German music formed a large part of Rusty Egan’s DJ sets at The Blitz Club between 1978-1981.
The legendary Blitz Club DJ and Chi Ming Lai of ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK recently participated in a well-received discussion about how German electronic music influenced the New Romantic movement at the ELECTRI_CITY_Conference in Düsseldorf.
Including other international acts such TELEX, SPARKS, YELLO and YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA, The Blitz Club‘s soundtrack cocktail was to prove highly influential on the UK music scene and spawned a wider movement that led to the success of acts such as VISAGE, SPANDAU BALLET, LANDSCAPE and ULTRAVOX who formed part of the clientele.
The discussion formed part of a wonderful three day event which co-organiser Rudi Esch said was to “honour the global importance of Düsseldorf’s pop-cultural heritage”
Taking place in front of a live audience, the amusing chat focussed on Düsseldorf, Berlin, Bowie, KRAFTWERK and NEU! while Motorik beats and modern DJ culture also formed part of the spirited conversation.
Rusty Egan and ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK have previously worked on several projects together including a successful 25 week radio show series. Egan’s current radio show Electronic Family Tree broadcasts every Friday night / Saturday morning on internet dance station Mi-Soul Radio.
Almost four years have passed since his debut album ‘Kasiotone’, but KID KASIO has returned with his most adventurous single and video yet.
The project of Nathan Cooper, formally of THE MODERN, his unashamedly synthpoppy tunes have gained a cult following over the past few years.
Busy recently with a variety of other projects including contributing music for the film ‘Miss You Already’ which starred Drew Barrymore, Toni Colette and his brother Dominic, the follow-up album has perhaps taken longer than expected to appear.
However, KID KASIO is back with ‘The Kodo Song’ and raring to go. Nathan Cooper chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about the single’s elaborate video concept, how he still believes in synthesizers and the album format, plus much more…
‘The Kodo Song’ is possibly the most serious KID KASIO song yet, what has brought this about?
I wrote the song with a good friend of mine, Benjamin Todd. We’d just written some music for a film and he came to me with this highlife guitar chord progression and a rhythmic idea. There was something almost PAUL SIMON ‘Graceland’ about it.
It was the chorus part, and I remember I came up with two different ideas for vocal toplines over it. I thought they were two of the best things I’d ever written. Kind of as a joke, I thought I’d record something really stupid to put in between them, a kind of red herring, so that when I unveiled all 3 ideas to Ben, he’d hear this crap idea, sandwiched between these two works of genius, and it’d give a kind of perspective and make the two good ones sound even better!
So anyway the next day, during his lunch break, I went down to the shop where he worked, and predictably I totally chickened out of playing him the crap idea. He listened to what I thought were two of the best vocal lines I’d ever written, and he just looked up and said “Hmmm, have you got anything else?”, so I said “well there is something else”…
I kind of cringed as I heard it bleeding through his headphones while it was playing, because it was literally just nonsensical, garbage lyrics I’d made up on the spot, just these words that meant absolutely nothing, gibberish that I’d thrown together in two minutes. I just kept thinking “this is so embarrassing”. But of course, he took the headphones off and was like “that’s it, that’s fantastic!”
The problem I had then, was weaving some kind of context into the verses, something that would justify the gibberish chant in the chorus. The music throughout the song was quite upbeat, and I wanted to imbue some kind of air of melancholia through that. I think it was Neil Tennant who stated that if you can juxtapose those two emotions and capture that awkward knife edge between gloom and joy, and keep it precariously balanced there over 3 minutes then you have yourself a great pop song.
I often write songs about love, but I thought why not try something else? OMD managed to sculpt perfect pop songs using subjects like power stations and the atomic bomb! That’s always fascinated me, and it dawned on me that the way I could fuse the South African vibe of the music with an air of melancholy was through the story of the Anglo-Zulu war, and I was pretty sure no pop songs had ever been written about that before! So that’s how it came about.
The premise of the story is about two friends conscripted up for this war in the late 19th century, who sing this nonsense chant together on the battlefield. One of them gets killed, and it’s about how the memory of their friendship lives on through this song, that they both used to sing together. So I guess you could say the songs about friendship and the longevity of music.
There appears to be an air of HOWARD JONES in his ‘Dream Into Action’ period, is he still an influence?
Obviously I love the whole Synth Britannia thing, and the importance of KRAFTWERK and that kind of metronomic Germanic dance sound that was so important to The Blitz Kids, but I feel like I kind of got that out of my system a while ago. I’m much more interested now in that 83-86 period, where all these pop acts were experimenting with different rhythms and this whole kind of “world music” influence that infiltrated pop. It’s world music, but diluted via the limited technology of the 1980s, so you get this marvellous conflict. They were taking this truly organic music and totally recreating it with machines, with Synclaviers and Roland TR909s, which in return creates this entirely new genre which permeated the “new pop” of the 80s.
There was a whole sub-division of these bands that kind of existed in that fey, well meaning, world music / synthpop genre. I think, journalist Simon Price, encapsulated it best recently, when I heard him describe it as “White Pyjama Music”.
It sums up perfectly bands like CHINA CRISIS, RED BOX and certainly HOWARD JONES in his ‘Dream into Action’ period (although his pyjamas were orange in the video!) and even BLANCMANGE to a lesser extent. I’m continuously trying to capture the sound of that era, albeit with a 2015 slant.
A really talented producer called Adrian Hall mixed the album for me, and for each particular track he asked for a mix reference.
I remember for the ‘The Kodo Song’, I played him ‘Tantalise’ by JIMMY THE HOOVER and ‘New Beginning (Mamba Seyra)’ by BUCKS FIZZ!!! I think he may have thought I’d completely lost it.
To answer your question, yes I’m massively influenced by HOWARD JONES! I’m a solo synth artist who plays 80s influenced synthpop. I’m indebted to him.
