Tag: Vince Clarke (Page 1 of 10)

2023 END OF YEAR REVIEW

18 December 2023 / electricityclub

Photo by Jori Hulkkonen

Just as it looked like it would be safe to come out to play, there was uncertainty within the music industry again.

What had become the artists’ favourite platform thanks to its low commission and 0% Fridays, Bandcamp was taken over by Epic Games in 2022 but then following a move by employees to unionise, was sold to Songtradr who immediately dismissed half of its staff… in hindsight, despite its proclamation that this platform cared about the music, it looked like this had been yet another start-up by tech venture capitalists. Just as many acts dropped their own websites in favour of Facebook over a decade ago but were then trapped into sponsored posts to reach the majority of their own fanbase, online shops had been dropped for Bandcamp. So, things are back to square one as many consider a rebuild of their web presence.

Meanwhile, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino made a controversial declaration that concert ticket prices were generally too low and that artists could easily “charge a bit more”. While THE CURE notably refused to do this and capped their face value tickets at $20 for their US tour, the Live Nation sister outlet Ticketmaster applied excessive booking extras of more than $20 per ticket for a “service fee”, “facility charge” and “order processing”! With dynamic pricing in place at a number of high profile events and so-called VIP tickets on the rise (which didn’t actually include a meet ‘n’ greet but only a nearby bar and a lanyard), fans had their “FOMO” anxieties triggered and simply paid up!

Photo by Chi Ming Lai

Another artist who kept ticket prices low was Midge Ure who embarked on the successful ‘Voices & Visions’ tour after a year’s delay due to uncertainties over the Covid situation in 2022. Complimented by a straightforward but very effective light show and material from his second and third long players with ULTRAVOX ‘Rage In Eden’ and ‘Quartet’, it was a triumph. He was rewarded with a 70th birthday show celebrating his career at The Royal Albert Hall, which despite its plush surroundings was also kept affordable.

Who says an artist has no control over retail pricing? But one band who were shamelessly happy to charge more for concert tickets, more for merchandise and more for physical releases were DEPECHE MODE. For their first album and tour since the passing of co-founder Andy Fletcher in 2022, the remaining members played the death card with ‘Momento Bori’ and managed to plonk an even more underwhelming arena show into the stadiums of the world… at least the ‘Global Spirit’ tour featured risers!

With renowned UK venues such as Printworks and Moles closing down, as had already been highlighted by Juls Garat of US goth band PILGRIMS OF YEARNING via social media in 2022: “If you’re spending a kidney on DEPECHE MODE tickets and not attending a local show this weekend, I don’t wanna see you complaining that there’s no scene, local venues or new music anymore”. However, one seemingly oblivious Devotee said about the inflated ticket prices: “Really don’t know what the issue is. Happily paid £108.00 for a DM ticket. Would have paid more!!”. And therein lays the problem… DEPECHE MODE played a date at Stadion Wankdorf in Bern and that said it all! As the man who Devotees call a genius once wrote: “Some great reward will be coming my way…”

Photo by Chi Ming Lai

As The Devotees wallowed in their collective misery during 2023, the Stockholm Syndrome was stronger than ever. On the Bratislava leg at the National Football Stadium, one of The Black Swarm commented to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK: “I was there… I must admit, a bit disappointed… but I still love them!!!”. It was business as usual for DEPECHE MODE, with “business” being the operative word. It was reported that so much money had been sucked out of the European alternative music market in particular that a number of acts had to schedule their planned tours to 2024, while others who had made good albums worthy of attention in 2023 got lost in the sea of DM propaganda on the web.

Despite increased ticket prices at all levels, gig etiquette declined to the worst possible standards with the constant chatter and bad manners among some attendees. Surely if you have paid upwards of £30 or more for a show, you might want to pay more attention and enjoy it? ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK has never seen it this bad in the 43 years it has been going to concerts, but this entitled arrogance to talk extremely loudly about total bollocks is a undoubted legacy of Brexit and Covid which in combination has normalised a lack of social graces in gathered environments… and when challenged, these total numbskulls become aggressive, pitifully unaware that they are ruining the evening of those around them.

Meanwhile, there was another undesirable element who only go to gigs to post selfies and badly distorted footage on their socials… these were often the sort of people who actually hated the band back in the day, but after 40+ years realised they like the song on the Vitality or Waitrose advert so are sudddenly giving it the big “I AM” about being a fan… but BECAUSE they are only there for one song, they then treat the rest of the gig like they were out with their mates in the pub! 🤬

Photo by Chi Ming Lai

The best live shows of the year came from PET SHOP BOYS and DURAN DURAN with their arena extravaganzas full of hits, classic fan favourites and great staging. Among the album celebrations, CHINA CRISIS ran through their second long player ‘Working With Fire & Steel – Possible Pop Songs Volume 2’ on tour to celebrate its 40th anniversary and founder bassist Peter Hook took the first NEW ORDER compilation ‘Substance’ out on the road to coincide with its expanded 4CD reissue.

“Sweden’s best kept pop secret” KITE impressed with an imitate headliner for their debut London gig and later at Cologne’s Amphi Festival to a much larger crowd, while the return of Ollie Wride to the London stage at The Scala illustrated why he has potential to be the next synthwave artist to crossover into the mainstream.

Photo by Ed Miles

‘Time’s Arrow’, LADYTRON’s second album since their return from hiatus proved to be something of a disappointment while fairing slightly better with its anti-Brexit sentiments, ‘Bauhaus Staircase’ was touted as the final album from OMD; now kissing the strict machine, having previously been supportive of new electronic pop via ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK championed acts MIRRORS, VILLA NAH, VILE ELECTRODES, METROLAND, TINY MAGNETIC PETS and SOFTWAVE, their choice of art glam hipsters WALT DISCO as opening act on the UK leg of the 2024 tour was symbolic of the general poor state of modern synthpop ie pop music using synths, particularly within the narrow-mindset of Brexit Britain.

