E E FR PLE SAMSUE IS
AUTOBAHN AT 40 Wolfgang Fl端r, Daniel Miller, Andy McCluskey and Michael Rother celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Kraftwerk classic
PLUS OMD / YELLE / A MAN CALLED ADAM / 3D
Deputy Art Sub Contributing
Editor: Editor: Editor: Editor: Editor:
Push Mark Roland Mark Hall Neil Mason Bill Bruce
Contributors: Andrew Holmes, Andy Thomas, Bethan Cole, Carl Griffin, Chi Ming Lai, Daisy Glean, Danny Turner, Dave Mothersole, David Stubbs, Fat Roland, George Bass, Grace Lake, Heideggar Smith, Jack Dangers, Jason Bradbury, Johnny Mobius, Kieran Wyatt, Mark Baker, Martin James, Mat Smith, Miles Picard, Neil Kulkarni, Ngaire Ruth, Patrick Nicholson, Paul Browne, Paul Connolly, Sam Smith, Simon Price, Steve Appleton, Tom Violence, Vader Evader, Vik Shirley, Wyndham Wallace Sales and Marketing: Yvette Chivers Published by PAM Communications Limited Š Electronic Sound 2014. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced in any way without the prior written consent of the publisher. We may occasionally use material we believe has been placed in the public domain. Sometimes it is not possible to identify and contact the copyright holder. If you claim ownership of something published by us, we will be happy to make the correct acknowledgement. All information is believed to be correct at the time of publication and we cannot accept responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies there may be in that information.
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welcome to Electronic Sound 08 Welcome to this free sampler of Issue 8 of Electronic Sound. We hope it will give you a good introduction to our magazine and maybe think about buying the full version of Issue 8 or perhaps even becoming a subscriber. Each issue of Electronic Sound costs less than a cup of coffee in one of those fancy-pants places. To entice you, we have included some goodies from Issue 8, including an interview with Andy McCluskey about OMD’s glorious ‘Dazzle Ships’, a record that lost the band 90 per cent of their fans when it was first released, but is now considered a stone-cold 80s classic. We also have a weighty profile of French electropop oddball Yelle, whose latest album is a total treat, and an extract from the cover feature of the regular edition of the magazine – a huge piece celebrating the 40th anniversary of the release of Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’. The full Kraftwerk article is an in-depth delving into the genesis of ‘Autobahn’, with contributions from several key players and superfans, including Wolfgang Flür, Michael Rother and Daniel Miller. We guarantee you won’t be disappointed. To give you a flavour of the rest of Issue 8, our sampler also includes a slice of history we call Landmarks, where we talk to someone about the making of an electronic masterpiece – A Man Called Adam’s ‘Barefoot In The Head’, in this instance – and an interview with agit-electro newbies 3D. There’s a sprinkling of album reviews and a few other bits and bobs to tickle your fancy too, but there really is so much more in the full edition of the issue. Check out the greyed-out elements of the sampler’s Contents page. You’re missing Synth Town, for example, our hilarious* cartoon strip featuring many of your favourite synthpop stars as you’ve never seen them before. Whether you’re reading on a tablet, on a phone, or on one of the other digital platforms you can can find Electronic Sound, do join us and keep electronic music at the top of your agenda. Electronically yours, Push and Mark
* “Hilarious” is an entirely subjective term
FE ATUR E S
CONTENTS
OMD
SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO
As the band prepare to perform two special live shows at the Museum of Liverpool, Andy McCluskey talks candidly about OMD’s much misunderstood 1983 opus, ‘Dazzle Ships’
There have been some strange goings-on out in the desert of the Joshua Tree National Park in California. And we know a couple of blokes who might be able to shed some light on that
YELLE
TIM GANE & SKY RECORDS
When it comes to ultra-cool electropop, our friends over Le Channel know a thing or two. Proof? Hurtling out of a quiet corner of Brittany comes the fantastically fizzy sound of Yelle
The Berlin-dwelling Stereolab chap gets knee-deep in krautrock for the first in a series of compilations gleaned from the archives of the groundbreaking German record label
KRAFTWERK To mark the 40th anniversary of the release of ‘Autobahn’, former Kraftwerkers Wolfgang Flür and Michael Rother remember its impact on the world, as do superfans Andy McCluskey and Daniel Miller
FUTURE DAYS David Stubbs takes a literary spin down the ‘Autobahn’ with an exclusive extract from his new book, ‘Future Days: Krautrock And The Building Of Modern Germany’
BORIS BLANK A musical career that spans four decades? What Dieter Meier’s shadowy Yello sidekick needs is a box set showcasing a raft of his never-before-heard material
ROC With their freshly re-released 1996 debut album garnering rave reviews a second time around, the south London trio tell us the sticky truth about the sinking of the original album
TECH & ALBUM R EV I EWS
XENO & OAKLANDER The analogue-obsessed duo invite us for a poke around their Brooklyn studio. An Aladdin’s cave of analogue goodies.
TECH REPORT A quick round-up of the highlights at this year’s BPM trade show, featuring the latest goodies from KORG, NOVATION, MOOG and ROLAND
ALBUMS SYNTH JOURNEYS Detroit techno legend and sci-fi enthusiast JUAN ATKINS gives us the lowdown on his first love – the Korg MS-10 monosynth
APHEX TWIN, ERASURE, FAUST, JOHN FOXX, ROEDELIUS, OLIVIA LOUVAL, GAZELLE TWIN, NICHOLAS KRGOVICH, IRMLER & GUT, KMFDM, OCTAVE MINDS, BLACK STROBE, RYAN TEAGUE, GUI BORATTO, CLIENT, DORIAN CONCEPT… plus PERC TRAX, DÜSSELDORF and 12”/80S compilations… and more!
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WHAT’S INSIDE UP THE FRONT
LANDMARKS
TIME MACHINE
Sally Rodgers spills the beans on A MAN CALLED ADAM’S 1990 Balearic classic ‘Barefoot In The Head’. “Is it an ode to ecstasy? That’s totally what it is”
NEW ORDER? A five-song set broadcast completely live on the telly? What could possibly go wrong? The full story behind that extraordinary 1984 BBC session
PULSE: 3D
WHAT’S GOING ON…
Take a chunk of intense performance art with the charisma of Jarvis Cocker and add it to some killer hard-edged synthpop. Coming to a pub near you shortly
To celebrate her new solo album hitting the racks, Stereolab singer LAETITIA SADIER talks us through her current downtime pleasures
ANATOMY
JACK DANGERS
BLANCMANGE’s cat-tastic ‘Happy Families’ sleeve dissected and served up cold, like all the best desserts. Oh, hang on, that’s revenge. Well, much the same thing really
Our resident archivist digs into his extensive collection of early electronic music and pulls out some ultra-rare vinyl by the Chilean pioneers of the 1950s
PULSE: S’S
PULSE: ANEZ
California dreamin’ never felt so bad. From the City of Angels, S’s explains why his dystopian aural horror show is the only rational response to a world gone mad
These foil-wearing Hungarian synthesists take their inspiration from Björk, Bowie, Bartok and the splendid isolation of their countryside farmhouse
FAT ROLAND Our man Fats has a nervous breakdown because APHEX TWIN decides to put out a new album. We care because he does
SYNTH TOWN
Shit
splish
sploosh
What’s this? Retro-Numan returns to Synth Town? But where’s Mecha-Numan? And what does Retro-Numan have planned for Phil Oakey, Ralf Hütter and maybe Andy McCluskey?
LANDMARKS
SIC A CLAS CK TRA ERED REMEMBBY ITS RS CREATO
SALLY RODGERS talks about the rise and rise of A MAN CALLED ADAM’s 1990 Balearic classic ‘Barefoot In The Head’
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Gilles Peterson used to do a monthly night at The Wag Club called WahWah Acid Jazz and somehow A Man Called Adam became the resident band. We were a 10-piece jazz band then and we were pathetically ambitious, doing covers of 1960s film soundtracks. We did Lalo Schifrin and Henri Mancini. Our favourite was Sergio Mendez’s ‘Brazil 66’. The core members were me, Steve [Jones], Paul Daley [later of Leftfield] and a guy called Derek Delves, who was incredibly stylish and had a huge following of people who adored him. We also had a bassist called Pete Woolcott who drove an amazing black Citroën Dyane. He was a good bass player, but he was in because of the car. We were a strange, deluded bunch. It was total 60s kitsch. I used to wear all sorts of wigs and catsuits. We were more interested in dressing up and having our photographs taken than anything.
