Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (Photos: Marija Buljeta)
To get the measure of Mute’s influence, it is enough to note that Yazoo’s second and final album was given the catalogue number, STUMM 12. The eleven that had come before it included three LPs from Fad Gadget, two from Depeche Mode, one by DAF and the only Silicon Teens album.
By the summer of 1983, when You and Me Both came out, Mute was on the cutting edge of electronic and experimental music. Founded at the end of 1978, Mute was originally just a name for Daniel Miller to release his single, “TVOD/Warm Leatherette.” The DIY punk ethic had seen many bands put out their own 7″ singles, and as The Normal he wanted to make punk with a Korg 700s synthesizer.
Dividing his time between his mother’s house in Temple Fortune and Rough Trade’s back rooms in Notting Hill, Miller took on additional and more ambitious projects, gaining a reputation as the go-to guy for synth programming (Soft Cell, Thomas Dolby, Alex Ferguson) and alternative records.
Early projects, like his own Silicon Teens enterprise, were the stuff of record store fantasies: covers of rock standards using synths; industrial records with multiple grooves and spindle holes; singles about love during nuclear war. Then, attending a show by Fad Gadget, Miller stumbled upon a diamond the size of a TR808: four Essex futurists named after a French fashion magazine that they couldn’t pronounce accurately but with an instinct for infectious pop.
Depeche Mode changed everything for Miller and Mute. When they agreed to work with him, he gained the band that he had imagined Silicon Teens to be. Guitarless and guileless, Depeche Mode were on an upward pop curve but willing to experiment. He took them into Blackwing Studios in South London, where he had been working on other Mute projects, and emerged with a string of singles and an album, Speak and Spell, that lifted both the band and the label into the musical stratosphere.
When Depeche Mode lost their main songwriter, Mute gained another artist and repeated its success with Yazoo. When they broke up, the label kept its relationship alive with Vince Clarke, who provided them with a longer-lived project as Erasure.
These pop successes drew in funds that allowed Mute to support work by industrial and alternative artists like NON, Diamanda Galas, Pan Sonic and Simon Fisher Turner. Sublabels began to sprout, focussed on everything from soundtracks to techno. Sometimes, these had massive hits of their own (S’Express, Bomb the Bass), but often they just accumulated catalogues of exceptional artists (SPK, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle).
Dedication to artists proved a profitable as well as principled practice for the label. Mute kept the faith with Moby during his Animal Rights years before turning Play into sync-rights gold. Nick Cave was able to explore a range of styles, becoming one of the greatest songwriters of his generation.
This is only the background to the stories of Mute and Miller. We have learned that his parents moved to the UK as refugees from Nazism. It has become well known that Mute bailed out Rough Trade during its lean years; but, in its own time, was sold to EMI. What did Guy Hands think about Neubauten? There is a lot of interesting material to be shared, for sure, but it’s being saved for another day.
What we do have is Mute: A Visual Document (Thames & Hudson) by Terry Burrows with Daniel Miller. It’s a trawl through the Mute archives, collecting artwork for sleeves and advertisements with short, accessible essays. Some of the biggest names in photography and design have worked with the label’s artists – including Anton Corbijn, Neville Brody, Brian Griffin and Peter Saville – so there is a lot of eye candy between the dayglo orange covers. The early graphics of Simone Grant are a key to Mute’s visual identity, and it’s great that Grant has been interviewed for the book. Miller provides colour commentary, and the approach is effective – rather like a director’s comment track on a DVD.
Even if our understanding of the economic history of Mute is not deepened by the book, Mute: A Visual Document does enrich our appreciation of a genuine success story. Mute have been innovators at using technology, exploring new formats and extending their brands. They didn’t have written contracts with their largest artists for a long time, but managed to keep them from being poached by the majors by living up to their handshake deals. As a consequence, the vaults are full of graphics that tell stories that might not otherwise have been told.
Mute: A Visual Document will delight fans of the label and its artists, but it will tease anyone who is interested to know more about the way Mute was grown from a start-up into a giant among independents. There needs to be a book written about Miller’s experience in business, and it may still come – it just won’t have so many shots of Add N to X covers.
