DARK WAVES

POPULAR MUSICS MATTER: SOCIAL, POLITICAL AND

CULTURAL INTERVENTIONS

Series Editors: Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane and Martin J. Power

The Popular Musics Matter: Social, Political and Cultural Interventions
series will publish internationally informed edited collections, monographs
and textbooks that engage in the critical study of popular music perfor-
mance (live and recorded), historical and contemporary popular music
practitioners and artists, and participants and audiences for whom such
musics embody aesthetic, cultural, and, particularly, socio-political values.
The series sees music not only as a manifestation of global popular culture
but also as a form that profoundly shapes and continually seeks to redefine
our understandings of how society operates in a given location and era.

Titles in the Series

Soundtracking Germany: Popular Music and National Identity, Melanie Schiller
Heart and Soul: Critical Essays on Joy Division, edited by Eoin Devereux,
Martin J. Power and Aileen Dillane
Deindustrialisation and Popular Music: Punk and ‘Post-Punk’ in Manchester,
Düsseldorf, Torino and Tampere, Giacomo Bottà
Bob Marley and Media: Representation and Audiences, Mike Hajimichael
Dark Waves: The Synthesizer and the Dystopian Sound of Britain (1977-80),
Neil O’Connor
 DARK WAVES
The Synthesizer and the Dystopian
Sound of Britain (1977-80)

NEIL O’CONNOR

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London
 CONTENTS

Foreword vii
Introduction 1

Part I Background Noise

1 Dystopian Sentimentalities 7
2 Political, Economic, and Cultural Influences 13
3 Technology and Aesthetical Frameworks 21

Part II Outsider Electronics

4 Cabaret Voltaire: Dadaism Up North 35
5 Throbbing Gristle: Music from the Death Factory 55
6 The Normal: The Car Crash Set 75
7 Fad Gadget: Mechanised Curiosity 85

Part III Crossing the Mainstream

8 The Human League: Electronically Yours 103
9 Gary Numan: Subhuman in Suburbia 123
10 Visage: The New Guard 141
11 Conclusion: Influence and Afterword 159

v
vi     Contents

Bibliography 167
Index 173
About the Author 187
 FOREWORD

I stepped into the seventh decade of the twentieth century on a day of per-
sonal significance—the first of January 1970, my fifteenth birthday. An
age that suggests the ensuing trauma of adulthood, but with the optimism
and uncertainty of youth still ringing loudly through me. In a wider world,
it was also the dawn of a decade that similarly carried both the residual dis-
ruption of the previous years, matched with not-unreasonable expectations.
The horrors of the Vietnam War, widespread civil unrest, and shifting
geopolitical tectonic plates were frequently masked by the promise of new
technologies and Technicolor media, all driven by the boom of movement
and voracious consumerism. It was a decade of first-world acceleration
and the resulting disorder of global entropy. The year itself was largely
uneventful, but the seventies and the early years of the eighties proved to
be a period of unpredictable change. A time in which future dreams were
made corporeal against the backdrop of economic, social, and technological
transformation, and importantly, a time captured most vividly through the
exploding spectacle of popular culture.
The period marked a wider sense of growing up, of post-war reality
that had been put on hold by a sixties naïve euphoria reluctant to address
its systemic complexities. On a national level, the pressures played out in
a dysfunctional political landscape, struck by inertia in dealing with a scle-
rotic, largely nineteenth-century industrial infrastructure, shaped by class,
race, and regional divisions. Successive governments neglected the reality of
post-war migration and merely inflamed racial tensions whilst the notion of
a growing moneyed, urbane, service industry was at odds with a fractious
working class.
The cutting adrift of the industrial North did not start with the
current neo-Tory, levelling up, red-wall political zeitgeist. I grew up in

vii
viii     Foreword

Sheffield, the frontline of this very real divide. The People’s Republic of
South Yorkshire. A city built on the monoculture of steel, buttressed by
the coalfields of the surrounding areas. An area of general classlessness, in
the sense that everyone readily identified as ‘working class,’ but also one
that, after the disruption of war, blind to changing global economics, saw
its future through a vision of a potential shiny future. ‘Sheffield: City of
the Future’ boldly sold itself to the world. A booming youth who saw a
new world of television, music, and life-changing technology. The dark-
ness illuminated by the bright lights of the actually-realised space age. This
clash between emotions and reality encapsulated both personal experiences
and the events in the real world. We saw this flashing, push-button destiny
alongside rubbish-strewn streets, power cuts, and industrial action.
The perception that electronic music, this emergent form slowly
encroaching the growing music world during the second half of the sev-
enties, was driven by an avalanche of Japanese technology burying a new
generation of musicians and tech-savvy artists is pervasive. Our perception
of the future began with this idea of ergonomic, click-switch functionality.
Picking up from the sci-fi dreams of earlier cinema and television, music
was the future’s wet dream. But in truth, outside the wealthy players—ELP,
Tangerine Dream, and similar ‘progressives’—this more embryonic period
was built upon a much more prosaic repurposing of our post-war tech
world. It was, for youth like us, moneyless and involved simple electronics,
home-built tools, primitive VCOs, filters, fuzz boxes made from Practical
Electronics’ circuit designs, decommissioned military tape recorders, and
ad hoc tape delays.
The dream was not Korg or Yamaha, but the British-built EMS ma-
chines, which augmented their complex synthesisers with toylike touch-
sensitive keys. Electronic music was emerging from lab coat experimental-
ism, and musique concrete, in our case, of Cabaret Voltaire, in a tiny loft in
Sheffield, but touched by the glamorous, from-another-planet affectations
of David Bowie and Eno’s Roxy Music. The future of music was one of
hot-styled ‘make and make do’, built from shortwave radio magazines,
charity shop guitars, Woolworth’s makeup counter, and army surplus chic.
The everyday DIY reality was not a barrier, merely an inconvenience,
and on the whole, a creative prompt. As a generation born of TV and the
beginnings of cheap travel, we were opened up to speculative worlds and
exotic possibilities. We were overrun by imagination. In truth, the vacuum
that money’s absence afforded was filled up with exploration of the mas-
sive unknown; busy, enquiring, restless minds. We were youthful in a very
evocative time and a very media-saturated space. The opportunities to dig
 Foreword     ix

and question were like air: We sucked it in, used it, and blew it out. Our
access to everything in front of us was unique. McLuhan’s communicated
and connected global village enabled us. It offered autodidactic opportuni-
ties unavailable to previous generations; information at this moment, before
it became monetised data, was plentiful, empowering, and motivating.
What we didn’t know didn’t scare us, but it provoked us. Technology
provided both agency and facility. It filled the sky with images and sounds
we could play with, new worlds, like minds, speculative pathways out of a
drab reality. It provided the means by which we could express their mean-
ing for us, and it suggested how we could play them. It was all accessible; it
was all culture; it was all popular. Pop was grain, texture, noise, and colour.
Colour was pop.
As the decade rolled on, music became increasingly rendered by these
shiny new machines. Synthesisers augmented guitars and drums. Joy Divi-
sion, the perfect barometer, in their final moments, drifted into a rich new
sound, paving the way for the New Order to follow. In the case of acts
like the Human League, Gary Numan, and Depeche Mode, traditional in-
struments were replaced altogether, synthesisers creating familiar but ersatz,
and novel, sounds. Others saw a different application of these technologies,
their potential to divert the power latent within the system. As punk, at
its most fundamental, had tapped into an important resistance, a need to
challenge the accepted order, we and others saw the need to completely
ditch the form and content to truly disrupt. We ourselves, but Throbbing
Gristle in particular, felt it necessary to push the raw energy of the sounds,
images, and words into new shapes rather than emulate pop and rock’s con-
ventional forms. It was simply not enough to apply faux instrument sounds
in the belief you were creating something new; only real change could be
achieved by subverting the technology. Discard, or hack the manual; a new
counterculture that, by distorting any intended use, and simply overreach-
ing, saw it was possible to transform things, to give us new eyes and ears.
Electricity comes from other planets, Lou Reed told us. We merged
the power sounds of the city into the new electronic palette. To a con-
stant backdrop of arc furnaces, incessant factory drones, interjected by the
metallic pop and crash of steel, we imagined the noises of the new. Mu-
tating industrial power into technologically rendered sounds, until now,
unheard. Music from another planet. The key element that enabled this
sonic alchemy was ‘the studio.’ Until this point, recording, as part of the
making and selling operation, was in the grip of a corporate music industry:
formalised, regulated, expensive, and largely divorced from the creative part
of the process.
x     Foreword

Emerging electronic music shattered this component of the industry

cartel; it took ownership of how and where music could be made, feed-
ing into a burgeoning, hungry, independent label culture. Rough Trade,
Factory, Fast, Industrial, Mute, all began to break the corporate monopoly,
all provided opportunities for the new artists to be heard. New voices, new
sounds. The importance of this lies in how the studio, no longer just a
means to capture performance as a ‘record’ to be marketed and sold, or an
indulgent artist’s playroom, rather became an instrument in its own right.
Affordable, accessible, a space to play, a home of experimentation, and a
tool of creation. For myself, as Cabaret Voltaire, this building of our own
‘sound factory,’ a kind of low-budget hybrid of Andy Warhol’s loft space
and Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang, offered self-sufficiency and became intrinsic
to the whole making and releasing of music, away from prying ears. For
electronic and post-punk artists of the time, independence gave control,
the ability to choose where, when, and how they functioned. This domes-
tication of recording, helped by more new, readily available technology,
preempted the growth of late-century musicmaking. The autonomy of
the process began here; it was the twinkle in the eye of a million bedroom
studios that today lie at the heart of contemporary music. Artists controlled
the electricity.
Nothing is new; nothing is lost. We built on the old to create the new.
The traditions of montage and ‘objets trouvés,’ Duchamp’s ‘ready mades,’
provided an effective process of building the reality of the world around
us into the work. Breaking our world apart and putting it back together in
new shapes. The cutup techniques of William Burroughs and Brion Gysin,
the collages John Heartfield and Kurt Schwitters, were applied to television
samples, recording of political radio, underground film grabs, newspaper
clippings, and images.
The medium varied, but the medium was, indeed, the message. Tools
in the shape of tape recorders and Super-8 film allowed us to capture this
newly saturated world, to bend and reshape it to our own style. The sub-
sequent technologies of video recording and audio sampling would enable
immediate, quick-fire responses—our Western Works studio had the TV
set to record twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Old techniques,
new applications.
For myself, the merging of the industrial sounds of the city and the
future came increasingly through the vector of rhythm. The shape of the
responses came from our long-standing connection to the beat. Seeped in
soul, funk, and ska as young kids, we would push on with the Cabs during
the eighties through our teenage affection to the sounds of the night. But
 Foreword     xi

it required technology to articulate this new rhythm age. Freed from the
dependence upon cumbersome drum kits, and the chaos of rogue drummers,
we now had drum machines, arpeggiators, and sequencers, our mechanisms
of change. CV (control voltage)-gate, and MIDI (musical instrument digi-
tal interface) means by which these machines could connect to each other
became more widely used, enabling them to tightly synchronise, to talk and
dance with each other, driven by rhythm. The New York Times writer Jon
Pareles made the point that it was the century of rhythm—the tempo of
industry, the beat of technology, the pulse of the city. The repetition of
rhythm, its hypnotic hold, all reinforced by the revived 12-inch format.
The 12-inch became the default for club releases, extending the duration
of tracks, opening them up to freestyle dubbed-out mixes. These were
records that could push the low-end frequencies, through supercharged,
often handcrafted sound systems. The politics of change was taking place
in the darker subliminal spaces; the body became the locus, waiting for the
soon-to-come ecstatic release.
Time is sequential, but fluid; we structure our own ideas in order to
help us make sense of how things happen and why. Decades offer con-
venient points of transition, but in truth, things are much more complex
and compound. This late-century period was without question a time of
significant change, of uncertainty and premillennial shift and drift. Perhaps
the real decade of sound happened in reaction to the periods in flux pre-
ceding them: 1976–1988. A less arbitrary, more considered epoch, in
which popular culture, driven by technology, and generational, youth-
ful, energy reshaped our lives in response. The upheavals of the early to
mid-1970s, and the mid-1980s, both periods of conflict: war, strikes, and
social unrest, which in turn saw riposte through the emergence of punk,
post-punk, and the later explosive club cultures of house and techno. All
spikes in the system. Electronic music, and the technologies it used, both
catalysed and configured these changes. It is not a formula or a neat linear
trajectory, but an acknowledgment of change, of action and reaction: a
dialectic and a sonic synthesis. A volatile but notable and authentic period
for music in which uncertainty, hope, and blind faith made everything
alive and possible.
Stephen Mallinder
(Cabaret Voltaire)
2022
 INTRODUCTION

B ritain during the 1970s was a country and culture in flux, and the
threat of nuclear war, mass unemployment, and strikes made it a par-
ticularly gloomy period. This was mediated through the media via disquiet-
ing TV theme music and supernatural shows, such as Children of the Stones.
The modern world was on its way as giant concrete tower blocks paved the
way toward a new decade. Further to this:

There were few distractions; television closed down early, video was
yet to arrive, computer games were crude, food was functional. LPs and
singles were expensive and thus treasured, as were books. Britain has not
yet made the shift from a largely literary culture to the overwhelmingly
visual one of today (Lay 2007, 54).

The use of the synthesizer has spurred many fundamental shifts in the
mechanisms of musicmaking and within this, a growing number of elec-
tronic acts were using the synthesizer to soundtrack-changing times. Along
with the popularisation of the non-musician and the musical aesthetics
established by both the Punk (ca. 1974–1980) and Post-Punk (ca. 1978–
1984) movements, the synthesizer led to new and innovative effects, ideas,
and processes. In parallel, some acts used such approaches in musicmaking
in 1970s Britain to reflect the social and political climate at the time. Many
of these acts would go on to influence the more commercial sound of syn-
thesised popular music during the 1980s, which, in turn, shaped the sound
of mainstream electronic music today.
Dark Waves examines the role of the synthesizer and electronics in
shaping the dark and dystopian sound of electronic music in 1970s Britain,
presenting a collected musicological analysis of the acts Cabaret Voltaire,

1
2     Introduction

Throbbing Gristle, the Normal, Fad Gadget, the Human League, Gary
Numan, and Visage, and it considers the background, influences, and tech-
nological approaches to each work. Further to this, an analysis of a seminal
work of each act is presented, exploring and considering the production,
track by track.
Part 1, ‘Background Noise,’ attempts to contextualise the social and
cultural landscape of Britain in the mid- to late 1970s. Chapter 1, ‘Dys-
topian Sentimentalities,’ explores the idea of dystopianism and presents
a number of early literary works within the field while at the same time
considers both the cultural and technological factors that affected the devel-
opment of the acts presented. Chapter 2, ‘Political, Economic, and Social
Influences,’ is concerned with government structure and major policies
during this period, detailing how major urban areas were going under a
transformative change as tower blocks and urban areas were decentralising
communities. This, coupled with oil shortages, strikes, and the threat of
nuclear war saw Britain lose its grasp and direction, which, in turn, allowed
for subcultural divisions such as Punk, to appear.
Chapter 3, ‘Technology and Aesthetical Frameworks,’ considers the
popularisation of the synthesizer and uses a number of approaches, includ-
ing technological determinism and cybernetics, in an attempt to address
how technology influences both human action and thought. Many of these
approaches are based on the historical observation that technologies are
often released without thought given toward their impact. Further to this,
it again examines the synthesizer in its development of new approaches and
aesthetics. The synthesizer, which was once only in the hands of the few
(primarily progressive rock bands) soon became available with the advent of
Japanese synthesizers. Through this, musicians, and indeed non-musicians,
could now generate the sounds of the future, broadly contextualising how
musicians were using the synthesizer as a conduit for nonconformity and
musical subversion.
Part 2, ‘Outsider Electronics,’ discusses how many of the acts docu-
mented in this publication were influenced by seminal art movements,
and in this, would go on to inform their aesthetics and sound. Chapter 4,
‘Cabaret Voltaire: Dadaism Up North,’ examines the seminal act whose
work consisted primarily through the experimentation with DIY electron-
ics and tape machines, as well as Dada-influenced performances. Finding
an audience during the Post-Punk era, Cabaret Voltaire integrated their
experimental sensibilities and were the most innovative and influential
electronic groups of their era. This chapter focuses on the band’s approach
and the impact of their album Mix Up (1979).
 Introduction     3

Chapter 5, ‘Throbbing Gristle: Music from the Death Factory,’ ex-

amines the acts’ evolution from the experimental performance art group
COUM Transmissions to a musical act. This chapter examines the band’s
diverse range of influences: transgressive and confrontational aesthetics
as well as sound manipulation (noise; pre-recorded tape-based samples),
influenced by the work of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. Their
seminal album, 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979), is presented for discussion.
Science fiction and electronic music have always shared thematic ide-
als, and Chapter 6, ‘The Normal: The Car Crash Set,’ documents Daniel
Miller’s The Normal, an act majorly influenced by the works of J.G. Bal-
lard, in particular Crash (1973). The release of T.V.O.D./Warm Leatherette
in 1978 and the Mute Records in 1979, a label that would go on to shape
the electronic sound of the 1980s and beyond, positioned Miller as a key
figure of influence.
A number of the acts included for discussion would not go on to
gain the same levels of respect and recognition for their music, as Chapter
7, ‘Fad Gadget: Mechanised Curiosity,’ documents. The work and life of
Frank Tovey (1956–2002) and Fad Gadget represent an act that would
change and morph (musically) with the times. Although his early work
was largely ignored at the time, Tovey’s contribution would go on to in-
form the sound of Post-Punk and industrial music in both Europe and the
United States, through his album Fireside Favourites (1980).
Part 3, ‘Crossing the Mainstream,’ examines acts that crossed over into
the popular consciousness and zeitgeist. Chapter 8, ‘The Human League:
Electronically Yours,’ documents the act’s earlier days, when they were an
experimental act, until a split saw members go their separate ways, resulting
in Heaven 17 and a much more commercially orientated Human League
Mark II. Technologically, the act was ground-breaking, and this is discussed
via their album Reproduction (1979).
During 1977–1980, some artists were accused of being pastiche, and
their music and contributions became mocked (particularly by the press).
Chapter 9, ‘Gary Numan: Subhuman in Suburbia,’ documents Numan’s
rise to fame and his not-only-mainstream appeal but his commercial
crossover. His work, particularly with the Mini-Moog synthesizer, would
feature heavily in the work that is reviewed, The Pleasure Principle (1979).
As the synthesised musical landscape became more and more commer-
cialised, the dominance of fashion and style would play a major factor in the
success for many acts of the 1980s. Chapter 10, ‘Visage: The New Guard,’
documents the group and is discussed in relation to its collaborative effect.
Essentially a studio group, the New Guard was fronted by Steve Strange
4     Introduction

and musically directed by Midge Ure, who would go on to have even more
success fronting Ultravox. Their album Visage (1980) is presented here as a
document for changing times, breaking the dystopian for something to help
with an optimistic viewpoint at the cusp of a new decade.
Chapter 11, ‘Conclusion: Influence and Afterword,’ analyses how
these acts worked against the backdrop of the feelings of social alienation
that many of the movement’s key participants and fans were experiencing
at the time. These acts were making music during the Punk movement,
and while they were both concerned with rewriting musical norms, they,
in many ways, created an alternative world viewpoint, one that dealt with
themes of isolation and despair, mediated with sounds that seemed to have
come from another planet. The chapter also examines the influence of the
acts discussed, highlighting how dystopian pop crept (subconsciously and
consciously) into the mainstream and the UK Charts via acts like Depeche
Mode and Duran Duran during the mid- to late 1980s.
The legacy of the acts presented in the book is evident across all forms
of popular electronic musicmaking today. However, academically, as no
such collection exists, Dark Waves aims to shed further light on this monu-
mental and influential movement and moment of both technological and
cultural significance.
 I

