Gareth Jones was born in Lancashire and while he played a number of instruments as a youngster, his interest soon turned to music technology with the purchase of a tape recorder.
He gained his formal training at the BBC and began working as an engineer in various recording spaces including Pathway, a small 8 track studio in North London which was frequently used by Stiff Records and where THE DAMNED recorded ‘New Rose’ in 1976. It was there that he worked on MADNESS’ debut single ‘The Prince’ in 1979. But it was his work with former ULTRAVOX front man John Foxx and his 1980 long playing debut ‘Metamatic’ that was to be his breakthrough.
This led to work producing esoteric acts such as TUXEDOMOON and TAUCHEN-PROKOPETZ; it was while working with the latter on the 1983 ‘DÖF’ record in Vienna that it was suggested that Jones mix the album at Hansa Tonstudio in West Berlin. At the time, it was the most high-tech complex he had ever worked in and prompted to his relocation to die Mauerstadt.
Many British bands began recording and mixing in Berlin as the exchange rate made things highly cost effective. It was while Jones was engineering the recording of the third DEPECHE MODE album ‘Construction Time Again’ at John Foxx’s own studio The Garden in Shoreditch that he proposed mixing the record in Berlin. He had been initially reluctant to work with DEPECHE MODE who he considered lightweight but was eventually persuaded by Foxx to become their Tonmeister.
Gareth Jones was a pioneer in the use of state of art digital equipment including the NED Synclavier and AMS digital delays; among his techniques was using the big ballroom at Hansa to capture atmospheres created by sounds being played through large amplifiers which were then recorded with microphones, creating a huge cavernous sound.
Although chiefly known for his work with synths and sampling, Jones also worked with more guitar driven bands such as WIRE, THE HOUSE OF LOVE, INSPIRAL CARPETS and MOGWAI as well as dark lord Nick Cave. After the fall of The Iron Curtain, Jones later returned to London where he remains today at his current base theArtLab within The Strongroom complex in London.
Having fought cancer in 2008, he continues to produce, mix and compose with a third SUNROOF album with Daniel Miller currently in progress. Meanwhile Jones had also provided his expertise and guidance to emerging studio personnel via the Red Bull Academy.
With a restriction of one track per album project and in chronological order, here are 20 tracks which form ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK’s Beginner’s Guide to the innovative career of Gareth Jones.
JOHN FOXX Plaza (1980)
Having departed ULTRAVOX, when John Foxx recorded his debut solo record, Gareth Jones was the engineer at Pathway, a studio known for its reggae sessions. While the aim was a starker vision of electronic music, both Foxx and Jones absorbed dub influences where things would be stripped back but one sound given all the power. This aesthetic suited the dystopian ‘Metamatic’ opener ‘Plaza’.
Available on the JOHN FOXX album ‘Metamatic’ via Metamatic Records
Impressed with the sound of ‘Metamatic’, TUXEDOMOON had originally sought John Foxx to produce their next album ‘Desire’ but unavailable, he put the American art rockers in touch with Gareth Jones. “Gareth was brilliant, fabulous” said the band’s Blaine L Reininger, “He was able to teach us; kind of organise us”. On one of the highlights, ‘Incubus’, the same Roland CR-78 Compurhythm was used.
Available on the TUXEDOMOON album ‘Desire’ via Crammed Discs
With a second album and studio both named ‘The Garden’, Gareth Jones was again working with John Foxx realise both. After the colder overtures of ‘Metamatic’, traditional instrumentation returned. ‘Dancing Like A Gun’ contradicted its “Oppenheimer waltzing” line but blended synth with art rock to recall ‘Quiet Men’ from his ULTRAVOX days.
Available on the JOHN FOXX album ‘The Garden’ via Metamatic Records
Working alongside Daniel Miller who continued as producer, Gareth Jones had DEPECHE MODE sampling found sounds around the-then derelict surroundings of Shroreditch to create a new sonic template in pop. Many of the songs had socio-political themes as demonstrated by the Alan Wilder composed Cold War angst ditty ‘Two Minute Warning’.
Frank Tovey had been intrigued by German band EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN whose name translated as “collapsing new buildings” and their use of industrial equipment and found objects. So while recording at Hansa, he got Gareth Jones to record a large printing press nearby as the basis for a loop rhythm that became ‘Collapsing New People’.
Available on the FAD GADGET album ‘Gag’ via Mute Records
For his first second solo album, Blaine L Reininger was reunited with Gareth Jones at the production helm. Using Roland’s portable pre-MIDI holy trinity of the TB-303 Bassline, the SH-101 monosynth and the TR-808 Rhythm Composer synced via a customised cable, its highlight was the cinematic synthpop of ‘Mystery & Confusion’ which saw the TUXEDOMOON leader exude a distinct Eurocentric spirit.
Available on the BLAINE L REININGER album ‘Night Air’ via Les Disques du Crépuscule
An influential Neue Deutsche Welle band from Hamburg, PALAIS SCHAUMBURG were on the bill with DEPECHE MODE at the 1981 Mute Night at the London Lyceum. Their members included Thomas Fehlmann who went on to join THE ORB and experimental producer Holger Hiller. The percussive ‘Beat Of 2’ turned out to be their final single and was produced by Gareth Jones alongside Inga Humpe.
Available on the PALAIS SCHAUMBURG album ‘Parlez-Vous Schaumburg?’ via Mercury Records
Quirky Neue Deutsche Welle from sisters Annette and Inga Humpe, ‘Yama-ha’ was produced by Roma Baran who had worked on Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’. The “shopping list” synth and sample number listing a number of Japanese tech and vehicle manufacturers was remixed by Gareth Jones. The B-side ‘Memories’ was produced by Conny Plank.
When Gareth Jones was brought in to work with EINSTURZEN NEUBAUTEN, it was to provide a sense of order to the West Berlin group’s experimental metal-bashing. Using sampling technology to provide an avant-dance palette to accompany Blixa Bargeld’s fierce chant of “FÜTTER MEIN EGO”, the sinister rhythm was inspired by the sound of chopping up speed!
Available on the EINSTURZEN NEUBAUTEN album ‘Halber Mensch’ via Potomak
Featuring new BRONSKI BEAT singer John Jøn Foster, ‘Hit That Perfect Beat’ was a frantically paced HI-NRG track helmed by Adam Williams of THE SELECTER who had been co-producer on EURYTHMICS’ singles ‘The Walk’ and ‘Love Is A Stranger’. Impressed by his work for DEPECHE MODE, Gareth Jones was brought in for the final mix which replicated the pumping presence of ‘Master & Servant’.
Having risen to co-producer during ‘Some Great Reward’, Jones continued in the role for ‘Black Celebration’. Martin Gore’s songs had got bleaker and inspired by German film director Werner Herzog, Daniel Miller wanted a dystopian intensity, a feeling which ramped up when the band finished the album in Berlin. ‘Stripped’ was the “remarkable” single that heralded this darker direction.
Having debuted with the synth-oriented ‘With Sympathy’ album in 1983, by 1986 MINISTRY had become more abrasive with industrial elements creeping into their sound. Engineered by Gareth Jones but produced by Adrian Sherwood of On-U Sound, the beat driven ‘Just Like You’ featured a Fairlight CMI which mainman Al Jourgensen had been able to acquire as a part of the deal with Sire Records.
Available on the MINISTRY album ‘Twitch’ via Rhino Records
With their musical premise of “muscle and hate”, NITZER EBB took the seed of DAF to develop a danceable industrial finesse. While Phil Harding of PWL fame produced and mixed most of their debut long player released by Mute, Gareth Jones and Daniel Miller teamed up to remix their 1986 independently issued single ‘Let Your Body Learn’.
Available on the NITZER EBB album ‘That Total Age’ via Mute Records
After his DEPECHE MODE Berlin trilogy, Gareth Jones remained in the Mute family to work with ERASURE. The concept of ‘Blue Savannah’ was Roy Orbison doing electronic pop. As co-producer with Mark Saunders, he provided an uncluttered backdrop to showcase the soaring optimism of what was to become one of the most universally loved songs by Andy Bell and Vince Clarke.
Available on the ERASURE album ‘Wild!’ via Mute Records
When Mute Records licensed the CAN back catalogue in 1990, there came the opportunity to work on new solo recordings with their keyboard virtuoso Irmin Schmidt. With Gareth Jones as co-producer, while there were vocals as well contributions from bandmates Jaki Liebezeit and Michael Karoli, the closing synth and piano instrumental ‘Gormenghast Drift’ was an atmospheric delight.
An attempt at prog synth on the seventh ERASURE album saw Gareth Jones and Thomas Fehlmann of PALAIS SCHAUMBURG work together as producers on the ambitious if flawed self-titled opus. While there was the brilliant under rated single ‘Fingers and Thumbs (Cold Summer’s Day)’, there were also beautiful emotive neo-classical moments such as ‘Grace’ among the highlights.
Available on the ERASURE album ‘Erasure’ via Mute Records
The 21st Century incarnation of BOYTRONIC saw the return of original frontman Holger Wobker. The anthemic ‘Living Without You’, which was one of two songs produced by Gareth Jones for the parent album ‘Autotunes’, utilised an impressive array of instrumentation including electronics, filmic orchestrations and rock guitars as well as Wobker’s impassioned vocals.
Available on the BOYTRONIC album ‘Autotunes’ via Strange Ways Records
When it suggested that MESH work with Gareth Jones, the band were initially reluctant because of the inevitable DEPECHE MODE comparisons. But Rich Silverthorn remembered “He was a really nice guy. We spent about 10 days locked in eating Chinese food, laughing and mixing ‘We Collide’”. Of the six tracks Jones mixed, ‘No Place Like Home’ proved to be one of the most poignant songs of MESH’s career.
Available on the MESH album ‘We Collide’ via Dependent Records
On the milestone of his 65th birthday, Gareth Jones’ released ‘ELECTROGENETIC‘, his first album under his own name. Most of the tracks began as improvisations around a modular patch, then crafted in a blend of humanity and electronics. While in Detroit, he developed the subtle rhythmic pulse and absorbing keyboard overtures of ‘Safe Travels’.
