“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
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.
HEAVEN 17 are making a documentary and their audience will feature as its stars.
Celebrating 45 years of HEAVEN 17, this upcoming film will be directed by the BAFTA-nominated James Strong and go behind-the-scenes with Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware on their ‘Sound With Vision’ tour while also interviewing fans from around the world.
Formed after the split of THE HUMAN LEAGUE Mk1 in 1980, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh recruited their friend Glenn Gregory to front a new pop project HEAVEN 17 named after a fictional band mentioned in the dystopian novel and film ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Their 1981 debut long player ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ gained much acclaim. After a few near Top40 misses with the singles ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, ‘Play To Win’ and ‘Let Me Go’, HEAVEN 17 finally had two Top5 hits ‘Temptation’ and ‘Come Live With Me’ in 1983.
Despite this success and with the parent album ‘The Luxury Gap’ certified platinum, HEAVEN 17 remained a studio only concern. The following albums ‘How Men Are’, ‘Pleasure One’ and ‘Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho’ were unable to replicate their sales impact. However after a hiatus of several years, Messrs Gregory, Marsh and Ware released a comeback album ‘Bigger Than America’ and sprang an even bigger surprise by opening for ERASURE on their ‘Cowboy’ UK arena tour in 1997.
Beginning a new phase, there was even a live album ‘How Live Is’ but following the album ‘Before/After’ in 2005, Marsh bid farewell leaving Gregory and Ware to develop HEAVEN 17 as a performing entity over the past 25 years with engaging shows that have brought the remaining duo closer to their loyal followers.
In his eighth interview with ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK, Martyn Ware chatted about the concept of ‘Sound With Vision’ and the ever changing notion of fandom.
What is the idea behind this ‘Sound With Vision’ tour?
Essentially, a friend of ours James Strong runs a production company called Strong Pictures and is also a successful writer/director/producer who has won Emmys, he did ‘Mr Bates vs. The Post Office’, and ‘Broadchurch’, he worked with Glenn who did the soundtracks for his series ‘Liar’ and ‘Vigil’ with Berenice Scott.
He saw us perform at Shepherd’s Bush Empire and was struck by the unusual connection between the stage and the audience and between Glenn, myself and the band. It’s a warm experience, you’ve been, you’ve seen it, we make an effort to communicate and empathise that a lot of this audience are coming out as a relief from the existential nightmare that we’re all in, to understand that people want you to break that fourth wall. It gives them the sense that every gig they come to is a unique experience.
So James has seen us play loads but he was struck by how it had grown over time and how we have got loads of diehard fans… it is really nice to come onto stage and see lots of people who you are familiar with because it gives you a sense of confidence, it’s like having a home crowd at a football game.
In the background, James and Glenn had been mulling over the idea of doing some kind of documentary film about HEAVEN 17. For ages we thought it was a good idea but to be honest, does the world need another documentary backstage with the band and the great and good, lots of concert footage and a few jeopardy moments?
Then Glenn rang me with an idea… why don’t we make the hook of the next tour about a documentary celebrating that connection with the audience and our fans. When we were doing VIP meet ‘n’ greets before the shows on the last tour, there were all these people who came up to us going “I’ve been to see you 30 times” and we didn’t know who these people were, we didn’t recognise them from the audience or anything. We knew there were an obsessive hardcore following us like a football team, but this was new revelation for us and much more widespread than we thought.
We started thinking about our friends in this 80s and electronic scene, how there is a kind of zeitgeist at the moment for people of a certain age and their offspring who have no interest as to “when” the music was made. We started moving into a situation where 10-20% of the audience are new. So we thought we’d celebrate this by making a documentary that is as much about the fans as it is about the band, a little bit like Louis Theroux… so whatever, even if you are looking at it from the outside wondering what the hell is going on, it’s still going to be entertaining.
So how will your fans take part in the documentary, will there be a filming booth at each show which people can queue up for to volunteer their comments?