BACKGROUND NOISE
 1

DYS TOPIAN SENTIMENTALITIES

D ystopia is the creation of other worlds, imagined far in the future, and
it can be defined by an array of terms, primarily related to societal
issues, including notions of repression of independent thought maintained
by government, corporate, bureaucratic, or technological control. Within
this was the controller and the protagonist; the former is responsible for the
surveillance and uniformity of the latter. With such levels of oppression,
questions of oppression and untrust give way to the formation of its associ-
ated mindset. Before dystopia, utopia, or an ideal set of conditions, often set
with impossible ideals. Often it was in this mindset of writers that such worlds
were born. Indeed, its Greek translation suitably places it as οὐ (‘not’) and
τόπος (‘place’). This chapter examines the above while considering topics
such as ‘psychogeography’ and cultural issues.
The onset of the global COVID pandemic has seen a rise in popu-
larity of dystopian fiction, and indeed, television, with series like Charlie
Brooker’s Black Mirror, The Hunger Games, and the adaptation of Margaret
Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale captivating us with extreme levels of pes-
simism. While these shows may relate to our lived experiences in some
light, they no doubt raise levels of both cultural and social anxiety and
of the notion of how people with power can manipulate the population
through fear, oppression, and impoverishment, is critical in understanding
the concept of the ‘dystopian machine.’
Dystopian sentimentalities first appeared within key works of fiction,
including Mundus Alter ET Idem (The World Different and the Same) by
Joseph Hall, first published in 1596. It paints a roundly negative critique
of society at the time. It documents a messenger, Mercurius Brittanicus,
on a voyage to Terra Australis Incognita (now Antarctica). On his arrival,
Mercurius discovers a world where the norms of society are exaggerated,

7
8     Chapter 1

ultimately revealing its faults. Mercurius questions man’s weakness and his
appetite for vices. A deep feeling of cynicism fills his soul on departure from
this new world.
The book points its finger toward the ambitious and the free-spirited,
and its publication is said to have heavily influenced Jonathan Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1726. H.G. Wells ended the Victorian era
with the publication in 1899 of When the Sleeper Awakes, revised and repub-
lished in 1910 as The Sleeper Awakes. The story, in which a dream becomes
reality, sees the protagonist awake in 2100 to a world ruthlessly governed
by a harsh dictatorship. Two key dystopian themes are born within When
the Sleeper Awakes—the use of technology as a tool of manipulation and
the advent of the subterranean. More importantly, the book helped set a
thematic path toward a number of seminal British works that explore with
the dystopian mindset: Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell and Brave
New World by Aldous Huxley.
The role of society and technology is beautifully played out in E.M.
Forster’s short story The Machine Stops, first published in 1909. The story
tells of a population that lives in small pods buried within vast catacombs
underneath sprawling cities. All is controlled and provided for by ‘The
Machine,’ including the provision of food, shelter, and more importantly,
communication. In this world, technology provides and submits to your
every need:

Then she generated the light, and the sight of her room, flooded with
radiance and studded with electric buttons, revived her. There were
buttons and switches everywhere—buttons to call for food for music,
for clothing. There was the hot-bath button, by pressure of which a
basin of (imitation) marble rose out of the floor, filled to the brim with
a warm deodorised liquid. There was the cold-bath button. There
was the button that produced literature. And there were of course the
buttons by which she communicated with her friends. The room,
though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for
in the world. (Forster 1909, 130)

Forster predicted that technology would become central to the human

condition. He pointed out that our race needed it for survival, while at the
same time, he cautioned on its overreliance. These publications provide a
basis and insight into the misuse of power and technology, and the impli-
cations of technology are clear, and indeed, more vivid today than ever
before, through the use and misuse of technology.
 Dystopian Sentimentalities     9

What seems more pertinent to this discussion is the ‘dystopian sen-

timentalities’ question as both in fiction, and as we shall document, in
electronic musicmaking in Britain during 1973–1983, it was perhaps a
sense of loss of individualism and alienation that became its driving force.
Such undercurrents were supported further by the rise of a computerised
society where many were rebelling against both streamlining and at the
same time, corrosion of conformity.
During the period of 1973–1983, technology was developing autono-
mously; both society and its cultural outlets (music, film) were embracing its
progression and its efficiency. Often, little regard is given toward the social
and political implications that technology can generate. This diffusion of
technology has infiltrated commerce, education, government, and popular
music, through the use of the synthesizer, as it has now become a conduit
for musicians acting as a vehicle for innovation in sound, a sound that can
extend and break from the traditional parameters of popular music, used as
a conduit to provoke the generation of ‘imagined places,’ and for some, a
dystopian sound: oppressive, controlling, and dehumanised.

ARBITRARY ROUTES

In order to further define the creation of this so-called dystopian sound, an

important part of the relationship between the acts reviewed in this book is
that of place and its geographical effect on their resulting outputs. Within
this, we have to consider what it means to the effects of location on the
development of a ‘dystopian sound,’ and the concept of psychogeography
allows us to fully explore and discuss this. The history and evolution of the
term can be traced to three thinkers—Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benja-
min, and Guy Debord—and much of these observations are seen through
the viewpoint of the ‘flâneur’: ‘a figure of the modern artist-poet, a fig-
ure keenly aware of the bustle of modern life, an amateur detective and
investigator of the city, but also a sign of the alienation of the city and of
capitalism’ (Shaya 2004, 22).
With the onset of modernism and the Industrial Revolution, Baude-
laire painted a distinct sense of the modern cityscape and the urban expe-
rience. Images of this meta-being appear in a poem like ‘Le Soleil’ from
the Tableaux Parisiens section of the second edition of Les Fleurs du Mal
(1861), in the ‘duelling in dark corners for a rhyme / and stumbling over
words like cobblestones.’1 Baudelaire was exploring Paris as a dark and
10     Chapter 1

hostile environment under the influence of various opioids, so his writings

were tinged with surrealism and depth.
The flâneur was the birth of the outsider, and as we know, the realm
of the outsider has always been at the heart of esoteric and experimental
electronic and industrial music. Such themes appear across his work, most
notably in his work The Painter of Modern Life (1863). Here Baudelaire
saw modernity as evolutionary, ever changing in that ‘modernity is the
transitory, the fleeting [le fugitif], the contingent, half of art [la moitié
de l’art], the other half of which is the eternal and the unchangeable’
(Baudelaire 1863, IV 553). The beauty within the urban was fleeting, and
indeed it transformed ideas of beauty, as ‘at a stroke, or a couple of strokes,
Baudelaire transforms, or claims to, both the likely subject matter and
the evaluation criteria for art. The whole hold of contemporary life and
manners is opened up as worth representing, worth making into art–
as having its own beauty’ (Bowlby 2004, 47). Baudelaire would go on to
directly influence classifications of art analysis and criticism.
His work would massively influence Walter Benjamin
(1892–1940) and his The Arcades Project (1924–1940), in which he
reevaluated art versus the modern world and art versus nature. The life of
philosopher and culture critic Benjamin was complex. He died at the age
of forty-eight while fleeing from the Nazis in Portbou, Spain; at the time,
he was in the middle of completing the manuscript. The Arcades Project
subject is that of the consumer arades of Paris and the significance of what
they symbolise, both past and the future, and he saw these as markers of
changing social ideals; buying items was just as addictive as opium, and he
viewed consumerism as a distraction (and a threat) to nature. However,
Benjamin took influence from Baudelaire and brought the flâneur (albeit
now more of an idle, coffee-drinking people-watcher) back into the
urban sphere and consciousness.
Finally published in 1982, the work itself, said to be tedious and
unhumorous, remains linked in the evolution of the commodification of
things—and his speculative discourse on this paved the way for the next
wave of theorists within the evolution of the idea and influence of place.
Paris again was the scene of the next wave of urban explorists,
and during the mid-1950s, the term psychogeography was coined by the
Marxist theorist and Letterist Internationalist2 founder Guy Debord.
Taking from both Baudelaire and Benjamin, this form, what is referred
to as ‘cognitive geography,’ relied on more of a personal and emotional
connection to the urban landscape with Debord describing it as:
 Dystopian Sentimentalities     11

The practice of defamiliarization and the choice of encounters, the sense

of incompleteness and ephemerality, the love of speed transposed onto
the plane of the mind, together with inventiveness and forgetting are
among the elements of an ethics of drifting we have already begun to
test in the poverty of the cities of our time (Debord cited in Bishop ed.
2006, 23).

An environment could both alter mood and influence behaviour.

It’s obvious, even from the outset of this book, that the cities in which
they produced their seminal works had a monumental influence on their
sonic worlds(s), perhaps more so for acts like Cabaret Voltaire, in which
Sheffield, psychogeographically, played a role in their musical output and
perspectives; such will be documented in each chapter.

CULTURAL LAGS

The American sociologist William F. Ogburn coined the term cultural lag
theory in his work Social Change with Respect to Culture and Original Nature
(1922), suggesting that technology was the primary engine of progress, but
tempered by social responses to it. He defined the way in which culture
often takes time to catch up with its own innovations and that this (lag)
creates both social conflicts and dynamanisms:

The thesis is that the various parts of modern culture are not changing
at the same rate, some parts are changing more rapidly than others;
and that since there is a correlation and interdependence of parts, a
radical change in one part of our culture requires readjustment
through other changes in the various correlated parts of culture.
(Ogburn 1922, 200–201)

This theory has been used (and somewhat) abused as it has often been
implemented to address social problems. Ogburn saw the evolution of the
lag theory via four operations and concepts: ‘invention, accumulation,
diffusion and adjustment’ (Ibid., 75). Invention proposes toward the
onset of new technologies and were viewed as collective contributions to
society. When old inventions become obsolete, technology grows, and
accumulation and a process of stockpiling occurs. Diffusion sees the
spreading of an idea from one cultural group to another, which, in turn,
combines with old inventions to bring about new ones. This is very
much in line with the evolution of the synthesizer, particularly during the
12     Chapter 1

mid-1980s with the advent of MIDI. As a culture, we respond to inven-

tion and adjustment, and any delay in this can and will essentially cause
a (cultural) lag.
Culture for Ogburn was, in many ways, a microcosm, and his followup,
On Culture and Change (1964), examined the social trends as technology’s
influence became more and more dominant throughout the 1960s, exam-
ining technology, governmental change, and how inventions altered the
standard of living. One key element in his work, as discussed briefly above,
is that of diffusion, and within this, for each new invention, some major or
minor social change and adjustment must be made. He defined this as as a
‘combination of existing and known elements of culture, material and/or
nonmaterial, or a modification of one to form a new one’ (Ibid., 23). What
is really pertinent to his theories is the use of technological means to examine
culture and social change from a sociological perspective, an area that reso-
nates within this book.
In the case of the synthesizer, technological means altered the para-
digm of traditional musicmaking and its resulting sound. It’s not necessarily
about where an invention is made or manufactured (Moog in the United
States and EMS in the UK), culture may be influenced as a byproduct in
any case. Further to this, with the advent of more affordable synthesizers,
via both Korg and Roland during the period of 1977–1980, more and more
people were playing synthesised music, thus creating and/or contributing to
social trends that reflected cultural shifts.
Further to this, geography comes into play: as London was the base
for a number of the acts documented here, acts like Cabaret Voltaire were
more culturally distanced from cities like London. However, as we shall
see, distancing themselves from the influence of a major city allowed the
group to completely reinvent themselves and thus became a truly unique
‘invention’ of their own. Thus, acts such as Cabaret Voltaire grew and
propelled culture ‘due to two features of the cultural process, one is the
persistence of culture forms (tradition) and the other is the addition of new
forms (invention)’ (Ogburn 1947, 74).

NOTES

1. Extracted from Charles Baudelaire, The Sun, Les Fleurs du Mal, trans. Richard
Howard (London: Picador, 1987), 88.
2. Created by Guy Debord, Letterist Internationalist was a Paris-based collective
of radical artists and theorists, and many of the group would go on to form the
Situationist International (1957–1972).
 2

POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, AND

CULTURAL INFLUENCES

I n order to get a viewpoint of the contemporary vision of Britain in the

1970s, it is important to understand that the nation was undergoing a
number of concurrent crises. Two political agendas shook the landscape
during this period: the Industrial Relations Act (1971) and the Alternative
Economic Strategy (AES). This chapter focuses on the knockoff effect from
these policies. While political and economic crises have been the subject of
numerous publications, both past and present, the analysis of these is kept
to a brief overview. It also presents a number of cultural events that further
shaped the landscape.
Political crises during this period were the result of the failures of post-
war settlement, which were ‘laid out to which a new order emerged itself
potentially embodies an important (but often unacknowledged) set of politi-
cised assumptions’ (Black & Pemberton 2013, 2). Britain’s entry into the EEC
(European Economic Community) in 1973 could be seen as a symbol of a
reconceptualization of the commonwealth, or indeed, the beginning of its
decline in front of the eyes of the world, as common marketplace ideals were
in direct opposition to the ongoing oil crisis, power cuts, and miner strikes
ongoing at the time. The period of 1975 to 1979 polarised the conservative
government, a period in which unemployment doubled. The inheritance
from previous governments gave rise to ‘legacy’ issues, particularly in regard
to inflation. The creeping inflation of the 1950s had long since developed an
acceleration of its own, with successive reflationary bouts of public spending
aimed at reducing unemployment.
Savings were destroyed scarcely before they had begun to grow, and
inflation reached 30 percent in 1975, ‘eroding international competitive-
ness, creating long-term instability, obliterating profits, and engendering
uncertainties for investment and ultimately jeopardising jobs’ (Holmes

13
14     Chapter 2

1985, 14). One major factor that spurred the government was the high
taxation of the rich. This was offset by another inheritance from previous
governments, unemployment. In some ways, unemployment in Britain
during the late 1970s was a casualty of inflation, and the very nature of
technological onset in society influenced the demand on labour and capital.

(DE)POLITICISATION

Edward Heath’s government hastily pushed through the Industrial Relations

Act (1971), which sought to reform the unions. Labour failed to push through
a similar plan in 1969, and insuch, the act set off clusters of industrial action
across the nation. It has been suggested that the political impact of unions
was widely perceived to have brought down governments in 1974 and 1979.
Little political credit was given for the ‘sacrifices made by union members,
particularly in the public sector to see off hyper-inflation via the acceptance
of reductions in real wages’ (Black, Pemberton & Thane (eds). 2016, 8). The
act also triggered strikes and prohibited limitations on legitimate strikes, and
it would ultimately be the downfall of Heath’s government. The climate of
unfair industrial practices led to a wave of grassroot labour movements be-
ing created. Its background lies in the wildcat strikes of the 1960s, in which
it was believed that the trade unions had lost control and a form of militant
rank-and-file held their employers for ransom.1
The act would ultimately fail due to the government’s interventionist2
role within the trade unions. Nongovernmental forms of political action
among rank-and-file trade unionists ensured the political space for delib-
eration around industrial relations reform remained wide open. The Industry
Act (1975), passed by Harold Wilson’s Labour government, followed. With a
drive for increasing corporatism, the government was developing a new form
of interventionism, in which the role of the state was to harness capitalism to
the interests of all, and the role of business was to make a profit for Britain.
The state now leaned toward an economy in which it could direct and con-
trol private business, a leaning that favours collectivism over individualism.
The act was very much for the nation, not for class nor race, in that:

The Industry Act therefore expresses the basic character of corporat-

ism—an economic system which combines private ownership and State
control. It contrasts with capitalism’s private ownership and private con-
trol and with state socialism’s, state ownership and State control. The Act
also illustrates a fundamental principle of corporatist administration: the
 Political, Economic, and Cultural Influences     15

avoidance of explicit legal codification of its control mechanisms. Of

course, the emasculated piece of legislation that finally emerged does not
establish corporatism in Britain but it should not be underestimated.
It served to bring out into the open the principles of the economic
system toward which Britain has been evolving over the past 15
years. It created two corporatist institutions which may become more
powerful in future. It indicated the likely course of Britain’s medium-term
economic development, unless there is a significant shift in political
power. That is its historical significance. (Phal & Winkler 1975, 106)

Much like the Industrial Relations Act, the act divided the nation (eco-
nomically) as it focused on an aggressive protectionism of the nation’s
economic interests, suspicious of foreign companies and their agendas. The
resistance, at the societal level, was a necessary part of understanding how
the (de)politicised governance is shaped, imposed, transformed, and poten-
tially undermined. Radical thinking was needed and came in the form of
the Alternative Economic Strategy (AES). Dominating much of Labour’s
official programme during the periods of 1974 and 1979, and proposed by
Tony Benn in 1976, it was a strategy in which:

The government of national unity, the tory strategy of a pay policy,

higher taxes all round and deflation, with Britain staying in the com-
mon market. Then Strategy B which is the real Labour policy of saving
jobs, a vigorous micro-investment programme, import control, control
of the banks and insurance companies, control of export, of capital,
higher taxation of the rich, and Britain leaving the common market.
(Benn 1989, 203)

Key to AES was the rapid recovery and modernisation of industry and
addressing the ongoing recession. One of its more ambitious strands
was to bring about the ‘fundamental and irreversible shift of the balance
of power and wealth in favour of working people and their families’
(Rowthorn 1980, 85–94). Price controls on goods and compulsory plan-
ning on agreements would attempt to force big firms (especially multi-
nationals) to pursue different production, employment, and investment
strategies. Additionally, the public ownership of financial institutions
was muted, which would allow more public control over investment
portfolios in relation to pension funds.
Sadly, its most ambitious (and totally unachievable) aim was the
redistribution of income and wealth with aim of eliminating gross so-
cietal inequalities, an objective naïve in nature and ill conceived in its
16     Chapter 2

proposition as ‘its primary frame of reference is the nation, and many of its
measures involve a unilateral attempt to weaken our links with the rest of
the capitalist world, with the aim of strengthening Britain’s power to make
independent decisions. The strategy discounts the idea of a radical shift to
the left in continental Europe in the near future, and its ideas on new forms
of international cooperation are almost non-existent’ (Rowthorn 1981, 5).
The national dimensions of AES are clear, but it very much neglects an
international dimension and perhaps, lacks vision. Such high ambitions
were, no doubt, bound to fail, and ultimately the cabinet rejected Benn’s
AES in favour of a much more favourable loan from the International
Monetary Fund on December 1, 1976.3

HOME ECONOMICS

A concept referred to as Keynesian Economics are various macroeconomic

theories about how economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate
demand. In this Keynesian view, aggregate demand does not necessarily
equal the productive capacity of the economy. Instead, it is influenced by
a host of factors, ones considered in this chapter.
Britain’s economy during the period of 1973–1983 could in many
ways be viewed as a series of traumas: strikes and oil crises, to name a
few. From OECD4 reports, it seems that the 1950s and 1960s were the
golden age of economic performance. Margaret Thatcher’s conservative
government began on May 4, 1979.
The ideological conflict between both Thatcher and Heath was
evident and determined not to repeat both the Heath and Callaghan’s
governments. Thatcher focused on trying to halt Britain’s economic
decline and began to pick up the pieces left by legacy issues. What’s
interesting is that Thatcher’s ‘politics of decline,’ an ethos that mirrors
social and moral unrest, was an approach in which she based her claim
to power on having the unique ability to reverse the country’s decline.5
Central to this narrative was the argument that the problems of the
mid-1970s were not short term, but the ‘culmination of a long-term
decline, deeply embedded in British society and in its political economy’
(Tomlinson in Black, Pemberton & Thane [eds.] 2013, 51).
 Political, Economic, and Cultural Influences     17

MORAL PANIC

The story of Britain in the 1970s is one of the attempted rise and
management of a condition of rising inflation and rising unemployment and
the exhaustion, first, of the Conservatives’ and then of Labour’s capacity
to use incomes policies to manage inflationary pressures.6 The Winter of
Discontent (1978–1979) would prove, morally, to be bleak, and up to that
point, unchartered waters for Britain. The roots of the dispute lie in the
income policy of the 1970–1974 Conservative government of Heath, the
1973 oil crisis, and strikes in the mining industry that resulted in the ‘Three
Day Week’ in early 1974. The radical left wing politics, leftover from the
movements of the late 1960s, would go on to inform a new generation of
thinkers and intellectuals who would use these crises discussed to inform the
politics they would create.
This was a time for change, of considerable economic and political
uncertainty, and as Stewart Holland’s The Socialist Challenge (1975) outlined,
it was an ‘ambitious interventionist industrial strategy based around far-reach-
ing measures of public ownership and planning’ (Wicham-Jones 2013, 124).

