ORCHESTRAL MANEUVERS IN THE DARK - ARCHITECTURE & MORALITY @ 40

 

November 5th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the third album by OMD (Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark), Architecture & Morality, which was issued on this day in 1981. It’s an album that redefined electronic music’s potential, though it was clearly a shot over the heads of some critics of the day.

At the time work began on the A&M album, OMD were looking to infuse a fresh sense of warmth and humanity into the often cold, mechanical landscape of the growing electronic music scene. This was a trend that was working its way through the ranks of other synth driven artists like John Foxx, who’d done an about-face from his debut solo album, with all it’s grey metallic machinations, to the green of forgotten gardens with his follow-up. For OMD, their inspiration for where to find warmth and humanity in their music came from religious choral music, thanks to some experiments from former OMD member, David Hughes, who was using the group’s studio to tinker with some processed choral recordings he’d made. Though the group were themselves not religiously inclined, they appreciated the power and emotive capacity of the music. With this in hand, they focused on historical themes and characters to provide a conceptual framework for the album.

The title was suggested by Martha Ladly (Martha & the Muffins) after the 1977 book Morality and Architecture by David Watkin. The group felt that the duality suggested by the words perfectly meshed with their desire to take the rigid “architecture” presented by electronic instruments like drum machines, sequencers and synthesizers, and balance them with the “morality” of the human experience. The cover by acclaimed designer Peter Saville, known for his work with Factory Records and Joy Division, austerely reflected this concept and reinforced the thematic integrity of the entire project. Ladly & Saville were, incidentally, romantically involved at the time the album was produced.

Musically, the group went to great lengths to expand their sonic palette beyond the usual synths and drum machines, incorporating acoustic instruments, guitars and especially a vintage Mellotron, a rather unwieldy keyboard contraption that predated digital sampling by utilizing banks of audio tape loops of real instruments to create its sounds. Its presence often lends a haunting sense of surreal romanticism to the album’s aura. Structurally, the songs have a stately, procession type of movement to them. There’s a sense of drama and scale, though never bombastic or overblown. The results come across as heartfelt and sincere as they delve into the history and impact of their subjects.

The initial critical response to the album was baffling and mixed, however. After putting so much into this project, the group were taken aback by how harsh some critics were. Lynden Barber of Melody Maker wrote, "I don't believe the Orchs even care about this record... the style is the same, the content profoundly different, the onslaught of emptiness, frivolity disguised by furrowed brows, a new brand of meaninglessness." The response of the listening public, however, was immediately enthusiastic and the album spawned no less than three hit singles in the UK and European markets. The tide of negativism from the critics soon shifted, however, as the fog began to clear from their perception of the album and people began to comprehend the scope of what the group had accomplished. The critical standing of the record after 40 years on the shelves now puts it solidly in the “classic masterpiece” category with it frequently topping “best of the 80s” lists.

For me, it was my gateway drug for OMD and still sits as their high water mark as far as my personal estimation of their career is concerned.

NASH THE SLASH - DECOMPOSING @ 40

 

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this month is Nash the Slash's groundbreaking EP, Decomposing. Released independently on Nash's Cut-Throad imprint, it was claimed to be the first album to be playable at any speed, though I'd suggest Boyd Rice may have something to say about that with his "black" album offering similar potentials a few years earlier. Regardless, it was still an innovative approach and marketing strategy. In actuality, the recordings did lend themselves to working at the various speeds available on a standard turntable. They were all instrumental and heavily processed and electronic, so the concept proved to be entirely practical without making the music sound "wrong" (though at 78rpm, it may have felt a bit "rushed"). It likely occurred to Nash to do this after his first EP, Bedside Companion, was inadvertently played at the wrong speed on a radio show. That error eventually lead to that EP being released on CD in both its native 45rpm speed AND the 33-1/3rpm variation. The original vinyl version of Decomposing has since become a rather rare collectors item given that it was only ever independently released in Canada and not licensed to any European market like his other Cut-Throat titles. For me, it's one of my favorite releases from Nash along with the Bedside Companion EP and the Dreams and Nightmares LP.

CHRIS & COSEY - HEARTBEAT @ 40

 

40 years ago this month, in November of 1981, Chris & Cosey officially stepped out of the Throbbing Gristle shadows and began their career as the dynamic duo of electronic music.

It wasn't long after Chris Carter joined Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti & Peter Christopherson to form Throbbing Gristle that sparks began to fly between him and his future life and creative partner. By the time TG began to spiral down towards their termination, Chris & Cosey had already started working on material that would end up on their first post TG album. Heartbeat would come as a celebration of their new freedom and the beginning of their life together as they became a family with the addition of their soon to be born child, pictured in an ultrasound on the cover and commemorated by the title. It's an album about birth and new life and is bursting with a sense of liberation, enthusiasm and optimism about facing the future. While it still hints at some of the darkness that was the hallmark of TG, there's much more of a sense of beauty and wonder about it all as they were in the flush of their romance and finally being able to live openly and create freely within their own domain. Signing to Rough Trade records, the duo were able to focus on the music without having to deal with the administrative issues of running an independent label, though they'd eventually get back to doing that soon enough.