We haven’t figured that out yet, but that’s one way of looking at it. I think it will be quite nice to see them in their homes…
SPARKS did that for an MTV featurette…
Anyone who has an interest will get on it, we want as many people from as many different countries. Like there’s an 80s nostalgia thing going on in America… incidentally next year, we are doing an 80s cruise with Gary Numan in the Caribbean.
Photo by Richard Price
I was wondering if this fan relationship is a relatively recent phenomenon because of social media, but also because HEAVEN 17 didn’t tour back in the day, so you were sort of detached from your fanbase until the 1997 ERASURE tour which even then, it is likely people were almost treating you as a new act?
That’s absolutely quite perceptive of you may I say Chi; I think it’s true and we weren’t confident that it wasn’t just a bunch of weirdos out there… one fan Sumo who has been to 250 shows now, when I first met him, he brought this scrapbook and rather than keeping it as a memento, he gave it to me… this was like a different level of fandom that I wasn’t particular familiar with. I mean, I’ve never seen an act more than a dozen times at most.
But it was something we always wanted to happen, we always liked to build some kind of artistic conceit, a cinematic universe if you will, where everything is connected artistically and there is a deeper meaning to most of the stuff we do. The thought that there were people out there then (it’s all weird kind of time travel stuff this!), the fact that we only started performing live in 1997, so this is 28 years ago! This was 17 years after we formed ironically, so we have had an unusual career in that respect. So people didn’t get a chance to thank us I suppose.
One thing I noticed researching old CDs and all that, HEAVEN 17 were one of the first acts to have an email contact address in the booklet, so how did people respond to you?
We’ve always tried to allow contact, we’re in a fortunate position where we are not Taylor Swift and don’t get half a million emails! There’s a definite intention from both Glenn and myself , and Ian when he was in the band, that we wanted to be an open as possible with the fans and have as much contact. In fact, it was even more important when we didn’t perform live so we had the HEAVEN 17 Plan fan club which Lindsay, Glenn’s wife used to run.
We’ve tried to encourage as much contact as possible with the fans. But it was a bit of a dichotomy because we liked the idea of people on videos, you’re almost like an actor and a fantasy thing, then one day Robert De Niro says “you can email me if you want”… of course, I’m exaggerating it to make a point but you know what I mean?
An interesting flip of this contact, and this is something Neil Arthur of BLANCMANGE said to me, is that you are more accessible so people start approaching you about weird stuff, telling you their record is scratched and asking what you’re going to do about it… how have you dealt with the more intrusive side of being more open to your fanbase on social media?
I have to say it’s only a tiny amount, maybe 5% or less. But if we have a tour or a record coming, the most common annoying things are messages like “what time are you coming onstage?”, I sometimes respond and sometimes I don’t.
Then there’s people having issues with Ticketmaster or the venues themselves. But because I’m a point of contact and Glenn is in the background not having to deal with it, if something goes wrong and there’s a mistake in the publicity, Muggins here has to deal with it, they don’t contact the venue or the promoter… so I’ve had to back off on all that stuff. But it’s a rare thing.
Another thing about this approachability on social media, it means the artist has to regularly do postings but now there’s this trend for reels… CHINA CRISIS used to be quite mousey and quiet on socials but have taken to these filmed promo reels quite well but poor TEARS FOR FEARS look like they’re in one of those hostage videos! How do you feel about doing this kind of shortform in-person publicity?
We have PR for this ‘Sound With Vision’ tour which the promoter is paying for, they’re doing it properly and have got us on TV. This is no small thing getting on BBC1 at peak time but I have to say their research is sh*t because it’s always “WHAT AN AMAZING COMEBACK” when we we’ve been doing it for more than 27 years! But the great thing is they go “Oooh! ‘Temptation’”, “Ooooh ‘(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang’, you should put that out again”, like that’s an original thought, I don’t get one of those emails every day! *laughs*
We do make an effort, it’s building and building ad building until hopefully this tour will sell out, it takes a long time this to do that stuff. But I do think it’s good to be out of the public eye for a while so that you don’t bore people to death, so my view is to keep it until when you need it.
