Category: Interviews (Page 1 of 119)

Lost Albums: STEVE STRANGE Le Palais De Danse

10 October 2026 /

The final artistic testament of the late Steve Strange receives a belated release.

Having fronted colourful gatherings at Billy’s, The Blitz Club and Club For Heroes, Steve Strange was the undisputed poster boy of the New Romantic era. As the flamboyant frontman of synthpop pioneers VISAGE, his place in modern pop culture was cemented with the video to ‘Fade To Grey’, the biggest selling single of 1981 in West Germany. Later he co-established The Camden Palace with Rusty Egan where he mingled with the A-List but also juggled the demons that came to his doorstep and would continue to haunt him.

Towards the end of his tumultuous life, interspersed with club night revivals and various iterations of VISAGE, he was quietly sculpting an intended solo record alongside long-time collaborator, co-writer, bass maestro and post-Midge Ure VISAGE member Steve Barnacle. After Steve Strange passed away in 2015, word got out about this Lost Album and various parties were keen to make it public.

Now fully realized through Barnacle’s painstaking dedication, ‘Le Palais De Danse’ comes out as comprehensive 2CD deluxe package on Cherry Red Records. Appended by extended versions, single edits and dance mixes as well as liner notes from Barnacle himself, while VISAGE devotees will recognise 4 of these tracks, this collection presents the intended direction for Steve Strange’s solo bow.

The ‘Le Palais De Danse’ title song acts as a direct nod to David Bowie while ‘Breathe Life’ comes as a  brassy soul excursion featuring pitch-corrected vocals from Strange that differs from the version on ‘Hearts & Knives’. There’s the self-explanatory camp Europop of ‘Dirty & Flirty’ featuring a duet with Samantha Fox while ‘Insinuate’ is a semi-spoken diatribe against the gutter press, turbocharged by heavy rock guitar riffs.

In addition, there’s the out-and-out gay anthem ‘Boys’ and ‘Seven Deadly Sins (Part One)’, a reggae-infused precursor to what eventually surfaced reworked on ‘Demons To Diamonds’. ‘Welcome To The Digital Age’ comes as alternative funk-rock workout of what was the B-side to the VISAGE single ‘Dreamer I Know’ while ‘Never Stop Dreaming’ (which had appeared as ‘Never’ for VISAGE) is a surprisingly rustic country-tinged ballad to close. ‘Le Palais De Danse’ acts as the closing chapter of Steve Strange and this intriguing artefact will be embraced by his many followers who saw him as an icon.

From his base in France, Steve Barnacle kindly spoke in-depth to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about his time in VISAGE, the ill-fated STRANGE CRUISE and the long journey that led to the completion of ‘Le Palais De Danse’.

Photo courtesy of Steve Barnacle

When did you first meet Steve Strange?

The first time I met Steve was in 1982, it was for a ‘Top Of The Pops’ session for Night Train’. My elder brother Gary had played sax on ‘Night Train’, I was just asked to sit in while it was being recorded. Back in the day, you had to re-record your track for ‘Top Of The Pops’ and very occasionally, the Musicians Union and the BBC would send 2 representatives to the session, which was usually only 3 hours, to make sure it WAS being re-recorded. The stupid thing was, if you had 12 keyboard parts on the record, you had to book 12 keyboard players! You couldn’t overdub!

At this session is Rusty, Steve, me and my brother Gary and these guys show up. I hadn’t even heard ‘Night Train’ at that point but they wanted to watch what was going on and then leave with the final mix. We’re like “F*CK, WE’VE GOT TO RECORD IT!” so we had to act like we were going to record it. Rusty sets up the drum kit and plays ‘Night Train’ out of memory and singing the song to himself. Meanwhile, I’ve got a cassette of ‘Night Train’ and listening to how the bass goes and put it on while Gary was blowing his sax part. We had dodgy drums, dodgy bass, dodgy sax and then Steve had to go and do a lead vocal while having a total nervous breakdown! This track sounds f*cking horrendous, I WISH I had a copy of it! *laughs*

Steve was having a meltdown going “THIS IS GOING TO RUIN MY CAREER IF THEY PLAY THIS ON ‘TOP OF THE POPS’!” but Rusty does some quick thinking and goes “I KNOW WHAT I’M GOING TO DO”! He turns up the monitors and turns the treble up to full volume so that it made you feel sick! It sounded abysmal and it basically drove those 2 reps out. As soon as they left, we put the master on the mix! We got away with it! *laughs*

You properly became involved as a member of VISAGE with ‘Pleasure Boys’?

I knew Rusty from way back, the connection between him and Gary is they were in a funk band called HIT & RUN, they were one of the first things Rusty drummed in. The band needed a new lead singer and Gary asked me to deputise on bass as their regular bassist couldn’t make it for the auditions and that’s how I met Rusty. After we’d finished, Rusty told Gary that he liked the bass player and Gary told him that I was just helping out. So that connected me and Rusty.

Fast forward, I went away in 1983 to tour with a French guy Julien Clerc and when I came back, me and my partner  Cori Josias wrote ‘Takin’ It Straight’ which was a bit of a gay club anthem.  Rusty got us a publishing deal and he wanted to work with me and invited me to join VISAGE. So I became the musician in the band, me in the middle with Rusty and Steve! *laughs*

Steve was a bit of a primadonna, him and Rusty together, you can imagine was that was like! Steve was a bit paranoid about his voice because he wasn’t the greatest singer in the world. But they wanted to do a version of VISAGE that would go live because they had never played live. My brother Gary was involved and I got in the guitarist Andy Barnett.

The first thing I did was ‘Pleasure Boys’, Dave Formula and Billy Currie were involved in that and they were intrigued how I got the Minimoog bass to sequence. I had this brainwave of getting a sound that I liked on it and then dropping them both an octave, playing the track at half speed and doing two fingers on the keyboard… of course when it’s double speed, you don’t know any of the timing discrepancies but it sounds sequenced! So Billy and Dave thought I’d sequenced a Minimoog and were going “how the f*ck did you do that?” *laughs*

How did you find playing live bass over drum machines and sequencers?

I’ve been a home studio man since I was a teenager so I was fascinated by it all. When technology came along, that automatically involved drum machines and I just got used to it. It taught me a lot about my playing and getting behind the beat. It’s not something I’ve ever had any problem with but it was drummers who really suffered, there was many a freak out from them! *laughs*

You were also involved in the ‘Beat Boy’ album, what do you remember about those recording sessions?

Steve was banging on about wanting to do something newer and band-like but for Rusty, the Fairlight was happening and he was into all the racket. So I was in the middle of it, trying to please both of them! Most of the writing was Steve coming over to my place, we’d do some demos to get an idea of something and then it morphed into what it became.

‘Beat Boy’ is a very strange album, it’s not a very good one… there’s some funky stuff on it with black girl singers and there’s some nice atmospheric stuff. But the funniest story of all is when the Polydor came to us; they said Jean-Philippe Iliesco (JP) who was VISAGE’s manager at the time had taken the rough mixes of ‘Beat Boy’ album for preview to the European labels and they wanted a soft pop synthy song on it…

Oh, they wanted another ‘Fade To Grey’??? *laughs*

Yeah! Please! Can we have another of those?! *laughs*

Anyway Rusty went “OH! F*CK OFF!” so I said to JP I’d try something with Steve and he said he had an idea and that was ‘Love Glove’; “What’s a Love Glove?” I said to him, “Is it a condom?” *laughs*

So I sat down with that brief, did it with a Roland drum machine and synths, finished ‘Love Glove’ and of course, everyone at the label loved it because it was more along the lines of what they expected to hear from VISAGE. But Rusty’s like “WOTS THIS F*CKING SH*T???!?” but everyone else loves it! So he goes “alright”, programmed a tambourine and a couple of things on it and took a writing credit for it! He didn’t write a f*cking note! *roars of laughter*

But we did agree on a 3 way write so that was hilarious and the European labels wanted ‘Love Glove’ to be the single although Rusty was going “NAH! ‘BEAT BOY’ IS THE F*CKING SINGLE!” but he got talked down… he hated it but that was the one track they did a proper video for.

‘Love Glove’ hit the Top50 but it didn’t go any further and there’s a really good reason for that! In the same month, Polydor did a VHS video mailout to all the clubs but they had to decide between VISAGE and LEVEL 42 ‘Hot Water’ because they couldn’t afford to do both. So Polydor said whoever charts the highest will get the mailout. VISAGE charted higher at first BUT they’d already decided on LEVEL 42! This was a real p*sser and ironically, my brother Gary played on both singles! *laughs*

I’ll tell you a funny story, the ‘Beat Boy’ album features JJ Jeczalik’s Fairlight quite heavily with Rusty’s drum sound samples and then THE ART OF NOISE come up with ‘Beat Box’ before VISAGE release ‘Beat Boy’, how mercenary! *laughs*

Photo courtesy of Steve Barnacle

How was the STRANGE CRUISE period for you after VISAGE?

‘Beat Boy’ came and went but Steve was happy being the face of VISAGE and getting all the attention. He had this thing about wanting a live band and doing it live, that was never going to happen with the old VISAGE members because of all their commitments. He fell out with Rusty, quelle surprise, they were fighting all the time! Steve had a small attention span and had his drug problem… so we’d have a session booked for vocals and a) you could see he was getting worse so it was pointless pursuing it and b) he was getting tired. Rusty would go “WE’VE BOOKED THE STUDIO! YOU’RE GONNA STAY ‘ERE ‘TIL YOU’VE F*CKING GOT IT RIGHT!” and it was the worst thing you could say to Steve.

So I’d ask Rusty to leave and ask him to let me do the vocals with Steve. I’d sing the guide vocal and Steve would get the idea and copy me listening to me through headphones and get the phrasing. Consequently, Steve said he liked working with me as it was much less stressful than Rusty.

But VISAGE were still under contract for another 2 albums that Polydor were legally obliged to finance and release. Steve started working with me outside of the VISAGE sphere and proposed doing this Sonny & Cher cover ‘And The Beat Goes On’. Steve said he had this model Leza Cruz who could sing a bit and that he wanted to call this project STRANGE CRUISE; we did an 8 track demo of it and he took it to Paris when he went to see DURAN DURAN, there was a big party for the launch of ‘A View To A Kill’ so EMI were there. So Steve bowls up to this party and people are asking about what he’d been up to and told them about ‘And The Beat Goes On’. It was played at the party and everyone went nuts for it.

Dave Ambrose, the A&R at EMI was there and said it was “a f*cking hit, if you weren’t signed to Polydor, I’d sign you up tomorrow, I luv that song!”; so Steve comes back, tells me that everyone went mad for it and that he’d been put in touch with a management company Smallwood Taylor who looked after IRON MAIDEN. They’d had an IRON MAIDEN meeting with Dave Ambrose and were looking to expand their roster with a well-known artist whose career could do with a real boost. Dave Ambrose suggested Steve Strange so we get this phone call from Smallwood Taylor… they’d asked to speak to me because they’d spoken to Steve and y’know, they wanted to speak to someone who made sense! *fits of laughter*

We went to see them, the walls were covered in platinum albums, plush meeting areas etc; they said they really liked the demos of the stuff I was writing with Steve. They wanted us to sign to EMI but I reminded them we were still signed to Polydor and they said “we’ll take care of that!”

Steve said he wanted a live band, record as a band and go out on the road, Smallwood Taylor said great; I pointed out they would need to be on retainers and it will cost a lot of money but they said “yes”… they didn’t say no to anything! It was too good to be true right?

Consequently, they went and found out about the Polydor contract and it’s something Rusty doesn’t mention; as far as I know, Polydor bought the rights to VISAGE, drew a line and let Steve go and move on to STRANGE CRUISE. So Smallwood Taylor paid money to JP, Rusty and Polydor to shut the contact down… it wasn’t that much because Polydor were relieved not to have to shell out on another VISAGE album! Apparently, Rusty claimed JP forged his signature on the piece on paper when the money was handed over and kept it! So Jean-Philippe Iliesco pocketed it and Rusty denied any knowledge of ever signing VISAGE over to anyone because he claimed JP faked his signature!

Photo courtesy of Steve Barnacle

Things didn’t quite take off for STRANGE CRUISE did it?