Available on the GARETH JONES album ‘ELECTROGENETIC‘ via Calm + Collect
A studio collaboration between Gareth Jones and Daniel Miller, while this project mostly produced covers such as ‘Hero’ for the tribute album ‘A Homage to NEU!’ in 1998 and assorted remixes, SUNROOF released a collection of improvised modular experiments recorded in 2019, of which the energetic ‘1.8 – 2.3.19’ was the most immediate.
As the Yule Tide season gets into full swing, ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK presents a collection of modern seasonal tunes with a more artful slant…
With a song to play on each of the 25 days in December until Christmas, some are covers with a modern approach while others gather their thoughts and emotions into original compositions. But each has their own take on the holiday period, whether happy or sad or both.
Synths at Christmas are not entirely new; ‘Last Christmas’ by WHAM! was primarily made with a Roland Juno 60 while BAND AID’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas? was dominated by PPG Wave 2.2 with a percussive sample taken from ‘Memories Fade’ by TEARS FOR FEARS also being key to the intro.
However the traditional nature of Christmas often dictates traditional instrumentation in its songs, which means that Christmas synth songs are comparatively uncommon and a more recent phenomenon.
Whatever your plans whether with the family or in the studio, please remember, a synth is for life and not just for Christmas… may it bring you lots of cheer! The 25 songs are presented in yearly then alphabetical order within…
BE MUSIC Rocking Carol (1982)
A Be Music production given away as limited edition flexi-disc of 4400 given away at The Haçienda on Christmas Eve 1982, with the greeting “Merry Xmas From The Haçienda And Factory Records”, this was NEW ORDER covering the traditional Czech seasonal tune also known as ‘Jesus Sweetly Sleep’ and ‘We Will Rock You’ as a robotic electronic tone poem.
Recorded as part of an album on behalf of Special Olympics that featured U2, Madonna, Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, Bryan Adams and Alison Moyet among others, EURYTHMICS’ glistening electronic take on romance during the winter season was cited by ASCAP as now the most played version of the song which was made famous by Darlene Love.
Originally recorded by S.P.O.C.K for Energy Rekords’ ‘Virtual X-Mas 92’ EP and then a bonus song on their 1995 compilation ‘A Piece Of The Action’, this cover of the Irving Berlin standard made famous by Bing Crosby was suitably melodramatic as the holiday season was celebrated in The Neutral Zone while under threat of an alien attack.
Available on the compilation album ‘Virtual 2020 X-Mas’ (V/A) via Energy Rekords
SAINT ETIENNE Featuring TIM BURGESS I Was Born On Christmas Day (1993)
Delightfully catchy with a house-laden bounce, ‘I Was Born on Christmas Day’ was written in acknowledgement of band member Bob Stanley’s birthday for an EP ‘Xmas 93’. Featuring a duet between Sarah Cracknell and special guest vocals by Tim Burgess from THE CHARLATANS, the joyful narrative saw the couple elope, confusing some fans and press.
Originally recorded as a sparse ballad for the B-side of 1990 single ‘Your Sweetness Is Your Weakness’, Pete Burns’ foray into the music for holiday season was given a dancier makeover in 2000 and in hindsight, now sounds like a stylistic blue print for PET SHOP BOYS ‘It Doesn’t Often Snow At Christmas’. The two would later work together on the excellent ‘Jack & Jill Party’ in 2004.
Available on the DEAD OR ALIVE album ‘Fragile’ via Demon Music Group
With their naïve wispiness, understated cinematics and disco beats, if there act who are ably suited to Christmas pop music, it is Swedish duo SALLY SHAPIRO. A cover of a song by fellow Swede Nixon, the lines “The first time that I saw your face on a cold December night, it was a Tuesday on a gig with a band that we both liked” captured an innocent romance and the aural warmth of the named apparel.
Available on the SALLY SHAPIRO album ‘Disco Romance’ via Paper Bag Records
PET SHOP BOYS It Doesn’t Often Snow At Christmas (2009)
Originally recorded in 1997 for an exclusive fan club single but remixed in 2009, ‘It Doesn’t Often Snow At Christmas’ was a suitably cynical offering. Famous for keeping THE POGUES ‘Farytale Of New York’ off the 1987 UK Christmas No1 spot with their cover of ‘Always On My Mind’, while this didn’t hit those commercial heights, it provided a very PET SHOP BOYS take on the madness of the festive season.
Available on the PET SHOP BOYS EP ‘Christmas’ via EMI Records
CHEW LIPS might have disbanded but in 2010, on the back of their only album ‘Unicorn’ and its subsequent tour, they were on a productive high. ‘When You Wake Up’ was a bonus tune recorded and given away as a Christmas gift to fans at the end of that very successful year. Delivered with lead singer Tigs’ usual feisty panache, listening back only highlights how much CHEW LIPS are missed.
HURTS All I Want For Christmas Is New Year’s Day (2010)
With their TAKE THAT dressed as ULTRAVOX template, Theo Hutchcraft and Adam Anderson turned their attentions to memories of “the worst Christmas of our lives”. In true Bros Go To Bavaria style, despite the mournful start, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is New Year’s Day’ transformed itself into a hopeful anthem with a big chorus and lashings of tubular bells.
Available on the HURTS album ‘Happiness’ via Major Label / RCA
LOLA DUTRONIC Another Christmas Without Snow (2010)
In the UK, a wet Christmas is always more likely, but LOLA DUTRONIC’s ‘Another Christmas Without Snow’ resonated with its melancholic yet pretty demeanour. The project of Canadian producer Richard Citroen and using a flexible roster of wispy female vocalists, the tones of Lola Dee came over all dreamy like SAINT ETIENNE and conveyed the season’s mixed emotions.
Andy Bell and Vince Clarke’s version of this traditional Ecclesiastical Latin carol continued an ERASURE tradition that had begun with ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ for the CD edition of the ‘Crackers International’ EP in 1988. With a precise electronic backbeat, ‘Gaudete’ was taken from its 16th Century origins and thrown into the new millennium with a cheeky ‘Ice Machine’ reference for good measure.
Available on the ERASURE album ‘Snow Globe’ via Mute Artists
Whether it was a Casio, Yamaha or Roland, everyone wanted ‘A Synthesizer For Christmas’. Texan couple HYPERBUBBLE took that enduring memory and turned it into a delightful synthpop ditty that could resonate with electronic geeks from 8 to 80 the world over. Short but sweet, it was another joyous “cartoon automaton symphony” from Jess and Jeff.
If ‘Twin Peaks’ met ‘Leader Of The Pack’ under the mistletoe, it would sound like this. Possibly the best Christmas tune of the last 10 or so years, VILE ELECTRODES’ harrowing tale of a departed loved one is strangely enticing, with the beautifully haunting echoes of Julee Cruise’s ‘The Nightingale’ lingering over the frozen lake.
‘Find Peace’ was a Christmas song longing for the cold but merry winters of yesteryear under the modern day spectre of global warming, armed conflict and political tension. The off-kilter analogue buzzing and almost random sequences made for a striking listen as a frantic percussive death rattle and an emotive synth drone take hold to provide an appropriate backdrop for the eerie but beautiful voice of Hannah Peel.
Available on the HANNAH PEEL single ‘Find Peace’ via Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club
MARSHEAUX We Met Bernard Sumner At A Christmas Party Last Night (2015)
‘We Met Bernard Sumner At A Christmas Party Last Night’ was a wonderfully whispery synthpop number that was classic MARSHEAUX. The lyrics were constructed from the song and album titles of NEW ORDER to provide an imaginary narrative on Marianthi Melitsi and Sophie Sarigiannidou surreally bumping into the Manchester combo’s lead singer at a Yule Tide function.
On 1974’s ‘Kimono My House’ album, the Mael brothers recorded a song called ‘Thank God It’s Not Christmas’, a typically perverse SPARKS romp that had nothing to do as such with the holiday season. After their FFS collaboration, Russell and Ron ended the year with ‘Christmas Without A Prayer’, a fitting offering which also amusingly outlined that albums by WINGS were actually unwanted gifts.
“A twisted cover of a cover of a cover”, this synth laden reinterpretation of the tune based on a traditional Czech carol made famous by a bizarre but highly enjoyable version by David Bowie and Bing Crosby, saw former ABC stalwarts Mark White and Stephen Singleton reconvene as VICE VERSA to wax lyrical about 303s, 808s, 909s and a “shiny new Roland toy”. It was a fabulous combination of sleigh bells, squelching arpeggios and of course, drum machines…
When you’ve had enough of Christmas shopping and the in-laws, there’s probably nothing better to let off steam than a bit of ASSEMBLAGE 23. While not exactly seasonal, Tom Shear’s Futurepop discoscape captured many of the mixed emotions endemic with the final month of the year, all “Silent and alone, trying to make sense”.
Available on the ASSEMBLAGE 23 album ‘Endure’ via Metropolis
A cover of Finnish metal glamsters HANOI ROCKS, this take on ‘Dead By X-Mas’ from the nocturnal synth duo SIN COS TAN aka Juho Paalosmaa and Jori Hulkkonen came over a bit like Billy Idol gone electro, but with an elegiac twist. Bizarrely in 2006, the former William Broad issued his own collection of seasonal themed tunes entitled ‘Happy Holidays’ … it’s a nice day for a ‘White Christmas!
With female empowerment lyrics like “I don’t need any money or a new handbag, I just need a kind of thing I’ve never had, who says you have to have some shabby gifts”,FERAL FIVE attacked tacky commercialism in a sonic cacophony of crunchy bass guitar, big beats, sparkling electronics and chilling string machines for an alternative take on festivities.
Available on the FERAL FIVE single ‘I Want U’ via Primitive Light Recordings
Made famous by Greg Lake, CIRCUIT3 used analogue synths such as a Sequential Pro-One, Roland JX10, Korg Wavestation and Moog Sub37 to add an eerie chill to the already cynical song protesting at the commercialisation of Christmas. The lyricist was Peter Sinfield who later wrote the words to BUCKS FIZZ’s No1 ‘The Land Of Make Believe’ which warned against the evils of Thatcherism.
