NURSE WITH WOUND - SHE AND ME FALL TOGETHER IN FREE DEATH @ 20

 

Turning 20 years old today is She and Me Fall Together In Free Death by Nurse With Wound, which was released on May 31st, 2003.  Initially available only as a limited vinyl edition, the album found Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter exploring a somewhat more conventional musical landscape, at least by NWW standards.  The side long title track verged decidedly into psychedelic rock territory, particularly akin to Krautrock pioneers like CAN and NEU!.  A constant, hypnotic drum beat drives the groove while spacey guitar intonations drift atop of the bass heavy rhythm.  Side two consists of a triptych of compositions, kicked off with a cover of the traditional folk song, Black Is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair, which features the first ever lead vocal performance by Steven Stapleton.  The remaining two tracks go into more recognizably surreal NWW style weirdness, first exploring chicken coup insanity on Chicken Concret and finishing off with some robot pornography on Gusset Typing.  The CD edition issued the following year adds two remixed bonus tracks, the first being of the title track in a “Phosphorous Mix”, and the second being a variation of Chicken Concret titled Chicken Korma.

MALCOLM MCLAREN - DUCK ROCK @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the debut solo album from impresario Malcolm McLaren, with Duck Rock being released on May 27th, 1983. After a decade of working behind the scenes in the music business, McLaren decided it was finally time to step out front, taking the spotlight for himself rather than living vicariously through the likes of Johnny Rotten.

Cultural appropriation is something the Brits have certainly mastered over the years and Duck Rock is a prime example of a couple of white dudes wholesale pilfering black culture for their own ends. While it’s valid to be critical of that process these days, you still can’t deny that McLaren & company managed to put together one hell of a fun album. Since Malcolm wasn’t actually a musician in any sense, a HUGE portion of credit for the creation of this record has to go to co-producer, composer and instrumentalist, Trevor Horn. He’d made a name for himself as one half of The Buggles, followed by a brief stint in the progressive rock supergroup, Yes. Between the two of them, they put together a crazy-quilt of world music influences.

After becoming infamous for managing the Sex Pistols and then helping kick off the New Romantic “pirate” trend with Bow Wow Wow, Malcolm McLaren hooked up with Trevor Horn and the two began a sojourn around the globe, collecting bits and pieces for the collaboration they were cooking up. Their travels took them to places like South Africa, Brazil and the USA, where they recruited local musicians and performers to contribute to the musical gumbo they were cooking up. Unfortunately, several of those contributions were uncredited and subsequent lawsuits ended up being settled out of court in order to provide appropriate compensation to certain slighted musicians while retaining composer credits for McLaren and Horn.

Beyond the the musical elements recorded using local talent, Trevor Horn recruited various UK musicians to help him create the remaining musical components needed to tie all these threads together. These included Anne Dudley, J. J. Jeczalik, and Thomas Dolby. Side recordings which Horn, Dudley and Jeczalik made in between takes of Duck Rock would eventually become the debut album by the Art of Noise, Into Battle with the Art of Noise. Horn was essentially defining the sound of the ‘80s, which is particularly notable given that, after these two projects, he’d go on to co-found ZTT Records and propel bands like Frankie Goes to Hollywood to international fame. In retrospect, it’s impossible to overestimate the impact he had on the world of pop music throughout the decade and beyond.

The structure of the album presents a continuous flow of music inter-cut with radio spots from The Supreme Team radio show. Altogether, the album has a stream of consciousness feel to it, bounding between styles and genres with effluent ease. Each turn reveals a new surprise - from the tribal rhythms of Africa to the rope skipping glee of inner city youth clubs. Since Malcolm had no particular musical abilities, he took on the role of ringleader, contributing speak-sung vocals to several of the tracks. Throughout all of it, he pops in periodically as a kind of travelogue host, enthusiastically highlighting the virtues of each pit-stop along the journey. In his vocals, he affects a kind of mid-western Americana joviality, which almost comes off as obnoxious while somehow managing to remain charming.

As much as this album is an exploitation and appropriation of black music, it’s still interesting to note that the success of the album helped open the floodgates for that music to infiltrate the mainstream of pop consciousness. Before this album, hip-hop was mostly an underground fringe scene known only within select urban environments. After this release, rap music was all over the place. The impact on African music was also notable, particularly when you consider that, three years later, Paul Simon would release his Graceland album, which completely leaned into South African music. Ultimately, Duck Rock was a key pathway by which much or this black culture was smuggled into white western ears. 40 years on, it still has a freshness and dynamism that feels timeless.

