ROXY MUSIC - AVALON @ 40

 

Released in May of 1982, the eighth and final studio album by Roxy Music, Avalon, is marking its 40th anniversary this month. As a capstone to the groups prestigious career, it would offer up perhaps the most perfect example of their sophistication and creativity, at least as far as their post Eno period is concerned. As well as being arguably the greatest artistic achievement of the latter half of their career, the album was also their most commercially successful. It perched on the number one slot in the UK for three weeks and remained in the charts for for over a year. While it only peaked at 53 on the US Billboard charts, it proved to be a “sleeper” hit and continually ramped up sales until it was eventually certified platinum, their only album to do so in the US. Its success was buoyed by the four hit singles which were released from the album.

The album continued the romantic themes common to their last few releases and Brian Ferry has said that he had wanted to interconnect the songs into a kind of narrative, though the finished product would require a bit of stretching to reach that end as Ferry admits he just didn’t have the patience to stitch it all together properly. The concept of Avalon is an Arthurian legend of the afterlife where the Queens ferry King Arthur off to an enchanted island after his death.

The title song features a guest vocal appearance from Yanick Étienne, who Ferry and Rhett Davies stumbled on while doing some last minute re-cutting on the album on a Sunday when the studio would make itself available during the quiet times to young artists to record demos. When Brian and Rhett popped out for a coffee, they heard Yanick singing in the studio next door and were immediately taken with her. She spoke no English, so her manager had to translate, but she was recruited to sing the high parts in the song, which helped to finish the song off after going through a complete rebuild when the first version proved unsatisfactory.

Roxy Music, overall, has become one of an elite number of rock groups who have had an incredibly profound influence on the generations which followed them. Groups like Japan and Duran Duran built their careers on the foundations laid by Roxy Music, both musically and stylistically in terms of their looks and attitudes. Avalon offers up the quintessential expression of their oeuvre with a set of songs that each display their own self contained perfection. There’s no filler on this record and it has retained its presence and power throughout the decades it has had to establish its status as a pop music classic.

CHRIS & COSEY - TRANCE @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary this month is the second studio album from former TG founders Chris & Cosey, Trance, which was released in May of 1982.

Despite its title, “Trance” really has nothing to do with the electronic musical genre which would emerge nearly a decade later in the rave scenes of the UK and Europe. That’s not to say that the duo didn’t create music at this time which was a direct precursor to that style. The track, Dancing Ghosts, from the Elemental 7 soundtrack is indeed an ancestor and inspiration, but this album itself, while ahead of its time for electronic music, veers into other far more exotic territory.

Unlike the group’s debut, this album is nearly all instrumental with vocals only appearing on the track, Secret, and then only as atmospherics. It was designed to function as “mood” music, or a kind of bizarre “easy listening”, though Cosey’s searing guitar flailing on Re-Education Through Labor makes for some challenging meditations. Overall, it tends to exist in an odd netherworld between “ambient” and more rhythmic grooves. While the prior album, Heartbeat, occasionally brushed against "pop-song" conventions, Trance keeps clear of them, striving to remain true to it’s atmospheric ambitions and succeeding consistently throughout.

The front cover of the album offers up a portrait of the couple framed by the ancient Roman gates of London in the background. The location lends a sense of timelessness to the album and reinforces its ability to transcend temporal constraints. Indeed, as it has aged, its foresight and innovation have enabled it to continue to sound futuristic and alien, even after four decades of musical and technological advancement. There’s simply nothing about this LP that sounds dated or of its time. Most of humanity still hasn’t managed to arrive at the fantastical world which emanates from these recordings. Personally, it has always been and remains one of their most beloved releases in their canon.

CABARET VOLTAIR - 2 X 45 @ 40

 

Released in May of 1982, Cabaret Voltaire’s fourth studio album, 2x45, is marking 40 years on the shelf this month. It was the transitional album between their early experimental work and their more dance floor friendly fare which would dominate their career going forward. It also marked a downsizing of the band’s core members from a trio to a duo as Chris Watson left the group half way through its production. The first disc of the set was recorded with Chris at the group’s Sheffield Western Works studio in October of 1981 while the second disc was recorded without Watson at Pluto Studios, Manchester, in February of 1982.