The video took two years to make, what was involved in the process?
Originally when I played the song live, I was using some Keith Haring animation on the backdrop, but I realised that for the actual video, I was really keen to get across the story behind the song and Haring’s “Pop Art” style wasn’t going to be able to do that in the way I wanted.
It dawned on me that getting together an army of extras and flying them over to the plains of South Africa in full military regalia might be over my budget! So a realistic style animation was the only way.
I thought about the mood of A-HA’s ‘Take On Me’ and the less well-known DIRE STRAITS video for ‘Brothers In Arms’ and thought that the black and white, rotoscope, pencil sketch mood of those videos would suit my song too. I put together a four minute film using various clips from documentary footage and from the film ‘Zulu’ and using green screen, put myself within the action (although in a very low-tech way!). Then using a program called Toon Boom Studio, I painstakingly began tracing every frame of every scene.
I think, foolishly at the start, because I had read somewhere that ‘Take On Me’ took 4 months to make, that mine would be the same. But what I didn’t realise was they had a team of people doing it. It wasn’t just Morten Harket sitting alone in his room with a pen day after day!!
I quickly realised I’d bitten off more than I could chew. I’d be waking up at 6am and animating all day until 2am the following morning. I’d watch back what I’d spent the whole day doing and my heart would drop because it would flash by in the blink of an eye. It was absolutely soul destroying! It got to the point after about 8 months where I was beginning to lose sight of the end result and felt it’d never be finished. It became this massive burden, where I couldn’t relax or do anything without this huge feeling of guilt that I should be animating.
Eventually I had to give myself a break because I felt I was going mad. It was during this brief hiatus while working on some music for the film ‘Miss You Already’ that I decided to give from my second album to Drew Barrymore and Toni Colette on the set of the film. I really didn’t expect to hear anything back, but the next day, I got this text from them saying how I absolutely had to release ‘The Kodo Song’ track immediately! They both loved it. That was the incentive I needed to push forward and get it finished. So thank them. Or blame them!
Was it difficult to get permission to use the footage from ‘Zulu’?
I’ll wait until it takes off for that! I’m the same with samples. If it starts troubling the charts, then I’ll worry about that then. I remember years ago in my previous band THE MODERN, we tried to get clearance on a sample from Numan’s ‘We Take Mystery To Bed’.
It cost us so much, and took so long, and the song never even saw the light of day. I certainly hope it gets to the point where I’m in discussions with Paramount about ‘Zulu’, but I’ll wait for that to happen. Perhaps when the YouTube views get into 6 figures!
How do you feel about the end result?
It’s almost impossible after working on something for 2 years to have any perspective on it whatsoever. If you try and imagine slowing the video down to one single frame and then zooming in on that frame and meticulously drawing a Zulu warrior’s spear handle for instance, or the medal on the military uniform of a soldier and then imagine panning out on a whole battalion and having to draw everything in that scene with that detail. Buckles on belts, buttons, boots, guns, faces, a crowd of Zulu warriors carrying spears. I’ve drawn enough spears to last a lifetime!
And then once you’ve finished that scene, imagine repeating the whole process again, with only the tiniest of indistinguishable changes, and again, and again, 12 times just to make up one second of footage, which flashes past in the blink of an eye. So for some of the longer scenes that lasted maybe 8 or so seconds, I was drawing almost 100 near identical scenes.
The best analogy that I can think of is it felt like I was an ant dragging each letter one-by-one onto a blank page, page after page, until a novel was written. For me, from the perspective of the ant on the page it doesn’t look that good. In fact, you can’t really see what you’re doing. But I’ve had a nice response from it so far which is good.
‘Kasiotone’ came out at the start of 2012, how is the new KASIO KASIO longform release coming along?
I’m just finalising the artwork and it’ll be out before Christmas. I’m really embarrassed to admit it, but I had it mastered back in 2013!! It’s this video that’s held up the release!
My original intention was to release ‘The Kodo Song’ first, at the start of 2014 and then one more single after that, and then the album at the end of 2014 / start of 2015. But because the video took so long, everything got pushed back.
I’ve refreshed some of the tracks so they sound up to date, but I’m lucky in that the music I’m making isn’t like dance music, where the sounds change every few months or so. Because of the retro element to my music, it gives it a timelessness, thank god! Whether I release it in 2013 or 2016, it’s still going to sound like 1985!! *laughs*
Can we expect any new directions?
Unlike the first album there’s some collaborations, so the tracks I released with RICARDO AUTOBAHN and THE SANFERNANDO SOUND last year will be on there, as will some tracks I wrote with an old friend of mine Liam Hansell who goes by the name of KALCULUS. His production style is much more minimal. The two tracks on the album that I recorded with him have a starkness about them which I think is quite different to anything I’ve done before. We were very conscious of stripping the track back to its one or two most important hooks, as opposed to trying to cram in as many as we can which is often my way.
The result is more modern I think, in the way that a lot of current dance music will rely on one really good hook, rather than trying to tessellate 6 together all at once. That’s not to say lots of hooks can’t be good sometimes too. There’s one track on the album which sounds a bit like ‘Cupid & Psyche 85’ era SCRITTI POLITTI in terms of production, where there’s often 5 hooks all somehow going on at once. There’s also a track which started out as a cover of a DEPECHE MODE 1983 album track, which I think I will have to get some sort of clearance on, and another song, which was inspired by the film ‘Drive’.
It’s a mixed bag, albeit a bag made out of that black, grey and red striped material that all 80s duvet covers were made out of!!
The industry has changed quite a bit even in the last four years. Is there still a place for the traditional album format or have the Swedish synth duo KITE got it right by only releasing exclusively EPs?
