Sweden’s Emmon have covered Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy,” and their version is a classy, dreamy take on the original. Emma Nylén’s voice is heaven, so it is little wonder that this cover is in celestial territory.
Filmed at a 1984 appearance in the Swedish town of Linköping, this rare clip shows Page performing their hit, “Dansande man” for an appreciative audience. A couple of Pro Ones take a prominent position in the set-up, and both Eddie Bengtsson and Marina Schiptjenko look as cool as could be.
UPDATE
Shortly after this post went up, new footage emerged from Denmark of an even-earlier incarnation of Page from 1983.
Edvard Graham Lewis has appeared in a variety of guises since his first days with Wire. As one half of Dome, he erected a tent inside a recording studio. As one-third of Duet Emmo, he voiced the most achingly beautiful single ever written. As four-quarters of He Said, Lewis reimagined pop as an intellectual pursuit. The list of fractions and factions takes us through P’o, 27#11, Halo, Hox, Ocsid – a fluid combination of characters, both musical and typographic, dissolving and reforming. The unifying thread is a shifting tension between the lyrical and experimental; music that sometimes approaches commercial pop but draws away just in time. You can’t always dance to it, but you’ll have fun trying.
Two albums have just been released under Lewis’ own name by Editions Mego, but that doesn’t make them any more straight-forward. All Under starts with a film score and installation piece of the same title: the former seemingly a series of intercepted radio signals, processed into a sequence of overlapping tonal waves; the latter a strikingly delicate and haunting drone set against more visceral electronics. Lewis acts as narrator on “The Eel Wheeled,” a short story somewhere between Kafka and Conrad, set in the dystopia that is the Homeland. “No Show Godot” is a slow-burning, restrained conclusion. With the most sparing manipulation of electrical current, Lewis has taken large strides along the experimental path that he first explored in the early 1980s, and All Under is an exemplary transmission from his Uppsala base.
The companion album, All Over, serves up a dozen tracks that walk on the knife-edge between pop and experimentalism. “Straight into the Corner” could easily fit into the Wire/Wir canon, with an easy-going sensibility, but it is a singular example – other tracks might appropriate familiar conventions, but only so that they can be deconstructed and repurposed. This is unmistakably a Lewis album, with his signature wordplay and playful subversion. The stand-out track, “We’ve Lost Your Mind,” is the closest thing to a single, but in a fairer world “Passport to International Travel” would be all over the radio. Take that, white van man.
Krister Petersson is Sweden’s most loyal devotee of Italo Disco. As the instrumental anchor of the legendary Vision Talk, Petersson was a prolific source of high energy dancefloor-friendly tracks. Although Vision Talk are no more, he hasn’t stopped writing new material, so the Italo flame remains lit in the North. His latest project, Swedit, is a contraction of Swedish Italo; and, like Vince Clarke’s original idea for The Assembly, is built around the idea of using different guest vocalists for each song.
The first vocalist to join up with Petersson is Richard Flow, also ex-Vision Talk and currently the keyboardist with Machinista. Their collaboration, “Lost and Found”, is out now on 12″ vinyl release through direct order (contact Swedit Records for information). We think it’s awesome.
Hoxton Square Bar & Kitchen
London
9 July 2014
No one is staffing the merchandise table at Karin Park’s Hoxton show. A folded t-shirt sits next to a CD – abandoned, perhaps, so that the merch rep can take in the gig from a position closer to the stage. Spaces at the front are at a premium, taken up by photographers pointing lenses at Karin and girls pressing forward for a closer look at her brother, David.
It’s hard to fault them, really. Drummer David is a blonde mane atop a muscular V, while singer Karin’s symmetrical features are a lure to lenses. The show is a rare London outing for the Parks, and Dalston hipsters vie with Essex music veterans for the best view as David energetically knocks out rhythms and triggers pads. Sister Karin owns the stage, striding from Dreier-esque vulnerability to confident, floor filling dance tracks with a vocal range as wide as her legs are long.