For me, Heartbeat is a critical release within the arena of electronic music as it offers clear signposts towards styles and approaches which would become foundational for the future of the genre, particularly as the 80s ran out the clock in its final years. What makes this album so important is that it was so far ahead of the curve and ended up becoming a touchstone years later as producers inspired by the first waves of the techno & acid house movements began to look for ideas as to where to take that music as they strove to innovate and evolve. Many people quickly began to realize that Chris & Cosey had already plotted out the paths of where to go, nearly a full decade beforehand. As such, the album has retained a certain vitality and timelessness as it was so effective in opening the floodgates for the potential of electronic music for generations to come.

PINK FLOYD - MEDDLE @ 50

 

Celebrating half a century on the planet today is Pink Floyd's sixth studio album, Meddle, which was released on October 31st, 1971. It's an album which represents a bridging period between the early Syd Barret era psychedelic rock band and the prog-rock super-group which would emerge with the landmark release of Dark Side of the Moon in the spring of 1973.

While the group was making definite movements towards a much more accessible sound after the challenging obscurity of the prior two albums, Ummagumma & Atom Heart Mother, they weren't quite settled on the conceptual underpinnings which would form the framework of the albums that came after Meddle. The fact is that there's no overriding theme to integrate this album and it was produced over the course of the preceding year in fits and starts between live performance commitments around the globe. As such, the recording process was often fragmented, drawn out and frequently unproductive. It's actually quite surprising how accessible this album is given that the group indulged in so many esoteric experiments in order to try to spur on their creativity. Most of those ended up yielding very little, like the idea of each member recording their part without any reference to the other member's recording, only a rough outline of what they should play.

Yet, in the end, they managed to craft a lovely and entirely listenable collection of music, one which has become one of my favorite albums in the group's canon. The hooks and structures, while offering an aura of expansiveness, remain grounded and avoid any overt experimental self-indulgences. It has a dreamy sound that's never disturbed by uncomfortable awkwardness.

While the music itself was a rousing success and garnered critical praise, though modest sales, the cover, provided by legendary '70s design house, Hipgnosis, could be considered one of their weakest efforts. Lead designer, Storm Thorgerson, initially suggested a close-up shot of a baboon's anus, but the band wisely (or not?) vetoed that suggestion and instead offered the idea of a shot of an ear underwater, which is what he went with. Storm always felt it was a lackluster effort and considered it his worst contribution to the bands album covers.

Middling cover graphics aside, it's a thoroughly enjoyable listen from start to finish and an album I return to quite frequently when I need a Floyd fix.

MICKY DOLENZ PUTS YOU TO SLEEP @ 30

 

October 22nd marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Micky Dolenz Puts You To Sleep, his debut solo album, which hit the shelves on this day in 1991.

Considering Dolenz was one of the best pop vocal talents of the the late 1960s, it’s somewhat surprising it took over two decades for him to finally get around to doing a solo album after leaving The Monkees. He’d done a few solo singles throughout the 1970s and been involved in a couple of collaborative projects like the soundtrack for Harry Nilsson’s The Point (1977) with Davy Jones & the Monkees reunion albums: Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart (1976) & Pool It (1987), but a true solo effort remained off the table while his career shifted into TV production as a director, mostly in the UK.

For his solo debut, Micky came up with the idea of doing a collection of songs that would be adaptable to being sung as “lullabies”, something that could have been incredibly saccharine had it been handled by a lesser talent. But Dolenz manages to pull it all together in a manner that delivers on the “sweetness” without becoming insufferable. This comes down to two key factors: song selection and arrangements.

With the first factor, Micky went with some classics by great composers like Lennon & McCartney, Harry Nilsson and even a remake of the psychedelic Monkees masterpiece, Porpoise Song by Goffin & King. It’s territory that was always successful for The Monkees and is no less so here. The arrangements on the album are gorgeously elegant and understated. Each one snuggles comfortably into the laid-back twilight vibe the album seeks to inhabit with its goal of sending the listener off to dreamland. It does so with gentle ease, while never being boring. Micky is in perfect voice for the album and delivers every song with a sincerity and softness that is as comforting as a cup of hot chocolate.

In terms of a legacy, I don’t think a lot of people really know about this album, which is a shame. I didn’t discover it until very recently and was blown away when I finally heard it. It deserves to be appreciated far more than it has been as it offers up a fully realized concept, elevated by first rate songs, tasteful performances and production which holds up three decades after its release. Nothing sounds dated or is weakened by trendy production techniques. This could easily have been created at any time in the last 50 years, so it truly deserves to be called “timeless”.

APHEX TWIN - DRUKQS @ 20

 

Released on October 22, 2001, Aphex Twin’s Drukqs turns 20 years old today. It was the fifth studio album released under the Aphex Twin name and was one of Richard D. James’ most divisive albums.