I know what you mean about researchers who are getting younger, did not grow up with this music and not getting things right… but do you make allowances for this?
No, I’m very unforgiving, I think it’s easier to research than ever before, I think it’s laziness… it’s not the game it used to be, I was talking to someone the other day that the notion of journalism is going to sh*t basically!
Yes I agree, but I suppose a young BBC intern isn’t going to know who HEAVEN 17 are, but what annoys me much more are these so-called electronic music media outlets who see it as their specialism but don’t have a clue or do the research…
Well, they can’t all be you Chi but I’m harsher on the BBC and the major radio stations who literally can’t be arsed!
HEAVEN 17 have done the VIP package thing and everyone does that now, but the notion of it has been flipped by Ticketmaster who have been selling tickets as “VIP” which get nothing more than a lanyard, a poster and a bar nearer the seat… I know of people who bought these packages who really did think they were going to meet Bruce Springsteen and Taylor Swift… so this rise in concert elitism through VIP, what do you think?
Well, we thought about the VIP thing for a while before we started doing it but we regard it as a valuable tool to help support the costs of the tour. Fundamentally, there’s me and Glenn, then everybody else on the stage, all the staff, the drivers, front of house engineer and lighting etc all have to be paid. We only get paid at the end on the bottom line after. Fortunately the last few tours have done really well. But when we did the tours with the full band in 2010-2013, we looked at the figures after the tours, me and Glenn made zero money, we barely broke even. We were mugs for quite a while and I know we are not stupid business wise, but things are expensive and things have got more expensive now.
We were approached to tour America a long time ago and asked our manager to do an illustration of what it would earn us and it was like peanuts, but everyone else would have got paid. So that went back and forth every 3-4 years, the offer went up a little bit more each time and eventually we did it. When we got there, it ended up being more expensive than what our management had projected and we ended up losing money. Then we were asked again so we started asking ABC, THOMPSON TWINS, OMD and almost to a man, they said “Oh, we’re not doing it for the money, we’re doing it because we want to do it!” but me and Glenn aren’t really in that situation, we’re not poverty stricken but…
The whole live thing is getting more polarised all the time, we did the support for CULTURE CLUB with Tony Hadley on a UK arena tour last year, we had a great time, the O2 was sold out at £100 a ticket or more. Very nicely, the promoters SJM gave us a nice bonus at the end which wasn’t part of the contract, so they must have made an absolute killing! But in the mid-range, there’s not much killing going on and at the bottom, it’s almost like pay-to-play a lot of the time.
I don’t think fans really understand the economics and this is one thing that really p*sses me off about social media, we announce a big tour and put an effort into it and you just get a load of people going “why aren’t you coming to Stourbridge?” or “why aren’t you going to Skegness?”. We go where the promoters tell us to go, the tours are designed by them, not us! So the routines, the places available of a particular size that are hard to find now these days and the areas of the country that are covered are determined by the promoters, NOT by the band!
Of course, if you are a huge band, you can go “I don’t want to play in Tucson, I don’t want to play in Springfield”, you have more power to determine that but as a mid-range act, it’s difficult… it’s a point some people don’t get.
What do you hope the ‘Sound With Vision’ tour and documentary will achieve for you ultimately?
Firstly I think it’s an interesting idea and I can’t recollect anybody else doing it, the closest was probably the SPARKS one which was a little bit of an inspiration although that was still super focussed on the band. I really liked the KING CRIMSON one, that made me laugh a lot. The premise that the band is this all powerful entity that must be worshipped is the exact opposite of how we feel about the world. If people come to the gigs, there will be a good chance people will get filmed if they want to get filmed and there will be specific people that we talk to who we will visit in their world.