BAREFOOT IN THE HEAD
When Gilles started Acid Jazz Records, we did some tracks for him. We worked with an engineer called Mat Clark at the Westminster Basement Youth Club, where Jerry Dammers used to do his antiapartheid parties. Mat had an Akai sampler – this was 1988 and they were very new – and we used it to loop bits of the live musicians. Our second single for Acid Jazz, ‘Earthly Powers’, was a retro jazz-funk thing, but the B-side was an electronic reworking of the A-side. Of course, you’re not sitting there thinking, “Let’s make an interesting hybrid of Latin jazz and contemporary machine music”, you’re just doing it. It was completely accidental, but suddenly we were acid house instead of acid jazz.
I guess something sort of clicked in our minds at that point. A friend of ours called Tony Barry said, ‘You’ve got to come to one of these raves’. Tony was in a band called Tyrrel Corporation and he’d been my first boyfriend back in my home town of Redcar when I was 16. So we went to this rave near Hungerford, on a beautiful horse stud farm in the middle of nowhere. It was just glorious and I took more ecstasy that night that I did ever again. I had my mind opened wide that night.
The record came out around the time that people like Ten City and 808 State were in the charts. The sound was generally a little gentler and a lot of artists were still making the transition from live music to machine-made music. That was when Paul left to do his Leftfield stuff, which was a bit harder and deeper and more intense. If you listen to something like ‘Not Forgotten’ now, it seems pretty chilled compared to that much more aggressive sound Leftfield adopted later on.
records, stuff like Jimi Hendrix and Crosby Stills & Nash. Somebody just played records and you sat under the stars having a beer.
Hearing our music out there helped us make sense of it. It’s that Latin jazz vibe. You’re in the Balearic Islands and the track’s got that Spanish underpinning. But although ‘Barefoot In The Head’ is very elemental, the sound of the lapping sea and all that, we’d never been to Ibiza before. The influence was more Californian really. The spoken word This must have been 1989 and the sample on there is Rod McKuen, a next track we recorded after that I think ‘Barefoot In The Head’ 1960s American poet, singer and was ‘Ameoba’ [B-side to A Man scraped the Top 50 at one point and songwriter, and he’s talking about Called Adam’s third single], which is that would have been that for most the beaches in California. He has an proper acid house. We used a 909 acts. But things changed for us when incredibly mellifluous voice. I always drum machine on it and we really we went to Ibiza. We’d played some liked that bit where he talks about wanted it to sound like a record from of Charlie Chester’s underground the killdeer birds “marching down to Chicago. They don’t turn out like parties with the Boy’s Own lot and the sea and back… down to the sea that, of course, because you’re not Charlie was running a trip to Ibiza, and back…”. Steve did this thing with from Chicago, you’re from Teeside taking out a couple of hundred ravers, the sequencer and it’s such a perfect and Coventry, but that was the idea. a load of DJs and some bands. We musical declamation. The sequencer went to Big Life and asked for some goes all the way forward and all the Acid Jazz Records didn’t really like money for the flights to get us out way back, so it completely mirrors acid house, so we needed to move there and they were like, ‘What, for the lyrical content. on and Big Life came in for us. you to run around with your mates Despite having people like Yazz on The lapping waves on ‘Barefoot on the beach?’, but somehow they the roster, they seemed like an indie In The Head’ is actually a field paid for us to go. label, but with hindsight perhaps recording of sea, but it wasn’t the they weren’t the best company for Happy Mondays were out there, as Mediterranean or the Pacific. It was us. We just liked the people there so were all the Boy’s Own DJs – Andy probably from Teeside. That’s where we signed to them. Weatherall, Terry Farley and Rocky we shot the little film that went with & Diesel – and Kevin Sampson, who the track. We used an orange filter ‘Barefoot In The Head’ was our first was managing The Farm at the to try to make it look somewhere single for Big Life. It’s actually a bit time, was making a movie of their exotic, but if you look carefully you of a Frankie Knuckles rip-off. We just trip. We featured in the resulting can see ICI and British Steel in the took the bassline from ‘Tears’ and documentary, ‘A Short Film About background. inverted it. Steve had a keyboard Chilling’, which was shown on that his dad had bought him from Channel 4 and was the biggest youth Tandy, we used to carry it around TV audience they ever had. It was wrapped in a blanket, and that’s one of those right place at the right where we got those choral sounds. I time things. It didn’t turn us into a was reading a lot of science fiction at hit band, but it did catapult us into the time and ‘Barefoot In The Head’ people’s consciousness. was originally the title of a Brian Aldiss book. Is it an ode to ecstasy? We were blown away by Ibiza. It was That’s totally what it is. “Loving you when the chic hippies still ran the has made me strong / Now I’m ready show, so it was full of oddballs and to go on / And my mind’s wide open, bohemian characters. There was a baby / And I won’t let this feeling go bar called Milestones, although it / I can’t believe this love is wrong…” wasn’t even a bar, it was a hut up I’m not talking about a person there, in the hills above Santa Eulalia, and I’m talking about little pills. it had a little room lined with vinyl
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3D
SHOCK TREATMENT
F O T k E A .u SU D co IS UN d. LL O un S FU so E N I C ic TH O ron ET TR ct G E C le EL w.e w
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Straight outta Kent, melodic brutalist duo 3D are coming for you – and they’re coming for you at your local pub. This is your first and final warning Words: MARK ROLAND
First there were a couple of videos on YouTube. A synth duo playing in a pub somewhere in the darkest interior of Kent. The sound coming out of the machines certainly hits the spot: satisfyingly crunchy; powerful; melodically satisfying but unpredictable. It’s the work of someone who has listened deeply, and wants to create a catchy and appealing synthpop sheen, but has imbued it with something deeply unsettling, like a choking pall of dark smoke hanging over a post-riot London suburb. The band are called 3D. The synth player is wearing a military cap and his name is Dean Clarke. And then there’s the vocalist, Thomas Kelly. Tall, slender, regularly possessed by intense physical spasms, he sings in a baritone that wavers between Phil Oakey and Matt Johnson, but occasionally morphs into a choked scream like Gabi Delgado from DAF. Sometimes bearded, often photographed topless, he’s a kind of ultra-animated Vivian Stanshall of the electronic pop scene. Funny, yes. Also quite frightening and very charismatic. A star-inwaiting.
and play anywhere. We prove it can be done. Bringing electronic music to the masses. It shocks people. Thomas shocks people. Good. Job done. Our live set is different every time. We are different every time. The lyrics are often different every time! Connecting with an audience is everything to us. Whenever and wherever.” The pair are based in the Medway town of Rochester, but it was an encounter with New Yorkers Xeno & Oaklander that gave Dean and Thomas the impetus to become a hard-gigging electronic proposition. “When I saw Xeno & Oaklander support John Foxx And The Maths at XOYO, they set up in front of us, played an awesome set and then disassembled and got off,” says Dean. “That was a light bulb moment for me. And now that’s what we do.” 3D made their recording debut with an EP, ‘I Wanna Riot’, earlier this year. It was a DAFstyle banger, replete with a suitably shredding vocal performance and a press release featuring “stakeholder promises”: “We subvert your modern lives. We overdrive our filters so you don’t have to. We bitcrush our audience. Every time.”
