In the past few years, however, he’s returned to music, releasing some of his archival tapes from the 70s and 80s for the first time, as well as putting together some new compositions, playing with electronics, lounge music, and traditional pop influences.
My favourite track on The Scale of Ten, and one of my very favourite songs of all time, is its stunning opener, “Searcher.” Moreso than anything else on this album, “Searcher” really delivers on the premise of “industrial pop,” combining that soft, fluttering Fairlight-heavy sound with dejected vocals narrating a trip through an urban blight-scape. There’s even a fake-out ending! “Searcher” is just unlike anything else, on this album, or otherwise--it’s like a window into an alternate world, a completely different approach to the core ideas of industrial that has almost nothing in common with the rhythm-heavy “electronic body music” of the Continent. That’s all I have for today--thanks for watching!
