SONGS THAT SAVED MY LIFE #8 & 9 - ELECTRONICALLY YOURS
As i've written elsewhere in this blog, although it was increasingly easy as i grew up to get hold of older music, finding out about the artists was difficult. In a time before i had access to the internet, information about music from previous eras was either gleaned from the pages of magazines like Record Collector, or through older friends and acquaintances. In the mid 90's a satellite station named UK GOLD started broadcasting complete episodes of Top Of The Pops from the early 80's, and i was immediately grabbed by the Synthpop and electronic music - Human League, Depeche Mode, OMD and the like - and over the following years i picked up a few greatest hits and best of's, some having been introduced to me by older workmates. I was vaguely aware that some of these bands had more of a story than just a collection of shiny pop hits, especially The Human League, whose "Being Boiled" stood out a mile from the rest of their Greatest Hits album, almost sounding like an entirely different group. Which, as i was to discover, it was. Sort of. One night at work in the petrol station, i got talking to a taxi driver, Tony, who was a regular and friend of the staff, when we got talking about music. Being a good twenty years older than me, he started talking about the music from his teens - the early 80's - and asked if i liked anything from that time. I started reeling off the names of artists i liked from that period, and mentioned some of the Synthpop bands, including The Human League, and he proceeded to tell me about the earlier line-up of the band, before the hits. I said i knew Being Boiled, and a track i'd seen a clip of on Sounds Of The Seventies, but knew little else. The following night he returned with a C90 cassette containing the first two albums the band had released, and listening to it on my walkman on the bus journey home was a revelation - stark, primitive synthesiser music, unusual song structures, dystopian sci-fi influenced lyrics. A world away from "Don't You Want Me"!
Their 1979 debut album, Reproduction, was the stranger of the two: their was little attempt at making pop songs on here, the stomping Empire State Human aside. The music is very much influenced by Kraftwerk and Berlin-era Bowie, the lyrics are bleak, dystopian, kitchen sink sci-fi and social comment. It's quite an industrial album, in more than one way: the sound of their home city of Sheffield pervades the mood of the whole album, the sounds of the steel works and the cold echoes of concrete tower blocks, the urban decline and decay beginning to set in. A very dark and emotionless set of songs, stark and cold - even the cover of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" (part of a medley with a quite miserable "Morale") is stripped of its humanity. The two opening tracks - "Almost Medieval" and "Circus Of Death" - are lurching slow marches - basic rhythm tracks and doom-filled minor chords and cold, harsh vocals presenting nightmare images of men hanging from gibbets, the past and present colliding, and humanity being wiped out by a killer clown and his circus. "The World Before Last" and "Austerity/Girl One (Medley) present tales of breakdowns, urban social anxiety and terror. The final track "Zero As A Limit" seems to be about a car crash. It's not all downbeat though: the crisis of conformity that is "The Path Of Least Resistance" which, despite its lyric "Start digging the early grave" has a synthetic funkiness about it, and "Blind Youth" is a positive response to the "no future" nihilism of Punk. "Empire State Human" is a giddy attempt at a pop song, the lyric about the narrator willing himself to grow "Tall, tall, tall/as big as a wall wall wall" and vocodered chipmunk backing vocals seemingly foretelling singer Phil Oakeys' pop ambition. It's a very cold album, aided by a dry production, and even now nothing else sounds quite like it, but it has a strange charm.
The second - and last - album by the MK 1 line up of the 'League was 1980's Travelogue. After the first album had failed to set the world alight, and the likes of Gary Numan had suddenly starting having hits with what Oakey and co. saw as the same kind of music they were making, they opted for a more pop approach for their second long player. A new producer was bought in, the synths had an upgrade, and a warmer sound was sought. Travelogue still has the same themes as the debut - sci-fi, urban alienation, social comment - but with a more accessible feel, less doom and gloom and more futuristic. Opener "The Black Hit Of Space" is a daft tale of a record so bland that it sucks everything else in until "there was nothing but it left to buy", replete with laughable lyrics about making a sandwich and getting "James Burke on the case"! Lovably daft with chattering synths and sharp rhythms, with one of Phils' signature spoken word middle-eights. That was followed by a cover of Mick Ronsons' "Only After Dark", a great pop hit that never was, all warm fat chords and great harmonies. "Life Kills" was a galloping social comment on the stress of the working class life, working to pay the bills. Two tracks were instrumentals - the crystalline sounds of "Toyota City", and a revved-up cover of the "Gordon's Gin" advert theme. "Dreams Of Leaving" was a multi-part epic that seems to be a comment on people fleeing dictatorial regimes - possibly people trying to leave East Germany for the west - a tale of people paying to leave their home for a (seemingly) better life elsewhere, "A Crow And A Baby" is an odd but infectious song that could be a obscure comment on authoritianism, or it could equally be a quirky fantasy story, "The Touchables" is a fast paced track full of stabbing synths, about how people sometimes hide their true feelings to gain affection from others. There is a beefed up, triumphant re-recording of their first single, "Being Boiled", which was included on the Holiday '80 double single, which was their first chart entry at No. 56 just before the album release. The final track - and my favourite on an album of standout songs - is "WJXL Tonight", a jittery, slightly off-centre song with Oakey as the last DJ in a world of automatically run radio stations, a wall of analogue synth washes and stutters, crying out "I don't want you to go tonight!" into the darkness. When his vocals go up a couple of notches on the last part of the song, it makes my neck hairs stand up!
