This is a Recording

My introduction to TV on the Radio was via the TV, not the Radio. In 2004 I caught the video for 'Staring at the Sun' on MTV2 and realised at once it was something well out of the ordinary. I didn't love it at first acquaintance, but after seeing and hearing it a few more times, I'd changed my mind and was inclined to pay some money for it, ordering a CD copy of the 'Young Liars' EP from Amazon.  I'm glad I ordered the EP first, rather than their debut album Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes as I think it's the better effort. Had it been the other way around I may have been discouraged. 'Satellite' comes first: with its rapid heartbeat-like rhythm and layered vocal harmonies - it's a good song, but better is to come. The eerie and disconcerting 'Staring at the Sun' follows it, which still sounds out on its own nearly twenty years on. Coolly world-weary - and a tad less unconventional - 'Blind' is the EP's longest numbe...

About twenty years ago I aquired a wonderful and educational 3-CD box set called OHM: The Early Gurus Of Electronic Music . Among its tracks was an excerpt from Karlheinz Stockhausen's piece 'Kontakte'. As with much of Stockhausen's output, it's not the most immediately-accessible music, but I did acquire a fondness for it, and became curious to hear all 35 minutes of the piece. I suspect I would have ordered my CD copy a couple of years later from a long-defunct UK on-line classical specialist called "Crotchet". It's a 1992 re-issue of a recording made in 1960, the same one from which the excerpt on the compilation had been taken. 'Kontakte' exists in two versions: the original all-electronic one; and the better-known "hybrid" version with parts for live piano and percussion backed up by electronic sounds on tape. The possibilities of modern "live electronics" would doubtless have thrilled Stockhausen, but were a lon...

'Being Boiled' was one of the more unlikely hit singles of the early '80s. A song protesting the cruelty of sericulture, it was The Human League's debut single, first issued in 1978. A reworked version appeared on the band's second album Travelogue in 1980, with a re-release of the original 7" (slightly tweaked with added stereo effects) following a few months later. Only in the wake of the League's breakthrough album Dare , did a further re-issue (seemingly identical with the 1980 one) finally achieve success, reaching the respectable heights of number 6 in January '82. Even then, it still sounded forbiddingly futuristic, despite its having been "recorded on a domestic tape recorder, in mono, in an abandoned factory, at a cost of £2.50" (wikipedia). My copy is one of the re-issued variants, very likely the later one. The B-side, 'Circus of Death' is good too, though I'm not sure it really needed the 25-second spoken introduction ...

Isao Tomita made his name, following the example set by Wendy Carlos' Switched-on Bach , with a succession of albums through the '70s featuring works from the Western Classical canon adapted and arranged for the analogue sythesizers of the day. For example, his first record in this vein - Snowflakes are Dancing (1973) - was based on works by Claude Debussy. The basis for much of Tomita's fifth such offering, The Bermuda Triangle (1979), comes from pieces composed by Sergei Prokofiev, but this time some of the adaptations are looser, and, as the title suggests, there's more going on than just that. Nowadays we're told that the Bermuda Triangle is no more (or less) inexplicable than any other expanse of deep ocean, but in the late '70s and early '80s it was having its mysterious moment in the moonlight, as exemplified by such productions as the Bermuda Triangle board game (1976); the TV series The Fantastic Journey (1977) and of course Barry Manilow's ...

Fittingly for an album so much concerned with the seamy and the sleazy, the LP copy of Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret I picked up seven or eight years ago was in decidedly mucky condition. While the sleeve is still tatty, after a couple of cleans the record now plays a lot better, despite clearly (and, again, appropriately) having been well used. I knew and loved the singles ('Tainted Love', 'Bedsitter', 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye') from when they were first released, and had been introduced to the notorious 'Sex Dwarf' at University, via some acquaintances who'd got their hands on a copy of the original banned version of the video. Tracks like 'Frustration' and 'Seedy Films', on the other hand, I'd seldom heard, if ever, and it was a delight to belatedly make their acquaintance. Now over forty years old, this is an album that, for me, still sounds vivid and compelling with its very British combination of camp comedy, 'kitchen sink ...

