TOM TOM CLUB @ 40

 

Released 40 years ago this month, the Tom Tom Club’s eponymous debut set the world’s toes tapping in October of 1981. Conceived as a pressure release value by married Talking Heads rhythm section, Tina Weymouth (bass) and Chris Franz (drums), Tom Tom Club was concocted while on holiday in the Bahamas. With work on Talking Heads being so intense and demanding, the need for a lighter side project put the focus on the fun and joy of making music. Aside from Tina & Chris forming the rhythmic core of the group, the rest was filled out with a loose association of players and studio techs. Featured among these were guitarists Adrian Belew & Monte Brown, keyboardist Tyrone Downie, percussionist Uziah "Sticky" Thompson and Weymouth sisters Lani, Laura & Loric filling in the backing vocals.

The album doesn’t stray too far away from the funky dance territory staked out by Talking Heads, but goes for a much more playful, less academic disposition, something which caused Heads’ main man, David Byrne, to be somewhat dismissive of the project. While there are times when its “cuteness” verges on cloying, the album boasts one of the most infectious funk grooves ever committed to vinyl in the form of Genius of Love. Not only is the groove unstoppable, but Adrian Belew’s warped guitar solo is one of the strangest mutations of the instrument I’ve ever heard. The extended mix also served to bring some dub production to the radio top 40 charts! The single was extremely popular in both the US and UK, though it didn’t quite hit the top slot, but its impact would end up going far beyond its original form as its groove would be sampled and recreated over and over by rap, soul & R&B artists for generations after its release.

PATTI SMITH GROUP - RADIO ETHIOPIA @ 45

 

Released in October of 1976, Patti Smith Group’s sophomore studio album, Radio Ethiopia, is celebrating its 45th anniversary this month. Caught on the horns of the dilemma of the desire for commercial success vs the drive for raw creative expression, the album landed with a thud, critically, upon its release.

At the time of Smith’s emergence from the NYC CBGB’s scene, the idea of “punk” was nowhere near codified into the cultural cliche it would become within the next couple of years. As such, what was happening in this community and why was still being grappled with. PSG had come out of the gate with a strong debut in Horses the year before, but it had no momentum from the music scene to drive it and Smith was looking for some commercial validation at the time of working on her second album. To this end, she enlisted the help of producer, Jack Douglas, to help give the group some polish and professionalism. They’d been developing their abilities as musicians, but this can be a double-edged sword for artists working on the fringes of an emerging scene. The raw energies of their debut became muted by refined production values and restrained performances. The wild abandon of their premier was softened and clarified and that clarity can sometimes sap the energy out of an artist.

Then there’s the contradiction of putting something like the album’s polarizing title track in the midst of all these efforts at commercialization. It starts off innocent enough, but eventually works into a dizzying vortex of of noise and chaos that many considered too contrived an attempt to annoy. The song’s live presentation during their shows of the time was often considered the “downer” portion of the show. Whether it’s pretense or sincerity is a bit cloudy, but it does raise questions if not eyebrows.

Though the group took some pretty hard knocks for the album when it came out, opinions have softened towards it over time. I find it has some moments worth hearing on it, though it’s probably never gonna be my favorite album by Patti & the gang. It certainly didn’t deserve the pounding it got back then, but those where the days when rock critics made their name by seeing who could be the bigger asshole. Sometimes it was amusing, but they shit on a lot of good stuff while trying to be “cool” back then.

CAN - FLOW MOTION @ 45

 

Released in October of 1976, CAN’s seventh studio album, Flow Motion, is celebrating its 45th anniversary this month. It’s an album that continued the major shift in the way CAN created in the studio, something started with their previous LP, Landed, and was rather divisive among the group’s fans at the time of its release.

CAN always recorded in their own studios, Inner Space, but their equipment drove them to compose in a mostly “live” improvised manner for their early albums as they lacked the ability to do extensive multi-tracking. The arrival of a 16 channel recording system in 1975 meant that they could work in an entirely different manner than they had before and this was part of what drove them to pursue what some would consider more accessible music as the ability to consider and arrange songs usurped the improvisational approach of earlier works. As they came to grips with the possibilities of their new tools, they became interested in working with structures like reggae and disco inspired rhythms, a move that would prove somewhat unpopular with some.