CONCLUSION

This period has had an enduringly negative image due to the economic
and negative conditions that made it so. It is surprising, given both the
many policy and institutional failures, the vast majority of the population
continued to maintain their faith within its institutions. From the golden
ages of the 1950–1960s, the 1970s was the decline of the empire, yet it
also signalled a time of great social change. Women’s liberation came (via
its inroads made in the United States), allowing identity and awareness of
issues like equal pay to become more important in public consciousness,
and further to this, the rise of feminism underpinned a significant role in
how activism could (and did) play within social change. Within the more
established realms of intellectualism, the university sector (particularly some
of its younger employees) grew tired of the old system, damning the old
rule of law, and their attitudes and viewpoints would have caused a trickle-
down effect to students who were of a similar frame of mind, bemused by
the socio-political environment at the time.
The Punk movement was seminal in playing a pivotal role, and for
many in the adaptation of its ethos, it became a lifestyle choice for many
youths in Britain. In 1976 and having just signed to EMI records, the Sex
18     Chapter 2

Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK was unleashed on the public on November 26,

positioning Punk in a newly politicised attitude. Its opening line was part
mantra, part threat to the empire and old guard, with Lydon spitting, ‘I am
an antichrist’ in the song’s opening lines. It was nihilistic and raw, a callout
to the youth and an ideology for change in music, an opportunity to mix
things up.
One event on Thames Television in December 1976 exposed the
nation to the dangers of the movement, to the so-called sick and sinister
movements. Beamed into homes of millions of British bystanders, a promo
for the single, an interview on Granada Television with Bill Grundy (at
barely 90 seconds), would demonstrate their antiestablishment and disrup-
tive best, when guitarist Steve Jones referring to Grundy as a ‘dirty old
man.’7 Jones, on national television, was announcing his challenge to the
old guard and bluntly commenting on how youth culture felt about the
system. Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) suggests that
moral judgments are ‘constructed,’ in that:

The problem is the nature of the condition—‘what actually

happened. Questions of symbolism, emotion and representation
cannot be translated into comparable sets of statistics. Qualitative terms
like ‘appropriateness’ convert the nuances of moral judgement more
accurately than the (implied) quantitative measure of ‘disproportionate’—
but the more they do so, the more obviously they are socially constructed.
(Cohen 1972, 29)

Cohen questions societal response and whether it was appropriate or if mass

media were the moral judges. The aftermath of the appearance, this display
of anti-ethos, blatant respect for the elders on live TV, saw the traditional
media and musicmaking mechanisms immediately cutting ties with such
viewpoints: tabloids were the first to respond with memorable headlines like
‘The Filth and the Fury’8 and ‘The Punk Rock Horror Show.’ The BBC
were soon to follow, blacklisting the single, while EMI dropped the act,
showcasing that the establishment would simply not tolerate such damming
outbursts at the centre stage of society.
It also highlights that what they achieved and did was certainly not an
isolated incident, but it was and would become part of a wider, more inte-
grated social perspective. Ultimately, the nation’s reaction to the Sex Pis-
tols’ appearance on Granada Television created a moral panic, which had its
own trajectory, or ‘a microphysics of outrage—which however, is initiated
and sustained by wider social and political forces’ (Ibid., 31). As this book
attempts to document, many of the acts lived through these ‘moral panics,’
 Political, Economic, and Cultural Influences     19

and some attempted to channel this into their work, which in turn produced
some of their most influential works. Ultimately, they used technology to
channel the hopeless and dystopian dreams the nation had.

NOTES

1. Many thought the trade union ‘problem’ would have to be solved, as wage
drift inflation soon outstripped improvements in productivity.
2. As suggested by Sam Warner in https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy
/why-did-the-industrial-relations-act-1971-fail-depoliticisation-and-the-impor-
tance-of-resistance/ (accessed March 22, 2022).
3. See Benn (1989, 31).
4. OECD: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
5. See Lawrence Black, Hugh Pemberton, Pat Thane (2013, 44).
6. Ibid., 58.
7. See Savage (1991, 257–59).
8. Daily Mirror, December 2, 1976.
 3

TECHNOLOGY AND
AESTHETICAL FRAMEWORKS

T he synthesizer represents one of the most significant cultural

developments of twentieth-century popular musicmaking, and one
consequence of an increasingly technologized culture is the oversight of
what machines like these had, all before the dominance of digital signal
processing. This chapter examines the rise of the synthesizer in popular
music in Britain by considering the seminal events, in both the United
States and then the UK, and the technological shift that it brought about.
It also presents two aesthetical frameworks—technological determinism
and cybernetics—in an attempt to discuss approaches brought about via the
synthesizer. Finally, it considers a faithful June 1972 broadcast of Roxy
Music’s appearance on BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test, when Brian Eno
presented his EMS VCS3 synthesizer to millions of viewers, changing the
direction of countless musicians, helping them to reconsider the traditional
instruments upon which they had been relying.

THE SYNTHESIZER: ACROSS THE POND

Within popular music history, we can trace the synthesizer’s introduction

through a number of well-known productions, primarily in the United
States. The United States of America (1967–1968), and their use of the
synthesizer, had quite an influence on the counterculture music of the late
1960s in the United States.
Unusually, the band had no guitar player; instead, they used strings,
keyboards, and electronics, including primitive synthesizers and various
audio processors. They presented a more radical sense of politics, aesthetics,
and religious/philosophical aspects of 1960s counterculture, a dark contrast

21
22     Chapter 3

to the oncoming philosophy of free love and peace. The band’s leader,
Joseph Byrd, a Los Angeles–based composer, helped bring early synthe-
sizers, the avant-garde, and classical aesthetics to popular musicmaking,
establishing a role that synthesizers could potentially possess: that of
radical and cultural subversion, through sound.
Switched-On Bach (1968), by Wendy Carlos, represented a true
turning point for the synthesizer. Not only was it a commercial suc-
cess, it also contributed to the machine’s growing interest within the
general public. The limitations of the early Moog synthesizer used on
Switched-On Bach are often overlooked, as the instrument was mono-
phonic. Bob Moog built a component especially for Carlos that triggered
chords, and upon advice from Carlos, key sensitivity was introduced to
the instrument, but unlike a conventional piano, there were no sustain or
expression pedals. The different voices and elements had to be pains-
takingly tracked and layered in the studio: Expressions were added by
adjusting filters, while oscillator and envelope controls were played with
one hand while melodies were played with the other.
Rather viewing the synthesizer as a quirky new toy, the album
ultimately helped showcase it and its apparent limitless sound-generation
possibilities. Switched-On Bach went on to be the first classical album to
go platinum in America, remaining at number one on the classical-album
charts for more than three years, peaking at number ten on the pop charts
of 1972.
The 1970s was a hedonistic time for musicians who used synthesizers,
and from this, two distinct classes of users were born: explorers and virtuosos.
Bands like Tangerine Dream utilised the synthesizer to slip into the uncon-
scious, to charter far-out worlds, while the latter included groups like Em-
merson, Lake, and Palmer, who were using the synthesizer to demonstrate
musical skills, lost behind walls of electronic devices. Their sound was often
shaped by variations on classical music’s old reliables: fugues and arpeggios,
as heard in Emerson Lake and Palmer’s 1977 LP, Fanfare for the Common
Man, adapted from Aaron Copland’s 1942 piece of the same name. Thus,
each class of player helped shape the sound of the synthesizer in the 1970s
on a more commercially driven level.
Simon Reynolds’s Guardian article, ‘One Nation under a Moog,’
points toward two additional phases the synthesizer went through during
the 1980s, the first of which relied on science fiction–based concepts like
dystopia and dehumanisation, as it attempted to reflect the social and political
climate at the time with acts like Gary Numan being core to this movement.
The second phase was far more commercially successful as a reaction against
 Technology and Aesthetical Frameworks     23

the use of the synthesizer to portray a darker side of electronic music music-
making, as seen by acts like Soft Cell, which helped shape the sound of 1980s
synth pop, which, in turn, helped shape the sound of current mainstream
electronic music. Reynolds observed that:

Electronic sounds now suggested jaunty optimism and the gregariousness

of the dancefloor, they evoked a bright, clean future just round the corner
rather than JG Ballard’s desolate 70s cityscapes. And the subject matter
for songs mostly reverted to traditional pop territory: love and romance,
escapism and aspiration. (Reynolds, 2009)

Reynolds further alludes to this second wave’s more valuable contribution:

that of the synthesizer having the power to harness, again quite successfully
on a commercial level, electronic music with soul. This came to the fore-
front in the mid-1980s with acts like Yazoo and Erasure fully embracing
the synthesizer’s potential for this aspect. For the purpose of this book, the
discussion points toward the first wave in the use of the synthesizer.
The synthesizer helped spur toward a number of fundamental shifts
within the mechanisms of popular musicmaking. Methodologies within
the synthesizer’s instrument design and architecture, one that stretches back
fifty years, exploit traditional signal processing applications. As an instru-
ment, its design history, within popular music, can be traced back to the
early 1960s in the United States, when East Coast (Bob Moog) and West
Coast (Don Buchla) manufacturers began with a modular approach to sound
synthesis. Due to the demand for more portable and affordable options,
Moog, in particular, turned to more fixed architecture and consumer-based
approaches. During the late 1960s, people were obliged to perceive the syn-
thesizer in terms of instruments with which they were familiar, such as the
piano or the guitar, and escaping from these shadows proved to be difficult
at first. Mark Brend points toward this in ‘The Sound of Tomorrow: How
Electronic Music Was Smuggled into the Mainstream,’ in that:

(Electronic music) is not a cautious departure from certain traditional

paths but rather, in the radical character of its techniques, gives us
access to sound phenomena hitherto unknown in the field of music. This
bursting open of our familiar world of sound by electronic means leads to
new musical possibilities of a wholly unpredictable nature. (Brend 2012,
33)

This ‘unpredictable nature’ was often explored by the non-musician.

Aided by the prompt of the Punk movement and its aesthetics, the form
24     Chapter 3

of musician, with no formal musical training, could easily create real-time

responses to sound, producing more flexible, tangible, and versatile musical
experiences. Through this, part of the reward in using the synthesizer is that
users learn about their operation of the synthesizer during the musicmaking
process, and for the non-musician, making music with a synthesizer is, for
the most part, a process of exploration that often produces unexpected results
and sounds.

THE SYNTHESIZER: TECHNOLOGY AND GESTURE

The functional limitations of early synthesizers, ones used by the acts docu-
mented in this book, influenced the resultant sounds they produced. This, it
is suggested, allows users of the synthesizer to become closer to the electronic
behaviour of sound generation during its creation rather than something that
is preplanned, with sheet music being a prime example here. One key ele-
ment to the synthesizer, in particular an analogue one, is its control interface
and its tactile approach to musicmaking. This hands-on approach influences
the types of sounds and gestures that can be obtained from it. The multifunc-
tionality of digital synthesizers1 can present a hindrance of sorts within the
compositional process as it possesses infinite possibilities and sound-making
options. The control of sound with just one knob brings about one of the
(analogue) synthesiser’s major contributions, that of the limited control of
expressiveness and gesture—elements sometimes lost in translation within the
use of digital synthesizers.
Electronic musicmaking began in the radio studios of Europe
during the 1950s, most notably at WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) in Co-
logne and Radio France in Paris, when what was referred to as ‘specialised
equipment’ was repurposed as ‘instruments’ as composers such as Karlheinz
Stockhausen and Piere Boulez began to use them both for sound generation
and for manipulation. Soon they would be at the forefront at the borders of
sound exploration, born without reference to musical tradition.
David Keane, in his essay, ‘At the Threshold of an Aesthetic,’ referred
to the work of such composers as working ‘without reference to human
gesture’ (Keane 1981, 99). This tradition continued throughout the 1950s
and early 1960s. It would be the introduction of voltage-controlled synthe-
sizers at the end of the 1960s that would push the sound of the synthesizer
closer to the edge of popular music fields. As the budgets for electronic
music studios grew smaller and smaller, composers began to migrate from
hardware to computer-aided composition in the quest for the new.
 Technology and Aesthetical Frameworks     25

Musical performance, in a cultural context, has always been inextricably

linked with the body, and its physicality is evident. Further to this, the tactile
nature of the synthesizer allows it to be more gestural than traditional instru-
ments, thus providing a heightened sense of interaction for its users. Music
technology changed dramatically during the 1970s, and while musical aes-
thetics requires reflection and development benefiting from longer historical
periods, electronic music production is now largely supported by a diverse
industrial base devoted to its marketing and development. In this situation, an
awareness of an instrument’s physicality can influence some musical instru-
ment design approaches.

AESTHETICAL FRAMEWORKS:
TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM AND AGENCY

In order to discuss, aesthetically, the use of the synthesizer, the first

theoretical framework examined is the area of technological determinism
(TD). Technology develops autonomously; we embrace its progression as
it propels our culture at breakneck speed, toward a future that is hard to
see clearly. The synthesizer, as a conduit for creation, has facilitated the
musician or producer to take a more functional role by simply becoming
a controller, thus allowing the synthesizer to become the primary compo-
sitional element.
Is the synthesizer independent of external influence, or is it solely
determined by the human will of the player? One approach, technological
determinism, attempts to address such a question as it seeks to understand
how technology influences human action and thought. Much of its ap-
proach is based on the historical observation that technologies are often
released without thought given toward their impact, and while some
technologies may transform societies and cultures in significant ways, oth-
ers may not. Along with TD, the concept of agency should be considered.
Agency is an intersection of power, from where power is distributed into
the different hands and directions, and in this case, the synthesizer.
In ‘On Technological Determinism: A Typology, Scope Conditions
and a Mechanism,’ Dafoe (2015) elaborates on agency:

A central issue in the study of technology is the question of agency. To

what extent do we have control over the tools we use—and hence also
our systems of production, social relations, and worldview. To what
extent are our technologies thrust upon us—by controlling elites, by
26     Chapter 3

path-dependent decisions from the past, or by some internal techno-

logical logic? (Dafoe 2015, 1048)

Through this, agency entails the claim that musicians do, in fact, make
decisions, as Mayr (2011) in Authority, Liberty, & Automatic Machinery in
Early Modern Europe points out, in that:

Our self understanding as human agents includes commitment to three

crucial claims about human agency: That agents must be active, that
actions are part of the natural order, and that intentional actions can be
explained by the agent’s reasons for acting. (Mayr 2011, I)

Through the very act of performing or recording with a synthesizer, such

observations point out that while these elements are indispensable, they are
in conflict and tension with one another. How much does the synthesizer
engage with the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make
their own free choices?
A number of factors should be considered here: (a) the relationship
between the synthesizer and the person’s agency, (b) the capacity, condi-
tion, or state of acting or of exerting power, and finally, (c) a person or
thing through which power is extended or to which an end is achieved.
It is suggested here that the type of synthesizer used in a recording often
determines or limits an agent (the player or controller) and their decision-
making. Further to this, it’s important to discuss the recognition and
utilisation of agency as a fundamental human quality, as it has the power
to direct and regulate the conditions of musicmaking. From analogue to
digital synthesis, the synthesizer’s functionality is often contextualised by
technological change. Mayr continues:

The defining characteristic of technology is its functionality, not its

specific materiality. Technology, thus, (1) denotes those entities—
artefacts, techniques, institutions, systems—that are or were func-
tional and (2) emphasises the functional dimension of those entities.
(Ibid., 1053)

This (brief) introduction to the areas of TD and agency allows us to high-

light the aesthetical shaping of technology and the synthesizer, to give it
a context of how it was used by performers documented in the book.
These approaches also support the dialogue that exists between man and
machine, a conversation long-documented throughout in many musical
outputs, many of which are discussed in this book.
 Technology and Aesthetical Frameworks     27

AESTHETICAL FRAMEWORKS: CYBERNETICS

Cybernetics is a transdisciplinary approach for exploring regulatory

systems—their structures, constraints, and possibilities. The term is
often used in a rather loose way to imply the control of any system us-
ing technology or toward the scientific study of how humans, animals,
and machines control and communicate with each other. It also opens
up questions about technology and its unknown effects. Norbert Wiener,
the so-called father of cybernetics, published Cybernetics or Control and
Communication in the Animal and the Machine in 1948 and questioned the
idea of progress, considering that ‘progress imposes not only new possi-
bilities for the future but new restrictions’ (Wiener 1948, 46–47).
Cybernetic systems are used to model practically every phenomenon,
with varying degrees of success—factories, societies, machines, ecosystems,
brains. Later, Stafford Beer in In the Brain of the Firm (1972) provided a
valuable insight into cybernetics’ relationship to music and, for the purpose of
this book, the synthesizer, in that, ‘instead of trying to specify it (a system) in
full detail, you specify it only somewhat. You then ride on the dynamics of
the system in the direction you want it to go’ (Beer 1972, 68–69).
One famous non-musician, Brian Eno, would go on to use cybernetics,
linking its powerful toolset to the process of music composition. Its theories
connect engineering, math, physics, biology, and psychology, and some of
this inevitably trickled into the arts. A piece of music composed using feed-
back could be left to run; in turn, the system is the musician, not the player.
Through this process, the musician can trust the synthesizer to make creative
decisions.