It will hopefully be a feature length documentary that will be shown on Sky Arts or Netflix or whatever, who knows? It’s really about fandom, that’s the larger issue. Boomers I suppose, are the fans of that kind of 80s music largely all over the world and a lot of people think it’s the happiest time they’ve ever had, not just because they were young but because it was an extraordinary decade in music. So that audience has grown older, a lot of them have got a bit more affluent and they want to relive their youth, which is perfectly reasonable and I suppose we are in a certain respect. But they don’t want it to be patronising and feel like a nostalgia trip, they want to feel like they are living in the present when they experience that stuff.
So this is a new phenomenon, it’s not just us. It’s all the 80s acts that we love who I’m sure have similar fanbases. The rise of this kind of VIP thing is important element to it as well because when I was growing up and seeing loads of gigs, I was an obsessive music fan and the thought back then that you could actually meet these demi-gods who were on stage would have been amazing!
Were there any artists you would have paid VIP for had it been available?
Oh yeah! Bowie and Roxy, but you were never going to get to people of that ilk! There are people who take that properly seriously, Thomas Dolby,Martin Fry and Howard Jones for example and it helps support the band, it’s money going into the general tour pot. The mid-range of tours are not making a lot of money but it does provide employment and gives enjoyment for a lot of people. It’s only when you get to the £100 ticket level and beyond that serious money is made.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its sincerest thanks to Martyn Ware
HEAVEN 17 ‘Sound With Vision’ tour includes: London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire (6th November), Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion (7th November), Norwich Waterfront (8th November), Oxford O2 Academy 1 (10th November), Leeds O2 Academy (12th November), Glasgow Barrowland (13th November), Sheffield Octagon (14th November), Liverpool O2 Academy 1 (15th November), Newcastle Boiler Shop (17th November), Birmingham O2 Institute 1 (19th November), Bristol O2 Academy 1 (20th November), Bournemouth O2 Academy (21st November), Manchester O2 Ritz (22nd November)
No5 in ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK’s ALBUMS OF 2023, John Foxx’s ‘The Arcades Project’ was a beautiful instrumental suite based around the piano.
In the aural lineage of ‘Transluscence’, ‘Drift Music’ and ‘Nighthawks’, ‘The Arcades Project’ can be seen as a John Foxx’s tribute to his late collaborator Harold Budd. It was inspired by Walter Benjamin’s ‘The Arcades Project’ which gathered new ideas emerging from Paris in the 19th and early 20th century,
However, the new John Foxx solo piano album ‘Wherever You Are’ is a much more reflective personal work about the “mostly good, generous, bright people” he has met through his life. It was recorded at home in the weeks following a rare live performance in October 2023 as part of BBC’s Radio 3 ’Night Tracks’ event presented by Hannah Peel in London.
An album that says “simply, thanks. Wherever you are”, John Foxx spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about the inspirations behind his wonderful ivory adventures…
Moody tracks with piano have been part of your music since ULTRAVOX! as with ‘My Sex’ and ‘Just For A Moment’, so which works with a piano aesthetic first attracted your ears?
Well, hearing a friend play a piece by Satie on the old lecture theatre piano, at art school. That was the turning point. I immediately felt I’d encountered a true, pure beauty. This was in the mid 1960s and Satie wasn’t at all well-known or well regarded then. Before that, I’d been impressed by a late-night TV series in the early 1960’s – ‘Play Bach’, by the Jacques Loussier Trio. They had a regular spot on late night TV.
From that and a few other pieces, I felt there must be something further, and I needed to hear it – a purer, less complicated sort of solo piano. It was so tantalising. A few more hints of this came from unexpected places – on the popular music front, there was ‘Cast Your Fate to the Wind’ by Vince Guaraldi, for instance. But hearing Satie made everything else fall away. That was really it.
