“I don’t like country & western, I don’t like rock music… I don’t like rockabilly! I don’t like much really do I? But what I do like, I love passionately!!”: CHRIS LOWE
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK has always preferred a cover version over a remix any day of the week…
But if you are going to do a cover in an electronic fashion, then try to be original! Don’t be bleeding obvious, retreading a Numan track unless something fresh can be offered or recording a Depeche song weeks after it is released as some did with ‘Ghosts Again’… maybe pick an obscure country, folk or soul number and make it your own with an otherworldly synth-laden treatment…
A follow-up to the 25 CLASSIC SYNTH COVERS and 25 21ST CENTURY SYNTH COVERS 2000 to 2014 articles, this listing features recordings made since 2015 up to the present day. So here selected by ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK are ANOTHER 25 SYNTHY COVERS 2015 & BEYOND, with the list restricted to one song per artist moniker, presented in yearly and then alphabetical order …
MARSHEAUX Monument (2015)
The MARSHEAUX reworking of DEPECHE MODE’s second album ‘A Broken Frame’ shed new light on Martin Gore’s first long form adventure as songwriter and affirmed that ‘My Secret Garden’ and ‘The Sun & The Rainfall’ were just great songs. But ‘Monument’ was an example of a cover outstripping the original and given additional political resonance with the economic situation close to home that the Greek synth maidens found themselves living in at the time of its recording.
Available on the MARSHEAUX album ‘A Broken Frame’ via Undo Records
Needing to be heard to be believed, this rather inventive and charming cover of THE CURE’s ‘Close To Me’ by Belgium’s favourite passengers METROLAND utilised a selection of male and female computer voice generators to provide the lead vocal, in a move likely to upset the majority of real music purists. Meanwhile, the hidden melodies shone much more brightly than in the goth-laden original, thanks to its wonderful and clever electronic arrangement.
A song by mulleted Canadian rock musician Lawrence Gowan, ‘Moonlight Desires’ was first released by him in 1987 and featured Jon Anderson on backing vocals! Fellow Canadians PARALLELS fronted by Holly Dodson gave the hook-laden song a more nocturnal synthpop-oriented twist which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the soundtrack a Brat Pack movie.
Available on the PARALLELS album ‘XII’ via Marigold Productions Ltd
Manchester based Ross Tregenza is an experienced hand having co-written ‘Diaries Of A Madman’ with Dave Formula and Steve Strange when he was a member of VISAGE II in 2007. He surprised electronic music audiences with a Spartan cover of ‘The Partisan’, a song made famous by Leonard Cohen. While some may despair at the very mention of the droll Canadian, his work has strong parallels with Gothic veined musical forms, especially with this harrowing tale of fighting for La Résistance.
Available on the TREGENZA album ‘Into The Void’ via Tregenza Music
One of DAILY PLANET’s main inspirations was cult UK synth trio WHITE DOOR. So when their chief synthesist Johan Baeckström was needing tracks to include on his ‘Like Before’ EP, the almost choir boy overtures of ‘Jerusalem’ was a natural choice for a cover version. Of course, this was not the first time Baeckström had mined the WHITE DOOR back catalogue as the more halcyon ‘School Days’ adorned the flip of his debut solo single ‘Come With Me’.
Available on the JOHAN BAECKSTRÖM EP ‘Like Before EP’ via Progress Productions
From the Cold War Night Life curated ‘Heresy: A Tribute To Rational Youth’, one of the highlights from the collection was PSYCHE’s take on ‘Ring The Bells’ from appropriately, RATIONAL YOUTH’s ‘Cold War Night Life’ debut. The clattering 808 beat and elegantly haunting sweeps combined with Darrin Huss’ mournful vocal provide an atmospheric reworking that betters the original and reflects the decades long kinship between RATIONAL YOUTH and PSYCHE.
Originally on the album ‘Heresy: A Tribute To Rational Youth’ (V/A) via Cold War Night Life, currently unavailable
Forming in 2016, seasoned vocalist Gene Serene and producer Lloyd Price’s combined sound delightfully borrowed from both classic synthpop and Weimar Cabaret on THE FRIXION’s self-titled EP debut. From it, a tribute to The Purple One came with this touching take of his ‘Under The Cherry Moon’, highlighting PRINCE’s often hidden spiritual connection to European pop forms and recalling ‘The Rhythm Divine’, YELLO’s epic collaboration with Shirley Bassey.
The mysterious HEAVEN first came to wider attention with the release of the ‘Lonesome Town’ EP. Caked in reverb and virtually unrecognisable, the funereal paced title song cover of the Ricky Nelson ballad captured the fragility of the broken heart as conveyed by the forlorn vocals of Aja Emma. Closer scrutiny revealed that HEAVEN was another project helmed by the ubiquitous musician and producer Johnny Jewel, best known a member of CHROMATICS.
Available on the HEAVEN EP ‘Lonesome Town’ via Italians Do It Better
Moody electronic duo KALEIDA first came to wider attention opening for Róisín Murphy in 2015. Covers have always been part of Christina Wood and Cicely Goulder’s repertoire with ‘A Forest’ and ‘Take Me To The River’ being among them. Their sparse rendition of ‘99 Luftballons’ by Nena earned kudos for being very different and included in the soundtrack of the Cold War spy drama ‘Atomic Blonde’, hauntingly highlighting the nuclear apocalypse warning in the lyric.
What happens when you cross anthemic Scottish indie with cinematic Swedish synth? You get US, now known as UNIFY SEPARATE. A cover of a 2001 song with an acoustic but modern flavour by Swedish singer-songwriter Stakka Bo aka Bo Johan Renck, this was perfect for Andrew Montgomery of GENEVA and Leo Josefsson of LOWE to showcase their different musical sensibilities in a more electronic setting as their debut single.
The biggest surprise on the second IONNALEEalbum ‘Remember The Future’ came with the cover of ‘Mysteries Of Love’, the iconic Angelo Badalamenti ‘Blue Velvet’ song with lyrics by David Lynch, originally performed by Julee Cruise. Co-produced by RÖYSKOPP, Jonna Lee stole the moment with her angelic voice while big synth leads and widescreen atmospheres were reminiscent of Vangelis.
Unwittingly reflecting the Covid crisis, KID MOXIE soundtracked the film ‘Not To Be Unpleasant, But We Need to Have a Serious Talk’. The plot centred around a womanizer who finds out he is a carrier of an STD, lethal only to women! She said of ‘Big In Japan’: “It didn’t feel right to necessarily use drums because I did want to take a departure from the ALPHAVILLE original. There was already a strong rhythm element with the synth bass and it takes it to a different place by having a woman sing it.”
Available on the KID MOXIE album ‘The Covers’ via Minos EMI
NATION OF LANGUAGE front man Ian Devaney was in an alternative rock band THE STATIC JACKS who released an album in 2013, but his interest in synths was sparked by hearing OMD’s ‘Electricity’ in his father’s car for the first time in years. In NATION OF LANGUAGE, he combined his past and future interests into an excellent electronic cover of PIXIES’ ‘Gouge Away’ which managed to maintain the frustration, aggression and menace of the original within a new blippy machine driven setting.
More machine than metal, DIE ROBO SAPIENS is the more purely electronic sideline of Düsseldorf industrialists DIE KRUPPS. In honour of their home city which spawned KRAFTWERK, NEU! and DAF, they covered the less internationally well-known RHEINGOLD in tribute their late leader Bodo Staiger; Given the subject matter, his powerful DAF-influenced 1982 statement on toxic fandom ‘FanFanFanatisch’ was appropriately reworked into something where the body was strong.
Recorded for a SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES covers album, this superb take by Jorja Chalmers on ‘Rhapsody’ off their ninth album ‘Peepshow’, made use of an intriguing electronic warble within its stripped down arrangement; from its claustrophobic cocoon, Chalmers sounds trapped in an unsettling icy soundscape of synthetic strings and choirs.
Available on the JORJA CHALMERS album ‘Midnight Train’ via Italians Do it Better
Making her name in the duo SINK YA TEETH, Norwich-based Gemma Cullingford made her debut as a solo artist with the ‘Let Me Speak’ album. Utilising a minimal programmed backdrop, a stark spoken word reading of Bobby Gentry’s ‘Ode To Billie Joe’ proved to be a highlight. “I loved the melody, the fact that it was quite a happy sounding song but the lyrics seemed quite dark” she said, “Then I read the lyrics and saw just how dark they are, and I kinda jokingly said I’d do a cover of it!”
Available on the GEMMA CULLINGFORD album ‘Let Me Speak’ via Outré Disque
Italians Do it Better were named after a legend emblazoned on a T-shirt Madonna was wearing in the ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ video and would later release a tribute compilation featuring their roster of artists. Exiled from their homeland of Belarus, DLINA VOLNY alternated a detached deepness with an unexpected pop register on their reinterpretation of ‘Hollywood’ that presented the song as a much harsher warning to those seeking stardom.
Available on the DLINA VOLNY album ‘Dazed’ via Italians Do it Better
PSY’AVIAN featuring MARI KATTMAN Monoculture (2022)
PSY’AVIAH is the electronic rock vehicle of Yves Schelpe and in a collaboration featuring Mari Kattman of HELIX on vocals, the B-side to their ‘Can We Make It Rhyme’ single was a cover of Monoculture’ which came from the first reunion of SOFT CELL in 2002. Her voice fitted perfectly to the heavier backdrop with the Marc Almond’s original commentary on the world’s cultural mediocrity as relevant as ever.
Available on the PSY’AVIAN featuring MARI KATTMAN maxi-single ‘Can We Make It Rhyme’ via Alfa Matrix
Not known for his vocal work as SCANNER, Robin Rimbaud recorded a covers EP of his late mother’s favourite songs as a tribute to her memory. Using vocoder and synths, his take on ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’, Gilbert O’Sullivan’s introspective hit song reflecting on loss and bereavement, was particularly poignant and perhaps unexpectedly given the robotic backdrop, emotional. The other songs featured were ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ and ‘When I Need You’.