THE TIMELORDS - DOCTORIN’ THE TARDIS @ 35

 

Screeching into its 35th anniversary today is the one hit wonder from The Timelords, aka Ford Timelord, aka The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, aka The KLF, aka Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond, with Doctorin’ The Tardis, which was released on May 23rd, 1988. Roaring into the number one UK single spot, it was a novelty record which helped set the stage for one of the most notorious musical careers of the late 20th century.

The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu were founded on January 1st, 1987 whereupon they spent the next year pumping out a couple of LPs and a handful of singles. Those had limited exposure and commercial success, though they had more prominent legal troubles thanks to their unauthorized use of copyrighted music from other artists. ABBA’s legal challenges ultimately resulted in their debut LP ending up as a bonfire when courts order the destruction of all remaining copies.

After that rough startup Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond were looking to take a break from The JAMs to clear their heads and regroup. They were looking for a musical palate cleanser and something unabashedly accessible, rather than the eccentric limited releases of The JAMs with Drummond’s strident rapped social commentary. Initially, the idea was to make a dance record, something grounded in the 4/4 disco beat being rehabilitated by House music. Yet, as the fates would have it, their decision to pillage 1970s nostalgia drove their groove in a slightly different direction.

The rhythmic bed they chose for their “hit single” was lifted from Garry Glitter’s 1972 smash, Rock ’n’ Roll Parts 1 & 2. At first they tried to fight against the song’s boogie-woogie, bump & grind swing in order to shoehorn it into a more disco friendly rhythm, but after three days of struggling, they came to realize that it was useless to resist. Augmenting this groove with a bit of The Sweet’s Blockbuster, they next spliced that rhythm with the sequencer driven pulse and sine wave wail of the Dr. Who theme song. The whole thing was topped off with a football chant style chorus, mindlessly repeating “Dr Who, The Tardis”. It was an admittedly stupid juxtaposition, but something about it seemed to work. It had a kind of rousing brutishness to it, though inter-cut with a sci-fi sense of drama. The pair self-proclaimed their new product, “probably the most nauseating record in the world”, adding that "we also enjoyed celebrating the trashier side of pop”.

They then set about creating a new alter-ego for their creation, based on Cauty's 1968 Ford Galaxie police car. It had been featured in the cover graphics for the second JAMs LPs, but was also Cauty’s regular ride, which he dubbed, “Ford Timelord”. Rather than list Cauty and Drummond on the single, the song’s creation was credited to the car, which was prominently featured on the single’s cover. Cauty and Drummond were only hinted at as “Lord Rock” (controls) and Time Boy (navigation) and the duo claimed the car had issued instructions to them on how to create the record. A music video for the single showed the car chasing various cheaply made Daleks around the countryside, with sirens blaring throughout.

Numerous formats for the single were produced including CD Maxi Singles, 12” EPs, 7” singles and a special remix featuring Gary Glitter on guest vocals. Of course, this was all before Gary’s legal issues and conviction as a sexual predator. After its release, it quickly climbed the charts until it hit the number one spot in the UK, where it stayed for precisely one week. Critically, the single was seen as nothing more than a bit of novelty pop trash. Melody Maker described it as "pure, unadulterated agony ... excruciating”. Yet its creators were entirely aware of the song’s nature and had conceived it as a kind of tribute to the genre of novelty records. After its release, they followed up the single with the publication of “The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way”, a guide booklet to chart success. The text meticulously laid out the entire process by which one can compose, record, release and promote a number one single. However, while such hubris might indicate a fool-proof methodology, the fact is that the pair’s subsequent attempts at chart success were far less successful.

Success did eventually come to them again after they rebranded themselves as The KLF and began to issue a series of singles, which became exemplars of so-called “Stadium House”. In the early 1990s, these records achieved incredible chart success around the world, including the US. They were considered the most successful group of the era, topping it off with the massively successful White Room LP. But then, just as mysteriously as they rose to fame, they abruptly pulled the plug on their career, deleted their entire record catalogue and vanished from the music industry, leaving behind only a hail of blank bullets, a dead sheep and a pile of burnt money.

THE GOLDEN PALOMINOS @ 40

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the eponymous debut LP from New York art-funk freaks, The Golden Palominos, which was released on May 20th, 1983. Combining elements of funk, hip-hop, no-wave & jazz, it was an album of extreme fusions and deliberate confusions.

Formed by acclaimed session drummer/producer/arranger Anton Fier in 1981, along with Material members, bassist Bill Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, the extended lineup of the group was as consistently mutating as the music itself. For their recording debut, the core trio were augmented by DNA frontman, Arto Lindsay on guitar and vocals, violinist/guitarist Fred Frith, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and keyboardist Michael Beinhorn (also a member of Material). The inclusion of a DJ scratching along with the music made it one of the first records outside of the rap genre to incorporate the technique.