We started rehearsing STRANGE CRUISE and we got Wendy Wu in from THE PHOTOS to replace Leza Cruz, it was all going well. But Steve had brought in this guitarist who turned out to be epileptic and actually had a seizure while we were playing! That wasn’t going work! We replaced him with Frankie Hepburn and off we went.

On my behalf, the band said to Smallwood Taylor that I should produce the album but they preferred a big name producer to help the album along, so we ended up with Mike Hedges. Funnily enough, he lived about 200 metres from me in Willesden. We met him, he had ideas of having brass on the album and EMI were happy as well. Me and Steve were also signed to Zomba Music Publishing so there was some money floating around. Mike wanted to do the album in Germany at Hartmann Digital Studios in Bavaria where he had done ‘Vermin In Ermine’ with Marc Almond. It was a live-in studio so we went out there. It was a little German village where the church bells went off at 7 o’clock in the morning so Steve was going stir crazy because he couldn’t go clubbing and do his drugs!

It was a bit of a nightmare. Because he lived up the road from me, he kept popping round unannounced so I’d ask if he’d got the brass arrangements done and he was like “No! No! I’m working on that!”; I was going to use my brother as he has a really good horn section that was doing loads of work so we had them booked… but basically Mike Hedges was the wrong choice for that whole thing, he was a bit of a tw*t. He goes to me “how do you get a vocal out of Steve?” and I explained what he was like and the best way to do it, but decided to be a bit like Rusty and went “F*ck that! He’s going to stay there ‘til he’s got it right!”

Steve was having breakdowns, so I confronted Mike and we nearly came to blows as he was going about it completely the wrong way because he had no sympathy for Steve’s predicament or anything. We finished the album and he didn’t do any brass arrangements, in the end the keyboard player did them from ideas I sung to him.

The album was finished but we weren’t happy with the mixes so it had to be remixed and we ended up at Sarm West, spending loads of money. EMI opted to do a taster single ‘Rebel Blue Rockers’ with video to establish the band to get people to know they were around and then do the big launch with ‘And The Beat Goes On’. And we were going to start playing live which was the whole point of STRANGE CRUISE. But Steve went into his world while this was going on and after we did the video, he was back clubbing in London and asking for money all the time because of his drug problem. And then he got done for fraud!!!

WHAT??? 😳

YEAH! Because he was hosting people at his clubs, the managers of various other clubs would do the same. So Steve and one of his girl friends was out with the manager of this club who was hosting him, this guy had to leave but said to Steve that all food and drinks were on the house, stay as long as you like. As he left, he dropped his wallet and the girl picked it up and there was a lot of cash in it and a cheque book! She told Steve that she was going to be evicted from her flat unless she came up with some money, maybe he could sign a cheque in this guy’s name and cash it!

So picture the scene, Steve is there out with his heroin buddy! They nicked all the cash and he went into the bank the next morning with a cheque card, forged the guy’s signature and cashed £250 which was a lot of money then! She gave the girl the cash who then said to him, can you do it again, that’s not enough! MEANWHILE, the guy who dropped the wallet has called the bank that he’s lost his wallet, “please cancel everything” only for the bank to tell him that someone has cashed a cheque under his name! But Steve went back not realising to can only do this once a day and there was the long arm of the law on his shoulder! He got done!

EMI had done these press releases that Steve Strange had cleaned his act up and come back with a great new band which were ready to go, but they then see this bloody front page headline that Steve Strange is in court for fraud and embezzlement! I got wind of this and was like “WHAT THE F*CK?”, this was the worst possible thing you could choose to do at this time. He went to court and said he was out of his head on heroin and didn’t know what he was doing, that was his excuse! EMI went “F*CKING HELL” but Steve then f*cked off and disappeared!

By this time, my share of my publishing advance had gone to pay for the remixes… a song I had written as a B-side for Samantha Fox called ‘Dream City’ was making me a load of money but had all gone to that as well! So you can imagine how I felt! And because this co-publishing detail was with Steve, anything I earned paid off what was owed by both of us! I didn’t realise it was cross-collateralisation so any money that was owed would be grabbed before we saw any of it which is fair enough because they gave us a big advance. So I repaid that advance with a song that was nothing to do with Steve and he’s f*cked off! So you can imagine what I thought of Steve! *laughs*

So Steve was dead to me and it turns out he ran off to Ibiza and was hosting, selling T-shirts and making some kind of living for a couple of years. No one knew where he was, he’d just gone and back then, it was a lot harder to track people down. To put it into context, that’s why STRANGE CRUSE never happened, Steve wasn’t around to make it happen even if he was going to be forgiven by EMI which he wasn’t, so they actually just pulled the plug on the album and only pressed 2000 copies which is why it’s a collector’s album now! Most of the tracks were still the Mike Hedges mixes because we wouldn’t remix everything so I was just furious and livid. I went onto SPEAR OF DESTINY after that and didn’t have any contact with anyone of that lot for about 20 years!

Photo by Richard Price

How did you become reunite with Steve Strange and thus begin work on what became ‘Le Palais De Danse’?

I got a call from the other JP, John Pitcher who had become involved in managing VISAGE; so because Steve was the only signatory on the original contract, he got a big chunk of money from 5 years of VISAGE royalties from America, like £70,000. Steve was short of money but he went to a lawyer about it who said he’d sort the payment for 30% and the tw*t said “yes”! Steve thought it was all for him and then he spent it all, knowing damn well it was VISAGE money! Rusty got wind of it and went ballistic!

Fair enough! Steve just cared about money in his pocket but it was the wrong thing to do. So John Pitcher enters the frame and suggests making a new VISAGE album and the initial royalties can go towards the money that Steve took that should have gone to Rusty and the others. So he got Steve and Rusty together despite Rusty calling Steve “a thieving c*nt” and everything else under the sun!

Photo by Richard Price

But Rusty didn’t stick around long…

Rusty wanted to be the producer but John Pitcher is also a control freak but does it in a more subtle business-like way… I don’t like John Pitcher, he’s been very shady. So Rusty now wants nothing to do with the record, the Midge Ure song ‘Become’ is withdrawn because Rusty is no longer involved so John Pitcher finishes the album he’s already started with his team and is determined to finish it. He thought it would be good to get some actual former VISAGE members involved in the new VISAGE other than Steve so he calls me! *laughs*

I told him about my last dealings with Steve Strange. He suggested jumping back in working with Steve again to bury the hatchet… well, there was a lot of water under the bridge so I said yes, that I’d like to do some co-writing with Steve and put a few tracks on the album. John Pitcher had already had the album written by his team but he said “sure” to get me involved and I ended up with one or two tracks on ‘Hearts & Knives’.

I lived in Dover then, Steve came down to stay for a week and while there was water under the bridge, he was the same old f*cking Steve… I’d never spent that much time with him just the two of us. We did that a few times so I thought we’d just write some songs and if they weren’t on this album, they could go on the next album etc. But then I realised John Pitcher has his own agenda and he’d go “oh, that’s a nice bassline, I’ll give you a writing credit on that track” which is what happened with ‘Hidden Sign’. He realised dealing with me that I was someone who knew what he was doing and was actually the guy who could pull it all together for him by keeping Steve under control. So he valued having me on board.

We wanted to play live which we finally managed to do but in that time, I realised while doing the second album ‘Demons To Diamonds’ that Pitcher was just milking it. He had this list of fans who were going buy the album regardless, he did all these mixes, orchestral versions etc AND kept most of the money! He gave me the most ludicrous deal which he led me to believe it was 2% of retail but was actually 0.2% of 1% of what Steve was getting! But I thought OK, maybe this has got legs so I put the live VISAGE band together… I drove Steve around the country in MY car, keeping tabs on him, I was the f*cking tour manager, musical director, the works!

We did the Hoxton show and then about 10 dates around the UK before ending up back in London for a gig that was more or less sold out; I thought that was the best show of the lot because we’d done all the other shows and we were a lot tighter. Steve was getting used to being on the road live because he was like a rabbit in headlights when we started. He actually did really well, he sang pretty well and it went down a storm. I was thinking maybe this could work…

Photo by David Levine

So what happened next?

It was then like, what about the next album? So Steve had been coming down and talking about stuff, what we liked and how to arrange the songs. So say with ‘Breathe Life’ which was on ‘Hearts & Knives’, this version on ‘Le Palais De Danse’ is completely different and more funky. The songs on this album are basically what me and Steve discussed how we’d like them to go, but we had been handing over stems to John Pitcher. The title ‘Le Palais De Danse’ I saw on a poster and I told Steve that would be a great title for a song and he said “Yeah! Make a note of that!”

‘Never’ has one of Steve’s best vocals I think and it’s more electropop on ‘Le Palais De Danse’ while John Pitcher had done something else with it on ‘Demons To Diamonds’. The other songs that had been released before as VISAGE have been completely reworked in the way Steve and I talked about. He wanted to do this and wanted to that and one of the things he wanted to do was a coming out song called ‘Boys’ to shock everybody but John Pitcher wasn’t into that for some reason, so it was never done as VISAGE.

So I had Steve’s vocals where he’d been ghosting me and doing various bits with an idea to get out of the John Pitcher thing and do something ourselves when we got more control… but then he went off and died! So I’m left with these tracks! They were totally mine and I owned all the copyright as the main writer so I thought I’d finish the album myself with backing vocals, guitars etc. So that’s how the album ended up, it’s what we talked about. Like ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, I suggested a heavy reggae feel that Steve said “Yeah! Great!” although it was more like “I’ll go away and you do all the work!” *laughs*

Where did the camp Europop of ‘Dirty & Flirty’ with Samantha Fox come from?

So that song I mentioned earlier ‘Dream City’ was for Samantha Fox so I’d met her at her album launch party and at Zomba a few times. Steve knew her too and suggested writing a song for her with the title ‘Dirty & Flirty’, so it’s the usual “here’s a title, now you write the song!” *laughs*

Steve got hold of Sam and asked if she was interested and she was… it was meant to be a duet. She came down with her then-partner Myra who was also her manager to put her vocals on it with Steve.  Afterwards, they asked for the stems for their producer to remix it to be her next single but asked if I’d mind if they took Steve’s vocals off it! *lots of laughter*

Unfortunately Myra was then diagnosed with terminal cancer so obviously it went quiet. And before Myra passed away, Steve died!  So for the duet that’s on the album, I had to patch Steve’s vocals up to go with Sam’s.

So what was the timeline for making this album?

Me and Steve started in 2012 about the time ‘Hearts & Knives’ was being made. Over that period, we kept writing and would record the songs anyway and if it John Pitcher rejected them for VISAGE, then we would do something else with them, that was the idea.

So lets’s get this right, ‘Breathe Life’ was on ‘Hearts & Knives’ and ‘Welcome To The Digital Age’ was on B-side of ‘Dreamer I Know’ while ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ and ‘Never Stop Dreaming’ aka ‘Never’ were on ‘Demons To Diamonds’?

Yes!

So when did things begin in earnest to make this material on ‘Le Palais De Danse’ suitable for release?

John Pitcher knew I had these vocals and these songs, so when Steve died, it made them more valuable. He kept banging on at me to do something with these tracks but by then, I didn’t really want any more to do with him! I started mixing them in the way me and Steve had talked about. At different times, 4 different labels were interested but when it came to actually releasing it, they all went cold. I got a bit despondent but I wanted to draw a line under it and have the tracks come out. It’s funny but Cherry Red who ARE releasing it had expressed interest and then passed on it!

How do you think the album stands up?

The ‘Le Palais De Danse’ album IS a bit different to what Steve has done in the past. I obviously finished it without any feedback from him but we’ve got approval from Steve’s sister Tanya. It’s been a massive convoluted journey because the last time I saw Steve, we’d fallen out! He pulled this horrendous stunt when we were playing this gig near Prague.

I’ve got to tell you this story… John Pitcher found out you could get the Prague Philharmonic pretty cheap so we flew over there to do those orchestral versions and this gig with them. It was the World Ski Flying Championships in Prague. Me and Logan Sky were the skeleton version of VISAGE without the drummer and using mostly backing tracks. Steve couldn’t quite get it into his head and asked me if this was the Olympics so I said “no, it’s not the Olympics!”… then he asked if it was the Paralympics so I went “Yeah! They go down the slope in wheelchairs… NO IT ISN’T THE PARALYMPICS!” Anyway, he was completely confused! *laughs*

There was about 10,000 people at the end of the ski jump on one side and on the other was the stage with proper lights, fireworks, everything as it was after the final! Steve gets a makeup artist who speaks English from Prague and we’re due to drive up there in a minibus . There’s a knock on his door but he tells her to tell them “I’m not in!”… what he wanted was the minibus to leave and for a limo to be put on for him and this makeup girl. We had to leave and were like “What the f*ck’s he doing?”