Although the UK was continuing to party like it was 1933, the incendiary language that Cruella Braverman was using was so extreme that she was even dismissed from fronting the Conservative Party new wave covers band A FLOCK OF SIEG HEILS… as a trio of poets from South Yorkshire once said: “BROTHERS! SISTERS! WE DON’T NEED THIS FASCIST GROOVE THANG!” ✊

Reflecting a wider issue, 2023 also saw ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK publish its fewest number of ‘Introducing…’ new artist articles since its inception in 2010 with only Brigitte Bardini and Madeleine Goldstein featured. There were a number of possible reasons…

Photo by Bella Salvatore

“The technology leads the art form and it always has” said veteran producer Steve Lillywhite on a recent Rockonteurs podcast, “if the technology allows you to reference other people’s records… you WILL do that!”. This was summed up by an Apple Mac advert featuring sample-based British pop singer PinkPantheress demonstrating how to have a hit by appropriating a topline from Kelly Rowland and plonking it into GarageBand before processing her voice through AutoTune and nabbing the intro of ‘Gold’ by SPANDAU BALLET… you said it yourself Miss Walker, IT SOUNDS LIKE GARBAGE!

While the accessibility, usability and sound quality of modern tech has totally democratised music making, as another veteran producer Stephen Hague put it to ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK “it’s made it far too easy”, with the end result being familiarity and imitation rather than innovation. Now that an acceptable sound is able to be obtained fairly quickly on software such as GarageBand, the level of songwriting has generally declined in many genres. Artists abstain from putting in the hard work towards the actual songcraft because they think their track is already great, as it sounds like someone they’ve based it on!

However, the misuse of “synth” as a description reached a new nadir in 2023. There were those using “synth” or “synthwave” in their brand identity who proudly revealed via their Spotify Wrapped that their Top Genre was actually rock or made bizarre comments like “What I like most about synthwave is the guitar solos”. Meanwhile one artist declared they were synthpop because they had spent their youth “listening to too much Madonna”! But synth music as an enduring form is ultimately doomed when social media platforms using “Synthpop” in their idents think that guitar-based bands like BIG COUNTRY and COCTEAU TWINS are part of it, or compile acoustic playlists!! 🤦‍♂️

“Synth” has now somehow become is a general term for any retro-flavoured pop with an element of shiny artifice whether synthesizers have been used or not! These artists and “content creators” are now too young to understand what “synth” in music actually once meant and probably think the term is short for “synthetic” as in clothes and hair products, as opposed to “synthesizer”.

That said, 2023 was not all bad and there was a lot of excellent music. The song of the year was by the unlikely synth hero in glum rocker Lloyd Cole; while guitars made a more prominent but limited return on his album ‘On Pain’ following 2019’s electronically-dominated ‘Guesswork’, the standout song ‘The Idiot’ saw him provide a touching narrative on the relationship between David Bowie and Iggy Pop as they relocated to Berlin in 1976.

Swedish veterans PAGE took the Numanisation of their poptronica to its zenith by bringing in former imperial phase Numan band members Chris Payne and RRussell Bell on their new album ‘En Ny Våg’. Across the Öresund Bridge, Danish synthpop couple SOFTWAVE showed the world the ‘things we’ve done’.

Photo by George Tripodakis

Another music veteran Ricky Wilde teamed up with NINA to reveal their ‘Scala Hearts’; full of classic pop references and a modern sheen, this was the record Wilde had wanted to make for a few years but hadn’t been able to with his sister Kim. Its creative drive showed and this was also the best long player that NINA had been part of since she launched her solo career in 2011. In a busy year, NINA also found time to satisfy many a red blooded fantasy by collaborating with Kid Moxie on the ‘Lust’ EP released by Italians Do It Better.

The Finns were strong too, with Jaakko Eino Kalavi and Jori Hulkkonen producing two of the best albums of 2023. The former’s eclectic ‘Chaos Magic’ featured Alma Jodorowsky, Mr Silla and Jimi Tenor as special guests while the latter’s ‘There Is Light Hidden In These Shadows’ brought in John Grant, Ralf Dörper, Jake Shears, Jon Marsh, Juho Paalosmaa and Tiga.

While maintaining his front man role in MESH, Mark Hockings presented his solo project BLACKCARBURNING in long playing form and was ‘Watching Sleepers’. Also going it alone, Alison Goldfrapp squarely hit the dancefloor via ’The Love Invention’ with Kylie Minogue’s similarly glitzy ‘Tension’ as its companion. But with ACTORS still busy touring the world, the planned long playing debut from LEATHERS was yet to emerge but there were two new singles in the interim.

METROLAND and side project 808 DOT POP ambitiously released albums in five different formats with exclusive tracks on each between them simultaneously, in a move that had not been seen since 1978 when all four members of KISS released solo records on the same day. Much more discretely, ITALOCONNECTION came up with ‘Nordisko’ which comprised of Nordic pop disco covers. More ambient experiments were served by John Foxx, Vince Clarke, Patricia Wolf, Johan Agebjörn and the late Ryuichi Sakamoto, while putting those ethereal textures into song was Hinako Omori with her appropriately named second album ‘stillness, softness…’

Germany’s BEBORN BETON offered bleak commentary on the state of the planet with ‘Darkness Falls Again’ but encouraged everyone to be dancers in the dark while Chinese band STOLEN highlighted this ‘Eroded Creation’. Within their ‘Circle Of Doom’, NNHMN had pressing matters closer to home while ZANIAS emerged from her ‘Chrysalis’. FERAL FIVE confronted and worked with AI to declare ‘Truth Is The New Gold’ and Finlay Shakespeare tapped into his ‘Illusion + Memory’.