“I’m a performance artist wearing a singer’s hat,” says Thomas. “My job as frontman is to ensure that there is no fence-sitting at our gigs. I want your absolute attention. I cannot tolerate indifference or complacency and it is my mission They’ve just released a second EP, ‘Ugly Nature’, to destroy it.” the lead track of which delivers on that promise with huge swirls of trancey, boiling synths and Certainly in one of the YouTube clips, a couple in a lyric that’s as hilarious as it is seedy: “Oh! In the audience decide not to sit on the fence. Or the future!” howls Thomas, before outlining indeed to stay sat in their seats. They’re driven some sort of technological masturbation out by the intensity of 3D, scuttling past the process and its aftermath. Another cut, ‘City@ camera exuding discomfort and disapproval in Night’, is considerably less frenetic, hinting at equal measure. Has his performance style ever the duo’s ability to deliver an emotional punch landed Thomas in trouble? and revealing a canvas that borrows from John “Ripped clothing, dry cleaning bills, busted Foxx’s icily majestic tones. Following on from knuckles, kneecap impact injury, spinal damage, ‘Ugly Nature’, they have what they describe as whiplash – every heavy metal fan knows how I a “more mellow” EP in the works, plus an album feel – bruising, cuts… normal stuff. The songs I and a single called ‘MedWave’. write are highly personal, emotionally charged “It’s our love letter to forgotten towns searching and sometimes autobiographical. It costs me to for a new reason to exist,” says Dean. sing certain songs about bereavement, loss and love.” And they will no doubt be playing it in the most inappropriate drinking holes in the most What’s with this performing in pubs and the forgotten places they can find. like? Do 3D have a “play anywhere” philosophy? Like an electronic Fugazi? 3D: spreading the electronic gospel, one pub at a time. “Absolutely,” says Dean. “As most electronic bands will tell you, locally we are surrounded by a sea of indie rock, alt rock, country, folk. The ‘Ugly Nature’ EP is available on 3D They all pitch up and do their stuff and get off. But we can do that too. We can set up quickly
ANATOMY
ANATOMY OF A FAT ROLAND, our man with the funny handshake, reveals the secret messages hidden deep in the artwork of your favourite album covers. This time, it’s BLANCMANGE’s ‘Happy Families’
A blue sky illustration represents hope, unless the blue crayon runs out, in which case it represents sadness
Other ideas for this sleeve: skinny-dipping rhinos, sea lions playing tennis, Joe Pasquale dressed as a gnat
These rooms have a roof. Pharrell Williams is furious
‘Blancmange Happy Families’ is an anagram of ‘Pagan Cymbal Feline Mishap’. Also available in Comic Sans
Axl Rose is in this room, planning his next brilliant album
This is the Queen. She has her own table. If you want a table too, you can get your own, you scrounging tosswang
Melted Pikachu. Quite the delicacy in 1982. Serve cold
“Trees”. Also known as “snot blancmanges”
A cat DJ. Probably Catboy Slim. Or Swedish House Miaowfia. Milkmaster Morris? Oh forget it
Hiding in this room: the album cover’s designers. They are very, very high on crack
Solar Death Ray. Not to be used while operating heavy machinery
This is where Blancmange buried Erasure and Bronski Beat eathers, eye patches, bottles of rum). It’s super uncomfortable
Tiny feline sex gimp. Which, coincidentally, are the names of my first four children
I had a dream like this once, although instead of fine china it had naked Piers Morgans and instead of cats it had wasps
A normal house, although you do have to live on the ceiling. That was a Blancmange reference. Hello? Hello? Is this microphone on?
This album cover will win next year’s ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and everyone will weep
These scamps are playing the Electric Shock Game. Can I play? Oh thanks, I’ll just — AAAAAARGH!
Small cats stealing a big cat’s tail. Metaphor for online piracy and/or cats being idiots uis. Will one day be auctioned for $16
Bez has let himself go
Not blancmange. It’s actually Bono’s wibbling heart, which you can poke with a stick for 50p
‘Future Days does not capture Krautrock so much as unleash it. At long last, the definitive book on the ultimate music.’ Simon Reynolds
‘His book is so well researched and filled with such enthusiasm for its subject that it absorbs from start to finish.’ The Observer
books and music at the heart of independent publishing @FaberSocial | fabersocial.co.uk
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RAZZLE DAZZLE
OMD
Commercial failures, artistic triumphs and overdue celebrations… On the eve of two exclusive live shows, Andy McCluskey discusses ‘Dazzle Ships’, ORCHESTRAL MANOEUVRES IN THE DARK’s often overlooked 1983 masterpiece Words: WYNDHAM WALLACE
Andy McCluskey is excited. Even down a phone line, his enthusiasm is palpable. A mere 31 years after Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark’s fourth album, ‘Dazzle Ships’, famously succeeded in sinking 90 per cent of their audience – “As Virgin Records joked at the time, it shipped gold and returned platinum!” the Liverpudlian howls with laughter – OMD have sold out, within minutes, two special concerts inspired by the record at the Museum of Liverpool in early November. But these won’t be boilerplate OMD gigs. They’ll see Andy McCluskey and his colleagues, Paul Humphreys and Martin Cooper, performing tracks from their once fated, now fêted release, including two that have never been played live before. In addition, they’ll be reunited with their original percussionist, a tape machine called Winston that’s normally stored behind glass in the Museum of Liverpool’s Wondrous Place gallery.
The shows are a powerful indication of how an album that was originally derided by critics and spurned by fans has been so dramatically reassessed that it’s become one of the most treasured in OMD’s catalogue. At the time, ‘Dazzle Ships’ sold 300,000 copies, which these days most bands would die for, but its predecessor, ‘Architecture And Morality’, had
shifted three million. McCluskey refers to this striking drop in sales as “bloody painful”.
“It does seem to be taking on a life of its own,” McCluskey agrees. “The amount of discussion about it, and the reverence for it, you would Nowadays, though, in a world of digital sampling, think it was the biggest selling and the greatest where “cut and paste” is an everyday expression, album we ever made. It really is becoming the methodology of ‘Dazzle Ships’ (inspired iconic.” by musique concrète as much as Kraftwerk) seems significantly less alien. What was once ‘Dazzle Ships’ took its title from ‘Dazzle-Ships considered either unseemly and jarring or just In Drydock At Liverpool’, a painting by Vorticist plain self-indulgent (at least for an act who’d artist Edward Wadsworth, and refers to a form become one of the most idiosyncratic pop bands of brightly coloured geometric camouflage used of the 1980s), now seems gently accessible by ships in the First World War. Wadsworth and no less thrilling than it once did to its few himself oversaw the camouflaging of hundreds early fans. Listening to it today, you might even of dazzle ships for the British Navy. The album wonder what all the fuss was about. title hinted at the content of the OMD record, both its paranoid, politicised atmospheres and “We’re accustomed to channel surfing, to multithe bewildering, elusive shapes that made up its tasking with our computers, phones, radios, soundscapes. iPods and TVs,” McCluskey explains sagely. “We consume things in a much more multiplied and These days, McCluskey recalls with amused fractured way, and we’re accustomed to songs hindsight their motivation for switching away made of samples and broken bits of music from the more seductive mood of ‘Architecture reconstituted. So I think people find it easier to And Morality’, whose success, he says, had digest the album now.” “sown the seeds of our destruction, because we were trying to change the world with our music”. In fact, its popularity just keeps growing. After all, they might have taken songs about
OMD
EVERYBODY LISTENED TO IT AND WENT, ‘WE DON'T GET THAT! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’ The main theme of ‘Dazzle Ships’ was the Cold Joan of Arc to the upper reaches of the charts, War, which was raging at the time. In fact, but they were subsequently forced to recognise that Leonid Brezhnev was still leading the Soviet just two weeks after the album’s UK release, US President Ronald Reagan announced his Union. Strategic Defence Initiative – better known as “We thought, ‘Well, we’re not changing the Star Wars – which was designed to blow enemy world, we need to be more radical’, so we got missiles out of the skies. But rather than address more politicised,” he says. “In the process of such topics with mere lyrics, OMD built the doing so, I think our confidence allowed us record like a puzzle, using material inspired by, to believe we could strip down the musical and in some cases inadvertently provided by, the presentation to be, frankly, less musical. We West’s supposed enemies. delivered an album that was quite bold in “In the early 1980s, I was listening to lots of content and quite stark in its presentation. short wave broadcasts,” McCluskey explains. Many of the songs were simple blueprints that “Every communist country in Europe had a radio weren’t perhaps sheathed in the sort of candy station and they were broadcasting communist coating of the beautiful choirs and melodies that we’d previously used. So it was a shattering and socialist propaganda to the West. The West had their radio stations too and they were revelation to our record company when broadcasting back to the East. So there was everybody listened to it and went, ‘We don’t get that! What have you done? You’ve gone too effectively a war going on across the airwaves and that’s what we were writing about in songs far!’.” like ‘Radio Waves’. It probably didn’t help that what their label really wanted was a repeat of the sales enjoyed “We were sampling Radio Prague and we had clips about terrible things that had been by ‘Architecture And Morality’, something they happening in the world. But we didn’t try to reckoned would transform OMD into “the next polish them or regurgitate them in more user Genesis”. friendly ways. ‘International’ starts with a “That was the wrong thing to say to the 21-year- piece about a girl who’d had her hands cut off. old Andy McCluskey, a pretentious little shit It was telling it like it was and doing so quite who thought Genesis had completely sold out,” unvarnished. Since the Berlin Wall came down laughs McCluskey. “I specifically and absolutely and the Cold War ended, Europe has been such didn’t want to do anything that sounded like a different place. I grew up at a time when we ‘Architecture And Morality’ and I definitely didn’t expected somebody to press the red button and want to be the next Genesis.” we would all be blown to hell in a nuclear war.”