I think music, particularly pop music, has started to develop at a much slower pace over the past ten years. If you look at the Top 40 now, it’s not a million miles away, in terms of sound, to what it was 4 or even 8 years ago. Compare that to the late 70s, early 80s, when trends and sounds were changing at a break neck speed, week-in week-out.
If you watch the re-runs of TOTP1980 that are running at the moment on BBC4, it’s hard to keep up, everything is moving so fast in terms of music and fashion.
You’d never ever be able to release the same record in 1982 as you did in 1977, apart from anything else, sonically it would sound completely out of step. Yet today, what is at no.1 now, could easily have been at no.1 in 2010. I think because of this, its not unheard of for artists to wait much longer between albums than they used to, there isn’t the incentive to stay one step ahead. The fear that the next youth movement is creeping up behind them, that will render them insignificant, that anxiety just isn’t there anymore.
So I think because of that, it has afforded artists more time. With that in mind, I think artists should be making full length albums. If people want to make EPs that’s totally up to them. But for me, I’m not a huge selling artist with an enormous fan base. I’m not ONE DIRECTION… I don’t have Simon Cowell beating my door down demanding a product. No-one really cares if I take 4 years to make an album.
So I may as well take my time and record 10 or 11 songs, rather than 4 or 5. Plus I still love the whole concept of an album. The A side, The B side, the album as a chronological story with a beginning, middle and end. I know that’s not how most people consume music anymore, but I think its still a good way of creating a product, as an artist it’s a good framework. Having said all that, I think KITE are great by the way!
How do you feel about the current electronic scene? I know we have differing opinions on YEARS & YEARS… is synthpop alive? 😉
Haha! I think in terms of broad cycles, we are definitely living through a golden age of synth, in a similar way that the 80s were. The majority of current pop music is synth driven, which is definitely something that should be celebrated. In terms of current chart acts, I love the Norwegian producer KYGO, he uses this one synth sound in all his tracks, which is kind of like ‘Popcorn’ meets Pan Pipes!!! I’ve been waiting forever for the Pan Pipe sound to come back in!!
And yes I love YEARS & YEARS, I’m a sucker for anything synth driven with a male vocal. I realised the other day, they tweeted me back in 2011 before they were famous saying they “Loved my album”… who knows maybe I influenced them! I tweeted them back but no reply yet! Maybe the four year gap was a bit much!
I’m sure a return to guitar bands is only just around the corner, but until then we should all make hay! The memories of turning up at venues in the early 90s during the grunge era and being laughed at by sound engineers when I told them I was the keyboard player is still all too painful for me! Even when I look at the Top 5 from 10 years ago, from the week my old band THE MODERN released our first single makes for shocking reading! THE ORDINARY BOYS, ARCTIC MONKEYS and FALL OUT BOY!! I know as electronic artists we should be thankful of the here and now.
What did you think of DURAN DURAN’s ‘Paper Gods’?
As literally their number one fan, I couldn’t be happier for them! Going back to the dark days of the early 90s again, I remember when the mere mention of them would inspire hoots of derision. So I’m happy that they’ve kind of taken on this mantle as the modern day elder statesmen of pop.
I’m not as keen on this album as much as the last album so far, but that might change. I’m a massive Nile Rodgers fan and I’m definitely partial to some funk slapped bass and there’s definitely some of that on this album. John Taylor is a massively underrated bass player in my opinion. And as for Nick Rhodes! I was lucky enough to meet him a few years ago and he was the nicest bloke ever, we chatted about nerdy synth stuff and he couldn’t have been more humble. I actually wanted to grab him by the collar and scream “you’re my f***ing Hero, you’re the reason I do this, I had a poster of you on my wall when I was 8!!” but thankfully I didn’t do that, I kept it together and we chatted politely about the virtues of the Crumar synthesizer.
So what next for KID KASIO?
The second album will be out before the end of the year, and then I’ll make a decision on what single to release next, depending on what peoples’ reception to certain songs are. And perhaps another video, although what I will say is it definitely won’t be anything involving animation!
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Nathan Cooper
‘The Kodo Song’ is available now as a download from the usual digital outlets, along with the 2012 debut album ‘Kasiotone’
The period between 1979-1983 was one of the most glorious and productive periods in British music.
Sparked by the Synth Britannia revolution, acts such as THE HUMAN LEAGUE, OMD, DEPECHE MODE and SOFT CELL emerged. Around the same time came more conventional bands with a disco oriented flavour like DURAN DURAN and SPANDAU BALLET, who embraced electronic elements to enhance their sound.
With its colour pages and printed song lyrics, ‘Smash Hits’ became the nation’s best-selling music rag; so it was in pop that the battles for supremacy were at their most competitive. One of those vying for a slice of the action were a young York based trio called THE MOOD. Comprising of John Moore (vocals and guitar), Mark James Fordyce (drums, electronic percussion and synthesizers) and Eric James Logan (synthesizers and piano), they began as a quintet with Steve Carter and John Dalby.
Developing a modern pop sound that fitted in with the syncopated 120 BPM rhythm mood of the times, their first single ‘Is There A Reason?’ was released in 1981 on the appropriately named Romantic Records. The band attracted interest from RCA Records and after a deal was inked, a new mix of ‘Is There A Reason?’ was immediately released. Despite not charting in the UK, it helped position THE MOOD under the New Romantic banner that also included the then up-and-coming bands of the period such as DURAN DURAN, SPANDAU BALLET, B-MOVIE and TALK TALK.
Their second single ‘Don’t Stop’ showed significant progress by attaining a Top10 position on the US Billboard Hot100. However, the single stalled at No59 in the UK, despite the band being championed the BBC Radio1’s Peter Powell and appearing on the children’s pop show ‘Razzmatazz’. But THE MOOD’s trajectory was heading in an upward direction.