November opened with Chris Carter taking to the stage at Rough Trade in London to demonstrate the new TG-ONE synth module from Tiptop Audio. Filled to the brim with samples from Throbbing Gristle’s recordings, as selected and processed by Carter, the unit allowed him to generate a show in the TG style. Due to the random looping feature of the module, the show can never be reproduced in the same form.
The occasion of the performance was a signing event for the 40th anniversary reissue of TG’s classic album, Second Annual Report. It also provided an opportunity for Carter and his partner, Cosey Fanni Tutti, to reminisce about their careers in music. They were joined on stage by Daniel Miller, whose Mute label is releasing Carter’s forthcoming solo album, for a relaxed conversation about modulars and the early days of industrial music.
The relationship between Miller and Throbbing Gristle goes back a long way – further, actually, than Miller recalled. His memory of chaos at TG shows, including one featuring Robert Rental & The Normal, was vivid, but Carter surprised Miller with an anecdote about visiting Mute’s original base in Temple Fortune when “TVOD/Warm Leatherette” was being recorded. “I met your mum!”
As they warmed up, the anecdotes started to flow. It came out that Miller met Robert Rental at a TG concert in July of 1978 where chairs were thrown in a Situationist cause. Also that Rental’s girlfriend worked with Thomas Leer’s at the Virgin store on Oxford Street. Miller recalled seeing a Peter Gabriel quote on a TG album there to the effect that it was the best thing ever (“I wasn’t sure if it was a piss-take or not!”). This was news to Tutti and Carter, but the dots were connected through TG member Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson’s work for Gabriel as a visual artist.
Further connections arose from events at the Cryptic One Club, which was organised by the promoters, Final Solution. After TG played a notorious event – which featured Tina Turner’s doormen, who had been recruited as celebrity heavies – Miller and Robert Rental were separately asked to play at the club. Neither wanted to perform separately, so they teamed up as Robert Rental & The Normal, sharing a bill with TG.
The duo joined the Rough Trade tour with Stiff Little Fingers, recording a one-sided live LP for Rough Trade’s US label. There was a TG connection there, too: Carter had built a Gristleizer effects unit for Rental, which he used to process the sound of his Wasp synth.
The discussion moved on to modular kit. Carter explained that, in 1999, he had a mid-life crisis and sold off his old analogue and modular equipment; but, within a year, he was rebuilding his collection. Carter’s latest solo album, which comes out in March, has been made with his rebuilt modular collection. It was also revealed that a new version of the Gristleizer, designed for Eurorack systems, is on its way.
For fans of industrial and electronic music, the evening was very special. Carter’s demonstration and the open conversation between three legends showed that the DIY post-punk spirit that motivated them at the end of the 1970s is still vital today. It also put their imprimatur on the burgeoning modular scene. TG might be finished as a band, but its subversive and animating influence is undiminished, even after four decades.
Lau Nau lives on a Finnish island that is shared with only a handful of people. The sea and the sky dominate the environment, and between them the inhabitants share their rock with trees and the wind. The summer days are long, but winter’s veil lifts only to reveal a grayness that soon fades.
It is hard to disassociate Lau Nau’s creative output from that environment. Her last studio album was the soundtrack to Lotta Petronella’s film, Hem. Någonstans [EN: Home. Somewhere], which emerged from the amplifier like frozen vapour encloaking shards of Nordic ice.
The latest Lau Nau album, Poseidon, owes something to the sea, but also to urban scenes. It was not composed for film but serves as a soundtrack for life’s minor key stories. As Laura Naukkarinen explains:
I was playing my grandmother’s piano and shortly realised that I was composing songs that were the beginning of a new album instead of the film music I was working on. The songs wanted to be performed by a character called Lau Nau. It’s the melancholic, always dreaming part of me that stands quietly on the stage and shares fractured moments with the audience. The songs on Poseidon are small secular prayers and messages of love, sorrow and care. Poseidon is a god of the sea but also the name of a certain bar in Helsinki. He veils us in the fog when the night falls.