The opening cut from the album, I Want More, and it’s reprisal on the side A closing track, And More, build on a shuffling disco beat with the opening track becoming something of a hit single in the UK, one of CAN's biggest ever. It even scored them a slot on Top Of the Pops, which was great for exposure, but hardcore fans of the band weren’t into seeing them lip-syncing and dancing on the BBC and a lot of them started to write the band off as sell-outs. But in retrospect, the fact is that it’s simply a damn good little song that deserved the popularity it garnered and, once people got off their “high horses” and gave it a chance, they came to recognize its charms.

Much of the rest of the album plays around with variations on reggae rhythms, with Cascade Waltz coming up with the ingenious idea of fusing a reggae shuffle into a 3/4 time signature. While there’s a lot of accessible, compact music on the album, it’s not without its darker turns as is the case with the thundering percussion, like rolling storm clouds, on Smoke (E.F.S. No. 59), or the sprawling strangeness of the album’s ten minute plus closing title track. All in, the balance between so-called “mainstream” dalliances and CAN’s usual weirdness, something that is never truly absent from any of their albums, add up to a pretty great listen. Of their late ‘70s releases, it’s one of my favorites and one of the most thoroughly listenable from this era.

THROBBING GRISTLE - GREATEST HITS @ 40

 

Forty years ago this month, in October of 1981, Throbbing Gristle released the capstone of their brief yet confrontational career, Greatest Hits - Entertainment Though Pain. It’s a compilation of some of their most notorious music, including some non-album singles, intended to offer the curious a convenient though subversive introduction to these “wreckers of civilization”.

The album, like 20 Jazz Funk Greats, trades on deception right on its cover, while also paying tribute to one of the band’s most surprising influences, Martin Deny, who’s music often closed TG’s live performances and served as inspiration for more than one composition. The front is a direct parody of his ‘50s Exotica covers with Cosey filling in as the model with bamboo curtains draped in the background. The back cover offers the band photo, again all looking super friendly and fun, just like 20-JFG. This image sits next to a hype essay courtesy of Claude Bessy, who expounds upon the mysteries and marvels of our heroes. It’s a perversely rambling attempt to make sense of the band’s career in the wake of the recent “termination” of their “mission”. It’s suitably obtuse and does a good job of elucidating at the same time as intensifying their mystique.

Inside, the album does its best to touch all the bases covered over the course of the band’s 5 years of activity. It’s mostly kept to the more accessible tracks like Hot On the Heels of Love, but you get a bit of the edge thrown in for good measure with tracks like Subhuman & Hamburger Lady. Ultimately, it does what it says on the tin and gives the novice TG listener a handy gateway into their demented and demanding world with just enough cushion to soften the harder blows while twigging the imaginations of the adventurous to want to poke around for something more.

ORBITAL @ 30

 

Celebrating its 30th anniversary today is the debut eponymous album from Orbital, which was released on September 30th, 1991. Along with debuts by the likes of LFO, Aphex Twin, Nightmares on Wax and The Future Sound of London, Orbital would become recognized as a critical part of the new wave of British techno music bursting from the clubs at the dawn of the 1990s.

The Hartnoll brothers, Phil & Paul, would begin working towards this album in 1989, crafting their first single, Chime, on their dad’s cassette deck in a compact little office/workspace he had cut out from the void under the staircase of the family home. Over the course of the next few years, they’d assemble the songs that would eventually become their debut. Taking their cue from Detroit techno and Chicago acid house coming from America in the late 1980s, they’d quickly become part of the UK’s exploding rave scene, where they were recognized for their improvised live sets. Some of these would make it on to their debut in the form of live versions of Chime and Midnight.

I was turned onto this album almost immediately upon its arrival at the local import shop. As soon as I heard the Star Trek - The Next Generation samples on the opening cut (The Moebius, Time Squared, S02E13) with Worf’s “… where time becomes a loop” and LaForge’s “…whatever happened WILL happen again”, I knew I had to have this album. With TNG being at the peak of its popularity by 1991, that hook was irresistible. And the rest of the album didn’t disappoint as they filled the entire CD’s 78 minute capacity with one solid groove after another. It became regular essential listening in my home for some time after its arrival. Digging it out again for a fresh listen, it’s still got a lot going for it and has held up nicely over the past thee decades. I’m sure it can still pack a dance floor whenever it gets a spin.