Around the same time, my aunt gave me her old upright piano, which happened to be a reasonably good one. I was around sixteen years old. That’s when I began trying to make pieces of my own. A year or so later, at Manchester art school, my girlfriend had a copy of Satie pieces by Aldo Ciccolini – the album with the Picasso drawing of Satie on the cover. So I was able to hear more of his work. I began to wonder what form something like that might take in a modern context. A few years later, Brian Eno originated the idea of ambient music, which created a suitable context then along came ‘The Pearl’ – such a unique combination of talents – Harold Budd, quiet piano visionary, Dan Lanois, the Capability Brown of sonic landscaping, and Brian Eno, avant conceptualist. That record was really revolutionary for me – it brought Satie into the next century.
Who are your favourite piano composers?
Erik Satie, Harold Budd, some sections of Keith Jarrett’s solo concerts. After that, a few individual pieces – some Chopin Nocturnes and Debussy pieces – ‘Clair de Lune’, etc, a few slower solo pieces such as Beethoven’s ‘Fur Elise’. I also some of Arvo Part’s compositions – ‘Spiegel Im Spiegel’, ‘Fur Alina’ etc.
After ‘Metamatic’, piano made a notable return on ‘The Garden’ with ‘Europe After The Rain’ and ‘Walk Away’ but then kind of disappeared?
I had a grand piano in The Garden studio, so that was very convenient. After that, electronics took over again – there was also a period when I didn’t have an acoustic piano at home. That’s really the key – you need to be able to play whenever the mood strikes.
You did three albums with the late Harold Budd, the first pair ‘Translucence / Drift Music’ in 2003, so why have your own solo piano works taken longer to be forthcoming?
I was so completely focussed on making the work with Harold as good as possible that it took me some time to realise I hadn’t actually done a piano record of my own.
When working with Harold Budd, how would you describe your role? Did you contribute piano parts or did you leave that aspect entirely to him?
Well, I was default producer, organised the studio in a friend’s house, brought the piano over and set up recording equipment. When Harold arrived, we discussed his music – where we might take it, etc. I also recorded everything. I played around half of the piano pieces on those albums – sometimes Harold and I would swap piano chords then I’d improvise, other times I’d invent a piano piece from scratch. Other tracks were entirely his composition and playing.
Harold had the first and last word. The basic approach originated from him, a philosophy of simplicity, directness, finding the most beautiful notes, giving them space to develop, making use of the reverb and harmonic fields. We’d record as soon as it felt right. It all went very quickly and easily. The entire album was a delight to work on. Harold never played anything more than twice and mostly just once. He was so unassuming – simply came in and played, then we’d listen back and get on with the next piece.
Afterwards, I compiled what I felt were the most representative tracks and sent them off to him. He was fine with it all, so we ended up with two records, ‘Translucence’ – the piano, and ‘Drift Music’ – the more radically treated pieces. The idea of ‘Drift Music’ was complete abstraction – take reverb, echo and all sonic treatments as far as we possibly could.
By the way – It’s interesting how this has been taken even further now, by some characters on YouTube slowing those tracks down radically. I like that, and I’m absolutely sure Harold would, too. But all that’s just the technical side. The more central thing is the reason we do all this in the first place.
For my part, (and I feel this may also have some relevance to the way Harold works), it’s an attempt to capture a few small but valuable things from our passing lives. A glimpse of someone, a fleeting thought when you’re sitting on a bus looking out of the window at the city passing by, a moment of stillness and wonder, that sensation of imagining we recognise someone who vanishes in a crowd, the brief, long light at the end of a day. Nothing grand, significant or dramatic – just the opposite – and not resolved in any way, yet so recognisable when evoked musically. These small things are easily lost or overlooked, but they form a sort of undercurrent in our lives. They’re part of its fabric.
