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.

THE BIRDS, THE BEES & THE MONKEES @ 55

This month marks the 55th anniversary of the release of The Monkees fifth studio album, The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, which was issued in April of 1968. While it was home to two of the last hit singles to come from the group during its heyday, it was also the first major indicator that the band’s fortunes were about to take a nosedive.

After the production coup of early 1967, which saw the group wrestle control of their music away from the dictatorial hands of Don Kirshner, the honeymoon phase that graced their third album, Headquarters, would be short lived. The camaraderie that guided the production of Headquarters, driving the group to handle all the playing themselves in order to prove their merits as a band, began to crumble once they started work on Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd.

The reality was that they were four disparate individuals with completely different musical priorities and sensibilities. Reverting to their previous production approach, the group began to rely on session musicians again while they also separated into discrete production teams. By the time they started production on The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, the segregation between the members was essentially complete. Each had their own team of musicians and techs, often working in different studios in the LA area. Whereas the previous two records had the benefit of Chip Douglas’ production to tie things together, he was dismissed for this album and had no hand in its creation. There was still an agreement that all work created under these conditions would be credited as “produced by The Monkees”, but the concept of them being a band was now in name only.

This situation resulted in a collection of songs for the album which was wildly divergent and eclectic in style. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but does make it difficult to give a singular LP product a sense of cohesion, though it was not significantly different than what The Beatles were going through while producing their “White” album. Davy pursued his show tunes style, Mike indulged in country rock and bizarre psychedelic experiments and Micky explored his soul and baroque pop leanings. Sadly Peter Tork’s work remained mysteriously consigned to the outtakes bin as none of his songs were selected for the final track listing. In fact, Peter only played piano on Daydream Believer, so he was effectively absent from the album save for his picture on the cover. One has to wonder how much this played into his decision to be the first to quit the band, but it should be noted that he contributed two songs on the HEAD soundtrack, their next album before his departure.

In addition to the songs created for the album, a couple of tracks left over from the sessions for the previous LP managed to find their way into this collection. These included the hit singles, Valleri and Daydream Believer, both of which hit #1, though the latter would be the last such success for the band. The album also features some particularly innovative elements, especially with the songs from Mike and Micky. Micky’s P.O. Box 9847 & Zor and Zam showed off his ability to deftly slip social commentary into bubblegum pop while Mike’s Writing Wrongs featured an extended, tripped-out arrangement that took the listener through a series of shifting dreamy soundscapes. And Magnolia Simms emulated the squeaky sound of a scratchy, skipping vintage phonograph, much to the confusion of some listeners, necessitating a warning on the LP’s back cover that the “skipping” was intentional and not the result of faulty stereo equipment or a damaged record.

Upon release, the album managed to climb to #3 on the US charts, which wasn’t terrible, but was shy of the #1 slot their first four albums had easily secured. In the UK, the album didn’t chart at all, though the two singles did well. It was clear that the tide was beginning to turn on their popularity, however. The last episode of their TV series aired barely a month before the LP’s release and news of the show’s cancellation soon followed.

With the end of the series, producer Bob Rafelson was ready to bury the project in order to pursue a feature film career and saw the band’s feature film project as the perfect opportunity to desecrate their “manufactured image” while simultaneously making a social commentary on commercialism and consumer culture. Not that The Monkees were victims in this. They were completely complicit in this process and were looking to break out of their "pre-fab four" kiddie band box, a metaphor seen repeatedly throughout the movie. They were desperate to be seen as a legitimate creative force, but the backlash of popular opinion ultimately overwhelmed the group. With the commercial disaster of both the movie and a poorly conceived subsequent TV special, the group soldiered on through a few more albums, shedding members like so many falling leaves, before the whole thing collapsed in 1970.

Fortunately, history has has seen fit to rehabilitate the band’s image and allow them a remarkable renaissance in the 21st century. Their legacy of classic, timeless and innovative pop music has survived the reactionary and unfair misjudgements of the past. Now, we can appreciate all the marvels that lurk in the grooves of these records. Like most of their catalogue, Rhino Handmade have issued a deluxe expanded edition of the album featuring both stereo and mono mixes and a plethora of alternate mixes and outtakes. The sheer volume of the bonus material included in these reissues begs the question of how they managed to be so stunningly productive within such a relatively short period of time. It was really only a handful of years where they were initially active, yet they left behind an incredible catalogue, a treasure trove that would take any musicologist a lifetime to fully comprehend.