The set feels like it is over in a heart-beat, but the hour-long show covers a lot of terrain: from current Beatport favourite, “Shine,” to the dueling drums of “Thousand Loaded Guns.” A new song, “Look What You’ve Done Now,” is darkness and magic. “New Era,” from the Tiger Dreams EP, rubs shoulders with “Wildchild” from Highwire Poetry and a version of Maya Jane Coles’ “Everything.” Recalled to the stage by enthusiastic applause, the Parks reach back to 2009’s Ashes to Gold for “Desire” with just the slightest hesitation – it hasn’t been played live recently, but it’s a reminder of how far their sound has traveled and how vital it remains.
From the backwoods of Dalarna to an intimate venue in Hoxton, Karin Park’s song-craft is consistently unvarnished and raw. It touches nerves, breaks hearts and moves hips. It’s the real thing. You can pick up a t-shirt another time.
Canadian electro-pioneers, Rational Youth, recently wrapped up a successful tour of the Nordics. Their visit to Europe coincided, not only with a new Cold War, but also the release of a box set from the German artisan label, Vinyl-on-Demand. VOD have a reputation for careful and detailed craftsmanship, and the Rational Youth box has clearly been assembled with a designer’s eyes and a studio engineer’s ears. There is no other label producing material of this quality, which makes the compilation of Rational Youth’s recordings even more special. For those who missed the Nordic dates, admiring the VOD box is the best way to pass time until the band return to Europe for German shows in October.
There are five albums in the set, focused mainly on the band’s early years, when they produced their most influential work.
LP1: COLD WAR NIGHT LIFE
The original version of the Cold War Night Life album was released on Montreal’s YUL Records in 1982. It fused the edgy, shadows-and-fog atmosphere of Berlin in the Smiley and Harry Palmer films with a Kraftwerkian pulse. Canada’s first synth band, Rational Youth created a collection of world-class electronic pop that easily sits alongside Depeche Mode’s Speak and Spell or Human League’s Reproduction in the pantheon of classic synthesizer albums. Every one of the songs is a gem, from the opening click-track of “Close to Nature” to the politically prescient underground hit, “Dancing on the Berlin Wall.”
LP2: YUL RECORDS 1981-1983
YUL Records was named for Montreal’s airport, which has the international aviation code, YUL. The label was founded by Marc De Mouy, who also provided a platform for artists Cham-pang and Monty Cantsin. Besides the Cold War Night Life album, Rational Youth released a number of singles on YUL, which are collected on this volume with an emphasis on different versions from those previously included in other releases. From the initial 16-step sequence of “I Want to See the Light” to the masterful instrumental, “Pile ou Face,” the songs assembled here showcase the original path followed by Rational Youth, which went much further than anything else coming from North America at the time.
Interesting fact: there is no American equivalent to Rational Youth.
LP3: DEMOS, OBSCURE, LIVE & RARE
The Rational Youth archives have been properly raided for this album. Of fourteen tracks, seven are previously unreleased; two come from a cassette-only release; while the balance previously featured on the recent releases of live shows from 1983. There are demo versions of “Saturdays in Silesia,” “Just a Sound in the Night,” “Dancing on the Berlin Wall,” “In Your Eyes” and “Holiday in Bangkok,” as well as solos or duos by the original members, Tracy Howe, Bill Vorn and Kevin Komoda.
The question many fans have is, “What would have happened to Rational Youth if Bill Vorn hadn’t left before the 1983 tour?” We’ll never know, but these tracks give us a window into the Tesla-like creative energy that Vorn, Howe and Komoda were all discharging at the time. The demo of “Holiday in Bangkok,” in particular, shows off the way that sines, squares, triangles and saws could be combined by them to devastating effect, underpinning Tracy Howe’s distinctive vocal lines and innate sense of melody. The live tracks show that the band found a way to remain innovative and compelling even without Vorn to accompany them; but, without the rigid sense of electronic purity that Vorn took with him into the studio, many of the songs have a different feeling in live performance. It’s exciting to hear these recordings from the 1980s – and interesting to contemplate the immense creative distance that each version of the band could cover.