Written by Howard Blake for the 1982 animated film ‘The Snowman’ which later added a cameo intro by David Bowie, ‘Walking In The Air’ became a hit for Aled Jones although the original version was actually sung by choir boy Peter Auty. Tom Andersson is the Swedish synthesist and retro gamer known as WAVESHAPER and his symphonic instrumental synthwave cover was both respectful and beautiful.
If ACTORS did Christmas songs, then it would have probably sounded like this gothic motorik number from the ever cheerful Rodney Cromwell. Written for by Cherryade Records’ ‘A Very Cherry Christmas’ compilation, its chilling ARP synth strings and driving bass guitar was in total antithesis to Cliff Richard with bleak observational lyrics “like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ turbo-charged for 2022”.
Available on the RODNEY CROMWELL single ‘Cold Christmas’ via Happy Robots Records
SOFTWAVE featuring Barney Ashton-Bullock Will It Ever Be Christmas Again? (2022)
Presented as “Probably the first synthpop Christmas song in Danish music history”,SOFTWAVE provided a hopeful message to hold back on overindulgence. ‘Andy Bell Is Torsten’ writer Barney Ashton-Bullock made a cameo as Santa Claus to remind everyone that “Self-service, doesn’t mean self, self, self…” and that joy comes from being able to give to others.
Something of a tradition having covered ‘Walking In The Air’, ‘Lonely This Christmas’ and ‘Deck The Halls’ in previous years, Gemma Cullingford took Christina Rossetti’s poem and Gustav Holst’s musical arrangement of ‘In The Bleak Midwinter’ into darker and colder electro dance territory, reflecting today’s divided world in a cost of living crisis.
It was the late Seymour Stein who said “the reason ERASURE are so great is because they make people feel good about themselves”.
Together as ERASURE, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke have been one of the most consistent British pop acts ever. Originally released in 2015 to celebrate the duo’s 30th anniversary, Mute / BMG have reissued ‘Always – The Very Best of ERASURE’ as a revised and updated double vinyl LP set for the first time.
It would be fair to say that Mute Records’ initial commercial success came on the back of Vince Clarke’s songcraft. First with DEPECHE MODE and then YAZOO with Alison Moyet, Clarke demonstrated his marvellous pop sensibilities amongst all the cult acclaim that was accorded to acts like THE NORMAL, DAF and FAD GADGET.
However, Clarke suffered from recurring disillusionment and having left DEPECHE MODE and disbanded YAZOO, his new project THE ASSEMBLY with producer Eric Radcliffe had hit a brick wall despite a 1984 hit ‘Never Never’ featuring THE UNDERTONES’ Fergal Sharkey. It had been intended to use a different vocalist on each track with BLANCMANGE’s Neil Arthur and BOURGIE BOURGIE’s Paul Quinn among those mooted to take part.
Photo by The Douglas Brothers
“I want to get back to KRAFTWERK, you know” he said to International Musician & Recording World at the time, “Synths that sound like synths, not like brass, or voices or whatever. I know it’s not hip, but I don’t care”. Having decided on a fresh start, Clarke placed an advert in Melody Maker simply stating “Versatile voice wanted for established songwriter”.
A 21 year old ex-butcher Andy Bell was one of the many applicants and was audition #36. In front of a judging panel that also included Mute supremo Daniel Miller and producer Flood, the latter noted that Bell was the only candidate who hit falsetto during one of the audition pieces ‘Who Needs Love (Like That)?’. Impressing with not only with his Moyet-esque vocal technique but his range as well, in neo-X Factor style, Andy Bell was declared the winner and ERASURE were born.
Although Vince Clarke was considered to have a Midas touch following his success with DEPECHE MODE, YAZOO and THE ASSEMBLY, ERASURE’s debut album ‘Wonderland’ was not an instant hit. Released as the lead single, ‘Who Needs Love (Like That)?’ was mistaken by some to be a previously unreleased YAZOO recording.
However, it was very immediate and although Clarke had penned ‘Who Needs Love (Like That)?’ solo, there was a special spark developing both musically and personally between the pair. Soon a collaborative aspect to composition emerged that had not been present in DEPECHE MODE and rarely occurred in YAZOO. Songs were generally written as a duo on guitar or piano before any consideration of electronic embellishment was made.
Among the album’s highlights were the joyous ‘Reunion’ and the funky ‘Push Me… Shove Me’ which also displayed some Italo disco tension. The ‘Wonderland’ HI-NRG centrepiece ‘Oh L’Amour’ also flopped as a single but undeterred, ERASURE toured the college circuit to build up a new fanbase from scratch outside of DEPECHE MODE and YAZOO. Vindicated in 1987, ‘Oh L’Amour’ became a belated hit single for DOLLAR.
The 12” release of ‘Oh L’Amour’ was to become a sign of ERASURE’s future as it contained a thrilling Boystown cover of ‘Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!’. At the time, ABBA were considered passé; but a few years before while on holiday in Tenerife with BLANCMANGE’s Neil Arthur and Stephen Luscombe, the threesome had a tape of the Swedes’ most recent greatest hits collection ‘The Singles: The First Ten Years’ on constant rotation. It was here that the idea of BLANCMANGE doing ‘The Day Before You Came’ was formulated; Clarke was also taking notes…
Following his disillusionment of playing live with YAZOO where the two Fairlights he had hired had proved so troublesome that reserve backing tapes were used as the tour progressed, technology had become more reliable and compact so that meant going on the road in a van was now much more straightforward. ERASURE’s 1986 live set-up featured an Oberheim Xpander, a three module Yamaha TX816 rack, a Sequential Pro-One and two Casios, all driven by a BBC computer using the UMI-2B MIDI sequencer with Yamaha RX11 and Roland TR727 drum machines handling the rhythms.
Clarke and Bell were still getting to know each other so could be forgiven for their tentative start but the potential in the chemistry between the two hit paydirt with ‘Sometimes’, the first new single after ‘Wonderland’. Just missing out on the No1 spot in Autumn 1986, it was released ahead of the second album ‘The Circus’ and showcased what was to become a signature ERASURE sound with bubbly infectious electronics augmented by rhythmic acoustic strums.
Again produced by Flood but given the final once over by PWL Mixmaster Phil Harding, ‘Sometimes’ marked the beginning of an imperial phase as further hits followed, continuing with the vibrant ‘Victim Of Love’. But ERASURE also took two songs into the charts with poignant political sentiments against the Thatcher era; ‘It Doesn’t Have To Be’ protested against the UK government’s apathy towards the Apartheid regime of the racist South African government while ‘The Circus’ highlighted the plight of those made unemployed in the wake of key UK industries being closed down or sold off.
Meanwhile songs on ‘The Circus’ such as ‘Spiralling’ and ‘Hideaway’ confirmed ERASURE were more than just a great singles act; Hideaway’ was ERASURE’s very own ‘Smalltown Boy’ while the elegiac ‘Spiralling’ was a masterpiece, showcasing Bell’s fine voice in sparse surroundings.
1988’s ‘The Innocents’ produced by Stephen Hague was symbolic in that it was the first time that Vince Clarke had reached the third album milestone with a project… he had finally settled down! As with ‘The Circus’, further political observations came with the excellent ‘Ship Of Fools’ which surprised as the lead single with its maturer pace. But ‘Chains Of Love’ provided more of what was expected, as did the brass punctuated ‘Heart Of Stone’ while ‘Phantom Bride’ took a more serious turn in a commentary on forced marriage.
But the album’s opening song ‘A Little Respect’ was perfection from the off with its combination of Vince Clarke’s pulsing programming and strummed acoustic guitar As the busy rhythmical engine kicked in, Andy Bell went from a tenor to a piercing falsetto to provide the dynamic highs and lows that are always present in all great pop songs. It was deservingly nominated in the ‘Best Contemporary Song’ category at the 1989 Ivor Novello Awards.
To consolidate their best year to date, ERASURE ended 1988 with the seasonally themed ‘Crackers International’ EP. The lead track was ‘Stop!’, a throbbing Giorgio Moroder-inspired disco tune that borrowed counter-melodies from Donna Summer’s ‘Love’s Unkind’. Also featuring ‘Knocking On Your Door’ and ‘The Hardest Part’, the EP helped ERASURE’ maintain their profile while they were preparing their next plan of action. And as it was dropping out of the charts at the start of the new year, ERASURE won the ‘Best British Group’ accolade at the 1989 BRIT Awards,
With Gareth Jones and Mark Saunders at the production helm, 1989 saw ERASURE release their most ambitious album yet in ‘Wild!’ with a tour and accompanying stage set to match. ‘Blue Savannah’ imagined Roy Orbison doing electropop with a rousing sense of optimism to become one of ERASURE’s most universally loved songs, while the surprising Latin romp of ‘La Gloria’ saw Bell realise his Carmen Miranda fantasies. ‘Piano Song’ and ‘How Many Times?’ were the minimally structured ballads while ‘Star’ and ‘Drama!’ provided the hits with the latter displaying a previously unheard turn of aggression.
Amidst the success of the ‘Wild!’ campaign which culminated in a huge open air party at the Milton Keynes Bowl, Clarke was however less sonically satisfied. It had become apparent to him that there were technical limitations in the now dominant MIDI standard when sequencing, known as “MIDI slop”. In order to achieve the tighter feel of his earlier work with YAZOO on the ‘Upstairs At Eric’s’ album in particular where the various synthesizers were controlled using the Roland MC4 Micro-composer and ARP 1601 sequencer, the next ERASURE album ‘Chorus’ eschewed MIDI completely. The restriction of using only analogue synthesizers and no drum machines was applied to its production, save the occasional sampled cymbal crash. The sequenced monophonic nature of the equipment meant there would be no traditional chords either.
With this return to analogues, KRAFTWERK was crossed with Gloria Gaynor on ‘Love To Hate You’ and the energetic vintage thrust of ‘Breath Of Life’ recalled DEPECHE MODE’s ‘Speak & Spell’ album. The superb emotive ballad ‘Am I Right?’ was a surprise hit single while amongst the album highlights were ‘Waiting For The Day’ and ‘Perfect Stranger’.