BOARDS OF CANADA - MUSIC HAS THE RIGHT TO CHILDREN @ 25

It was 25 years ago today when Boards of Canada released their debut full length album, Music Has the Right To Children, on April 20th, 1998. Blending muted downtempo hip-hop grooves with blurry ambient textures, the album created a whole new genre of chill-out music, evoking faded recollections of childhood nostalgia while simultaneously projecting itself into the future.

BoC began with brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin experimenting on modified tape recorders and synths as early as 1981. Becoming involved with the Hexagon Sun artistic collective in Pentland Hills, Scotland, they began releasing limited cassette collections of recordings, which were self-distributed among friends and relatives. Eventually, the Scottish brothers came up with the the name "Boards of Canada" as a reference to time spent in Canada as children, an experience which left an indelible imprint on the duo. After releasing a trio of EPs between 1995 & 1996, which contained numerous early versions of tracks destined for their major label debut, they signed a deal with Warp Records to release their first proper album. Of their origins, Marcus Eoin has commented:

“We'd been recording in various forms of the band as teens through much of the '80s, and already had a big collection of our own old crappy recordings that we were really fond of. Then, around 1987 or 1988, we were beginning to experiment with collage tapes of demos we'd deliberately destroyed, to give the impression of chewed up library tapes that had been found in a field somewhere. That was the seed for the whole project. In those days, everyone used to have drawers full of unique cassettes with old snippets from radio and TV, it's kind of a lost thing now, sadly. To me, it's fascinating and precious to find some lost recordings in a cupboard, so part of it was an idea to create new music that really felt like an old familiar thing”

The album was recorded at their home studio in Pentland Hills, a facility which was described as a “bunker”, a characterization which the band claim was inaccurately exaggerated for publicity. Their recording facility included samplers, de-tuned synths, drum machines and a variety of analogue reel to reel and cassette tape recorders. Samples which were included in the album include bits of Sesame Street songs, CBC Canadian cultural promos and chance natural sounds like on Rue the Whirl, where the studio's window was left open and the sound of birds was accidentally recorded into the track. The results of their efforts were a mix of short transitional pieces and longer rhythmic meditations. The often muffled, degraded sound employed throughout the album contributed to the sense of experiencing faded memories, calling up recollections of youthful encounters and half remembered dreams. The titles for the songs and the albums were kept obtuse, offering as much murk as the sound of the music. The band have commented:

“Our titles are always cryptic references which the listener might understand or might not. Some of them are personal, so the listener is unlikely to know what it refers to. Music Has the Right to Children is a statement of our intention to affect the audience using sound. The Color of the Fire was a reference to a friend's psychedelic experience. Kaini Industries is a company that was set up in Canada (by coincidence in the month Mike was born), to create employment for a settlement of Cree Indians (sic). Olson is the surname of a family we know, and Smokes Quantity is the nickname of a friend of ours."

The cover image for the album is a family photo taken at Banff Springs in Alberta, Canada. The photo has been processed to reflect the same blurred, indistinct quality as the music, again bringing to mind the imperfections of memory and the sense of melancholy. There’s a kind of sadness that lurks throughout the album on every level, as a recognition of the impermanence of existence. All the cues that trigger recollection also remind the listener that these moments are gone and on their way to being lost forever.

The album won near universal critical praise upon its release and set about defining a new sub-genre of electronica. The mixture of funky rhythms undercut by textured softness and ambience surrounding them stood out as stylistically distinct in the realms of both downtempo and ambient music. It bridged the two spheres while also creating a new aesthetic which celebrated the glorious decay and imperfection of analogue recording. Dropout, hiss, warble and other artifacts of the medium of tape became functional elements of style. Brian Eno identified the phenomenon perfectly in his famous quote:

“Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them.”
 