Photo by Tim Darin

Among the promising emergent acts with debut EPs were NEU-ROMANCER and DIE SEXUAL while German solo artists Jennifer Touch and Laura Dre added to their long playing portfolios, as did OHNOTHING and BUNNY X. Fronted by respectively by John Grant and Neil Arthur, CREEP SHOW and THE REMAINDER outlined the benefits of collaboration while CAUSEWAY joined forces with R. MISSING for the single ‘Wear The Night Out’.

Despite having plied their trade for over 50 years, SPARKS continued to be as eccentric as ever and even had Cate Blanchett appear in the video for ‘The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte’. With ‘*Happiness now completed’ and Dave Ball returning to the live fold after a period of serious illness, SOFT CELL effectively issued another new album featuring a significant number of previously unreleased tracks including covers of Giorgio Moroder and X-RAY SPEX to provide a much more satisfying listening experience than the parent ‘*Happiness not included’ record. Then there was the unexpected recorded return of CLASSIX NOUVEAUX with their ‘Battle Cry’.

Veteran acts who ceased active operations many years ago got worthy boxed set treatments; TELEX provided ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK with the funniest interview of the year in support of their self-titled retrospective on Mute while LANDSCAPE were comprehensively catalogued by Cooking Vinyl. Not to be left out, the trusty Cherry Red via their Lemon imprint showcased how underrated NEW MUSIK and their leader Tony Mansfield were, especially with the latter’s sound clearly audible in today’s pop acts such as THE WEEKND.

Despite the return of Q, the jury was still out on whether music magazines are still desirable aside from their CD and vinyl artefacts. Meanwhile, music-based social media dumbed down its engagement to cut ‘n’ paste Wikipedia snippets accompanying archive photos or artwork, pointless 26th anniversary posts and non-significant birthday celebrations to attract likes. Comments from the public such as “My favourite album… I wish I still had it!” and saying “Happy Birthday” when the platform wasn’t even connected to the artist concerned only highlighted further the continuing inane nature of online interaction. And this was without those irritating “POV” reels and reaction videos on TikTok and Instagram which were unfortunately prevalent!

The less said about the right wing gammon infested sh*t show that Twitter has become, the better but on the new Threads platform intended to take it on, PENDULUM’s El Hornet remarked “omg threads is full of music industry self help w*nkers making lists about things nobody asked abort! ABORT!” 🤣

With such platforms also seemingly centred around the exposure of flesh with photos “just for fun” be the subject a golfer, gamer, painter, baker, comedian, hairdresser, photographer, psychologist, racing driver, book reviewer, poet, dating coach or Lego enthusiast, is it any wonder that several music artists resorted to setting up OnlyFans accounts to sell nude photos!

With pun totally intended, in this challenging climate for exposure, some acts simply got a bit too big for their boots and were unbearably conceited on their socials with their bragging and frivolous chatter to appease a needy flock who hung onto their every word, desperate to be seen to be “friends” of wannabe stars while crowdfunding towards their spa weekenders and vet bills for their cat… it was therefore ironic that one of these acts declared “Music isn’t a competition!” when it appeared that another band might be taking away some of their limelight! Well, stop acting like it’s a 24 hour edition of ‘The Apprentice’ then!!! 🙄

On the other side of the coin, one too cool for school band took a strange attitude to promotion by refusing to accept questions about their influences while trying to come over like total originals. Despite their inspirations being blatant and obvious to hear, they had a misguided self-belief that they were somehow speaking a new language! But everybody knows they started out by purchasing the sheet music to ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ from a New York thrift store! 😆

A few years ago, a lone British artist was complained about the lack of press attention for their new admittedly good album, but then proceeded not to answer emails containing interview pitches. Artists need to engage, no matter how much they say they hate doing promotion, they can’t have it both ways. The days of RADIOHEAD not doing interviews to promote a new album and letting the music speak for itself are long gone…

With the world now making up for lost time since 2020, it would be fair to say that 2023 has been something of a strange year!

Text by Chi Ming Lai
18 December 2023

Always: The Legacy of ERASURE

15 August 2023 / electricityclub

Photo by The Douglas Brothers

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!”

‘Always – The Very Best of ERASURE’ is released by Mute / BMG as a double vinyl LP on 18 August 2023

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Text by Chi Ming Lai
15 August 2023

LISTENING TO THE MUSIC THE MACHINES MAKE Interview

3 December 2022 / electricityclub

‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’ is a new book that tells the story of the Synth Britannia generation, an unlikely melange of outsiders, pioneers and mavericks who took advantage of affordable music technology to conquer the pop charts in the UK, Europe and even America.

Written and assembled by Richard Evans, his high profile roles have included the establishment of the This Is Not Retro née Remember The Eighties website and working with ERASURE on their internet and social media presence.

He has conducted years of extensive research to document the synthpop revolution that began from a British standpoint in 1978 with THE NORMAL and THE HUMAN LEAGUE before TUBEWAY ARMY took this futuristic new sound to No1 with ‘Are Friends Electric?’.

Using the subtitle ‘Inventing Electronic Pop 1978 – 1983’, while the book primarily sources period archive material, additional input comes from Neil Arthur, Dave Ball, Andy Bell, Rusty Egan, John Foxx, Gareth Jones, Daniel Miller and Martyn Ware. Meanwhile, Vince Clarke contributes the foreword while a third verse lyric from the ULTRAVOX song ‘Just For A Moment’ provides the book’s fitting appellation.