As I grow older, I begin to realise the so-called important times can often leave us unmoved, while a few odd, unexpected things will get through the defences. Some moments last forever. Music is such a great trigger, it’s capable of evoking something of the way these small things can affect us. Also, recording itself is such a strange and mysterious activity. You take a moment that would otherwise be lost forever and enable it to live forever. Isn’t that downright weird? Not to say magical?
And this can give a recorded moment vast significance. Something like using a microscope to see all the complexity inside a drop of water, or realising that a face in Cinema close-up is twenty feet high and transmitting fleeting expressions as subtle as changing weather. These recorded moments can be closely examined and re-experienced an infinite number of times, and through being captured in this way, they’ve become something quite new.
‘The Arcades Project’ was billed as your first solo piano album, how would you describe your approach? How was it different from your instrumental ambient works like the ‘Cathedral Oceans’ trilogy or ‘London Overgrown’?
‘Arcades’ is a lot simpler and absolutely direct. One instrument. All improvised. Occasionally, a discreet synth part. ‘London Overgrown’ and ‘Cathedral Oceans’ involved improvising over long delays then building multiple tracks. ‘Cathedral Oceans’ was intended as a technological continuity of ancient chant, through singing into huge, notional electronic spaces and harmonising with returning, reflected voices. Both had an entirely different premise from ‘Arcades’.
You have said that “Around dawn is the best time to play piano”, were most of the pieces improvised or was there some degree of notation beforehand, even if it was just to sketch a basic structure?
Very little was ever written down – the only time I ever saw Harold use any sort of notation was on ‘Spoken Roses’ – he referred to some brief notes he’d made, then he did two takes, one after the other, both good, before choosing one as the master. It was a revelation to hear that piece unfolding live. Truly gorgeous. Everything else sprang from a basic chord or two, then a note or two over that, then you were off – take it any way you feel. A few very basic, but vital rules – maximum beauty, minimal notes. Brevity, simplicity, joy.
In what ways does your new piano album ‘Wherever You Are’ differ in concept from ‘The Arcades Project’, it appears more personal?
Yes, I think it is.
I see Harold Budd and Conny Plank among the many photos on the front cover artwork of ‘Wherever You Are’?
Well, they’re both significant. Satie’s there too, on the inside cover. It all goes back to him.
How important is the visual presentation of these piano works to the music it contains?
I guess the imagery acts as a sort of entry point. Indicates the kind of emotional tone you can expect to encounter.
What types of piano have you been using?
A Yamaha grand, 6ft 2inches. Great fun getting it through the front door a few years ago, when I swapped it for the previous one, which was a few inches shorter. Occasionally I get access to other pianos. A Steinway or a Kawaii, and I can sometimes use a combination of sustain from an acoustic piano and play over that using Pianoteq.
In terms of recording, piano is known not to be easy to lay down and there was a time particularly when there was a lot of Roland CP70 electric baby grand piano direct input and then treated afterwards, what set-up did you use to record your pieces at home?
Simple as possible. A couple of decent mics placed inside the lid, an old Alesis mixer and an antique reverb unit. I’d begun to use some newer software reverbs, but the overall sound of the antique thing is richer, more interesting. Occasionally I’ve just used one mic, and that can be more solid an image, letting the reverbs do the stereo. You always have to move the mics around very patiently until it all feels cohesive. That’s the most important bit, really. You simply have to listen.
Photo by Brian Griffin
Although ‘The Arcades Project’ and ‘Wherever You Are’ are piano-based works, there are a lot of effects and occasional synthesizer, had you considered producing more something much barer and more minimal?
By the way, there’s no synth on ‘Wherever You Are’. It’s all piano and reverbs. I think the way I record is already fairly simple and minimal – single takes of an improvised piano piece, made mostly by reacting to the piano’s open string harmonics. You see, my basic premise is – there’s an aspect of the piano that has been completely overlooked, yet it’s what makes the piano completely unique. This is the harmonic field produced by the sympathetic vibration of all its strings.