Because of Steve, we were late and missed the soundcheck etc! The place was full of drunk people and then the weather turned, so the actual ski jumping got cancelled. But we were there, the Prague Philharmonic were there, we were ready to go, what do we do? The promoters said to go ahead with the show!

The Master of Ceremonies announced to these 10,000 people that the ski jumping was cancelled because the weather was bad BUT he was also meant to say that the show was still going on so to stay for it! So the 10,000 crowd start f*cking off! Meanwhile, Steve is pulling another one and no-one can find him! So without Steve, we were being driven to the stage but the driver goes towards the crowd at a snail’s pace. Backstage it was very muddy and we had these dinner jackets to put on while walking on these planks! *laughs*

The promoters were yelling that the show’s gotta start and the intro on the backing track had started… once that happened, you couldn’t stop it! Everything was sequenced so it was on for the orchestra to play along to! But we still hadn’t got changed! It was mayhem and there’s still no sign of Steve! Then, he waltzes on giving it the big “I AM” while we were looking out and there’s about 4 drunken guys and a dog in the stand! *laughs*

I was furious with Steve so I left just before we were do a tour of Japan… that was my last conversation with him and it was a kind of “f*ck off”! We did later speak a couple of times on the phone but then he died. This has taken so long because of all the reasons I’ve mentioned. I did some extended mixes but I’ve finally drawn a line under it.

Who do you think this album is going to appeal to?

If people hear about it and get to listen to it, I think they’ll be quite interested because it’s got a kind of continuity to it which is what I wanted. At the end of the day, Steve sounds alright vocally which is an achievement in itself after what I’d been through with him and if you’d heard some of the outtakes that I’ve had to polish! He always liked it when I played with his vocals on the computer and made it sound better. I’m hoping they won’t be disappointed because they have an expectation of how they like someone to be.

In memory of Steve Strange 1959 – 2015

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Steve Barnacle

Special thanks to Richard Peat

‘Le Palais De Danse’ is released by Cherry Red Records on 20th November 2026, information and pre-order at https://www.cherryred.co.uk/steve-strange-le-palais-de-danse-2cd-edition

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
10th October 2026

BUNNY X: The Ms & Ms Interview

5 October 2026 /

Navigating the glass towers of ambition as post-grad working girls for their recently released third album ‘Love On A High Floor’, BUNNY X captured the excitement of entering the workplace and mutated their retrowave sound into what they called “officewave”.

Now comprising of Abigail Gordon and Jenny Bates, BUNNY X presented a fantasy nostalgia that recalled career ambitions, office romances, cocktail bars, late-night taxi rides taxi and penthouse suites. However, set against the backdrop of Wall Street excess, “greed is good” and the New York City real estate boom, ‘Love On A High Floor’ also explored the seductive promise of the American Dream and the disillusionment that often follows its pursuit.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK called Ms Gordon and Ms Bates on their Motorola DynaTACs for an interview in the style of the old married couple TV quiz show ‘Mr & Mrs’. The pair answered the same questions on their creative partnership and personal relationship separately without knowing the other’s answers… so here playing ‘Ms & Ms’ are BUNNY X…

What was your first impression of the other?

Abbi: In the iconic words of Kylie Minogue, it was love at first sight. Jenny and I met through a close mutual friend and I was struck with Jenny’s warmth, beauty and intelligence and knew I wanted to be her friend. After some years had passed, we were at another mutual friend’s karaoke themed birthday party in March 2020 just about a week or two before lockdown when Jenny busted out a sick rendition of ALICE IN CHAINS’ ‘Man In The Box’ and my jaw was literally on the floor. I was blown away by Jenny’s incredible pipes and I’m pretty sure I immediately approached and asked her how the heck I was just hearing her sing for the first time.

Jenny: I had the privilege of first seeing Abbi shine on stage in BUNNY X, so my initial impression was “wow” (of course) and how awesome she was as a performer. Little did I know she was going to be the coolest human being ever and eventually, become my best friend.

What song by another artist does the other love that you hate?

Jenny:  I truly don’t hate any music that she loves.

Abbi: Jenny loves her 90s music and while I certainly don’t mind listening to PEARL JAM’s ‘Ten’ on occasion, I could also go the rest of my life without. So I’d say that. But I’d also say that Jenny is perfect at all times so there is that.

What was the moment that you knew you could be in a band together?

Jenny: This was a somewhat gradual process born out of so much support. Abbi and I were hosting a monthly salon / evening called ‘Risky Business’ with Andy Diamond (from my other band, DIAMOND FIELD). The idea was that BUNNY X and DIAMOND FIELD would share the first hour of the night to perform. This format, organically, allowed BUNNY X to try new configurations and eventually have me sit in on a few songs towards the end of the set. It soon became clear that having someone to play off of on stage, harmonize with and also having the visual dynamic of two strong women, an image that’s been BUNNY X’s selling point for over 15 years, was the way to move forward.

Abbi: Honestly probably when she busted out some incredible karaoke at what ended up being our last hurrah before Covid, but it really hit me when Jenny stepped in to help out when Mary (one of our best friends and founding BUNNY X member) became ill and could no longer perform with me.

Sometime after that, Jenny and I started to perform together regularly for our ‘Risky Business’ 80s inspired party that we would throw in NYC when the line-up would consist of DIAMOND FIELD, BUNNY X and a guest musician and DJ. Jenny started to join me for part of my set and then over time, it just became clear that the show would be better if she joined me for the entire set. So, we began to perform together in largely an organic way.

What’s the skill or trait which the other has in abundance that you wish you had?

Abbi: Her tenacity and resilience and energy. Phew, my girl has these characteristics in spades while I (especially of late) find myself wanting to spend more and more time on my couch reading a good book. She really helps to energize me and keep the project moving forward when I need a boost. I really value that and I also value her business acumen. Jenny has really played a pivotal role in helping us professionalize our project and I think our last album – which is our most ambitious project to date – really shows that.

Jenny: The ability to write incredible top line melodies with such regularity. Abbi is constantly sending me ideas for new songs.

When Mary left BUNNY X, things could have gone either way… how did you handle the situation?

Abbi: It’s been hard, I’m not going to lie. It’s been an impossible situation for all of us in many ways, especially and most importantly for Mary and her immediate friends, family and long-time partner. Jenny has been nothing but graceful, kind and loving throughout the entire scenario and we have done our very best to honor Mary during every performance and every song we sing. Our new album is dedicated to her and she will always be an integral part of the BUNNY X story and our lives.

Jenny: It was personally important to me to do two things: 1) Honor Mary’s time in the band and celebrate the beauty of her voice. 2) Make sure Abbi had the partner she needed in order to keep BUNNY X going. This was the most important reason for me joining the band. I was a BUNNY X fan first, and I think Abbi is such a huge presence in the synth scene. If I had to give one reason why I joined the band, it was to keep the band going so Abbi could continue writing.

How would you describe your songwriting dynamic?

Abbi: In a nutshell, Jenny puts up with me when I send her random demos at random intervals, sometimes very late at night. We tend to do it this way, work on demos on our own and then present them to each other and tweak as or if needed. Then, we head into the studio to record once we feel the demo is in good enough shape to move forward into production. Plenty of stuff winds up on the cutting room floor as it were and that’s okay as sometimes these ideas can be revisited for future tracks. We tend to do the most tweaking during the recording and production process in the studio. I will say that our demos generally don’t change a whole lot once we have an idea down. I think we both kind of know when a demo has that “it” factor that should be moved into production and others that didn’t quite hit the mark for whatever reason.

Jenny: Every band has to have a leader, and Abbi is BUNNY X’s. But she is absolutely open to my ideas whenever we’re in the studio together. Both melodically and lyrically.  I’ve also written full songs (top-to-bottom) for the project and they may have a bit more of a rock edge to them, like a bit more 80s, Pat Benatar or HEART flare). For example, ‘Take Me Away’ on ‘Love On A High Floor’; what I would say my number one contribution while we recording is mapping out all of the harmonies. That’s my forte.  We also work with our producer GOSTEFFECTS who really helps take what we have in our heads to create the final tracks.

Is there a fashion item that is owned by the other that you covet?

Jenny: We practically share each other’s closet so what’s mine is hers and what’s hers is mine! But she does have the best low-cut V-neck halter dress that she looks amazing in!

Abbi: Well, given that we tend to twin it for the vast majority of our shows, we tend to have and wear a lot of the same things. Jenny did just recently get an incredible custom leather jacket that I’ve been eyeing though… 😉

When was the last time you walked out angry after a disagreement between you and how did you resolve it?

Abbi: Well, we are basically head over heels for each other, so this honestly doesn’t ever happen! There are times we may have slightly different visions as we’re finessing a track under production but it’s always very minor (eg should the ending of song X have a hard stop or fade out, should we tweak a word or phrase in the lyrics etc.). If she feels very strongly about something and really has a vision for it, I am happy to defer and vice versa.

Jenny: It’s literally never happened. We are adults and know how to manage disagreements.

How do you look back on the making and subsequent reception of ‘Love On A High Floor’?

Abbi: It was a ton of work as we really wanted to up the ante but honestly for us it has all been worth it. People seem to like it and I think they got a kick out of the “Officewave” aesthetic and our silly antics on Instagram as we told this story and attempted to create this universe. It’s been a lot of fun and it gives us both great pride to see the final product make its way out in the world.

Jenny: I still don’t think it’s truly hit me how awesome everything was / is. ‘Love On A High Floor’ has been out into the world for just about a month now and hearing feedback like… it will be known as “one of best synthwave albums” of the year is truly humbling. The community surrounding the genre is incredibly supportive and we cannot thank everyone enough for their energies in celebrating the album and buying the physical copies! They say everything tastes better when you cook with love, well this album was cooked with a lot of love, laughter and great times in the studio. It also took a lot of diligent hard work, and we are extremely proud of it. Abbi and I miss our regular morning to midnight sessions with GOSTEFFECTS each weekend. But, those will start again soon. We are already planning album #4!

There’s a new BUNNY X collab coming with Johan Agebjörn called ‘Filled Me Up’ that’s on his new album ‘Casablanca Nights 2’ how did that come about?

Abbi:  Yes! We’re really excited about it. I’ve been a fan of Johan’s longtime project Sally Shapiro since probably around 2007 so it’s been a true honor to be able to work with him. The collab came together really quickly and easily and I’ve really enjoyed messaging with Johan off and on over the past few months. We are very pleased to be included and are big fans of the other artists on the album.

Jenny: Johan Agebjörn wrote to Abbi and asked us to collab and sent us the track he wanted us on. Abbi and I split up the writing and singing duties. Our vocals were recorded by Grammy winner Tony Lake. The compilation album is the “who’s who” of the synth world so I’m very honored that we are going to be part of it. And I think the track is gorgeous.

What’s your favourite BUNNY X song?

Jenny: I’ve been a longtime fan of ‘Unknown Places’, it’s one of my favorite tracks to sing and is incredibly haunting. Choosing from ‘Love On A High Floor’, I think ‘Believe In You’ and ‘Business Trip’ are running neck-in-neck for first place right now. But it’s so hard to pick just one. BUNNY X has so many genres within their catalogue so it depends on what mood you’re in when choosing your favorite track!

Abbi: Hmm I am really partial to ‘Still On My Mind’, one of the many collaborations we’ve done with the incredible SELLOREKT / LA DREAMS that was on our first album ‘Young & In Love’. I remember how nervous I was to reach out to Kevin (SLA DREAMS) about a potential collab and he couldn’t have been nicer. His music is so special and I really wanted to add a vocal topline to his original instrumental track and lucky for us he was up for it. I think the track also really captures the essence of the nostalgic vibe we have been trying to go for as well.

How do you decide what songs to perform, do have an individual power of veto?