With a vampiric intro recalling David Bowie’s ‘Cat People’, DURAN DURAN’s take on ‘Bury A Friend’ was much more direct and propulsive compared to the minimal Billie Eilish original. Swathed in jagged synth and guitar sounds as well as Simon Le Bon’s histrionic vocals, it more than fitted in with the Halloween theme of the ‘Danse Macabre’ album which was primarily made up of cover versions and darker re-recordings of Duran faves.
Available on the DURAN DURAN album ‘Danse Macabre’ via BMG / Tape Modern
Always adept at doing covers having had hits with ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘What’, SOFT CELL presented a brilliant electro tribute to Poly Styrene with ‘The Day The World Turned Day-Glo’. Taking a musical leaf out of ‘Sex Dwarf’ with Dave Ball making his syndrums and synths sound so menacing yet accessible, while Marc Almond delivers a vocal recalling the anguish of ‘Martin’ with sleazy sax passages resonating with the dystopian lyrics.
A fabulous cover of the Italo flavoured Kim Wilde B-side to ‘The Second Time’ from 1984, the throbbing ‘Lovers On A Beach’ saw NINA sounding sexier than ever before. Ricky Wilde said “I just thought there was a little bit more that it needed that I maybe wanted to add back in the day”. With sharp spikey edges boosting the trancey template, he provided a superb extended end section that paid homage to Giorgio Moroder in the best way possible.
Available on the RICKY WILDE X NINA album ‘Scala Hearts’ via New Retro Wave
Covered by acts as diverse CARTER THE UNSTOBBALE SEX MACHINE and Liza Minnelli, the latest interpretation of PET SHOP BOYS stark narrative of a kept woman came via this wispy account by Swedish duo SALLY SHAPIRO. Keeping the relationship dependency theme close to its heart but offering an icier Nordic vision from a female perspective, the sax of Steve Moore provided extra sleaze to the NICOLAAS remix.
Available on the SALLY SHAPIRO single ‘Rent’ via Italians Do It Better
NIGHT CLUB The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum (2024)
‘Masochist’ was the highly appropriate title for the fourth NIGHT CLUB album, a dystopian prophecy that came true! Written by FUN BOY THREE in 1981 as a metaphor by to the dangerous posturing games played by Ronald Reagan aka “The Cowboy” during The Cold War, the inclusion of a cover of ‘The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum)’ became even more sinister with the ultimate lunatic duo of Donald Trump and JD Vance now given control of the nuclear button…
Available on the NIGHT CLUB album ‘Masochist’ via Gato Blanco
PROPAGANDA Wenn Ich Mir Was Wünschen Dürfte (2024)
Starting a new chapter of PROPAGANDA, Michael Mertens and Ralf Dörper recruited young German singer Thunder Bae. Her talent shined with a superbly enticing performance in a haunting cover of ‘Wenn Ich Mir Was Wünschen Dürfte’, a Weimar-era song written by Friedrich Hollaender in 1930 that was made famous by Marlene Dietrich. The song had been also used for a controversial scene in the 1974 film ‘The Night Porter’.
Available on the PROPAGANDA album ‘Propaganda’ via by Bureau B
Comprising of Steve Hovington (vocals + bass), Paul Statham (guitar), Rick Holliday (keyboards), and Graham Boffey (drums), Mansfield quartet B-MOVIE are most often associated with being part of the Some Bizzare stable managed by futurist DJ Stevo Pearce which also included SOFT CELL and THE THE. They had all appeared on the ‘Some Bizarre Album’ compiled by Stevo which also showcased DEPECHE MODE and BLANCMANGE.
Phonogram Records wanted to sign B-MOVIE so Stevo insisted on a 2-for-1 deal which included SOFT CELL. But their trio of singles from that heady period ‘Remembrance Day’, ‘Marilyn Dreams’ and ‘Nowhere Girl’ failed to breakthrough into the UK Top40 while SOFT CELL hit No1 with ‘Tainted Love’ in 1981 and began an outstanding run of a five Top3 singles into 1982. Ultimately Phonogram and Stevo lost interest in B-MOVIE and an album they were working on was shelved.
A fragmented B-MOVIE led by Hovington and Statham signed to Sire Records and released the album ‘Forever Running’ in 1985 but by then, the magic that had sparked major label interest had fizzled out. B-MOVIE quietly disbanded but in 2004, the original quartet reformed. Despite releasing two new albums ‘The Age of Illusion’ and ‘Climate of Fear’, talk always returned to their Some Bizzare period with demand for its imperial trilogy of singles to be made available in the digital era.
Now in 2025, those three singles, their B-sides and tracks recorded between 1981-1982 for an intended long player have been digitised and restored to create the debut “that never was”. Titled ‘Hidden Treasures’, as well as featuring seven previously unreleased recordings plus ‘Remembrance Day’, ‘Marilyn Dreams’ and ‘Nowhere Girl’ on vinyl, the CD version contains 12” versions, B-sides and ‘Moles’ from the ‘Some Bizarre Album’.
Paul Statham chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about the release of ‘Hidden Treasures’ and revisited this lost chapter of B-MOVIE…
How does it feel to get this excellent album that was recorded 43 years ago out finally? Were there a lot of hoops to jump through in the politics to get it to this point?
We had almost given up of ever getting the original 3 singles of ‘Remembrance Day’, ‘Marilyn Dreams’ and ‘Nowhere Girl’ on any streaming platform as the no one knew who owned them or if they still existed. It was thanks to the diligence of B-MOVIE manager and long-time fan Andy Woods, that he located them and got them returned to us.
It’s a little disconcerting listening back to how we were back then! We had lots of confidence that’s for sure! It’s of its time and we changed nothing and neither added or taken anything away, so it’s like a document or treasure we’ve found that was hidden away, hence the fitting title!
The ‘Hidden Treasures’ title definitely suits the circumstances that it is being released now, but did you have any working titles during its recording?
Normally it’s a song title that could work as an album title, ‘Beginning To Fade’ would have been appropriate!
Was there much tweaking needed on any of the ‘Hidden Treasures’ tracks or are they basically “sold as seen”?
Sold as seen. The initial master tapes were baked, transferred and we luckily had the stereo mixes of most tracks, I believe the song ‘Crowds’ was remixed though.
I’m assuming most of the ‘Hidden Treasures’ was produced by Mike Thorne, but did his commitments to SOFT CELL prompt getting Steve Brown in to produce ‘Nowhere Girl’? As someone who produced ABC’s first single and would later work with WHAM! and THE CULT, how did you choose him? How did his approaches differ from Mike in the studio?
No, Mike only produced ‘Remembrance Day’ and ‘Marilyn Dreams’, the rest were really demos for the band that Andy Dransfield recorded on 8 track at Studio Playground.
I worked again with Mike Thorne on the Peter Murphy album ‘Holy Smoke’ that Mike produced. That was a much longer and involved process as Peter and myself first spent 2 weeks at Mike’s New York studio then a month in England, so I know Mike’s process is very very meticulous, lots of tracking guitars / keyboards and really thinking it through.
The lovely Steve Brown was a funny, sweet man, who unfortunately passed away way too soon. He worked quickly and intuitively, making decisions on the fly and sticking with them. We only really had one day and a night to record Nowhere Girl after a 48-hour drive from Southern Spain where we had just finished our first European Tour. Very hectic, then straight out the studio at 5am to drive to play a Christmas Eve show at Retford Porterhouse! We had lots of energy back then!
As good as it was, ‘Marilyn Dreams’ was less immediate than ‘Remembrance Day’ or ‘Nowhere Girl’… so looking back, was it the best choice as the single between them? Can you remember what the thinking had been behind the decision?
Yes!! After ‘Remembrance Day’, London Records wanted Mike Thorne to produce ‘Nowhere Girl’ as the follow-up. We convinced him to do ‘Marilyn Dreams’ to the record companies’ horror. We were a little naïve but believed in the song. So, a Sliding Doors moment. On the one hand I’d have loved to have heard how Mike Thorne would have produced ‘Nowhere Girl’, but I sort of know. It would have been more electropop and following on from ‘Remembrance Day’ would have probably gone in the Top 40 and given us the hallowed Top Of The Pops… BUT, we would then never had had the magnificent ‘Nowhere Girl’ 12 inch that is surely the definitive version!
The jagged album opener ‘Citizen Kane’ comes over like a cross between THE TEARDROP EXPLODES and ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, had that “psychedelic” Liverpool Eric’s scene been an influence on B-MOVIE?
It’s more the source of those 2 bands inspiration. We loved THE DOORS and PINK FLOYD as well as ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, but our sound was also 4 people with diverse tastes and different levels of musicianship. We never followed a ‘plan’ to get to the top. We were considered very wilful individuals, and we played music for ourselves, often extending songs to 10 minutes long. A classic live performance would have been the Futurama Festival were we really jammed out but went down a storm!
‘Polar Opposites’ is included and it’s a great version although I think the John Peel session just edges it, which in your opinion is the definitive version? There have been several versions recorded, was it just a difficult one to nail down?
The John Peel session, 1000%!!
There are some strange guitar parts on this upcoming version that I wouldn’t have played, and it turns out it was Steve who went back in and played over the track. I’ve no idea why but it was 43 years ago!
‘Ice’ is feisty gem of song, can you remember how it come together and why did it not end up on any of the radio sessions you did at the time?
I think it came later, after the Peel Session and the Richard Skinner session. Again, it was us just playing in rehearsal over Steve’s bass line and lyric. We played it live and it always went down a storm
The arrangement of ‘All Fall Down’ is very different to the 1981 John Peel version?