LP4: LIVE IN WINNIPEG, 1983
When Kevin Komoda looked into a box in his attic one day in 2013, he discovered two tape recordings from Rational Youth’s Vorn-less 1983 tour of Canada. The sound man had taken recordings straight from the board, and they lay for three decades forgotten in a box under some black-and-white pictures from Kraftwerk’s first performance in Montreal. A copy must have been made for a friend, at one point, because a bootleg tape of the Winnipeg show circulated as far afield as Sweden, but the master recordings sat in a lonely place until Nachos! Records released both the Winnipeg and Ottawa shows as cassettes. Artoffact Records then picked up the recordings for a CD release.
The Winnipeg show took place close to the famous intersection of Portage and Main, practically in the middle of North America. The venue, Wellingtons, closed down recently, but in 1983 it was a subterranean safe-harbour for alternative music. A local import record store organised the show, which was opened by local band, New Man Celebration. The warm reception given to Rational Youth comes through in the informal and friendly banter between Howe and unknown off-stage voices, but the legacy of their visit was to send synthesizer sales skyward at the local instrument shop. This record captures the energy and influence of Rational Youth, which sent prairie youths in double-breasted shirts and Phil Oakey haircuts in search of their own Moogs.
LP5: THE CAPITOL YEARS
It was probably inevitable that, given Rational Youth’s underground success, the major labels would eventually move in, looking for a host organism. Capitol Records was able to latch on, but had no clue how to develop and promote the band. Instead of taking them to the Pasadena Rose Bowl – as Mute and Sire did for Depeche Mode – Capitol led Rational Youth on a merry dance and eventually lost interest. It’s too bad, because while signed to Capitol Tracy Howe wrote and recorded some of his best material, including “In Your Eyes” and “Holiday in Bangkok.” The last volume of the box set draws on some of this great store of music, which set venues alight during the band’s recent Nordic adventure.
As with many other VOD releases, the box set includes a beautiful booklet, reproducing rare photographs, gig posters, lyric sheets and recollections from Howe. It’s a fascinating read and a compelling view of one of the most dynamic electronic artists from the early 1980s.
One of the things that has always made Wire stand out is the presence of oblique strategist and wordsmith Edvard Graham Lewis on bass. “On bass” is perhaps a strange way to describe his role, because it also encompasses graphic design, stage design, sound design, vocals – maybe it’s better to say, “as multimedia, polymath whirlwind.” As part of Dome, Duet Emmo and 27#11, and as solo artist He Said, he has pushed the boundaries of pop into achingly beautiful and unconventional realms. Wire are still reinventing themselves, but Lewis is also working up solo material from his base in Uppsala. Two albums are coming around midsummer from Editions Mego: All Over and All Under are days away from release.
The first track we’ve heard is “We’ve Lost Your Mind” from All Over. It’s unmistakably Lewis material, with an almost conventional start that ultimately dissolves into fractals of noise. Immense.
These days, Martha Ladly teaches interactive design at OCAD, but in 1983 she had found herself in England, immersed in the country’s flowering pop scene. Together with fellow Canadian art school refugee, Brett Wickens, she wrote and performed this gem, which featured Peter Hook from New Order on bass and had a Peter Saville sleeve. Formerly one of the two Marthas in Martha and the Muffins, Ladly sang for Roxy Music and The Associates, dated Saville and was credited for suggesting the names of OMD releases. Wickens played with The Spoons and Ceramic Hello, released a 12″ with Jah Wobble and worked closely with Saville. Name-dropping aside, this is a lovely slice of Anglo-Canadian pop, just right for summer.
We hardly knew Jeff Plewman, the man behind the bandages. Nash the Slash, on the other hand, had a global following. In his top hat and suit, Nash was a silent film star in an age of noise; widely appreciated for his misuse of electrified violins and mandolins. Fed through effects pedals and played over drum machines and keyboards, Nash’s instruments yielded shrieks and drones that could mute a banshee or echo Prokofiev.