POPULAR CULTURE AND THE SYNTHESIZER

Tracing this history could take all manner of side roads and boundaries and
could very well exist as a publication in its own right. With this in mind,
a number of key elements and dates will be discussed. As discussed briefly,
before the synthesizer, electronically generated sounds would come in the
form of test equipment and banks of primitive oscillators and filter bands.
A conduit for the popularisation of electronically generated sounds
in Britain is key to its rise: the medium of television and a group of
composers and engineers who formed the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
(1958–1998). One of its founding members, Daphne Oram, would go on
to create music and special sound for BBC radio plays, including Prometheus
28     Chapter 3

Unbound (1957), Private Dreams and Public Nightmares (1957), and Amphitryon
38 (1958). Her experiments with electronically manipulated music can be
traced to the late 1940s with her visionary Still Point (1948–1949), a work for
two orchestras and a turntable soloist. Traditional compositional approaches
contributed to her frustration with the Workshop’s focus on dramatic scoring
and sound design.
Two events are presented here toward the popularisation of synthesizer
in Britain. Firstly, in November 1963, a major milestone would come from
the Radiophonic Workshop, turning the nation on to sounds from beyond.
The work, composed by Ron Grainer and realised by Delia Derbyshire at
the radiophonic workshop, would become seminal in the creation of new
sound worlds and moreso, its advent in the popularisation of electronically
generated sound.
The theme song from Dr. Who (1963) was one of the first television
themes to be created and produced by entirely electronic means. The syn-
thesizer was unavailable at the time. Each note was created by cutting tape
sections of a single plucked string. This was combined with the sounds of
white noise and primitive oscillators and varying tape speed manipulations to
create a composition whose sound would prove influential in the oncoming
dominance of the synthesiser. Even though Grainer is credited as composer,
Derbershire’s work deserves so much more attention, as she was a pioneer of
her era, working in a field and climate dominated by members of the other
sex, who were often disapproving of her technical abilities.
Secondly, another television event within this (short) history is
considered here, due to the effect it would have on many subjects within this
book, including Cabaret Voltaire’s Chris Watson and Throbbing Gristle’s
Chris Carter. The BBC’s broadcast of Roxy Music’s performance on the
Old Grey Whistle Test on June 20, 1972, would go on to change popular
musicmaking in Britain. Their radical approach to popular musicmaking,
one that borrowed from that past and blundered the future, would go on
to inspire countless acts in the mid- to late 1970s. The band opened with
‘Ladytron’ and began with a strange and atonal atmosphere, conducted by
Andy McCay’s clarinet being processed through Brian Eno’s EMS VSC3
synthesizer. What then begins as a more traditional pop/rock song, in the
end expands into a sound and sonic exploration never before heard from
the BBC’s Maida Vale studios. Roxy Music presented what would be an
escape from the mundane reality, showcasing a mesh of pop nostalgia,
off-the-beat rock music, and experimental electronic music, all beamed
into millions of TV sets across the country.
 Technology and Aesthetical Frameworks     29

After leaving Roxy Music in 1973, Brian Eno observed that dur-
ing the 1970s, while popular music was seeking variety, it seemed a type
of music was needed for an almost lack of variety, and through this he
developed notions of a music that was ‘part of the ambience of our lives—to
be continuous, a surrounding.’ His aim was to ‘to immerse myself in sound,
to make music to swim in, to float in, to get lost inside’ (Eno, quoted in
Cox & Warner 2004, 95). For the production of Discrete Music (1977),
Eno used an EMS Synthi AKS (one that incorporated a digital sequencer).
A portable modular analog synthesizer made by Electronic Music Systems
of England, it was most notable for its patch pin matrix. Its functions and
internal design, similar to the VCS3 synthesizer, were also made by EMS,
and they would become more widely known on Pink Floyd’s ‘On the
Run’ from The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), via the use of the EMS Synthi.
The liner notes to Discrete Music borrows heavily from Beer’s writings
on cybernetics and provides a valuable insight to the process that sums up
Eno’s aesthetic and creative processes toward the synthesizer. He states:

Since I have always preferred making plans to executing them, I have

gravitated towards situations and systems that, once set into operation,
could create music with little or no intervention on my part. That is to
say, I tend towards the roles of the planner and programmer, and then
become an audience to the results.2

Eno accepted himself, within the piece, as playing a passive role within
the compositional process, and it seems the processes developed within
the piece were developed over a ten-year period from first experimenting
with tape recorders and echo machines. Further to this, Eno attempted to
ignore the tendency to play the artist by dabbling and interfering within
the production process. As the piece eventually turned out to be a piece of
‘systems’ music, and using cybernetics as a model, Eno felt it appropriate to
develop a score, not in the traditional sense, but of an operational diagram.
Discrete Music focuses on a perceptual process of the decay of an idea: The
decay of a sound will loose and regenerate over time when it is played
back, re-recorded, and played back over and over again, and the decay of
the conceptual model was proposed by Eno from the outset. What we are
presented with then is the gradual transformation of a recognizable musical
phrase. The generation of such music(s) comes with many considerations.
One contribution the album made was that of ‘background music,’ or what
is at times more crassly referred to as ‘elevator music.’
30     Chapter 3

In Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Jacques Attali made the following
observation about such music(s), in that:

Ambiguous and fragile, ostensibly secondary and of minor importance,

it has invaded our world and daily life. Today, it is unavoidable, as if,
in a world now devoid of meaning, background noise was increasingly
necessary to give people a sense of security. (Attalli 1985, 3)

Attali’s point about music’s apparent triviality is important; he remarks that:

All music, any organisation of sounds is...a tool for the creation or
consolidation of a community, of a totality. It is what links a power centre
to its subjects, and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power in all its
forms...any theory of power today must include a theory of the localization
of noise and its endowment with form...noise is inscribed from the start
within the panoply of power. (Ibid., 6)

Attali’s concepts relating to noise, music, and power are of particular

relevance here. Eno verbalised and demonstrated a concept that perfectly fit
its time and place and that has visibly shifted the landscape of musical thought,
and by subjectively removing himself from the production process, he helped
create a sense of space where there was once an object. In many ways, Eno
utilised the synthesizer to create a utilitarian music, reduced, stripped of its
fundamental cultural importance. Ultimately, this process led to a reconsid-
eration and reevaluation of how the synthesizer is used, which via the BBC
and the Old Grey Whistle Test, meant that many upcoming non-musicians
now saw a new world and approach unfold before their eyes.

CONCLUSION

The aesthetic frameworks presented here frame the synthesiser in terms of

its usage and its influences on the creative process. In terms of the influ-
ence upon the artists in this publication, Eno’s approach to the synthesizer
was monumental, and his referencing to cybernetics resonated with a new
generation of electronic musicians who sought new systems and theory
for music production, one more based on free-roaming ideas rather than
that of predetermined ones. As Punk appeared, the musician’s mindset
altered, as for some, the actual execution of music could now incorporate
little or no intervention on the musician’s part.
 Technology and Aesthetical Frameworks     31

Current electronic music production methods offer the musician a

creative utopia: access to unlimited possibilities, tonalities, and the total
control over every imaginable parameter of sound. This type of control can
leave the modern electronic music producer in somewhat of a void. Current
computer platforms tend to have a very distinctive and recognisable sound
palate, a sound palate that can, at times, lack sonic character. What these
modern systems of music production (Abelton, Logic, Pro Tools) lack is
that of the unknown, the unstable, something in which Eno and others rev-
elled, which they explored and rebelled within during its heyday of the late
1970s in Britain. More interactive and tactile musicmaking platforms, such
as Cycling 74’s Max/MSP, certainly do open up ‘generative’ options for the
electronic music musician, but again, surely the computer is the creative
force, and the user is merely feeding it a chain of commands. Whilst current
music technology does its best at reimagining the electronic instruments of
the past, through physical modelling,3 the process, creatively, is different,
detached, and nowhere near immediate.
As Eno observes, it is what you do with these tools that is what
matters, in that:

The technologies we new use have tended to make creative jobs do-
able by many different people: new technologies have the tendency
to replace skills with judgement–it’s not what you can do that counts,
but what you choose to do, and this invites everyone to start crossing
boundaries. (Eno 1996, 394)

With a computer, a controlled form of interaction exists, although open

source software allows some freedom from this. For the vast majority of
electronic musicians today, the synthesizers once used by Eno and the acts
documented here sell for extravagant sums of money, so the sound world
they were (are) famed for generating is totally out of reach for many.
Ultimately, via technological determinism, the computer drives the
sound of electronic music today as it represents the most functional and
economical way to produce it. However, this process also sees the loss of a
more traditional means, which, in turn, influences the level of knowledge in
our society about electronic musicmaking today.

NOTES

1. The synthesizers used by the acts documented in this book were analogue
synthesizers.
32     Chapter 3

2. See liner notes to Brian Eno’s Discreet Music (1977) EG/Virgin Records.
3. Physical modelling refers to sound synthesis methods in which the waveform
of the sound to be generated is computed using a mathematical model, a set of
equations and algorithms to simulate a physical source of sound, usually a musical
instrument.
 II

OU TSIDER ELECTRONICS
 4

CABARET VOLTAIRE
Dadaism Up North

W illiam Bell Scott’s painting Iron and Coal (1855–1860) depicts a

group of men working in an iron foundry, their arms raised in
labour, using long-handled hammers to pound an object in the fire. In
the lower portion sits a young girl; like others of her class and gen-
eration, she will benefit from the new prosperity brought by mining,
engineering, and invention. The Industrial Revolution (1760–1840)
firmly established Northern England as a powerhouse within this global
maturity, and with the development of the free market (or the rise of
capitalism), the rule of law,1 and the benefits of colonialism, an un-
precedented explosion of new ideas and new technological inventions
came about that transformed the use of energy, creating an increasingly
industrial and forward-minded nation.
Economic historian Robert Allen has argued that during this
period, ‘high wages, cheap capital and very cheap energy in Britain made
it the ideal place for the industrial revolution to occur’ (Allen 2010,
122), and now that capital was available for industrialists to invest in
research and development, they expanded their knowledge base both
in Britain and abroad, bringing about the rise and popularisation of
intellectual property. Such modernisation and progress was not
viewed as enlightening to all, including the poets of the Romantic
Movement: William Blake, John Keats, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley.
Shelley’s Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus) ponders and reflects
upon whether or not progress—in particular, scientific progress—works
against humanity rather than working in conjunction with it, as:

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful. Life, although it may

only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.
(Shelley 1818, 133)
35
36     Chapter 4

What overrides Frankenstein are the limits of science and technology, and this
is reflected in every person whom the protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, had
cared about, showing us that society should believe in the sanctity of human
life and that the human mind should be wary of great and sudden change.
A modernist and brutalist systematic format of change was coming to
the cities of northern Britain during the mid- to late 1970s, including the
home of Cabaret Voltaire, Sheffield. This city was revamped during the
1970s, and its urban planning was a poster child for modernist futurescapes.
Heavily targeted in the Blitz during World War II, on the nights of the
12th and 15th of December 1940, it was targeted by the Nazis due to the
significance of its industral outputs, much of which had been turned to in
the manufacturing of weapons and ammunition for the war effort.
The dominance of automation would see many of the key factories and
industries come to be closed during the 1950s and 1960s. The development
of housing projects like Park Hill Flats, built between 1957 and 1961, would
come to represent the way forward for many cities up north. In order to
accommodate such a population increase, many parts of the surrounding
area were demolished to make way for a new system of roads. Given this,
it would be incorrect to assume this geography directly shaped Stephen
Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk, and Chris Watson’s Cabaret Voltaire’s
outputs; it is perhaps more appropriate to postulate that the industrialization
of the city, along with the social and authoritarian conditions that came
with it, helped colour their sound. In a wider effect, laid-off workers and
strikes helped further undermine the city’s climate and social and cultural
atmosphere. Such ‘atmospheres’ are explored in this chapter, presented
through the early development and aesthetics of the band, the technology
they used, and an analysis of their album Mix Up (1979).

INFLUENCES

Dadaism was the ultimate European avant-garde art movement, one that
challenged and rejected societal and cultural norms. From its beginning in
a coffee shop in central Zurich, aptly named Cabaret Voltaire, it would
go on to spur similar movements in New York (c. 1915), Paris (c. 1920),
and Japan, Georgia, and Russia. In 1916, Hugo Ball, unwilling leader of
the Dada movement, penned the first ‘Dada Manifesto’ in Zurich. This
short but influential text highlighted Ball’s opposition to Dada becoming
an art movement in the first place and would go on to create conflict with
the Dadaist circles, including Tristan Tzara. In line with Ball’s manifesto,
 Cabaret Voltaire     37

Tzara would go on to publish his own manifesto and would similarly be as

abstract and form a collection of thoughts, mostly against the very notion
of a manifesto. He wrote:

To put out a manifesto you must want: A. B. C. / fulminate against

1. 2. 3. / fly into a rage and sharpen your wings to conquer and
disseminate little abcs and big abcs / sign, shout, swear, organise prose
into a form of absolute and irrefutable evidence, to prove your non
plus ultra. (Tzara 1918, 1)

Tzara considered art as both a serious conditional and at the same time,
just a game, one that explores core traits of its movement. His writings
were mostly inspired by both the contempt of bourgeois culture and
toward more traditional viewpoints within art. Ultimately the differ-
ences of viewpoints within each manifesto would split options within the
movement with Ball leaving Zurich for good in 1918.
Dadaism covered a wide range of art forms, including the visual,
sculptrual, literary, sound, collage, and cutup writing techniques.2
At heart, it was anti-capitalist and attempted to deconstruct the
capitalist worldview by incorporating the nonsensical and irrational
into art, and its home was a place where ideas could run freely, the
neutrality of Switzerland. Influenced by Cubism, Expressionism,
Futurism, and Constructivism, Dadaism looked to change the world, or
at best, alter its view toward war, nationalism, and class systems. Again,
the manifestos attempted to consider and address these issues. The col-
lective would go on to include the artists Jean Arp and Emmy Hennings
(Hugo Ball’s wife and cofounder of Cabaret Voltaire), and they were per-
haps the first anarchists in art, a movement that was apocalyptic in their
collective approaches in which it anticipates ‘an imminent cosmic cata-
clysm in which God destroys the ruling powers of evil and raises the
righteous to life in a messianic kingdom.’3
More musical streams of Dadaist works came primarily from the
work of the artist Kurt Schwitter (1887–1948), who developed the
concept of sound-poems. After falling out with the Berlin-based Dadaists,
Schwitter would go on to form his own group, Merz. First performed
on the 4th of February 1925 at the home of Irmgard Kiepenheuer in
Potsdam, Ursonate (1922–1932) uses two Plakatgedichte (Poster Poems) by
Raoul Hausmann, which provided the sonata’s opening line: ‘Fumms bö
wö tää zää Uu, pögiff, kwii Ee.’ It consists of four movements: Erster Teil,
Largo, Scherzo, and Presto.
38     Chapter 4

Dutch composer and vocalist Jaap Blonk, who has both performed and
recorded the piece, observed that:

Somehow Schwitters, as in much of his visual art, managed to find the

right balance between quasi-naïve freshness and strong structure. The
piece is very much founded in the directness of real life, and still is great
art at the same time. (Blonk 2009, 4)

The piece would go on to influence modern art and music, including

Eno’s incorporation of Ursonate in ‘Kurt’s Rejoiner’ from Before and Af-
ter Science (1977). Dadaism’s legacy can be seen right across the arts, in
multiple offshoots; in the early 1920s, it would go on to have a major in-
fluence on the development of the surrealist movement in Paris, another
point of reference within Cabaret Voltaire’s canon of aesthetics. With the
onset of World War II and Adolf Hitler’s attitudes toward what was refer-
enced as ‘degenerate art,’ many of the Dadaists immigrated to the United
States, and although less active as an art movement, Dadaism would go on
to influence core upcoming American art movements, including modern-
ism, and literature.
Cabaret Voltaire would go on to incorporate, in both compositional,
performative arenas and artwork (covers, videos, promotional material), key
techniques developed by Dadaism, which included:

Collages: Taken primarily from the Cubist movement, this process

involves cutting up images and assembling them into art (Double
Vision 1982).
Cutup Technique: Popularised by both William Burroughs and
David Bowie, this involved cutting up words to reconstruct more
chance-like narratives (Voice of America 1980).
Photomontage: This involves the use of scissors and glue rather than
paintbrushes and paints to express views of modern life through
images presented by the media (Drinking Gasolene 1985).
Assemblage: This involved the assembly of everyday objects to
produce meaningful or meaningless pieces of work (across their
discography via the use of homemade electronic devices).

One more movement within the arts would go on to influence, more

directly, the narrative of Cabaret Voltaire: Situationist International. Most
active between 1957–1972 in Europe and assembled from, amongst others,
past members of the Dadaist and Surrealist movements, the foundational
 Cabaret Voltaire     39

approach here was the idea of ‘the spectacle.’ The spectacle was a unified
critique of advanced capitalism and the increasing tendency toward the ex-
pression and mediation of social relations through objects. Artists took this
theory, first proposed by Guy Debord in his book The Society of the Spectacle
(1967),4 out of the art galleries and into the streets and communities, via the
construction of situations, moments of life deliberately constructed for the
purpose of the liberation of everyday life.
Cabaret Voltaire would embrace the movement’s approach during
their early beginnings, as Sheffield music historian Martin Lilleker observed
and reposed that, the ‘band would drive around town blasting Sheffield’s
own sounds from their speakers mounted on top of a friend’s van. They
would jump out of cars to play high-volume tale loops at the city’s unsus-
pecting pedestrians.’5 Situationist International would also influence Factory
Records band the Durutti Column, which took its name from artist André
Bertrand’s collage Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti.6 At heart, the movement
was anarchic in that their ideas played an important role in the revolution-
ary events in Paris during 1968.
In Sheffield, Cabaret Voltaire made cultural productions, a part of
everyday life, and it’s fitting that their studio, Western Works, would be
housed in what was once a World War II air shelter. Their own experi-
mental recording studio would feature as a key focal point in Sheffield’s
musical community, recording demos and early works of acts such as Clock
DVA. Such an environment embodies, at heart, core values to the Situ-
ationist International movement, in that the production of commodities
was an end to itself and production by way of survival.