I was unaware, on seeing the exotic figure of Steve Strange in Bowie's video for 'Ashes to Ashes', and then, more prominently, in the one for Visage's 'Fade To Grey', that he was a South Wales Valleys boy like me, from Newbridge, about twelve miles' drive away from my grim home town. I was very much taken with both the song and its video at the time, though the latter looks more than a little ridiculous now. The song, however, still sounds great - which perhaps owes more to the talents of Billy Currie and Midge Ure than Strange himself, who wasn't that much of a singer. He was, however, the focal point of the band, and of a broader moment in pop culture, in his brief tenure as arbiter of all that was fashionable in London. On the B-Side, 'The Steps' is a moody instrumental incorporating heartbeat-like drums and synths suggesting organ chords and brass fanfares. I had always supposed 'Fade To Grey' was the debut Visage single, but no - w...

When I heard the track 'Malukayi' on Don Letts' radio show in 2015 I had to find out more about it - which wasn't immediately straightforward as the track had been mis-labelled on the playlist and was still, at that point, very new. Not much later I'd gathered it was the work of the Congolese group Mbongwana Star, whose debut album (and so far their only one) was released in May of that year. I ordered a CD copy. "Tired of pre-conceptions around African music, Mbongwana Star are creating their own identity, fusing traditional Congolese rhythms with post punk and electronics inspired by life in the townships around them, 'making magic out garbage.'" So a promotional blurb at the time explained their music. The masterminds behing the project were singer-songwriters Coco Ngambali & Théo Nzonza (formerly part of the band Staff Benda Bilili), and Irish-born, Paris-based produder Liam Farrell, aka "Doctor L". Aside from the mesmerizing ...

Last year someone donated a carefully-curated collection of vinyl to my local charity shop, including a variety of '70s and early '80s electronica, much of it obscure enough that I'd never heard of the artists before. There was some new-age stuff, Moog-based compilations, numerous LPs by Kitarō and Tomita, etc. Given the music involved, I'd not be surprised if there had also been Tangerine Dream and Jean-Michel Jarre albums that had been snapped up before I got to see what was left over. I must have bought eight or nine of those albums in all, and found about half of them to my liking, donating the remainder back to the same shop. Among the successes was Prisms , by Michael Garrison, a 1981 release, the artist's second. Garrison, it seemed, had been a great admirer of "Berlin School" electronica, but, hailing from Oregon rather than Central Europe, he was very far removed from the action. In isolation, he nevertheless acquired a variety of synthesizer equi...

My cousin Jeff, three years my senior, had an extensive record collection. Plenty of what he liked, I didn't, but our tastes did intersect. I distinctly recall him playing the first three tracks on side B of Trans Europe Express to me one Sunday; assuming, correctly, that I'd be interested - it certainly wasn't like anything else I'd heard up to that point. That would have been a few years before I started buying music of my own: nevertheless, it planted a seed. What we have here is a 1994 German CD issue of Kraftwerk's sixth album, with the original monochrome cover design. It has unkindly been said that Germans prefer the English-language versions of the band's songs and English-language speakers prefer the German ones: in any case, that is generally true for me. I'd had Autobahn on cassette since the '80s, and then later on CD, but had dithered about buying any others until my German music phase of '07/'08, when I acquired this disc and ...

It was in the wake of The Sparks Brothers and Annette movies last year that I paid a pound for a slightly distressed 7" copy of 'Beat the Clock'. I'm just about old enough to recall Sparks' startling debut appearance on Top of the Pops back in 1974. For all that. their music didn't loom especially large in my childhood, and by the time of their Giorgio Moroder collaboration in 1979 which gave rise to 'The Number One Song in Heaven' and 'Beat the Clock', they weren't my cup of tea. Notwithstanding the influence their template of emotive singer/expressionless keyboardist had on any number of artists that followed, I was only dimly and sporadically aware of the brothers' career from the '80s onward. It was FFS , their 2015 collaboration with Franz Ferdinand, that brought them squarely back to my attention: I particularly enjoyed the track 'Police Encounters' from that album.  Their own recent music has something of an operett...