The title track is a wistful song that flirts with music-box nostalgia and dissolves like a memory. Lau Nau’s voice is delicate to a level that will make every man regret every heart they have broken. There are references to owls and moths, but the first Finnish phrase you ever learn may be, “Suudellaan, suudellaan” [EN: “Kiss me, kiss me.”]
For those looking for cultural reference points, there are signposts to Virginia Astley, Brian Eno, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Philip Glass, but Lau Nau’s music evades their shadows. Take “X y z å,” which relies upon minimalist arpeggiation and the sparkle of light on water, while Lau Nau’s voice rises from the waves like ozone. There is depth and contrast in the material that goes beyond mathematical niceties and tricks of phrasing.
Lau Nau’s words are carefully chosen; her poetry as sensitive as her tones. As she sings in “Unessa”:
Spirits in this forest
are webs among the heather
how light a sound can be
Poseidon ends in a crazy beautiful way with “Kun lyhdyt illalla sytytetään, ne eivät sammu koskaan” [EN: “When the lanterns are lit in the evening, they will never die out”]. Somewhere in the space between chamber music and experimentation, it is a reminder that, even if the landscape is epic in its scale and influence on the soul, the human experience is what makes it magical.
Lau Nau's home page: http://launau.com Poseidon at Fonal Records: https://www.fonal.com/shop/poseidon-cd/
Vile Electrodes continue their conversion into a modern version of Throbbing Gristle. Caught here by Anders Wickholm, at their recent performance with Page in Stockholm, the duo of Neon and Swan dazzled with proto-pop from the 22nd century. And look, kids, no laptops!
Revolting Cocks
Academy Islington, London
26 August 2017
The first time the Revolting Cocks played in London, it was a debauched, riotous affair. Led by “Uncle” Al Jourgensen, the electro-industrial supergroup hoovered up enormous quantities of pharmaceuticals ahead of the show. They appeared with drugged-up strippers, who danced precariously and mimed sex acts with band members. The audience was whipped into a frenzy by the band’s taught, funky grooves and the chaos unfurling before them. The front of the stage was the wrong place to be for anyone who wore glasses.
That was 1991. Fast forward to the present day.
It has been just over thirty years since the release of Big Sexy Land, RevCo’s first album, and they are touring it as a live show. Richard 23, the European Commission worker and Front 242 member, is handling vocal duties. When he’s done, Chris Connelly, the record store manager and Fini Tribe founder, takes over to run through the second RevCo studio album, Beers, Steers and Queers. Paul Barker, the man whose fingers give RevCo its bass-level drive, is there to move hips throughout.
The audience gathered in London is filled with people who look like they were there for the first show and have been dreaming of doing it again. Their livers have taken a pounding in the intervening decades, but they haven’t given up on the rituals of substance abuse or spitting into other people’s drinks at the bar. Ladies of a certain age in dark make up and tattered clothes barge through the crowd, just to make their presence known.
These are the only people who are going to be disappointed by RevCo’s show. Uncle Al isn’t part of this tour, which means there are no strippers, water guns, dry re-enactments of classic porn scenes, or mad crushes at the front of the stage. The degenerates who have descended on Upper Street don’t get their riot. They can still gob at the bar, with a twinkle in their eye, but in the room they are going to have to make way for those who came for the music. A Swedish fan walks past in a white suit – the mirror image of the creatures who crawled in from the pub around the corner.
Album performances are rarely good ideas, because most albums are short on quality material. That isn’t the case with RevCo. Written by talents from the industrial and electronic music scenes, who were locked up with samplers and 1970s movies, every track on Big Sexy Land is solid entertainment. Rhythms were carefully worked out, rather than being slapped down as 4/4 bass kicks. Bass lines were introduced that corrupted funk’s stylings. Vocals were subverted with sampled quotes. Live, the material works as well as it did in the studio.
Richard 23 puts on a fine show, but things stumble a little when Chris Connelly takes his turn at the microphone. His voice is strained, and he struggles to hit the notes he is searching for in “Stainless Steel Providers” with his usual power. He quickly recalibrates to shout his lines, and suddenly it sounds like John Lydon has joined the act. He doesn’t start pitching dairy products, but the atmosphere is certainly more crumpets than chaos.