The potential hit breakthrough came with ‘Paris Is One Day Away’ when the band secured a slot on ‘Top Of The Pops’. However, it was the 1982 World Cup and a match heading into extra time meant that a hasty edit was made. And it was THE MOOD’s performance as the new and unknown act that ended up on the cutting room floor!
Thanks to the European success of ABC, EURYTHMICS, U2 and SIMPLE MINDS, the pop world had now moved towards blue-eyed soul and more rockier climes to satisfy an emerging Trans-Atlantic market clamouring for British New Wave after the success of MTV. For North American territories, a five track mini-album entitled ‘Passion In Dark Rooms’ came out in 1983, but it failed to capitalise on the interest in ‘Don’t Stop’ from the previous year.
A fifth single ‘I Don’t Need Your Love Now’ gained little attention and the band eventually split up in 1985, but John Moore briefly returned as THE MOOD without his two original bandmates, before changing the band moniker to WILD and then disappearing again. However in 2008, THE MOOD underwent a mini-renaissance when Cherry Red licensed all the bands recordings from Sony/BMG and issued ‘The Singles Collection’.
Mark James Fordyce kindly chatted to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK about THE MOOD’s brief flirtation with stardom and what might have been…
When you formed THE MOOD, how did you decide upon having a more synth assisted sound?
I became intrigued by the sound of synthesizers after hearing TUBEWAY ARMY in 1979 which made me revisit early KRAFTWERK recordings, then quickly leading onto everything from CAN, YELLOW MAGIC ORCHESTRA, TELEX, OMD and of course ROXY MUSIC and DAVID BOWIE. Eric was asked to join because he was the only person we know who had a synthesizer and he was into the same sort of music.
Who were the artists that THE MOOD looked up to and were influenced by?
Eric had the David Sylvian look as JAPAN was certainly an influence for him and us all, as well as ROXY MUSIC, whose music and style we were drawn to. When we first went to London, one of the first places we visited was the Antony Price clothes shop because he was the stylist for ROXY MUSIC and Lou Reed, and he was a Yorkshireman. Of course everyone from Steve Strange to DURAN DURAN also had the same idea!
Which particular synths did Eric acquire for THE MOOD and what inspired you into using more electronics despite being the drummer?
Eric started out with a Korg MS20 and Roland RS-09 string machine, adding a Prophet 5 with our advance from RCA. I had a Syndrum and Pearl Syncussion SY-1 pads right from the start, once we signed to RCA and started recording at SARM East studios, I added a Simmons SDSV full kit, Roland 808, Micromoog and a Roland SH101.
‘Is There A Reason?’ was a very promising debut single. What made you decide that should be your opening gambit?
It was always one of the most popular live songs we performed and had a great intro which made it the obvious choice for our first release. We initially released it on our own independent label and got to number 6 on the Sounds music paper dance chart, we re-recorded it when we signed to RCA and it became our first RCA release. It had some great synth runs which we really made the most of on the 12” mix, which is still one of my favourite mixes of ours.
Quite a few British acts like A FLOCK OF SEAGULLS and NAKED EYES had more success in the US than the UK. ‘Don’t Stop’ showed promise and appeared to gain a small foothold in America. Why do you think this was the case?
I think it was the right sound for the time in the US and took on a life of its own in American discos, predominantly New York clubs. I heard a story which I don’t know is true or not, that the throbbing base line was an influence for BON JOVI’s ‘Living on a Prayer’… sorry about that!
You worked with some key studio personnel like Steve Levine and Gary Langan, plus even had one of CULTURE CLUB play on ‘Passion in Dark Rooms’…
We were very lucky that our first producer Anthony Forrest chose to record at SARM East with Gary Langan and Julian Mendelson as engineers. I remember the studio being very busy with SPANDAU BALLET recording with Richard James Burgess and ABC doing ‘The Lexicon Of Love’ with Trevor Horn. It was a great place to witness some of the great recording of the early 80s, I also used to hang around in the evening when Gary and Trevor played around with their new toy the Fairlight computer, those early ideas went onto become THE ART OF NOISE! Later through a recommendation from Rusty Egan, we started to record with Steve Levine at Red Bus studios; Steve had just started working with CULTURE CLUB so we had Roy Hay play some guitar parts for us.
RCA obviously thought ‘Paris is One Day Away’ had enough potential to lavish THE MOOD with a video of the band stalking a girl in Paris… it was a different world then wasn’t it? 😉
Yes, we really thought we had arrived when RCA gave us a decent budget to shoot a video in Paris with a beautiful model! We got Tim Pope to produce it who had previously worked with THE CURE on their videos. We also made a video for ‘Passion In Dark Rooms’ in a cave where we got stalk two models this time!
You were chosen to appear on ‘Top Of The Pops’ with ‘Paris is One Day Away’ but then fate intervened… what actually happened?
When we were in Paris shooting the video we got a call to say we were No42 in the charts had had been chosen for the bubbling under section on ‘Top Of The Pops’. Unfortunately because of the 1982 World Cup, they cut that section for that week’s show, the following week we dropped back down the chart! I remember Thomas Dolby then moved up to No42 and got on that week’s bubbling under and a TOTP slot.
The next singles ‘Passion in Dark Rooms’ and ‘I Don’t Need Your Love Now’ failed to capture the public’s imagination. I understand THE MOOD weren’t playing live much then. Why do you think you lost momentum?
We played quite a lot in the early days, but as we started to spend more time in the studio and became more and more reliant on technology, we took our eye off the live side of things. We also had very weak management at the beginning who failed to take advantage of some of the opportunities we had. For example, we never went to America which was crazy considering the amount of interest we had with ‘Don’t Stop’.
What happened with RCA?