‘Dazzle-Ships In Drydock At Liverpool’ - EDWARD WADSWORTH
OMD
WE HAD THIS ragtag jumble of sounds and strangely recorded bits and pieces The making of ‘Dazzle Ships’ was not without its difficulties. Perhaps most notably, it was impeded by a bout of writer’s block on Andy McCluskey’s part.
Time Out magazine called “redundant avant garde trickery”. To be fair, music concrète was a long established idiom and ‘Dazzle Ships’ also owed a debt to Kraftwerk, one that the band has never denied, but their attempt to marry the more radical ideas of such artists with mainstream, commercial music was nonetheless a brave, possibly foolhardy step. “I think because we were considered to be a pop group, and we’d committed the cardinal sin of having huge hit records and being on ‘Top Of The Pops’, there were, as there always will be, some elements of the intelligentsia who wouldn’t want us to seem too uppity,” says McCluskey. “They just wanted to say, ‘They’re copying Kraftwerk’.”
The controversy over the album’s more perplexing tracks overshadowed its genuinely straightforward moments. Though its “Paul Humphreys was floundering as well,” he recalls. “I was just like, ‘I don’t know what to do, courageous, experimental adventurism was too much for most of the band’s fans to swallow, Paul!’.” it’s often forgotten that the album is busy with In the end, OMD were forced to re-record a prime OMD melodic magic. It’s something couple of tracks that had been B-sides for McCluskey is both delighted with and relieved to singles during their previous album’s life cycle, be reminded of. something that provoked a fair degree of “We were still within the parameters of criticism. The group’s choice of producer for melodies,” he offers. “We were tinkering ‘Dazzle Ships’ was unexpected too. Rhett Davis with the formula and some of ‘Dazzle Ships’ had just enjoyed success with Roxy Music’s went beyond what was considered acceptable ‘Avalon’, but while he might have made sense musicality at the time, but ’Telegraph’, ‘Radio had OMD not chosen to abandon their previous Waves’ and ‘Genetic Engineering’ are really working methods, he was definitely not an kickass pop songs. And some of the ballads are obvious option for their fresh approach. beautiful. But it’s the four found-sound pieces “We turned up with this ragtag jumble of that seem to dominate the conversation. People sounds and strangely recorded bits and pieces,” forget the quality of the music on there and they McCluskey chuckles. “And we asked this really focus on the unusual found-sound tracks.” smooth guy – smooth in every sense of the word – to make sense of it. The guy who’d produced ‘Avalon’, that wonderful, groovy album, was asked to make sense of ‘Dazzle Ships’. He was handsomely paid, but he must have been wondering what the hell he’d got himself into.” Others, meanwhile, no doubt wondered what the band had got themselves into. This was probably not helped when they appeared on Channel 4’s ‘The Tube’ performing ‘ABC AutoIndustry’, a track dominated by kettle drums and robotic voices, with semaphore flags and a primitive, hand-cranked autocue. The critics of the day were, at best, baffled by OMD’s new, cerebral direction. Those accustomed to their bittersweet melodies were shut out by the sound collages that made up a number of tracks, while others dismissed what
OMD’s plans for this November stretch beyond their two live performances. In fact, McCluskey refers to it as a “Dazzle Weekend”.
“We hope to do something really special,” McCluskey concludes. “People have to know that it’s going to be a little more challenging, for lack of a better expression, than the average It all began when National Museums Liverpool Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark gig. I think (a grouping of local museums, including the some will be quite emotionally charged by Museum of Liverpool), Liverpool Biennial, Tate what we intend to do. I know that when we Liverpool and 14-18 NOW (the official cultural do ‘ABC Auto-Industry’ for the first time in 31 programme for the First World War centenary years with the semaphore flags, there will be commemorations) co-commissioned artist Carlos a load of middle-aged bald guys in floods! I’m Cruz-Diez to turn an old pilot boat (the Edmund really looking forward to going out there with a Gardner, which is berthed in dry dock next to completely clear conscience and fearlessly doing Liverpool Albert Dock) into a dazzle ship. things that I know the people who’ve come will be wanting us to do, rather than just waiting for “I approached the Museum of Liverpool and us to play ‘Enola Gay’.” said, ‘Could we put some new ‘Dazzle’ music in the ship to be part of this commemoration?’,” It’s no wonder Andy McCluskey’s so excited. elaborates McCluskey, who’s a trustee of Three decades after its ill-starred release, ‘Dazzle National Museums Liverpool. “We had this Ships’ is at last about to be given the blinding sort of music concrète series of sounds on spotlight it deserves. the album and we fancied using the bits that weren’t released – ‘Dazzle Ships (Parts 1, 4, 5 and 6)’. And then it just gradually expanded to OMD’s ‘Dazzle Ships’ gigs take place at the the museum saying, ‘Would you like to play a Museum of Liverpool on 1 and 2 November concert?’. Now it’s gone to two concerts. “We’re taking over the atrium of the museum and are effectively going to turn it into a dazzlestriped kaleidoscope. It’s going to be more of a multimedia installation than a concert. We’re also curating a series of dazzle ships-related films in the museum’s cinema and the people who have tickets for the gigs also get access to the new dazzle ship itself, so they can hear the music in the engine room. So the whole thing is utterly fantastic!” With just 1,100 tickets available for the two performances, McCluskey concedes that only a select few will get this unusual opportunity to revisit the ‘Dazzle Ships’ album, but there’s good news for all OMD fans. The band hope to film the performances and make them available at some point in the future, and are even considering the possibility of taking the show elsewhere. For the Museum of Liverpool – who’ve never hosted a concert before – there’s plenty to celebrate too. OMD and their and crew are working for free, with all proceeds going towards making up the funding shortfall created when the museum’s grant was cut by 20 per cent. For those who are at the gigs, however, it promises to be an unforgettable evening – and that includes the musicians themselves.
YELLE
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Spellbinding electropop, you say? You’d better put us through to our French cousins tout de suite. Picking up the phone in Brittany is Julie Budet, aka YELLE, who makes a welcome return with her latest set of guaranteed floorfillers Words: SIMON PRICE
YELLE
If any act embodies the ebulliently selfconfident spirit of French electronic pop in the 21st century, it’s Yelle.
this time. The first two albums were just recorded with GrandMarnier in our studio here in Brittany. This was the first time we opened the circle of the creation process. Which probably put some different emotions and feelings in it, and it’s important for us to share that happiness and craziness.”
With their 2008 debut single, ‘Je Veux Te Voir’, the “solo-duet band” fronted by the eponymous Yelle (aka Julie Budet) went from zero to inescapable with astonishing speed. For most of that year and a fair chunk of the next, you couldn’t go out without hearing it. By opening the circle, Julie Budet is Whenever DJs – from Hoxton hipster referring mainly to writer-producer Dr holes to provincial indie nights and Luke, the man responsible for some their clubland cousins across the globe of the biggest pop hits of the last 10 – wanted to punch a bit of romping joie years (‘California Gurls’, ‘Tik Tok’, ‘Price de vivre into a flagging set, they’d reach Tag’, ‘Wrecking Ball’ and ‘Since You’ve for ‘Je Veux Te Voir’. Been Gone’, to name but five), and his Most Anglophone punters only team. Despite his impressive pedigree, comprehended the title, as shouted – Yelle hadn’t heard of him when he first yelled, in fact – by Budet over those approached them. thumping bedroom-house beats and “When we remixed Katy Perry’s ‘Hot mangled-to-distortion electro bleeps, And Cold’, a guy we were with said, and assumed she was merely missing ‘Do you know Dr Luke is a big fan of her lover. In fact, she wanted to see you?’,” says Budet. “And we said, ‘Who the song’s subject/victim in a porno is Dr Luke?’. He liked the remix and movie (“Je veux te voir dans un film he’d come to see us live in 2011, but pornographique!”), but for reasons of we didn’t know that. The first time we sadistic ridicule, not lust. The song, were introduced and realised who he originally titled ‘Short Dick Cuizi’ when was, it was crazy. When he asked to it was first uploaded to MySpace in make music with us, we said, ‘Yeah, 2005, was a brilliantly funny diss track let’s try it!’.” aimed at rapper Cuizinier of Parisian hip hop collective TTC in revenge for the Working with one of the world’s most sexist flavour of his lyrics. successful hit machines meant Yelle turning their creative process upside ‘Je Veux Te Voir’ reached Number down. Four in France and the follow-up, ‘À Cause Des Garçons’, got to Number “We normally start with a word, a 11, while Budet also guested on Fatal sentence, a hook, a vocal line,” Budet Bazooka’s French chart-topper ‘Parle explains. “But he was on the other side A Ma Main’. And, tempting as it might of the world, sending beats back and have been to dismiss Yelle as a novelty forth, so this time we started with a two-hit wonder, Budet & Co proved tune and had to write the lyrics from the cynics wrong. Now slimmed down scratch. It helped us to have a fresh from a trio to just Julie Budet and vision. It was a real experiment.” producer GrandMarnier (aka JeanHilariously, another unlikely collaborator Francois Perrier), third member Tepr this time was “a French dandy called (aka Tanguy Destable) having left to Jérôme Echenoz”, better known as pursue other projects, Yelle are onto Tacteel, a colleague of Cuizi (he of the their third album, ‘Complètement alleged short dick) in TTC. Evidently Fou’ (‘Completely Insane’), and it’s there’s no lingering animosity between their most exuberantly poptastic and the two camps. positive-sounding yet. “I don’t know if it’s happier,” says Budet, “When we heard Jérôme’s own tracks, it was very close to the way we played taking a break from rehearsals in the Breton town of Saint-Brieuc. “If it is, it’s with words,” says Budet. “We weren’t probably because we worked differently sure if he’d be happy about working
YELLE
“IT’S SOMETIMES COOL TO HAVE ANALOGUE SYNTHESISERS, AND HAVE THE CHANCE TO FEEL IT AND TOUCH IT...”