Abbi: We do tend to perform a lot of the same ones as people seem to enjoy certain ones during our live shows such as ‘We Demand Fun’, ‘Perfect Paradise’ and ‘Daydreaming’. Since we have a lot of material now, we try to do at least one track on each album and lately we’ve been performing a lot of the new material. We’ve been performing lately with our longtime close friend and collaborator Conrad “Connie” Kaneshiro who has been joining us on stage for some Italo disco medleys. We call this part of the set the “Connie Rock Block” (CRB).

Jenny:  Abbi and I are usually on the same wavelength when choosing our set lists. But I usually defer to her final decision. As Abbi and I split singing lead on a lot of tracks, we also want to make sure we each have equitable time to shine during a set. Recently, as one might assume, we’ve been slowly rolling out and concentrating on the new songs from ‘Love On A High Floor’.

What is your favourite city to perform in?

Abbi: Well we typically play the most in Brooklyn which is my home base personally, so I prefer to play at the local venues in and around Brooklyn. It’s great to play in Manhattan as well as it’s more central and easier for some friends and fans to get to. We hope to expand our reach a bit and do an East and West Coast mini-tour at a point and we have always wanted to play in the UK so fingers crossed we can find a way to set that up before long… 🙂

Jenny: NYC has always been so supportive of the band. But we are excited to start visiting more cities soon here in the states and hopefully across the pond!

What is the essential thing that you can’t do without?

Jenny: Empathy. And a soda after a performance 😉

Abbi: Synthwave of course! Also Jenny, Daniel, sparkling water and my Romantasy / Sci-Fi books.

What’s the most annoying habit that the other has?

Jenny:  Not believing in herself 100% of the time! Other than that, Abbi is my perfect Bunny!

Abbi: Honestly, she’s too perfect – I’m like save some for the rest of us! Who can compete??

Which do you think is the other’s “go to” karaoke song?P

Abbi: My girl loves her 90s so definitely ‘Man in the Box’ and songs in that general wheelhouse. She also does a killer rendition of ‘White Rabbit’.

Jenny: One of the songs I love hearing her sing at karaoke is ‘Rush Hour’ by Jane Wiedlin.

What’s your favourite concert by another artist?

Jenny: I had an amazing time seeing GHOST this year. They had everyone put their phones in Yondr pouches so it was a truly enjoyable experience without little screens glowing everywhere.

Abbi: So many but I recently caught PETER HOOK & THE LIGHT and they put on a fantastic show.

If you had been Andi in ‘Pretty In Pink’, would you have chosen Blane or Duckie?

Jenny: Probably Duckie. Funny enough, I worked with Jon Cryer’s dad, David Cryer, when he was in the national tour of ‘The Phantom of the Opera’. I’ve been the press and marketing manager on that tour for the past 25 years.

Abbi: I think I would have been enamored by Blane at first but ultimately would have chosen Duckie as he was the real ride or die partner.

‘Two Broke Girls’ or ‘Romy & Michele’s High School Reunion’?

Abbi: Romy & Michele all the way.

Jenny: I think we would have more fun playing off of ‘Romy & Michele’s…’ though someone just noted that BUNNY X is very ‘Practical Magic’ coded, so I think that’s the true winner.

Which female actress pairing, past or present is most like BUNNY X?

Abbi: I’m gonna go with ‘Practical Magic’ as I think Jenny is the more Sandra Bullock-esque grounded of the two of us and is the glue that keeps everything and everyone together in so many aspects of her life to include her family, work and our project. I think I share some of those same qualities too, but I can also be a bit more in the clouds at times like Nicole Kidman’s free spirit character was in the movie. I am also slightly more morally grey like Kidman’s character while Jenny is more likely to give people the benefit of the doubt and take the high road. Also, have you seen our hair lately? Jenny’s our beautiful brunette and I am back to a strawberry / red tone. Amirite?!

Jenny: I think we may need to stick with the ‘Practical Magic’ theme here. Abbi is Nicole Kidman and I’m Sandra Bullock in this equation. Abbi absolutely brings the wistful playfulness to the band and every room she enters. People adore her. I feel I bring a bit of the bookish practicality (with an edge) to the band. Together – we are magic!

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to BUNNY X

‘Love On A High Floor’ is released by Aztec Records, available as a CD, vinyl LP, cassette and download from https://bunnyx.bandcamp.com/

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Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
5th October 2026

Lost Albums: ANDREW POPPY The Beating Of Wings

29 September 2026 /

While ZTT Records was busy with their assault on the singles charts with FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD, PROPAGANDA and THE ART OF NOISE, the label held a secret weapon in post-minimalist composer Andrew Poppy.

Poppy’s musical trajectories shifted after discovering the radical soundscapes of Bartók, Debussy, Cage, Feldman, Riley, Glass, Reich, and musique concrète. Following studies at Kingsway’s College and Goldsmiths, alongside a formative summer school session under John Cage, Poppy honed his avant-garde instincts within THE LOST JOCKEY ensemble before securing a deal with ZTT.

Unleashed in 1985, his debut solo album ‘The Beating Of Wings’ has hit its 4 decade milestone proving that contemporary classical and electronic pop aesthetics remain surprisingly compatible bedfellows. Where later follow-up ‘Alphabed’ brought early Akai samplers and vocal turns from Annette Peacock into the mix and prior to lending orchestrations to ERASURE and NITZER EBB, ‘The Beating Of Wings’ positioned Andrew Poppy as ZTT’s ultimate high-concept iconoclast.

Paul Morley himself later observed that “ZTT needed Poppy as much as it needed Frankie”, crafting a bridge for fans of Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson and KRAFTWERK. As Steven Wilson noted on the podcast ‘The Album Years’, Poppy was “ahead of his time… fitting right in with the Max Richters and Nils Frahms of today.”

Composed, produced and performed alongside bespoke ensembles, the album’s sonic architecture welds acoustic orchestration to electric piano, bass, electric guitar, drum machines and the Fairlight CMI to build an infectious, hypnotic pulse.  This post-minimalist avant-pop driven by hypnotic rhythms, synth textures, and grand classical arrangements has been freshly remastered by Stephan Mathieu while the CD is now housed in a deluxe two-panel gatefold sleeve featuring a 24-page booklet with brand-new liner notes written by Andrew Poppy.

Who better to talk to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about the 40th anniversary edition of ‘The Beating Of Wings’ than the man himself, Andrew Poppy…

Photo by AJ Barratt

What was your own musical training journey?

I think what I do comes out of both a classical world and pop, rock and dance music.  Jazz is in there somewhere too. My relationship with the conservatoire-based things is quite soft and chaotic but also fundamental. The classical tradition is obsessed with training and schooling. I’m not very good with that, even when I try.  So I’m always both engaging and disengaging. There’s another way of doing things, trial and error, doing something, seeing what happens, listening and copying.

I did have piano lessons on and off from the time I was about 9 or 10; 6 months here, 6 months there. I was interested in the piano and music but didn’t really understand what the lessons were about. You do scales and very simple pieces of classical music like Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’ piece. I stumbled through that early on. But looking back I couldn’t make sense of it. My early piano teachers never played it for me. I might have understood it intuitively if they had. My musical world was singing simple hymns in church and listening to pop music on the radio.

Perhaps I was too young. I must have learned some basic principles of notation and some dexterity at the keyboard. But it didn’t really connect with me until I started messing around trying to make my own things. A school friend said I could join his band if I bought a bass guitar. So I did. This is 1968-9. That experience sent me back to the piano and I found a piano teacher who had been a big band leader. He smoked a cigar through the lessons and encouraged me to play Bartok. Which is very scrunchy and rhythmic music, which I loved.

At secondary modern, schools education ends at 16. I was cued up to work in a factory. Apprenticed to a soldering iron. So it was a couple of years before I discovered the various FE college programmes where there were opportunities to explore music and literature and theatre. A whole world I didn’t know existed. But these programmes are only one part of it. The people you meet and the things that happen in the margins are often the real drivers of a creative education.

The real break though was a couple of teachers at Kingsway College in London where I did a music course. Dika Rančigaj, a Slovenian pianist was my piano teacher for two years. My first hair-raising experience was in the first week. She told me I was going to turn pages for her at her lunch time concert that day. She was playing a two-piano piece by Debussy: ‘En blanc et Noir’. So I’m sitting very close, watching her hands, trying to follow the score over her shoulder, hoping I’d catch her nod. My head’s almost inside the grand piano with a lid up. Wow.

In the lessons she was very hot on technical stuff but it wasn’t dry. It was physical, a lot about touch, the position of the hand and fingers and weight of the arm. It was no longer about just playing the notes.

Kingsway was also where I met composer / pianist Dave Smith who introduced me to an enormous amount of experimental contemporary music much of it by young living composers like Philip Glass. He was writing his own piano music and performing it, sometimes in art galleries. So it was about absorbing the things that are happening. The first conversation I had with him was about Stockhausen. I said I was fan and he gave me a book. Dave and Dika. I met them in the same week. It changed my life.

The things that you teach yourself are more connected to your physical and social world. So I doodled around on the piano with a direct physical connection to the sound of the instrument. Without knowing or really thinking or understanding what I’m doing. It’s the way I learned to play guitar and bass. I just picked them up and started to explore. Friends tell you how to make chords or how to play a bass line and you listen to records and pick it up.  Much later a few classical guitar lessons were useful. When I played bass in a school band, I always played with a pick. Now I usually play with fingers. Cut out the plastic middle man.

It’s the same in electronic music. I know now that Stockhausen’s music comes out of an intellectual procedure known as serialism. But if you hear ‘Kurzwellen’, his piece which uses 4 radio receivers, it’s a collage, however he arrived at the building of the moves. As a teenager I’m hearing the changes of texture and the shear audacity of it. “Oh yeah, I can do that”. And I did. Kind of. Made a tape piece when I was 15 using a domestic Grundig ¼ inch reel-to-reel machine with a sound-on-sound facility.

Education is also about paths you choose as well as those that are chosen for you. Once I’d left school I was choosing to try and gain access to something. I had a sense that there was more over the horizon than what was being mapped for me. If you can choose then some kind of ambition is speaking in that choice. If you don’t choose, someone else’s ambition is in play. When I was at school I had an idea I might be an artist of some kind. Although I didn’t know what it was. I just scribbled poems. I made a tape piece, tried to write a song, made a little piano piece.

I don’t think creativity is discipline specific. Many artists move through different disciplines. They might be successful at something, but there are other things which all contribute. The painter Paul Klee was a violinist. It’s a cliché to mention the UK art school system in the 50s and 60s and its part in producing successful British pop music. And many of the keyboard players studied classical music. Last word on this. I’m loving the last two Kim Gordon records. She’s a painter and a very interesting writer too.

Photo by Anton Corbijn

Who were your inspirations in the classical and pop world?

So many people and the list gets added to every year. If I think about it in terms of performance it’s a different list from thinking about ‘inspirations’ or ‘composition’. But it blurs.

For the piano the inspiration at the very beginning, in the 60-70s, was the playing of Nicky Hopkins, Leon Russell and Thelonious Monk. The piano music of Beethoven, Bartok and Debussy. Electric piano and keyboards, Ray Manzarek, Stevie Wonder, Joe Zawinul. For the bass guitar it was Jack Bruce of CREAM. For electronics and the studio inspiration it was Stockhausen, Hendrix and THE BEATLES. And I haven’t even touched on the voice or composition. Whatever that is!

In terms of producer / arrangers, the hit list would be George Martin, Brian Wilson, Quincy Jones. The first single I ever bought was ‘River Deep Mountain High’ with that fantastic ecstatic vocal by Tina Turner. But it’s staged by Phil Spector and arranger Jack Nitzsche. Of course, there are less flamboyant producers like Tom Dowd who did classic 60s Aretha Franklin. In the 60s I loved orchestral pop; in the 80s I discovered Mahler’s song cycles and then everything kind of started to cohabitate.

Composition gets confused with record production early on for me. It’s a confusion that’s there in THE BEATLES and Stockhausen. But in terms of the traditional idea of notated composition, of pitches and rhythms, acoustic textures and forms, then Debussy, Cage, Feldman, Riley, Glass and Reich would be important inspirations. All that music is notated and that’s the crux of it somehow.

There were a number of strands going on for me moving into the 80s. I was starting to make, to write, notated piano pieces and ensemble pieces at Goldsmiths in the late 1970s.