Announced a year in advance at the time of the ‘Chorus’ album’s release was a theatrical spectacular entitled the ‘Phantasmagorical World Tour’ which took up residencies in London, Edinburgh and Manchester, the latter leg of which was immortalised in ‘The Tank, the Swan and the Balloon’ concert film.
Clarke wanted to take his vintage tech philosophy onto the stage and a special hydraulically controlled caterpillar tracked tank was constructed to house his various pieces of equipment. The engine room was an MC4 acting as the main sequencer controlling via CV / Gate, a Minimoog for bass sounds, a Roland Juno 60, a Prophet 5 alternating with a Roland Jupiter 8 dependent on the song programme and the Oberheim Expander with an Akai MPC-60 and Akai Linn synced up to provide the drum sounds pre-sampled from assorted synths. The data for the MC4 was precariously pre-loaded using a high end Maxell cassette to break the sound barrier.
With the choreographed presentation featuring a flamboyant sexy dance troupe and Andy Bell’s infamous sequinned cowboy outfit with no backside, it also included a bingo interval and Clarke dancing as part of a routine during a meaty sounding ‘Voulez-Vous’! And it was with a 4 song EP of ABBA covers entitled ‘ABBA-Esque’ that ERASURE scored their only No1 single in Summer 1992.
One key legacy of ERASURE during this time was that they planted the seeds of an ABBA revival. Not only was there a new compilation ‘Gold’ released after the profile of the Super-Swedes was boosted by ‘ABBA-Esque’ but around the same time, the Australian tribute act BJÖRN AGAIN released ‘ERASURE-ish’ which had Agnetha, Björn, Benny & Anni-Frid styled versions of ‘A Little Respect’ and ‘Stop!’ in time for the party season.
ERASURE’s cover version success also led to PET SHOP BOYS postponing the release of ‘Go West’ which had been due to be available for Christmas 1992; Neil Tenant and Chris Lowe made the decision after it was pointed out doing a VILLAGE PEOPLE cover would look like the duo were aping their rivals’ ‘ABBA-esque’! ERASURE ended 1992 with their first singles compilation ‘Pop! The First 20 Hits’ featuring all of the band’s singles to date. It reached No1 and has since given PET SHOP BOYS ‘Discography’ a run for its money as one of the best greatest hits collections ever.
To take the pre-MIDI analogue path planted during ‘Chorus’ to the next level, Martyn Ware who had used such synthesizers as a member of THE HUMAN LEAGUE and also used the Roland MC4 Micro-composer on HEAVEN 17’s ‘The Luxury Gap’ was recruited as producer for ERASURE’s next album ‘I Say I Say I Say’. Featuring the hits ‘Always’ and ‘I Love Saturday’, Ware laid out a methodology that was fundamentally “old school” to allow Clarke to bounce ideas off him in the studio.
Another technique was to allow Bell to lay down all his vocals first, so that the music could be worked around him to allow more air in the finished recordings. Ware got on well with Clarke and they were to found Illustrious to explore the possibilities of immersive 3D sound design. “I remember with Vince when we were taking about this process and he agreed” remembered Ware, “He said ‘You know what Martyn, I am my own biggest fan, I just think everything I do is brilliant’… it was so disarmingly honest and it wasn’t anything to do with arrogance at all, he just knew he was the master of his craft because he had all the tools at his disposal to do exactly what he wanted…”
The closing ‘I Say I Say I Say’ track ‘Because You’re So Sweet’ was a pretty ballad representative of the mature approach on the album taken by Andy Bell and Vince Clarke although the frantic energy of earlier ERASURE was not forgotten on ‘Run To The Sun’. But at Ware’s suggestion, a choir was brought in for the glorious ‘Miracle’ to provide an eerie contrast to the electronic proceedings. Meanwhile ‘Man On The Moon’ and ‘Blues Away’ outlined how Bell and Clarke were in the classic songsmith mould, regardless of the synthesized backing behind them. Cited by many as ERASURE’s best album, I Say I Say I Say’ was yet another No1.
But ERASURE’s run of five UK album chart toppers ended with their self-titled seventh album in 1995. ‘Erasure’ was Vince Clarke’s attempt at prog synth or as Andy Bell referred to it, the duo’s own ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ or ‘Bright Side Of The Sun’; produced by Thomas Fehlmann who was best known for his work in THE ORB, it was an ambitious if flawed opus with extended intros and the sub-10 minute numbers like ‘Rock Me Gently’.
But there were also emotive neo-classical moments such as ‘Grace’ which recalled the atmospheric drama of prime OMD. The brilliant ‘Fingers and Thumbs (Cold Summer’s Day)’ though was its most accessible offering and remains possibly their most under rated single. The experimentation of the period also led to B-sides such as the delightful KRAFTWERK homage ‘Chertsey Endlos’.
Produced by Gareth Jones and Neil McLellan, 1997’s ‘Cowboy’ brought back the 3 minute pop tunes, with the superb ‘Reach Out’ and ‘Rain’ among the highlights along with the two contrasting singles ‘In My Arms’ and ‘Don’t Say Your Love Is Killing Me’. Clarke declared the album his favourite although Bell felt it lack passion and was too linear. However, ERASURE played the biggest arena tour for quite some time with a promising new live act HEAVEN 17 opening for them…
However, ERASURE then entered a quiet period but it wasn’t until later that it was learnt that there had been more serious concerns to deal with. But when the ‘Loveboat’ album emerged in 2000, it was considered a disappointment all round with discontent in the ranks. Despite production by Flood, Andy Bell admitted how shocked he was when he heard the “weird and indie” final mix by Rob Kirwan that emphasised the more guitar driven dynamics.
The ‘Loveboat’ album lacked the usual ERASURE charm and even its one potentially great song ‘The Moon & The Sky’ was missing an uplifting chorus, something which was only fixed with the Heaven Scent Radio Rework version by Jason Creasey that was later released on an EP. Fans were confused but in the face of poor sales, Clarke quipped on Channel 4’s Electro Pop Pioneers Top 10 show in 2001 that the ‘Loveboat’ album had “a couple of holes in it” while Bell added with a smile, “we’ll just do another one!”.
Fortunes only slightly improved with their mid-career crisis covers record ‘Other People’s Songs’. In a creative rut, what began as an Andy Bell solo covers exercise became an ERASURE one with Vince Clarke proposing Peter Gabriel’s ‘Solsbury Hill’ and THE BUGGLES ‘Video Killed The Radio Star’. Bell’s choices were more from the classic songbook including True Love Ways’, ‘Ebb Tide’, ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’’ and ‘Walking In The Rain’ while a take on Steve Harley’s “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)’ with a Stylophone solo provided another Top 20 hit.
2003 saw a new ‘best of’ compilation called ‘Hits! The Very Best of ERASURE’ but a year later, Andy Bell was in a confessional headspace with his health. Making his 1998 HIV diagnosis and a hip replacement public, this was to affect the mood of the next ERASURE album ‘Nightbird’ although this was to be their best body of work since I Say I Say I Say’. Released in 2005, ‘Nightbird’ was something of a departure as it comprised entirely software synths, enforced partly by Clark’s move to the US, leaving him unable to work with his analogue armoury for a period.
Introspective in its demeanour, ‘Nightbird’ was more layered than anything they had undertaken before. Although ‘No Doubt’ was about riding the storm through tough times, ‘Let’s Take One More Rocket Ship To The Moon’ offered a hopeful “live for today” message. ‘Breathe’, ‘Here I Go Impossible Again’, ‘Don’t Say You Love Me’ and ‘I Broke It All In Two’ were among the many highlights in a brilliantly cohesive work. It was proof if that if you’ve got it but have lost it, the redeeming consequence is you can get it again back if you keep trying…
Issued in 2006, the interim ‘Union Street’ was a collection of previously released album tracks re-interpreted in an acoustic and countrified style. But in the opposite direction, the next ERASURE long player was the more dance-oriented ‘Light at the End of the World’. Produced by a returning Gareth Jones, while the entire album was played on its accompanying 2007 tour, it proved to be lukewarm, sparking more mixed fortunes for Clarke and Bell both creatively and commercially.
However, one of the more memorable tracks that emerged from these sessions was track on ‘The ‘Storm Chaser’ EP entitled ‘Early Bird’. An enjoyable duet between Cyndi Lauper and Andy Bell, it was a soulful slice of Trans-Atlantic synthpop that coincided with Ms Lauper heading towards a career renaissance with her enjoyable ‘Bring Ya To The Brink’ album in 2008.
As the duo took an extended break, Clarke reunited with Alison Moyet for the YAZOO ‘Reconnected’ tour while Bell worked on a second solo album which following aborted sessions with Stephen Hague, eventually saw the light of day in 2010 produced by Pascal Gabriel under the title of ‘Non-Stop’.
ERASURE headlined the closing night of the Short Circuit Presents Mute event in Spring 2011 with guest appearances from Alison Moyet and Fergal Sharkey as another new album ‘Tomorrow’s World’ was pencilled in for the Autumn. However, things were not promising as the severely over rated Frankmuzik was recruited to apply his modern dance production aesthetic.
The first single ‘When I Start To (Break It All Down)’ sounded like a rather anodyne TAKE THAT ballad and Bell’s voice was strained to an auto-tuned flatness, lacking power and soul. The joyous ‘Be With You’ was a good second single choice from the album but still came over as dispassionately mechanised. But much more enjoyable and classic was the Vince Clarke produced ‘Be With You’ B-side ‘Never Let You Down’ which was free of the auto-tune treatments that Frankmusik had applied when helming ‘Tomorrow’s World’.
2013 gave ERASURE the opportunity to finally make ‘Snow Globe’, the Christmas record they had wanted to do since including ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ for the CD edition of the ‘Crackers International’ EP. As well as traditional seasonal tunes and new songs such as the joyous ‘Make It Wonderful’, the centre-piece was the haunting Ecclesiastical Latin carol ‘Gaudete’. Taken from its 16th Century origins and thrown into the new millennium with a precise electronic backbeat, there was even a cheeky ‘Ice Machine’ reference thrown in for good measure.