A conversation between two kindred spirits, Richard Evans and ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK spent an afternoon talking by the window as the light fades about electronic pop’s musical impact and enduring cultural influence, despite the massed resistance to it back in the day.

For this book, you’ve focussed on 1978 to 1983, some might say it should be 1977 to 1984?

I knew roughly what I wanted to cover and my lofty ambition for the book was to create a document of all the most important records, artists and events that created this shift in pop music. Until this specific generation of people started messing around with keyboards without any musical knowledge, adopting that punk rock attitude with this new instrument, it wasn’t until that point that I felt that this story really started.

I looked at all the records I wanted to talk about and at the beginning, there’s relatively few. But the important ones for me were THE NORMAL ‘TVOD’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’ and THE HUMAN LEAGUE ‘Being Boiled’. In fact, ‘Being Boiled’ was my key one and an early version of the book had the subtitle ‘From Being Boiled To Blue Monday’; I thought that sounded quite snappy and explained what the book covered. But then Daniel Miller said to me “You do know ‘TVOD’ / ‘Warm Leatherette’ came out before ‘Being Boiled’?” *laughs*

So the book had to be specific and start around 1978. Then at the other end, it was because of ‘Blue Monday’. By the time late 1983 comes around, the electronic pop that I have been writing about over this 5-6 year period starts to become indistinguishable from everything else in the charts. All the pop stuff, all the soul stuff, all the American stuff that was coming in, it all had the same sequencer and drum machine sounds, the same production techniques… you could almost not quite work out what was electronic and what wasn’t electronic anymore and ‘Blue Monday’ worked well as a track that was pointing forwards to everything that came next.

By starting at 1978, you are specifically highlighting the start of that British wave because before that, it’s international with bands like KRAFTWERK and SPACE as well as Giorgio Moroder and Jean-Michel Jarre…

That’s absolutely right. There is a brief section at the beginning within the context of the whole book that joins together some of the dots, things that people were taking in their early electronic experiments. Things that Vince Clarke was listening to like SPARKS, things that OMD were listening to like Brian Eno, things that THE HUMAN LEAGUE were listening to like Giorgio Moroder.

Although punk was a driving force for this, the actual punk music wasn’t that interesting to any of them because it felt like music they already knew, whereas they felt these new sounds were something that were unknown to them at that point. The tapestry of their influences was so broad that they would bring in elements of progressive rock, Jean-Michel Jarre and even ELP, putting that in with disco, the German stuff and even the quirky little novelty records like ‘Popcorn’, to create this whole new melting pot.

I’m old enough to have lived through this era, what about you?

This was the first music that felt like it was mine. I grew up in a household where there wasn’t any music, my parents weren’t fans of pop music at all. In a way, that was really important because any music that I found was mine, it wasn’t handed down to me or curated for me. I am the oldest of my siblings so I didn’t have anyone playing stuff in their room that I could hear. Sometimes I would find stuff that was terrible because you make those mistakes.

I started senior school in 1979 so it was really at that point where I became aware of music and its possibilities. But earlier than that in 1977, I was brought up in Chelmsford in Essex and I can remember being in town on a Saturday, seeing the punks hanging around in the shopping centre and I thought they looked brilliant. It was so exciting, they were like scary but otherworldly and I thought they were amazing. When I started senior school, some of those punks were in my school, they were actually kids… in my perception, they weren’t that and were completely ‘other’! I realised I was not so distant from these things *laughs*

You’ve mentioned ‘Being Boiled’, ‘TVOD’ and ‘Warm Leatherette’, but which was your epiphanal moment were you realised you were an electronic pop fan? For me although I had bought ‘The Pleasure Principle’ by Gary Numan as my first album, it wasn’t until I heard OMD ‘Messages’ that I considered electronic music to be my thing…

I don’t know if I have an actual moment to be honest… I realised quite late that I’ve never particularly characterised myself as an electronic music fan, certainly not in the 80s. Looking back, I can see that the things I was listening to and responding to, always had a really strong electronic core. Even if they were rock things like ’Owner Of A Lonely Heart’ by YES which was produced by Trevor Horn, I was obsessed. I was listening to things like ‘The Message’ and that sort of hip-hop stuff… it wasn’t quite electronic music but it had element of precision running through it. Everything I was liking had this common electronic genesis.

One thing that your book does unashamedly focus on which I am pleased about, is that it focusses on the “pop” in electronic pop… other books about electronic music in the past have been a bit “too cool for school”…

Absolutely, that’s completely true. I find it really strange because only quite recently has it been ok to be into “pop music”. Like you say, there’s a stigma towards it, that it’s not “proper music”, that you are not a proper music fan if you listen to it, but a victim of some sort of a commercial heist! *laughs*

I think that electronic pop in this period is so crucial in the development of music, and it was just time for someone to tell the story. I’d been working on the book for a few years and the whole time I thought “someone is going to do this, someone is going to do this before me!” *laughs*

With this book, you opted to reference archive material rather than talk to the stars of the period in the present day?

My idea for the book was to tell the stories of all the bands and releases of that synthpop generation who took music in a whole new direction. Because of what I do in my working life, I am very fortunate in that I have access to a lot of people who were the original protagonists in this story. So I thought I could get in touch with them and job done. I also have a shelf full of music autobiographies and I’m sure you have too! *laughs*

There are loads out there but it was while reading those that made me realise that those stories didn’t always quite marry up. There are two reasons for it; one is this period started 45 years ago, you’re not going to remember these details. Two, these stories have been told so many times that they lose their resonance and the facts just change a little bit to make everything look better or to fit with someone else’s narrative.