I organised a performance of Terry Riley’s ‘In C’. Persuaded ten musicians to come and play. It’s a notated piece but not in the usual way. It’s a one-page piece that often goes on for 50 minutes. Everyone reads from the same page. It’s built from 53 short modules. You repeat them and move though the sequence at your own pace but mindful of the group context. It’s foundational, for me and lots of other people, including Glass and Reich. At some point fellow student Jeremy Peyton Jones and I organized a concert of ensemble pieces in which I played an amplified solo piano version of Philip Glass’s ‘Music in Fifths’. And then we started making concerts just of our own music.

I’ve made a playlist of inspirations or at least things that turned me on from between the age 15 to 26. You can read it on the False Walls label website blog.

Photo by AJ Barratt

What attracted you to signing to ZTT Records as opposed to a classical label?

In 1980, alongside making notated pieces, I set up a home studio with a TEAC 4-track, a mixer I built from a kit, and a space echo delay. Then quickly moved onto an 8 track and Soundcraft mixer. I was making soundtracks for contemporary dance and theatre and just making things because I could; quite abstract collage-type pieces sometimes, as well as some vocal-based pieces. I bought a drum machine when they started to appear, and a Pro-One mono synth. There was an Emu sampling keyboard that I hired to use on a dance theatre piece called ‘Mid-Day Sun’ that played at the ICA theatre in London. That was my first experience of sampling.

I can’t remember where I heard about the Fairlight music computer. When it came out in the early 80s, it wasn’t affordable; it cost more than buying a car. But Blue Weaver (famous musician in the 70s) had one of the first in the UK. I booked him to do some programming for another theatre score. We spent a couple of days together programming what I’d sketched out in notation. It was a fantastic education into both the practicalities and the concepts of sampling and programming.

A little while later I heard ‘Into Battle With The Art of Noise’ in the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street. I bought the record and it immediately connected. I knew how it was done. Also, the reference to Futurism in the name of the band, or what I thought was a band, was loaded with associations of the machine age. We were moving into a new machine age of the electronic programming computer. So I thought their record label might get what I was doing. It was a very casual thing. But looking back it was the most appropriate. I was sending tapes to lots of labels because I wanted to make records as an artist. Some of them showed interest but didn’t offer me anything. I’m glad they didn’t because ZTT was so right in many ways.

To answer the second part of the question, it depends what you mean by classical label. I did approach Bob Hurwitz at Nonesuch Records. If they’d said yes, it would have taken me in a slightly different direction. They eventually had Laurie Anderson. Three of the pieces on the ‘Wings’ record were fully notated and had performances. ‘Cadenza’ had many performances between 1980 and 1983. So those pieces might have sat well in a Nonesuch or an ECM Records catalogue. It would have worked. But, I’ve got lots of their records and it’s a similar aesthetic. The image of all the music is of a live acoustic performance. It’s careful not to appear artificial. I was interested in a more constructed, produced approach, where the recording process itself is very present and direct. It’s more of a pop aesthetic; it’s an electronic music aesthetic. It’s like Andy Warhol screen print portraits. They could be paintings, but they’re photographs of a recognisable face and they’re paintings at the same time.

Photo by AJ Barratt

Was there a concept or storyline to ‘The Beating Of Wings’?

I think a theme emerges, once you get two people or animals in the same room they start to speak to each other. Or rather the listener imagines what they’re saying. I don’t think it’s necessary to know. That is almost the theme: I don’t think it’s necessary to know.

But to put it another way, the theme that emerges is something about authority and control breaking down and moving towards instability. It’s summed up by the verse from ‘Listening In’, which I never sang, but which was printed on the inner sleeve of the original vinyl.

“Don’t worry, they said, ALL’S WELL. My Doctor says ALL’S WELL in

the world of new music and my lawyer says ALL’S WELL; ALL’S WELL in the world of youth culture and my government says ALL’S WELL; ALL’S WELL in the world of scientific discovery and my father says ALL’S WELL; ALL’S WELL in the world of decision making and my lover says ALL’S WELL; ALL’S WELL in the world of experimental psychology and my preacher says all sorts of crazy things.”

—extract from unrevised AP ‘post first past the—’ 1984

In this stanza, a whole bunch of narrators are identified through their seats of knowledge and authority. My doctor, my lawyer, my government, my father, my lover, my priest. And then what they say suggests that this knowledge is unstable.

All the pieces work with repetition, each in a different way and in a very controlled way. But gradually they move from a cool sense of a formal pattern-making towards something hot, edgy and maybe a bit out of control. It’s never really out of control but each piece has a sense that it could be round the corner. The process of moving out from a starting point is different in each piece. Again, to come back to the Warhol screen print portraits, some are bright, some are direct, some are sparkly and some are chaotic; even if they are the same face over and over, like the Joseph Beuys collection. So with ‘The Beating of Wings’ the listener has to decide if the four pieces are four different faces or are they the same face with different colours and textures.

Photo by Anton Corbijn

‘The Object Is A Hungry Wolf’ was a fairly ambitious opening that combined orchestrations and Fairlight, what was going through your mind and driving you both musically and culturally?

Thanks. Yes, I think it is ambitious in hindsight. When I made it, I just made it. It’s a modular machine. It kind of grew itself.

It holds together lots of different textures and ways of doing things. In some ways it’s very simple. A single musical pattern in 12/8 is all there is. But the way it gets projected into different gestures, different colours and musical spaces it becomes something else. It’s pattern-based rather than melody- and harmony-based. Although these emerge in different ways.

I like the vocal presence that kicks in right at the beginning. The vocal at the beginning of Wolf is articulated as: “Do, do, do da – da, do do do do do, da-da”. For me it’s connected to that pop so-called ‘non-lexical vocables’. THE CRYSTALS’ “Da doo ron ron, Da doo ron ron”, there’s a fizz to the opening. The repeated alternation of the vowels and consonants articulate a rhythmic idea. In ‘Da Doo Ron Ron’, the opening up-beat down-beat sets a tempo. ‘Ron ron ron sets up an off-beat sequence that is buoyant and exciting. The voice as a drum. But the voice sets up a tension with the drum in ‘Da Do Ron Ron’. In ‘Wolf’, this vocal pattern is forever reforming itself.

The recording process was ambitious for all the tracks on the album because they were all different ways of doing it. For ‘Wolf’ I wanted to use the Fairlight as spine and record the acoustic instruments in overdubs. I started by working with Fairlight programmer Steve Rance. It was quite straightforward to plan it out as I’d had the Blue Weaver experience. We sat together with the score, which I described and he programmed it.

Then on the live sessions I worked with sound engineer Stuart Bruce on each instrumental strand separately. The strings were one session, then the woodwind individually. Rory Allam, who plays the prominent bass clarinet part, was an important contribution. Then with the voices Elise Lorrain and Mary Philips, we worked on the feel. Getting an intimacy, groove and energy. It’s not just about getting the notes right. It’s more like film making. It can seem artificial. But you can create a different type of focus and intensity, rather than recording everyone in the room after a short rehearsal. Each sound and performance has a life that is different from moment to moment. It allows for great flexibility of balance in the mix. Sometimes it’s the way to go. I played all the pianos, and the electric organ part.

By contrast, ‘Cadenza’ and ‘32 Frames’ are single takes with everyone in the room. For ‘32 Frames’ we had a short rehearsal a few days before. There was lots that was great about the recording session but some important moments were blurred. That’s why there are overdub credits. A few weeks later we made the overdubs. They are the same parts but making sure important details can be heard and feel right in the context.

The Fairlight extends the drum box. Its programming is more open ended. It’s not limited to two bars of 4/4. What happens in ‘Wolf’ is that the machine’s idea of the pulse drives it through. Even though the music chops and changes direction and it’s even got a slow movement in the middle and two different tempos in the last part. It’s locked into a machine groove. The human performance is always pulling it out of shape and that tension is ecstatic if you get it right.

You’re good friends with Claudia Brücken but how aware were you made that a small section of ‘‘The Object Is A Hungry Wolf’ would be sampled for the intro of the first ACT single ‘Snobbery & Decay’?

I did not know that. Brilliant. Thanks Claudia xx

Photo by AJ Barratt

‘32 Frames For Orchestra’ might be one of your best known pieces and even got the ‘Drummed Up’ treatment for release as a 12 inch single, how was the “pop” marketing approach for you?

 I love the ‘I Feel Love’ disco experience and those James Brown dance grooves. The TALKING HEADS’ rhythm section or Sly and Robbie on Grace Jones’ ‘Nightclubbing’.  And then there’s the dance feel of KRAFTWERK’s ‘Pocket Calculator’ and ‘Autobahn’. The machine and the dance move towards each other.

You could hear ‘Drummed Up’ as a kind of love letter to disco or house. It wasn’t a marketing idea. I really wanted to do it and thought it would bring out some of the dance floor implications of the piece. It should be fun.

‘The Impossible Net’ on the B-side of the ‘32 Frames For Orchestra’ single was an Fairlight-assisted “industrial” version of the A-side, did you see the remix culture that ZTT were very much part of as being a development on the “variations on a theme” aspect of classical music?

Yes, for sure. That’s exactly the idea. ‘32 Frames’ is a set of 8 variations each with 32 bars. ‘Drummed Up’ is a very straightforward version of the piece with a drum machine.

The concert piece and the album piece are ‘32 Frames’. Once you start to move it somewhere other, ideas suggest themselves. It somehow wanted to be a more extended dub-based cut up piece. Which is what happens in ‘The Impossible Net’. It got cut in half. Then the first half slows down. Introduce a dub suggestion of the instrumentation and then build a new middle with the Fairlight, using all the same notes and patterns but electronic sounds. Then, transitioning back to the original tempo for the last part. Because the sample-based machine can increase the tempo without changing the pitch. Of course, now you can do all this in two seconds with the swipe of a screen.

Opening up the middle allowed for adding a kind of piano cadenza type coda for the orchestra to think about. ‘The Impossible Net’ is a whole new piece really.

Your own voice featured in ‘Listening In’ and it was very percussive with a LinnDrum being brought in as well alongside the samples, how did that come together, especially with not using live percussionists?

Yes. I’m glad that vocal performance is there because it suggests what comes later. Particularly on the 2nd album for ZTT: ‘Alphabed’. But also what happened in my recent albums like ‘JELLY’. The speaking and singing on ‘JELLY’ picks up that thread. There’s a 3.50 version of ‘Listening In’ called ‘Listening In remodelled’. It was on the B side to the 7 inch vinyl of ‘The Amusement’.

The original demo for ‘Listening In’ was made around April or May 1981. It used an Akai 4-track tape recorder, voice, Wurlitzer electric piano, Pro-One mono synth, guitar, bass guitar, Doctor Rhythm drum machine and Roland space echo delay. It started with a simple drum pattern, sent through the delay. I improvised with the delay feedback to make a dub groove which then was recorded. Then the track was built, first a hand-muted bass guitar rhythm played with pick that sat inside the drum track. Then all the other melodic patterns were added, and the vocal.

For the ZTT recording in 1985, the demo was scored out with the drum machine and tape delay rationalised into a melodic pattern. Then Stuart and I recorded lots of percussion sounds individually to make a library of samples. Each sample was then triggered from an AMS delay which could be used as a simple sampler. Each sound was then recorded separately onto the multi-track using a drum programme to create a melodic shape of sampled drums. It seems an absurdly convoluted way of doing things now. There were also a number of metal samples triggered in the same way.

The only Linn sound is the bass drum I think. The bass part is a DX7 keyboard. Wurlitzer electric piano added the melodic parts, with Bruce Nockles’ live trumpet giving a breath and sustain to the percussive keyboard sound. Jack Hues’ electric guitar overdub replicated the guitar part that had been transcribed from the demo.

Photo by Anton Corbijn

You stripped it down to pianos for ‘Cadenza’ and you left a lot of space and silence? What fascinated you about minimalism?

It was the first of the four pieces to be written, in 1980. The silence is only at the opening with the three arpeggios, which cover the whole keyboard played with the so-called sustain pedal held down. Each arpeggio moves to a loud chord whose decay hangs in the room. The piece comes out of that decaying sound of the piano. Each time it happens the ear follows the dynamic contour from loud chord to nothing. Hopefully. The gesture is inviting the ear to listen in. The main body of the piece is about staying in the moment of that opening gesture. To make it continuous. It’s almost a drone piece.