BEGINNING(S)

Hegarty (2007) observes that the sociopolitical implications of Industrial

music is both reflective and comparative of life, in that:

Industrial music plays out the accursed share of modern society, staging
sacrificial performances and making music that offers momentary col-
lapse of rational thought in the shape of a listening that would know in
advance what it would be listening to. (Heggarty 2007, 105)

Cabaret Voltaire used technology to shrink the distance between them and
cities like London and penned the way for other seminal Sheffield bands
like the Human League, and in later eras, Pulp and the establishment of
40     Chapter 4

Warp Records. In a similar vein to Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire

shared their in-house vision through self-produced art and studio spaces.
Initially operating outside the music industry (although signing later
to Mute and Virgin Records), Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk, and
Chris Watson operated outside the bounds of traditionalism. Core to the
early development of the band was Watson, who shared similar interests
with Throbbing Gristles, and Chris Carter, in the building and designing
of electronic instruments or using nontraditional methodologies to make
electronic music, as Watson describes:

We were all interested in the non-musical side initially—but that

was my main contribution throughout my time with the group. My
contribution was not through a particular instrument as it was with
the other two—Richard with the guitar and wind instruments and
Mal with the bass, percussion and voice. I was more concerned with
sounds in general and in the production of records. I worked more
as an engineer of sounds rather than actually playing an instrument to
produce them. (Watson quoted in Reed 2013, 216)

Eno was another point of departure for Watson, along with the vast majority
of nonconformist electronic musicians in Britain during the mid-1970s. From
what began as a purely experimental sound project, Cabaret Voltaire would
go on to take these techniques and turn them into full-fledged outputs and
later, ones that would become quite successful with Nag Nag Nag (1979),
which sold quite well in continental Europe.
Beginning in Watson’s family home, the trio, in order to exploit
the latest electronic music technologies available at the time, somehow
managed to convince the upper management of the music department of
Sheffield University to use their electronic music studio, which housed
an EMS VCS3 synthesizer. Eno’s workhorse, it ‘obviously it appealed to
us because Eno used a VCS3—however the idea of using a very technical
synthesizer rather than a keyboard based one was very appealing to us.
Those were the only instruments we had access to’ (Mallinder 2020, 206).
Indeed, the initial setup of the band was nonconformist, nontraditionalist,
and anarchic, in that:

We started working in Chris’s loft with only tape recorders and a

few things to bang as percussion. However, the first instrument we
bought was an AKS, which was a suitcase synthesizer—again it was a
non-musician type of synthesizer, more of a sound generator. I sup-
pose the next thing that was an indicator as to the way we would
develop, was that Richard bought a clarinet for about 15 pounds. Then
 Cabaret Voltaire     41

a few months later, it was Richard’s birthday and Chris bought him a
guitar for 5 pounds. (Ibid., 206)

Their early approaches to sound generation would lead to a mix of sonic

elements, both electronic and acoustic, but also a core element of Eno’s
approach: the processing of acoustic sounds, electronically. Much the same
as Throbbing Gristle, the band’s early work was outputted on cassette tape,
with Eno apparently receiving the first one.7 Much of these early tape
recordings would go on to feature on Methodology: ’74—’78 Attic Tapes,
released on Mute Records in 2019.
Their early performances were visceral at the core as they were in
many ways, ‘composition in real time,’ incorporating elements within the
intersection of technology, Punk, Dadaism, and music. Mallinder, who
would bring the vocal element to the group, is perhaps the band’s most
important element. As much of the band’s vocal presentation is processed,
it becomes detached, floated around the steady beat of a drum machine.
Such a process allowed Mallinder to become an auditory nonconformist;
here now the traditional role of the lead singer was gone, and its replace-
ment was an attention-grabbing ‘nag.’
During the late 1970s, many independent UK studios became
associated with either labels or bands associated with the label, the most
famous being Factory Records’ alliance with engineer Martin Hannet and
Cargo Recordings Studios in Rochdale, Greater Manchester. In 1977,
Watson financed the establishment of the band’s own recording studio on
the second floor of a building called the Western Works on Portobello
Street, Sheffield. As previously discussed, it served as the band’s studio
for many years, as well as providing a social gathering spot for the local
Sheffield scene. Having a non-commercial, exploitory space in which to
experiment with sound at its very core was elemental for not only Cabaret
Volatire’s developing sound, but the same can be said of nearly all the acts
discussed in this book.
Given the artistic isolation of the city to places like London,
although greatly improved by the building of the A1 motorway in 1964,
in many ways the group had to be the liberitat, to go on and serve the
greater good, to be anarchic in all aspects of their approach, and without
it, early acts like Clock DVA, the Future, the Human League, and ABC.
What is highlighted here is the importance and significance of the urban
experience and/or the set of aesthetics or values that a communal space
can bring to a musical community, one that, in this case, broke down
traditional ideologies toward both musicmaking and its production.
42     Chapter 4

First published in 1964 and still in circulation today, Practical

Electronics would become a milestone in the development of both
musicians and nonmusicians’ growing interest in home electronics. Both
Chris Carter and Chris Watson would use their engineering backgrounds
and technical ability to further extend both of the bands’ sound (Carter’s
Grizzilizer is discussed further in chapter 5). This was Punk aesthetics at
its core; building from scratch, sound and sonic devices that would go on
to inform and influence the group’s output.
A contributor to Practical Electronics was F.C. Judd. Known for his
work primarily within amature radio, he would go on to inform and be
part of early British electronic musicmaking. After serving in the forces dur-
ing World War II, he trained as an engineer and soon saw the possibilities
electronics offered toward sound and musicmaking. Along with Daphne
Oram (BBC Radiophonic workshop cofounder), he was enthusiasti-
cally promoting electronic music to the British public via demonstrations
and lectures to amateur tape-recording clubs and much of his technical
knowledge would go on to be published as Electronic Music and Musique
Concrete (1961). In the absence of any interest from the world of music,
Judd was a true Punk; he worked completely outside the music community
in the 1950s and 1960s. His only infiltration into the popular zeitgeist, Judd
made TV soundtracks, including Space Patrol (1963), which was the first
British TV series to have a fully electronic score.8 In a similar vein to what
was occurring in Western Works, Judd made the score using tape manipu-
lation, loops, and tone generators in his home studio in London.
Following a belated and long-overdue recognition of early British
electronic-music composers like Tristram Cary, Daphne Oram, and Delia
and Derbyshire, Judd’s work was reworked by a collection of composers and
producers (including TG’s Chris Carter) on London’s Public Information
label entitled Electronics Without Tears (2012).
In 2011, Judd was the focus of Practical Electronica, an experimental
documentary by director Ian Helliwell, which allowed a whole new gen-
eration of electronic musicmakers. Judd was also seminal in both publishing
and working on a rather specialised community of Amature Tape Recording
(ATR) magazine. Launched in 1959 and later rebranded as Studio Sound in
1970, the magazine would go on to become a seminal publication, much
the same as Practical Electronics, in the development of a prototype DIY and
underground movement, spurring people to, like others in this publication,
take recording matters into their own hands. After his death in 1992 and after
publishing eleven books ranging from tape recording, home recording, and
amature electronics, Judd can be seen as a significant figure within the context
of the acts discussed within this book.
 Cabaret Voltaire     43

Middleton (1990) laid out the conditions in which collective elements

and environments encourage the production of works, much as to what
Western Works would produce, commenting that ‘most accounts of studio
recording that we have suggest a great range of patterns, varying according to
historical periods, social and institutional context, musical aims and individual
motivations’ (Middelton 1990, 91). Mallinder, Kirk, and Watson formed an
institution of sorts with Western Works, in which the aesthetic processes
of such a collaborative space brought about a form of artistic autonomy in
which each member became creator, producer, engineer, and musician, and
as Benjamin suggests, these forms of working could bring about not only
democratisation, but new hierarchies in that ‘the auteur remains, merely
changing his position and identity’ (Ibid., 91).
It’s difficult to quantify the output from Western Works, but the
popular record-selling website discogs.org lists some 362 releases9 to its
name, which makes it one of the most prolific independent studios in
Britain during its operation.
Later, the production of Red Mecca (1981) and The Crackdown (1983),
part Some Bizzare/Virgin Records, would see recordings take place in
London, and the further they got from Western Works, it would seem the
group (along with Watson departure in 1981) distanced itself further from
its industrial origins, toward a more commercial sound. The demolition of
Western Works in 1987 would ultimately see further reliance on London
as a conduit for the band.

THE AGE OF NOISE: MIX-UP (1979)

Noise, considered by many as unwanted, and mistakenly defined as such

by some, has little respectability and conjures up images of rejection, the
unwanted. Yet, its rise since the advent of the postindustrial society means
that, as the world grows larger, the noise gets louder, or as writer Aldous
Huxley defined it:

The twentieth century is, among other things, the age of noise. Physical
noise, mental noise and noise of desire—we hold history’s record for all
of them. And no wonder; for all the resources of our almost miraculous
technology have been thrown into the current assault against silence.
(Huxley 1970, 218)

The history of noise is fascinating, beginning with Einstein’s explana-

tion of Brownian motion. In a nutshell, it is the random motion of par-
ticles suspended in a medium (gas, liquids), named after botanist Robert
44     Chapter 4

Brown. He discovered the process while looking through a microscope at

the pollen of the plant Clarkia Pulchella immersed in water. It was Einstein
who then used Brown’s discovery and modelled the motion of the pollen
particles as being moved by individual water molecules, making one of his
first major scientific contributions: that noise could establish the existence
of atoms.
In music, noise provides an erratic acoustic vibration that is
intermittent or statistically aleatory or ‘any auditory sensation which is
disagreeable or uncomfortable’ (Burns 1969, 14), and historically, it was
in use in Western music across a number of genres, from the Italian
Futurists composer Luigi Rossollo to twentieth-century classical music
composers, including György Ligeti.
Hegarty (2007) observes that ‘noise is not an objective fact. It
occurs in relation to perception—both direct (sensory) and according to
presumptions made by the individual. These are going to vary according
to historical, geographical and cultural location’ (Hegarty 2007, 3). Such
conditions surrounded Western Works, surrounded Mallinder, Kirk, and
Watson, and to understand, or to gain perspective on the significance of
noise, in both the arts and sciences, is to understand Cabaret Voltaire’s
1979 album Mix-Up.
Jacques Attali’s Noise: The Political Economy of Music presents
concepts relating to noise and music and are of particular relevance here;
in that music, a supposedly pleasurable and emotionally expressive force
is not neutral, but is (as with the rest of the products of the entertainment
industry) politically aligned, in that:

All music, any organisation of sounds is...a tool for the creation or con-
solidation of a community, of a totality. It is what links a power centre
to its subjects, and thus, more generally, it is an attribute of power in
all its forms...any theory of power today must include a theory of the
localization of noise and its endowment with form...noise is inscribed
from the start within the panoply of power. (Attali 1985, 6)

Attali viewed the evolution of music under a number of stages, which

included Sacrificing, Representing, Repeating, and Post-Repeating10 Moreso,
these cultural structures allow for music’s transmission and reception. For
example, ‘sacrificing’ defines music as ritualised, and ‘post-repeating’ points
more toward both sampling and electronic music and its manipulation
possibilities. Ultimately, each stage carries with it a certain set of technologies
for producing, recording, and disseminating music. The making of Cabaret
Voltaire’s Mix-Up reflects Attali’s thesis that music, as a cultural form, is tied
up in the mode of production in any given society.
 Cabaret Voltaire     45

After Throbbing Gristle offered to release their debut album on Industrial

Records, funds were unavailable at the time, and on their recommendation,
the band signed to Rough Trade in early 1978. Their earliest recordings were
primarily circulated within mail art communities (via Kirk), some of which
would eventually appear on Methodology 74/78 Attic Tape (2002). Extended
Play EP (1978) was their first release on the label, and it featured the live
classic ‘Do the Mussolini-Headkick’ and a version of ‘Here She Comes Now’
by the Velvet Underground.
The single ‘Nag Nag Nag’ (June 1979) would go on to have greater
traction, selling upwards of ten thousand copies, including quite a
significant number in France and Belgium. The track is in many ways a
throwback to 1960s garage punk, washed with fuzz tones and a pulsat-
ing Farfisa organ throughout. Heavy noise and distortion run through the
track, which decentralises Mallinder’s voice or presence as the lead vocalist
and part of the tracks ‘nagging factor’ is, indeed, noise in the form of ‘a
constant 1300 Hz sizzle that runs through its electronic timbres that sounds
more like a dental suction tool than a synth or guitar’ (Reed 203, 64).
Despite poor reviews, some glowing and positive ones did appear, most
notably from Andy Gill of the NME, who wrote that he ‘firmly believed
Cabaret Voltaire will turn out to be one of the most important new bands
to achieve wider recognition this year. Wait and see.’11
Even at this stage, the sound of the three members was formed:
Watson’s synth processing, Mallinder’s pulsating bass, and Kirk’s
stabbing, angular guitar lines. This sound world would continue to pre-
vail throughout 1977–1979 and until 1982, when a more commercial
approach was dominant. Nevertheless, what would remain was the aes-
thetic and attitudes of the band, and even with Watson’s departure, Reyn-
olds in ‘Rip It Up’ and ‘Start Again’ eloquently describes their approach
in that ‘they blended a Yorkshire-bred bloody minded intransigence in the
face of badge-holders and bureaucrats with the sort of pot-filled never met
a conspiracy theory I didn’t like; attitude you found throughout squatland’
(Reynolds 2001, 171).
Released on October 23, 1979, on Rough Trade, Mix-Up builds
on the success of ‘Nag Nag Nag’ and presents a mode of produc-
tion that sets the band mark of both industrial and post-Punk genres.
‘Kirlian Photograph’ opens the album. Its title is apt: It was named
after Semyon Kirlian, who, in 1939, accidentally discovered that if an
object on a photographic plate is connected to a high-voltage source, an
image is produced. Abrasive and dissonant electronics cloud the mix that
is supported by a primitive drum machine (either a Farfisa or Selmer) and
wandering bassline. The noise bursts used throughout are these ‘kirlian’
46     Chapter 4

high-voltage sources, moving back and forward, aggravating both the song
and perhaps its listener. Right from the beginning, the band is using noise
as a weapon, a mode that is either disagreeable or uncomfortable to the
listener, depending on the listener’s taste, of course.
This approach was used to sway both the listeners and its range of
potential commercial success, as Kirk points toward in this 2013 interview,
commenting:

We definitely retained a darker, more subversive side to what we were

doing, but we definitely wanted to reach more people. If we made
something darker, the beats would hold it together. It wasn’t any kind
of formal decision, it just seemed natural. We’d been big fans of dance
music in the 70s but it was the technology that was the missing link.
Suddenly we got programmable drum machines and sequencers, and
with that we got the repetition you need for dance music—it brought
that sound within our grasp.12

‘No Escape’ follows the approach of ‘Nag Nag Nag’: fuzzed-out garage
rock. Written by Richard Elvern Marsh in 1965 and performed by the
Seeds, it is an interesting cover version. Appearing on the Seeds’ 1966
album The Seeds, it is clean, upbeat, and full of energy, due to the band’s
appearances in and around Los Angeles clubs. Seventy-five hundred miles
away, its reinterpretation has similar energies while it is washed in noise
and a plulasting farfisa organ. The pounding drum machine, its lyrical detail
‘nowhere to hide,’ perhaps reflects the surrounding sociopolitical climate
during this period of its history in Britain; secondly, toward the group’s
attitude toward paranoia of law, governmental, societal element. Mallinder
has commented on such in the past, in that ‘being in a state of paranoia is
a very healthy state to be in. It gives you a permanently questioning and
searching nonacceptance of the situation.’13 In terms of references, the track
very much is a nod toward Suicide, New York–based masters of minimalist
electronics, pulsating rhythms, and confrontational live shows.
‘Fourth Shot’ begins with alien electronic textures, courtesy of
Watson, that resemble something like a BBC radiophonic workshop.
Kirk’s fuzzed-out guitars dominate the foreground, sustaining elongated
notes while Mallinder takes a more contemporary and ‘melodic’ approach
to the song. Within this cacophony of instruments, the trio pull off what
can only be described as a spell-burning wash of cross-referencing; King
Tubby, Can, and Pierre Schaeffer all exist here, albeit within the group’s
own visionary approach. ‘Heaven and Hell’ follows with a wash of white
noise and an electronic pulse reminiscent of a distant radio transmission.
 Cabaret Voltaire     47

Again, as if some sort of reprise, Kirk’s distorted guitar populates. Polluted,

this seems like a good analogy here; although mechanical, it’s a miserable
landscape.
This is further made evident with the introduction of Mallinder’s
vocals, aggravated and (lyrically) indistinguishable, with only words and
phrases like ‘mesclun haze’ and ‘senseless rejection’ appearing from the mist.
As the proto drum machine begins to accelerate in tempo, a real sense of
continuity in sound and timbre now begins to appear, that of Kirk’s distinct
guitar sound, one that would continue through most of their catalogue.
What it presents is fragile, delicate, and confused. This is further
pushed around in the soundscape by effects such as reverb, while the
instruments are processed by Watson, perhaps on the EMS VCS3 from
Sheffield University’s Music Department. It’s both alien and afraid, both
coherent and incoherent. As the song ends, Mallinder is, in many ways,
caught between this flux, as he screams both ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell,’ and
with this, ‘he is no longer a singer in the band, not merely an implicit
radical megaphone, but part of an aggravation machine, turned equally on
its audience and itself’ (Reed 2013, 64).
‘Eyeless Sight’ is the only live contribution to the album. It’s an
extended improvisation, and what is core to this is this: The inclusion
of this on the album puts the listener in the audience’s position. Intercut
with vocal samples, it’s a surrealist landscape, in a nod to both Brion
Bysion and William Burroughs, both of whom were of major influence,
in particular to Kirk.
It’s a fantastic slice of through the looking glass, composition in real
time and the inclusion of ‘Eyeless Sight’ is a great example of some of the
group’s core aesthetics: that of disruption and reaction techniques, further
sighting Dadaism. Tristan Tzara, in the Dada Manifesto (1918), describes
the construction of the cutup:

TO MAKE A DADAIST POEM

The poem will resemble you.
And there you are—an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even
though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.14

‘Photophobia’ is more akin to some of the frightening public service tele-

vision commercial’s line ‘Protect & Survive.’15 Produced in Britain during
the late 1970s, it documents a nuclear fallout and remains a stark reminder
of what the conditions of the Cold War brought about. In a blurred-out
dub-like environment, Mallinder’s spoken-word contributions are very
much situationist and Dadais with memorable lines, singing: ‘If the Rolling
48     Chapter 4