For some reason, however, I never really kept up with the group after their first release. I remember checking out their third album, Snivilization, and being somewhat ambivalent about it and I never bothered to go back to that well again after that. Yet I’ve been doing some dipping in now, spurred on by the nostalgia that was triggered after rediscovering their debut, and I’m finding myself very much enchanted again. I don’t know why I didn’t stick with them back then, but I’m glad I’m giving them another chance now and I’m very impressed with what I’m hearing with fresh ears.

RICHARD H. KIRK - RIP

 

The unexpected passing of experimental electronic music pioneer, Richard H. Kirk, has got me thinking about how his work has impacted my own personal musical journey through the decades. Not only since I first came across Cabaret Voltaire so long ago, but also because I kept rediscovering him over and over through his solo works released under their innumerable aliases. I first heard Cabs way back in 1981 when a high school buddy and band mate in my first band, Mark, bought a copy of Voice of America. He’d special ordered the album based on a recommendation from his cousin. Mark had sent him a cassette of some demos we’d recorded and he’d told him we sounded a lot like this band from Sheffield in the UK. So Mark ordered the album and, when he eventually picked it up from the shop, we ended up going back to his place to check it out since he had a proper hi-fi stereo system. After our first listen, Mark was a bit ambivalent about the album, but I heard something in it that I instantly took a shining to and offered to buy the record off him. That’s how I acquired my first proper “Industrial” album for my growing little record collection.

Voice of America was an album that clicked with me for a number of reasons, mostly down to the way the drum machines sounded, Mal’s deep bass throb, Chris’ cheesy organ & disorienting tapes and Kirk’s piercing guitar & clarinet stabs. My full-stop favorite record at the time was PiL’s Metal Box (Second Edition), and there was a definite kinship between the two given the atonal, metallic din of CV’s sound. But there was a lot more experimentation going with Cabs than even PiL were up for and that started opening my mind up to all sorts of new possibilities in terms of structure and sounds. Plus the band looked absolutely miserable on the cover with their long black overcoats, frazzled fringes and glowering glares. It was all very appealing to my sense of teenage post-punk angst.

From there, I next encountered some of their singles like Nag Nag Nag, which sounded like this amazing fusion of electronic and punk and showed just how simple you could keep things and still whack out a catchy, furious ditty. Then there was Seconds Too Late, which I heard shortly after moving to the big city and discovering my first underground after-hours warehouse nightclub. This was in early 1983 and I can clearly remember that immense bass sound pulsing through the PA while its ghostly synths drifted over top. Seeing all these wild looking spiky haired Goths dancing away in the dimly lit shadows of this hidden nest of subversion was one of those magical experiences that stays with you for your entire life. I felt like I was in a post apocalyptic sci-fi movie, which was aided by the chemical enhancements that were available at the time. This was soon followed by encountering the single version of Yashar in a more mainstream, legit nightclub. It's a song that would set the template for the group’s metamorphosis into something truly “club friendly”.

Of course, this was the shift into serious dance music with the release of The Crackdown. It became the root DNA for all the electronic dance music which would come to dominate the more hardcore dance clubs throughout the ‘80s. Everything that would become “EBM” or “cyber-punk” was rooted in The Crackdown’s pulsing beats and riveting synth-bass. For me, they did it first, they did it best and they were the godfathers of that sound. That was, however, a bit of a double edged sword. As that style became more codified, popular and ubiquitous (and ultimately cliched), it started to drive me away from Cabaret Voltaire’s subsequent works, though I would continue to delve into their earlier catalogue and fall in love with everything from Mix-Up to Red Mecca to 2x45 and compilations of their early singles and EPs like Eight Crepuscule Tracks, which kicked off with the massively inspirational, Sluggin’ For Jesus.

For the most part, however, the later half of the ‘80s and most of the ‘90s had me leaving Cabs behind and going into the worlds of Chicago Acid House and UK & European electronica. It wasn’t until 1998 that I spotted this CD by Sandoz called “In Dub - Chant to Jah”, that I would chance to cross paths with Kirk again. I didn’t even realize he was behind that project at first and bought the CD purely because I’d seen the name Sandoz associated with Psychic TV and knew that it was an LSD reference. When I got around to looking at the album’s credits, seeing Kirk’s name attached was a most pleasant surprise! The album’s fusion of electronica and reggae made it a frequent listen in my home and I ended up picking up anything I came across with that name on it.