It’s the directness of so-called minimalism that I like, and the physicality of repetition.

How do you look back on ‘The Beating Of Wings’ four decades on?

In some ways the remastered anniversary edition has been a revelation. I’ve heard it as more complete. Previously, I was more self-conscious about the album’s diversity. But times have changed with the remastering, Stephan Mathieu has somehow made it flow through the whole 48 minutes. I like that. In 1985 it was mastered for vinyl. Back then side A and side B were two different moments. Just turning the disc over is a big event. It’s like an interval in the movies. We don’t do that now. Interesting last year that the Oscar-winning ‘The Brutalist’ builds an interval into the whole film experience, with a still image and its own musical score. It makes the ritual of seeing it in the cinema into something special. CJ  Mitchell at the False Walls label, designer David Caines and I, wanted to do something similar with the design for the anniversary edition. Making is meta with a small ‘m’. So you get a version of the original vinyl centre labels on the CD sleeve. It should be fun.

Is the legend true that Trevor Horn actually wanted you to be more like Isao Tomita?

Ha ha ha! I wouldn’t put it like that. I remember it was our first proper conversation just before I started working on ‘The Object is a Hungry Wolf’. It was already fully scored for voices, ensemble and keyboards. We were sharing thoughts. He talked about the Tomita synth versions of Debussy music. Which I knew. It’s a kind of response to Wendy Carlos’ ‘Switched on Bach’.

Interesting that Trevor developed that idea with Anne Dudley and THE ART OF NOISE years later. But the year before going to ZTT, I’d made a piece using the Fairlight and wanted to use that alongside the acoustic instruments. He was into it.

Was ‘The Beating Of Wings’ ahead of the game in the sphere of modern classical music, what with the short-lived Factory Classical label that came in 1989, the late William Orbit in the clubs with the Ferry Corsten remix of ‘Adagio For Strings’ and all those “classical meets pop” concerts that spring up a lot today?

 It’s not for me to say.

Photo by John Hollingsworth

Would you say ‘The Beating Of Wings’ opened doors for you after its release, do you remember the ZTT period with fondness?

This is probably a “no” and a “yes” answer. Yes, remembering fondly for sure. I felt like I’d achieved a lot, learnt a lot and been part of an intense creative hub. I’ve kept in touch with some of the Sarm ZTT people I worked closely with back then. The recording engineers were all brilliant to work with: Stuart Bruce, Bob Kraushaar and Dave Meegan, who recently mixed ‘JELLY’. Also Paul Morley, Karen Goodman and Claudia Brücken. And I’ve seen Trevor Horn a few times. When I saw him at the SARM closing down party he said “I still play ‘The Amusement’”.

In 1988, I tried to get another deal and would like to have toured the nine-piece band I had for ‘The Value of Entertainment’ concerts. But it wasn’t possible. Over the decades the music seems to have resonated more and more. Younger people get it and as the Internet started to kick in 25 years ago, I became aware that people all over Europe and America love those two early albums.

In the early 90s I continued to write, perform and produce records. The first album I made after ZTT was called ‘Recordings’. And was recorded straight to stereo at Abbey Road. A kind of detox. But, as I already mentioned, I had an 8 track studio set up at home since about ‘82 and after ‘Wings’ was finished, Steve Lipson suggested I buy an Akai sampler and a computer as the Fairlight was so expensive to hire. So I got into that and ran it alongside my 8 track until well into the present century. Then the computer finally took over completely with Protools. Still have the Atari 8 track ½ inch machine but it hasn’t been on for 25 years.

Photo by Jack Symes

What is next for you?

‘The Beating of Wings’ anniversary album has already had some very positive reviews. It’s primarily an instrumental album and what I’ve been doing recently is vocal music. There is quite a bit of instrumental music that’s not been released, so maybe there’s another ‘Ark Hive’ disc. There’s also a collection of 30 or so piano pieces from the last 40 years called ‘Fruits & Shavings’. I’m going to publish those scores. So anyone who’s interested can play them.

The last couple of decades has focused on vocal music that I could perform myself. I’ve always written vocal music for other people, from songs to choral pieces. It was a leap in the dark to start doing some work on my voice so that I could record and perform things. Going back to ‘Listening In’ on ‘Wings’, the ambition was there. It put down a marker. The ‘Alphabed’ album which followed ‘Wings’ is full of voices but not my own.

The new project has pianos, synths, bass guitar, and continues to work with an alternation of speaking and singing that happens on ‘Hoarse Songs’, ‘Shiny Floor Shiny Ceiling’ and’ …and the Shuffle of Things’. The last project ‘JELLY’ had such a positive response live and I’m keen to get back to performing with a new project. At the moment it’s called ‘BOUNCE, the melancholy of the.’

ELECRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its deepest thanks to Andrew Poppy

Additional thanks to CJ Mitchell at False Walls

The 40th anniversary edition of ‘The Beating Of Wings’ is reissued by False Walls as a CD and download on 2nd October 2026, available from https://andrewpoppy.bandcamp.com/album/the-beating-of-wings-40th-anniversary-edition

http://www.andrewpoppy.co.uk/

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https://www.instagram.com/mr_poppy/

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
29th September 2026

Looking Backwards Towards The Future – The Story of ULTRAVOX: An Interview with Richard Evans

26 September 2026 /

From the author of ‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make – Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983’ comes ‘Looking Backwards Towards The Future: The Story of ULTRAVOX’.

This first authorised biography of ULTRAVOX is the work of Richard Evans, a music industry stalwart who founded the popular website This Is Not Retro and currently holds down a day job working for ERASURE.

Drawing from a vast archive of research materials and incorporating exclusive input from band members, as well as from their peers, their label and management teams, ‘Looking Backwards Towards The Future’ tells the many varied stories of the band, from fractures and fallouts to ambition and ego.

Written with the knowledge, permission and co-operation of the majority of the band’s surviving core members, the book traces ULTRAVOX’s art school beginnings led by John Foxx, changes of line-up and reinvention as a hit band fronted by Midge Ure on the back of the New Romantic movement. ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK sat down with Richard Evans to get the lowdown on its genesis and realisation…

It came as a surprise when you announced your ULTRAVOX book but then again, with the title of your last book ‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’, it was blindingly obvious!!!

At the end my last book, I didn’t know what I was going to do! *laughs*

So there wasn’t a big joined up plan at any point but ‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’ did well enough for Omnibus to ask whether I would like to do another book. I went up to London to meet with them and I pitched 4 ideas… and they favoured the ULTRAVOX book.

There IS a gap in the market, that first ULTRAVOX book ’In Their Own Words’ back in the day was some tacky thing like ‘A Tourist’s Guide To JAPAN’…

Yes that’s right, lots of pictures and some quotes…

‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’ was very much using archive material as references, so what was your approach this time?

It was similar actually… one of the reasons I came up with the ULTRAVOX book idea, apart from their not already being an ULTRAVOX biography, was the research was already in place as I had collected it from doing ‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’. One of the things that interested me about ULTRAVOX in THAT story was they were one of the very few bands who were there at the beginning AND at the end of the period that I wrote about.

I started working from the research materials I already had and I put together some bits and pieces before I contacted the band. They all came on board in dribs and drabs. I didn’t want to take them through the same stories that they had told thousands of times since 1974, I wanted to write the book essentially first and then come to the band to talk about the things I needed more information about.

Who in the band came on board and was there any reluctance from some?

I got in touch with Billy Currie first as I had interviewed him before and about the same time, I got in touch with John Foxx as well. Billy connected me with Warren Cann and separately Midge Ure also said yes as well.

The next person I tried to get was Stevie Shears, the original guitarist and through a very convoluted period, I tracked down a friend of his and told him about the book; in the end, his friend said Stevie didn’t really want to go back to all those days. So unfortunately Stevie isn’t represented, however the ‘Systems Of Romance’ guitarist Robin Simon is represented and he was put in contact with me via Steve Malins, John Foxx’s manager.

What’s particularly interesting about Stevie Shears is he later trained to become a psychotherapist and so did the late Chris Cross after he first left ULTRAVOX in 1987, discuss…

I’m sure ULTRAVOX was not the reason they became psychotherapists! *laughs*

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK’s own journey with ULTRAVOX is an odd one, it starts with the ‘Vienna’ album in 1980, jumps back to the ‘Ultravox!’ debut, then goes to the ‘Three Into One’ compilation and then ‘Rage In Eden’ in 1981 as that hadn’t come out yet and became next in line, what was yours?

I wish I had a cooler answer than this but it was the ‘Vienna’ album because it WAS everywhere and the single was such a slice of different music coming through at a time when there was loads of really interesting things happening, it was an unusual record. It caught my ear and I bought the single and continued buying the singles as they went through.

But they were never really my band; for me, they were always a singles band, I didn’t really have the albums. It wasn’t until later that I had the albums and rediscovered them in a more general way. Part of the appeal of writing the book was that I didn’t know much about them, I had no pre-conceived ideas and it was all new to me.

Do you have a particular favourite phase of ULTRAVOX? I love the Conny Plank trilogy but most seem to discriminate in between the John Foxx and Midge Ure eras, although no-one has said the Sam Blue period yet! *laughs*

The most interesting period for me was ‘Rage In Eden’ because the band were in this situation where the world was at their feet, they could have done whatever they wanted, they could have just taken the easy route and they completely threw that out of the window and did something so strange and idiosyncratic! That’s absolutely brilliant that they had the balls to do that, what an extraordinary body of music to come out with when they could have just been pop stars!

Did the band share any light as to what it was like to be stuck in the middle of the German countryside for 3 months recording ‘Rage In Eden’?

All of those who were involved are proud of ‘Rage In Eden’ and part of that was because it was made against all the odds in terms of the 3 months in Germany with Conny Plank and also the pressure on them individually with the things that were happening around them and also in their relationships with each other under those periods of stress.

How did you find everyone was when talking about their time in ULTRAVOX?

I was never able to speak to two people at the same time, all my interviews were individual. I interviewed them in different ways; Billy was interviewed on Zoom and we had a series of very lengthy conversations. With Warren, it was on the phone and they were lengthy chats as well. John would only really answer messages by email as he likes to consider them and have a think about things. Midge was unwell during the period I wanted to talk to him so I didn’t have a direct connection with him at all in the end which was unfortunate.

At the beginning of the process, the various members were very careful about how they portrayed the relationships within the band. But as I got to know them better, they got a little bit more secure talking to me and were little bit more honest! Some bits I was able to print, some of which I’m not! It was a bit of a balancing act! *laughs*

So the Midge version of the band fragmented just before ‘U-Vox’ in 1986 when Warren was ousted and then after the album and tour, the band was no more… fans will generally blame the others kicking Warren out as being the reason that it all fell apart, but do you think the cracks actually happened during the recording of the ‘Lament’ album in 1984? My evidence of that would be they put out an 8 track album which meant they didn’t have enough material and I know those songs are fan favourites but the ‘Lament’ album seems to deteriorate towards the end with ‘When The Time Comes’ and ‘A Friend I Called Desire’ sounding almost unfinished?

I would agree completely, that was the time in their history when their relationships got problematic. Also, each of them were being pulled in different directions. Midge wanted go and do solo stuff, Warren had that ongoing HELDEN project which he was so passionate about and so invested in… they had other things happening. Then of course there was Band Aid and then Live Aid, all those things that didn’t help!

Weirdly, do you think ‘Dancing With Tear In My Eyes’ becoming a Top3 hit didn’t help the situation and kept that line-up of ULTRAVOX together for much longer than necessary when perhaps it had run its course?

I think there’s something in that… creatively after ‘Lament’, they were already considering their options. But because they had that level of success, I suspect they had to keep following it while they were on a high! Maybe in retrospect, that wasn’t the way to do it!

The socio-political impact ULTRAVOX had in pop culture is often understated… in the early summer of 1984, you have Nik Kershaw with ‘I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me’, Frankie with ‘Two Tribes’ and ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’ all in the charts with their nuclear angst themes… so you have these families watching ‘Top Of The Pops’ before David Attenborough’s ‘The Living Planet’ and the BBC decide to show most of the ‘Dancing With Tears In My Eyes’ video including the explosion!?! Did you watch that edition back in the day?