I have a vague recollection of first hearing schneider tm, aka German musician Dirk Dresselhaus, by way of a promotional compilation CD affixed to the cover of a magazine. The particular piece that caught my attention was 'Eiweiß', and, on the strength of my affection for that track, I bought Moist on CD. I'm not the biggest afficionado of electronic music, but I find this an absorbing and appealing album. The moody eponymous opening track seems to borrow something from the pioneering efforts of Cluster and their ilk, blended with more state-of-the-art ingredients (as of '98).  'Up-Tight' is uptempo & staccato, akin to an infeasibly rapid march, while 'Eiweiß' has a more liquid character with its rounded bleeps & bloops. 'Starfuck' includes buzzing electric noise and cyclically looped feedback combined to striking effect. There's a satisfying variety on the album. I also bought the second schenider tm release ( Zoomer ) but was much ...

Falling as it does between their effervescent earlier hits, and the moody darkness of their glory years, 'See You' is probably among the less sought-after Depeche Mode 45s, which might explain why it's the only one I've yet found in the wild. I've never been an outright fan of theirs, but have enjoyed several of their songs down the years, and recall having a fondness for this one as thirteen-year-old. Some may call it twee, but, nowadays, to me, it seems vaguely creepy: one could interpret it as a kind of stalker's lament. "And I won't even touch you", "But I swear I won't touch you" sound like remarks from the wrong side of a restraining order. "Well I know five years is a long time" - five years? where's he been exactly: prison? The B-side 'Now, This is Fun' isn't bad - it has a bit more going on musically than 'See You', but the vocals are oddly low in the mix and the overall effect is lacklustre....

With the unlimited scope for invention afforded by electronic music, it can be frustrating to see it so often conform to a few well-worn templates. Then again, innovation is difficult and time-consuming, as exemplified by the music of English composer Lee Fraser. Apparently it can take him as long as a year to compose a single piece. His discography, therefore, is not extensive, comprising two albums: Dark Camber (2014) and this one, Cor Unvers (2018). I first saw Fraser's name mentioned in a short comment recommending his work posted somewhere on Reddit a couple of years ago. Looking it up on Bandcamp, I was much intrigued, and ordered both albums on CD direct from the artist - they arrived with a handwritten note of thanks.  The four tracks on Cor Unvers encompass a tremedous variety of tones and timbres, from the obtrusively artificial to the seemingly organic: buzzing, fizzing, droning, clanging, ringing, beeping, dripping, etc., etc. There is very little in the way of disce...

I've only owned Quazarz: Born On A Gangster Star (and its companion-piece Quazarz vs. The Jealous Machines ) for a couple of months, and have only listened to them a half a dozen times apiece and am still getting to know them, so I don't have well-formed opinions to express about them except that I love the sleeve art for the former (the work of London-based artist Isvald Klingels ). Both albums were CDs bought very cheaply from an ebay seller. My ears perked up to the sound of the track 'Moon Whip Quäz' when it came on the radio back in 2017, its melody line very reminiscent of that of Kraftwerk's 'Das Model'. From there I checked out more of their music on YouTube (including the remarkable video for ' Shine a Light ' - also on the album), but I didn't follow through and spend a little money on the music until this year. I've seldom connected with rap or hip-hop, despite it having been part of the cultural background for forty-odd years. Am...

Along with many of my generation I watched, transfixed, as Gary Numan made his debut TV appearance performing 'Are "Friends" Electric?' as part of Tubeway Army on Top of the Pops in 1979. To my ten-year-old eyes it seemed thrillingly otherwordly. By rights I should have spent some pocket-money on the single, but it wouldn't be until years later that I felt any need to acquire music of my own. Some forty years afterwards, I picked up a copy of Replicas , the breakthrough Tubeway Army album, and, a little more recently, a copy of the 'Down in the Park' single: both charity shop finds. As I hardly ever listened to the album, I let that one go, and ordered a copy of 'Are "Friends" Electric?' on 7", so I at least had the two stand-out tracks from it should I feel the need to hear them. Both belong to a current in late '70s / early '80s British music with something of a dystopian sci-fi feel (and, more specifically, a strong Ball...