with us because of the whole ‘Je Veux Te Voir’ thing, but he told us he was a big fan. We did a few sessions with him in Brittany, and now we’ve made a friend. It’s funny how things change over the years, and of course we have a common past, but we were actually huge fans of TTC when we did that song. There are no hard feelings.”
In an age when analogue fundamentalists and digital enthusiasts often seem to be at war, Yelle happily employ the best of both. “It’s a mix,” says Budet. “When we were with Oligee [Oliver Goldstein, Britney/Shakira producer] in a studio in Silverlake and we had loads of cool gear to play with, it was hard to choose. But we also like to work with plug-ins, because we’re not really into this analogue thing. It’s not something we care about. We just want to find the good sound that will match the mood and what we want to express. It’s sometimes cool to have analogue synthesisers, and have the chance to feel it and touch it, but sometimes it’s simpler in your computer. Or even on your phone. I just downloaded an application called Figure, and it’s like a game, you can make house music on your iPhone...” If ‘Complètement Fou’ sometimes sounds like a simplistic pop record, that impression is deceptive. ‘Florence En Italie’, for example, was inspired by Stendhal syndrome, which causes viewers of particularly moving works of art to swoon and collapse.
“We went to Florence two years ago, just for 36 hours. We walked through the streets in the night and had a chance to see the architecture, meet the people and feel something deep and strong in this city. We had this idea of talking about Stendhal syndrome. People fainted when they saw too much beauty, mostly during the Renaissance, but maybe it was because their dresses were too tight, or the smells were overpowering. There are stories of tourists falling down because it’s too much. We really liked the idea that the beauty of art can put you through such strong emotions.” Another highbrow influence on the album was Voltaire’s classic 1759 satire ‘Candide’, which Budet read during the album’s composition. “There’s a part in ‘Candide’ about Eldorado, the city of gold, full of rich things,” she explains. “I don’t know the word in English, but it’s when you have everything you want and it’s neverending, the food, the beauty and so on, and we had this in mind, the quest for all that. Most of the time people don’t understand why we stay in Brittany and don’t want to live in Paris. But I just feel my roots are here and my stability is here. I make my own Eldorado here in Brittany. Sometimes people are looking for something in their life and it’s right in front of them. Sometimes it’s just a room in your house, or the garden, a place where you feel that you’re free and you’re at your best.”
YELLE
Musically, the 80s influence on Yelle is impossible to miss. They’ve sampled Heaven 17’s sublime ‘Let Me Go’ and Budet counts ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ and ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ among her favourite songs. She also often namechecks Prince and Madonna, who makes an appearance in their photomontage video for ‘La Musique’ (made by the team who created Pharrell Williams’ 24-hour ‘Happy’ video) playing a dead chinchilla like a guitar, a sly reference to the singer’s infamous coat, made from 40 of the unfortunate rodents. What’s mentioned less frequently is Yelle’s debt to the French pop of the 1980s, before French music became officially cool. Indeed, ‘À Cause Des Garçons’ itself is an 80s cover. “French bands inspired us first,” says Budet. “I grew up listening to French pop… Etienne Daho, Chagrin D'Amour, Elli & Jacno, Les Rita Mitsouko, even early Mylene Farmer. We found that stuff in our parents’ collections.”
listening to that sound. And we are interested and curious in what people are doing around us, even if we are alone in our little city.” In their early days, Yelle were often mentioned in the same breath as France’s tecktonik street dance craze, and Budet does feel a kinship with many of her compatriots. “With the internet, the game totally changed, and it’s easy to hear brand new stuff from anywhere,” she says. “Even though we want to stay in Brittany, we have lots of friends in music in Paris – all the Ed Banger crew and lots of other people we’re working with.” The country that has taken to Yelle the most, perhaps surprisingly given its reputation for linguistic and cultural insularity, is the USA. On ‘Bouquet Final’, the lead single of ‘Complètement Fou’, Budet puns “Nos etats sont unis, baisons comme de bons amis” (loosely translated as “Our states are united, we fuck like good friends”). A reference, surely, to America’s love of Yelle?
Perhaps that blind spot is caused by the language barrier. An insulting number of interviewers have questioned Budet’s decision to sing in French, even “Probably, yes”, she confirms. “But though much of Yelle’s tongue-twisting ‘etat’ in French also means how you feel wordplay (try saying “C’est pas une physically and emotionally, so we like vie la vie qu’on vit quand on vit pas la these double meanings. This connection vie qu’on veut” without tying your lips with the US is something we always in knots) would be lost in translation like to play with. And if people can anyway. Her brilliant response, in understand it, it’s cool.” ‘Amour Du Sol’, is the line “Je chante This theme continues on the album’s en Français des années 80” (“I’ve been striking artwork, which depicts Budet’s singing in French since the 80s”). face drowning in a sea of blue popcorn. “I can understand people asking why,” “We wanted a close-up because it’s she says. “But it’s really important for me to keep expressing myself in French. probably our most intimate album, but part of me is hidden because I’m We thought about having a few English still hiding some secrets. People have sentences on this album, but it didn’t asked, ‘Is that flowers? Is that rocks?’. happen.” And lately we’ve realised it’s also an image of being in the ocean, surrounded by water, because this is an album Despite hailing from the unfashionable we made between Saint-Brieuc and backwater of Brittany, Julie Budet feels LA, and there’s the Atlantic Ocean in Yelle are part of the wave of French between. And popcorn, for us, is the electropop that has been rolling since representation of the US. In the US, the late 1990s. corn is the cereal everyone eats, it’s a “I think we are part of that generation,” huge industry, but in France it has a bit she says. “We are all children of Daft of a bad image. So it’s a link between Punk, and of course we grew up with the US and Europe.”
YELLE
Yelle spent three whole years touring their debut album, ‘Pop-Up’, with many dates in America, and did almost as much gigging for its follow-up, ‘Safari Disco Club’ (including a stint supporting Katy Perry). Some acts would buckle under such a punishing schedule, but Budet misses it when it ends. “After doing a few tours in different countries, you realise it’s kind of a drug,” she says. “Because there’s this moment when you’re back home and you don’t have your shot of energy and happiness and love every night, so you have to find something else to fill that empty part. The last time, we ended the tour in December. So there was Christmas, then it was January, and it was cold and grey outside and, even though I love my city and my house, it was a little bit depressing. “But you have to get through this to realise what inspired you, to make you work again and compose again. It’s evolution. It’s your life, but it’s always in parallel to your private life. It’s necessary to digest everything you loved, and then create something new. “I just need to go on holiday and find a place with sand, and see my friends, and start another creation process. Maybe not music. A project, working on
fashion, a movie... You have to put all that you have into something different. I’m sure I’ll do that next time.” Budet, who used to work for a theatre company, is a big believer in bringing theatricality to Yelle’s live performances. Rather than clinically replicating the records, she consciously introduces chaos and disruption into the mix. “It’s really important for us to give something different from the album,” she says. “The records are very electronical, but we have two drummers live. It’s important to remix the song to have a connection with people. To share something, to play with it, and to play with the crowd.” And when Yelle invite you to play, you’d be completely insane to decline.
