Archive for the british tag

Naked Eyes: Voices In My Head

Though better known for the singles "Always Something There To Remind Me" and "Promises, Promises", Naked Eyes have plenty of equally good output that tends to go unnoticed. "Voices In My Head" is the opening track on the same 1983 release as those hits, Burning Bridges. In this digital music era where people rarely listen to full albums anymore, it's been largely forgotten.

The English duo were originally in the band Neon. In the early '80s, Neon split; Pete Byrne and Rob Fischer then formed Naked Eyes while members Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal became Tears For Fears. Still making music and touring, Naked Eyes will release their latest album, Piccadilly, this summer.

official site
available on their Best Of complation

Richie Hawtin Interview with Daniel Miller

Whoever came up with the idea for this is brilliant. Superstar techno dj and producer Richie Hawtin interviews Daniel Miller, founder of legendary UK label Mute Records. They talk about the early days of the British electronic music scene, the trials of starting up a label, his signing of Fad Gadget and later Depeche Mode, synthesizers, Berlin, and the influences Mute has had on Hawtin's own Plus 8 label. Miller signed Hawtin to his sub-label Novamute in 1992 as his dark alter ego Plastikman.

Mute Records
Plastikman

C Cat Trance: Shake The Mind

Though boasting a fairly large rotating cast of members, C Cat Trance was primarily the project of John Rees Lewis, previously of the band Medium Medium. Combining British post punk (hey, they're from Nottingham) with more traditional Middle Eastern and African influences and an artistic, vaguely experimental sound seems like it might be a recipe for disaster, but it certainly wasn't. C Cat Trance pulled it off with an aesthetic that is at once worldly and intelligent while still being infectiously danceable. Often referred to as "ahead of their time", it's debatable whether that time has or ever will come.

C Cat Trance released five albums on Red Flame and subsidary Ink Records in a fairly short span of the late '80s, followed by a retrospective collection released in 2005. "Shake The Mind" is one of their better known singles.

C Cat Trance MySpace
Available from Amazon.com on their 2005 retrospective Karadara.

My Robot Friend: We’re The Pet Shop Boys

"We're The Pet Shop Boys" is so...meta. I don't even know where to start. Released by My Robot Friend in 2002 on the full length Hot Action, it's a song about the Pet Shop Boys, created almost entirely of Pet Shop Boys' own lyrics. As if that wasn't enough, the Pet Shop Boys themselves actually did a cover of it as a b-side to "Miracles". Oh and it doesn't stop there, either; Robbie Williams did a cover of the Pet Shop Boys cover of the song about the Pet Shop Boys. Where will the madness end!?

Done, of course, more in the Pet Shop Boys' style than his own, My Robot Friend is worth checking out for his other material as well. He relays tales of robot adventures amongst the humans set against exactly the sort of machine-made pop you'd expect from someone who does his live shows in a full body robot costume (do NOT miss his live show if you happen to come across one...think Captured By Robots, the sequel).

official website
buy Hot Action on Amazon.com

Modern English: Life In The Gladhouse

You know this band. You've heard "I'll Melt With You" about a million times in your life, but you probably can't remember a single other Modern English song, can you? It's ok, neither can anyone else. And that's a damn shame, because they have a really nice catalogue if you want to do just a little digging.

Signed to 4AD in 1980, their other material borrows more influence from post punk than you'd suspect from their biggest hit. "Life In The Gladhouse" is by far my favorite Modern English song, and if you know what a fan of Gang of Four I am, you'll not be surprised. Taken from their 1982 release After The Snow, the title track for which I highly recommend to New Order fans.

Trivia bit: A pair of Modern English songs inspired the formation of This Mortal Coil.

official website
buy After The Snow on Amazon.com

Recoil: Faith Healer

Tuesday. Tuesday...I never thought next Tuesday would ever happen. Way back in the wee days of the internet, I was on the Recoil official mailing list--back when that meant daily emails of conversing with other fans, and sometimes Alan Wilder himself, who is surprisingly approachable for someone who used to be a very key member in one of the most important electronic bands ever.

We begged, and begged, but he said it couldn't be done. Recoil could never tour, could never even do a live show... there were just too many people involved. We couldn't expect him to actually pack Douglas McCarthy, Toni Halliday, Moby, Maggie Estep, Siobhan Lynch, Nicole Blackman, Samantha Coerbell, Hildia Cambell, and Diamanda Galás all on a tour bus. Oh come on, we could dream, right?

I guess Alan changed his mind, because he's on tour, and he's coming to The Metro on Tuesday night with Gary Numan. After a LOT of digging around, I was able to discern that he actually accomplished this by bringing no vocalists at all; in their place is film, with imagery chosen specifically for each piece. It's not Diamanda Galás and Douglas McCarthy hanging out on a bus, but I'll take what I can get.

Though nearly impossible given all the options, I choose Recoil's first single and most well-known track, a cover of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band's "Faith Healer" featuring Douglas McCarthy (Nitzer Ebb) from Bloodline*. I can't say it's a good representation of Recoil, because each album and even each song is a work of art that stands on its own, ranging from vintage Bukka White placed over minimal electro and Maggie Estep's hilarious spoken words to Diamanda Galás screeching in tongues and Toni Halliday screaming hate over industrial like nothing you'd ever imagine listening to her spacerocky Curve albums. And I'm not even touching on the whole plane-crash-as-concept-album thing...

official website
buy Bloodline on Amazon.com

*trivia: Foetus also covered this song on Rife, ergo this track is often mistaken for a Foetus cover, not to say that Thirwell's version didn't influence this one.

Tribute to Gary Numan: Radio Heart + My Jesus

Tonight we celebrate the career of electronic music pioneer Gary Numan, and we'll be giving away tickets to his show at Metro on Tuesday. He'll be playing his signature album Pleasure Principle in it's entirety. Also playing: the amazing and beyond definition Recoil (which I'll blog about this weekend), and Daniel Myer project Architect, rounding out the lineup appropriately with a little noisy techno-industrial.

Radio Heart was a project of Hugh Nicholson, a friend of Gary Numan's. Elton John and Ray Cooper also contributed vocals on various tracks, but the three songs featuring Numan are by far the best on the album. The single "Radio Heart", released in 1987, is far more mainstream pop than his own output, and likewise achieved more chart success than Numan had on his own at the time.

My favorite Gary Numan album does not come from his smashing glam-meets-new wave '80s-era work, but his 2000 release Pure. Following in the wake of his wife's repeated miscarriages, Numan took a page from Trent Reznor's book (and one he himself inspired, no less), and wrote an industrial-inspired epic of pain and scathing religious commentary, as exemplified in "My Jesus".

official website
buy Gary Numan at Amazon.com

Ou Est Le Swimming Pool: Dance The Way I Feel

About a week ago, Ou Est Le Swimming Pool's lead singer, Charlie Haddon, walked off the stage after his performance at the Pukkelpop festival in Belgium and jumped to his death from a telecommunications mast.

As the news hit the blogs, a whole lot of people asked not "what would make someone do such a sad thing?" but "who is Ou Est Le Swimming Pool?". Having released all of three singles, the British synthpop band has made something of a name for themselves touring for La Roux, but were still under most people's radars. The thing is, though, those three singles were really really good. And like so many bands before them, we're left wondering what might've become of Ou Est Le Swimming Pool, and what great music we're now missing out on, as a result of one key band member's suicide amidst a swirl of depression that we can't understand.

R.I.P. Charlie Haddon, we hardly knew ye.

official website

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