The title for the album is a direct reference to its original format, being a set of two 45 RPM 12” EPs enclosed in a black textured foldout card stock sleeve with Neville Brody graphics concealed on the interior. As the album focuses on a set of long rhythmic tracks, the higher fidelity afforded by the format offered optimum sound quality for the material. Though they were decidedly moving into a funkier groove, the music beyond the beat felt more “jazz” inspired, though still thick with the group’s experimental discordance. They hadn’t quite landed in the “EBM” zone which would define their next LP, The Crackdown, but the remixed single version of Yashar by John Robie would create a direct bridge to that era. For 2x45, however, the rhythms are primarily provided by real drums and the use of electronics is surprisingly limited.

Because the album moved so far outside the “industrial” framework of its predecessor, Red Mecca, and didn’t quite arrive at their eventual EBM destination, it tends to be overlooked by both of the band’s fan camps for their early vs later output. Initial reviews for the album saw it as a lesser success than Red Mecca, but the benefit of hindsight has shown that what the group were doing was still very much outside what anyone else were up to at the time and still on the cutting edge of experimental pop. As such, it remains one of their most idiosyncratic releases.

LAIBACH - KAPITAL @ 3O

 

Celebrating 30 years since its release is the fourth studio LP by Laibach, Kapital, which was issued on April 21st, 1992. Uniquely, the album is different depending on the format, with different versions of the songs being used for the vinyl, cassette and CD variations.

Thematically, the album came about at a time when communism was reaching its end and Yugoslavia was about to enter into a particularly bloody time of conflict. As such the concepts around the album were decidedly disillusioned and dark, with a foreboding sense of industry and commerce. This is most clearly stated on the album's lead single, "Wirtschaft Ist Tot," or "Economy Is Dead”. They were just as suspicious of the new looming gods of gangster capitalism as they were of the old communist insiders.

In general, this is probably the group’s most “electronic” album, often veering into a Kraftwerk-esque sound, albeit with a somewhat more “east of the wall” feel. It still maintains an “industrial” edge, but does so with a great restraint and a decidedly funkier electronic precision. It was their longest album to date, taking advantage of the full CD runtime, and featured all original material. After their bombastic interpretation of The Beatles’ Let It Be album on their previous release, Kapital offered a tight, minimalist and club friendly vibe. With that disposition, it became very popular within the burgeoning techno landscape which had taken the underground music scenes over since the explosion of rave culture and acid house in the late 1980s. With this album, Laiback could sidle up alongside artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre and not seem out of place. They even incorporated a bit of rap into the proceedings! Ultimately, it offered up a fresh and funky approach to proletariat techno-pop for the ‘90s.

LOOSE TAPESTRIES PRESENT THE LUXURY COMEDY TAPES @ 10

April 21st marks the tenth anniversary of Loose Tapestries debut LP, The Luxury Comedy Tapes. The album was issued as a digital download on March 2nd of that year, but a small run of 500 copies on vinyl were released for Record Store Day.

Loose Tapestries was a collaboration between comedy performer Noel Fielding and Sergio Pizzorno of the band, Kasabian. They had come together to create the musical components for Noel’s UK series, Noel Fielding’s Luxury Comedy. This first release collects all the musical elements used for the first season with a second collection issued in 2016 for series two. Kasabian touring members Ben Kealey and Tim Carter also worked on the album.

Stylistically, the music and audio snipers follow along a very psychedelic progression completely consistent with the look and feel of the show, which was like an even more strung out version of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. For the album, brief musical segments are woven together with occasional spoken clips from the show to create a kind of stream of consciousness dreamlike flow. Among it’s many memorable oddities is perhaps the best original birthday song to come along in decades in the form of “Ghost of a Flea (Happy Birthday Song)”. It’s a hilariously bizarre, surreal experience from beginning to end.
 

THE THRESHOLD HOUSEBOYS CHOIR - FORM GROWS RAMPANT @ 15

Released on April 19th, 2007, the first and only fully realized solo project from founding Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV & Coil member, Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson is celebrating its 15th anniversary today. Produced under the project name, The Threshold HouseBoys Choir, Form Grows Rampant offered a double disc set with an audio CD and video DVD capturing images from the Thai GinJae Vegetarian Festival accompanied by Peter’s original musical score.