Stones could not play the queen’s music, they would be removed from the
country.’
Kirk’s guitar (processed by Watson) buzzes around, like a fly you’re
trying to swat while an underlying drone acts as a bed in which the mad-
ness unfolds. Bass guitar and drum machine soon follow, stumbling and
gasping for air in what can only be described as a schizophrenia in sound.
However, in terms of atmospherics, it’s a standout contribution. Its slow
motion bass line and drone make it a hypnotic listening process, and with
the addition of these melodic elements, it allows the listener to remain
in limbo. Although very much spiky and aggressive, halfway through the
album at this stage, it remains engaged and totally accessible.
Studio drums, courtesy of Haydn Boyes Weston, a session drummer
who would go on to session for other Sheffield mainplayers including the
Human League and Heaven 17, appears on ‘On Every Other Street.’ The
drum pattern (and its echo effects) sounds strangely like Talking Heads’
‘Warning Sign’ from their 1977 album, More Songs About Buildings and
Food. As with the other contributions within the album, Kirk’s processed-
guitar stabs demand the attention space, while the flanger and delay create a
dub-like soundspace. Mallinder’s ‘Da Da Da Da’ lyric contributions popu-
late the mix, and thematic continuities remain, a distrust for both pleasing
melodic and rhythmic cohesion. ‘Expect Nothing’ features a drum machine
(what sounds like a Korg Mini Pops) that dominates the foreground, which
then becomes processed. The bass and guitar seems to play, somewhat in
sync, but Watson’s wash of electronics distorts this at times. Lyrical detail
is, again, obscured. The piece ends on an electronic bed of noise as if suf-
focating from the torment induced.
‘Capsules’ ends the album, and it is fitting. Brittle and sparse, it book-
ends Mix-Up perfectly. Processing by Watson in many ways dominates,
more so than the instruments. There is a final addition here to the album’s
formula: angular/dissonant rhythm guitar, electronic effects, noise experi-
mentation, and obscured lyrical presentation.
Mix-Up is, in many ways, a history lesson; its lack of variety, contrast,
challenging, and dark sound world allow it to stand out as a significant con-
tribution to British industrial music of the late 1970s, a sound that would go
on to continue to influence across genres from Post-Punk, noise, and lo-fi. In
a world of digital music production, Mix-Up remains (sonically) dark, murky,
and obscure, yet this distinct quality, which is both detrimental to its sound
and could and perhaps repel the listener, is very much the defining part of
the album’s appeal.
 Cabaret Voltaire     49

TECHNOLOGY

Cabaret Voltaire initially made the use of homemade electronics, which was,
in many ways, made due to financial reasons. Watson used his engineering
background to facilitate the band with rudimentary instruments and processing
powers. It was Watson who was experimenting with tape decks in his parents’
house in the Sheffield suburb of Totley in the early 1970s while Kirk built
oscillators from mail-order kits.
When they came together, it was more about experimentation
rather than musicmaking or a means of making music to either sell or
perform it. Moreso, the process here at the beginning of the group was
directed toward the exploration of sound rather than creating something
more formal or structured.
As the group evolved, more traditional instruments were added to the
mix; these included the clarinet and guitar. However, these instruments are
often treated electronically. It would be Brian Eno who again would prove
to be influential on Watson, not so much on his music, but more so on his
process and approach to musicmaking, as Watson explains:

Early Roxy Music for us was probably one of the sparks for the group.
I remember seeing them in early 1972 at a college in Sheffield. I was
completely knocked out, it actually changed my aspect on virtually ev-
erything I did regarding music both listening and production. I was in-
terested in Brian Eno’s technique and some of the sounds he produced. I
learnt a lot about contemporary music through that, whereas my interest
before that had come from the classic avant-garde such as Stockhausen,
Schaeffer, Satie. (Watson quoted in Reed 2013, 216)

In terms of synthesizers and keyboards, the group would go on to use

an endless line of electronic devices through each album. However, for
the purpose of this discussion, only the early technological development
of the group will be reviewed here. As previously mentioned, the group
gained access to the University of Sheffield’s Music Departments EMS
VCS3, an instrument that would have been very much out of reach,
financially, to any group of the 1970s, apart from the likes of Richard
Wright (Pink Floyd) and ELP. Further to this, an EMS Synthi AKS
Synthesizer was used by the group. More of a sound generator than a
traditional synthesizer, it was Eno’s go-to machine during this pe-
riod. The machine was used on ‘Do the Mussolini (Head Kick),’ ‘The
Set Up’ from Extended Play, and ‘No Escape’ and ‘Heaven and Hell’
from Mix-Up.
50     Chapter 4

Watson also utilised a Vox Continental organ, which can be heard

on Mix-Up’s ‘No Escape.’ In the early days, it was primarily the tape
machines that would prove most useful and Dadaist with tape loops and
collages becoming some of their first explorations into technology with
sound. Again, Watson’s career and training as a telephone engineer meant
he had the technical know-how to produce and self-build electronic
instruments such as an oscillator, which would become core to the group’s
early work. A consideration in the early years of the band was rhythm.
Initially facilitated by tape loops, soon the drum machine would come
into play. The earliest used by the band were drum machines that were
primarily used by organ players as accompaniment, notably the Selmer MR
101 (1972) and Farfisa R10 (1970).
In many ways, these machines would become the foundation on
which the group could explore ideas, as Mallinder explains:

The whole rhythmic side of things came about from banging

anything that was around the loft at the time—pure percussion.
Whatever sounded good, you hit it. Also we used a lot of tape loops,
and although not percussive in themselves, the whole notion of the
tape loop is based on repetition, and it therefore becomes a percussive
pulse. Leading on from that, as another way of generating rhythm
we bought a drum machine. What appealed to us was the idea of
providing a faultless beat, a pulse behind what we were doing to link
things together. We didn’t really want to use a drummer at the time
because we didn’t want to be part of the ‘rock music’ tradition. In
a lot of ways we wanted to parody that whole ‘rock’ tradition and
integrate it into the basic idea of sound collage. We wanted to
juxtapose different forms of music, such as the avant garage
experimental tradition, with a parody of rock music. (Mallinder quoted
in Fish 2002, 207)

In terms of audio documentation, a Revox Tape Machine (most likely

an A-77) was used by the group from an early stage, including one at the
University of Sheffield’s Music Department. Again, Eno’s influence comes
into sight here as the A-77 was heavily used by Eno on numerous albums
during this period, including his seminal LP with King Crimson guitarist
Robert Fripp, No Pussyfooting (1977). So much so was the significance of
how the group would go on to have ultimate control of how their material
was recorded, the band would go on to sign with Rough Trade in 1978
(in lieu of an advance) for a four-track Revox tape machine; this machine
would go on to become the primary recording device of Western Works.
 Cabaret Voltaire     51

The band’s relationship with technology would ultimately change when

Steveo Pearce of Some Bizzare Records leveraged a licensing deal with
Virgin that secured the band a £50,000 advance for the production of
The Crackdown (1983). Here, with the aid of the most cutting edge music
technology available at the time, Cabaret Voltaire would now write music
for the new decade. With this, the direction and aesthetic quality of the
group changed, and with each consecutive album, including The Covenant,
The Sword and the Arm of the Lord (1985), the sound of Western Works was
very much left behind, and London (Mallinder’s new base) would be the
environment where the group would base its future directions in sound.

CONCLUSION

In Hit Factories: A Journey Through the Industrial Cities of British Pop, Carl
Whitney considers Sheffield, the city, characteristic of its sound, in that
‘new technology demanded a different kind of musician, one of great
technical ability whose skills tended towards the practical requirements
of an engineer’ (Whitney 2019, 120). The term ‘engineer’ here can be
interpreted in a multitude of variations as the act was engineering as much
an aesthetic and approach, rather than a more formal audio engineering
process. As per the acts reviewed and discussed in this book, the Punk
movement’s ethos was very much begging the drive (technologically) to
do it yourself.
Cabaret Voltaire produced challenging music for its time, in an era
of social and economic turmoil, and although not directly political, the
ambience they created in their recordings, primarily in 1979’s Mix Up, was
a sonic brutality unlike anything to come from Britain from that period.
Cabaret Voltaire (via Dadaism and Situationist approaches) were un-
classifiable—not a single classification can be applied to their approach—
and indeed, the term ‘industrial’ has historically been a point of contention
for the act, as it is almost a cheap shot at defining their contribution to the
field of electronic music production in Britain during the late 1970s. This
can be best summed up by Mallinder himself, as he attempts to explain (and
educate) the masses, commenting:

A brief work of warning. I have to confess to a level of discomfort when

the term industrial is put on me. As a musician and producer, who it
would seem, has more than a passing flirtation with what the media and
music consumers broadly label “industrial music,” or “industrial beats”
52     Chapter 4

I tend to bristle a little. As a founding member of Cabaret Voltaire, a

group who hail from a northern British industrial city, it seems I can
offer little defence, though. (Mallinder quoted in Reed 2013, XI)

Genres are constructed by external factors in the way in which music mar-
kets make them, as it’s easy to commodify, categorise, and sell a product. For
Cabaret Voltaire, Sheffield would come to define how others would
classify their sound. However, the band did play along with this, as it seemed
functional to do so. Reconsider for a moment the climate of the era, with
Thatcherism, the threat of nuclear war, and energy shortages. Rather than
feeling encased by this, Cabaret Voltaire used their instruments and elec-
tronic machines to transcend and move through the day-to-day reality of late
1970s Britain.
Ultimately, Kirk, Mallinder, and Watson used technology in the
search of an idealised future, and the noise, distortion, and fuzz effects used
by the group were perhaps employed to blur and subvert this future, as for
many, it wasn’t something particularly good to look forward to.

NOTES

1. Authority and influence of law in society, especially when viewed as a

constraint on individual and institutional behaviour, (hence) the principle
whereby all members of a society (including those in government) are consid-
ered equally subject to publicly disclosed legal codes and processes.
2. See also https://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88v/burroughs-cutup.
html (accessed December 16, 2021).
3. See Tzara 1918, Dada Manifesto, 391.org (accessed December 16, 2021).
4. Primarily based on Marxist critical theory, Debord presents 221 short theses
in the form of aphorisms, including ‘mass media commodity fetishism’ and ‘com-
parasments between religion and marketing.’
5. Mallinder, quoted in S. Alexander Reed’s Assimilate, 62.
6. See also https://www.theideaofthebook.com/pages/books/2 (accessed June
10, 2022).
7. Mallinder, quoted in Mick Fish’s Industrial Evolution, 206. (accessed May
12, 2022).
8. See also https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0164289/ (accessed August 2022).
9. See also https://www.discogs.com/label/267832-Western-Works (accessed
March 22, 2022).
10. See also Dana Polan’s review of Noise: The Political Economy of Music by
Jacques. Attali, Substance, Vol. 17, No. 3, Issue 57 (1988), 56–58, https://www
.jstor.org/stable/i287882. (accessed July 1, 2022).
 Cabaret Voltaire     53

11. See also June 27, 1978 edition of NME (New Musical Express).
12. R.K. Kirk, ‘Interview,’ Electricity Club Magazine, https://www.electricity-
club.co.uk/cabaret-voltaire-interview/ (accessed July 7, 2022).
13. See Reynolds (2005, 171).
14. See also T. Tzara (1920), On Feeble Love and Bitter Love—Dada Manifesto.
15. Produced by the British government between 1974 and 1980, Protect and
Survive was intended to advise the public on how to protect themselves during a
nuclear attack. Its controversial subject, its cultural impact was longer-lasting than
most public information campaigns.
 5

THROBBING GRISTLE
Music from the Death Factory

P erformance art has many different facets—music, dance, fixed media,

and improvisation—and it has always shared a link to experimental
music performance. Firstly, both are primarily presented on a stage, and this
process allows it to be viewed in real time by the audience. Secondly, from
a voyeuristic perspective, the audience watches ‘art in motion,’ and through
the process of improvisation, this is extended further as the performer(s)
react, change, and modify a performance.
Throbbing Gristle began their life as an experimental performance art
group, and the traits briefly discussed above would become core not only to
their live performances but also to their recorded musical output. Core to the
group’s philosophy were confrontational approaches and provocative visual
imagery. Like many of the acts discussed in the book, musically they used the
synthesizer and homemade electronic devices as instruments of subversion.
Simon Ford’s full-length study of the group, Wreckers of Civilization (1999),
paints a very accurate picture of the band and its approaches through the lives
of its shapeshifting members, from the freak scene/beat 1960s into the hostile
and dystopian climate of the late 1970s.
In the Industrial Culture Handbook, Jon Savage identifies and defines
five aesthetic approaches within industrial musicmaking, including:

1. Organised autonomy
2. Access to information
3. The use of synthesizers and antimusic
4. Extramusical elements
5. Shock tactics.1

55
56     Chapter 5

Throbbing Gristle encompassed all the above (and more) in their

lifespan, the first era being 1976–1981, and it helped form an ideology that
is still prevalent today in challenging and subversive underground electronic
music across the globe. All members of the group had careers in their own
right before assembling as a band. Chris Carter began his career as a bass
player and later as a technician for television and home electronics hobbyists,
while Peter Christopherson (Sleazy) worked as a graphic designer. However,
in the midst of the Punk movement, it would be Genesis P-Orridge (Neil
Andrew Megson) and Cosey Fanni Tutti (Christine Carol Newby) whose
platform of expression, via surrealist musical and theatrical happenings, would
provide an aesthetic approach for the band to follow. This chapter presents
the early development and aesthetics of the band and an analysis of their
album 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979) via the use of the synthesizer and
electronics.

INFLUENCES

The Vienna Actionists2 was an art movement between the mid-1960s and
1970s that explored many different fields, including improvisation and the
reinterpretation of theatrical works, and their commune/art group environ-
ment was the breeding ground for artists who sought to break down the
barriers between audience and performer. Artists including Hermann Nitsch
and Otto Muhl used approaches close to the Fluxus movement to create
real-time performances or ‘happenings.’ Moreso, the movement used the
body as a performance mechanism that was often steeped in violence and
destruction. Indeed, they sought to provoke moral panic through their work,
with Muhl’s work often leading to an arrest and fleeing for his safety, most
famously for his piece Piss Action in 1968 Munich.
Much of their work would go on to inspire a young Neil Andrew
Megson. After dropping out of university, Megson’s involvement with
Islington’s Transmedia Explorations would be seminal in the foundation of
COUM Transmissions.
Transmedia Explorations’ unconventional approach to everyday life
was influential; members could not sleep in the same location on consecutive
nights, money was held in a central deposit, and clothes were changed daily
in order to alter role and persona: a new costume on the daily stage of life.
Under such social and living conditions, things were bound to break, and
Megson’s stay was only three months long, or perhaps it was the ‘realisation
 Throbbing Gristle     57

that the hippie movement had fizzled, failing to deliver on its promise of
radical change’ (P-Orridge quoted Reed 2013, 75).
On his return to Hull, and renaming himself Genesis P-Orridge, a
message came to him during a vision, aptly in his parents’ house, in which
he heard the words ‘COUM Transmissions,’ and he visualised the band’s
symbols of a semierect penis bearing the letters COUM, beneath which
was the phrase ‘YOUR LOCAL DIRTY BANNED.’ Northern England
would be the location for the first iterations for the COUM Transmissions’
early experiments during 1971–1973, and after performing at a number of
‘happenings,’ the group began to attract some notoriety and were banned
from most local venues. Bored with traditional approaches, P-Orridge and
friend John Shapeero formed a collective that operated throughout the
United Kingdom from 1969 to 1976 and was the grounding for Throbbing
Gristle, as it also contained one of its founding members, Cosey Fanni Tutti,
along with a wider circle of contributors.3
COUM Transmissions set out to challenge boundaries and conventions
by using both confrontation and subversion as key elements of its approach.
Primarily influenced by a greater disregard for the establishment,32 they stared
aspects of British society in the face, challenged them, and questioned them.
The development and widespread use of the Pill, and even something as
trivial as the miniskirt, was altering Britain in more ways than it perhaps cared
for. Further to this, changing attitudes in society, divorce, abortion, and the
1967 legilization of homosexuality was used by P-Orridge to develop the
group’s aesthetics, spurred on by the increasing counterculture movement
happening across the pond.
The wave of late-1960s experiments in music in Britain would be a
influence on the collective, primarily on Tutti, commenting:

The philosophical approach to music of Cornelius Cardew, Keith

Rowe, Lawrence Sheaff, Lou Gare and Eddie Provost proved to be very
influential and reads rather like an early version of what was to become
COUM’s approach to music: anti-harmony, no prerequisite for anyone
to be able to play an instrument, and the sound the ‘group’ generated
was also regarded as a contributory member of the group itself. (Tutti
2017, 78)

It was at Oval House in Kennington, South London, that the staging of the
piece ‘Couming of Age’ (1974) would prove fruitful to the formation of
Throbbing Gristle. Peter Christopherson approached P-Orridge and Tutti
after the performance and was very much interested in the sexual nature of
the performance; hence the ‘sleazy’ moniker was born.33 More importantly,
58     Chapter 5

Christopherson’s employment at the time, at the seminal design company

Hipgnosis,34 led to COUM gaining access to cutting-edge computers and
printing facilities, much of which would go on to be employed during the
development and subsequent performance of their first collaborative piece,
‘Couming of Youth,’ first staged at the Melkweg, Amsterdam, in 1975.
Sleazy’s contribution to COUM made ‘the three of us together made for a
volatile mix, encouraging each other to indulge in our sexual interests and
explorations and putting them center stage’ (Ibid., 166).
Chris Carter would soon be introduced to the group via the visual
artist John Lacey. At the time, he was touring universities and colleges with
a solo multimedia show, and after having worked as a sound engineer at
Granada, Themes Television, and the BBC, Carter’s interest in self-built
synthesizers and keyboards was becoming more prominent.
It would be COUM Transmissions’ 1976 show, Prostitution, at London’s
ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), would prove to be the group’s last
major show and its most controversial. Based around Tutti’s pornographic
career to date, the show incorporated, amongst other things, rusty knives,
syringes, tampons in a glass case, and a stripper. In a direct and mediated
act of confrontation, Punks and prostitutes were hired to ‘engage’ with the
audience. In the view of Andy Warhol’s Plastic Exploding Inevitable, the show
was a multimedia performance with performances from the Punk band
Chelsea and Throbbing Gristle (the house band). The show would go on
to catch the attention of the UK tabloid press, and in a hilarious turn of
events, Tutti would reincorporate the press clippings back into the show.
In a further turn of events, Scottish conservative MP Sir Nicholas Fairbairn
summoned, from Arts Minister Harold Lever, an explanation into these
so-called perverted events, labelling them as ‘wreckers of civilization.’4
This kind of press was key to the band’s legacy, with the British perfor-
mance and experimental music movement, and the COUM Transmissions’
performances during the 1970s, firmly establishing the experimental
performance art in Britain, and through the aid of the art council’s support,
they would go on to perform in Europe and the United States.
Even though Prostitution was COUM Transmissions’ swan song, its
reincarnation was transferred more directly to sonic experiments, via the
formation of Throbbing Gristle. Tutti was keen to challenge both audience
and listener, in that:

We wanted a sound that hit people between the eyes and swirled in
grinding, growling mayhem between their ears. A sound that caused
an involuntary physical response in the body that would make people
 Throbbing Gristle     59

feel and think rather than just listen, dance and get drunk. In the studio,
we experimented with extreme frequencies; one of us stood at the
‘kill switch’ to cut the power if the effects became too much. We
experience tunnel vision, our stomachs going into spasm and our trou-
ser legs flapping. (Ibid., 241)

Without the formation of COUM Transmissions, the group would not have
existed, and as elements like propaganda and pseudo-fascist iconography were
carried over, most notably confrontationally performative elements such as
the ones employed in songs like ‘Discipline’ (1977).