I keep crediting the radio with introducing me to this or that artist: Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith being another one among a great many. In this particular case I think it was Stuart Maconie who featured some tracks from EARS on his Freak Zone show on BBC 6 Music around the time of its release in 2016. I didn't buy the album at the time, but kept it in mind and at intervals I'd return to look up something or other of hers on YouTube. During one YouTube session I watched a video of a performance she did with veteran knob-twiddler Suzanne Ciani - and loved it enough that I bought their collaborative Sunergy album right away. Soon after that I ordered a copy of EARS via ebay. I slightly prefer the the spacious & semi-improvisational feel of the former album, but find the latter most enjoyable too. Smith coaxes burbling, seemingly-organic textures from her electronic music-boxes, and seamlessly combines those with processed vocals and 'natural' woodwinds (the notes menti...

My Dad was an Eurythmics fan. I don't know how it is he took a shine to their music, but not to that of any of the other synth-pop duos of the day, but there it is. He had copies of the Sweet Dreams and Revenge LPs. I'd been a fan too, since falling for their song 'The Walk', which I'd long assumed had been the lead single from Sweet Dreams , but no, wikipedia tells me it came out after 'This is the House'. It's hard to believe in retrospect that the immediately seductive 'Love is a Stranger' was only the third single from the album (only to be re-issued anew in the wake of the great success of 'Sweet Dreams' (the song)). It sounds fantastic given the room to breathe on a 12" single. I've always loved the video for the song, too. Of the two tracks on the B side, the first 'Let's Just Close Our Eyes' is a synth-heavy reworking of 'The Walk' which I like much less than the original. The second track, 'Mon...

I've always frowned on the practice of including two mixes of the same song on a 7" single; or worse, multiple versions on a 12" one. It's hardly ever happened that I want to listen to multiple arrangements of the same tune in succession. 'Manchild', Neneh Cherry's second 45 release, has 'Manchild (The Original Mix)' as its B-side. Not that it really matters, as I bought the record second-hand and very cheaply, and because I've always liked the song. Apparently one of Cherry's first attempts at songwriting, it's a poignant ballad with a memorable melody. Some voices have a certain something in their timbre which just sit right somehow in one's ear, and for me, hers is such a one. The lyrics, a sketched portrait of the titular character, fall in a way that leads me to try to puzzle out a narrative from them when I listen to the track. Jean-Baptiste Mondino's video for the song is also a delight. My copy has a worn & torn pic...

Naruyoshi Kikuchi's 'Dub Sextet' is a conventional jazz quintet (tenor sax, trumpet, piano, bass & drums) augmented by a sixth member, Pardon Kimura, who is credited as providing the dub. Kimura's contribution seems to entail moments where reverberating echo has been added; others where blooping oscillators come in; and others still where the acoustic sounds break up into glitchy electronic static, etc. It's not obvious to me which, if any, of those effects were applied 'live', or if they were all varieties of studio post-processing. In any case, they strike me more as decorations than as structurally-integral parts of the music. I wouldn't imagine the album would have sounded radically different if it had been a dub-less quintet performance. The musicianship is excellent: Kikuchi is the saxophonist, leader and principal composer; Shinpei Ruike on trumpet is no lesser player; and drummer Tamaya Honda is terrific, often threatening to steal the show...

I'd known about Kraftwerk since the '70s, and had later made a passing acquaintance with some of Can's œuvre, but it wasn't until '07/'08 that I explored the music of some of their ' kosmische ' contemporaries in any more depth. Discovering Neu! '75 had started me off, and, before long I was ordering CDs by La Düsseldorf,  Michael Rother, Harmonia, Faust and Cluster from amazon.de: Zuckerzeit was among them. It's a catchily melodic album, but meanwhile a wonkily off-kilter one, as if things were always slightly out-of-sync, or not running at exactly the right speed: its imperfections are both charming & disconcerting. My favourite track is 'Caramel', with 'Fotschi Tong' and the unnerving 'Rote Riki' in contention for silver and bronze.   Before writing this post I should have first checked that I still actually owned the CD. I suspect it may have fallen victim to a recent purge to clear out some shelf-space. Either t...