We signed to RCA in 1981 on the back of the success we had with our own independent single ‘Is There a Reason’, which we re-recorded for RCA and subsequently became our first major release. We then released ‘Don’t Stop’ which got a lot of Radio 1 and TV support, especially from Peter Powell who we did a live Maida Vale session for. ‘Don’t Stop’ also gained good support on US radio and club plays, resulting in a number 6 Billboard Dance Chart position, which was taken from the radio and club plays, sadly not record sales.
The record company really got behind the next release ‘Paris is One Day Away’ with a video and loads of airplay and is probably our biggest track in term of exposure. We then got a bigger recording budget and started recording the remainder of the album with Steve Levine at Red Bus Studios; we recorded five tracks with Steve. Because we were getting a lot of interest in the USA, RCA America decided to put out a mini LP which included some of the Steve Levine recordings as well as the singles ‘Don’t Stop’ and ‘Passion in Dark Rooms’.
Was the debut album close to being completed?
The album was completed, but RCA decided not to release it in the UK and we were put on the back burner with the label taking a further year to release our final single ‘I Don’t Need Your Love Now’, which we recorded at Rockfield studios in Wales with new producer Paul Cobalt. It was during this time that we split from our old managers and signed a new management deal with Mike Wiand who also managed VICIOUS PINK; I played drums on their single ‘Je T’aime’. We attempted to leave RCA for a new deal with EMI which never came, we then split as a band shortly after in ‘85.
When THE MOOD split, why did you personally decide not to continue with another band?
After a short break I did get back together with John Moore and formed a band called PLEASURE COMPANY, recording back at Rockfield Studios with THE MOOD’s last producer Paul Cobalt. We signed a production deal with Rockfield alongside T’PAU and had Ronnie Rogers play guitar for us. T’PAU got the deal before us and got early success, we were eventually dropped. Eric formed a band called STRANGLANDS and ended up supporting A-HA on one of their UK tours in the 80s.
Many years later in the 90s, I formed an electronic duo called THE GROOVE TWINS with Anton Witter. Although we played several gigs and recorded an album under a recording and publishing deal, the album was never released. I am happy to report that we have recently been remastering the album tracks and intend to release it on iTunes later this year, only 20 odd years late!
Cherry Red released a CD collection of all your singles in 2008. How was that received? For a band in that didn’t quite make it position, is there much in it financially?
The release was instigated by a fan in the US who was selling a bootleg collection of our tracks on eBay. The reception was quite astonishing! With a lot of online interest which resulted in us doing a few internet radio interviews, with a show in New York dedicating an entire show to THE MOOD! The CD is still doing quite well, selling in the thousands and is on its second run with Cherry Red, so there is a small income which will not change any lives, but is still flattering that people still care about the band.
Looking back now, how successful do you think THE MOOD could have become had that ‘Top Of The Pops’ break happened? How would your sound have developed and where would you have sat next to groups like say ENDGAMES, FIAT LUX, FICTION FACTORY or H2O?
I think had we had got the TOTP exposure and better management to capitalise on the early US interest, we could have had a career along the lines of Thomas Dolby or THE THOMPSON TWINS. Incidentally, we shared the same A&R man as H2O who signed to RCA a year into our deal.
Now that you’ve had some distance, which of THE MOOD’s songs stand up for you in the realm of that classic pop era?
I still really like ‘Is There a Reason?’, especially the 12”. The same goes with ‘Don’t Stop’ which was quite ground breaking at the time and still stands out as a great synth record today, and was remixed more recently by PRINCE LANGUAGE for his NYC club hit in 2009 ‘Don’t Stop the Macho’.
How you look back on it all now? What would you like to have done differently?
We should have concentrated and built on the live shows as we were a good live band, which got us the initial attention and a good following in the north. Playing more down south and then taking it to the US would have been a better move.
You’ve had a successful post-music biz career and have been collecting vintage synthesizers over the years. What have you got, which are your favourites and which do you still want?
Yes, I have been lucky to have a successful Telecoms company which has allowed me to indulge in my midlife crisis of re-collecting some of the synths and drum machines I once owned and ones I wished I had owned at the time. I currently have a Minimoog Model D, Minimoog Voyager, Moog Prodigy, Moog Little Phatty, ARP Odyssey MK 1 in black and gold, DSI Pro 2, Roland TR-808, LinnDrum and EMU Drumulator.
Everything is plugged in and ready to play, the Model D is stunning in looks and sound and I love playing it whenever can. Also the Odyssey is beautiful and as new condition, it’s one of the rarest examples you can find. I am still on the lookout for a Prophet 5 in very good condition, then I may take a break.
What sort of music are you making now with them and how is that progressing?
At some point, I intend to make an electronic synth album recorded as it would have been done in 1981, which I think is the classic year for synthpop. This will be done with THE GROOVE TWINS and the intention is to play all the parts live onto tape with only analogue sequencing where necessary. I just like the idea of having to face the limitations of the equipment we faced back in those days, which ultimately drove a generation of electronic musicians to create amazing and beautiful music that has lasted decades.
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Mark James Fordyce
Stephen J Lipson, both individually and in collaboration with Trevor Horn, has been responsible for some of the most iconic sounding electronic-based musical productions over the last 30 years.
Alongside Trevor Horn, he was an integral part of the ZTT Records sound which was the Ying to the pop Yang of Stock, Aitken and Waterman – producing a stellar run of songs that were musical, very often cerebral and in many cases, massive chart hits. Whereas some band producers of the era were happy just to record the artists and suggest a few overdubs, Lipson and Horn saw the potential in often scrappy sounding demos and had the vision to use the latest available technology, combined with their own musicianship, to totally transform and take them to another place altogether.
The two acts that remain most musically indebted to the ZTT stable were Liverpool’s FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD and Germany’s PROPAGANDA. As well as producing tracks which arguably sounded better than most of the competition, the label’s arch strategist Paul Morley perpetuated a tradition started by Factory Records in aligning the music of their artists with a design aesthetic that although could be seen as being ultra-pretentious, helped give the bands a unique identity.