‘Complètement Fou’ is released on Kemosabe Records
THREE IS A MAGIC NUMBER The three Yelle albums (so far)
‘Pop-Up’ (Source Etc, 2007) Yelle’s vibrant debut, featuring the world-conquering ‘Je Veux Te Voir’ and the follow-up single, ‘À Cause Des Garçons’. A silverselling success despite almost no radio support in their native country and subsequently strip-mined by countless fashion shows, film scores, TV trailers and computer games for instant slices of shouty French fun.
‘Safari Disco Club’ (Barclay, 2011) Recorded with prolific Berlin producer Siriusmo and released on the iconic Barclay label (Brel, Aznavour). Described by some guy from the Independent On Sunday as “essential for anyone who appreciates dancefloor-friendly European synthpop” and “like a Francophone hybrid of Ladyhawke and Peaches, with [Budet’s] in-your-face delivery and gloriously high-on-E-numbers sense of melody”.
‘Complètement Fou’ (Kemosabe, 2014) The polished electropop gem, created between Brittany and LA with American pop heavyweight Dr Luke and released on his own Kemosabe label. Takes Yelle’s existing neon colours and turns up the intensity to create a sound resembling Daft Punk meeting The Knife on a particularly cheerful day.
AUTOB THE ELECTRONIC ROAD TRIP
OBAHN It’s 40 years since KRAFTWERK released their “year zero” album, ‘Autobahn’. With the help of insiders WOLFGANG FLÜR and MICHAEL ROTHER, and qualified self-confessed Kraftwerk obsessives DANIEL MILLER and ANDY McCLUSKEY, we examine this most crucial and enigmatic of electronic music landmarks Words: MARK ROLAND
KRAFTWERK
In 1973, the world’s media was getting into a The famously introspective and guarded Ralf and lather about comet Kohoutek. Its tail was going Florian were not, however, the most enticing to occupy two thirds of the visible sky. It was prospect for Flür. going to light up the heavens brighter than “I was still uncertain as to whether I could drum seven full moons. Crackpot religious cult the for them,” he says. “Their music was so different Children of God told anyone who would listen to the music I had played in my own bands. that it was the harbinger of The End Of Times. It And they weren’t in a rush for me to become a was due on Christmas Day, but the hype started permanent member of the band, either.” early in the year. At this stage, Wolfgang Flür was just another “I remember how we were all a little hysterical musician to be hired in, part of Ralf and Florian’s about it and feared for our existence,” says attempt to fatten their live sound and be able to Wolfgang Flür, who was soon to become present themselves as a band. Kraftwerk’s stand-in drummer and would eventually be one quarter of the group’s “Right from the start I had problems with definitive line-up, but who was then working as Ralf and Florian’s evasive personalities,” Flür an apprentice in an architect’s office designing continues. “I found it difficult to agree to shop interiors. rehearse with them. Besides, some time before their visit, they had poached Michael Rother, the Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the creative guitarist in my band, and therefore broken up core of Kraftwerk, at that time an experimental my group. I was still pretty cross with them.” rock/noise project, chose to immortalise the comet’s imminent arrival with a single called ‘Kohoutek-Kometenmelodie’ in December 1973. Given that Kraftwerk’s next album, ‘Autobahn’, released the following year, was as unexpected a phenomenon as a shooting star must have been to God-fearing medieval peasants (which, given the popularity of Jethro Tull in the mid70s, is quite an apt metaphor), it’s tempting to think that they felt they were also lighting up the sky, a once-in-a-lifetime experience in the tumultuous rock firmament. In reality, writing slow, swirling paeans to comets, as in ‘Kometenmelodie 1’ (as it became when re-recorded for the ‘Autobahn’ album), was part of the kosmische space rock urges of their milieu. Tangerine Dream had done pretty well out of lengthy spaced-out pieces and their commercial success wouldn’t have been lost on the ambitious Ralf and Florian. Still, the single that was released in December 1973, like Kohoutek itself, was something of a damp squib, but it was a stepping stone to what they were about to become. And Wolfgang Flür was going to play a crucial part. “I was completely surprised when they turned up at the architectural studio,” says Flür of his first encounter with Ralf and Florian. “They’d come to ask me to rehearse with them for an appearance on ‘Aspekte’, a TV culture show on the German ZDF channel. They needed a drummer urgently. They wanted me because they’d heard me playing with my band Spirits Of Sound in a small town near Düsseldorf. Back then, I had already developed a very individual, minimal style, which they told me they liked.”
“I thought, ‘Kraftwerk? What’s that?’ I had never heard of them. I thought the name was silly” MICHAEL ROTHER
Michael Rother, who was in Kraftwerk for six months or so in 1971 before forming Neu! with drummer Klaus Dinger, and then Harmonia with Moebius and Roedelius, has a slightly different take on events.
And despite Flür’s initial wariness of Kraftwerk, his feelings began to change as soon as the cameras were rolling on the ‘Aspekte’ TV performance.
“During the show, something clicked in my head, both musically and historically,” he says. “I suddenly understood that my idea, of using an electronic drum set alongside the Minimoog and the Arp synthesiser, was just right for the Rother was working in a mental hospital, serving Kraftwerk sound. It was the future. I had made out his time as a conscientious objector in lieu a decisive contribution to modernity, to the of then-compulsory service in the German electrification of Kraftwerk, and that made military. He first heard about Kraftwerk from a me proud. I felt that I had proven myself as an colleague at the hospital, also a guitarist, who artist.” mentioned the band were recording “film music” and maybe he would like to go to a session. For his part, Ralf certainly seemed to feel the appointment of Flür benefited Kraftwerk. “I thought, ‘Kraftwerk? What’s that?’,” he says. “I had never heard of them. I thought the name “We have been working together for three or four was silly.” years,” he told Best magazine in 1976, talking about the classic line-up of Hütter, Schneider, But he went along anyway and ended up Bartos and Flür. “That’s really the best band jamming with Ralf Hütter while Florian Schneider that we have made to this day. There’s a perfect and Klaus Dinger, who Ralf had recruited as a symbiosis between our personalities.” drummer during the recording of Kraftwerk’s debut album, watched “from the sofa”. A few years later, in 1981, Ralf told Electronic & Music Maker magazine, “I think we were one “Florian contacted me two weeks later and asked of the first groups to have an electric drummer me to join the band, but in the meantime Ralf with Wolfgang Flür. I’m not just a keyboard had left,” says Rother. “He’d gone to continue player, nor is Wolfgang simply a drummer, this is his architecture studies and was nowhere to be too limiting for each player who has developed seen. I never played in a Kraftwerk line-up with skills in making harmonies and melodies as well him, which was unfortunate because I would as rhythms.” have enjoyed having him along. The jam with Ralf was like a door had opened. We didn’t In 1974, though, the line-up was far from fixed. have to talk about music. He was the first guy Ralf and Florian even tried to recruit Michael I played with who had the same vision for a Rother again, setting up the tantalising thought blues-free music.” experiment of imagining how a Kraftwerk made up of Hütter, Schneider, Rother and Flür might Despite becoming what was a pretty electrifying have sounded. trio, the Schneider/Rother/Dinger version of Kraftwerk quickly petered out. Ralf Hütter came “They wanted to play live, but they had the same back into the fold, Rother and Dinger left with problem – they needed musicians to join them the blueprint for Neu! (which they finessed with to put their music on the stage,” says Rother. “It producer Conny Plank), and Ralf and Florian was one of those telephone calls, like the one made two more Kraftwerk albums, ‘Kraftwerk 2’ from David Bowie later on [Bowie wanted Rother in 1972 and ‘Ralf And Florian’ in 1973. to make an album with him in Berlin in 1977]. But I was happy with Neu! and Harmonia.” It was after the release of the latter album that Ralf and Florian first approached Wolfgang Flür. As the band went into Conny Plank’s studio... “I was not poached by Kraftwerk!” he says. “I wasn’t a virgin being poached by a rival tribe, it was my decision.”
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BPM REPORT
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BPM REPORT KORG, NOVATION, ROLAND and MOOG presented some of their recent releases at this year’s BPM, the annual electronic music and DJ trade fair Words: MARK ROLAND This year’s BPM, the annual electronic music and DJ trade fair, once again took place at the NEC in Birmingham. Electronic Sound broadcast an hour-long radio show each day from the event (courtesy of our good friends at B-Side Project Radio) and spent the rest of the three days wandering around in a beat-induced blur, encountering some Very Interesting Stuff.