Gary Numan stumbled across Nash in a Toronto nightclub and immediately dropped his scheduled support act. Nash accompanied him on tour, gaining exposure, a UK record deal and even a place on a Smash Hit flexidisc (alongside OMD); however, unlike Canadian label-mates, Martha & The Muffins, Nash failed to achieve commercial success in the UK. Dindisc, the Branson-funded label run by Carol Wilson, promoted Nash as a post-punk novelty act, playing on his horror-film imagery and clever covers of songs by The Rolling Stones and Jan & Dean. Frustrated by the lack of appreciation for his inventive original material, Nash returned to Canada.
From his base in Toronto, Nash released records on the Cut-throat imprint. The label’s distinctive logo included a skull, and one of the eye sockets was positioned over the spindle hole on Cut-throat releases. Listening to a Nash album therefore required listeners to impale the skull and rotate it around the violated socket. That dark sense of humour and his attention to detail were constant features of Nash’s work, whether in songs like “Vincent’s Crows” or in the production of a Nash the Slash comic book.
Nash played to packed arenas and small clubs. He warmed up for The Who but also for The Spoons. He toured with Iggy Pop and played along to silent films in local cinemas. He composed albums that could be played at any speed and practically invented the sound of The Orb and System 7 with “Blind Windows” in 1978.
He retired from music in 2012, leaving a note charting his accomplishments and lamenting the consequences of file-sharing:
A journalist once asked me to describe a typical Nash the Slash fan. I replied, ‘They just get it’. They get my references to Ray Bradbury, Boris Karloff, and even my opening quote from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was my intention to shock, but not offend.
Nash had a full stage name – Nashville Thebodiah Slasher – but his family and friends knew him as Jeff. His passing last weekend leaves a hole in the heart of alternative music.
At the end of April 2014, a series of mini-festivals were organised in Norway and Sweden, showcasing some of the most exciting electronic music acts from the 1980s and today. Cold War Night Life took in the Swedish shows and came back with bags of salt licorice and memories of unmissable performances.
RATIONAL YOUTH
Malmö, 30 April 2014
Gothenburg, 2 May 2014
Stockholm, 3 May 2014
Caught between two superpowers, Canada was the right place for an album called Cold War Night Life in 1982. Though recorded in Montreal, the atmosphere of Rational Youth’s debut was distinctly European: basslines and leads echoed the sounds coming from Dusseldorf, Liverpool and London, while the lyrics evoked the shadows and fog of divided Berlin and Gdansk. As troops stared at each from opposite sides of no-man’s land, Tracy Howe and Bill Vorn absorbed the tension and cynicism of the times, filtered it through a construction kit of analogue synthesizers and sequencers, and produced a world-class collection of songs on themes of love, alienation, glamour and paranoia.
Cold War Night Life became one of the defining electronic albums of the early 1980s, comfortably sitting alongside John Foxx’s Metamatic, Kraftwerk’s Computer World and Fad Gadget’s Under the Flag. Released on an independent Canadian label, its commercial reach was limited, but over the years the record became a cult favourite among the synthescenti. A copy found its way to neutral Sweden and C90 duplicates began to circulate throughout the country’s burgeoning electronic music scene. In this case, home taping didn’t kill music; it built a base of fans for whom Rational Youth issued distant signals on wavelengths tuned to the alternative dancefloor.
It was only at the turn of the last century that Rational Youth finally bridged the physical distance between them and their Swedish fans, playing selected dates with local synthpop heroes like Elegant Machinery and contemporaries like Robert Marlow. The warmth of their reception on these occasions stayed with singer Tracy Howe, and a return to the Nordics was organised to coincide with the release of a box set on the German artisan label, Vinyl-on-Demand, and new vinyl editions of the last studio album, To the Goddess Electricity.
The original plan was to transport a six-piece pop combo from Canada for a mini-tour of Sweden and Norway, but logistical considerations trimmed the act down to the essential duo of Howe and original keyboardist Kevin Komoda. Not a problem: fans were more than happy to receive them for a purely electronic show. Armed with a Moog Little Phatty and Roland JX-8P, Komoda was able to recreate classic sounds while confidently adding runs and fills that lifted the atmosphere higher than the International Space Station.