ES promoters, Sebastian Hess and Henrik Wittgren, saying goodbye to the long-running event
Sweden’s premier music event, Electronic Summer, is no more.
It ended with a blast of futurepop from Rotersand, but the three day event packed in performances from Kebu, Portion Control and The Invincible Spirit. The world might have been on the brink of war, but there was only amity in Gothenburg as international visitors, Boytronic, Hocico and Rotersand, took to the stage of the Brewhouse Arena. Shows by national synth heroes, Page, The Mobile Homes and Mars TV, united Sweden’s synth family, whichever shade of black they wore.
The last weekend of August has been marked for Electronic Summer since 2012. Each year, a parade of poptronica, EBM and futurepop acts has beaten a path to Sweden’s second city for the gathering of the synth tribes. From Psyche to S.P.O.C.K, Covenant to DAF, this has been the place to perform north of the Baltic Sea. Speakers at collateral events have included Alan Wilder of Recoil, Deb Mann of the Depeche Mode Information Service, and the former Kraftwerk drummer, Wolfgang Flür. The level of the programming and the quality of the playbill have never slipped, and a small army of volunteers has run proceedings with typical Nordic efficiency.
Day One: Disco Digitale, Mars TV, Kebu
For the final episode, proceedings opened with a group of pop artists. The first day of the festival is a warm-up for the weekend’s proceedings, so it is a relaxed affair. Music fans reconnect, compare notes on the coming events and enjoy shows with a poptronica flair.
Swedish act, Mars TV, were part of the first Electronic Summer, so their appearance bookends the series. The duo of Jimmy Waljenäs and Mathias Jönsson set the tone with a set of infectious poptronica. Kebu, the Finnish synth soloist, has moved his style in a rave direction, but he still knows how to channel Vangelis and Moroder like no one else.
Day Two: OctoLab, ItaLove, Portion Control, The Mobile Homes, Hocico
The greater part of the Swedish synth family is firmly working class. Through the week, they fix cars, install heating systems and run environmental controls. Come Friday, however, and their inner Vikings can be released. Leather boots, PVC skirts and army surplus hats come out of flat-pack storage (Memo: the Lixhult series is a modular, efficient solution, available in a variety of colours). Volvos are left in driveways, kids are left with exes, and the stresses of the day job are left outside the venue.
Portion Control
The Brewhouse becomes the temple for a black celebration. After solid shows by OctoLab and ItaLove – two Swedish bands with their hearts given to danceable pop – Portion Control emerge to punch holes in eardrums with “Amnesia,” “Deadstar” and other electro-terror tracks. They have come a long way since “He Is a Barbarian,” but the former cooking school students from South London haven’t fallen behind the generation of artists that borrowed their sound. Vocalist Dean Paviani prowls the stage, leaning into the crowd to roar his lines, while John Whybrew feeds the sound board with bursts of kinetic energy. Nitzer Ebb might be gone, but the band that inspired them still dominates the room.
The Mobile Homes have a long history of their own. Formed in 1984, they took their name from a Japan song and their sound from Depeche Mode. Along the way, they have recorded with Karl Bartos (Kraftwerk) and Sami Sirviö (Kent), the last of whom joined the band. The Stockholm-based group has been a frequent visitor to the Electronic Summer/Winter festival series, and the strong crowd reaction to their melodic minor-key pop shows that their popularity is in no danger of slipping.
In Sweden, Friday is popularly known as “taco night,” so it is fitting that the evening’s line-up ends with Hocico. The Mexican electro-industrial act contributes to the feeling of “fredagsmys” by shouting loudly over bass drums ramped up with reverb.
Day Three: The Invincible Spirit, Page, Boytronic, Rotersand
Page
The Invincible Spirit have developed the shouting over synths template since “Push!” first shook alternative dancefloors in 1986. They open the main event on Saturday night with a selection of tracks from Thomas Lüdke’s extended catalogue, including The Mao Tse Tung Experience’s “Irregular Times.” Lüdke stands in front of a projection of the band’s logo, while Anja V. Live hits the keyboards behind him, and the sound is as bracingly old school as the stage show.