By simply holding down the sustain pedal, you allow all the strings to make this wonderful, moving, harmonic field. No other instrument can produce an effect like that – perhaps the nearest might be a sitar – but that doesn’t have anywhere near the number of strings. A piano has over two hundred, so they produces an incredibly rich and complex sound, and I think this is the unique signature of the modern piano.
Yet no-one seems to have noticed it. No music I know of has ever been composed or recorded with this in mind – it’s simply never been investigated properly – so that’s what I’ve been doing with these recordings. The reverbs I use are designed to extend those harmonics, that combination creates a changing bed of sound for me to improvise over.
The origins of this go way back to 1977, recording the first minute and a half or so of the intro to ‘A Distant Smile’, with ULTRAVOX! I got Billy to play a few piano chords, having had the idea of getting him to hold down the sustain pedal in order to allow all the piano strings to vibrate sympathetically, then recording these until they died away, some time later. Then I asked Steve Lillywhite to take off the initial impact of the notes being hit, by fading in just the sustained sound afterwards.
In this way, we quickly built up several layers that make a beautiful bed of moving, sympathetic harmonics from the two hundred or so strings. You can hear these under the track’s beginning. I was tremendously excited by the beauty and potential of the sound this produced. It was obvious there was so much more to explore here, but also frustrating, because I couldn’t do that – we were in the middle of making a rock album to a strict deadline. So I had to stow the idea away for later use.
Have you any favourite pieces from ‘Wherever You Are’?
The first track, ‘When She Walked In With The Dawn’, because that’s when I got the sound just right, which triggered me to write and record all the other tracks.
With the piano, have you found your forte, as it were, at this stage of your creativity or is there something else you would like to try, say with artificial intelligence for example?
I do feel I’ve got a unique territory I can explore now – and that’s always a great feeling – your own territory, another adventure opens up. I like the simplicity and the entirely hands-on nature of it.
You set up the sound, than simply sit down and record – and that’s it, no overdubs or other complications, an entirely human response to what a piano and an old reverb unit gives you. It acts as a great release from all the other stuff I’m involved in. It’s the opposite of AI – and even of synths or multitrack recording. Much as I love all that, it’s just wonderful to take a step sideways.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to John Foxx
Additional thanks to Steve Malins at Random Management
To be still releasing great pop records 44 years after your debut is a fine achievement and that is exactly what Kim Wilde has done with her new album ‘Closer’.
Interestingly, the songstress herself has stated that ‘Closer’ is a companion record to her 1988 long player ‘Close’ which saw a revival in fortunes thanks to the hits ‘You Came’ and ‘Four Letter Word’. Coupled with a high profile tour opening for Michael Jackson, that occasion followed a few comparatively leaner years after the huge success of her self-titled debut and the sophomore offering ‘Select’.
Although Kim Wilde has never gone away, apart from a hiatus into horticulture which led to an award for best courtyard garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2005, while she has always maintained a loyal fanbase and continues to perform shows across the world, there is something in the air surrounding her latest work. Produced and co-written as usual by her brother Ricky Wilde with additional songwriting contributions from his daughter and her niece Scarlett, they stood stage right as part of a tight septet. Alongside was Steve Power with a Korg Kronos and Roland keytar while to the left were other long-standing Wilde-men Paul Cooper (bass), Neil Jones (guitar) and Jonathan Atkinson (drums).
With a funky opener in ‘Hey Mister Heartache’, the initially tentative audience were all on their feet for ‘You Came’, a classic pop tune in anyone’s book. The introductory showcase of the ‘Close’ album also featured ‘Never Trust a Stranger’ but slotting in perfectly were songs from ‘Closer’. The powerful ‘Trail of Destruction’ highlighted environmental and existential concerns while providing reinforcements was the synth rock statement of ‘Midnight Train’. What was particularly impressive was how Kim Wilde’s backing band left no rest for the wicked, energetically seguing straight into the next track without batting an eyelid.