As an album, the music occupies a soundscape of idiosyncratic hybrids skirting the edges of numerous avant-garde sub-cultures of the early 1980s, offering a cutting discordance along with the interplay of tribal-verging-on-funky rhythms. It’s not easy listening by any stretch, but it remains one of the most distinctive creations of the era, particularly in its ability to pull in strands of the burgeoning hip-hop scene, utilizing DMX drum machines along with scratching, but bending them into contorted free-jazz influenced shapes. It’s a record that creates its own rules, which it then indiscriminately breaks. 

THE STRANGLERS - BLACK AND WHITE @ 45

 

 

Marking 45 years on the shelf today is The Stranglers' third LP, Black and White, which was released on May 12th, 1978. It’s an album which continued to highlight the band’s distinctiveness, well beyond the limitations of three chord slashing, bog-standard punk rock. The album showcases the group beginning to develop a more introspective emotional lyricism along with an increased sophistication in their song-craft, introducing elements like the 7/4 time signature in the song, Curfew. For some, the shift towards a more refined sound came at the expense of powerful songwriting, as showcased on their first two LPs, but for others, the writing was just as solid, while pushing musical boundaries with implications of influence upon contemporaries like Gang of Four, Joy Division and Public Image Ltd. Clearly, they were on a path which was akin to those “post-punk” allies and their continued evolution down that path would quickly lead to some significant pop classics down the road. Not that Black and White doesn’t have its own cherries to be picked. Tracks like Nice ’n’ Sleazy, Toiler On the Sea, and Death & Night & Blood are just some of the songs which have become essential listening in the classic Stranglers canon.

The initial release of the UK version included a white vinyl 7” which included a cover of Burt Bacharach’s Walk On Buy, along with two other bonus tracks. The US release did not include the single, but was pressed on black & white marbled vinyl. The album was a critical and commercial success at the time of its release, though retrospective critical praise has been a bit more mixed in light of the band’s evolution. Still, it remains an essential piece of the band’s legacy for any serious fan.

TODD RUNDGREN - HERMIT OF MINK HOLLOW @ 45

 

Released 45 years ago this month, it’s Todd Rundgren’s 8th studio album, the very literally titled Hermit Of Mink Hollow, which was issued in May of 1978. After his excursions into the far reaches of progressive experimentation and excess with his band, Utopia, and solo albums like A Wizard, A True Star, this album found the eccentric genius in an introspective and minimalist mood, stripping back his style to a kind of accessibility which hadn’t been heard since 1972’s Something / Anything.

At the time the album was produced, Rundgren had recently ended a serious romantic relationship and was looking to regroup in a more private setting. He also wanted to simplify his arrangements to the bare bones of drums, bass, piano and vocals, with the emphasis on the last, for which he’d developed some new techniques while out on the road with Utopia. Ensconcing himself in his home studio at Mink Hollow Road in Lake Hill, New York, Rundgren set about creating the album entirely on his own, producing and playing everything, with only the occasional visit from engineer Mike Young. That “do it yourself” approach proved to be somewhat tedious at times, especially with the drums set up in the basement while the control room was upstairs. With no remote controls for the recorder available, Todd would have to bolt up and down the stairs to activate the machine and get the recording done. If he made a mistake, he’d have to dash back upstairs to reset the tape machine.

To help relieve some of the tedium, Rundgren would approach particular instruments and recordings by adopting “characters”. For example, he might imagine himself as Paul McCartney for a particular bass part, channeling characteristic runs and fills after the musician. Songs were generally built up from the drums & bass, with vocals coming in as the final element. After having gone through a breakup, Rundgren’s lyrics tended to be more intimate and confessional, though he later denied that they were directly biographical in nature.

Upon its release, the album received mostly positive critical reviews, with many noting his “return to form” with more modest and accessible pop sensibilities dominating the proceedings. The album performed reasonably well on the charts and the single, Can We Still Be Friends, became his most frequently covered composition, with versions by Robert Palmer, Rod Stewart, Colin Blunstone, and Mandy Moore.

NEU! - 2 @ 50

 

Marking it’s golden anniversary today is the sophomore LP from Krautrock pioneers, NEU! as “2” turns 50 years old, being released on May 7th, 1973. While on the one hand, it furthered the group’s position as the premier ambassadors of the “Motorik” sound, it also generated controversy with its unorthodox approach to dealing with a limited production budget.