The highlight of my visit to Novation was probably messing around with the Bass Station II, their relatively recent and welcome arrival, and pining for my own Bass Station, a rack mountable version bought when they first came out back in the 1990s, adored, and then dropped down the stairs, rendering it silent forever. Another chunk of time disappeared down a MiniNova synth-shaped hole. It’s a couple of years old now, but its simple design (which evokes thoughts of a smart rethink of Korg’s MicroKorg) and decent price point make it a great machine to have in the armoury.
I made a beeline for the Product Demo Stage, where KORG were showing off their flagship beast, the impressive KingKorg, with all its analogue engines being put through their paces to impressive effect by Luke Edwards. Can he play the opening to Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’ ROLAND were displaying racks of their first and a dozen other classic synth lines? Yes he can. (much anticipated and long overdue) forays into revisiting their own wildly adored machines of Korg’s stand itself was busy throughout the fair, the past – the TB-3, an all-flashing, touchpad with people giving the Volca range of fun miniversioning of the TB-303, and the TR-8, which units a workout, not to mention the MS-20 Mini. gives you the TR-808 and TR-909 drum When I confessed to my own struggle with the machines in a green and black box for about MS-20 Mini’s patch bay, I was informed that an a tenth of the cost the originals would set you e-book of patches is on its way any day now. I back. I also took a look at their new SBX-1 audio also pleaded for info about the delayed reboot interface, which allows users to sync MIDI, CV/ of the ARP Odyssey. “It has to be right and we’d Gate and modular systems, a move that is going rather make sure we get it right than hurry it to make many an enthusiastic synthesist happy. to market,” said Korg’s Adam Bradshaw when I interviewed him on the Electronic Sound radio Finally, I dallied a good while at the MOOG show. Roll on January, the launch date being stand, mostly caressing the Sub 37, their bandied around now. new “paraphonic” (two-note as opposed to monophonic) synth. Those beautiful Moog knobs Another highlight of BPM was the NOVATION alone make the thing worth whatever they stand. Novation’s range of Launchpad pad want to charge for it. And it sounds and plays controllers, immediately attractive thanks to beautifully, of course. I particularly enjoyed the the mesmerising flashing lights, are great fun handsomely specced arpeggiator (Up, Down, to play around with and they enable very fast Order, Random, Latching, Back/Forth, Invert, and intuitive arrangements of elements for song +/-2 Range, Tie, Rest, MIDI Sync, 64-note creation with Ableton. There are also iPad app sequencer) and the extra large knob for the versions of the Launchpad and Launchkey, which cutoff filter. Well, that’s the one we all go for are free and incredibly powerful. Free! Did I first, isn’t it? mention they’re free?
BORIS BLANK GETS ELECTRONIC SOUND
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ALBUM
REVIEWS
G E L ET w E T w C H .e TR E le O F U ct N L ro I C L I ni S S S cs O U ou UN E O nd D F .c AT o. uk w FAUST
Just Us
only is their story a remarkable one but, with the exception of the 1980s, when they disappeared altogether, they are the most long-lived and consistent in pushing ferociously back at the avant garde envelope. In the 1970s, Faust had two huge bites at the commercial cherry, both of which they spurned with their resolutely anti-commercial output. Assembled from two previous groups by the journalist Uwe Nettelbeck, they were originally signed by Polydor in Germany, in the hope that they might transmogrify into a “German Beatles”. However, the band members refused to be moulded into any such thing, instead embarking on two albums of Dadaist/electronic/ free improvised/pastoral/brutalist rock.
and Diermaier, whose first roles in Faust were as bassist and drummer, have laid down 12 “foundations”, which the listeners are advised to add to musically themselves, making their own overdubs using the various means of technology available to do so today. So tracks like ‘Nähmaschine’, with its ticking backdrop and tractor engine-like recurring drones, or ‘Nur Nous’, with its spare droplets of piano and curt, jazzy percussive phrases, are deliberately incomplete listening experiences. It’s for us to supplement them with our own musical thoughts and suggestions.
This is recognisably Faust, however. The cadences of Diermaier’s percussion will be familiar to longNew material from the Péron/ term fans, while the billowing, Diermaier version of group is burgeoning barrages of distorted a series of “music foundations” These albums, ‘Faust’ and ‘So Far’, noise on ‘80hz’ are a ghostly designed for others to build upon made legends of the group feted by reminder of Faust’s past. And for John Peel, Julian Cope, Jim Kerr and those wishing merely to play a Ian McCulloch, among others. They Of all the groups that arose almost passive listening role rather than were swiftly dropped by Polydor, only simultaneously in the late 1960s play the game, there is still much to for Richard Branson to invite them and early 1970s in West Germany to please. Take ‘eeeeeeh…’, for example, comprise the krautrock phenomenon, to join his fledgling Virgin label as he which begins with a desolate trump Faust are among the most important sought to grab himself a piece of the as if on a prehistoric wind instrument, krautrock action. Faust never took and most often overlooked. Yet not the sound then processed into a to Branson, Virgin’s famous Manor sampled, multi-track flurry. The link Studio or English food, however, and between notional ancient beginnings they parted company. That was more and futures as yet unheard that is or less that, until they re-emerged implied here is key to Faust. in the mid-1990s with new material and pyrotechnic live performances There’s something poignant too that demonstrated their ancestral link about the gaps that are an integral to Einstürzende Neubauten. part of ‘Just Us’. You can’t help but think of the Faust members who Artistic differences saw the band later have dropped away from the group, split into two different Fausts, one not only the estranged Irmler but led by Hans-Joachim Irmler, the other also Rudy Sosna, who died in the by Jean-Hervé Péron and Werner 1980s and who Péron has described “Zappi” Diermaier. But even as their as the “genius” of Faust. You sense krautrock contemporaries have given their vanished presence. More way to more commercial styles, positively, ‘Just Us’ is representative semi-retirement or the Grim Reaper, of Faust’s general invitation to the remaining active Faust members listeners and future generations to press on. And so to ‘Just Us’, the be inspired by their methodology and work of the Péron and Diermaier the template they have laid down, camp. True to the Faust spirit, it is an and that cries out for development as extraordinary undertaking that defies much now as it did in the 1970s. comparison. DAVID STUBBS Indeed, it’s an impossible album to review in the conventional manner given its concept. Péron Karsten Boettcher
Bureau B
sings, “I don’t see how to reconcile / How to transgress the binary realities holding us”, you might think “Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon?” would be a more suitable lyric. Instead, she discusses political theory in her calm, melodic delivery, citing Guy Debord’s Situationist manual ‘La Société Du Spectacle’ as her key text. The book, published in 1967, was seen as a catalyst for the Paris riots a year later and as a punk bible. Throughout ‘Something Shines’, Sadier seems to be grappling with her 1970s beginnings, with the young adult lives going on around her Something Shines childhood. The album’s soundscapes Drag City recall David Axelrod, Genesis and The Beach Boys’ ‘Surf’s Up’, hi-fi staples Following her 2012 ‘Silencio’ album and hot on the heels of her of that decade’s trench-coated new Little Tornadoes project, it’s a students. It sometimes feels like busy time for the Stereolab singer nostalgia for a never-was futureworld, as in ‘Butter Side Up’, where we swim with the friendly (lovingly Laetitia Sadier’s eyes burn out from reconditioned) synths. the cover of ‘Something Shines’, despite the portrait being dizzyingly Amid the floating and the blurred. And that clarity and breakdowns, things do occasionally obscurity are in play throughout this fall into shape. In a parallel 70s, album, the staunchly period musical Bacharach hears ‘What’s Going On?’, elements forming a launchpad for unpredictable explorations and deconstructions, while Sadier wrestles moral questions and offers up the odd opinion.
LAETITIA SADIER
Next up, ‘Then, I Will Love you Again’, all chiming ‘California Dreaming’ chords and a warm back beat, is easier to grasp. When Sadier
David Thayer
The opener, ‘Quantum Soup’, sets out the template with its turn-ofthe-70s picked bass and a ringing rhythm guitar in circular repetition that recalls Stereolab’s krautrockisms. Above it all, there’s a benign imprecision – fragments of organ, brass and Sadier’s French whispers looming and vanishing. Her voice was always the approachable element in Stereolab’s studious cool. As on several tracks, the relentless pattern collapses into uncertainty, with shapeless chording and electronic intrusions, before a mechanised bassline takes over.
goes to the piano and composes the gorgeous ‘Release From The Centre of Your Heart’, and then calls Streisand to demo his latest smash down the phone. In sharp contrast, the ironically titled ‘Obscuridad’ ditches the production for a plain strummed acoustic, while Sadier states her position directly: “The ultra-rich in their impunity rot our society”. Elsewhere, her gentle presence seems to invite discussion of her conundrums, but the anger in her enunciation is unmistakeable and rather shocking here. ‘Something Shines’ is subtly ambitious, a welcoming and absorbing record. And with so much going on, it’s one that promises further rewards with repeat listens. PATRICK NICHOLSON
ALBUM REVIEWS
glittering artifice of a city built on fame and its ultimately hollow and melancholy payoff is not only evocative, it is profound in its pastelhued pathos.