Following the disappointment of ‘Tomorrow’s World’, 2014’s ‘The Violet Flame’ produced by Richard X saw ERASURE return to form and express an infectious zest for the future. Following his VCMG techno project with former DM band mate Martin Gore, the songs began with Clarke’s pre-recorded dance grooves. Bell vibed instantaneously with these faster pace backbones and the end result was a much more immediate and uptempo album.
‘Dead Of Night’ was the collection’s euphoric, uplifting opening number while despite the cutting rave stabs and thundering rhythms, ‘Sacred’ did bear a rather striking resemblance to GUNS ‘N’ ROSES’ ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’! But the best number from the sessions was ‘Be The One’ in its remixed treatment by Paul Humphreys who added some of the beautiful Synthwerk magic that characterised OMD’s brilliant ‘English Electric’. With ‘The Violet Flame’, ERASURE returned to the Top 20 album charts for the first time since 2003.
But following their 30th anniversary, ERASURE returned in a more pensive mood for the self-produced ‘World Be Gone’ album. The percussive lead single ‘Love You To The Sky’ sounded uninspired and while ‘A Bitter Parting’ ably communicated its anguish, it sounded laboured in its execution. It was a departure but it was not particularly easy listening for ERASURE fans.
Photo by Chi Ming Lai
The first trio of UK shows that came not long after ‘World Be Gone’ was released were oddly paced too. Possibly due to a run of high profile dates opening for Robbie Williams coming straight after, the first hour of the set more or less comprised of hit after hit like a dress rehearsal for those support slots before a run of three songs from the new album found themselves slotted in at the end. This undoubtedly inhibited the expected concert climax before the welcome encore of ‘Victim Of Love’ and ‘A Little Respect’.
ERASURE’s eighteenth studio long player ‘The Neon’ came in the middle of the 2020 lockdown. Described by Bell as “going back to the beginning” with Clarke in love with analogue synthesizers again, songs such as ‘Hey Now (Think I Got A Feeling)’, ‘Diamond Lies’, ‘Nerves Of Steel’ and ‘Fallen Angel’ captured a vibrant immediacy that offered some much needed escapism.
Unable to promote the album in a conventional manner, Bell and Clarke instead held endearing ‘Staying In With ERASURE’ online broadcasts where Clarke and Andy Bell talked about some of their favourite records and answered questions from fans while at the end of the year, they held a Virtual Christmas Party. It was this personable effort to connect compared with some of their contemporaries that highlighted why ERASURE have been so adored by their dedicated following around the world.
With ‘The Neon’ reaching No4 in the UK album charts, their highest placing since ‘I Say I Say I Say’ in 1994, their 2021 tour came just as the world started allowing live events again post-pandemic; it saw ERASURE headline London’s O2 Arena for the very first time. But just as further 2022 arena shows were announced in the UK with BLANCMANGE as the support act along with dates in Europe, North America and South America, the next leg of the tour was cancelled due to unexpected family circumstances.
Aside from ‘Day-Glo (Based on a True Story)’, an experimental record based on reconstructions using parts of ‘The Neon’, ERASURE have been quiet of late but Andy Bell recently emerged to perform solo at various festival events the UK and Ireland. He has also returned to the ABBA cover fold with Claire Richards of STEPS for a stomping version of ‘Summer Night City’.
ERASURE’s enduring legacy is great emotive pop songs but with an openly gay front man, Andy Bell has been a trailblazer for equality and acceptance with Vince Clarke as his loyal ally. Continuing the good work laid down by SOFT CELL, ERASURE have along with PET SHOP BOYS furthered the cause of the synth duo as the most practical format to make quality pop for outsiders that has also managed at times to crossover into the mainstream.
Photo by Richard Price
ERASURE is a long standing pop marriage that only PET SHOP BOYS can equal. Compared with PET SHOP BOYS, while Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe may have scored more UK No1 singles, Andy Bell and Vince Clarke come out on top with more UK album No1s over the same period.
One of the other reasons ERASURE have been able to achieve longevity is that Bell and Clarke have given each other space and allowed the flexibility to undertake side projects. The first Andy Bell solo album came out after ‘Nightbird’ in 2005 and saw collaborations with Claudia Brücken and Jake Shears. Since 2014, he has been involved in the ‘Torsten’ trilogy with a series of theatre shows written by Barney Ashton and Christopher Frost.
Meanwhile, Clarke produced a wealth of instrumental material with Martyn Ware which was collected as the 8CD boxed set ‘House Of Illustrious’ as well as doing remix commissions, running his own label VeryRecords and presenting The Synthesizer Show with Reed Hays of REED & CAROLINE on Maker Park Radio in New York..
In the expanded ‘Total Pop! The First 40 Hits’ deluxe boxed set booklet issued in 2009, Andy Bell said “Some people like the records and some can’t stand them I guess”. But as Vince Clarke dryly said back then: “We’re just going to keep making records. We’ll never split, sorry folks!”
As the title of the new SOFTWAVE EP suggests, every song on it has an aspiring story.
‘Aspire’ is the Danish synthpop duo’s first new body of work since they opened for OMD at the start of 2020 on the Scandinavian leg of their ‘Souvenir’ greatest hits tour.
The inspiration came after Catrine Christensen and Jerry Olsen were chosen to remix a couple of track for Andy Bell of ERASURE’s ‘Club Torsten’ collection. These songs document their own existential crisis over the lockdown period while seeking to motivate others to achieve new goals.
Opening ‘Aspire’ with the bittersweet superpop of ‘Thank You For Breaking My Heart’, it reflects on the positives of a toxic relationship ending, with shackles unlocked and new opportunities beckoning. Embracing the glistening shades of vintage ERASURE, this solo Christensen composition declares “Without you there’s no dark” as light shines again through this catchy Eurodisco with Olsen’s Clarkean interventions.
More rugged, ‘Supernova’ is the classic SOFTWAVE vein, with rousing verses and uplifting choruses over a backing track rich in counter melody akin to ‘Something Is Missing’. Dedicated to Andy Bell himself as a one of a kind worth looking up to, it also ably captures the bubbly poise of ERASURE.
With a fight back, ‘Don’t Bully Me Again’ gets its message across in a midtempo number seeking détente, while ‘Wake Up’ plays with rhythm variation to reinforce its tension, poignantly declaring “we’ve run out of fuel” as a challenging winter looms.
Ending with ‘This World’, this number is a highlight as it presents a darker austere than previous SOFTWAVE songs, with a depth that could point to a future direction. “We want people to go deeper and reflect on how they see the world today” said Christensen, “We just want people to think themselves”. Despite the sombre feel, it is a call to action that fits with the aspirational aims of this EP to encourage people not be afraid of the dark and to stick together.
As strange times continue, despite the adversity, there is always hope and it is a message that SOFTWAVE have provided clearly with ‘Aspire’.
You’ve heard the music, listened to the podcast, now you can read the book…
‘Electronically Yours Vol 1’ is the autobiography of Martyn Ware. From his synth innovation with THE HUMAN LEAGUE and HEAVEN 17 to productions for Tina Turner and Terence Trent D’Arby to ambient collaborations with Vince Clarke, it is the story of his humble working class origins in Sheffield, rise to acclaim and million selling records.
In between, there was his teenage friendship with former-bandmate Phil Oakey that led to the formation of THE HUMAN LEAGUE who were subsequently declared “the future of music” by David Bowie. After a Coup d’état that led to Ware leaving THE HUMAN LEAGUE, he formed BEF, a production company from which an umbrella project named HEAVEN 17 with singer Glenn Gregory and fellow League refugee Ian Craig Marsh became an international success, most notably with the huge hit single ‘Temptation’.
Ware achieved two No1 albums as the producer of ‘Introducing The Hardline According To Terence Trent D’Arby’ in 1987 and after HEAVEN 17 went into hiatus, the sixth ERASURE album ‘I Say I Say I Say’ in 1994. The latter link up with Andy Bell and Vince Clarke eventually led to HEAVEN 17 returning to the fold as the opening act on 1997’s ‘Cowboy’ tour and becoming a favourite on the live circuit to this very day.
‘Electronically Yours Vol 1’ also allows Ware to articulate his views as a proud socialist, something he considers to be a soulful, personal and moral duty. Anyone who considers politics and music should not mix have perhaps missed the point of his music; the themes of HEAVEN 17’s first two albums ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ and ‘The Luxury Gap’ highlighted the class divide that got only wider under the government led by Margaret Thatcher.
Martyn Ware chatted candidly with ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.CO.UK over a game of Vintage Synth Trumps about the history of technology, how the music industry has changed over his multi-decade career and his fruitful working relationship with Vince Clarke.
The first card is the EMS Polysynthi…
I’ve never played one of those but I’m a big fan of EMS design in general, my first band THE FUTURE featured Adi Newton who owned an EMS Synthi AKS suitcase synth. I couldn’t get any sense out of it at all but it made a fantastic racket that you couldn’t predict.
The number of people I have talked to on the ‘Electronically Yours’ podcast who have talked about EMS in fond terms, it’s the one that I covet…
The EMS Polysynthi was at our college studio and it sounded horrible… I thought it was just me but then a few years ago, Vince Clarke declared it as “the worst sounding synth ever made”*laughs*
It looks nice and colourful which is generally a good sign but how weird is that? I never saw it in his studio, maybe he didn’t have it out because he didn’t like it.
Next card is a Roland SH3a…
I had one of those! This was around 1979-80, it was a very nice synth, I liked it a lot but it wasn’t as good as the modular synths that I was more familiar with. Roland were starting to move into more mass production stuff at that point and appealing to a bigger market. They were using a lot of the same components but somehow, the filter was not as extreme so the sounds were less electro-punky like I preferred at that time. They redeemed themselves with the Jupiter 4 but it was too effete, too soft.
So did it get used on ‘Reproduction’ or ‘Travelogue’?
No, it was sort of the unloved runt of the litter. I just couldn’t get it to go far enough for my taste, it was a bit safe. I think Roland toned down the extremities of the filters to make it more usable for the average Joe.
I’m always fascinated by synths that artists don’t like, I remember Billy Currie of ULTRAVOX saying his was the Prophet T8 because it cost a fortune and was nothing like the Yamaha CS80 which he’d sold it for…
Haha! We’ve all done that! We regularly sold our old synths for whatever the latest thing was, that proved to be a massive mistake as soon as we approached the FM synthesis period which I never really got on with.