THC was Sleazy’s first major post Coil project following the tragic death of creative and life partner, Jhon Balance (Geoff Rushton), after a drunken fall from a balcony at their UK home in 2005. Peter had relocated to a compound in Thailand after that and began to enmesh himself into the local culture, capturing the details of the sometimes graphic rituals performed during the GinJae Festival. These include various acts of self mutilation, piercing and scarification which, though seemingly severe, usually left nearly no noticeable marks on the bodies of the participants afterwards. Peter had used some of this material as video backing for live performances prior to this release.

The music created for the album utilized many of the latest computer based audio production tools that Sleazy had started experimenting with at the time. In particular, this involved software which generated voices from scratch. These were not sampled vocals, but sounds built up entirely by the computer software. This became the “choir” referred to in the name of the project. Threshold House was the record label Coil had used to release their recordings prior to the passing of Balance. The “houseboys” component was a reference to the small stable of young Thai men with whom Christopherson kept company at his compound.

The set has recently been reissued and is available on vinyl and digital download for the first time since its initial 2007 limited release. While it is the only solo work that was completed before his death in 2010, there are other THC releases which include a 4 mini-CDR set of demos (Amulet Edition) and a few other odds and ends. Form Grows Rampant also sits alongside a series of Throbbing Gristle related releases from all the members of the group, who were in the middle of a reunion phase at the time. 2007 also saw the releases of new works by TG, Charter Tutti, Psychic TV and Thee Majesty, making it a banner year for the group and its fan base.

LAURIE ANDERSON - BIG SCIENCE @ 40

April 19th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Laurie Anderson’s debut LP, Big Science, which was issued on this date in 1982. Featuring the surprise hit single, O Superman, it took Anderson out of the obscure corners of the performance art world and made her into a “new wave” pop star.

Big Science was not Anderson’s first appearance on vinyl. Anderson had previously recorded one side of a 2-LP set titled You're the Guy I Want to Share My Money With, a collaboration released on Giorno Poetry Systems with William S. Burroughs and John Giorno. She had also contributed two pieces to a 1977 compilation of electronic music. But this was her first album all on her own and it was a showcase for material which had been part of a massive 8 hour stage production, United States Live, which was a multimedia experience where music was only part of the show. The success of this album helped to put Laurie’s musical efforts into a far more prominent position in her career.

A key distinguishing factor for this album was that it put to use a number of technological innovations which were only starting to become known in the world of popular music. Digital samplers and effects processors allowed her to work with a palette of sounds unlike anything else familiar to the record buying public at the time. The few people who were using samplers back then were mostly employing them for special effects and augmentation of more traditional instruments. Anderson put those tools front and center and took specific advantage of their potential for performance techniques beyond the scope of conventional instrumentation. That’s not to say that regular instruments weren’t used, but that they were seamlessly balanced with the digital and electronic tools to create a combined sound that was fresh and alien. Even the use of pitch shifting was novel at the time and made her songs stand out as she modulated between her normal voice, a deep baritone and a high pitched childlike patter. The fact she could replicate this live was also something new for most audiences and gave her a kind of magical presence, like an illusionist performing a slight of hand or a space age version of ventriloquism where she became her own puppet.

All these strange sounds were further emphasized by her arrangements, which were kept to minimalist essentials so that every nuance was highlighted in a way that brought focus and attention to the austerity of each composition. O Superman is a singular example of this approach as it rests upon a starkly simple vocal pulse with little more than vocoder enhanced spoken word accompaniment. Careful accents highlight the shifts in the extended arrangement of the piece until, near the end, it starts to open up and bloom before it finishes in a flutter of synth arpeggios.

Conceptually, the album uses the same kind of dispassionate observational disposition as David Byrne was doing with Talking Heads. Anderson offers commentary on life and culture and human nature while weaving in a subtle, but omnipresent sense of humor throughout each piece. Yet she also manages to place in those perfectly poignant moments along the way, like her heart warming “hi mom” in the middle of O Superman. Although she sounds emotionally distant on the surface, it always feels like her finger is still lightly touching a pulse of empathy and feeling throughout.

I bought the album when it came out on the strength of seeing the O Superman video on late night TV. The video for the song is just as innovative as the music and just as minimal and stark. The hook for the whole thing is the use of a small light which Anderson had inside her mouth, creating the strangest dehumanizing effect. It made her seem like some kind of android automaton in performance as she kept her motions slow, mechanical and deliberate, though with a dancer-like sense of grace and precision. It was enough to bring her to my attention and get her album in my collection.