NICHOLAS KRGOVICH
On Sunset Tin Angel
Exploring the underbelly of Hollywood with tracks inspired by leftfield 80s pop and smooth 90s downtempo music
Courtenay Johnson
Los Angeles – and specifically a psychogeographical Los Angeles of empty mansions, deserted cerulean swimming pools and highways that wind endlessly – is the landscape that has inspired the bittersweet orchestral paeans of Nicholas Krgovich’s ‘On Sunset’. Krgovich has created a very subtle and subliminal audio environment with this album and its subject matter. The gorgeous,
The obvious reference points for ‘On Sunset’ are 80s outfits like Prefab Spout, Scritti Politti and The Blue Nile. We’re talking sugar-coated experimentalism and highbrow pop. It’s also somewhat reminiscent of Sweetback, the late 90s downtempo house and funk project of Sade’s backing band. There are times, such as the brilliant but derivative lead single, ‘Along The PCH On Oscar Night’, where you feel that Krgovich has carefully studied Paddy McAloon’s formula for erudite refrains and cinematic tones, and pretty much reproduced it note for note. In Krgovich’s defence, his is not an obvious form of 1980s revivalism. During the wholesale pillage of that decade’s music that’s been going on in recent years, the focus has largely been on brisk, angular, post punk guitar music – Gang Of Four et al – and primary colour electro influences. Not so many have attempted to resurrect the literate postmodernism of the highly intelligent and deliciously avant garde pop of the era. On balance, then, perhaps
Krgovich is to be commended for unearthing some treasures and taking inspiration from less likely sources. I would imagine part of the reason for this is the sheer musicality and the nuance needed to reproduce both the pristine veneer and the intricate melodics, harmonics and orchestrations. Despite sounding effortless – like languid ripples in places – Krgovich’s music has a modern classical complexity and suggests a knowledge of oblique, diminished, unexpected chord changes and atonality. You’ve got to know the rules before you break them. That said, I don’t think Krgovich’s songwriting is a strong as that of McAloon or Green Gartside and his melodics are softer and less emphatic. Ambient and downtempo have certainly also had an influence here. ‘Along The PCH On Oscar Night’ is definitely the strongest track and the one that’s going to be most popular with the downloaders. ‘Rock’s Dream’ also sounds rather luxurious, though, the melody gliding smoothly on strings and piano into the ether. Don’t be afraid to go with it. BETHAN COLE
VARIOUS ARTISTS Slowly Exploding Perc Trax
Celebrating 10 years of Perc Trax with a bumper selection of new material History will record that we are currently living through great days for techno, a period in which the genre has finally cast off the yoke of minimal and rediscovered its rusty 90s heyday of high bpms and panelbeater drums. And right in the thick of it – even partly responsible for it – is Ali Wells, whose Perc Trax label was originally set up to release his own tunes, but soon attracted other like-minded souls equally as keen to recreate the pumping, visceral thrill of early Tresor. Ten years later and here we are with a superlative birthday showcase for the Perc sound. Plump for the CD version of ‘Slowly Exploding’ and you’ll get one disc of new stuff, plus another of Wells ripping it up with a mix that includes old stuff too. Keep it vinyl and you’ll be the proud owner of three EPs of new material. And what new material it is. The opener, ‘(I Don’t Want To Die In) James Franco’s House’ by Drvg Cvltvre, basks in a sheet-metal riff for a while, before a languid 303 offers up a reminder that acid remains a potent force. It’s not clear why an artist by the name of Drvg Cvltvre should fear death
at James Franco’s house – he is, exactly under-represented in terms of after all, teetotal and doesn’t do quantity. drugs – but Perc’s world isn’t about But the reason Perc gets column making sense, it’s about banging inches is because, despite the harsh hard. Moreover, it turns out that Drvg aesthetic, it’s as funky as all hell. Cvltvre’s 303 workout is but a mere These tracks are part of a lineage aperitif before the real pandemonium that stretches via Berlin to the Motor begins. City. For no sooner has it faded out than Sure enough, ‘Brockweir’ kicks off a your speaker cones are shuddering tremendous mid-album run of tunes under the weight of Happa’s ‘To Die by Sawf, Perc himself and label new Hating Them’, a dizzyingly heavy boy (but hard techno regular) Martyn blast of sonic filth that is every bit as Hare, in which each and every one uncompromising as its title suggests. is hard but funky, unrelenting but Next, like Patrick Bateman reaching never stoopid. You can get high bpm in his armoire and saying, “We’re tracks on any street corner in any not finished yet”, comes one of the city – tracks made for drug-buckets album’s strongest tracks, ‘Brockweir’ by drug-buckets – but rarely will you by Truss, on which a coruscating get them executed with such style, punishment-riff lays the foundation with such an ear for techno’s golden for a snarling kick-drum, resulting in age of Mills and Hood and Tresor and gnarly techno nirvana. It is very, very Carl Cox on the ‘F.A.C.T’ mix (sigh). good indeed. It’s some kind of neat trick to pull Truss is a longtime Perc Trax regular off something that is simultaneously and as good a place as any to stop nostalgic and forward-looking, but and remark on what it is that makes Ali Wells and crew do precisely that the Perc sound so utterly irresistible. – and they do it with considerable After all, the world of hard techno, panache. Slowly exploding indeed. while remaining so underground as to be virtually invisible, is not ANDREW HOLMES
ALBUM REVIEWS
Soundcloud stream (ditto), and there are only two pictures of JEF 700S around. In one of them, he’s hiding his face behind his hands. In the other, he’s wearing a black balaclava. Without an image, other than that of a burglar for hire, ‘Exploded View Of Love’ is left to speak for itself. It might be a concept album. It’s certainly unpredictable, but there are moments of friendliness. The opener, ‘Sex Machine’, is hard and twisted for the first 41 seconds. It’s dark and it’s dystopian. With bells on.
S’S
Exploded View Of Love G@#9
Where The Young Gods meets Black Flag. We advise you to put on a safety helmet before reading any further We may never know the identity of S’s, a one-man project from Los Angeles. He says his name is JEF 700S, but he’s not giving much else away. His Facebook page is set to private (for now), as is his
The sound is so big that you assume it must be the work of a band (three or four people, possibly more), perhaps the kind of band to play at the Burning Man, the infamous cyberpunky, steampunky festival in the Nevada desert. It’s trickier than that, though. In here somewhere is a man with a story. S’s’ influences appear to be from the roots of electronica – the random twists and turns of the krautrock pioneers, the plug-in-and-play ethos of the early minimal wavers – but he’s also a fan of US hardcore punk
legends Black Flag. He’s certainly studied the lyrics and poems of Black Flag singer Henry Rollins. The truth, you think, starts to seep in through the very human feeling in the weirdly catchy vocal melody of ‘Electric Friends’, the electronic squonk of which is created with a device called The 3dK (no idea), until the “ooh-ahh” harmonies break the wave. It really shouldn’t work, but it does, and it’s enough to transcend the continued theme of a world we may as will give up on. At this point, you may decide to turn the volume up. That would actually be a mistake, though. Of course. Because the consistent element here is the beast within every song, whether it be the otherworldly, gruesome vocals, or the hypnotic, buzzing electric pulses and rhythms, or the harsh, ritualistic, broken beats. Sometimes it’s reminiscent of Switzerland’s one and only Young Gods, a band with more edge and punch than even Black Flag. The moods always match the names of the tracks – this album could win an award for the most appropriate titles – but nothing prepares you for the way that ‘Unhaunted’ looms or how ‘Love Life’ bites. ‘Exploded View Of Love’ is unexpected at every turn. To be this brave (or maybe stupid), to have the gumption (or naivety) to grab a great idea (or 10), and drag and drop it into your own time and place, and jump up and down on it a bit, you probably need to hide behind a mask. You probably need the secret identity, the ambiguous S’s, the alias like a password. The fact that not everybody will welcome this sort of depth, this much of a challenge, is all to the good. One final thing. If JEF 700S plays any live shows to promote this album, how will he be able to sing with such commitment and ferocity and keep his balaclava on? Now there’s an interesting problem. NGAIRE RUTH
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