Again, we played it however we felt it at the time. That was probably our downfall commercially as we had no manager invested in us who would ever come to rehearsals, or a bona fide game plan… Stevo was just involved with SOFT CELL, understandably so as they were No1 here and in America, but there was a window for us if we had focused more, partied less and perhaps listened to other people occasionally!
‘Crowds’ was less post-punk and perhaps more of a melodic electronically styled pop song and not dissimilar from say OMD or A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS, how was the band developing musically at this point?
The arrival of Mike Peden on bass was at the time a good idea. It turned out not to be so and signalled the end of the original line-up. We did on this occasion listen to people, just the wrong people with bad advice so we sacked Graham which to me was the biggest mistake we ever made by far! And this sort of fretless bass playing from Peden and a less driving sound that Steve has when he plays bass (he’s actually a top bass player as well as singer!), I’m not a fan of where we went around 1984 onwards
Based on what has been documented on the ‘Remembrance Days’, ‘Radio Days’ and ‘BBC Radio Sessions 1981-84’ CDs, the band were mightily prolific during this period, how would you describe the band’s attitude and drive at this point?
With Martin Smedley on bass and myself playing guitar and keyboards, we formed a B-MOVIE version 2. Steve, Martin and I were re-energised as Mart was a great player and had a real energy. Although we went through other band members like bloody SPINAL TAP. Seymour Stein signed us to Sire. We met Bill Siddons, THE DOORS old manager, as well as Rod Stewart’s manager Arnold Stiefel who told us the Sire album was not up to scratch, he would re-negotiate a new deal (which he was entirely capable of doing) but did we listen? Nope, we went with John Hartman who managed Ringo Starr cos he had a fridge full of beer and had pizzas delivered nightly as we crashed at his LA pad. Turned out it wasn’t even his house, Seymour went ballistic, yelling “that guy still thinks records are played at 78rpm!”…. yep, we failed to notice the gift horse, let alone its mouth.
Is the track listing and running order of ‘Hidden Treasures’ what was intended back in the day or a retrospective selection?
Retrospective. Steve and Andy have been very involved in this, thankfully. I’ve been a little busy of late working with SIMPLE MINDS and a new DARK FLOWERS album plus lots of other things so it’s really down to their tenacity that this album is seeing the light of day
The CD contains bonus tracks in the 12 inch versions and B-sides from the period plus ‘Moles’ from the ‘Some Bizzare Album’, was there any thought to releasing these as part of a double vinyl package or is this something you might be keeping in reserve for Record Store Day?
Ha ha well you never know! There is another album coming out, focusing on the Covid Years! That’s all I’m saying!
How close did what is now ‘Hidden Treasures’ come to being released as the debut B-MOVIE album back in the day, or was it more or less shelved after ‘Nowhere Girl’ failed to get into the Top40?
Shelved. The music industry can be very unforgiving in a short space of time. Stevo wound everyone up but seeing as both SOFT CELL and THE THE had leverage, it was always going to be us who suffered the fall out of his many physical and mental fights with industry bosses. I don’t blame him, they deserved it, and he was a genuine innovator with real passion, but ultimately we paid the price.
As 1982 progressed, there were the inevitable tensions and the band fragmented after the ‘Hidden Treasures’ recordings, are you able to talk about what happened?
As said earlier, influences turned our heads in thinking that a new drummer would somehow aid the new ‘muso’ sound that Mike Peden’s professional session player style required while Rick met Cindy Ecstasy and had SIX SED RED in his mind. I was never involved in the early songwriting so my own position was marginalised, this situation changed after a reset and Steve and myself collaborated on the Sire album ‘Forever Running’ on a lot of the songs,
But then financial reality kicked in and after a revolving door of band members, it was down to Steve and myself to finally admit it had run out of steam. Steve formed ONE and I went to work with Peter Murphy as initially his keyboard player and second guitarist but co-wrote ‘All Night Long’ and ‘Indigo Eyes’ which helped the parent album ‘Love Hysteria’ reach No1 in the Alternative Rock charts prior to the success of follow-up album ‘Deep’.
Most of these songs are previously unreleased and didn’t feature on what eventually became the official B-MOVIE debut album ‘Forever Running’ in 1985… do you think in hindsight you should have carried these songs over to that or did you just want a clean state, for better or worse?
It was necessary to see the trio of Steve, Martin and myself as a new entity. We did a great Kid Jenson session with the 3 of us, I played guitar and keys, Mart played bass and saxophone and Steve sang brilliantly and for a time we felt re energised so again a radio session sounded much more brutal and punky than the eventual album which was watered down by the producer Stephen Stuart Short (again sadly passed away) and after that we all felt a little disillusioned
‘Hidden Treasures’ is equal to the debut albums by your contemporaries TALK TALK, BLANCMANGE and CHINA CRISIS; now this is imagining a “what if?” scenario but if ‘Nowhere Girl’ had been in the Top20 and the album had come out in Autumn 1982, what do think B-MOVIE’s career trajectory might have been?
That’s very kind of you, and yes I think we would have made a classic first album, it would have been spiky and experimental; but I still feel the band would have split after that album, just because we were growing as people and we needed to be able to express ourselves individually.
Do you have any particular favourite track or memory from ‘Hidden Treasures’?
Well, it was a very long time ago and I’ve made a lot of good memories post then. A lot of it I can’t really recall, we liked a drink and often would ferociously do that before recording. I loved the recording of ‘Remembrance Day’ at Scorpio Sound at the top of Tottenham Court Road with Mike Thorne. We spent a lot of time on the tracking of multiple guitar parts and we had Rick playing fantastic piano underneath the track. Also Steve and Graham laid down a fabulous beat and Mike supplied a producer sheen over everything which was extraordinary to what we had previously ever recorded. And I had my first McDonalds which is still there!!
B-MOVIE are playing shows to coincide with the release of ‘Hidden Treasures’, what can people expect, will you be performing the whole album plus the B-sides like ‘Institution Walls’ and ‘Scare Some Life Into Me’?
We have been playing those songs in the set anyway, way before this. We all have different tastes in the band, so we listen to each other when compiling a set list. I’m always pushing for new songs in the set and there will be a few, but overall we tend to look backwards and that is why the set is about 80% of the classic period, but we will be playing some surprise songs from ‘Hidden Treasures’ for sure!
Stevo was not a shy boy in really saying something about how much he hated “Fakkin’ BANANARAMA”, so I think it’s quite amusing that you and Rick ended up writing songs for them…
Ha, I had a ball with Keren and Sara. I think Rick had a song covered by them but I wrote 3 songs with them and those girls were mega fun, drank like mad with wicked senses of humour!
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its grateful thanks to Paul Statham
Additional thanks to Andy Woods at Astradyne Management
One sadly poignant note about the new Cherry Red double set ‘Fall – Float – Love (Works 1989-1993)’ is that its three main protagonists Julee Cruise, Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch are no longer with us.
Compiling her first two albums ‘Floating Into The Night’ and ‘The Voice Of Love’ with bonus edits, remixes, a demo and a cover version, the young Julee Cruise had moved to New York to make her fortune in acting and singing. A theatre workshop produced by Badalamenti brought her to the attention of the Brooklyn-born composer who had just begun working with David Lynch; the director himself had just come off the success of his 1984 film adaptation Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’.
Working on his new noir drama ‘Blue Velvet’, Lynch had wanted to use THIS MORTAL COIL’s cover of ‘Song To The Siren’ for a key scene but the asking price was beyond the allocated soundtrack budget. He suggested that Badalamenti write a song in a similar otherworldly style featuring a suitably haunting female vocalist. Badalamenti recommended Cruise, the track became ‘Mysteries of Love’ and the rest is history.
Having been schooled in a more theatrical style, Cruise had taken time to adapt her vocals to suit Badalamenti’s mood pieces and Lynch’s stream of consciousness lyrics while also accepting the heavy use of digital reverb on her voice. The three way creative relationship continued to produce music for Lynch’s cult TV series ‘Twin Peaks’ and Julee Cruise’s debut album ‘Floating Into The Night’ released in Autumn 1989; with its shimmering glacial perfection, it has since been acknowledged as a key album in the development of dream pop.
Although using conventional instrumentation like guitars, sax and brushed percussion highlighting Badalamenti’s jazz background, ‘Floating Into The Night’ was characterised by his Fender Rhodes electric piano with synthesised and sampled textures coming from a range of equipment including the Roland D550, Roland MKS70, Yamaha DX7, Akai S1000, Emulator II and Linn 9000, often played by Kinny Landrum.
The iconic ‘Falling’ as the vocal version of the ‘Twin Peaks’ theme needs no introduction in its crystalline moods and twangy Duane Eddy influences samples, but ‘Floating Into The Night’ began with ‘Floating’ which as title suggested, was a gorgeous slice of wispy avant swing that set the scene for an outstanding album. A more minimal cousin to ‘Falling’, ‘I Remember’ maintained the standard with an unexpected shuffle dropped in to throw off the scent; the airy mood recalled 1961’s Phil Spector produced ‘I Love How You Love Me’ by THE PARIS SISTERS which itself would later appear in ‘Twin Peaks: The Return’.
Although melancholic, ‘Floating Into The Night’ was no doom fest but with its gently swinging backbeat, ‘Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart’ provided a spritely uplift to proceedings. Following it, ‘Mysteries Of Love’ stands up nearly 40 years on as a bonafide classic that has since been covered by Claudia Brücken, Kid Moxie and ionnalee. Shaped by Fender Rhodes and slowly sweeping synths, ‘Into The Night’ was another fine lesson in minimal atmospheres from the ‘Twin Peaks’ universe while ‘I Float Alone’ provided a variation on the ’Floating’ theme at a more funereal pace.