So with your book, you mentioned you started it 3 years ago, is it basically a product of lockdown?
I’d been thinking about it for a while and then lockdown happened, I thought if I don’t do it now, I’m not going to do it. I’m one of those people that HAS to be doing something.
If I’d had been locked inside during lockdown like in some countries, I would have gone insane. During lockdown, there were two things that I quickly determined; one was to start this autobiography.
My daughter was living with us then so I employed her with the research as I can’t remember a lot of it as I never kept diaries. I’ve got a sketchy knowledge of stuff and remember individual incidents. So over three months, we did solid research using a spreadsheet with a timeline but after a month, this spreadsheet took up a whole wall!
It’s like getting your ducks in a row, you’ve got to have a cogent understanding of what was connected to what happened in what time order. It can become like David Niven’s ‘The Moon’s A Balloon’ which is a series of reminiscences but I didn’t want it to feel like some old bloke’s book! Although I’m an old bloke, I wanted it to feel dynamic.
So once you’ve established the timeline correctly, you can start messing about with it or approach it from the point of view of themes. What I ended up doing was a combination of themes, chronological stuff and to break it up a bit, there are contributions from people who have been important to me throughout my career ranging from the producers I’ve worked with like Pete Walsh, Greg Walsh and Richard Manwaring to various musicians.
The final bit of the jigsaw is essentially me going through EVERY track I’ve ever recorded with BEF and HEAVEN 17 and explaining the process behind it. So for people like yourself and those who are interested in the technical and creative aspects, this will be great. I’ve never really seen that in other musical autobiographies, I was partly inspired by Peter Hook’s ‘Substance’ book so kudos to him, I’ve nicked that idea, thank you.
Your next card is the Sequential Pro-One…
Now then, this one’s interesting. I’ve never used one but I’ve played with one… when you were in the studio in the 80s, you had a budget to rent equipment and try out stuff. We were fairly happy with the synths we’d got, but from time to time, something wouldn’t be available from the hire company so they would suggest “X”, so the Pro-One was one of the things we tired. I like Sequential Circuits as manufacturers and I know Vince Clarke has one of these so I messed around with it then. The basic oscillators and filters are quite pokey so I like it from that point of view. I think it was more of a performance synth.
You’ve mentioned in the past that you favoured the Japanese manufacturers over the American ones…
I always thought with the American synths, I liked the roundness in their tone, I would have killed for a Moog Modular like Wendy Carlos or Giorgio Moroder had but I couldn’t afford it. But they were more performance oriented…
I’ve never been a very good keyboard player, so it wasn’t my desire to find something that would enable me to perform in a musicianly way or to imitate a sax or oboe or whatever. I was never interested in that.
I was more into textures and from that point of view, Korg and Roland were much more on that kind of odd Japanese trip. The approach that they took to the user interface for synthesis was more theoretical. But a lot of the American manufacturers, for me, were aimed at a traditional musician, so when somebody was going into a synthesizer shop to try something out, they could easily get a sound that they were familiar with out of it. I was never keen on that, I wanted something that sounded unfamiliar, so there was a philosophical difference actually.
One time you did go down the American route was for ‘Pleasure One’ with the Emulator II…
Yes, but I’m not really counting this in with that American synth ethos because we had a Fairlight which was frankly a disappointment. We used it on ‘How Men Are’ but it was quickly superseded for me by the Emulator II. Ian Craig Marsh spent £40,000 on something that rapidly became a doorstop *laughs*
Ian was gutted when I bought the Emulator II for about £3,500 plus a magneto-optical drive with the latest CD-ROM. This was state-of-the-art, not even computers had these things apart from mainframes. So for domestic use, this was almost unheard of. We had access to this gigantic library of sounds, which today, nobody thinks twice about. Back then, it gave you an advantage and the sound out of the Emulator II was miles superior, as well as its samples. It became my workhorse for a good 4 or 5 years in productions.
Stephen Hague said the Emulator II was his bread and butter for about 5 years…
It was very elegantly designed, the people who did the sound libraries for them knew what they were doing. It was very warm sounding compared to other things.
Here’s another card, the Korg Mono/Poly…
I did fall for the whole M1 thing but after the early Korgs, between 1981-85, I didn’t buy any Korg equipment because everything Roland was coming out with was so brilliant and I didn’t see any advantage in spending a lot of money on what was essentially, not that different. I’ve played with a Korg Mono/Poly more recently and it’s fine…
You’re often thought of as a Roland man, is there an unconsciously loyalty with particular manufacturers…
I think the development process and timeline of Roland felt more cutting edge than any other manufacturer. Because we were self-identified as needing to be “cutting edge”, there didn’t seem any reason to stray from that. The Jupiter 4 was incredible, I still think it’s the best sounding traditional keyboard synth, rather than modular. The Jupiter 8 was good and ahead of its time but it didn’t sound as good as the Jupiter 4 and so on and so forth. If Roland had started falling behind in the late 80s, then I might have switched. I had a Roland S-700 series sampler which because of the converters sounded better than the Akai ones.
So with your book, was there a story you had completely forgotten about that came up in research?
Yeah, quite a few. They were amazing days in the first half of the 80s, I didn’t have a holiday for 3 years! It was that time when Virgin were making so much money from the birth of CDs that it was flooding in, so we felt we had to take advantage of this good fortune… but, while we didn’t think this money was coming out of thin air, we weren’t really fully concentrated on the fact that we’d have to pay all the recording costs back for instance. We didn’t fully recoup on HEAVEN 17 until the late 90s on the recording side.
There was one major story that I’d forgotten about, I was reminded about it by Glenn. We were recording ‘How Men Are’ at Air Studios in Oxford Circus and we were getting cabin fever. The news was full of Thatcher’s government committing a huge amount of public expenditure on cruise missiles. We were absolutely terrified like the majority of people were that we were going to be blown off the face of the planet! *laughs*
There was this idea of Mutually Assured Destruction as discussed on ‘Let’s All Make A Bomb’ from ‘Penthouse & Pavement’ and it just seemed like the whole world was going to sh*t… now that sounds familiar! Back then, we were heavily involved in the anti-nuclear movement and we’ve always been activists. One day, we just said “we’ve got to do something positive” as people we’re looking up to us as a politically motivated band…
Photo by Gered Mankowitz
So what happened?
I can’t remember whose idea it was. I think it was Ian’s and he said “why don’t we do a banner and put it on the top floor above Topshop on Oxford Circus as a protest?”. We thought in our demented minds that this was a great idea so we got some canvas and painted it to say “HEAVEN 17 SAY NO CRUISE IS GOOD NEWS” with the CND logo on a 20 foot by 4 foot banner.
We wanted it on the corner to get the maximum viewing on Oxford Circus but we had not really thought this through because how do you get this thing up? There was this ledge outside the window a metre wide and I’m not that great with heights! But Glenn said “I’ll do it” while Ian was completely mad and said he WOULD do it.
Meanwhile our engineer Jeremy Allom, a crackers Australian dude, said not only would he do it but would take his bike onto that metre long ledge and rode it around the outside of the building, overlooking the street with a hundred foot drop! I was like “I AM OUT!” and went home!
So Glenn, Ian and Jeremy put it up on a summer’s evening and Glenn took a polaroid… he came round my house and said “Martyn, take a look at this, it’s f*cking amazing!”… this photo is in the book by the way. I was thinking “this is great, it’s going to be in the newspapers”. But next thing in the morning, I get this phone call from Gemma Caufield, A&R co-ordinator at Virgin Records saying “YOU’VE GOT TO TAKE THE BANNER DOWN! THE POLICE ARE THREATENING TO ARREST YOU!” The owners of the building were threatening to sue us and we were given an hour to take it down… I didn’t even put it up there! *laughs*
Here’s another card, this is a fluke, a Korg 700s!!
Now you’re talking, you fixed this! So the Korg 700s, it’s the one I’m most fond of as it was the first synth I ever owned, apart from the dual stylus Stylophone I had. I’ve started taking the 700s out on tour again to play ‘Being Boiled’, the audience can’t believe what it sounds like.
It’s a totally different experience to any digital synth. The solidity of the bottom end is incredible and the filters are amazing. It had two oscillators that you could tune against each other or make them interfere using the ring modulator function, plus it’s monophonic of course, which suits me cos I’m sh*t!
The filters are called “travellers” and it’s got really weird colourful switches saying things like “expand”, WTF does that mean? I know what these things do now because I know how synths work but back then, it was mysterious. It had a white noise oscillator, there’s delay and vibrato. That was used in THE FUTURE before THE HUMAN LEAGUE and I’m really fond of it, if it ever got destroyed, I would be heartbroken.
When THE HUMAN LEAGUE played at the original Marquee on Wardour Street in 1978, it was rammed and they couldn’t get any more people in, we thought we were hardcore electro-punk! I found out 6 months ago that some people got turned away because it was full… two of them were David Bowie and Iggy Pop! Fortunately Bowie came to see us later at The Nashville. We opened for Iggy later on the ‘Soldier’ tour when Glen Matlock was in his band.
When THE HUMAN LEAGUE opened for punk bands like SIOUXSIE & THE BANSHEES, THE STRANGLERS and PERE UBU, the audiences were initially confused but they soon came round and turned into our core support in the end. It was different time and people now seem to be more segmented in marketing terms whereas then, it was much more open.
Your ‘Electronically Yours’ With Martyn Ware podcast has gone very well, you’ve done a lot of episodes, has it got bigger than you expected?
Absolutely 100%, I did it really as a distraction over lockdown… I had about 20 or 30 people who would probably do it. I like the podcast medium and listening to audio books while walking around London. I thought “I could do that”; there was nobody really doing anything in this sector of music. The thing I like about podcasts is they are truly international, there were colleagues and friends in American who knew people who might be interested, so one thing leads to another. A friend of mine from Sheffield who was the singer in a band called SOUNDS OF BLACKNESS introduced me to Maurice Hayes who was musical director for Prince, I would never have thought about approaching these people. It’s got a life of its own now.