Sadly, not many songs from these two unique and groundbreaking albums are on Youtube, so you'll have to take my word for it when i say that anyone with an interest in electronic music should own them!
Their 1979 debut album, Reproduction, was the stranger of the two: their was little attempt at making pop songs on here, the stomping Empire State Human aside. The music is very much influenced by Kraftwerk and Berlin-era Bowie, the lyrics are bleak, dystopian, kitchen sink sci-fi and social comment. It's quite an industrial album, in more than one way: the sound of their home city of Sheffield pervades the mood of the whole album, the sounds of the steel works and the cold echoes of concrete tower blocks, the urban decline and decay beginning to set in. A very dark and emotionless set of songs, stark and cold - even the cover of "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" (part of a medley with a quite miserable "Morale") is stripped of its humanity. The two opening tracks - "Almost Medieval" and "Circus Of Death" - are lurching slow marches - basic rhythm tracks and doom-filled minor chords and cold, harsh vocals presenting nightmare images of men hanging from gibbets, the past and present colliding, and humanity being wiped out by a killer clown and his circus. "The World Before Last" and "Austerity/Girl One (Medley) present tales of breakdowns, urban social anxiety and terror. The final track "Zero As A Limit" seems to be about a car crash. It's not all downbeat though: the crisis of conformity that is "The Path Of Least Resistance" which, despite its lyric "Start digging the early grave" has a synthetic funkiness about it, and "Blind Youth" is a positive response to the "no future" nihilism of Punk. "Empire State Human" is a giddy attempt at a pop song, the lyric about the narrator willing himself to grow "Tall, tall, tall/as big as a wall wall wall" and vocodered chipmunk backing vocals seemingly foretelling singer Phil Oakeys' pop ambition. It's a very cold album, aided by a dry production, and even now nothing else sounds quite like it, but it has a strange charm.
The second - and last - album by the MK 1 line up of the 'League was 1980's Travelogue. After the first album had failed to set the world alight, and the likes of Gary Numan had suddenly starting having hits with what Oakey and co. saw as the same kind of music they were making, they opted for a more pop approach for their second long player. A new producer was bought in, the synths had an upgrade, and a warmer sound was sought. Travelogue still has the same themes as the debut - sci-fi, urban alienation, social comment - but with a more accessible feel, less doom and gloom and more futuristic. Opener "The Black Hit Of Space" is a daft tale of a record so bland that it sucks everything else in until "there was nothing but it left to buy", replete with laughable lyrics about making a sandwich and getting "James Burke on the case"! Lovably daft with chattering synths and sharp rhythms, with one of Phils' signature spoken word middle-eights. That was followed by a cover of Mick Ronsons' "Only After Dark", a great pop hit that never was, all warm fat chords and great harmonies. "Life Kills" was a galloping social comment on the stress of the working class life, working to pay the bills. Two tracks were instrumentals - the crystalline sounds of "Toyota City", and a revved-up cover of the "Gordon's Gin" advert theme. "Dreams Of Leaving" was a multi-part epic that seems to be a comment on people fleeing dictatorial regimes - possibly people trying to leave East Germany for the west - a tale of people paying to leave their home for a (seemingly) better life elsewhere, "A Crow And A Baby" is an odd but infectious song that could be a obscure comment on authoritianism, or it could equally be a quirky fantasy story, "The Touchables" is a fast paced track full of stabbing synths, about how people sometimes hide their true feelings to gain affection from others. There is a beefed up, triumphant re-recording of their first single, "Being Boiled", which was included on the Holiday '80 double single, which was their first chart entry at No. 56 just before the album release. The final track - and my favourite on an album of standout songs - is "WJXL Tonight", a jittery, slightly off-centre song with Oakey as the last DJ in a world of automatically run radio stations, a wall of analogue synth washes and stutters, crying out "I don't want you to go tonight!" into the darkness. When his vocals go up a couple of notches on the last part of the song, it makes my neck hairs stand up!
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