I did watch it and it didn’t particularly resonate with me at the time. But I know this was a situation that the band had to navigate because people would approach them and say “my children were asking what the song is all about and they are upset!”; it was a strange paranoid period in our history where everyone was going “what’s happening?”

That American film ‘The Day After’ had been shown and BBC’s ‘Threads’ would come later in that year, it’s the whole antithesis of the legwarmers and Filofax thing that some think this Thatcher / Reagan “loadsamoney” decade is all about?

It feels like similar times in lots of ways now although I’m not feeling that reflected in the things that I’m hearing in the same way as the nuclear paranoia of 1984. But I think the way we listen and watch is so different, everything is so much broader now whereas back then, we HAD to listen to those records because they were the records that were on the radio!

So it’s 1987, Midge decides he doesn’t want to do ULTRAVOX anymore, Chris goes with him but Billy carries on! And there’s this period where Billy goes through a series of vocalists, Marcus O’Higgins, Tony Fenelle and Sam Blue. Was there still life in the ULTRAVOX name at this time for live bookings etc or was Billy just being bloody minded?

I would agree with the latter and I think Billy would agree with that as well. I think it became something that he wanted, it wasn’t available to him initially and made him want to pursue it even more! As a result, rather than concentrating on the nuts and bolts of putting together these new line-ups and exploring what they could do, it was more about what name was going to be put on it rather than what it actually was. That was a shame because these line-ups had potential in their own ways.

Photo by Rob Harris

So it’s 2008 and the classic line-up of ULTRAVOX unexpectedly announce they will reform for a tour the following year, what’s your take on that part of the story?

I don’t think anyone could have predicted that one coming. It was a complete surprise to me also but the fantastic bit was by that point, I had caught up with ULTRAVOX and I knew I’d liked them more than I realised previously and it gave me a chance to go see them as I’d never seen them before. So I saw them at Hammersmith Apollo and was absolutely blown away, I thought they were a fantastic live act so that was a really special moment from my point of view.

It seemed that they had got on well enough after 2 tours to do a new album ‘Brilliant’, what did you think of it because it did go through a few problems?

It did go through a few problems but obviously at that point, we the audience weren’t really aware of that. As far as we were concerned, the band had reformed, it had all gone extremely well and had led to this opportunity to make new music. New music from this line-up of ULTRAVOX was a very special thing and when the album came out, I reviewed it for This Is Not Retro and I liked it. I looked back at what I wrote when I was doing the book and fortunately I’d been quite enthusiastic about it. I said something like “it doesn’t push any boundaries” but would we want it to? I still enjoy it now!

I like it as well but I think it’s too long, it could do with 3 less tracks but which 3 is debatable… I think the important thing was it got the band on the road again. The thing about ULTRAVOX live in this period, they were quite clever in that the lighting was quite subtle, so you sort of couldn’t tell how old the band were! But how it all drifted apart after, how have you concluded what happened?

At the beginning of the reunion, they were able to draw on the “newness” of getting back together again but after the novelty of that wore off, it feels like some of the old issues were creeping back in! *laughs*

Of course, ULTRAVOX were much older than their peers at that point and touring is a tough old game. When I was talking to Warren about this, he was paraphrasing someone else but he basically said “they don’t pay me to play, they pay me to travel… the playing is great but the travelling f*cking sucks!” *laughs*

Usually, the fun bit about doing any kind of book or article is to find out something you didn’t know before, was there anything in the course of doing ‘Looking Backwards Towards the Future’ where that happened?

It’s a bit tricky for me to answer that one actually because I didn’t have that fan perspective going in, I didn’t quite know what the narrative was, and what was surprising and what wasn’t for other people. So I’m not really going to know that until people have digested the book and comment “I had no idea that was the case” etc.

Going back to the early days of ULTRAVOX, John Foxx has said before that he started the band as an art project, what is your take on that?

This feeds into what we were talking about and things I discovered, so I asked John specifically about that and if it was an art project, was it marked by the college? And they didn’t really! But the way his art course was, it was very self-directed and as long as people at the college knew what he was up to, he could kind of go off and do his thing. The fact that he seized upon this concept as a result of a lecture at art college and created this band and a world around it for the band to exist in, that was an interesting part of the story.

The John Foxx era of ULTRAVOX did not get a lot of good press, as Billy once pointed out in that Channel 4 run down show ‘Top Ten 80s Romantics’ in 1999, “you can do a lot of things with ‘Ultra’, there’s Ultrahype and Ultracrap” but despite all of this, Paul Weller was a fan?

Paul Weller apparently used to go and see them in the early days and was a constant presence…

Midge joining ULTRAVOX was as a result of VISAGE happening first, is the VISAGE story something you cover in the book?

I don’t cover VISAGE as such because it’s its own story, it’s a separate story and quite a complicated one… it’s possibly one that could be a book itself, not that I have a plan in that direction! *laughs*

Obviously I mention it and Rusty Egan in his machinations about getting everyone together but I don’t go into any of the side projects of any of the members…

So you don’t go into John Foxx with ‘Metamatic’ or Midge Ure with ‘No Regrets’ or ‘The Gift’?

No, I would have had to do the same for everybody and that would have made the book quite unwieldy and a bit bloated to be honest.

Now you’ve mentioned balance, with the core 7 members, how did manage it in the book?

In any situation, whatever I was writing about, I always tried to bring in as much of everyone’s view of that situation as possible. It’s not a book that makes judgements, it’s a book that sets out what happened in my understanding of it and I support that with the various conversations with the band members. Obviously, at times they were more friendly to each other than at other times.

As well as the music, a key part of both John Foxx and Midge Ure era of ULTRAVOX was the visual presentation and in the latter case particularly, the videos… how far do you go into the visual aspects of the band?

Quite a lot actually, I think that was a very important part of the band and the way they presented themselves because it was almost like presenting fantasy versions of themselves. They could create these little worlds they could occupy and they could present themselves in whatever ways they chose.

From a video point of view, they were pioneers for sure and that is definitely noteworthy. From an artwork point of view, the fact that John was an art student so art directed and designed so much of the early stuff, and then after, they started to use people like Peter Saville who is a key name in music design, they always seemed to be on top of that side of things. There’s an element of the band controlling their own career which is really important and a power behind their success. People at their label Chrysalis said ULTRAVOX would come in with their ideas and they would just need the record company to make those ideas come true.

I thought it was interesting that although ULTRAVOX did have Peter Saville do their sleeve designs, it is widely reported that he didn’t particularly like the music… did any of that come out in your research and how was this navigated in the working relationship?

I think it did matter… it was Chris Cross who brought Peter Saville into the ULTRAVOX camp because he was interested in the work he was doing with Factory Records. Peter Saville was a great designer in his moment because I studied design in university and he was someone I looked up to. The problem with Peter and I have worked with him since, is that he’s very very slow. So if you are on any sort of a deadline, then that’s problematic because you can’t be working on that sort of basis.

ULTRAVOX were often quite late in bringing a project to the point where it needed design so they needed someone faster to work with. I still think those Peter Saville covers are among the best of the ULTRAVOX cannon.

I wanted to throw this theory forward, that because he wasn’t into the music, Peter Saville’s more outlandish ideas got onto ULTRAVOX artwork and made it more striking. I would even argue that much of his ULTRAVOX work is better than what he did with OMD and in some cases, NEW ORDER?

Yes, that’s an interesting path to tread because there must have been a limited number of artists to work with who were that open to that sort of intellectual conceptualising to the extent that NEW ORDER did and that ULTRAVOX also did. In a way, they were a great match but it feels that they ran their course and just gently drifted from each other. I think that’s also quite healthy. The band was changing as well and it needed new visual approaches. I have to say that ‘U-Vox’, not the most successful or popular of ULTRAVOX’s albums, is one of my favourite sleeves in its original striped LP PVC outer package.

My favourite sleeve is ‘Rage In Eden’…

Yes, my other one would be ‘Rage In Eden’, it would be between both of those.

Video became very much part of the classic line-up of ULTRAVOX with Midge and Chris going on to direct them; my favourite is ‘The Voice’ because it’s so arty farty and has a lot of on-the-line imagery… I mean holding fire torches while walking up a hill at night can be perceived as something else, especially with the band’s attire at the time which was like Germans in the 1930s, the “dead man’s clothes” as Midge once put it! Do you have a favourite video? *laughs*

I would probably go with ‘Love’s Great Adventure’ because it makes me laugh every time, it’s funny and light-hearted.

Who was the driving force of the videos, was it Chris or was it Midge?

It was as a team, they found this little niche for themselves and they were happy to do it while Warren and Billy were less bothered by the conceptualising of that. They just ran with it and what a great thing to run with!

I remember when ULTRAVOX ‘The Collection’ came out in 1984 and it also came out as a video compilation and I bought the Betamax cassette of it! *laughs*

BETAMAX! *laughs*

There’s a lot of groundbreaking stuff that ULTRAVOX did with the “greatest hits” package like this accompanying full-length video and including a brand new track, do you think it’s something that they don’t get enough credit for?

I do, it’s almost like every version of ULTRAVOX from John Foxx’s concept right into their imperial hit phase, they were so groundbreaking and pioneering yet no-one ever gave them the respect. There’d always been someone just rushing up behind them who would take those ideas and run with them to get all the credit and all the praise. They were extremely unlucky in lots of ways.

Is the story of ULTRAVOX comparable in some ways to those of PINK FLOYD or GENESIS?

I think there definitely are some parallels with those progressive rock bands.

I know this sounds a bit obvious, but who are you aiming this book at? *laughs*

It’s a good question actually because in lots of people’s perception, there’s 2 ULTRAVOXs and you only like one or the other! I would love people in both of those camps to get the book, I would love them to read the section they are interested in, but I would also love them to read the other section so that they can get a sense of what else was happening around these people and their creative trajectories.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Richard Evans

‘Looking Backwards Towards The Future – The Story of ULTRAVOX’ by Richard Evans is published by Omnibus Press in the UK on 8th October 2026 – in North America, Australia and New Zealand, the book will be published on 9th February 2027

https://ultravoxbook.com/

https://www.facebook.com/ultravoxbook

https://www.instagram.com/ultravoxbook

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
26th September 2026

A Short Conversation with CIRCUIT3

9 September 2026 /

Photo by Jackie Hudson-Lalor

Having built a solid reputation for hook-laden synthpop crafted with an enviable collection of vintage hardware, Dublin-based electronic auteur Peter Fitzpatrick takes a sharp, contemplative turn from the expected path with his analogue vehicle CIRCUIT3.

Leaving behind the traditional song structures that defined earlier works, his latest CIRCUIT3 long player ‘Metanoia’ plunges into a world of spacious, subtly emotive instrumentals that let the synthesizers frame the narrative. The catalyst for this stylistic shift emerged from a post-gig conversation over drinks with Mat Smith of the Mortality Tables imprint. As the dialogue drifted into deep-seated themes of personal trauma, therapeutic breakthroughs and the lingering shadow of emotional repression, a creative seed was planted.

Notebook fragments and raw reflections soon evolved into a series of delicate laboratory experiments. The resulting album operates as a candid sonic diary documenting the gruelling yet ultimately cathartic arc of modern psychotherapy. Fitzpatrick relies on carefully sculpted timbres and warm textures to convey what words often fail to capture.

‘Metanoia’ charts a distinct emotional topography. The shadowy, suffocating soundscapes of ‘Burnout’ and the fractured, abstract geometry of ‘Mood’ give way to the serene contemplation of ‘Where Are We Going?’. Meanwhile, the Vince Clarke collaboration ‘The Hope’ injects a welcome flash of classic melodic optimism into the mix. It makes for an engrossing electronic journey best experienced with headphones to fully appreciate its therapeutic intent.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK caught up with Peter Fitzpatrick to discuss the emotional and creative mechanics behind his “Music From Therapy”…

Photo by Paul Maxwell

Your first three albums have been song based, so what set you off on the ambient instrumental route for ‘Metanoia’?

I had been listening to a lot of purely electronic music, everything from Berlin School artists such as TANGERINE DREAM through to recent works such as Vince Clarke’s ‘Songs of Silence’, alongside many others. It started during the pandemic and developed from there. I had not planned to produce an instrumental album at all. When I was unwell, I leaned into using my instruments for pure audio pleasure and started recording what I created. Originally, the recordings were just for me, with no thought of releasing them.