Are there any artists that you haven’t interviewed yet who you would like on ‘Electronically Yours’?
There’s some I’ve been chasing since the start who have said they’ll do it, but for a number of reasons, it hasn’t happened yet. The main one is Brian Eno who I know, I don’t think my career would have happened without him on every level from Roxy to his ambient stuff to his work with Bowie and Fripp etc. He’s agreed to do it but he’s so busy.
Kate Bush has turned me down for the podcast and BEF but has always been sweet, she said it’s not something she’d do, I think she’s a very delicate flower. There’s another woman Annette Peacock whose 1972 album ‘I’m The One’ I loved, I got into a long dialogue with her and she’s still doing amazing stuff in her late 70s but she wants to combine appearing on the podcast with her next release. I’d like to chat to Cosey Fanni Tutti, she said she’s happy to do it but only when she’s ready.
There’s a few who have turned me down like Kevin Rowland who’s a friend of mine but didn’t fancy doing it… some people aren’t comfortable with autobiographical long form… the other main one is Green Gartside who I’ve worked with and known for 30 years but he’s not responded.
Time for another card, and it is an ARP Axxe…
I’ve not used a lot of ARP stuff in recording terms. Vince Clarke has nearly every ARP synth on earth and duplicates of a lot of them, so I got the chance to play with them… I just think a lot of those synths sound quite similar, what would you say the characteristics of the ARP Axxe were?
The ARP Axxe is a smaller version of the ARP Odyssey, I remember when Billy Currie spoke to me, the thing he loved about the Odyssey over the Minimoog was it had sliders rather than knobs so he could almost play heavy metal on a synthesizer, it was about player controllability…
I was curious to find out what the weapon of choice was for synth-funk bands in the 70s but one day, I stumbled across a video of THE GAP BAND and they had an ARP Pro-DGX. So I started looking into it and the reason why it was the weapon of choice was it had control features like polyphonic aftertouch which other synths didn’t have. A lot of synth basslines from the period had slurs between notes using ribbon controllers, that became the funky bass synth so that’s my ARP story.
Another card and it’s the EDP Wasp…
I love the Wasp but it’s completely unusable… it’s one of the most beautifully graphic designed synths, but it sounded irritating to me, a bit like its name! It was a bit like a toy, but not in a good way.
Two more cards, this is one you wanted, an EMS Synthi AKS…
Now you’re talking, I really want one of those. If anyone wants to distort my cultural development and sell me one at a reasonable price, I am definitely up for it. I want it as a piece of design but I can’t justify it for the price it’s going for these days. It’s a thing of immense beauty, what do you think?
There was one of these at the college studio which had the EMS Polysynthi and the Roland System 100 which was the synth I took to out of all of them… I never got on with the Synthi AKS because I couldn’t get my head around it, I just wanted to make sounds straight away which you could do with the System 100…
Yes, you’ve got to know what you’re doing, the Synthi can be difficult to get it into registration with a keyboard, it’s not a simple matter of plug and play at all, what with that matrix patch bay…
With the System 100, you could almost make something out of nothing, it was like no matter what you did with it, something happened and you could make it sound like what you wanted…
As it says in the manual, “there are no illegal connections…”
So how did you discover the Roland System 100 and make it your next purchase after the Korg 700s?
That’s not true actually, I bought the 700s and Ian bought the System 100 and sequencer at the same time. So those two and a tape machine became our tools to create demos in the early days. I learnt to use it and the System 100 is fantastic as a teaching tool, it’s so clearly laid out and easy to show what happens. When I teach my students on the MA Songwriting and Production about analogue synthesis, I’ve got a digital oscilloscope that I put on the end of the output and it shows the shape of the waveform, the tones are so pure.
But the story behind my System 100 is when I produced ‘I Say I Say I Say’ for ERASURE in 1993, I had been waxing lyrical about the System 100 as Ian had sold his. Vince had one of course and two days before Christmas, there was a knock on the door and there was a bunch of boxes outside. I was thinking “what’s this?” and Vince had bought me a complete System 100 with speakers and everything! I couldn’t believe my eyes, he had been saying to me that I needed to get back to pure electronic music. Apart from being an incredibly generous gesture, it was his way of changing my cultural development back again. It’s a beautiful story.
So what was the production dynamic like between you and Vince for ‘I Say I Say I Say’?
Here’s the story, I’d never met Vince or Andy before but I was a fan and I was contacted one day out of the blue from Mute Records saying Daniel Miller would like to speak with me. I was a big fan of THE NORMAL and SILICON TEENS so next thing I know, Daniel who I had never spoken to before asked if I would produce the next ERASURE record.
It turned out he didn’t realise I did productions and I said “I’ve done Tina Turner and Terence Trent D’Arby!”; Vince said the same thing after I met him in Amsterdam later. I laid out a methodology that I thought would work which was fundamentally old school. Vince just wanted someone to bounce off.
As I read it, him and Andy work remotely, that was certainly the case for ‘I Say I Say I Say’. It’s only when we laid toplines and backing vocals that Andy would come into the studio, most of the time, Vince was on his own. I think he got bored with being on his own and that’s why he wanted different producers. Now Vince KNOWS what he’s doing, production-wise and arrangement-wise but he needed someone as a means of randomising things a bit and to confirm that he’s moving in a different direction.
I remember with Vince when we were taking about this process and he agreed. He said “you know what Martyn, I am my own biggest fan, I just think everything I do is brilliant”… it was so disarmingly honest and it wasn’t anything to do with arrogance at all, he just knew he was the master of his craft because he had all the tools at his disposal to do exactly what he wanted, to create any sound he wanted, impersonate the effect or function of anything from guitars to bass guitars, woodwind to percussion to those aleatoric weird sounds, he could do it all at the drop of a hat. So all he needs is someone to help him organise it.
I contributed some arrangement ideas and record the vocals which he didn’t really want to get involved in, so I was the vocal specialist; I learnt about vocal stacking techniques from Greg Walsh who did ‘The Luxury Gap’, he worked with HEATWAVE and Geoff Emerick who worked with THE BEATLES. These are the dark arts that transform things from average into multi-national hits.
ERASURE had not really had that kind of producer before, in the past it was perhaps kind of more vibey electronics with Flood. There were all great producers, but it was a different approach. On one side I know all about electronics while on the other, I’m more like an old school traditional auteur producer if you like with a 70s vibe… that worked brilliantly with them I thought. Andy has since told me that as far as he’s concerned, the vocals and arrangements on ‘I Say I Say I Say’ are the best that ERASURE have ever done.
What’s your favourite track on ‘I Say I Say I Say’?
I do really like ‘Always’, we worked so hard on that. Right from the outset from the sketch before we fleshed it out and made it really something unique, it sounded like a hit. I was really thrilled when the album went to No1. They are such amazing people to work with, so creative and innovative, they are so self-effacing and open to suggestions, but they also know when the to stop; I know a lot of artists who constantly doubt themselves and aren’t happy even when it’s all done.
The story that sticks with me with Vince is when I went in the studio one day and he asked me what I thought of a track he did overnight. It sounded really good and I suggested 3 or 4 amendments in terms of sound to open out the spectral thing to make it sound bigger. I went to have a cup of tea and when I came back 20 minutes later, he had changed every single element and it was much better. It was everything! Can you imagine, the command that any person has of… he’s got like 50 synths that are all CV or gate connected in his studio, a series on MC4s that he programmes in with numbers and BBC Micro UMI which at that point he used to use as well plus Logic… this is a man who has complete command of his craft.
What are your thoughts on songwriting and production in modern synth music? This site has been criticised for not supporting enough new electronic music… I thought I was just being an old git thinking that songwriting is not as good as it used to be. But over lockdown, I listened to a lot of old stuff to lift me up and it seems to generally be true. Also with production and I don’t know if it’s because of software and DAWs, many artists are not crafting their sound anymore…
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, I can’t really add very much to that. There are many reasons for it, the workflow is entirely different now, it’s so quick to get something up to a reasonable standard… the temptation is to fall in love with that “reasonable standard”, the old thing would have been falling in love with a cassette demo. But you can take that reasonable standard and just put a topline on it and then its “OK, that’s done”. I think a lot of the time is because they don’t know…
When I teach songwriting at MA standard, there are some super talented individuals in traditional music terms but the vast majority of them who are in their 20s and don’t have the thematic or cultural context that our generation grew up with.
I love contemporary dance music and avant garde, but I’m against mediocrity. My general theory is if it doesn’t evoke any emotion in me, then I’m not that interested. If it’s exciting or people have a unique take on contemporary songwriting or instrumentals or whatever, I’m down with that. My worry is that everything is becoming more homogenised. I think a lot of it is due to following an economic model and that is a self-defeating mechanism ultimately because people chase the tail.
Honestly, some students of mine have told me “Well, I’ve watched lots of YouTube videos and I’ve done what it says and made a song with four chords and rotated it…” – they’re not doing it to be clever or lazy, they just DON’T KNOW! They’ve not studied great songwriting, they’re not paying attention to the stuff that we grew up with by default. We grew up through the main periods of some innovative artists like Kate Bush, David Bowie, Peter Gabriel etc who were always pushing the boundaries.
I’d like to think people like HEAVEN 17 and DEPECHE MODE were doing the same, but the whole landscape shifted in the late 80s towards marketing and then the whole music scene got steamrollered by the dance fraternity. I love dance music but a lot of it is a bit facile I find, it’s just too easy!
In my opinion, dance music ruined everything…
Here’s a story, when I first met Vince in 1992, he was living in a flat in Amsterdam above a small recording studio. There were these friends of his who we said hello to and what they did every day was do incremental variations on house music. At the end of the week, they would do some vinyl white labels and distribute them among the clubs in the city and see what ones were popular. Literally, they would change 10% of it and I was thinking, if this is the future of dance music, then I’m not interested.
Fortunately there are great artists at all points but what I’m saying is that economically, a lot of that oxygen was sucked up by the dance fraternity up to the 2000s, then it was given to the singer / songwriter cohorts who frankly, unless they are very good, are immensely dull. So we are here now, there is some innovative stuff going on, particularly in the hip-hop scene internationally, but it’s a problem.