For their second LP, Klaus Dinger & Michael Rother, along with producer, Conny Plank, continued to explore the hypnotic, driving grooves which had made their debut album a landmark, creating a sound which would become emblematic of the German music scene of the decade and inspire countless musicians for generations yet to come. While the first side of the LP presented a set of four new finished tracks, the budget for recording had run out by the time they’d completed those pieces. Desperate to find a solution to fill out the other side of the album, the group took the previously released single,“"Neuschnee/Super", and proceeded to create a series of “variations” using no more than a turntable and cassette deck.

The song was played at different speeds, manually spun or mangled on the cassette tape. The result was a set of six “remixes”, as Dinger would later classify the recordings. At the time of the album’s release, critics and fans considered the tactic a con or a rip-off, a “cheap gimmick”, though the band were, in reality, displaying an unprecedented sense of ingenuity when faced with a difficult circumstance. In fact, the move was actually quite in keeping with their artistic aesthetic and approach to “pop art”, presenting an innovative use of a “ready made” sound object, subverted and reshaped to create an entirely unexpected result. It was an approach that would be exploited by many other advocates of experimental music in numerous manifestations over the ensuing years.

Despite the controversy of some of its content, the album is still considered one of the foundation recordings of the German alternative music scene of the early 1970s, presenting a distinct and revolutionary sound, freed from the influence of American blues based structures and building on a completely re-imagined musical scaffolding.

GOD BLESS THE RED KRAYOLA AND ALL WHO SAIL WITH IT @ 55

 

Released 55 years ago this month is the sophomore LP from Red Krayola, God Bless The Red Krayola And All Who Sail With It, which was issued in May of 1968. Shifting their sound radically from their debut, the band inadvertently predicted post-punk atonality and minimalism a good decade before it would become trendy.

After the psychedelic hippy freakout that was The Parable of Arable Land, which inter-cut wildly effected songs by the band with improvised mayhem from the collective, The Familiar Ugly, a group of some 50 hangers on and friends, things got paired down significantly for the followup. The group were down to a trio with a scant few guests to join in. The production also took a radical shift away from what had been done before, with the band opting for a completely stripped down and flat production sound. No effects, reverberation or delays were used at all, save for the last track on the album. Only the natural acoustics of the studio room were used with even the EQ on the tracks was deliberately kept flat to avoid adding any color that was not inherent in the natural sound. Combined with the disjointed, angular and obtuse performances on their instruments, the band created a sound not dissimilar to what would come out of New York ten years later with the “No Wave” scene, which incorporated many of the same stylistic cues of free jazz improvisation, atonal musical structures and stark minimalism.

At the time of its release, it was completely misunderstood by fans and critics and it sold exceptionally poorly compared to their previous record. Yet in the ensuing years since its release, it has become recognized as a critical touchstone for bands which would become cutting edge with a decade of musical evolution behind them to provide context. For this album, when it hit the record shops in 1968, there was literally ZERO context for anyone to relate it to and try to understand what was going on. It was simply unprecedented. 

FUNKADELIC - COSMIC SLOP @ 50

 

Marking half a century of funkin’ it up is the fifth studio LP from Funkadelic, Cosmic Slop, which was released in May of 1973. After staring their career as a fusion of psychedelic rock & R&B, the “Funketeers” were starting to refine their sound into something which would soon define ‘70s funk, landing the accent firmly on the ONE and building the foundation stones for the hip-hop revolution which would inherit their grooves in future decades.

The shift away from the heavier rock sound of their early albums into the smoother grooves of what would become classic P-funk had begun in earnest on their previous, sprawling double LP, America Eats Its Young, an uneven album, but one which put some key elements into place. The evolution of the band’s lineup had stabilized somewhat by this point with the addition of key players like Bootsy Collins and singer-guitarist Garry Shider. These changes fueled the collective for the remainder of the decade. Such a significant revamp, however, initially left their fan base and critics out of sync with the band at first, with the results being poor sales for Cosmic Slop, which failed to produce any hit singles. Since its release, however, it has been significantly re-evaluated and recognized for its virtues, which become clearly evident when the album is contextualized by the rest of the group’s output. Cosmic Slop clearly shows the band finding their creative feet and stomping them with conviction and confidence. The rest of the world simply needed to catch up to where they were headed.

This was also the first Funkadelic LP to feature the graphic art genius and liner notes of Pedro Bell, who assumed responsibility for the band's gate-fold album covers and liner notes until their collapse after 1981's The Electric Spanking of War Babies. This is where the mythology of P-Funk truly starts to take flight and flex its muscles, creating an identity and presence which outstripped any other funk outfit roaming the American landscape during this golden age of the groove. Cosmic Slop simply set the standard and the P-Funk gang kept upping the ante throughout the rest of their career, maintaining both Funkadelic and soon Parliament, as well as a number of other side-projects, in an ever expanding universe of funk dominance.