What I didn’t realize was that Kirk had become a shape-shifter and was putting out obscure titles under a plethora of pseudonyms and it wouldn’t be until early in 2020 that I finally sat down and seriously started trying to put all the pieces of that puzzle together. Thanks to Discogs extensive database and cross-referencing tools, I was able to ferret out innumerable side projects, collaborations and one-off gems strewn about from releases issued throughout the last three decades. That got me on a binge of it all since I was able to find a good deal of it on YouTube. There was a wide range of styles to explore from straight up dance techno to ambient to noise to downtempo and everything in between.

This foray into his obscure solo catalogue was preceded by a re-examination of Cabaret Voltaire’s later works after The Crackdown up until their last album before going into hiatus, The Conversation (1994). While some of the more mainstream leaning albums like Code and Groovy, Laidback & Nasty now show a bit of their age since their release, CV’s releases in the 1990s returned to something that now sounds more timeless and hold up well compared to anything released by their contemporaries of that era. The 1992 album, Plasticity, in particular works exceptionally well in the realm of underground electronica.

Finally, in late 2020, Kirk formally revived Cabaret Voltaire with the release of Shadow of Fear. It’s an album that hearkens back to the earlier edgy grooves of albums like Voice of America while bringing it all forward to the 21st century and the zeitgeist of the current times. With the specter of pandemics, war and environmental collapse infusing the music, it has a familiar sense of dread and anxiety while also making you want to tap your toes. It was, as it had been in the beginning, dance music for the end of the world, but now with 45 years of experience and living built into its essence. It was clear that Kirk was still on the edge of the curve and able to create music that was able to build on the past while looking forward and eschewing any sense of nostalgia, a concept Kirk often made clear was anathema to his process.

I suspect there’s a lot of material in Kirk’s vaults which remains unreleased, both in terms of older material and projects that were just completed or nearing completion. I expect we’ll be able to enjoy his works for some time to come, but it’s still very sad to know he was hardly at the point of losing steam in his creative career and that he was cut off while still rolling down the tracks. But one thing is certain. He’s left a mammoth legacy of incredibly varied and influential music that’s had an impact on generations and it will continue to do so for generations to come.

NIGHTMARES ON WAX - A WORD OF SCIENCE (THE FIRST AND FINAL CHAPTER) @ 30

 

Released on September 16th, 1991, the debut album from Nightmares on Wax, A Word Of Science (The 1st & Final Chapter), is celebrating 30 years on the shelves today.

NoW began to germinate their debut as far back as 1984 when then 14 year old George Evelyn began to experiment with mix tapes using bits of film dialogue that caused one friend to comment that it all “sounded like a nightmare”. This was the inspiration for the group’s name. In 1987 Evelyn began working with a Leeds crew recording demo tapes using a 4-track system and a sampler. Elements from these recording sessions would eventually find their way into A Word of Science. At this point, they were working predominantly within the techno style of 4x4 dance electronica, which would lead to the group’s first two singles on Warp, Aftermath (1989) and Dextrous (1990). In the early days, the group was a trio consisting of Evelyn, Kevin "Boywonder" Harper and Jon Halnon. Though their debut album is credited to the group, Harper and Halnon don’t actually appear on the record and didn’t tour to support it.

The album itself is one of those releases that contains the DNA for at least a half dozen different stylistic offshoots. It drifts from its founding techno grooves to venture into more funk & hip-hop oriented vibes with psychedelic overtones offering a strong signpost for the evolution of trip-hop and downtempo music throughout the coming decades. It’s also a conscious move away from strictly dance-floor oriented music and is one of the first “techno” albums to fully embrace the idea of “home listening” electronic music along with the likes of LFO’s Frequencies album from the same era. Its divergence of styles was something of a frustration for those looking for the basic beats characterized by their debut singles as the album ventured down avenues that other producers were barely starting to consider options for exploration. As a result it has gained a legacy as a ground-breaker for innovation in electronic music.

This one went under my radar when it first came out and Nightmares on Wax went into a bit of a hiatus for a few years before their sophomore LP, Smoker’s Delight (1995) would cement them in place as leaders in the downtempo scene. Their reworking of the debut album’s Nights Interlude would appear on the 1996 Future Sound of Jazz Vol. 2 compilation and serve as my gateway into the world of NoW. I wouldn’t discover their debut until nearly 10 years after its release, but it has continually surprised me with how well it has held up. At the very least, it’s a signpost album that points the way to the future of electronic music for the next two decades.