Stephen J Lipson has also produced for PET SHOP BOYS, SIMPLE MINDS and ULTRAVOX amongst others. He kindly spoke to about elements of his glittering career and also his move into the world of film music production and mixing.
Your early days in the industry seemed to involve a lot of “learning on the job”…
I was self-taught and I built my first studio in the mid 70’s with no knowledge or help. Then I started engineering, making it up as I went along – my only previous experience was operating a Revox tape machine in my bedroom. After the studio had been going for a few months, Dave Robinson (Stiff Records) wanted to record an album there and suggested that he got an engineer in for the first day. That was Phil Brown who, in the space of 12 hours, got the project under way and taught me some invaluable lessons.
The art of band album production is often seen as a bit of a “black art”, what is your take on being successful at it?
You need to have personal taste, be able to get on with people and have good teamwork. Not taking up too much space in the room too by doing what has to be done – tea, driving, jokes, playing, writing, emailing, etc etc. Also giving encouragement to all involved and understanding that it’s not too important, at the end of the day it’s just music!
You’re well known for playing on some of the works you produce, are many producers frustrated artists?
I don’t know many producers and the ones I do know seem to be happy without the need for adulation.
Things really clicked into place when you started working with Trevor Horn and the whole ZTT experience, what are you main memories from that period?
My main memory is WORK! We worked so hard that when FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD’s ‘Relax’ went to number one we didn’t celebrate, we just kept at it – it was enjoyable work in a great team though. My other memory is exposure to loads of equipment and having the time to use it.
‘Relax’ took a lot of attempts to perfect, how did the process go from the original (very rough) demo to final product?
Trevor had done a version with The Blockheads before I started working with him. We then spent ages on a “smart” version which took ages. Then he came in one day and said he wanted to scrap it and start again. That was when the single happened, very quickly, Trevor, JJ Jeczalik, Andy Richards and myself all playing live.
With the exception of Holly Johnson and Paul Rutherford, the rest of FRANKIE GOES TO HOLLYWOOD didn’t actually play on the final released version of ‘Relax’, how did the public react to that?
As far as I know, I don’t think anyone knew at the time!
PROPAGANDA’s ‘A Secret Wish’ is still a stunning sounding piece of work, were the demos you received for the album pretty fully formed?
For the most part the demos weren’t finished at all. They were skeletons, which is one of the reasons the album took so long. Michael Mertens, the musician in the band, lived in Düsseldorf. Trevor was working on other projects, so we were very much left to our own devices. Paul Morley was the main person who helped steer the project. My main memory of the album is of working in a black room for months with Andy Richards and loads of gear.
Apparently there were 14 versions of ‘Relax’ and 10 of ‘Dr.Mabuse’ – why go the extra mile and create so many alternative versions?
No-one knew what they were doing at the time and Paul Morley probably kept asking for more and we just kept going!
Do you feel you and Trevor Horn deserve more recognition for pioneering the art of remixing and the alternative version?
No… people who do what we do are, by definition, backroom people. That is a choice and those who want to know can find out…
I believe you were one of the first producers to work using digital recording, how was that experience?
It was a massive relief. There was no hiss, the difference in sound to our ears was wonderful and less EQ was needed. The Sony machines were also really reliable, we tried a Mitsubishi 32 track first but it didn’t work.
Are you a “snob” when it comes to music/studio equipment?
Absolutely not. Just about every piece of equipment is good nowadays, plus you can’t blame the gear any more. Instruments are different of course…
Do you often wish that vocalist-enhancing tools such as Autotune and Melodyne were available back in the day?
Not really. The limitations were good and I miss that, but we can’t turn the clock back, so onwards…
Do you have a favourite post-ZTT artist that you’ve worked with?
It’s hard to say, I enjoy the process of recording so if I were to pick an artist I would base it on personality which isn’t really relevant.
You produced the ULTRAVOX comeback album ‘Brilliant’, were you a fan of the band before joining the project?
Yes! Also I thought that any band that could write and make the records that they had over the years would be great to work with.
How was the process of working with the band on the album, was it a challenging experience?
Sort of, but it was very fulfilling. They’re lovely guys, but I was amazed that the album didn’t do all that well, I thought it was very good.
Do you have any ideas as to why the album wasn’t more successful?
Not a clue. Maybe it was a lack of money to promote it? Maybe a lack of interest in the band? It’s hard to say.
Today it is far easier for artists to self-produce and record, do you still think the big studio has a place in the current market?
Yes and no. In order to collaborate it’s ideal to be in the same space and this requires more than a home studio. I miss the collaborative aspect of record making but pragmatism must prevail, plus there are rarely any big budgets for projects now.
Does having the internet mean that there is a less of a necessity to travel for certain projects now?
To a certain extent, but a common space is better. It’s an interesting way of working though. I did an album with Mike Oldfield recently, where I was in LA and London and he was in the Bahamas where he lives. For the most part it worked but we did have some strange moments!
Much of your work now involves mixing/producing film scores including with Hans Zimmer on ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and ‘Rush’, how does that compare with making band albums?
It was a massive learning experience moving into the film world, but it happened for me at an ideal point. I was getting bored with the predictable song structure and instrumentation of pop music. And I was starting to feel out of touch with the charts. There isn’t much comparison apart from music being the common denominator. Everything in film world is larger – budgets, quantity of music, sounds, personalities, sophistication. But being able to go between the two is amazing as after a while I miss all the things I found boring in pop.
Is Hans Zimmer’s studio as stunning as it looks in photographs?
More so! The pictures don’t show the technical side which is beyond one’s wildest thoughts.
What projects are you currently working on and are they still biased towards the film world?
The film work is definitely biased towards the film world!