Ah yes, legend now accepted as truth like Wolfgang Flür saying OMD came backstage to meet KRAFTWERK in 1975 when they didn’t actually exist at the time…

It’s really easy to say in 2022 that DEPECHE MODE were always going to be a huge band, but in 1981 when there was none of the weight of that knowledge. They were a brand new thing being judged entirely on their first forays into electronic music, it’s a very different way of looking at the music and the people who made it. I realised it wasn’t going to be particularly useful to go to the original people and say “tell me that story again” because they’ve told it that many times that they probably aren’t really feeling it and it gets reshaped over the tellings.

So what I decided to do was go back to the music press of the day. I went to The British Library which is a fantastic resource, it’s one of my favourite places. I looked at all the NME, Sounds, Melody Maker, Record Mirror, Smash Hits, The Face, New Sounds New Styles from 1978 to 1983, everything I could lay my hands on that was music or popular culture related.

I went through all these things, page after page after page and every time I saw something that I attained to this story like a news item, review or interview, I took a photo of it on my phone. I ended up with thousands of photos and it was like a box of jigsaw pieces. Each of these photos was part of a story. Then the writing bit came in stringing these things all together and turning them into this story from all those different perspectives layered on top of each other. Hopefully, that would give it a rounder and more accurate picture because they were the opinions of the time and what the people who made the music were saying about it, without the weight of history that they carry today.

What this book captures and reminds people of, is the viciousness and hostility towards electronic pop from the music press during the period, which perhaps contradicts the rose-tinted view that some fans have of the time now…

It’s really quite strange to read through these original accounts of what was happening, but it’s not so strange in retrospect. At that point in time, punk had just happened and had been quite profitable for the music industry and press, the whole black and white aesthetic fitted very well with the way they presented their material.

There was also this new generation of journalists like Nick Kent and Julie Burchill who were quite vicious with this punk rock attitude which was probably quite exciting at the time. Punk was a very short-lived thing, so they found themselves having to move in different directions and I think there was a resentment that it happened from the media. I think there was a snobbishness which we’ve already touched on that this really wasn’t “proper music” because it was machines, these bands hadn’t paid their dues, they hadn’t picked up the guitar, they hadn’t done the toilet circuit playing to 3 people and a dog, being spat on and having their van stolen, all that kind of thing that supposedly makes you a worthy musician.

So none of these things had quite happened with these electronic pop bands and the music press didn’t know what to make of it. So they could choose to either embrace it as the next big thing, or they could reject it, and many rejected it roundly so…

Can I tell you some irony about Nick Kent’s then-stance? His son is PERTURBATOR, the synthwave star!! But in amongst all this journalistic antagonism, there was one bright light and that was Beverley Glick who wrote as Betty Page in Sounds, a female journalist championing the likes of DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL, DURAN DURAN, SPANDAU BALLET, VISAGE and JAPAN in a male-dominated profession…

She absolutely was and she was the voice that was the breath of fresh air throughout all of this. She was young and she interested in “the new”. In the same way the older journalists were looking for something to call their own, so was she; but her frame of reference was markedly different from theirs. She found it in what they were rejecting and it probably didn’t do her many favours within the profession to be this person until the tipping point happened. The success started to happen with people going “oh, all the Betty Page bands ARE the new wave, they ARE the new pop royalty…”

I hope it was a nice moment for her. In 1982 I think, she changed papers and went to the short-lived Noise magazine and then Record Mirror… hopefully, that was in recognition of her being a leading light in this particular movement.

You’re right to say she was probably among the first journalists to talk to DEPECHE MODE, certainly one of the first to talk to SPANDAU BALLET, to SOFT CELL and JAPAN… she was very vocal and very reasoned. Also reading her, I liked her… I’ve never met her or anything but I liked her style, she wrote a lot like a fan so she wasn’t out there grinding her axe in attempts to look clever, lofty and intellectual. She was reporting the way she was responding to the things she was exposed to and that felt much more interesting and real to me.

The SPANDAU BALLET versus DURAN DURAN thing has been well documented, but what about SOFT CELL versus DEPECHE MODE? They were both on the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ but in 1981, SOFT CELL were rated higher than DEPECHE MODE, any thoughts?

The ‘Some Bizzare Album’ was incredibly prescient and also not quite, because in the increasingly chaotic and strange world of Stevo who was behind it, he was very opinionated but also very passionate. He was playing these sorts of records before anyone else, he was pre-Rusty Egan in terms of the electronic records on the decks. He was interested enough to start his Electronic Party nights at the Clarendon in Hammersmith, putting on people like FAD GADGET.

So he came up with this idea to do the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ and reached out to 12 bands; his hit rate was so great, he had DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL and BLANCMANGE on there, the three of them alone were enough to shape the new generation.

I think SOFT CELL had more of an edge, their image was a lot more together, they looked meaner and a little bit more credible I suppose. Because they had a more credible background and came from art school, in that journalistic way that you have to pay your dues, you have to go through a cycle of things before you’re allowed to call yourself an artist, I think SOFT CELL had more of that. They had more of a concept, they were more artistic and harder edged. DEPECHE MODE came along and were err, just quite sweet…

Yeah, well, they’d just come from Christian camp… apart from Dave! *laughs*

That’s right, their Boys’ Brigade uniforms were probably still hanging in their wardrobes when they were off to do ‘Top Of The Pops’! So they had come from a very different place, they were a little bit younger, they didn’t have that art school background, they’d met at school and messed around in bands. Vince Clarke decides he wants to put this band together who would be a bit like THE CURE, and when Vince starts to put together the bones of what becomes DEPECHE MODE, it seems he’s incapable of writing songs like THE CURE; his aesthetic and musical vibe is entirely pop so he churned out what people termed “bubblegum”.