BEGINNING(S)

Exploring the worlds of confrontation and subversion, the group now used
musical instruments to channel and birth a music that was both dynamic and
challenging. One only has to examine the kinds of music being produced in
Britain during 1975—it was hardly inspirational. Bay City Rollers, Wings, and
Rod Stewart were topping the charts. Perhaps it was of no or little influence
or significance to Throbbing Gristle, if only its effect on the course of popular
music at the time in Britain. Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells was number nine
in the bestselling albums of 1975. An album of purely instrumental sounds,
the production’s sonic productions (the use of synthesizers, tape echo, long
reverberant sound) did allow it to stick out within the contemporary radio
landscape soundscape. Although not infiltrating the underground electronic
music scene at the time, it is nevertheless worth pondering whether this
sound was subconsciously deepening the nation’s consciousness to alterna-
tive approaches to musicmaking.
Another album worth noting, released at the cusp of the formation
of Throbbing Gristle, was an album that would have very much informed
the electronic sound of the group, in particular Chris Carter. Rubycon by
Tangerine Dream was released by Virgin, and although it did not quite match
the sales figures for Phaedra (1974), it nevertheless reached number ten in a
fourteen-week run, their highest-charting album in the UK.
Recorded at the Manor Studio in Oxfordshire, owned at the time by
Virgin Boss Richard Branson, the album used an array of influences and,
indeed, machines, from choral and pastoral elements added to the impres-
sion that Froese, Franke, and Baumann had really absorbed the innovations
of Stockhausen and Ligeti decades before. On the equipment front, Franke
added a modified Elka organ, while Baumann introduced prepared piano
60     Chapter 5

and ARP synth. Edgar Froese remembers the recording, in that ‘unlike
Phaedra, there were no breaks in creative flow. The sequencers could now
be technically better equipped, although many of the technical alterations
had to be custom-built.’5
The chasm that separates Throbbing Gristle, Mike Oldfield, and
Tangerine Dream is indeed wide. With the latter being very much about
the control, refinement, and mastery of walls of modular synthesizers, the
album is simply a refinement of its predecessor. Like many of the acts
observed in this book, electronic music from Germany at the time was
a considerable influence. Krautrock or Kosmische6 music’s influence on
Carter is very much evident and is discussed later through in Carter’s use
of synthesised arpeggios, programmed on ‘Walkabout’ from 20 Jazz Funk
Greats (1979).
Core to the group’s sonic approach was the use of prerecorded
tape-based samples, highly distorted background, and spoken-word
performances by Cosey Fanni Tutti or Genesis P-Orridge. These are all
found on the group’s debut single, United / Zyklon B Zombie, released on
the band’s own Industrial Records in May 1978. Not only is the single
title a statement, as Zyklon B was a gas used by Nazi Germany during
the Holocaust, but the artwork is just as controversial; the front and back
covers provoke the above with a shower scene, cold and dark buildings.
United/Zyklon B Zombie’s sound world is stark, surreal, and confron-
tational. United takes its nod (sonically) from Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe
Express (1977) in its use of white noise as a percussion element, allowing
the tracks to have a propulsive, steam-engine sense of momentum. In
many ways, it’s a study of minimalism, as repetitive themes from a synthe-
sizer cast ominous and oblique harmonic patterns. The lyrics are upbeat
and perhaps not reflective of what was to come on The Second Annual
Report (1977). Zyklon B Zombie is a complete contrast: angry, distorted,
and on the edge. It sets the mantra for forthcoming releases from the
group—a world that moves between unpredictability and perverseness.
Further to this, there is a flirtation with images and lyrics that provoke
horrors of the past, presenting to the consumer a world full of horror
with information without moral judgment. However, there is a ‘blurred
line between anguished awareness of horror and morbid fascination—
bordering on identification with evil. Throbbing Gristle constantly teetered
on the edge’ (Reynolds 2005, 223–24). The group’s use of electronics and
the synthesizer is seminal on 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979), an album in which
the sound and sonic palate of Throbbing Gristle really come to the fore.
 Throbbing Gristle     61

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE:

20 JAZZ FUNK GREATS (1979)

In Assimilate—A Critical History of Industrial Music, the root of industrial mu-

sic is considered, in its power to establish a strong sense of identity, of ideas,
where bands often have a very strong visual aesthetic and that ‘part of
what makes industrial music’s story compelling is the tension between all
its theoretically rich ideology and the way that people have really engaged
with it’ (Reed 2013, 12). One only has to observe the absurdity and
perhaps audacity of the cover of 20 Jazz Funk Greats, which has multi-
tudes of subversive meaning. Firstly, consider the image itself; in keeping
with the theme of manipulating expectations, the members of the group
posed as if out on a day trip, collecting samples from nature, innocent
and free. Here, unknowing to fans unfamiliar with their previous works,
the cover allows them to break with their own past. The cover, shot by
Christopherson (Sleazy), is a skillful document in deception and kitch,
deliberately altered to eject from previous ideas the group represents for
both listener and, to a lesser degree, critic. Secondly, what’s more menac-
ing is the location: Beachy Head, East Sussex.
Known at the time as the most popular suicide point in Britain,7 this
statement of intent signifies the group’s wish letter to its fans: never expect
the same thing. One only has to draw the parallels between suicide and
conformity to fully explore the cover in detail. What is deemed beautiful
and peaceful is cast by the group into a flux of hidden meanings, and what
is more sinister is their grinning faces.
Based on a more traditional lounge or exotica8 music album cover
format, it was a kilter of album covers at the time. Consider Joy Division’s
Unknown Pleasures, released in June 1979. Sleazy elaborates:

At the time, there was no cultural knowledge or acceptance, no “lounge

movement”. Very few people knew who Martin Denny or Prezez
Prado or any of those guys were, not like now where everything is
pretty much available and known about. At the time the whole lounge
aspect to it was something that was completely out of left field, and
that aspect contributed to the weirdness of it. People in England at the
time thought they knew who TG were—we were very noisy and dark
and weird in the public’s viewpoint, so twisting in this slightly sunny
or lounge aspect was definitely a twist we hadn’t made before. (Sleazy
quoted in Reed 2013, 27)
62     Chapter 5

It is performance art: the location, the smiles, the jumpers, and the Land
Rover. The viewer and listener have quite a hard time putting themselves
in the group’s world in that the album cover is ‘aesthetically soft but
hermetically hard’ (Daniel 2012, 29).
P-Orridge discussed further the subliminal ideas within the cover:

Certainly Chris and/or Cosey were repulsed and attracted to Range

Rovers at the time. The royal family had begun to use them. Maggie
Thatcher’s son endorsed them. What more fitting for the notorious
“wreckers of civilization” than to appear to drive the same car as their
arch cultural “enemies”? (Ibid., 31)

The cover was a mediated decision by the group in order to compound

the listener’s expectations, or perhaps they were just playing into the hands
of popular music and its expected mechanics. Daniel again eloquently
sums the cover as ‘occupying a disappearing middle between boredom and
disdain, the cover seems calculated to please no one’ (Ibid., 35).
The sound of the group was informed by radical and nonconformism in
music, much of which was informed by the West Coast of the United States
when composers like Terry Reilly and La Monte Young were stretching
musical minds by experimenting with time and repetition during the 1960s.
Theirs was an attempt to raise the finger to contemporary classical music at
the time, be it in sandals, mantras, and long beards. Nonetheless, it would
be both East and West Coast American music that would prove to be most
influential on the group. Bands like the Velvet Underground were cer-
tainly of influence with their references to death, sadomasochism, violence,
and drug use. Not only that, but their focus and concentration was on
making their image core, with sunglasses and leather pants being part of
their uniform.
None of its members were trained musicians, and the bulk of their
works are challenges to both popular musicmaking and the use of traditional
rock instruments. Much of their recordings are composed of long impro-
visations being edited and treated as source material for recordings. One
fundamental approach they incorporated into their anarchic philosophy to
musicmaking was, like that of Throbbing Gristle, the ‘non-musician.’
As discussed in chapter 4, Brian Eno was largely responsible for
the popularisation of the ‘non-musician’ in Britain in the 1970s, and his
knowledge of traditional music theory was limited. Lester Bangs probed
Eno in 1979, enquiring:
 Throbbing Gristle     63

LB: “Have you ever had any formal music or theory training at all?”
BE: “No.”
LB: “Have you ever felt the pressure that you should get some?”
BE: “No, I haven’t, really. I can’t think of a time that I ever thought
that, though I must have at one time. The only thing I wanted to
find out, which I did find out, was what ‘modal’ meant, that was, I
thought, a very interesting concept.”9

What listeners will notice immediately when listening to 20 Jazz Funk

Greats is a total change in musical direction when considered against 1977’s
2nd Annual Report, which opens as dark, sullen, and unwelcoming. Not
anymore, this one opens clean and crisp, with a drum machine startling the
listener. With the end of the 1970s in sight, it was perhaps now time to ex-
periment with a more digital sound and a sound palate that would condition
many bands to a more formalised music.
The ‘locked in’ to the patterns and step sequences that instruments
like the Roland TR-808 would provide, and indeed, industrial music of
the 1980s, would see an array of acts using these machines to generate more
dance-oriented industrial music, which included SPK and Skinny Puppy.
The album opener, ‘20 Jazz Funk Greats,’ is hardly dystopian or in-
dustrial for that matter. It could be anyone, anything; all notions of linkage
to both TG’s sound to date and indeed the staples of industrial music’s (dark,
brooding) soundworld are gone. That is, until at thirty-six seconds in, the
sounds of an atonal cornet and synthesizer make themselves known. The lyr-
ics, or lack of, indicate abstract notions of what the listener is experiencing
rather than a complete picture of what’s to come. ‘Jazz,’ ‘Tonite,’ and ‘Yeah’
is not much indication of the album’s contest, and it’s a play on the album
cover’s concept.
Today, it is easy for us now to experience such diversions of an act’s
musical patch with the influence of streaming and instant access to the
entire catalogue of recorded music, but it must have profoundly confused
the listener of the late 1970s. While taking cue from the song’s title, it does
incorporate elements of these genres, improvisation from jazz, and perhaps
repetition from funk music. Again, it is technology that is the driving force
here. A key element in funk, the electric guitar, is here supplemented by
two synthesizers playing solos, confusing and compounding musical norms,
a postmodernist take on more traditional instruments. Further to this,
perhaps the track’s ‘funk’ elements are the interplays between the drum
machine and the modular synthesizer.
64     Chapter 5

The song fades out at two minutes and thirty seconds, throwing
the listener into a position of confusion after perhaps providing (if only
temporarily), a safe and nonoffensive place. Alas, we have just been
duped, and what we have experienced is the group’s successful attempt to
wrongfoot audience expectations, something very much continued over
from the COUM Transmissions’ modus operandi and their ‘we guarantee
disappointment’ mantra.
In a similar sense of immediacy, ‘Beachy Head’ follows, and once
more, we are in familiar territory. It’s stark and mysterious, almost like a
calling to the shore, or head, as is the case. The guitar here seems to be
stuck in space, flowing around our heads, and the field recordings buried
underneath take us to that dark and lonely place for many, a last glimpse
of the world around them. An important consideration here is the way in
which the guitar is played; rather than being strummed, it incorporates an
early version of an Ebow, in which a mechanised rubber wheel rubs against
the all strings, thus producing large and continuous drones. If anything, this
is what deep depression sounds like as it comes and goes, like a headache or a
deep fog. The location here is evident; even the landscape of the cliff, prone
to erosion, this sense of decay provokes a world full of unstable situations
and perhaps, ideas. Place is crucial here, and the field recordings from Beach
Head included in the composition are elemental, bringing us directly to that
place through sound.
In any environment, our surroundings condition us, inform us how to
operate, help us understand our habitat. It’s hard to conceive of a space, so
bound with rules and regulation, that is, in essence, transitory. Often, these
spaces, which seem like part public spheres, are owned and managed either
by government and private firms—each implying its own objectivity and
onus of the control and regulation of space, in terms of security, atmosphere,
ambience, and experience.
In The Politics of Public Space, Low and Smith (2006) define the difference
between both public and private space, observing that:

Public space is traditionally differentiated from private space in terms

of the rules of access, the source and nature of control over entry to a
space, individual and collective behaviour sanctioned in specific spaces
and rules of use. (Low & Smith 2006, 1)

In discussing ‘Beachy Head,’ the representation of the place is key.

Environmental psychology discusses the relationship of people within their
physical setting. Studies in this area involve the evaluation of the interaction
 Throbbing Gristle     65

of people’s behaviour and the perceptions toward spatial configurations as

Sommer’s (1974) Tight Spaces: Hard Architecture and How to Humanise It,
discusses, in what he termed ‘humanised places,’ and Sommer argued that
alienating environments produce subtle but psychological effects in all of us.
He touches on this further in Personal Space—The Behavioural Basis of Design
(1969), discussing how much an environment, or any environment for that
matter, affects humans activities, writing:

[Man] will adapt to hydrocarbons in the air, detergents in the water,

crime in the streets, and crowded recreational areas. Good design be-
comes a meaningless tautology if we consider that man will be reshaped
to fit whatever environment he creates. The long-range question is not
so much what sort of environment we want, but what sort of man we
want. (Sommer 1969, 3)

Ultimately, what the group presents here in ‘Beachy Head’ is a

process of how both location and environment can be provoked and
transcended, as an everyday human experience, through sound. From
something familiar to us, we are thrown into what can only be termed
as ‘psychotic disco’ in ‘Still Walking.’ In this immersive sound mix, a
comb filtered or flanged drum machine pulsates around us and provokes
a harsh and metallic place. Battered by feedback and distorted guitar
stabs, provided by Tutti, it’s an alien place. This is further accentuated
by P-Orridge’s violin, which dominates the soundspace like a bully in
the playground: pepped up, full of aggression, ready to fight. It is a
suffocating mix, but what makes it even more chaotic is the call-and-
response vocals, provided by P-Orridge and Tutti. Words like ‘still walk-
ing,’ ‘share of thee water,’ ‘in its element,’ and ‘like all of us’ are panned
across the mix. Their lack of clarity makes even more abstract this sense
of hypnosis. P-Orridge’s interest upcuts, a technique employed by the
likes of William Burroughs, of whom he would later befriend, involved
cutting up words and arranging them in different and nonsequential order,
a ploy to perhaps confuse and overwhelm the listener.
Jazz improvisation features quite heavily on ‘Tanith,’ as a solo con-
tribution from P-Orridge. Perhaps the most meandering composition
on the album, this solo competition bass, distorted/processed violin, and
vibraphone, with the addition of an auto-wah pedal, the sound world
here is lost within itself. Its mood is something it shares with more
contemporary jazz through abstraction and back-and-forth playing, the
communication of instruments, and attempts to syntax of language.
66     Chapter 5

Its duration unfortunately blocks us from further exploring the song’s

potential. Perhaps this is its very intention. In an attempt to bring you down
from ‘Still Walking,’ the group uses improvisationally driven, direction-
ally unexpected song form, and already we see its members stripping away
much of the noise and nihilism of their past work to explore rhythm and
melody more coherently.
‘Convincing People’ uses technology to deliver its message in a more
clear and linear fashion, albeit a more sinister one. Here we have a sound-
world that is disconcerting as P-Orridge discusses his notions on the title
of the song. The delayed vocal, panned on the left and right of the mix,
resembles very much an inner dialogue made public. As the song pro-
gresses, the presentation of the vocal becomes, at times, more childlike and
psychotic. What surrounds the vocals is a distorted bass, and guitar figures as
the monotonic, unchanging sequenced electronics drive on, without care as
if ignoring the electronic elements floating around it. A study in alienation,
what is interesting about this song is that the use of delay was its primary
driver as P-Orridge, confirming that ‘the delay on the voice that inspired
the way the song was constructed.’42 In an act of convincing people, such a
nihilistic approach throws the listener into a state of paranoia, and again we
hear the band’s power to interchange, to complement themselves, to use
extreme juxtapositions, all the while adding a clever sense of irony.
Dystopian and industrial drones reappear and bring us back to earlier
works via ‘Exotica.’ Far from any relationship to the genre,43 high frequen-
cies ring backward and forward in an improvised place, while more melodic
ones (and contrary to the background synthesised and phased instruments)
produce a world of contradictions. If the vibraphones alone were to be put
in isolation, they would indeed provoke sound worlds typical of exotica.
However, the group successfully applies their own stance on what exoticas
involves, as Daniel (2012) eloquently puts it, commenting that:

Transposing the same formal strategies of group improvisation and col-

lective feedback-looped mood summoning already employed on their
harsher recordings, on “Exotica” TG reveal that all along their actual
songs—qua songs—however texturally hard, are structurally soft. (Dan-
iel 2012, 94)