Drukqs is so controversial because it refuses to adhere to anyone’s expectations nor to conform to any particular style across it’s two CDs / four vinyl LP mammoth 30 song, 1 hour & 43 minute runtime. It runs the gamut from hyperactive break-beat overloads to gently pastoral mechanical piano interludes and all of it seems to be thrown together with little to no consideration for track sequencing. Indeed, James himself has said that most people just import music into their computers and play albums in any order they like, so he anticipated that people would reconstruct the album to suit their own tastes anyway. As such, there wasn’t much point in spending a lot of time painstakingly arranging tracks into a particular order.

With this in mind, Drukqs can be seen as both a banquet of potential goodies or a confused amalgam of stray ideas. It only seems to make sense when the listener intervenes and puts the music together in a way that works for them. I know I found it an impossible listen when I first encountered the album when it was released and it was only much later when I took the time to reorder the tracks that I was able to find a way to appreciate it for what it had to offer. Personally, I found splitting it into “ambient” vs “rhythmic” tracks created two albums that I could listen to in their entirety, though I'd say I favor the more mellow side of this collection.

Part of the reason for the inconsistency in terms of styles can be found in its genesis, which was largely spurred by the theft of a laptop computer containing a massive collection of unreleased tunes which James lost while traveling. In order to thwart potential bootlegging, James put together Druqks as a stopgap measure, which is a predominant reason for critics often citing the album as merely a collection of random unreleased tracks from the previous few years. For many, it didn’t offer any new groundbreaking material and seemed to be no more than restatements of ideas already explored on more coherent releases like I Care Because You Do & the Richard D. James album.

Ultimately, the album relies on the listener to pick up the pieces and make something listenable out of it. There are some brilliant moments on it, especially with unexpectedly subtle compositions like Avril 14th, one of the mechanical piano tracks alternating between the more furiously complex break-beat excursions. James has provided a pile of puzzle pieces and left it up to the listener to sort them out. It would also have to suffice as the last Aphex Twin album until 2014’s Syro release. Not that James was completely silent all those years, releasing the Analord EP series as “AFX”, among other scattered side projects like The Tuss, but he’d stay away from Aphex Twin for over a decade. Part of that may have had to do with a nasty divorce from his wife and an effort to keep her from benefiting from potential royalties. Whatever the case, it left the Aphex Twin legacy in something of an uncomfortable limbo while fans tried to figure out what was going on.

THE RESIDENTS - STARS AND HANK FOREVER @ 35

 

October 21st marks the 35th anniversary of The Residents most unlikely commercial success, Stars & Hank Forever!, which was issued on this day in 1986. It was Volume II in their American Composer Series, which began two years earlier with the release of the George & James album. For this second volume, the composers were Hank Williams on side one and John Philip Sousa on side two. Though the American Composer Series was intended to span as many as 10 volumes over 16 years, the project was abruptly abandoned after this second volume due to various logistical difficulties. These, in part, involved rising costs for licensing fees and the incompatibility of the project’s structure with the emerging CD format. The American Composer Series was built around two composers per release occupying separate sides of an LP. With CDs usurping vinyl at the time as the dominant release format, the split side concept didn’t work anymore.

To say the album was commercially successful does not necessarily mean that it was critically or artistically so, though it does have certain moments. While the first volume, which covered works by James Brown and George Gershwin, offered a lot of giddy interpretations for the group to indulge in, their irreverent approach maybe didn’t serve the revered nature of Hank Williams’ legacy. However, their toe tapping take on Kaw-Liga, which mounted the familiar “Indian” lament atop a rhythm section lifted straight from Michael Jackson’s hit, Billie Jean, proved to be extremely club friendly and The Residents found themselves suddenly in the unfamiliar position of being DJ faves in the underground clubs of the mid 1980s. Releasing the track in an extended 12” remixed format helped drive its popularity even more. That hit aside, however, their versions of other Williams classics like Jambalaya may have been seen by some as disrespectful, though personally, I find the Williams side pretty consistently enjoyable.

The Sousa side, on the other hand, offers up a far more challenging listening experience. The bombast of parade and marching music makes for some pretty brittle listening and the arrangements, with their accompanying sound effects intended to recreate the ambiance of a live parade, leave the whole side long mix of songs sounding jarring and alienating. A remix of this material without the sound FX was later released separately, though I’ve not bothered to check out that version.

The saddest aspect of this album is the fact it contains the last recordings done with frequent collaborator and unofficial “fifth” Resident, innovative guitar genius Snakefinger, before his untimely and tragic passing. This fatal blow was something of a culmination to a turbulent time for the band, which had gone through a lot of struggle thus far in the decade. With the Mole Trilogy faltering and failing to resolve itself into a completed project, its accompanying live tour nearly bankrupting them and then the American Composer Series going off the rails after only two volumes, the loss of Snakefinger must have dealt a serious blow to the group’s resolve. It’s no wonder they’d turn their attention to the realm of faith and religion with their next major project, God In Three Persons. Though this represented the end of the composer series, they would do a collection of Elvis Presley songs a few years later in 1989 for The King & Eye album.