This term “bubblegum” is in almost every review of DEPECHE MODE’s early works, especially the ‘Speak & Spell’ album. Because of that, they appealed because they were SO pop, but because they were SO pop, they weren’t in the same credibility bracket as someone like SOFT CELL.

Talking of “synthesizer image”, was that important to you as in the equipment that was used and the way it looked on ‘Top Of The Pops’, like when John Foxx appeared with four Yamaha CS80s for ‘No-One Driving’ or ULTRAVOX doing ‘The Thin Wall’ with two Minimoogs, an ARP Odyssey, an Oberheim OBX and much more or Gary Numan’s first TV performances? This was a thing for a while although there would be a backlash later on, like when OMD appeared with a double bass, sax and xylophone for ‘Souvenir’!

I think it was, but in a different way to you. I’m much less technology focussed, I don’t play music, I’ve never picked up a synthesizer, I don’t know my Korg from my Moog from my Wasp. I could never do Vintage Synth Trumps for example *laughs*

Having said that, the aesthetic was really important to me because it felt so different and new. It surprised me in the preparation for this book when looking at the line-ups for ‘Top Of The Pops’ around this period and seeing how unbelievably straight and staid and dull so many of the bands that were coming through from the 70s still were… glam rock aside, they were almost imageless…

Like RACEY and THE DOOLEYS? *laughs*

Yes! Lots of terrible clothes, bad beards and long hair, it all seemed very soft and safe! Now when the electronic bands started coming through, they came with this aesthetic with the keyboards and it looked fantastic. But they also had this new look, they were smarter, had these interesting haircuts and they looked so different. For me, the thing that was most marked about their performances was the sound itself. It was something that I’d never heard before, those noises were SO new and SO modern!

One of the best things about this era was how these weird avant pop songs could enter the charts, they were classic songs but presented in a strange way with these sounds and boundaries were pushed… as much as I embrace this period of music, I always felt when it all crossed over into the mainstream in 1981, I don’t think it was on the cards and kind of a fluke…

I don’t think it was on the cards either… I think everyone was surprised and backfooted by it, particularly the major labels who struggled to keep up with it, in exactly the same what they had struggled to keep up with punk! They came to the party too late and signed all the wrong bands and were saddled with this legacy that they had an obligation to support what was going on, and that’s the point when everything started to become much less interesting.

In terms of the avant pop, I think it was to do with perspective. I think being of the generation that we are of, I think because we were coming of age at that time, it felt we were like a new generation and new things were happening at the time, not just in music but also politically and technologically with computers. So all of these things were happening at once and suddenly the future felt possible and then this music happened at kind of the same time and it felt like the perfect soundtrack to this possible future.

So, I’m going to throw a controversial question at you, in the context of 1978-1983, which is the most important record label out of Virgin and Mute? *laughs due to pause*

… I think creatively, it’s Mute but commercially it’s Virgin.

When I get into this discussion with anyone, I always say Virgin because although they were more established and successful commercially later in this period, they did actually take chances with acts like THE HUMAN LEAGUE, JAPAN and SIMPLE MINDS…

They were both incredibly important and I wouldn’t know who to back in a fight! *laughs*

This is why I wanted to talk about this in the context of 1978-1983 because thanks to some of the business choices that Richard Branson has made over the years which have upset people, the Virgin name has been tarnished as far as their contribution to music is concerned. Meanwhile history has seen Daniel Miller come out smelling of roses. An interesting thing about Virgin in 1980 was that they were close to bankruptcy.

I have heard that and was aware that Virgin did have all sorts of money problems at that time.

One of the things that irked Branson in particular was how OMD were the biggest selling act in the Virgin group in 1980 via the Dinsdisc subsidiary. This had embarrassed him so ultimately he was keen to see Dindisc fall apart so that he could get OMD for the parent company…

Yes, this situation impacted on the bands that we are talking about, there were pressures on people to be more commercial when one of the reasons that they were attracted to Virgin in the first place was so that they could be less commercial should they choose to be.

But then, those pressures were happening within the bands themselves, THE HUMAN LEAGUE are a great example of this. They went in to be wilfully uncommercial and yet they always had that commercial edge, they stated their intent to be a combination of disco and KRAFTWERK. Although they loved being the conceptualists and the renegades with their Machiavellian feeling that they were infiltrating the music industry from the inside, they were starting to feel dissatisfied that their efforts so far hadn’t really crossed over in the way they felt that they deserved to.

So the two things in tandem, the bands wanting to make more of a mark and wanting the recognition that came with that, plus Virgin’s financial situation which meant they needed bands to step up and start making more commercial records, was actually a very powerful moment in shaping some of the most important records in Virgin’s catalogue I would say.

In this 1978-1983 period which you cover in the book, is there a favourite year and if so, why?

Good question! I don’t specifically, it hadn’t occurred to me until you asked, but I think from a writing point of view, the earlier years were the most interesting to me because in 1978, I was 10 so I wasn’t really aware of these things. Lots of these records, I didn’t really hear until later and some much later… one or two of them, and I’m not confessing which ones, I didn’t even listen to until I started writing the book.

So from my point of view as a fan of this music, then 1978 would probably be the most interesting year because it provided me new material to listen to that I hadn’t heard before.

The book talks about a lot of acts who are basically canon now and many of them are still performing in some form or another. But is there an underrated act for you from this period?