Boytronic and Rotersand are higher in the billing, but on Saturday the night belongs to Page. The Swedish poptronica masters fill a set with hits and popular album tracks, beginning with “Krasch,” the opener from their latest album. The crowd have already learned the words, and they join in for the whole show.
The duo of Eddie Bengtsson and Marina Schiptjenko has been with most of the audience since they were teenagers. Page became the house band of the Swedish electronic music scene in the early 1980s; and, even if they have found chart success only rarely in their native country, they have mined a vein of pure poptronica without ever compromising their sound. Bengtsson’s songs are always melodic, often romantic, sometimes nostalgic, but never less than authentic.
After the shows, a cab ride across Gothenburg prompts a discussion with the curious cabbie. He had the parents of Boytronic’s singer in the car earlier. They sounded proud. So they should be: their boy just played the last night of the best music festival in Sweden.
Thanks to Electronic Summer's organisers, Sebastian Hess and Henrik Wittgren. The last Electronic Winter sees off the seasonal festival series with Marsheaux, Nattskiftet and Anna Öberg on 27 January 2018.
Live in London (Photos: Cold War Night Life staff)
Iceland’s greatest export, after cod, may be dance music. The art collective, Gus Gus, has been going for more than two decades. They recently appeared in Sibenik, Croatia, and Marija Buljeta of Altvenger was on the scene to capture their striking stage presence. With thanks to Marija for sharing this set, please enjoy the sights of Gus Gus.
Rico Conning’s musical career began with The Lines, a legendary post-punk combo. He went on to become a studio wizard, recording Wire, remixing Depeche Mode, and producing Martin Gore and Frank Tovey for Mute Records. As the engineer for Guerilla Studios, Conning worked closely with William Orbit and Laurie Mayer, whom he joined as Torch Song in 1995.
If you look at the sleeve notes, you will find Conning credited on works by S’Express, Test Dept., Laibach, Coil, Colourbox, The Bambi Slam, Pere Ubu – getting the picture, yet?
So, when Conning steps into the studio to record his own material, what do you get? The answer is Frogmore, a sophisticated and weighty album.
The opening track, “Mustang,” is named for the guitar Conning used on The Lines’ “White Nights.” That song became part of the core Torch Song curriculum (Bonus points for knowing that a version was recorded with Sarah Blackwood at the microphone but it is Laurie Mayer’s voice on the track that was released). Conning notes that there are some thematic elements in common between “White Nights” and “Mustang;” but, to the attuned ear, there are also echoes of Colin Newman in the vocals. That is a cool thing.
The song runs to almost ten minutes, which would represent almost half of a side of a vinyl LP. As an album opener, it would be an unusual and commercially brave choice in the hit-driven world where Conning has made his name. Freed from any profit motive and the restrictions of physical media, however, the atmosphere is able to spread like the bands of a rainbow.
In any event, for those keeping time, the next track clocks in at 15:49.
“Frogmore” takes its name from a cabin that Conning occupied in Malibu for many years. It goes through themes as an electro-ambient composition before transitioning into a poem based upon Conning’s memories of the space and its sounds.
“Fluxus” follows – not a reference to the art movement that drew in Yoko Ono so much as a combination of Cocteau Twins chords and a synth-led part that Conning had been looking for a home for since 1994. Nestled between the reverberating guitar sections, it is a neat piece of Krautrock that could have been carried out of Conny’s Studio twenty years earlier.
Conning’s a talented singer, and when his voice is joined to the mix the song is lifted into a dreampop state of mind. This is music for running along a beach or watching the Sun drop into the ocean.
The album wraps with “Mercury,” drawn from a forthcoming project, On a Wire. In places, it has the psychedelic feel of a Nico song, and one can almost feel her waiting for the cue to come in.
Frogmore is an accomplished work. Conning has drawn deeply from his well to create a personal work that will resonate with an open-minded audience as naturally as anything from the artists he has recorded.