NURSE WITH WOUND - SOLILOQUY FOR LILITH @35

 

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this month is Nurse With Wound’s triple LP slab of droning ambience, Soliloquy For Lilith, which was released in May of 1988. After nearly a decade of warping minds with a series of surreal and jarring excursions into sonic malfeasance, Steven Stapleton charted an abrupt change of course for this album, into a world of serene solemnity, forcing his fans to reconsider what was possible for the project while creating one of the most enduring and admired titles in it’s vast catalogue.

From its inception, Nurse With Wound had established itself as a true eclectic outlier within the experimental music community, creating a series of idiosyncratic releases which generally involved extensive use of disorienting editing and audio cutup techniques. Soliloquy, however, would rely on a very different approach, with Stapleton and wife, Diana Rogerson, claiming to have used no instruments of any kind in the album’s production. Instead, the sounds originated from a series of effects devices and pedals which were wired together in sequence to form a closed feedback loop, with no original source instrument or microphone to generate the sound. The noises that emanated from this configuration were believed to have resulted from an electrical wiring fault in the studio which caused a “hum” to be picked up in the wiring. This noise was then morphed and amplified by the feedback loop of effects pedals. Changes to the tone and texture of the sound were triggered by Stapleton’s physical proximity to different devices in the chain. Moving & gesturing near them, like one would do with a Theremin, caused oscillations and other modulations. A series of six recordings of this setup were captured, each lasting no less than 17-18 uninterrupted minutes in length.

Nurse With Wound releases are often packaged in limited editions, occasionally with one of a kind cover art for the extremely rarefied items. For this release, Stapleton & Rogerson created a new, though short-lived, independent label imprint, Idle Hole, and assigned the album a catalogue number of Mirror One. Funding for the project was aided by a government Enterprise Allowance Scheme grant. The album was packaged as three LPs enclosed in a glossy black lidded box, embossed with a gold foil radiating disc graphic & title texts. An insert included with the set depicted the Burney Relief (also known as the Queen of the Night), a Mesopotamian terracotta plaque in high relief of the Old-Babylonian period. It depicts a winged, nude, goddess-like figure with bird's talons, flanked by owls, and perched upon two lions. The figure is often associated with the biblical figure of Lilith, a female in Mesopotamian and Judaic mythology, theorized to be the first wife of Adam and supposedly the primordial she-demon. The title of the album, while being archaic and occult in nature, also referred to the couple’s daughter, Lilith, who was born earlier in 1988.

Although a limited edition, the album quickly sold out, even at the exorbitant price necessitated by the elaborate packaging. I recall paying $60 CAN for mine in the local import record shop, a steep price in 1988. In fact, it quickly became Nurse With Wound’s most popular release, with funds generated by its sales contributing to the Stapleton family being able to finance the purchase of farm property at Cooloorta in County Clare, Ireland in 1989, where they maintain a homestead to this day. The album was reissued on CD, first in 1993 in a standard jewel case 2CD set, and then again in 2003, this time in an expanded 3CD edition with packaging emulating the original LP embossed box. The third disc, added to further emulate the original LP configuration, adds two remixes to the set, bringing the total to eight movements. The reissues continued to sell better than nearly any other Nurse With Wound title and the album remains in print. It easily stands as one of my all-time favorite releases from Nurse With Wound, as well as one of its most listenable.

JAH WOBBLE’S BEDROOM ALBUM @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary this month is Jah Wobble’s second full length solo LP, Jah Wobble’s Bedroom Album, which was released in May of 1983. After the former Public Image Ltd bassist cobbled together his debut solo releases mostly from unauthorized remixes & augmentations of Metal Box outtakes, which allegedly hastened his departure from the band, Wobble was back with an intimate collection of material recorded in his home using a modest private recording setup.

Although it had been nearly 3 years since his debut solo LP, Wobble hadn’t been exactly dormant during that time. He’d released a collaborative LP/EP with CAN rhythm section, Holger Czukay & Jaki Liebezeit, two live cassettes albums with his band The Human Condition, a single with Ben Mandleson and a couple of solo 12” singles with A-side tracks that would later appear on the Bedroom Album. However, by the time he stared working on the Bedroom Album, he no longer had major label support from Virgin Records. As a result, Wobble set up his first independent imprint, Lago Records (aka WOB Records), which released a series of singles, EPs and LPs between 1981 and 1986, before Wobble temporarily retired from music in the late 1980s to work on the London subway system and deal with his substance abuse issues.