For me, I would say YELLO; they were making really challenging and innovative records, they were visually interesting, they had all the bases covered. They gave great press but for whatever reason, it took quite a long time for them to break through into the mainstream and even then, it was only because their music was used in other contexts like films. They were a band who I had underappreciated previously, but have got to know much better through the course of writing the book. They should have been much bigger than they were.

Your book cuts off at 1983 and that’s for the context reasons rather than stopping liking music. But Simon Reynolds said in ‘Synth Britannia’ that it was Howard Jones that made him feel that electronic pop was now no longer special and part into the mainstream… was there a moment when this music changed for you?

I don’t think I have a moment for that, my musical church is quite broad and I’ve never been very over-intellectual about my music tastes, it’s like “I do or I don’t”. Howard Jones came in with a different take on the form and actually, I loved Howard Jones so from my point of view, my love of electronic pop did continue. It blurs and like we talked about earlier, lots more things were interesting in different directions and also taking some of this electronic sensibility into it. They may well have been more interesting to me at the time. However, I was perfectly prepared to accept Howard Jones and the later electronic acts.

After 1984 and then into the new decade, a lot of people were trying to kill off electronic pop, especially around Britpop but was there a point later, and this might tie in with Remember The Eighties, when you thought “this stuff has value and people are liking it again”, that there might actually be a legacy?

You are kind of right that the start of Remember The Eighties came from that. The site was born of a conversation I had with an 80s artist; in my working life, I build fan bases and work for bands, I’ve done this for quite a long time. This artist came to me and said “I’m thinking of doing some new material but I don’t know if I have an audience anymore. If I do have an audience, I don’t know how to reach them”… the reason I’m saying “an 80s artist” is I felt that this particular person didn’t really have an audience anymore, and to find that audience if it was there at all, would be very time consuming for very limited return.

But I started thinking “wouldn’t it be great if there was one place that people could go, people like me who remember the 80s (*laughs*) fondly and could find out what all these people are doing today?”. The strange thing was I was never really interested in it being retro, it was always about today’s news from those bands, I thought “that’s a good idea”. I was learning to build websites at the time and it was early days in all that. I had some time so I just decided to do that, put up some stories and waited to see what happened.

It became something quite successful and partly that was because the whole 80s rediscovery hadn’t happened. Like you said, the 80s came with a bad rep at that point in time and imploded quite messily with lots of non-credible aspects emerging and dominating it. It had eaten itself almost. But the timing just happened to be right and all of a sudden, there were PR companies coming to me saying “Thank goodness you’re there!” because they had nowhere to go with these artists they were representing. So they were asking if I would like to interview then and I was like “Yeah! Great!” *laughs*

That was how the website started so yes, I guess that was the moment for me in 2001-2002. It suddenly felt like these bands had a new cache. I’d invested so much of my myself and spent so much of my money in my teens in their music, that it wasn’t such a big jump to continuing that support of them 10-15-20 years later. The investment was already done, it was more like picking up the story.

For me, it was like 1998, DURAN DURAN had the ‘Greatest’ CD out and were touring, OMD had a new singles compilation and CULTURE CLUB had reformed for shows with THE HUMAN LEAGUE and ABC supporting… but I think it took a long time for something to develop. I don’t think it was until DURAN DURAN reformed the classic line-up with the three Taylors in 2004 and then the OMD classic line-up reunion in 2007 that things got properly kick started… I think it took a while because of the age of the audience, people had mortgages and kids in primary school!

You’re right, it was like a stage of life, you need time to reconnect with the person you used to be.

Your book captures a period, I don’t know if you listen to much modern day pop, but do you think there is an electronic pop legacy today, whether direct or indirect from this 1978-1983 era? The act I’m going to highlight is THE WEEKND…

I definitely do think there is a legacy. I’m not great on contemporary electronic music, the things I hear about, I tend to hear about from ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK and that’s fantastic. I use Spotify a lot and the suggestions function is quite powerful as well. From a sonic musical point of view, I can totally see these bands are referencing things that happened during the period I have written about in the book.

Everything seems to go on cycles but at the moment, in the last year or so, it feels like there’s been a return to a starkness, a certain simplicity of sound. I’m not denigrating it because I think it’s a very effective way of presenting sound. It feels there’s been a period where everything and the kitchen sink has gone into electronic music and its gradually being pared away to a point where the instruments and sounds are getting a bit of space to breathe. It feels like the same sort of sounds that I started responding to on ‘Top Of The Pops’ when we first saw DEPECHE MODE and SOFT CELL.

Although THE WEEKND isn’t strictly an electronic pop artist and more of a one man compilation album who dips in an out of styles like Ed Sheeran (whose own synthpop track ‘Overpass Graffiti’ incidentally is very good even though it rips off ‘The Boys Of Summer’), there was this song THE WEEKEND did called ‘Less Than Zero’ which is exactly what you’ve just described. We mentioned underrated bands and I would say this track sounds like NEW MUSIK…

That’s a great choice actually…

NEW MUSIK have been popping up on these Cherry Red boxed set collections and its obvious now with the passage of time that they were pretty good! They were dismissed as a novelty act back in the day because they had silly voices in the songs, but there’s a crucial connection with that track by THE WEEKND in that there’s gently strummed guitar alongside all the pretty synth stuff. NEW MUSIK’s leader Tony Mansfield went on to produce most of A-HA’s debut album ‘Hunting High & Low’… although A-HA are outside of the scope of your book, they can be seen as the bridge between your book and modern electronic pop like THE WEEKND’s ‘Blinding Lights’…

That’s true, I think A-HA are a really important band and yes, they are not in the scope of the book but if they could have been, I would have been delighted to include them because their canon is quite ambitious and wide-ranging.

Is there another book of this type to cover the later period on the cards at all?