Another song from ‘Twin Peaks’, the rich arrangement for ‘The Nightingale’ was laden with all the Badalamenti signatures of gentle melodies and delightful oddness. But ‘The Swan’ was bare and exposed with off key twists in the most minimal accompaniments while ‘The World Spins’ presented a beautifully orchestrated closer to the Lynchian drama with the sounds from ‘Falling’ all reprised in the dreamy waltz along.
After the cancellation of ‘Twin Peaks’, Lynch made a prequel spin-off movie ‘Fire Walk With Me’ in 1992 and with it came soundtrack contributions, some of which became songs for Julee Cruise’s second album ‘The Voice Of Love’ released in 1993. Although conceived as a companion to ‘Floating Into The Night’, this sophomore offering was less immediate and much hazier with an emphasis on mood. Instrumentally it was more organic than its predecessor, with bass guitar from Reggie Hamilton acoustic string bass from Buster Williams adding components that had not been present on ‘Floating Into The Night’.
Opening the album, ‘This Is Our Night’ sprang a surprise with an unexpected reggae inflection. ‘Movin’ In On You’ hypnotised in its repeated vocal phrasing but inspired by the Wim Wenders film that the trio contributed a cover of ‘Summer Kisses, Winter Tears’ to, ‘Until The End Of The World’ offered an exercise in elegance despite the metallic rhythm.
However, the eerie avant jazz of ‘Up In Flames’ proved challenging while the swinging piano-led moods of ‘Kool Kat Walk’ outstayed its welcome. And although ‘In My Other World’ played with a looser feel and hints of dysfunctional Americana, it lacked structure. The album was put back on track with ‘She Would Die For Love’, the vocal version of the ‘Fire Walk With Me’ theme and ‘Questions In A World Of Blue’, a song that would be the zenith of the Cruise / Badalamenti / Lynch axis when performed by her as herself in the film.
The soothing piano title song provided the formal ending to ‘The Voice Of Love’ but part of this set’s appendix, the gorgeous Elvis cover ‘Summer Kisses, Winter Tears’ recorded for the ‘Until The End Of The World’ soundtrack perhaps highlighted that while ‘The Voice Of Love’ was swathed in the aural wash of its predecessor, it lacked the accessibility that the songs on ‘Floating Into The Night’ had. But maybe ‘Floating Into The Night’ was just too tough an act to follow?
Whatever, ‘Fall – Float – Love’ gathers some fine music and in ‘Floating Into The Night’, a masterpiece in its not easily defined and yet instantly recognisable aesthetic. While originating from an arthouse cinematic headspace, the key is this music stands up without having to view any of the David Lynch filmography, conjuring images in an individual’s own mind from simply listening.
Wherever they are now, Julee Cruise, Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch are together making positive vibrations again.
In memory of Julee Cruise, Angelo Badalamenti and David Lynch
Having ended 2024 opening for popular American indie band VAMPIRE WEEKEND at London’s Brixton Academy plus their usual seasonal appearances at The Cavern in Liverpool, 2025 sees CHINA CRISIS busier than ever on the live circuit.
Gary Daly and Eddie Lundon started CHINA CRISIS in 1981; signing to Inevitable Records who launched the careers of WAH! And DEAD OR ALIVE, their debut single ‘African & White’ was championed by John Peel. CHINA CRISIS were picked up by Virgin Records and on the release their first album ‘Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Some People Think It’s Fun To Entertain’ in 1982, the pair were opening for SIMPLE MINDS with the profile helping to achieve their Top20 breakthrough ‘Christian’.
The second CHINA CRISIS album ‘Working With Fire & Steel – Possible Pop Songs Volume 2’ produced by Mike Howlett spawned their biggest hit single ‘Wishful Thinking’ in 1984. But a fresh approach the following year saw their third album ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ produced by Walter Becker of STEELY DAN fame. With the subsequent tour featuring what is often considered the classic Chinas line-up of Daly and Lundon with Gazza Johnson on bass, the late Kevin Wilkinson on drums and Brian McNeill on keyboards, this most successful of the CHINA CRISIS long players celebrates its 40th Anniversary in 2025.
With show formats ranging from synthpop quartet to full 9 piece band, today the live nucleus includes keyboard player Jack Hymers and saxophonist Eric Animan; the pair were involved in the recent reworks collection ‘China Greatness’ issued on independent label Last Night From Glasgow. It took CHINA CRISIS back into the Top10 of the UK album chart for the first time since 1985.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK had a long entertaining chat with Gary Daly over a game of Vintage Synth Trumps about the workings of CHINA CRISIS through the years and much more…
The first card is a Roland SH-3a…
Oh gosh, I know nothing about that AT ALL! I didn’t know it existed!
It is a rare one, but I saw a synth that you used from the Roland family on your solo album ‘Gone From Here’, the RS-202 String Machine…
That belongs to my friend Chris Barlow from Manchester, he would have brought that to the session and known his way around it. It was great, we had David Berger who was the engineer and also the drummer in a band called OUTFIT, he’s Swiss-French and lives in Liverpool.
What we were trying to do was recreate the Bowie / Fripp / Eno thing. So David would be engineering and sort of messing the sound as we went along, then Chris who knew the equipment inside out and there was me trying to come up with the lines and melodies to the song. It was a lovely way of working, it was very productive because we knew what headspace we were in, so it was “let him get on with this, you get on with that and I get on with this”, it really does free you up if you work as a team with synthesizers.
You said a few years ago that one of the early influences on CHINA CRISIS was MAGAZINE and their keyboardist Dave Formula had a Roland RS-505 which superseded theRS-202…
I would have seen Dave playing it! I would have seen them a lot… I originally saw them at the De Montford Hall, then The Empire. It was always with John McGeoch on guitar, Barry Adamson on bass, I thought they were amazing, there was something about them. I’ve just got the MAGAZINE boxed set for Christmas.
I’d listened to a lot of prog rock and my favourite ones were the keyboard-based bands like YES… although they are not considered “a keyboard band”, I consider them a keyboard band because of Rick Wakeman. I liked ELP and even HAWKWIND as they were a bit sonically synthesized. So when I moved to new wave, that’s what helped because there was the likes of MAGAZINE who were a bit rocky and a bit proggy, but it was new enough for me to go “oh, that’s not what I’ve been listening to, it’s almost punk”.
Around that time, everyone was using synths differently. There was SIMPLE MINDS’ Mick MacNeil, Vini Reilly in THE DURUTTI COLUMN along his guitars, OMD, THE HUMAN LEAGUE, HEAVEN 17, all these people I suspect had no formal training and were all self-taught, inspired by KRAFTWERK and all of that. It became that we could do it as well.
It’s interesting to look back now that all these groups were lumped in together as “synthesizer bands” but who all sounded so different, which perhaps isn’t so much the case now… so you’ve mentioned John McGeoch, Dave Formula and Barry Adamson, so did you like VISAGE?
I did, I bought the records when they came out and I was so excited about it. But I was originally put off for a little bit by the New Romantic thing, I didn’t really like seeing members of MAGAZINE in there, I wanted them to be completely MAGAZINE…
So you wanted them to do another ‘Sweetheart Contact’! *laughs*
Oh my god, absolutely!
What about Midge Ure and Steve Strange’s involvement in VISAGE?
I wasn’t too keen on Midge Ure at the time, only because he seemed a gun for hire, I knew of SLIK and RICH KIDS so I was like “What the hell?”; Midge was a bit of a “Mexican flea”, jumping from one act to another… obviously Midge is amazing and the sound of VISAGE.
D’ya know what? We actually met Steve Strange about 12 years ago, we did this gig with him at the O2 and he had to share a dressing room with us! We had a few people in the band then who were quite badly behaved with various stimulants and what not! And that poor guy Steve is trying to recover from all manner of addictions and our band are bouncing off the walls before even going on stage! *laughs*
Steve seemed really lovely, I wish I’d met him before and it would have been nice to chat, we did a tribute gig to him in Port Talbot with all these friends of his after he’d passed. He was like one of those little figures, there he was in the video to ‘Ashes To Ashes’, that was an amazing song and put Bowie totally in the ball park of new wave. But the fact that Steve was there walking on the beach with him in that weird video effect, it made you think “oh, he’s not just a Blitz Kid”!
The thing is, in the North, we had a very negative view of that whole New Romantic thing, we thought “why would you do that in front of your music?” without realising you could do anything. We weren’t brought up in families like that where you were encouraged to be as individual as possible or to express yourself as much as you want, with synthesizers or without. Ours was big working class families, Eddie was one of 10, I was one of 8! EVERYONE went to work, the fact that me and Ed ditched our jobs at 17 was AN OUTRAGE because everyone went to work, but we stayed at home and tried to come up with these songs all that time.
Another card, this one is the Roland Jupiter 6…
Oh, that I don’t know! I’ve had two Jupiter 8s, one I owned twice in that I sold it and then bought it back and sold it!
The Korg Polysix was your first polyphonic synth but was it a bit of a revelation once you upgraded to a Jupiter 8?
The Jupiter 8 is my favourite synth, I would kill to have one of those again. Mark Phythian who mixed the last couple of CHINA CRISIS albums and my solo album, he was our tea boy during ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ and then goes on to win 3 Grammys! These are in his studio room at his terrace house in Liverpool where he’s got a Jupiter 8 but his isn’t working, it’s faulty… that instrument, the big thing about it was we could sequence it with the drum machine. So we could trigger it. You could imagine, all of a sudden, I was arpeggiating all the basslines in different kind of ways, it sounded very convincing, that we knew what we were doing but really, we weren’t! *laughs*
So was the sequencing at the start of the ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ song, was that done by triggering the Jupiter?
Possibly, it sounds like it would have… I think that wasn’t me sequencing that, the producer Mike Howlett did that later, triggering it via the gate through the desk, I think he might have done it like that.
You’d mentioned Mark Phythian and his Grammys, but you’ve had a habit of working with young producers who go onto big things, like Gil Norton who did half of your first album?