DAVID BOWIE - ALADDIN SANE @ 50

 

Celebrating its golden jubilee with half a century on the shelves, it’s David Bowie’s sixth studio album and second during his initial commercial breakthrough as "Ziggy Stardust", Aladdin Sane. After taking the charts by storm with his previous record, it would exceed that success, commercially, though perhaps not quite artistically.

Aladdin Sane was written and recorded during breaks between grueling touring schedules as Bowie and RCA sought to maximize his exposure following the success of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Aladdin Sane, the title being a play on the phrase “a lad insane”, continued the narrative of the previous record, introducing the titular character as a means to explore the personality fragmentation symbolized by the lightning bolt across Bowie’s face. Thematically, the record deals with a lot of the ups and downs of life on the road, fame and how those dichotomies can split a personality. This was the first album Bowie wrote from a position of stardom, so the view from the mount of fame plays a significant role in the concepts explored.

Because production for the LP was squeezed into snatched free time between touring legs, this didn’t leave Bowie a lot of time to develop ideas or stockpile songs from which to cherry pick later. This meant that, overall, the quality of the material on the album maybe wasn’t quite as consistent as the previous few records, though there are clearly essential songs which managed to find a home in its grooves. The title track and Jean Genie are the obvious standouts. Musically, being on the road and performing live put an emphasis on a harder rock sound, though a bit of British music hall camp can also be found lurking about the edges. The Rolling Stones were a significant influence at this period as is evidenced by Bowie's cover of Let’s Spend the Night Together.

Recording for the album took place mainly between December 1972 and January 1973, and was split between Trident Studios in London and RCA’s NYC facility. The Spiders From Mars band, comprising Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey, contributed heavily to the album’s creation, though after a run of three albums with Bowie, this would be the last to feature this lineup. Though the album focuses on a heavier rock sound, it also starts to bring in some more experimental leanings, and many consider this the beginning of that trajectory, a disposition which would lead him into stranger and darker realms throughout the remainder of the decade until his crowing achievement in that vein with Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) in 1980.

For the cover of the LP, Bowie is seen in what has become his most iconic form, in fully Ziggy glory, lightning flash blazing across his face. It is perhaps the most recognizable image of Bowie ever created. It was shot in January 1973 by Brian Duffy in his north London studio. Duffy would later photograph the sleeves for Lodger (1979) and Scary Monsters. In an effort to ensure RCA promoted the album extensively, Bowie’s manager was determined to make the cover as costly as possible. He insisted on an unprecedented seven-color system, rather than the usual four. The resulting image was the most expensive cover art ever made at the time. The make-up designer for the shoot was Pierre Laroche, who remained Bowie's make-up artist for the remainder of the 1973 tour and the Pin Ups cover shoot. Laroche copied the lightning bolt from a National Panasonic rice-cooker that happened to be in the studio. The make-up was completed with a "deathly purple wash", which together with Bowie's closed eyes, evoke a "death mask".

After its release, it quickly became Bowie’s biggest selling record to date, but critics picked up on the uneven songwriting in comparison to the previous records, though they still praised it overall. It certainly deserves its legacy as being considered an essential entry in Bowie’s catalogue, capturing the artist at a peak in his creative and performing abilities. In some regards, perhaps it’s Bowie merely riding the wave of his success for a time, but history has clearly shown that he was just taking a bit of a breather before his next artistic ascent.

DAVID BOWIE - LET’S DANCE @ 40

Released forty years ago today, on April 14th, 1983, is David Bowie’s 15th studio album, Let’s Dance. While it set the commercial high water mark of his career, becoming his all time best selling album, it also painted him into a creative corner, boxing him into a commercial sound which drove down the quality of his output throughout the remainder of the decade.

Throughout the latter half of the 1970s, Bowie had been pursuing a distinctly avant-garde tinged approach to pop music, exploring darker themes and sonic experimentation with sales taking a backseat to artistic expression. After the success of his Ziggy Stardust period, veering into these more obscure directions sometimes meant sacrificing commercial appeal. However, his last album on this trajectory, 1980’s Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) found him coming to a near perfect balance between experimentation and commercial viability.