Taking a breather, the audience sat back down for the soulful ballads section that included ‘Love’s a No’ and ‘Four Letter Word’. While the feisty Kim and Scarlett duet ‘Hourglass Human’ didn’t get the crowded immediately back on their feet, the evergreen ‘Cambodia’ did! This was followed a barrage of the early hits ‘Water on Glass’, ‘View From A Bridge’ and ‘Chequered Love’ which gave plenty of opportunities for singalongs and “Molly Ringwald in ‘The Breakfast Club’ style dancing”. Again, the band co-ordination in the segues made sure there was no sleep ‘til Indigo2!
A rocked-up ‘Love Is Love’ added some 21st Century momentum to proceedings and if there’s a song that could win Eurovision again for the UK, it is this one. Meanwhile, ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’ brought Motown and plenty of “woah-oh-oh-oh-oahs ” into the room.
For the encore, it was time to party again like it was 1981 and while the new wave power pop of ‘Scorpio’ is from the new album, it could have easily been mistaken to be a lost song from ‘Kim Wilde’. And as the band gathered in front the drum riser preparing to do battle for the final time of the evening and sharing a similar electronic pulse, there was only her fabulous signature tune ‘Kids in America’ left to do!
In fine voice and exuding her charming down-to-earth presence, joyous is the only word that could be used to describe the warm family atmosphere resonant throughout this enjoyable evening. If you’ve never been to Kim Wilde show before, now might be a good time to change that 😉
With thanks to Sacha Taylor-Cox at Hush PR
‘Closer’ is released by Cherry Red Records as a CD, black vinyl LP, limited edition white vinyl LP and download
It took 13 years for DESIRE to follow-up their acclaimed self-titled debut album with ‘Escape’ but it’s taken just under 3 years for ‘Games People Play’ to emerge containing “twenty love songs for your dreams…”
Led by Megan Louise with Johnny Jewel at her side in the production seat, DESIRE are now very much the highest profile of act on Italians Do It Better and seemingly on an endless world tour. Unfolding like a game of chess with Megan Louise as the latex-clad queen, fate as the dealer and love as the wager, the shadowy premise of ‘Games People Play’ is “Checkmate is inevitable – but who will make the final move?”
Opener ‘Darkside’ offers the classic dreamy side of DESIRE while the enigmatic ‘Russian Roulette’ is an eerie ivory laden spoken word en Français. Flutey and French, ‘Réflexion Sous La Pluie’ allures as a vibey ballad that sits well alongside the atmospheres of ‘Demons In The Rain’.
On the other side of the coin, ‘Human Nature’ is danceable pop DESIRE with ‘Vampire’ providing a Germanic flavour while borrowing the synth line of ‘The Boys Of Summer’. Popwave and techno make their presence felt on ‘Dangerous Drug’ and ‘Dream Girl’ respectively.
A frequent purveyor of cover versions, DESIRE’s take on ‘Tell It To My Heart’ is elegantly nocturnal, as is the gentle self-penned ‘I Know’ which concludes with a particularly spicy arpeggiated twist. There’s a sharp cascading synth instrumental in ‘Sometimes’ but ‘The Judge’ is artful and alluring with an enticing percussive backdrop while ‘Love Races On’ is an airy slice of electronic pop.
The arpeggio laden bounce of ‘Cold As Ice’ is not a cover of the near-namesake Italian disco number by Grant Miller but throws in orchestral stabs while Italo house stomper ‘Drama Queen’ comes with a Madonna ‘Vogue’ type rap.
It would be fair to say in its second half, ‘Games People Play’ is particularly moody with Johnny Jewel providing a fitting cinematic backdrop with Megan Louise resigned to the way the chess game is playing out.
Maybe there is too much to take in and while the styles are varied, all types of DESIRE are represented. There is something for everyone so if in doubt, compile a playlist to suit your own DESIRE.
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