He was our original engineer who would have introduced us to the 8 track at Amazon Studios in Kirkby and then to the 16 track. Working with Gil was so enlightening and fantastic. For all our inexperience, Gil would set the desk up and he knew we’d been working with the Portastudio for a few years, so we knew about slowing tape down, speeding it up, turning it over, reversing it, what you could do with delays, how you could stereo them… so Gil would be more than happy to have us go in with the bare pickings of a tune like the 4 tracks of our Portastudio and spend the whole day coming up with stuff. That doesn’t happen like that, so he was happy to set it up and let us get on with it while he went to have a cup of tea. Then he’s come back in, see what we’d been doing and get it to tape.
With the Portastudio, because you only had 4 tracks, you had to make decisions about what to keep and what to lose and what to bounce. So when we got onto the 8 track and then the 16 track, we knew how to do that with Gil. The great thing with Gil was that he taught us; so if he said we should bounce this with that, then it freed up another 4 tracks. So that meant you had to commit to the sound you were making, because it was going to be there at the finished mix. So by the time you go to the end of your recording, there was very little that you had to do because you had been doing it as you went along.
It was funny how Gil became so successful, working with bands like THE PIXIES and FOO FIGHTERS, I was like, that’s not the Gil I knew, the Gil I knew was very unassuming and I don’t remember him wanting an amazing career, it was like he was happy just to be in Kirkby and doing what we were doing. The clientele that came in ranged from SAD CAFÉ to Ken Dodd to ECHO & THE BUNNYMEN, that was the centre of our universe really. We only went away because we were in a band and working with other producers, but I always thought Gil would stay there and become the chief guy.
So Gil co-produced the second “Entertainment” side of ‘Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms’, had that been the intention to keep it 8 track, because the impression I get from reading between the lines was that the more sophisticated “Difficult” first side and particularly the sessions produced by Steve Levine weren’t that smooth?
No, it wasn’t great at all… it was great working with Steve, he’s lovely guy but we felt like he was… what we heard coming out of the speakers, we weren’t entirely happy with really. He was sort of getting a bit too involved, he was playing us too many of his ideas and committing them to tape… we were like “What are you doing? That’s not your job! This is OUR track and this is OUR job!”
He was committed to recording the rest of the album, so me and Ed walked out a bit unawares that he’d been booked to the whole album and a contract had been signed, that’s money and people’s wages and everything! And we’re just going “Oh, we’ve tried a couple of weekends with him, we don’t like him, we’ll do it ourselves! See ya!”, Virgin must have thought “WHO THE F*CK ARE THESE KIDS? WALKING ON STEVE LEVINE, WALKING OUT ON PETE WALSH?” *laughs*
What happened was, we OK’ed him to mix what we’d done with him, so three tracks, one was a version of ‘No Ordinary Lover’ which we went “no, that’s not happening”! The other two ‘Seven Sports For All’ and ‘Feel To Be Driven Away’, we thought “oh they are quite good actually, he’s done a great job there”; and I think had he done it all, it most probably would have been a very successful record actually! *laughs*
Having said that, my experience of working with Pete Walsh and the three tracks he did (he did four but one didn’t make it), I thought he was the best on that record, he could have done it all, it would have been an incredible record. Oh, you want to see the track sheets for ‘Christian’, there’s nothing on it, there’s literally NOTHING on it, and that’s him! Pete, he knew! He was so great!
They’re all great these producers, honest to god, every one of them know their job… ok Steve overstepped it a little bit but only a little bit, they all of them kept exactly what we’d done of the demos and then elaborated on them or supplemented or replaced, but they all did it in such a way where they were like “whatever these guys played to the record company, they must have liked it, we’ve got to keep that ingredient”.
Even when Walter Becker was like “Gary, you can’t play… not the kind of playing I know”, he still made sure that he got every single thing I’d done on the demo onto the tracks before we worked with anybody else. They were all like that. With Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, even though by then we had Brian McNeill on keyboards, he wouldn’t have played on my demos for ‘Arizona Sky’ or the tracks off ‘What Price Paradise’. So when we went in, I would have done mine little bits and Brian would have recreated them. It’s a great thing that method of production, holding onto the essential thing. I suspect they didn’t do that with FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD*laughs*
The next card is a Roland SH-101…
Ah yes! I would have worked with that, I can’t quite remember on what, but we would have had one, although not for long. Gazza most probably would have had something to do with that. I didn’t like it when they started doing like faders and quality of the plastic casing felt a bit… it wasn’t as robust as the SH-09 or the Yamaha CS-10 which were solid little things that had a weightiness to them. The SH-101, that could almost be “oh, we did this on a 3D printer!” *laughs*
I remember in your second Smash Hits interview that you’d said you felt sort of obliged to keep up with the technology and were buying lots of equipment but then regretted it, did you ever feel the pressure as a band to keep up technologically?
No, because by the time Brian McNeill had taken over on keys, it was him who was in charge of whatever we needed and I just had what I had at home to do my demos on. Brian had a rack mount of DX-7s, about 9 or 10 of them, he would have used them on CHINA CRISIS for brass and this and that, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near that. Sequencers, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near them, anything that was digitally programmed, I wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it.
If I worked on the DX-7 which I had and the DX-7 II, say I went into the algorithm, I didn’t know what I was doing so then I would say to Gazza to teach me how to save stuff, he understood it a bit more. I was one of those guys who when I got something out of the box, I discarded the manual whereas Gazza and Brian didn’t, they would sit and get their heads around it. I was always intuitive, as in I liked to get involved and hear it and feel it, as opposed to read how to do it. I’ve never read how to do anything, I left school and I wasn’t entered for any exams at all because my thing was not to open the book.
Another card, it’s the MicroMoog… did you ever own a Moog?
No, but Brian did, he’s got the proper Minimoogs. This was when they started making them more plastic. We did have a Moog in Amazon, it was the one Gary Numan used…
Oh, the Polymoog?
Yes, it was beautiful. It was in the studio and it wasn’t ours but when we went in, we always used that, it was fantastic. It was warm and rich, I saw Gary Numan with it and I was like “YEAH! THIS IS IT!”
What have you been listening to lately?
I’ve just been listening to some old live tapes, CHINA CRISIS live in the USA, OH MY GOD! F*CKING HELL! It’s such a rubbish recording, it even has all the tech credits at the end, y’know “A Star Systems production by Ray Skidberry, mix engineer Kevin Clark…”, but it sounds like dogsh*t! It hasn’t been mixed at all! But it’s always interesting hearing a little bit of them *laughs*
Something much better I’ve also been listening to is this ‘Shanghai’ 12 inch single by Albert Au released on EMI Hong Kong, the B-side of this is ‘Black Man Ray’ in Cantonese; it’s lovely y’know, in the middle he uses steel drums… we got it at the time, it’s so fun. Everywhere I go, if I come across a record shop, I always go in it… the other day at a gaff that had a café near where we were playing, I got the ‘Black Man Ray’ 12” for a fiver… ok, I HAVE obviously got it but you can never have too many copies of ‘Black Man Ray’ *laughs*
Next card is the Oberheim OB-Xa, was that a synth you worked with?
That’s the ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ era, I really don’t know how we ended up with it. It might have been something to do with SIMPLE MINDS and Mick MacNeil. I remember for the life of us that we couldn’t get to grips with it, not like we did with the Poly 6, the Jupiter 8, the SH09 and the Yamaha CS10, they were magic really, I completely got engrossed with them.
The Oberheim’s sounds were incredibly rich but it wasn’t completely user friendly, it didn’t have that arpeggio thing which the Jupiter8 had, which was gold for me… I wasn’t a musician as such so even up to ‘Arizona Sky’ and stuff, I was still using drum machine to trigger the arpeggiator and then use the echo unit to get that wondering motoring kind of sequencer effects.
The Oberheim would have been the melody line on ‘Bigger The Punch I’m Feeling’, Walker Becker would get me and Eddie to all the parts we’d done on the demos with all the sounds we’d used, then that would be it and Nick Magnus would be involved to bring in chords and getting sounds quickly. We weren’t like that at all, our approach was a lot more organic and painstaking. And then… it fell out the back of a van outside The Ritz in Manchester!! *roars of laughter*
That was in 1989, ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE to get the f*cking insurance on it!!! We were touring ‘Diary Of A Hollow Horse’, things were tight and management had sort of hinted “do you really need that? We don’t need it, could it fall out of the lorry!”… Hahahahaha! I WASN’T personally involved in that deviation but what a mental thing to do! Smash a synth to get the money! It shows you where we were at, mentally with each other, with the record company, with management, everything was just going *******!!!
But that’s the kind of band we were! You’ve got to remember me and Eddie were from Kirkby, we’d grown up in big families and all our friends, nobody had anything and you wouldn’t be completely light fingered but you’d by hook or by crook, you’d make stuff happen, do you know what I mean? Amazon Studios, me and Eddie would bunk in through the window in the night with our Portastudio and mic to record the piano! Out of necessity, you would!
You recently got back into the album charts with ‘China Greatness’, what was it like revisiting the back catalogue to select inclusions, particular the “lost” jewel ‘It’s Never Too Late’?
Once we saw people doing that orchestrations thing like OMD at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, people were coming up to us and saying “your music could be amazing like that” but we were like “yeah, it would but it’s never gonna happen!”. So we were of a mind and what happened was a guy Steve Hammonds who was in charge of all the CHINA CRISIS deluxe editions, I said to him “if I wanted to get hold of our masters, could you get them for us to work on?” and he got back to me and said “yes, tell us what do you want”.