For Rational Youth, the shows were about revisiting familiar songs and old friends. In Malmö, Howe sported a personalised version of the jersey of Sweden’s national hockey team – a gift from S.P.O.C.K’s singer on a previous tour – while diplomatically avoiding mention of the Olympic games final. At the same show, Howe paid tribute to the Swedish scene’s finest songwriter, Eddie Bengtsson, performing an English-language version of “Luft” by Sista mannen på jorden. Joined on-stage by Bengtsson, Howe was visibly moved by the beauty of the music and their reunion.
Rational Youth’s sets on each date were dominated by tracks from Cold War Night Life, such as “Ring the Bells” and “Beware the Fly”. The songs have lost none of their vitality in the three decades since they were recorded, and the tug-of-war over Ukraine by empire-builders provided them with a familiar geopolitical back-drop. Tracks from later releases, including “The Man in Grey” from their eponymous EP on a major label and “Pink Pills, Orange Pills” from To the Goddess Electricity, were warmly received. The loudest cheers were reserved for “Saturdays in Silesia” and “City of Night” – both up-tempo, sequenced singles fondly remembered from the days when superpower submarines prowled Sweden’s archipelago.
A surprise show-closer in Malmö and Stockholm was a cover of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” including Angus-like hopping. Firmly tongue-in-cheek, it was a playful riposte to the scene’s purists. Like many of the electronic pioneers, Howe was a punk who found his way to synthesizers (he still plays drums with his old band, The Normals), and he clearly couldn’t resist breaking down walls. It was also a coded signal that he hasn’t given up on adding drums and guitars to Rational Youth’s live act. A return to Europe is a real prospect, as is an expanded line-up with a new take on the band’s classic songs. The purists will secretly love it.
PSYCHE
Malmö, 30 April 2014
Gothenburg, 2 May 2014
Stockholm, 3 May 2014
Legendary Canadian exports, Psyche, have been pioneers on the dark electro scene for almost three decades. Informed by the hard electronics of early Fad Gadget and the Gothic imagery of post-punk artists like Joy Division and Bauhaus, Psyche launched in 1982 but first came to wider attention with 1985’s Insomnia Theatre, an album of horror-inspired classics with titles like “The Brain Collapses” and “Mr. Eyeball Ooze.” In due course, Europe called and Psyche were transplanted to Germany, from where they have continued to release edgy music born in the depths of the night and build their reputation as an outstanding live act.
Psyche’s Swedish shows opened with the hard-edged stomp of “The Saint Became a Lush” from 1986’s Unveiling the Secret. There were hints of “Tubular Bells” in the sequencer pattern; but, instead of Max von Sydow in a dog-collar, the fog gave way to singer Darrin Huss, occupying the stage with a vigorous dance routine, and keyboardist Stefan Rabura. What followed was a selection of hits from Psyche’s extensive back-catalogue, covering a range of styles while maintaining the dialectic between the morbid and uplifting. Songs like “15 Minutes”, “Sanctuary” and “The Crawler” easily got the appreciative crowd making noise: in Gothenburg, Huss told the boisterous audience, “I’m singing to the rhythm of your screams!”
Huss’ vocal range is impressive, and he is capable of bluesy belters as well as more delicate interpretations. On “Goodbye Horses,” one of Psyche’s signature covers, Huss successfully conveyed the song’s careful balance of pain and splendour, while Rabura’s accompaniment underlined its emotional ambiguity. The full power of Huss’ voice really came out on “Unveiling the Secret,” their 1986 hit, showing exactly how Psyche became a lasting presence on the dark electro scene.
A treat for Gothenburg fans was the appearance of Gothic personality, Adora BatBrat – who was on DJ duties for the event – for a cover of Soft Cell’s “Sex Dwarf.” The Swedish singer and model brought her entertaining brands of glamour and humour to the song – a main-stay of Psyche’s live shows – while acting as a foil for Huss’ own improvisation. Like the public service announcements used to say, “Sometimes the after-effects never wear off.”