Currently I’m working with Ronan Keating. The 5th album of his I’ve worked on. Also an amazing Japanese artist called Hotei. In a couple of weeks I’m off to New York to do another movie with Hans.
If you could pick a ‘Desert Island Disc’ track that you are most proud of working on, what would it be?
I have no idea. I’m not truly happy with anything so would probably take something else entirely!
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Stephen J Lipson
‘Blood Spills Not Far From the Wound’ was an album released in 2007 by NECESSARY RESPONSE, a pseudonym adopted by Daniel Graves of AESTHETIC PERFECTION when they were certainly a different sounding beast to the one they are now.
If you have only been exposed to fairly recent songs such as ‘Antibody’ and ‘Big, Bad Wolf’, then tracks such as ‘Fix’, ‘Sacrifice’ and ‘Surface’ from ‘Close to Human’, although featuring some undeniably hooky synth lines, also showcased aggressive, screamed post-hardcore vocals which could certainly prove deal breakers for those into vocally melodic strains of electronic music.
‘Intro’ starts the album, a short piano-based instrumental piece with minimal drums, a sampled breath running throughout and a dark / sinister vocodered voice intoning “Let’s spill some blood….” which introduces the first song on ‘Blood Spills….’
Opening piece ‘Spilling Blood’ is intriguing in that in certain respects it musically templates what was to eventually become the next AESTHETIC PERFECTION album ‘A Violent Emotion’. A far more typical industrial sound, with big distorted 909 kicks, filtered sawtooth synths and a triplet Schaffel feel.
What differentiates it from what was to come AP-wise (and say a typical COMBICHRIST song from the era) is the lead vocal, itself very melodic with a vocoder ghosting underneath it to give it more of an edge. The song starts with a mid-range voice announcing “Every living creature on earth dies alone” with other less discernible snippets of film dialogue following. The song’s chorus is big and anthemic with the “She says she’s never been so alone, don’t you care about me?” lyrical hook providing a real emotional twist to what is a very hard-edged machine-driven track.
‘Forever’ sets the template for much of the album, both musically and vocally. It is a very melodic 4/4 piece with hypnotic synth and haunting choral introduction lines, but with an overlong instrumental bridge and a musically underdeveloped chorus which doesn’t quite do the songwriting justice. ‘Forever’ could be interpreted as being written from the perspective of a touring musician trying to come to terms with commitment and being able to maintain a faithful relationship, with lyrics which talk about spending “our whole life together” but not “knowing how it’s done”.
‘Vapor’ is one of the standout songs on the album. Lyrically it details a fleeting and potentially doomed romantic liaison set against monophonic synth riffs which wouldn’t be out of place on the debut DEPECHE MODE and YAZOO albums.
The main drawback to ‘Vapor’ is its length; a three and a half minute edit would be perfect for a traditional synthpop song of this ilk. But stretching it out to nearly six means that a lot of the track’s emotional impact becomes lost, especially when another repeated chorus appears around about the five minute mark! ‘Dying In The Worst Way’ and ‘This Distance’, the other instrumental on the album, are the darkest tracks on ‘Blood Spills…’
The former recalls NINE INCH NAILS lyrically, whereas the latter comes across as a Dystopian sci-fi theme with filter swept ‘Man Machine’ style bass synths counterpointing the intricate stuttering of the main elements.
After a detached Apple-style robotic voice repeats “this distance is breaking me apart” in the middle eight, a deep Reese / detuned sawtooth bass adds to the overall menace before the lone computerised voice appropriately breaks down at the end.
Both pieces flirt with the Glitch genre and feature cut-up slices, helping to differentiate the songs from just being standard synth-pop compositions.
‘Devotion’, the album closer starts with looped found sounds combined with a low droning bass, ominous piano and strings. The song itself has Depeche DNA at its heart, but again the glitched components of the chorus help set it apart from something that Basildon’s finest would produce. An overlong drum-less middle section hampers the momentum of the track to a degree, but the chorus returns back at the end to lift the piece.
The main selling point for a casual listener to explore ‘Blood Spills….’ is the quality of the songwriting and synth work contained within.
Arguably there are issues with the overlong songs and underdeveloped production in places, but it still has the power and charm to make you want to revisit it regularly.
Daniel Graves kindly spoke to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK to discuss some of the songs on the album, why he deemed it necessary to adopt a different name for the project and also why ‘Blood Spills…’ has received a 2015 ‘re-boot’ with the addition of ‘Never Enough’, a previously unreleased song from that period…
What was the main reason to step away from AESTHETIC PERFECTION to record and release ‘Blood Spills…’?
I was forced to! At the time, the powers that be insisted that AESTHETIC PERFECTION be a strictly aggrotech act. The original cut of ‘Close to Human’ contained ‘Tomorrow’, ‘Forever’ and ‘Elements’, and even though the labels liked those songs, they said I’d have to create a new project if I ever wanted to release them. I was young and eager to make people happy, so I did it. Ever since then, the goal was to slowly lead AESTHETIC PERFECTION towards what it was supposed to be from the beginning: A dynamic expression of all ranges of emotion.
Initially you went to quite a lot of effort to keep the identity and source of the act secret, including the creation of a fake MySpace located in Sweden, why was that?
I wanted the music to speak for itself. I had hoped NECESSARY RESPONSE would garner attention because the songs were good, not because they were made by “the guy from AESTHETIC PERFECTION”. Ironically though, the album was a total flop, so in hindsight I should have exploited everything I had!
As NECESSARY RESPONSE, you toured as support for DE/VISION, how was that experience?
At the time it was the longest tour I had ever done. Don’t forget, this is about a year before ‘A Violent Emotion’ came out, so AESTHETIC PERFECTION hadn’t done any significant amount of touring yet. The response was positive, but it still wasn’t enough to get the project off its feet.