So me and Eddie chose 7 songs each, we wanted ones we really liked and we had to include some of the singles. It took 3 days to send the files because they were so big and hi-res. I went through these with Dave Berger who worked on my solo album and you’ve got to remember I’ve not heard these since we recorded them and it WAS a moment. Then we gave Jack carte blanche to do whatever he wanted. We tried to use the strings from our 40th Anniversary concert because we’d recorded them but had to replace them because they were out of tune which always happens when it’s a live thing. So Eric transcribed the new brass parts that Jack had done. ‘China Greatness’ is literally all Jack’s and Mark Phythian’s work. We might have made a couple of suggestions but not much at all.
So had ‘It’s Never Too Late’ always been preying on your mind, that it was shelved for ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ and then when it finally came out, it was tucked away on the bonus 12” of ‘Black Man Ray’ so wasn’t really heard by many people, even fans?
That was just bad management really… I wrote that song on guitar and possibly one of the first songs I ever wrote on guitar because I couldn’t play guitar. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, I thought it was a little bit wet but it’s quite lovely really, I think it is a bit special in a pop way, it’s got that thing of what CHINA CRISIS had. We had all these lovely melodies and lines that would introduce the song like on ‘Wishful Thinking’, every one of our songs (almost) has an introductory line that catches your attention doesn’t it? Same with ‘It’s Never Too Late’.
Yes, it was us who made the decision to drop it, but someone should have took us to one side and said “That song is very much like the song we think will be the big single off the album, we should really keep hold of that because you are going to want a follow-up”! But we f*cking followed it up with ‘Hanna Hanna’ that was NOTHING like ‘Wishful Thinking’ and people were listening going “we don’t even know what group that is, you don’t sound like that other song, different singer, different everything!”
I remember ‘It’s Never Too Late’ was never even on the sleeve tracklisting or the label of the ‘Black Man Ray’ bonus 12”, there was just this sticker. I remember when I heard it, I thought it was a great song but to be fair, I can understand why it wasn’t included on the ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ album…
Yeah, because some of the songs already on the album like ‘Here Come A Raincloud’ and ‘The Soul Awakening’ were more what we wanted to be… ‘The Soul Awakening’ to me was like ‘Julie With…’ from ‘Before & After Science’ by Brian Eno, we were trying to be bit like that. ‘Here Come A Raincloud’ was beautiful, it was a reaction what was going on, the strikes, the miners, a lot of unemployment and stuff that wasn’t great. We were going home to that from our lovely lives in the Roosevelt Hotel in LA with Iggy Pop in the swimming pool, then all of a sudden in Kirkby, all the factories are closing down, the police are battling with miners, oh my god! So ‘Here Come A Raincloud’ when you hear it on the John Peel session, I’d written it on bass guitar…
That ties in nicely with my next question as there’s ‘The Complete Sessions 1982-1983’ which features CHINA CRISIS recordings for the John Peel show and released by Last Night From Glasgow… this isn’t doing down the album version but I actually feel the John Peel session recording of ‘Here Come A Raincloud’ is better, the overdriven drum machine just gives it that extra eerie tension which fits the lyrics…
Yeah…
…the John Peel version of ‘This Occupation’ is particularly interesting because it’s full-on synthpop! What’s the drum machine you are using?
That’s a Roland TR808 triggering the bass synth, it was us trying to get a bit A CERTAIN RATIO and ABC, it was all getting a bit funky and we were quite keen on doing that because we loved Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’ and that kind of thing… the fact were doing it all with synths was what we were involved with, that was just a natural thing to happen. But lots of people were making a racket then like CABARET VOLTAIRE and all these people, I can remember listening to all that thinking they were great with the solidity of what they were doing, it was forceful and solid with great sounds, but they lacked songs and melody.
We were so involved with melody and when we were out on the road, we would have mixtapes that would have everyone on it, songs like ‘Wichita Lineman’ to THE BEE GEES to Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick, all these great songs… we didn’t have any snobbery in our band, there’s so much music out there.
You sent me a photo of your Boss Doctor Rhythm drum machine, was that a bit of a revelation when you got that?
Yeah, ‘African & White’, we wrote that around that drum machine. We didn’t know how to programme it so we were just hitting stuff and pressing play. One morning we pressed play and it did this “tsk-tsk-tsk, tsk-tsk” and straight away I picked up the bass and did that “boom-boom-boom-boom, boom”, its f*cking Motown, all the music we’d grown up with! Then Eddie did that echoing guitar sound, although he never replicates that live and I don’t sing it the octave down with the high octave… I often think, we should be trying to do it to see if people will respond. It’s difficult because music mutates over time, especially live.
Talking of live, 2025 sees the 40th Anniversary of ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’…
What, Walter Becker’s debut solo album? *laughs*
What are you favourite memories of making this record?
I must admit, the actual making of it, I had such a lovely time and my roles had changed so much. What you have to remember is we’d done two albums, we’d had chart success, Top10, we’d lived and toured, stuff like that… so we were really not wanting to see each other again. Eddie and Gazza were working together, I was working on my own. That only lasted a few weeks but it would have felt like a long time. But we’d written ‘Black Man Ray’, ‘Bigger The Punch I’m Feeling’ and stuff, y’know…
Once Walter was involved, I was neither here nor there… I was resigned to the fact that I was in “a band” now, it’s not me and Eddie anymore with Gazza, Kevin and Walter being this incredible rhythm section, making what me and Ed had done really sound amazing. But at the same time, I was still “this isn’t how I’d have it” but I was happy to go along with it. That’s why it’s not my favourite CHINA CRISIS album, it’s like my third favourite but I’m not even sure it’s that! *laughs*
But it was such a happy time for us because Kevin rejoined the band, Walter so lovely and really enjoyed being with us… I think we reminded him of STEELY DAN when they had Skunk Baxter and all these people in, having success with ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ so he slotted right in.
I had such a great time singing for him, he thought my lyrics were genius and he’s actually in print saying that, he thought ‘Black Man Ray’ was like THE BEATLES… I was just stoned all the time and he was very happy for me to be like that. We’d sing in the evening and it was very meticulous, lots of tracking and lots of takes but I was just having a laugh. So when he was telling me to do things and repeatedly do it, I was like yeah, not a problem. And when they were comping and all that, I could have a smoke and then come back in *laughs*
It really was a great time for us, so I have very fond memories of the album even though I don’t think it’s the best album. I can see WHY people think it’s the best album because it’s got that sonic thing to it, a cohesion that makes it. But I’m of a mind that if you really want to hear CHINA CRISIS and US playing and US performing, then that’s ‘Working With Fire & Steel’. That’s because that is me and Ed, Gazza and Kev have just joined us, there’s no session keyboard players, everything you hear is me with a bit of Ed. But I do think ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ is like Walter’s solo album but we were the writers for it and he used our band but with his ideas *laughs*
With the Flaunt The Imperfection’ tour, it was like you were finally enjoying playing live for first time because I’d seen you at the London Lyceum in 1983 and you weren’t very good then…
Yeah, there was no stage presence and no stage craft in 1983, because we weren’t particularly interested in that. I certainly didn’t want to stand up in front of people, there was a lot of pressure on us to become a band. Everyone else was enjoying being in a band but I wanted be at home with my Portastudio and Jupiter 8, I was generally the only one who ever turned up for albums with a finished demo. I might get Eddie or Gazza round to do a bit but mostly everyone was happy to just elevate the band thing.
My favourite CHINA CRISIS album is ‘Working With Fire & Steel’, I do like ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ but it is music of its time which was more Americanised, more FM radio-friendly with more live playing… but the album of yours which despite its highlights that I’ve never got on with as a whole is ‘What Price Paradise’…
What happened with ‘What Price Paradise’ was we got a residential rehearsal place and then made the songs. Y’know, I can’t stand the sound of that album… quintessentially the drums were the wrong sound and they were used for all of it. I was like, you can’t fix it if you’ve used it for all of it! Again, we got into a position where it’s moving at such a pace, it wasn’t me and Eddie anymore and more so once we’d got to ‘What Price Paradise’.
Of course, Brian McNeill had joined as the keyboard player and happy to be involved. So even though I would arrive with ‘Arizona Sky’, it would be completely redone sonic wise. I was resigned to it being “this is the band” and not being about my little demo as great as that sounds… I feel the band went a bit “blokey” on ‘What Price Paradise’…
I’d never thought of it like that before but it makes sense and I’ll try and use an analogy… it’s like those two NEW ORDER albums without Gillian Gilbert, they’re a bit rock and not that good yet when she’s back on ‘Music Complete’, some of the old magic reappears. You know yourself that it’s often the chemistry of the people you have that makes a band successful rather than musicianship or contribution… I seem to remember from reading the deluxe reissue booklet notes you weren’t that keen on the live drummer you had for the ‘Working With Fire & Steel’ tour?
Oh Traxie O’Toole, he went on to do quite well actually and ended up playing for Steve Hackett who was in GENESIS. But for us, he was f*cking shocking man! He just couldn’t help himself, he paid no attention to what Kevin had done or was on the tracks, but he couldn’t restrain himself, he’d be doing proper jazz fills and stuff inappropriately, in the wrong place in the wrong song *laughs*
He sounds like the live drummer that DEPECHE MODE have now! *laughs*
Yeah!
OK, next card is an Octave Cat… you had one and it was supposed to be an ARP Odyssey copy but with knobs instead of sliders, was it ever any good?
Oh yeah! It felt a bit cheapskate, it just wasn’t made very well. We used it on a memorable occasion when we were playing Kirklands in Liverpool 1981 for the release of ‘African & White. We did three Mondays as a kind of residency, first Monday hardly anyone come, second Monday f*cking mobbed, third Monday hardly anyone come. It was me, Ed and Dave Reilly on drums while we had backing tracks on the Portastudio. At one of the gigs I remember, I played a topline on the Cat and managed to detune the oscillator! I couldn’t f*cking get it back so I had to turn the volume off and mimed to look like I was doing something with the actual music everyone was hearing! *laughs*
So not a great synth?