My previous album ‘Technology for the Youth’ included short instrumental pieces which I enjoyed creating; I was positively pre-disposed to trying more. It’s less weight to carry because you’re not thinking about lyrics or vocals. Stepping away from song structure has been liberating and interesting. I have some beautiful synths capable of making beautiful noises. Instead of writing songs, I had fun with my instruments and remembered to hit record on everything as I experimented. I found myself getting deeper into long-form pieces, which was a departure for me.

Had you tired of synthpop or was it a question of ‘Burnout’ as one of the track titles on ‘Metanoia’ suggests?

No, I have not tired of synthpop. The very idea! I’ve got an album of songs sitting there but I think you’re closer to the mark with your note about burnout.

In early 2023, I experienced burnout; it was terrifying and exhausting. I really thought I was losing my mind. There’s never a good time to be ill, but the timing was particularly unfortunate because I had plans to continue promoting ‘Technology for the Youth’. My brain and body had other ideas. After months of doing very little, I eventually felt able to go back into the studio and play. The only aim was to switch on the instruments and enjoy them for a few minutes, reconnecting with something that brought me joy.

When I met Mat Smith from Mortality Tables in late 2023, he asked if I’d like to contribute a track to a project; that was the genesis of the album. I owe Mat much gratitude for this.

Photo by Jackie Hudson-Lalor

Aside from the more personal therapy motivations, were there any particular ambient works you had enjoyed before that acted as inspiration?

I use the term ambient in a very broad sense. If I was to try describing what I enjoy, it’s “melodic drone”. Is that even a real genre? I always struggle with genres and labels.

The music I was listening to included artists like Aphex Twin and Augustus Muller, who you’ll know from BOY HARSHER. A friend recommended ASHRA’s album ‘Blackouts’, and I also listened to Peter Baumann, TANGERINE DREAM and Chris & Cosey. During my recuperation, I read a couple of Cosey’s books. She’s a fascinating author. I revisited her work with Chris and, of course, THROBBING GRISTLE. I also revisited albums by Lisa Bella Donna, LOGIC SYSTEM and MARTIAL CANTEREL whom your readers will know from XENO & OAKLANDER.

Among the albums I discovered was ‘Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One’, the soundtrack album by Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury. I really enjoyed it because it brought the old 2000 AD comics back to life for me. I also fell down the BOARDS OF CANADA rabbit hole. Another artist I only got around to in recent years is Brian Eno. I still think of Eno as part of ROXY MUSIC, and I’m listening my way through his 1970s albums. This is all good: I want to live in a world where there are more “new-to-me” albums. Isn’t it great to know there’s more out there?

When listening to all these artists, I was thinking about their processes and methods and asking myself, “How do you do this?”

The initial sonic clusters of ‘Cracked Eyes’ recall ‘Neroli’ by Brian Eno or is that pure coincidence?

It’s a nice coincidence. I had not listened to that album until a few weeks ago and yes, I hear what you’re hearing. Those sonic clusters are simple sine waves with lush reverb treatment.

‘Cracked Eyes’ is important for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was recorded live except for one short overdub. I was using a new module, the Befaco Oneiroi, which is designed for creating instant drone-style soundscapes. I modulated the oscillator while playing an evolving melodic sequence into it, full of unequal measures and unusual key modulations. I also sampled myself reciting poetry into the Oneiroi.

Second, that poetry comes from the late Pat Ingoldsby, an Irish poet and writer. Last year I attended the book launch for a posthumous collection of his work. His poem ‘Beautiful Cracked Eyes’ jumped out at me because it related to something I had discussed during therapy. The “keeper of Pat’s poems”, and yes, that is her title, Vivienne Bailey, very kindly gave permission for me to use the poem.

What was the compositional process overall for ‘Metanoia’ and how challenging was it to eschew your songwriter instincts?

I had to develop new processes. This remains exciting because it’s so new to me and I’m getting to use all of the hours of study and listening I’ve put in over decades. I studied music at university and while I don’t fly as high as my university contemporaries such as Michael McGlynn from ANUNA, I haven’t forgotten the fundamentals.

Typically, I would set up a couple of synthesizers and begin to experiment. I’d go into the composition with a theme in mind. The album germinated from the notes I shared with Mat, which gave me plenty of jumping-off points and a clear idea of what I wanted each piece to convey. Relaxing the songwriter muscle was not too difficult because I was quite intentional about writing pieces like this.

My energy levels took a good year to rebuild. Not having to consider lyrics and song structure was a welcome respite. My songwriter instincts have carried over in one important way, though: I’m still mindful of the listener. As far as possible, I’ve tried to shape the pieces so that they remain interesting, whether through their harmonic structures or the sounds themselves. It’s important to me that listeners will want to play this album more than once.

You liven proceedings with some sequencer patterns alongside the drones on ‘Imperfect’, some of it reminds me of Richard Barbieri’s more recent solo work?

Richard Barbieri is great: I love his work. It’s interesting that you should mention the similarity. There’s a sound on ‘Imperfect’, made with the Minimoog Model D, that is not dissimilar to one of the sounds he uses on ‘Traveller’ from his album ‘Hauntings’. It has that unmistakable sound of an overdriven Moog filter.

Even with drone or minimal ambient music, I want some melody, whether that is an ostinato or a Berlin School-style repeated pattern built around an odd time signature. I can’t bring myself to leave the listener behind intentionally with hour-long metal-machine drones.

So ‘Where Are We Going?’

Always going forward. Somewhere better. We have to nurture hope. If we allow hope to die then they have won. We can’t let them win.

Photo by Peter Fitzpatrick

Were you tempted into any modular experimentation for this album or did you feel it was more comforting to stick to your tried and trusted instruments?

A significant change in my music-making followed the integration of semi-modular and fully modular synths into my palette. As I gained confidence using those instruments, I learned to experiment more. Specifically, I started with the Roland System 500 modules. They’re a now-discontinued set of Eurorack-format modules modelled on the System 100M and System 700 series from many years ago.

I have sought out specific modules for particular functions, for example the Befaco Oneiroi and 1010music Bitbox. I’ve avoided buying lots of random modules, something I was somewhat guilty of doing with synths and drum machines in the past. My modular needs are specific but limited.

Toward the end of creating this album, I had the opportunity to acquire some Roland System 100M modules, last manufactured around 1983–84. For those who don’t know, these modules were used on many classic albums and by artists we all admire. Your readers will know the sound. They aren’t in the smaller Eurorack format, but in a larger proprietary format, housed in metal boxes that fit into a dedicated case. I was drawn to them because of the sounds they create, having heard what people like Alan Wilder, Vince Clarke and Martin Rushent have done with them. I expect them to get a lot of use when I return to song-based recording.

‘What If Everything Goes Right?’ might be considered to be the most conventional in its structure as an instrumental on this album, how did this come together?

Coincidentally it was the first track I created for this project and was the last track to be finished. I was exploring Berlin school type sequencing and wanted to work on the track with the ARP 2600 so that I could become more familiar with it. The repeating patterns come from the 2600. The additional sounds are from the Sequential Prophet 10 and Oberheim OB-X8.

The track almost didn’t make the cut. I felt it was incomplete; it needed something. I played it alongside an old film to see whether that gave me inspiration. The soundtrack idea had me thinking about choral sounds, and I remembered that I had a very nice choir library sitting on one of my samplers. I think that’s the only use of digital technology on the album.

How did Vince Clarke come to work with you on ‘The Hope’?

It’s an amusing story and a lesson in the power of positivity. I call it my “synth blind date”.

Every few weeks I’d send Mat new works in progress as the album developed. Then he messaged me to ask if I’d be interested in collaborating with another artist. I said yes. It’s important to understand that collaboration doesn’t always work, not because anybody is unwilling or unable, but because the planets have to align if you want to catch lightning in a bottle. I thought nothing more of it. A few weeks later, the morning after KITE’s 2024 London show, Mat forwarded a screenshot of a message that said, roughly, “Yes, I’m happy to work with Peter. Have him email me and tell me what he’d like me to do on the track”. Before I could reply, Mat sent another message: “Oh, that’s from Vince, by the way.”

I had to do a double take. Whenever I’m asked about influences and people I’d like to work with Vince has always been top of the list. We had exchanged emails in the past. You might expect the chance to collaborate with somebody I admire to create a lot of pressure, but it was the exact opposite. I knew what I wanted Vince to do, and I knew how it was going to work.

Exploring my desire to dabble in the visual arts, I’ve produced a gorgeous video with help from my friend, the artist Jackie Hudson Lalor. I’m really proud of both the track and its accompanying video. For a “synth blind date”, it worked out well even if I may say so myself.

Some would say Vince Clarke’s contribution to ‘The Hope’ is very audible…

Some would say that and some would be correct.

I had already created a track using the Moog Matriarch, a melodic drone with no set tempo. I used the synthesizer’s two envelopes to drive it: when one envelope finished, its end point triggered the other, creating an infinite drone loop.

The brief for Vince was straightforward. I’d painted a picture of hope and hopelessness, and I wanted him to bring some hope into the listening experience. Even when things feel hopeless, hope is still there somewhere. I asked him to let it ebb and flow against the darkness of the drone until it eventually revealed itself.

He sent me some ideas a couple of weeks later. Sometimes it’s best not to overengineer or overthink these things. I was able to use those ideas to complete the track. Let’s not forget that Vince has created some of the most memorable melodies of our generation. I knew the brief would play to his strengths, but he did more than provide a melody. He introduced an arpeggio into a track with no obvious tempo, which was an interesting response. He painstakingly built a tempo map to drive a very simple but effective repeating synth pattern. The Tierce de Picardie resolution at the end is entirely Vince’s, and it’s something I would probably have shied away from for one silly reason or another.

Do you and Vince do much synth talk or was this a remote collaboration in the truest sense?

We exchanged emails and Logic Pro sessions trading them between our studios in Dublin and New York, where Vince was living at the time. We did chat a little about synths but only to the point where I wanted to understand what he had used and I shared a little bit of what I used. I suspect Vince just doesn’t want to talk synthesizers so I didn’t distract from the job-in-hand. I didn’t want to be that guy. I don’t think he dreams of wires all day long.

Which tracks on ‘Metanoia’ give you the most satisfaction?

That’s a tough question. I think the entire album gives me real satisfaction because I realised my vision. Forced to choose, I think ‘The Hope’ because it represents a successful collaboration and of course personal achievement.

Two tracks stand out for me. ‘Where Are We Going’ reminded me how much I enjoy playing piano, and it came together in two takes one Saturday afternoon. ‘Shielding From The Past’ is satisfying because of the sounds used, and I’m pleased that I was able to create a track that sustains interest for more than six minutes without needing lyrics.

Photo by John Keenan

Is there a way of listening to ‘Metanoia’ that you would recommend for best results?

I ask the listener to switch off the outside world, sit comfortably and give themselves the time to listen to this as a work. ‘Metanoia’ was mixed, sequenced and mastered with that in mind. So much of what is released these days is disposable and fragmented. I don’t want this album to be wallpaper; I want it to be a listening experience. The concise running time is intentional.

Everything about this album is intentional. Whether that is the sound, the harmonic structure, the sequencing of the tracks or the artwork; I’d love to think people will listen with intent.

So will there be more ambient instrumental albums or will you return to songs? What is next for you?

There definitely will. I’m looking forward to further experimentation. I continued creating new pieces in my studio until I had to focus on promoting ‘Metanoia’. I have at least one unfinished song-based album, and I want to make many more. I feel fortunate to have the ability, the tools and a very receptive audience, all of which allow me to do this.

I’m preparing to perform ‘Metanoia’ live here in Dublin mid-September 2026 with the possibility of a London date on the horizon. I’m keen to further explore visual art to accompany my music such as the video we have created for ‘The Hope’.

ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Peter Fitzpatrick

‘Metanoia – Music From Therapy’ is released by Mortality Tables and available as a CD and vinyl LP from https://circuit3.bandcamp.com/ or download from https://mortalitytables.bandcamp.com/

http://www.circuit3.com/

https://www.facebook.com/circuit03/

https://www.instagram.com/circuit3music/

https://www.threads.com/@circuit3music

https://bsky.app/profile/circuit3music.bsky.social

https://soundcloud.com/circuit3/

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
9th September 2026

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