Fundamentally, the music created for the Bedroom Album contains the seeds for what would become Wobble’s trademark “world music” style, incorporating elements of Middle Eastern and Asian influences into his post-punk, dub-wise & reggae tinged style. Certain tracks even hinted at a slightly industrial kind of “musique concrète” approach. Whereas his debut LP & EP in 1980 were characterized by a kind of puerile & mischievous humor, the mood throughout this LP is far more somber, subdued and warm, reinforcing the sense of intimacy that was consistent with the concept of recording in his bedroom. The only outside musical contributions for the album came from “Animal”, Dave Maltby, who played guitar on and co-wrote several of the songs. He was also a member of the power trio, The Human Condition, along with Wobble and original PiL drummer, Jim Walker (1981-1982).

The album’s impact is hard to assess as no reviews or charting info could be found at the time of writing this. It has never been reissued since its initial vinyl release, though it does appear in its entirety on the two CD box set, The Early Years, released in 2001 on Wobble’s 2nd indie label, 30 Hertz Records, which continues to function as his primary musical outlet to this day. That compilation even features the same cover graphic as the Bedroom Album, created by Margaux Tomlinson. Unfortunately, it seems that the master tapes for the original LP, along with several singles included on that collection, are no longer extant as the audio included on the CD is clearly derived from vinyl sources. This makes the LP something of an outlier in Wobble’s canon of recorded work, which has become vast over the course of the past four decades as he has maintained an unprecedented level of productivity. With the aura of a lost musical relic, it captures a most enigmatic time in Wobble’s early career.

ZOVIET FRANCE - SHOUTING AT THE GROUND @ 35

 

Turning 35 years old this month is Zoviet France’s monolithic double LP masterpiece, Shouting at the Ground, which was released in May of 1988. The album marked a stylistic shift for the group compared to previous releases. Most notably, they began working with digital signal processing devices. Previous releases had all been created using basic analogue instruments and effects like tape loops & delays, spring reverb tanks, acoustic instruments and, occasional analogue synths. With the adoption of digital effects processors & sampling, the sound took on a much more drone-centered compositional style, taking advantage of the potential to extend digital reverb and delays into sustained, near infinite soundscapes. The packaging for the album was also surprisingly conventional, incorporating a standard LP cover with printed color inner sleeve inserts. Previous LPs had made use of exotic materials like rubber, foil, burlap and roofing tiles, often with hand painted or screen printed accents and graphics. Though the album represented a technological evolution and a slight move towards more mainstream accessibility, it retained the band’s sense of mystery and atmosphere, creating sonic landscapes of vast expanse and depth, placing them at the forefront for the development of dark ambient music.

NEW ORDER - POWER CORRUPTION & LIES @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the sophomore LP from New Order, Power, Corruption & Lies, which was released by Factory Records on May 2nd, 1983. After a tentative step out from under of the shadows of Joy Division and the suicide of Ian Curtis with their debut LP in 1981, New Order were clearly letting the world know they were freed of the shackles of their past and ready to move forward as a reconstituted creative force. Backed by the unprecedented success of the Blue Monday single released in March that same year, this double-barrelled assault on the underground proved to be irresistible for fans and critics alike.

Building on the foundations set by Blue Monday, which was not included on the album, New Order set their sights on a distinctly more electronic sound, incorporating more sequencers, drum machines and synths into their arsenal than their first album & singles. This helped give the group a more distinct sound than their debut album which still bore many sonic trademarks established by Joy Division. It wasn’t a complete stylistic departure and there were still hints of past ghosts in the themes. The brighter, tighter sound still had their essential post-punk DNA in it, but the greys and monotones of previous recordings were blushing with more color and intricacy. The mood was decidedly less introverted, with guitarist Bernard Sumner stepping up to assume the brunt of lead vocals, performing with more confidence while being less hidden in the mix.

The distinctive cover of the album was designed by Peter Saville and followed on from the Blue Monday graphics with their use of the color coded key on the sleeve’s edge, but this time featuring the painting "A Basket of Roses" by French artist Henri Fantin-Latour, which is part of the National Gallery's permanent collection in London. Saville had originally planned to use a Renaissance portrait of a dark prince to tie in with the Machiavellian theme of the title, but could not find a suitable portrait. At the gallery Saville picked up a postcard with Fantin-Latour's painting, and his girlfriend mockingly asked him if he was going to use it for the cover. Saville then realized it was a great idea because the flowers "suggested the means by which power, corruption and lies infiltrate our lives. They're seductive." The owner of the painting (The National Heritage Trust) first refused the label access to it, but Tony Wilson called up the gallery director to ask who actually owned the painting and was given the answer that the Trust belonged to the people of Britain. Wilson then replied, "I believe the people want it." The director then replied, "If you put it like that, Mr Wilson, I'm sure we can make an exception in this case." The cover was later among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January 2010.