No, I think we gave it away! It didn’t make an appearance on any record! You sort of fall in love with what you are working with which is why guitarists have their favourite guitars. Keyboards have their particular sound.
So there’s a 10th anniversary reissue of ‘Autumn In The Neighbourhood’ as a vinyl LP coming as well which will see it more widely available?
The only reason it’s happening is to get it in the shops so that people around the world can get it. I won’t be keen to make it available for too long, I do like having ownership of that record and I want to retain that really. A lot of those songs originally were me starting my solo album. I convinced Ed that we should send them round to a few people to get a reaction and they all thought it was CHINA CRISIS. I knew nobody was interested in me doing a solo record so that was it. I want the album to get the credit it deserves, the fans absolutely loved it but otherwise, it was like nobody knows about it. Why hasn’t it been reviewed, why hasn’t Mark Phythian won a Grammy for the mix, y’know?
A bouncy little ditty called ‘Everyone You Know’ came from those sessions and was given away free as part of the original Pledge Music crowdfunding campaign, it wasn’t on the CD but was an added bonus on the first vinyl issue of the album, will it remain?
It wasn’t on the original CD because I felt the approach we took on ‘Everyone You Know’ was a bit too poptastic and I was like “Ooooh! Who’s that?” *laughs*
It’s a great song, a Gary and Eddie one because that’s his riff, although I played it. He had that in another tune but he did nothing with it so I started playing it and then the next thing you know, I wrote a song and showed it to Ed, he absolutely loved it.
I made a bit of a mistake, when we put it on the first vinyl, it didn’t seem to fit into the running order. The end of ‘Autumn’ with ‘Wonderful New World’ just seemed correct as its about loss but you’ve got to look forward, it’s beautiful… and then it goes “BANG!” into ‘Everyone You Know’, it’s not f*cking right! So we might think of about maybe changing that running order for this edition. It will be a great one live though, it would suit the CHINA CRISIS synthpop quartet format but it’s a bit of a one that…
2025 also sees you opening for SIMPLE MINDS somewhere in summertime, that’s going to be a nice reunion as they were important early champions of CHINA CRISIS weren’t they? You supported them on the ‘New Gold Dream’ tour…
I’d never seen anything like it. We’d toured with ORANGE JUICE and played little gigs with ALTERED IMAGES and stuff, but when we were with SIMPLE MINDS, they were the hottest f*cking band in the country! Every gig was mobbed, it all had an atmosphere and then the whole place would go mental when they opened with ‘New Gold Dream’! I can imagine for me and Ed, we’re stood there, a couple of nice boys with their nice songs looking at the whole theatre jumping, it was SO electric, it was like F*CKING HELL MAN!
They were so kind to us, they took us on their bus, we stayed in the same hotels and in the US, they were the same… they didn’t have to, they could have insisted we buy onto the tour and we do our own transport. It did help that Bruce Findlay, their manager was about to start managing CHINA CRISIS so he would have told them that we were going to be part of the Schoolhouse Management set-up. But they were like us, working class lads who taught themselves everything they know and we were learning just being with them, experiencing what it was like. They were so self-assured, they’d been doing it for a good while so they were ready and they were great.
It’s a shame about what happened to that line-up of SIMPLE MINDS, oh my god! Mick MacNeil, I’ve never heard a keyboard player like him, the fact that it was all on the Jupiter8 was like WOW! And Derek Forbes, those basslines and Charlie was just like, he was so handsome and his sound was so great, y’know. I originally saw them supporting MAGAZINE at The Empire and then on their own at Eric’s. So me and Ed would have seen them and bought ‘Life In A Day’ and ‘Real To Real Cacophony’. I remember the first song I wrote, I tried to do something like the ‘Life In A Day’ title song.
In 2025, it’s like CHINA CRISIS are playing live everywhere, in the US, Canada, Scandinavia, Germany, Holland, plus dates opening for SIMPLE MINDS and SQUEEZE, how does it feel to be almost busier than back in the day?
I think we’re good at it now, which I don’t think we ever were back then… I mean, if we could have the classic band of Kevin, Gazza and Brain now, we’d be unreal.
We started CHINA CRISIS so we didn’t have to get a job, the jobs they wanted us to have were on an industrial estate or in a factory if you know what I mean. I feel like after 40 years that we’ve made it our job so we are very workman-like, we’re professional about it and we make sure we turn up at the right time, we make sure everybody goes home relatively happy, that kind of thing.
I do love getting to play for people who may never have seen us before. Last year we played Singapore for like only the second time and there’s families there who can’t believe they’ve finally got to see you, their kids listen to your music in the car and on holidays, they’ve come with mum and dad; that’s a really lovely thing, that’s the positive in that we can still do it and still enjoy it. Even when I’m annoyed, I have a laugh, I let the audience know that I’m having to work tonight but guess what? Let’s have a laugh, you have to enjoy your work.
When you’re a creative person, I feel you do need a bit of space, don’t be that person who’s an entertainer for a bit, be another person who plans to go into a studio and plans to get the songs recorded. With it being self-produced and stuff, the amount of energy and effort, you don’t appreciate it when you’re younger but I can tell you ‘Autumn In The Neighbourhood’ was a gargantuan f*cking task of just getting everybody available and everybody paid, all the bills met, keeping the quality control up etc, the level of teamwork you have to inspire in people… you haven’t really got the time and energy for that if you’re out the door every other few days entertaining people. The pro plus is you get to experience it all with everybody and everybody loves it so much including yourselves. We’re a great band at the moment, everybody’s happy and focussed and mostly sober. The only downside is I do feel it encroaches on the creativity being so busy.
It’s funny isn’t it when you’ve achieved so much, even though I don’t think it was a lot… if it was a school report, I would say it was “fair to middling, could have tried harder”. People respond to the hits so much and you’re lucky to have them, but actually it’s a lot of the other songs that I properly enjoy, I really do. Over the last 20 years, me and Ed have not stopped, we’re now in a position where you don’t ever have to stop… if you don’t want to, you can literally carry on. People have connected with us in such a way, they’re quite happy for you to still to keep coming and be around. We were so privileged to be indulged by our families when we were 17-18. And then we were 18-19 when we got signed.
Finally, is there a synth favourite of all time?
That would be the Jupiter 8, that IS ‘Working With Fire & Steel’… the Korg Polysix is ‘Difficult Shapes…’, the DX-7 is ‘Flaunt..’ and Roland D50 was ‘What Price Paradise’, I lose track after that! *laughs*
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Gary Daly
CHINA CRISIS will be performing ‘Flaunt The Imperfection’ for its 40th Anniversary throughout 2025 – for information on these and other 2025 live dates in the UK and internationally, please go to https://linktr.ee/chinacrisismusic
With a backstory in Scottish indie and Swedish synth, UNIFY SEPARATE have always been a bit different and continue their development following two acclaimed albums ‘First Contact’ and ‘Music Since Tomorrow’.
To cut a long story short, Andrew Montgomery was the front man of GENEVA who were Nude Records label mates to SUEDE while Leo Josefsson is something of a Stockholm synth veteran as a member of LOWE and STATEMACHINE. A 2023 tour opening for German darkwave act DIARY OF DREAMS exposed UNIFY SEPARATE to a new audience and opened up more aesthetic possibilities.
A lot has happened in the world these past few years and the premise of the new ‘Heavy Meta’ EP is to build on the duo’s majestic sense of drama with a deeper and harder sound. This has been achieved with the rousing opener ‘Dark Heaven’ where the bass drum has got some almighty thump. Also thrown in are the ringing metallics of ‘Music For The Masses’ era DEPECHE MODE, the percolating synthbass of ULTRAVOX ‘The Thin Wall’ and even THE SMASHING PUMPKINS when they went briefly electropop on ‘Cyr’.
In a deep swoop of musical styles, the superb ‘DETOX’ initially enters stuttering techno territory, but things are turned on their head with Montgomery’s raw choirboy delivery lifting the tune over a switch to straight fours while the surprise of Josefsson’s distorted vocal cameo leads to a classic Scandi middle eight.
Stark expletive-laden commentary on the phenomenon of psychological manipulation, ‘Gaslighted’ captures its toll on a frustrated Montgomery over a backdrop of throbbing bass, sparkling arpeggios and textural six string with the final declaration that “your problem IS YOU!”
The influence of German IDM trio MODERAT takes hold on the building anguished dance stomper ‘Excuses Excuses’ where “when you try to make everyone happy, someone will get hurt”. Making a fine EP closer, ‘Return To Exile’ drops down to something much starker to recall the emotive ballad ‘Glassy Eyes’ by KITE whose soaring vocal melodies have much in in common with UNIFY SEPARATE.
In an increasingly dystopian world where the two biggest nuclear nations are being led by unhinged egomaniacs, UNIFY SEPARATE have provided their “sanity clause” as they confront an existential crisis that is more than about midlife in the ‘Heavy Meta’ EP, the crowd at this year’s prestigious Amphi Festival in Cologne are going to love it when they perform there in this summer.
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The MARSHEAUX reworking of DEPECHE MODE’s second album ‘A Broken Frame’ shed new light on Martin Gore’s first long form adventure as songwriter and affirmed that ‘My Secret Garden’ and ‘The Sun & The Rainfall’ were just great songs. But ‘Monument’ was an example of a cover outstripping the original and given additional political resonance with the economic situation close to home that the Greek synth maidens found themselves living in at the time of its recording.
Needing to be heard to be believed, this rather inventive and charming cover of THE CURE’s ‘Close To Me’ by Belgium’s favourite passengers METROLAND utilised a selection of male and female computer voice generators to provide the lead vocal, in a move likely to upset the majority of real music purists. Meanwhile, the hidden melodies shone much more brightly than in the goth-laden original, thanks to its wonderful and clever electronic arrangement.