No, I don’t have another book project at the moment. I only actually finished writing this book in July. Naively, I thought you just hand your book in and six months later they hand you a copy. But the process of going through all the edits, the photos, getting the artwork and style right, it’s been quite intense. It’s been quite a challenge to balance it with what I’m doing workwise.

Are there any ideas for a future book?

There are a couple of people who I have come to recognise that they played much bigger roles in this story and in some other stories as well than they are given credit for. But it’s going to take a bit more research in those directions to find out whether there’s a book’s worth of material.

Is an ERASURE book an ambition?

Obviously I work with ERASURE and individually or together, they are probably approached by publishers 2 or 3 times a year with offers to write or be involved in books. At this point, neither Vince nor Andy feel it’s the right time for them to be telling their story. I think they feel so much of what they have to say is already available and they don’t necessarily want to talk about the things that aren’t, because they are the personal things. So at this point, there is not a specific plan. If at any point, there is an official ERASURE book, then I hope I would be involved in some way.

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

Special thanks to Debra Geddes at Great Northern PR

‘Listening To The Music The Machines Make’ is published by Ominbus Press, available from the usual bookshops and online retailers, except North America where the book will be on sale from 26th January 2023

https://inventingelectronicpop.com/

https://www.facebook.com/inventingelectronicpop

https://www.instagram.com/inventingelectronicpop/

https://linktr.ee/inventingelectronicpop

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
3rd December 2022

Vintage Synth Trumps with MARTYN WARE

12 July 2022 / electricityclub

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

‘Electronically Yours Vol 1’ by Martyn Ware is published by Little Brown as a hardback book, e-book and audio book, available from 25th August 2022 via the usual retailers, signed copies can be pre-ordered from https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/martyn-ware/electronically-yours-vol-1-my-autobiography/hardback-plus

The ‘Electronically Yours With Martyn Ware’ podcast can be listened to at https://anchor.fm/martyn-ware

https://www.heaven17.com/

https://martynwareofficial.co.uk/

https://twitter.com/martynware

https://www.instagram.com/waremartyn/

Vintage Synth Trumps is a card game by GForce that features 52 classic synthesizers

https://www.juno.co.uk/products/gforce-software-vintage-synth-trumps-2-playing/637937-01/

Text and Interview by Chi Ming Lai
12th July 2022, updated 20th November 2022

ALKA Regarding The Auguries

6 October 2020 / electricityclub

‘Regarding The Auguries’ is the fourth album by ALKA, the electronic music vehicle of Philadelphian Bryan Michael.

It is also the second ALKA record to be released on Vince Clarke’s VeryRecords, following up ‘The Colour Of Terrible Crystal’ from 2017.

As the ‘Regarding The Auguries’ titles suggests, this long player is not a cheerful affair; “An augury is like fortune telling that comes from looking at the patterns of bird flight” said Michael, “Those patterns usually prophecy some sort of doom…”

‘Regarding The Auguries’ is therefore timely but it was recorded before lockdown. Expanding the ALKA line-up to a three way collaboration with vocals by Erika Tele and sonic interventions from Todd Steponick, the tracks developed in slow motion through file exchange with Michael beginning the creative process.

Despite the album being made under the spectre of existential dread looming, it starts in a comparatively lively fashion with the opener ‘Fractured Time’, catchy and immediate with its vocoder and synth hooks that will delight synthwave enthusiasts, although the bursts of sombre bass signal what is to come. ‘Widthchild’ is more metallic and even funky in the loosest sense of the world while using prominent beats and Japanese prose, ‘Faito’ is exotic and enigmatic.

But then the apocalypse looms in ‘Earth Crisis’ and is inevitably sombre in its apocalyptic ambience although at nine minutes, it rather overdoes it, but parts of it would probably fit in perfectly as part of a dystopian Sci-Fi soundtrack.

‘Scrapple’ is not much cheerer but exploits a harder rhythmic core augmented by a chant although ‘Sourcery’ lightens proceedings and ‘My Heart’ adds chimes over some spacey moods before electronic percussion, percolating hooks and sweet girly vocals provide a lift towards its conclusion. The robotic ‘Solfège’ buzzes and blips, albeit with a shadier tinge while with a subtle arpeggio, ‘Doubt’ doesn’t really go anywhere.

However, despite its title, ‘Dead Like Me’ is more accessible and prettier with fabulous synth tones complimenting Tele’s dreamy voice. The closer ‘King Card’ features Vince Clarke on synths and programming and provides some exquisite chattering texturing to the rainy droning backdrop as a guesting Elizabeth Joan Kelly provides the eerie foreboding vocals.

As per usual with VeryRecords releases, a set of remixes append the main act and the boss works his magic on ‘Faito’ in an accessible upbeat fashion verging on Jean-Michel Jarre territory, the Basildon boy obviously applying the knowledge acquired from his collaboration with the French maestro on ‘Automatic’.

Meanwhile, ‘Solfège’ is remixed by FUJIYA & MIYAGI and is inevitably a slice of pulsing electronic motorik merging into drum ‘n’ bass and DJ JEKYLL takes ‘Fractured Time’ into soulful electronic territory with a steadfast groove.

For those who like darker electronic textures from outside of the pop spectrum with contemplative aural concepts that capture the zeitgeist of uncertainty, ‘Regarding The Auguries’ will be worthy of investigation. But for everyone else, they might want to start with the remixes before attempting the album.

‘Regarding The Auguries’ is released by Very Records as a CD and download on 9th October 2020, available direct from https://veryrecords.com/shop/

http://magicksquares.com

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https://twitter.com/_alka

Text by Chi Ming Lai
6th October 2020