Following the completion of Scary Monsters, Bowie spent some time pursuing acting on both stage and screen, performing in The Elephant Man and Christian F., respectively. The assassination of John Lennon in December of 1980, however, put Bowie into shock and he cancelled an upcoming tour to support Scary Monsters, retreating to Switzerland where he became something of a recluse. Musically, he was not so productive, but still worked with Giorgio Moroder for the Cat People soundtrack and collaborated with Queen for the single, Under Pressure. He also appeared in the films, The Hunger and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, both released in 1983.

Scary Monsters also marked the end of his relationship with RCA records, whom he felt had failed to fully support his recent work, instead exploiting only his back catalogue. This took him to EMI records and, looking to have a fresh start while yet again reinvent himself, he set up shop in NYC and chose Chic main-man, Nile Rogers, as producer for his next album. This was a decision which would lead to a sever rift between Bowie and producer Tony Visconti, who had worked on Bowie's previous four albums. Bowie neglected to inform Visconti of the producer change and Tony ended up finding out second hand, to which he took deep offense. While the two would ultimately end up working together again, it would not be until 20 years later for 2002’s Heathen. Bowie’s intent was to go in a completely new direction with an entirely different collection of musicians and focus on the commercial viability of the album. All the regulars from the previous albums were set aside and a fresh group of players were brought in. For this album, Bowie also refrained from contributing as a musician himself, instead opting to focus solely on being a vocalist.

Nile Rogers had made a major name for himself with Chic and by producing a string of dance classics for the likes of Diana Ross & Sister Sledge. This prowess with a groove meant that he was uniquely qualified to put Bowie’s music onto the dance floor and the title track for the album became proof of that skill. The song, Let’s Dance, was released as a single and immediately swept the club scene. I personally recall it being in constant rotation in every type of setting, from mainstream clubs to the most underground warehouse after-hours industrial-goth freak scene. It joined a host of club hits which were rehabilitating the dance floors of the day after the backlash of the “death to disco” movement, which capped off the previous decade. Songs like Let’s Dance, Blue Monday by New Order & Perfect by The The became clarion calls to loose booties on both sides of the Atlantic, announcing that it was okay to cut a rug again.

Recording of the album was done at the Power Station in NYC, over three weeks in December of 1982. Since recording Scary Monsters, Bowie had become obsessed with R&B music from the ‘50s & ’60s and artists like James Brown, Buddy Guy and Albert King. Nile used that interest as a guide to the stylistic structure of Let’s Dance. When Bowie initially played him an acoustic version of the title song, he knew it wasn’t a dance song, but he was able to adapt the arrangement with elements of ‘50s & ’60s music to mutate it into something with a groove.

The idea to recruit Stevie Ray Vaughn came from Bowie after spotting him at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Rogers was initially ambivalent about Vaughn, classifying him as too blues-centric for the funkier R&B sound he was crafting, but Bowie was insistent that he had “something”. Vaughn was unknown and hadn’t released his first album yet, but Bowie won out in the end and Stevie contributed guitar solo parts on eight of the album’s cuts. While the album blushed against some of the “new wave” influences of Bowie's so-called “Berlin era”, the mainstream soul & R&B influences brought it far more in line with the feel of Young Americans, which was also heavily influenced by black American music.

At the time of its release, it became an instant smash, topping album charts in numerous countries around the globe. All four of the album’s singles were also significant hits, with music videos for Let’s Dance and China Girl (a cover of an Iggy Pop song from the Bowie produced album, The Idiot) getting heavy rotation on the still fledgling MTV music channel. The massive Serious Moonlight Tour, which launched to promote the album, managed to secure Bowie’s position as one of the biggest pop stars of the day, a triumphant career pinnacle after a decade of weaving in and out of public favor. As previously stated, that commercial success became a double edged sword as its rewards came at the cost of creative freedom, with Bowie feeling obligated to maintain that stature while his artistic integrity suffered with each successive release during the ‘80s.