A song by mulleted Canadian rock musician Lawrence Gowan, ‘Moonlight Desires’ was first released by him in 1987 and featured Jon Anderson on backing vocals! Fellow Canadians PARALLELS fronted by Holly Dodson gave the hook-laden song a more nocturnal synthpop-oriented twist which wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the soundtrack a Brat Pack movie.
Manchester based Ross Tregenza is an experienced hand having co-written ‘Diaries Of A Madman’ with Dave Formula and Steve Strange when he was a member of VISAGE II in 2007. He surprised electronic music audiences with a Spartan cover of ‘The Partisan’, a song made famous by Leonard Cohen. While some may despair at the very mention of the droll Canadian, his work has strong parallels with Gothic veined musical forms, especially with this harrowing tale of fighting for La Résistance.
One of DAILY PLANET’s main inspirations was cult UK synth trio WHITE DOOR. So when their chief synthesist Johan Baeckström was needing tracks to include on his ‘Like Before’ EP, the almost choir boy overtures of ‘Jerusalem’ was a natural choice for a cover version. Of course, this was not the first time Baeckström had mined the WHITE DOOR back catalogue as the more halcyon ‘School Days’ adorned the flip of his debut solo single ‘Come With Me’.
From the Cold War Night Life curated ‘Heresy: A Tribute To Rational Youth’, one of the highlights from the collection was PSYCHE’s take on ‘Ring The Bells’ from appropriately, RATIONAL YOUTH’s ‘Cold War Night Life’ debut. The clattering 808 beat and elegantly haunting sweeps combined with Darrin Huss’ mournful vocal provide an atmospheric reworking that betters the original and reflects the decades long kinship between RATIONAL YOUTH and PSYCHE.
Forming in 2016, seasoned vocalist Gene Serene and producer Lloyd Price’s combined sound delightfully borrowed from both classic synthpop and Weimar Cabaret on THE FRIXION’s self-titled EP debut. From it, a tribute to The Purple One came with this touching take of his ‘Under The Cherry Moon’, highlighting PRINCE’s often hidden spiritual connection to European pop forms and recalling ‘The Rhythm Divine’, YELLO’s epic collaboration with Shirley Bassey.
The mysterious HEAVEN first came to wider attention with the release of the ‘Lonesome Town’ EP. Caked in reverb and virtually unrecognisable, the funereal paced title song cover of the Ricky Nelson ballad captured the fragility of the broken heart as conveyed by the forlorn vocals of Aja Emma. Closer scrutiny revealed that HEAVEN was another project helmed by the ubiquitous musician and producer Johnny Jewel, best known a member of CHROMATICS.
Moody electronic duo KALEIDA first came to wider attention opening for Róisín Murphy in 2015. Covers have always been part of Christina Wood and Cicely Goulder’s repertoire with ‘A Forest’ and ‘Take Me To The River’ being among them. Their sparse rendition of ‘99 Luftballons’ by Nena earned kudos for being very different and included in the soundtrack of the Cold War spy drama ‘Atomic Blonde’, hauntingly highlighting the nuclear apocalypse warning in the lyric.
What happens when you cross anthemic Scottish indie with cinematic Swedish synth? You get US, now known as UNIFY SEPARATE. A cover of a 2001 song with an acoustic but modern flavour by Swedish singer-songwriter Stakka Bo aka Bo Johan Renck, this was perfect for Andrew Montgomery of GENEVA and Leo Josefsson of LOWE to showcase their different musical sensibilities in a more electronic setting as their debut single.
The biggest surprise on the second IONNALEEalbum ‘Remember The Future’ came with the cover of ‘Mysteries Of Love’, the iconic Angelo Badalamenti ‘Blue Velvet’ song with lyrics by David Lynch, originally performed by Julee Cruise. Co-produced by RÖYSKOPP, Jonna Lee stole the moment with her angelic voice while big synth leads and widescreen atmospheres were reminiscent of Vangelis.
Unwittingly reflecting the Covid crisis, KID MOXIE soundtracked the film ‘Not To Be Unpleasant, But We Need to Have a Serious Talk’. The plot centred around a womanizer who finds out he is a carrier of an STD, lethal only to women! She said of ‘Big In Japan’: “It didn’t feel right to necessarily use drums because I did want to take a departure from the ALPHAVILLE original. There was already a strong rhythm element with the synth bass and it takes it to a different place by having a woman sing it.”
NATION OF LANGUAGE front man Ian Devaney was in an alternative rock band THE STATIC JACKS who released an album in 2013, but his interest in synths was sparked by hearing OMD’s ‘Electricity’ in his father’s car for the first time in years. In NATION OF LANGUAGE, he combined his past and future interests into an excellent electronic cover of PIXIES’ ‘Gouge Away’ which managed to maintain the frustration, aggression and menace of the original within a new blippy machine driven setting.
More machine than metal, DIE ROBO SAPIENS is the more purely electronic sideline of Düsseldorf industrialists DIE KRUPPS. In honour of their home city which spawned KRAFTWERK, NEU! and DAF, they covered the less internationally well-known RHEINGOLD in tribute their late leader Bodo Staiger; Given the subject matter, his powerful DAF-influenced 1982 statement on toxic fandom ‘FanFanFanatisch’ was appropriately reworked into something where the body was strong.
Recorded for a SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES covers album, this superb take by Jorja Chalmers on ‘Rhapsody’ off their ninth album ‘Peepshow’, made use of an intriguing electronic warble within its stripped down arrangement; from its claustrophobic cocoon, Chalmers sounds trapped in an unsettling icy soundscape of synthetic strings and choirs.
Making her name in the duo SINK YA TEETH, Norwich-based Gemma Cullingford made her debut as a solo artist with the ‘Let Me Speak’ album. Utilising a minimal programmed backdrop, a stark spoken word reading of Bobby Gentry’s ‘Ode To Billie Joe’ proved to be a highlight. “I loved the melody, the fact that it was quite a happy sounding song but the lyrics seemed quite dark” she said, “Then I read the lyrics and saw just how dark they are, and I kinda jokingly said I’d do a cover of it!”
Italians Do it Better were named after a legend emblazoned on a T-shirt Madonna was wearing in the ‘Papa Don’t Preach’ video and would later release a tribute compilation featuring their roster of artists. Exiled from their homeland of Belarus, DLINA VOLNY alternated a detached deepness with an unexpected pop register on their reinterpretation of ‘Hollywood’ that presented the song as a much harsher warning to those seeking stardom.
PSY’AVIAH is the electronic rock vehicle of Yves Schelpe and in a collaboration featuring Mari Kattman of HELIX on vocals, the B-side to their ‘Can We Make It Rhyme’ single was a cover of Monoculture’ which came from the first reunion of SOFT CELL in 2002. Her voice fitted perfectly to the heavier backdrop with the Marc Almond’s original commentary on the world’s cultural mediocrity as relevant as ever.
Not known for his vocal work as SCANNER, Robin Rimbaud recorded a covers EP of his late mother’s favourite songs as a tribute to her memory. Using vocoder and synths, his take on ‘Alone Again (Naturally)’, Gilbert O’Sullivan’s introspective hit song reflecting on loss and bereavement, was particularly poignant and perhaps unexpectedly given the robotic backdrop, emotional. The other songs featured were ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ and ‘When I Need You’.
With a vampiric intro recalling David Bowie’s ‘Cat People’, DURAN DURAN’s take on ‘Bury A Friend’ was much more direct and propulsive compared to the minimal Billie Eilish original. Swathed in jagged synth and guitar sounds as well as Simon Le Bon’s histrionic vocals, it more than fitted in with the Halloween theme of the ‘Danse Macabre’ album which was primarily made up of cover versions and darker re-recordings of Duran faves.
Always adept at doing covers having had hits with ‘Tainted Love’ and ‘What’, SOFT CELL presented a brilliant electro tribute to Poly Styrene with ‘The Day The World Turned Day-Glo’. Taking a musical leaf out of ‘Sex Dwarf’ with Dave Ball making his syndrums and synths sound so menacing yet accessible, while Marc Almond delivers a vocal recalling the anguish of ‘Martin’ with sleazy sax passages resonating with the dystopian lyrics.
A fabulous cover of the Italo flavoured Kim Wilde B-side to ‘The Second Time’ from 1984, the throbbing ‘Lovers On A Beach’ saw NINA sounding sexier than ever before. Ricky Wilde said “I just thought there was a little bit more that it needed that I maybe wanted to add back in the day”. With sharp spikey edges boosting the trancey template, he provided a superb extended end section that paid homage to Giorgio Moroder in the best way possible.
Covered by acts as diverse CARTER THE UNSTOBBALE SEX MACHINE and Liza Minnelli, the latest interpretation of PET SHOP BOYS stark narrative of a kept woman came via this wispy account by Swedish duo SALLY SHAPIRO. Keeping the relationship dependency theme close to its heart but offering an icier Nordic vision from a female perspective, the sax of Steve Moore provided extra sleaze to the NICOLAAS remix.
‘Masochist’ was the highly appropriate title for the fourth NIGHT CLUB album, a dystopian prophecy that came true! Written by FUN BOY THREE in 1981 as a metaphor by to the dangerous posturing games played by Ronald Reagan aka “The Cowboy” during The Cold War, the inclusion of a cover of ‘The Lunatics (Have Taken Over the Asylum)’ became even more sinister with the ultimate lunatic duo of Donald Trump and JD Vance now given control of the nuclear button…
Starting a new chapter of PROPAGANDA, Michael Mertens and Ralf Dörper recruited young German singer Thunder Bae. Her talent shined with a superbly enticing performance in a haunting cover of ‘Wenn Ich Mir Was Wünschen Dürfte’, a Weimar-era song written by Friedrich Hollaender in 1930 that was made famous by Marlene Dietrich. The song had been also used for a controversial scene in the 1974 film ‘The Night Porter’.
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