I think this album, more than anything else I’ve done, was the slowest burn. People didn’t take notice of it until after AESTHETIC PERFECTION got more popular.
The phrase ‘Emo-tronica’ came into my head whilst listening to ‘Blood Spills…’
I’ve always been partial to “Emo Body Music”. Not only because it contains the word “emo” which receives an automatic knee-jerk reaction from anyone in the Goth scene, but it pairs it with the oh-so-sacred EBM acronym to really drag the nails across the chalkboard. If you want me to be honest, I’ve always thought of my music as “dark electro”, but that’s way less fun sounding. I’ve always found it funny that people associate ‘Blood Spills Not Far From the Wound’ with being sincere, open and honest and not the other AESTHETIC PERFECTION albums. Lyrically, I don’t see how ‘Sacrifice’ is any different from ‘Dying in the Worst Way’. All of my music is deeply personal. I don’t know how to write lyrics that aren’t.
On many AESTHETIC PERFECTION songs, you often come across as a larger than life persona… NECESSARY RESPONSE feels like it could be the ‘real’ Daniel Graves…..
None of what you see is the “real” me. Although, the “real” me just wants to be “Daniel Graves”. It’s two sides of the same coin. I can promise you that there was just as much performance in the NECESSARY RESPONSE days as there is now.
I wasn’t as good at it then, though. I’ve improved over the last eight years! It’s important for me that the listener interprets the song for themselves. My songs mean to me what they mean to me, and they mean to you what they mean to you.
The opening instrumental ‘Intro’ is reminiscent of a lost ‘Protection’-era MASSIVE ATTACK track, are you fan?
Nope! I absolutely hate MASSIVE ATTACK and trip hop in general!
‘Forever’, along with other tracks on the album, include some cut-up, glitchy elements, was there anybody that particularly inspired you to incorporate these?
I used to be huge into IDM and GRIDLOCK. They inspired the instrumentals on ‘Close to Human’ and ‘Blood Spills Not Far From the Wound’. You’ll notice though, that around 2007 I lost interest in the style and those types of songs stopped appearing on my albums!
Did you use the LiveCut plug-in to help program the glitches?
I’ve never heard of the LiveCut plug-in. I did everything manually!
An AESTHETIC PERFECTION trademark is the use of dialogue samples and snippets, did you add these afterwards or did they start as springboards for song ideas?
Samples almost always come at the end. I think of them as the icing on the cake rather than the batter.
‘Vapor’ sounds like a very personal lyric…
They’re all very personal, but I’d say this one was definitely less vague than the others. I think the narrative is very plainly laid out for the listener. It’s definitely one of my favourite songs, but it didn’t need to be six minutes long!
Some of the other tracks on ‘Blood Spills…’ could have quite comfortably followed a 3-4 minute ‘pop’ format…
I wish they had. I absolutely despise long songs now. Anything over four and a half minutes had better be some ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ rock opera epic-ness.
The album has a very clean and clear vocal production – what is your opinion on Industrial acts that treat their vocals almost as an afterthought to the music?
The human voice is the most unique and expressive instrument we have. No two are alike, why would you want to hide it in effects? Bring it all to the front. Don’t fear criticism. Own your flaws. Do whatever you need to do, but vocals are NOT an afterthought, they are the anchor.
Some of the album cuts ‘Elements’, ‘Tomorrow’ and ‘For All the Lost’ sound like they were done on quite a minimalist set of equipment…
Most of this record is an Access Virus B, a Nord Lead 2 and recorded in Logic with various softsynths. I’ve always tried to keep my set-up as small as possible. I find too much gear gets confusing, and you never truly learn the ins and outs of what you have. These days, the Nord and Virus collect dust as recording actual synths is totally impractical, but I like to bring them out every now and again.
The album ‘Blood Spills…’ has an almost minimal / monophonic KRAFTWERK-style aesthetic to it, are you proud of it in hindsight?
I get the worst idiot shivers when I hear the production on that record. It’s so NOT up to par. Even in 2007, it didn’t sound like a well-produced record. What I’m proud of are the songs, I think people like the record in spite of the production and not because of it. To be fair, though, I’m an artist and I hate almost everything I do. I have no objectivity, I have no perspective. I’m grateful that people like that record.
You sound REALLY unhappy with some of the aspects of the album…
Almost all artists are unhappy with their previous work. That’s the motivation to continue on and make something new, to learn from your mistakes and grow. If you believe you’ve made the perfect album, where else is there to go? I think the original version of that album sounded horrific. Those songs deserved better than that!
Which leads on to the news that you are about to release a new AESTHETIC PERFECTION version of the album…
It’s not an “AESTHETIC PERFECTION” version of the album. This record should have ALWAYS been under the AP moniker. This is me taking my album back and releasing it on my own terms. Sure, I spit-shined the production and redid the vocals, but it’s very much the same. Most of what you’ll hear are from the original recordings. I tried my best to avoid George Lucas-ing the record… believe me, it was hard!
Finally, and according to Wikipedia, “….on September 13, 2012, Daniel Graves posted on the official AESTHETIC PERFECTION Facebook page that “I wish there was a way to telepathically project, to everyone, that NECESSARY RESPONSE is dead, buried, and will not return… ever” – Any comments?
Does Wikipedia say that? I don’t remember if I ever said that, but it sounds like something I’d say! Look, I love the fact that people like that album, I like it too, but there is no need for NECESSARY RESPONSE to exist.
It’s frustrating that no matter how many times I explain that NECESSARY RESPONSE is just a name, and that if I were to ever make another album in that style again, it would be released as AESTHETIC PERFECTION. Funny enough, I approached ‘Til Death’ as if I were writing a follow up to ‘Blood Spills Not Far From the Wound’… I tell people that, and they still don’t get it. Whatever, you can’t please all the people, all the time!
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its warmest thanks to Daniel Graves
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