I do honestly believe there is no shortage of exceptional interesting stuff as much as there ever was, it’s just harder to find, that’s all. Now there is 50 times more stuff out there than there was in the early 80s.
Recently I got a new iPad so as a test case, I thought I’d see if any idiot could knock up a reasonable sounding dance track on GarageBand… I managed it in about an hour!
I’ll tell you a funny story about GarageBand. When my son was 12 and in the Scouts, he thought he’d do some badges and one was “Creativity”. So I asked him what he was going to do and he said he was going to do something on GarageBand. He did it in 2 hours and it sounded as good as a lot of stuff that comes out now. But he was literally just doing “drag and drop” and I was thinking, this is not good. So I explained to him that if you have an easy way of doing something, the likelihood is that you’ll do that. The stuff that makes things special and engagement is the final 10%. But if you are not encouraged to get there, you don’t know what you don’t know. So that’s why we’re at where we’re at.
The final card Martyn, and it is a Multimoog, this came after the Minimoog when they were trying to be more mass market and cheaper…
Yeah, normally when that happens, the components they use aren’t as good so they don’t so sound as good and so on and so forth. Moogs generally sound great with a round bottom end, I’ve often used the virtual Moog Modular and I’ve got used to adjusting things on the screen… I’ve got f*cking hundreds of sounds…
Yes, this was something you talked to William Orbit and Richard X about in your podcast, there’s just far too many options these days… so when you make music now, how much of it is software versus hardware?
It’s mainly software. I do lots of stuff that’s not straightforward pop music like installations, effects and sound design so that isn’t really about performance in the sense of playing a keyboard, it’s more about assembling things that one finds interesting and engaging.
I’ve got a totally different perspective on all this stuff now since I’ve been doing Illustrious with Vince since 2000, I am much less precious about the ingredients, I am more interested in the content.
So what are your hopes and fears for the book, will there be a Volume2?
There will only be a Volume 2 if Volume1 sells *laughs*
It’s 130,000 words, that’s a lot. I’ve never written that much in my life, I never went to university so I didn’t do a dissertation or anything. It’s been really hard work but I can honestly say that I am happy with the book so that’s a tick. I’m happy with the design. I’m happy with the support I’m getting from the publishers Little Brown. I’ve recently had to read the audio book version that will bring it to life even more.
I hope to do a series of signing events and talks associated with the book. I never thought I’d ever had a physical book, it’s quite something to be an author. And I wrote every word apart from the other people’s contributions. There’s no ghost writing, if anybody doesn’t like it, that’s fine. Someone actually said to me “well, I can’t wait for this but I don’t know if I can deal with your lefty views”… err, that’s who I am mate! I’m not telling you what to think, so don’t buy it then, I don’t care! *laughs*
ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK gives its electronic thanks to Martyn Ware
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Having departed ULTRAVOX, when John Foxx recorded his debut solo record, Gareth Jones was the engineer at Pathway, a studio known for its reggae sessions. While the aim was a starker vision of electronic music, both Foxx and Jones absorbed dub influences where things would be stripped back but one sound given all the power. This aesthetic suited the dystopian ‘Metamatic’ opener ‘Plaza’.
Impressed with the sound of ‘Metamatic’, TUXEDOMOON had originally sought John Foxx to produce their next album ‘Desire’ but unavailable, he put the American art rockers in touch with Gareth Jones. “Gareth was brilliant, fabulous” said the band’s Blaine L Reininger, “He was able to teach us; kind of organise us”. On one of the highlights, ‘Incubus’, the same Roland CR-78 Compurhythm was used.
With a second album and studio both named ‘The Garden’, Gareth Jones was again working with John Foxx realise both. After the colder overtures of ‘Metamatic’, traditional instrumentation returned. ‘Dancing Like A Gun’ contradicted its “Oppenheimer waltzing” line but blended synth with art rock to recall ‘Quiet Men’ from his ULTRAVOX days.
Working alongside Daniel Miller who continued as producer, Gareth Jones had DEPECHE MODE sampling found sounds around the-then derelict surroundings of Shroreditch to create a new sonic template in pop. Many of the songs had socio-political themes as demonstrated by the Alan Wilder composed Cold War angst ditty ‘Two Minute Warning’.
Frank Tovey had been intrigued by German band EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN whose name translated as “collapsing new buildings” and their use of industrial equipment and found objects. So while recording at Hansa, he got Gareth Jones to record a large printing press nearby as the basis for a loop rhythm that became ‘Collapsing New People’.
For his first second solo album, Blaine L Reininger was reunited with Gareth Jones at the production helm. Using Roland’s portable pre-MIDI holy trinity of the TB-303 Bassline, the SH-101 monosynth and the TR-808 Rhythm Composer synced via a customised cable, its highlight was the cinematic synthpop of ‘Mystery & Confusion’ which saw the TUXEDOMOON leader exude a distinct Eurocentric spirit.
An influential Neue Deutsche Welle band from Hamburg, PALAIS SCHAUMBURG were on the bill with DEPECHE MODE at the 1981 Mute Night at the London Lyceum. Their members included Thomas Fehlmann who went on to join THE ORB and experimental producer Holger Hiller. The percussive ‘Beat Of 2’ turned out to be their final single and was produced by Gareth Jones alongside Inga Humpe.
Quirky Neue Deutsche Welle from sisters Annette and Inga Humpe, ‘Yama-ha’ was produced by Roma Baran who had worked on Laurie Anderson’s ‘O Superman’. The “shopping list” synth and sample number listing a number of Japanese tech and vehicle manufacturers was remixed by Gareth Jones. The B-side ‘Memories’ was produced by Conny Plank.
When Gareth Jones was brought in to work with EINSTURZEN NEUBAUTEN, it was to provide a sense of order to the West Berlin group’s experimental metal-bashing. Using sampling technology to provide an avant-dance palette to accompany Blixa Bargeld’s fierce chant of “FÜTTER MEIN EGO”, the sinister rhythm was inspired by the sound of chopping up speed!
Featuring new BRONSKI BEAT singer John Jøn Foster, ‘Hit That Perfect Beat’ was a frantically paced HI-NRG track helmed by Adam Williams of THE SELECTER who had been co-producer on EURYTHMICS’ singles ‘The Walk’ and ‘Love Is A Stranger’. Impressed by his work for DEPECHE MODE, Gareth Jones was brought in for the final mix which replicated the pumping presence of ‘Master & Servant’.
Having risen to co-producer during ‘Some Great Reward’, Jones continued in the role for ‘Black Celebration’. Martin Gore’s songs had got bleaker and inspired by German film director Werner Herzog, Daniel Miller wanted a dystopian intensity, a feeling which ramped up when the band finished the album in Berlin. ‘Stripped’ was the “remarkable” single that heralded this darker direction.
Having debuted with the synth-oriented ‘With Sympathy’ album in 1983, by 1986 MINISTRY had become more abrasive with industrial elements creeping into their sound. Engineered by Gareth Jones but produced by Adrian Sherwood of On-U Sound, the beat driven ‘Just Like You’ featured a Fairlight CMI which mainman Al Jourgensen had been able to acquire as a part of the deal with Sire Records.
With their musical premise of “muscle and hate”, NITZER EBB took the seed of DAF to develop a danceable industrial finesse. While Phil Harding of PWL fame produced and mixed most of their debut long player released by Mute, Gareth Jones and Daniel Miller teamed up to remix their 1986 independently issued single ‘Let Your Body Learn’.
After his DEPECHE MODE Berlin trilogy, Gareth Jones remained in the Mute family to work with ERASURE. The concept of ‘Blue Savannah’ was Roy Orbison doing electronic pop. As co-producer with Mark Saunders, he provided an uncluttered backdrop to showcase the soaring optimism of what was to become one of the most universally loved songs by Andy Bell and Vince Clarke.
When Mute Records licensed the CAN back catalogue in 1990, there came the opportunity to work on new solo recordings with their keyboard virtuoso Irmin Schmidt. With Gareth Jones as co-producer, while there were vocals as well contributions from bandmates Jaki Liebezeit and Michael Karoli, the closing synth and piano instrumental ‘Gormenghast Drift’ was an atmospheric delight.
An attempt at prog synth on the seventh ERASURE album saw Gareth Jones and Thomas Fehlmann of PALAIS SCHAUMBURG work together as producers on the ambitious if flawed self-titled opus. While there was the brilliant under rated single ‘Fingers and Thumbs (Cold Summer’s Day)’, there were also beautiful emotive neo-classical moments such as ‘Grace’ among the highlights.
The 21st Century incarnation of BOYTRONIC saw the return of original frontman Holger Wobker. The anthemic ‘Living Without You’, which was one of two songs produced by Gareth Jones for the parent album ‘Autotunes’, utilised an impressive array of instrumentation including electronics, filmic orchestrations and rock guitars as well as Wobker’s impassioned vocals.
When it suggested that MESH work with Gareth Jones, the band were initially reluctant because of the inevitable DEPECHE MODE comparisons. But Rich Silverthorn remembered “He was a really nice guy. We spent about 10 days locked in eating Chinese food, laughing and mixing ‘We Collide’”. Of the six tracks Jones mixed, ‘No Place Like Home’ proved to be one of the most poignant songs of MESH’s career.
On the milestone of his 65th birthday, Gareth Jones’ released ‘ELECTROGENETIC‘, his first album under his own name. Most of the tracks began as improvisations around a modular patch, then crafted in a blend of humanity and electronics. While in Detroit, he developed the subtle rhythmic pulse and absorbing keyboard overtures of ‘Safe Travels’.
A studio collaboration between Gareth Jones and Daniel Miller, while this project mostly produced covers such as ‘Hero’ for the tribute album ‘A Homage to NEU!’ in 1998 and assorted remixes, SUNROOF released a collection of improvised modular experiments recorded in 2019, of which the energetic ‘1.8 – 2.3.19’ was the most immediate.
via EMI Records
via Lola Dutronic
via Mute Artists
via Socket Sounds
via Vile Electrodes
via Snowflakes Christmas Singles Club
(V/A) via Les Disques du Crépuscule
via Lil’ Beethoven Records
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