Despite the album's major commercial success, it received mixed reviews from music critics, with opinions varying on the artistic content. In Musician magazine, David Fricke called it "Bowie at his best". In a piece on Bowie for Time in July 1983, Jay Cocks described the album as "unabashedly commercial, melodically alliterative and lyrically smart at the same time". Robert Christgau felt that it had a "perfunctory professional surface", and that other than the "interesting" Modern Love, Let's Dance was "pleasantly pointless". Steve Bush of Smash Hits found it overall dull and Debra Rae Cohen of The New York Times deemed it Bowie's "most artless" record yet, but one whose familiar dance music is "almost timeless in its appeal".

Yet in terms of its legacy, it stands as the crescendo of one of the most astounding creative runs any artist has ever achieved. With 14 years of artistic genius backing it up, it should more properly be seen as a much deserved victory lap. But it did essentially bookend Bowie’s career relevance as the last significant release of his career, at least until his re-emergence from semi-retirement in 2013 with The Next Day, his penultimate album before his death in 2016. The years between Let’s Dance and The Next Day, while not entirely bereft of notable product, were still lacking in both the sense of Bowie being an artistic visionary working the cutting edge of the culture or a commercial force to be reckoned with.
 

JAPAN - ADOLESCENT SEX @ 45

 

Released this day, on April 8th, 1978, the debut LP from UK band Japan, Adolescent Sex, is celebrating 45 years on the shelves. At the time of its release, the band were still miles away from where they’d end up, creating a document of awkwardly fused glam and punk rock struggling to find an identity.

Founded in 1974 by brothers David & Steven Batt (later sir names changed to Sylvian & Jansen, respectively), along with schoolmates, Mick Karn, Richard Barbieri and Rob Dean, the band began from scratch by teaching themselves how to play their instruments. The name, Japan, was initially intended only as a temporary moniker, but it ended up being permanent when nothing better came along that suited their tastes. By 1976, they’d developed enough as musicians to catch the attention of Simon Napier-Bell, who signed a management deal with them. SNB also managed bands such as The Yardbirds, Marc Bolan's T-Rex, London and Wham! After winning a label-sponsored talent contest, the band signed a recording contract with the German disco label Hansa-Ariola in 1977, becoming an alternative glam rock outfit in the mold of Lou Reed, David Bowie, T.Rex, Roxy Music, and the New York Dolls although their initial material was principally guitar-based funk.

When you put it all together: the frizzled hair, gobs of makeup, snotty sneering and gritty punk-funk grooves - it didn’t make a lot of sense and the few press comments they got at their debut were generally dismissive and disparaging. Trouser Press wrote that the album "introduces Japan in all its guitar-rock misery, playing such Bowie-influenced tripe as 'Wish You Were Black' with less style than a sense of urgency". They were promising musicians, but the whole look and sound seemed like it was out of place in every sense compared to what else was going on in the industry. There was little indication that they’d be capable of morphing into the harbingers of “New Romantic” sophistication which would become their final form only a bit more than a year later with their third LP, Quiet Life. When the debut album was released internationally, many countries put it out with an eponymous title, taking offense to the sexual suggestiveness of the original. In the UK, the sales for their debut were pretty dismal, yet thanks to their name, they quickly developed a devoted and significant following in the country from which they'd borrowed their name, the land of the rising sun, Japan. The debut album was followed by a UK tour supporting Blue Öyster Cult. Intended to promote the album Japan faced more negative criticism and hostile audiences. In August 1978 their second single "The Unconventional" failed to chart. In November, the band also made a short US tour, but although they were better accepted by American audiences it proved to be their last and only foray into US soil.

Retrospectively, the band has little love for their debut. David Sylvian later commented that they were far too young and naive to be making an album at that point in their career and he was surprised they were encouraged and supported in pursing such a misguided product. Still, fans of their later work, myself included, found themselves backtracking into these early albums and, while both amused and bemused by the difference to the band we later came to adore, still consider these works as charming in their innocence and determination. And there’s even the odd song or two that still merits a listen again. AllMusic retrospectively gave the album a 4.5 out of 5 grade, writing: "A more exciting album than just about anything else they'd ever record, Japan were young, hungry, and more than a little rough around the edges." I don’t agree with that assessment of their later work by any means, but it’s still nice that their debut has garnered some respect after all these years.