Upon it’s release, the album became an immediate critical sensation and has since gone on to achieve legendary status, regularly referenced as one of the best albums of the era and even of all times. In 1989, Power, Corruption & Lies was ranked number 94 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s, with the magazine citing it as "a landmark album of danceable, post-punk music". Rolling Stone also placed the album at number 262 on the 2020 edition of its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time (it was not included on the original 2003 and 2012 lists).

FM - DIRECT TO DISC / HEAD ROOM @ 45

 

Marking its 45th anniversary this month is the sophomore LP from Canada’s OTHER progressive rock trio, FM, with Direct to Disc (aka Head Room) being released in May of 1978. Recorded shortly after the departure of co-founder, Nash the Slash, this would mark the premier of Ben Mink on mandolin & violin and highlight an idiosyncratic use of a short lived, but fascinating recording process.

For the recording of this album, FM employed an experimental technique which bypassed the use of recording tape and, instead, captured the sound directly to the master acetate disc. To utilize this process, the band had to perform live in studio, with no overdubbing capability, and mix the LP as it was being captured by the transcription mechanism to the master disc. The process for doing this was extremely sensitive as any flaw would ruin the master, so over-saturation, clipping and distortion were essential to avoid. This also meant that the band had to be prepared to get it right with only one or two takes allowed as it was extremely expensive to be burning through master discs for throwaway takes.

Despite the limitations of this process, FM opted to record two side-long, heavily improvisational and predominately instrumental compositions. It was a risky proposition to be flying by the seat of your pants when you are trying to work within such strict technical parameters. Yet the band managed to deliver the goods with two 15 minute excursions into jazz-rock infused experimentalism - incorporating their traditional electric violin & mandolin from Ben Mink, Cameron Hawkins’ battery of synthesizers & bass guitar and drums & percussion from Martin Deller. This also included a bizarre configuration which used an alpha wave brain monitor plugged into a synthesizer, translating Deller's live brainwaves into a throbbing hum. All in all, a pretty bold experiment for a young band to undertake.

The sessions reportedly produced two sets of master plates with one set used for the finished LP, which was pressed in a run of 20,000 copies, all of which sold out. There are rumors that the unused plates were later used for an unauthorized second pressing, titled Head Room, which because of the different plates, contained different performances of the tracks. The existence of this alternate version remains somewhat questionable as the band have not been able to confirm that the Head Room release actually contains different performances from the initial Direct To Disc release. Because of the nature of this “direct to disc” process, all records which were manufactured using it were, by necessity, limited editions. The master disc simply wasn’t usable past a certain number of copies. This also meant that any future reissues would have to be remastered from the vinyl pressings as there would be no master tape available.

For the initial authorized release, regular FM artist, Paul Till, provided the cover painting and the album was issued by independent label, Labyrinth Records, as their first and apparently only release. Critically, it was a well received album, but it is mostly neglected because of its limited availability and the more experimental nature of the music it contains. A reissue on CD was finally released in 2013.

KRAFTWERK - THE MAN MACHINE @ 45

 

Marking it’s 45th anniversary this month is the seventh studio album from Kraftwerk, The Man-Machine, which was originally released in May of 1978. It would complete the dehumanization process which had begun with Autobahn and crystallize the band’s image is musical “robots”, precisely crafting the future of techno-pop music for generations to come.

While the band’s previous album, Trans Europe Express, did a lot to streamline and perfect the pulsing electronic rhythms which had been evolving throughout their previous two albums, particularly with its groundbreaking title track and their expanded use of step sequencers and automated rhythms, Man-Machine took those techniques to their logical conclusion. They enabled the group to achieve a kind of stately exactitude which had a transcendent quality, ushering the listener into an alternate mechanical universe. It was like they’d finally manifested the true “soul” of the automaton and, not only made it live and breath, but also imbued it with the uncanny ability to bust a remarkably funky move! The entire album was bursting with a syncopated dance-ability which had been bubbling up in past releases, but which was now the dominant force. The opening track in particular, The Robots, announced itself with such bass shaking authority that it sent listeners cranking their volume to fully exploit its shuddering groove.