SISTA MANNEN PÅ JORDEN
Malmö, 30 April 2014
Gothenburg, 2 May 2014
Stockholm, 3 May 2014
Eddie Bengtsson nearly gave away one of his best songs to his old band, S.P.O.C.K. When they turned down “Stadens alla ljus” (EN: “City Lights”), he recorded it for his own project, Sista mannen på jorden (EN: The Last Man on Earth). Released in time for Swedish shows alongside Rational Youth, it is a fusion of space disco, with a pulsating, filtered bass and classic sweeps, together with a melody line that Jean-Michel Jarre would die for. S.P.O.C.K probably knew their limitations: given a live outing, “Stadens alla ljus” fits smoothly into the SMPJ canon, sending hips and feet into motion with a sleek style more Studio 54 than old-time S.P.O.C.K-and-roll.
Bengtsson has an informal rapport with fans, who push to the front of the stage to sing along to “Sekunder” (EN: “Seconds”), “Allt är klart” (EN: “Everything is Ready”) and other SMPJ classics. Flanked by Christer Hermodsson, he knocks out energetic poptronica gems with an ease that belies their sophistication. For sheer elegance, songs like “Luft” (EN: “Breath”) and “Det där är grönt” (EN: “That is Green”) are without peers in modern electronic music. The crowds in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm know this, and the bartenders at the venues are left in relative peace for the duration of SMPJ’s sets.
A SMPJ live show is an interactive affair; and, as the lyrics are all in Swedish, the audience easily sings along at Bengtsson’s prompting. You don’t need to speak a word of the language, however, to enjoy the throbbing basslines and clever melodic poptronica: a pair of dancing shoes will do the job perfectly.
I SATELLITE
Malmö, 30 April 2014
Gothenburg, 2 May 2014
Stockholm, 3 May 2014
The first single Rod MacQuarrie ever bought was Gary Numan’s classic, “Cars.” On the B-side of the US release was “Metal,” one of the cover songs that is a highlight of I Satellite’s Nordic shows. MacQuarrie, who grew up in a remote part of Canada but now lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, clearly absorbed Numan’s futurist vibe deeply, as I Satellite travels with a vintage Korg System 700 synthesizer and an analogue sequencer the size of a small house. Turning out catchy songs that deconstruct city living and the love lives of replicants, I Satellite was a popular discovery for Nordic audiences who grew up with The Pleasure Principle and Telekon on their built-in IKEA record shelves.
MacQuarrie’s show isn’t all robotic longing: audience favourite, “Bubbleboy,” taken from 2003’s Auto:Matic album, explains the fate of a boy “alone in a bubble world,” superimposed over a sonic palette lifted from 1979. The I Satellite originals on display are both quirky and catchy, and after the shows groups of young men press forward to ask questions and seek signatures. Who knew in Södermalm that Kalamazoo was hiding such an interesting act?
ROBERT MARLOW
Stockholm, 3 May 2014
Robert Marlow could have been a contender. While his Basildon contemporaries saw their careers take off with Depeche Mode and Yazoo, Marlow narrowly missed out on stardom. On paper, a label deal and production help from Vince Clarke should have been the ideal platform; instead, he was Andrew Ridgeley in the shadow of the talent he stood closest to. Sales of his singles were slow, and an album recorded with Clarke and Eric Radcliffe was shelved until the end of the 1990s.
Never mind – the crowd at Stockholm’s Nalen venue knows all of the words to the 1980s singles: Claudette, The Face of Dorian Grey and Calling All Destroyers. They sing along contentedly, while Robert Enforsen, the former Elegent Machinery vocalist, handles iPad and keyboard duties and adds harmonies. Marlow’s voice holds up, but the years have clearly weathered the lad from Essex.
“Touch me!” cries a heavily made-up Marlow, extending his free hand from the stage. A sea of friendly Swedish hands reach back; and, at least until the music stops, Marlow is the Smash Hits cover star he always wanted to be.