When I first bought the album, sometime around 1979/80, I brought it over to my friend’s place because he had a proper hi-fi stereo system. He aptly pointed out to me how perfect it sounded, with no sense of acoustics from the natural world. It sounded completely synthetic, though not at all “plastic” or phony. It was like hearing sound directly for the first time, like it was being transmitted to your brain with no interference from the atmosphere, like you were hard-wired. It was pure and pristine and unaffected. That made it stand out from any other record I had in my collection, electronic or otherwise. The uncompromising elegance and precision that was in place throughout every track put it in a category all its own. There was nothing else that came close to it.

That distinctiveness carried through to the artwork and even the promotion of the album, where Kraftwerk had commissioned the creation of mannequins to be made in their exact likeness. This allowed them to host two synchronized release events, one in London and one in NYC, where the former was attended by the group themselves and the latter was attended by their mannequins. In later years, they would be evolved to become actual physical robots and then 3D computer generated avatars. Artwork for the cover was produced by Karl Klefisch, based on the work of the Russian suprematist El Lissitzky – the words "Inspired by El Lissitzky" are noted on the cover. The back cover image is an adaptation of a graphic from Lissitzky's book for children About Two Squares: A Suprematist Tale of Two Squares in Six Constructions. The image of the band in their coordinated attire also set a precedent for the group, who would hence-forth always adopt coordination in their outfits, especially for live presentations.

Strangely, the album did not sell well when it was initially released, but it proved to be a sleeper. In the UK, it took until 1982 for it to chart high enough to become the group’s 2nd best selling record behind Autobahn. Two singles where released from the album with The Model, again, becoming a sleeper hit in the early 1980s. It’s like it took a few years for the world to catch up with Kraftwerk and figure out how far ahead of the game they were. Of course, the release of Computer World finally reinforced their visionary comprehension of where electronic music could go and there’s NOTHING in that world today which hasn’t built on Kraftwerk’s foundations. The Man-Machine is still my favorite album from them and its pristine songs hold up time and time again.

THROBBING GRISTLE - UNITED / ZYKLON B ZOMBIE @ 45

 

Issued 45 years ago this month is the debut single from Throbbing Gristle, United b/w Zyklon B Zombie, which was released in May of 1978. After coming out of the gates with a murky slurry of sonic despair for their debut LP, TG being ever the contrarians, felt it was necessary to demonstrate they were capable of knocking together a catchy pop song, despite any perceived musical limitations. The result was United, what appears to be a “love song” on the surface, although upon closer inspection, TG still managed to subvert the genre by bringing in allusions to obsession, identity confusion and occult references to Aleister Crowley’s Book of the Law. These sing-song musings sit atop a minimal yet catchy synth & drum machine rhythm, accented by occasional slashes of discordant guitar. But the mayhem is kept to a bare minimum with the results being what critic Jon Savage classified as the first “electropop” song. This respite from madness is short-lived, however, as the B-side returns the listener to the ravages of unfettered TG noise, this time focused on the subject of Nazi death camp poison gas, Zykon B. The single’s sleeve depicts an innocuous looking apartment complex and row of garages with an inset of some bare crossed limbs for the A-side, while the B-side shows Chris Carter in the shower with an inset of gas canisters sporting the label “Giftgas” and what looks strangely like a Psychic cross, albeit some years before Genesis would use a similar symbol for Psychic TV, his post TG project.

MARTIN DENNY - FORBIDDEN ISLAND @ 65

 

Marking its 65th anniversary this month is the third studio album from exotic lounge music pioneer, Martin Denny, with Forbidden Island being released in May of 1958. It was recorded in Hollywood at Liberty Studios after Denny’s group had finished a nine month residency as the house band at Don the Beachcomber's Bora Bora Lounge in Hawaii. This was their first album to be recorded without Arthur Lyman, who had left the group to pursue what would become a successful solo career. Along with the usual covers of popular tunes of the day, the album features four original compositions from Denny: "Cobra", "Exotica", "Primitiva", and "Forbidden Island". The album received mostly favorable reviews from critics and Billboard awarded the album four stars writing: "Interesting treatment of exotic original and standards… produced provocative sound. Good off-beat jockey wax." Where some critics maybe didn’t rate the music as “serious”, they at least had to acknowledge the technical perfection of the production and record engineering. Australian critic John Masters wrote in December 1959 that high fidelity addicts may enjoy Denny's "conglomeration of weird and wonderful imitations of tropical rhythms" and opined that, although "most of the content is sugar coated trash, the recorded sound is outstanding and for this reason the disc is commended, as a technical showpiece only, to stereophiles." Personally, it is one of my favorite of Denny’s classic “exotica” albums.