What follows is perhaps the album’s biggest statement of intent and most
commercial track is ‘Hot on the Heels of Love.’ An intoxicating track
that affixes the group’s exotica obsession to a minimalist disco beat and
Kraftwerk, that song would become a direct precursor to the entire genre
 Throbbing Gristle     67

of techno while also perhaps a homage to Giorgio Morroder and Donna

Summers 1977 hit, ‘I Feel Love.’ In an act of sheer defiance of the listeners’
expectations, beautiful arpeggiated sequences (one high on the right-hand
mix, bass on the left) allow the proto-disco drums to have their own space
while the vibraphones are meandering and wandering as per ‘Exotica.’
The keyboard line is human-like, as if it’s trying to speak a lan-
guage unknown to us. Further commanding our attention is the snare
that cracks and breaks any unwanted distractions. Carter’s skill of
programming really comes into focus here; it is reductionist and minimal,
but this is part of its beauty. Yet what is most convincing are Tutti’s
vocals: ‘I’m hot on the heels of love/waiting for help from above’ are
presented in a husky and sensual fashion, and it is very music, a sound
document of a pornographic nature.
Technological leaps allowed the group to communicate with the con-
temporary pop music landscape; in the early 1980s, industrial bands, like
Current 93 and SPK, were aligning themselves with pop. Again, brands like
Korg and Roland allowed such acts to do this with much lower budgets.
However, what is worth considering is that although a ‘musician’s tools
might not entirely determine the music produced, they bear a strong influ-
ence on it’ (Reed 2013, 130). Along with the ‘Disco Sucks’10 movement
that occured in the United States and with Public Image Limited ‘Death
Disco’ from the same year, the group attempts here to infiltrate the main-
stream, to push their messages and subculture into the dancehalls and clubs.
Ultimately, in line with other dance floor musical experience, the listener/
dander needs time to sit into the repetitive rhythm, to allow it to take com-
mand of their bodies. At four minutes and twenty-one seconds, while it is
danceable and catchy, its short duration fails to allow us to get lost within
it and maintains the kind of uncomfortable dissonance typical of an outfit
lurking in the background of mainstream music.
As the compositional zigzag continues, ‘Persuasion’ throws us into
a surrealistic realm where P-Orridge brings us into an uncomfortable
unconscious realm of experience so completely that the world of dream
and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world. The bass
guitar essentially hammers us into a persuasion, unwillingly, while
intermittent tape recordings try to provide a further glimpse of a
narrative or a story that is essentially sordid and perverse. Such experi-
ences must have resonated greatly with Tutti, who would have perhaps
been in many persuasive situations as both a professional stripper and the
star of a number of pornographic movies, as she comments:
68     Chapter 5

As the persuader, you only see the turn-on, you only see the positive
side, because you’re the one getting off on this. The other person isn’t;
they’re just the vehicle for you to do that. In some ways, it’s quite nice
because you get a balance of me with my guitar. It’s like a scream,
shoutin, “No”. When I look back on it now, that’s exactly what I’m
doing with the guitar. (Tutti 2017, 108)

‘Persuasion’ is both fantasy and control, and P-Orridge uncomfortably

draws a line between. Any indication of whether this ‘Persuasion’ is con-
sensual or not is unanswered, thus leaving the listener feeling unnerved and
perhaps now involved in something troubling.
In continuing the journey between emotional sonic arcs, ‘Walkabout’
is the happiest moment on the record, and ‘its placement both continuous
and exacerbates the sensation of music and emotional inconsistency in place
as the pendulum of 20 Jazz Funk Greats swings in increasingly erratic direc-
tions’ (Daniel 2012, 55). A nod to Nicholas Roeg’s 1971 film Walkabout, the
track could be seen as a precursor to what would become Chris & Cosey,
formed after the demise of the group. As previously discussed, its sound
world is also a nod to Carter’s siding with Krautrock or Kosmische Music and
showcases Carter’s both compositional and technical skillset. Again an arpeg-
giated sequence bubbles throughout and feels like the most futuristic track
on the album. All this melody is perhaps, for some, a welcome relief from
the previous compositions. While Carter casts the direction of the album into
light, it is perhaps too much niceness too soon, as P-Orridge returns with a
chaotic ‘What a Day.’ If anything, it recalls the sound of the first Throbbing
Gristle releases, the industrial ‘stamp of approval’ of creating alienating sound
worlds. The instruments are aggressive; synths and guitars fight between
the mechanism of the electronics, much of which, primarily the rhythmic
elements, were made by sequencing Sleazy’s found sounds and field
recordings on cassette. P-Orridge’s vocals circle around the listener, and in
many ways, he changes character throughout, yet it’s the repetition of these
words is perhaps the track’s strongest element, as the listener creates their own
meaning by continuity exposure to this repetitive manifestation.
The album concludes with a broken-motor, grinding momentum
in the form of ‘Six Six Sixties,’ which, in many ways, sounds like a
live sound recording. Dark electronics overload the sound space that is
complemented with P-Orridge’s wandering bass solo. The distortion used
acts as the album’s epilogue; a last call into the wild, poised at the edge as
the lyrics (that dip into occultism) drive forward.
 Throbbing Gristle     69

The album’s reissue and liner notes sum up the acts approach, in that
what they achieved with 20 Jazz Funk Greats was both an intentional (and
unintentional) exploration into the unknown, in that:

The quality and content of this album should not be compared to con-
ventional commercial live or studio recordings. The Throbbing Gristle
repertoire consisted of intentional (and unintentional) tonalities, timbres
including: tape hiss, phase errors, white noise, distortion, clicks, pops,
extreme high and low frequencies and occasionally silence. Please bear
in mind when listening to these recordings.11

20 Jazz Funk Greats pushes and pulls the group in and out of focus.
In its flight between ugliness and beauty (through sound), and although
it’s a noncoherent musical directive, it’s a very engaging listening experi-
ence. Its ever-shifting template, conceptual and process-oriented agenda,
make it a milestone of dystopian, industrial music produced in Britain
during the late 1970s.
In an exploration of such, 20 Jazz Funk Greats does not seek truth
or beauty; they simply dismantle it, using the synthesizer and electronics
as a conduit to achieve this. Finally, in an apt and fitting analysis of the
album, Daniel (2008) concludes a fitting summary of ‘poised at the edge
of the abyss, it’s a record that can’t make up its mind to jump or hang
on’ (Daniel 2008, 40).

TECHNOLOGY

Throbbing Gristle’s relationship with technology was a clear statement

of intent as it acted as a platform to extend their interests in not only
confrontation, but also in an attempt to challenge the listener. A clear
example of this is alluded to by Fanny Tutti, commenting that ‘Chris and
Sleazy became very close, drawn together in frenzied enthusiasm for tech-
nology that could bring a new approach to and ways of making sound’
(Tutti 2017, 242). The group did attempt to get endorsed by a number
of electronics brands, as Tutti recalls, commenting:

The Throbbing Gristle affair with Roland equipment started with

Chris’s synth and sequencers, then my Boss effects pedals, then we got
a Roland Jazz Chorus combo amp. And thought what fun it would
be to infiltrate the music-business practice of sponsorship deals. We
70     Chapter 5

approached Roland, sending them a photo of us posing with all our

Roland gear, They didn’t bite. (Ibid., 244)

Indeed, these brands of electronics manufacturers helped shape the very

sound of the group, as suggested by Tutti, in that:

The rhythms Chris has done previously using tape loops were quite
loose, allowing for more experimental, ambient tracks. We wanted to
tighten things up. I loaned Chris £40 to part-exchange his Korg synth
for a Roland Sequencer. He put rhythms together mostly in his flat,
recording straight to tape using drum machines and synths, his new
sequencer and tape samples. The Roland sequencer created the unre-
lenting rhythm that drove and anchored the Throbbing Gristle sound.
‘Zkylon B Zombie’ took on a new life and we opened with it at our
next gig. (Ibid., 226)

This rejection from a corporate electronics manufacturer was by no means a

deterrent; it was in custom effects and homemade electronics that the group’s
sound, spurred on by Carter, would become further extended and came in
the form of the ‘Gristleizer.’ The original Gristleizer unit was conceived and
constructed by Carter but was based on an electronics DIY project designed
by Roy Gwinn, which was published as the ‘GEP’ (Guitar Effects Pedal)
in Practical Electronics magazine (July 1975). Roy Gwinn’s project was also
briefly sold in kit form (just the PCB and components) in the UK during the
1970s. Their musical and sonic legacy is reflected today with the numerous
reincarnations of the Gristleizer, that included clones, in particular the ones
developed by Endangered Audio in 2009.
Here, the sound worlds and sonic devices of the past are reformatted
and reshaped for current generations to enjoy, and to perhaps create their
own worlds of dystopian sonic futurism. The Gristleizer was remade in 2009
in conjunction with Industrial Records, TG, and Christian Virant (inventor
of the widely popular FM3 Buddha Machine). This was a (more portable
and reliable) reproduction of the original Gristleizer. It features thirteen TG
loops that users can compose and make noise with. Carter is still very much
at the forefront of maintaining TG’s sonic legacy. Within the modular syn-
thesizer world, in 2019, Carter, along with Roy Gwinn, developed a wide
selection of eurorack12 modules with Future Sounds Systems. Christopherson
explained Carter’s construction and musical experimentation in a 1987 inter-
view with Keyboard Magazine, commenting:

It was a box that [TG synthesist] Chris Carter made for me, to my design
that basically switched on and off—through inputs on tape recorders—six
 Throbbing Gristle     71

cassette machines, the output of each going to a different key. Many of

the machines I used in TG were cassette machines that were stripped
down and altered to play backward and forward and four tracks at once,
the speed variable by flywheels. The very first sampling device there
ever was, as far as I know, was manufactured by Mountain Hardware
for Apple computers. It was designed to reproduce voice samples, and
had a very limited selection of pitches. I was using that onstage in ’79 or
’80, which was before the first Fairlight was used commercially. So I’ve
always had a soft spot for sampling.13

CONCLUSION

Demers (2010) points toward one of Throbbing Gristle’s key contributions

to electronic music; the distortion of beauty, writing:

The role of noise, repetition, stasis and distortion shifts to negative

beauty, a pleasure that does not conform to Katian standards of balance
and semblance but nonetheless aspires to the condition of beauty. The
sublime and the beautiful are thus not so much opposites as they are dif-
ferent destinations along the same trajectory. (Demers 2010, 106–107)

The sound world the group created was produced by the misuse of both
sythesthesizers and electronics. In this, they managed to achieve something
unique, alongside the Punk movement, which was happening concurrently.
By splitting both noise and music apart, their distortion of the traditional
model of musicmaking would go on to spur numerous acts in Britain in the
preceding decade. Indeed, the liberation of technology during the 1980s
meant that the influence of TG would continue to inform in the guises of the
split-off bands that the breakup would produced: Carter and Tutti’s ‘Chris
and Cosey’ and P-Orridge and Sleazy’s ‘Psychic TV’ and ‘Coil.’ Along with
Cabaret Voltaire, TG charted new territory and expanded borders of thought
and the norms of musical performance that continue to influence the shape
and sound of electronic music in Britain today. Their revolutionary attitudes
and methods, rooted in both Dadaism and surrealism and transduced through
means of confrontation and subversion, expressed Britain in the late 1970s
like no other, its struggles and isolation.
Within the formation of the terms ‘industrial music’ as a genre,
almost seems like accident and would come as much a surprise for the
band, and this was come to bear on a November day in 1977, while
visiting London’s Virgin Records:
72     Chapter 5

Saturday we went in to look around and see if it was on the shelves

yet. We were looking around and it was not under T. We figured those
fuckers hadn’t put it out. We looked under I for industrial and there
it was, written “industrial” and they spelled it wrong too. The next
time we went in, there was Cabaret Voltaire there under I. They really
swallowed it. They’d gone for it. Industrial music was now a genre.
We were all, wow! we did it! We invented a genre of music!14

On its release in 1979, 20 Jazz Funk Greats polarised both the music press
and its fan base. Rather than presenting a coherent collection of songs, what
is evident is only fragments of ideas, always never resolved and ‘neither
ahead of its time nor entirely at home in its historical moment, its an album
that never truly arrived’ (Daniel 2012, 161). Yet it was such a powerful
comment on modernity, a viewpoint of things that are broken, of social
upheaval, viewed through the urban wastelands of 1970s Britain.
Berman’s (2010) All That Is Solid Melts into Air considers the outcomes
and realities of modernity, observing that:

All these visions and revisions of modernity were active orientations

towards history, attempts to connect the turbulent present with a
past and a future, to help men and women all over the contemporary
world to make themselves at home in this world. These initiatives
all failed, but they sprang from a largeness of vision and imagination,
and from an ardent desire to seize the day. It was an absence of these
generous visions and initiatives that made the 1970s such a bleak decade.
(Berman, 2010, 33)

Throbbing Gristle certainly ‘seized the day’ and spun the ideals and aesthetics
of modernism to create, musically, something quite unique. 20 Jazz Funk
Greats’ very failure to resolve could perhaps be the group’s overarching
and lasting influence, that of being flawed. The group was ‘terminated’ in
1981 and produced Psychic TV, Coil and Chris and Cosey, acts that would
continue on their eternal musical journey of musical subversion.

NOTES

1. See Savage (1991, 5).

2. See also https://www.theartstory.org/movement/viennese-actionism/ (ac-
cessed September 22, 2022).
 Throbbing Gristle     73

3. COUM Transmissions also comprised more part-time members including

Tim Poston, “Brook” Menzies, Haydn Robb, Les Maull, Ray Harvey, John Smith,
Foxtrot Echo, Fizzy Paet, and John Gunni Busck.
4. This ‘establishment’ here was simply the older generation, so we are now
witnessing the youth culture of the mid-1960s dramatically shifting in attitudes and
values led by youth and was a worldwide phenomenon. The generations divided
sharply by many issues including sexual freedom.
5. See also https://pdfslide.net/documents/tangerine-dream-sos-1.html (ac-
cessed July 10, 2022).
6. See also Kosmische Musik and its techno-social context, Alexander C
Harden, ISPM Journal Vol 6, No 2 (2016). https://iaspmjournal.net/index.php
/IASPM_Journal/article/view/784 (accessed July 10, 2022).
7. See also S. J. Surtees, “Suicide and accidental death at Beachy Head,” British
Medical Journal 284 (6312): 321–24, January 30, 1982, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.
gov/pmc/articles/PMC1495868/ (accessed June 1, 2022).
8. Exotica was a form of music popular from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s
that evoked the unfamiliar, distant places and times, and used unconventional
instruments to achieve this (xylophones, marimbas). See also Martin Denny’s The
Enchanted Sea (1951).
9. Lester Bangs, “Eno,” Musician, Player, & Listener 21 (Nov. 1979), 40.
10. In 1979, the Detroit rock radio DJ Steve Dahl was so aggrieved that his
beloved Stones and Zeppelin were being dropped from playlists in favour of the
Village People, Donna Summer, and Chic, that he launched his “Disco sucks!”
campaign. Dahl encouraged listeners to phone in their disco requests, which he
would then destroy on air with explosive sound effects.
11. Liner notes, Remaster of 20 Jazz Funk Greats.
12. Eurorack is a modular synthesizer format originally specified in 1996 by
Doepfer Musikelektronik. See also http://www.doepfer.de/home.htm (accessed
September 1, 2022).
13. See also https://brainwashed.com/common/htdocs/publications/coil
-1987-keyboard.php?site=coil08 (accessed March 10, 2022).
14. P-Orridge interview extracted from Assimilate Magazine https://www.
tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10486801.2011.645231 (accessed September
15, 2022).
 6

THE NORMAL
The Car Crash Set

T he English writer J.G. Ballard (1930–2009) wrote some of his most

prolific work during the 1970s, works that painted images of bleak man-
made landscapes and dystopian outlooks. Ballard also wrote about progress,
albeit cautionary, and saw modernity as a landscape of bleak manmade sculp-
tures. He was a primarily science fiction writer, and his early works were a
direct response to his rejection of a particular type of ‘England.’
Within this, Ballard attempted to deal with the psychological effects
of technological, social, or environmental developments, and his obses-
sion with mass media and emergent technologies would provide much
influence on a generation of writers, artists, and musicians. This chapter
discusses Daniel Miller’s the Normal and the single ‘Warm Leatherette’
(1979), examining the influence of Ballard’s Crash (1973) on Miller while
also overviewing the synthesizers and electronics behind the work.

INFLUENCES

Stout (1916), in Art and the Automobile, describes the ways in which power,
body width, mass, comfort, and other automobile qualities can be suggested
by proportions of the human body and that the automobile of the future
would take every advantage of artistic knowledge to build up an appeal
consistent with its mechanical performance, in that:

Art is the science of eye appeal; the appearance-basis of attractive-

ness. If one builds into a commercial product an appeal to the eye, he
establishes the first point of salesmanship, which is impression. (Stout
1916, 536–41)

75
76     Chapter 6

The aesthetics with the mechanical were core to the Italian Futurist Move-
ment (1909–1944), and in The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism (1909),
F.T. Marinetti opens with a surrealist text, one full of ‘speed, violence and
dynamism’ (Baxter 2009, 111). Here, the author is seated behind:

the steering wheel, a guillotine blade that threatened my stomach, cel-

ebrates a new danger, which is also a new beauty: the beauty of speed.
A racing car whose hood is adorned with great pipes, like serpents of
explosive breath—a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more
beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace. After the crash, the author is
regenerated, rather than destroyed: When I came up—torn, filthy and
stinking—from under the capsized car, I felt the white-hot iron of joy
deliciously pass through my heart. (Marinetti 1909, 22)

This fusion of man and technology was at the core of the Futurist Move-
ment. Through technology, Marinetti attempted to cross the boundaries of
the self, subjectivity, reality, and the day-to-day experience. The Futurist
Movement was largely concerned with what was referred to as ‘dynamic
aesthetics,’ which involved glorifying modernity and breaking away from
Italy’s past. Marinetti saw the significance of the machine in that it could
be eternal, always churning, driving toward both modernity and the future,
albeit unknown. The industrialization in Italy (1897–1913) was a huge
significance to the Futurist Movement, with many exploring the mecha-
nisation of technology. The automobile, for Marinetti, explored futurism
through a car crash. In the moment, he steps into modernism, a world
where speed and technology explode (or crash) into his/her own progress.
The rawness of this power, to engage within this new experience, Marinetti
found, in the superior essence of progress, its major symbols, the car and:

On we raced, hurling watchdogs against doorsteps, curling them under

our burning tires like collars under a flatiron. Death, domesticated, met
me at every turn, gracefully holding out a paw, or once in a while hun-
kering down, making velvety caressing eyes at me from every puddle.
(Ibid., 186)

Another seminal text from the Italian Futurist Movement was Luigi Rossolo’s
The Art of Noises (1913). As Marinetti saw the car as a futurist conduit, Rossolo
envisioned musicians to substitute, for the limited variety of timbres that the
orchestra possesses, the infinite variety of timbres in noise and everyday life,
reproduced via instruments more like machines.
 The Normal     77

The instruments that he and fellow futurist Ugo Piatti built, like the
Intonarumori, were hand-cranked machines and exploited the Futurists’
notions of noise, violence, and confrontation. Sixty years later, Ballard
searched for new landscapes beyond what he observed on a daily basis, and
these aspects of Britain were often marked by the ‘overlapping, jostling
vocabulary of science, technology, advertising: the new means of com-
munication’ (Paolozzi 2000, 204). Ballard discusses such notions in the
introductory pages of Crash himself, commenting that:

Crash is the first pornographic novel based on technology. In a sense,

pornography is the most political form of fiction, dealing with how we
use and exploit each other, in the most urgent and ruthless way. (Bal-
lard 1995, 1)

The influence of mass media and technological change within society are
key to Ballard’s seminal 1973 book, Crash. This survey on the ‘nightmare
marriage between sex and technology’ (Gasioreck 2005, 17) would become
one of his most critically slated works. Gasioreck also points toward the
‘libidinal potency of the automobile, the most obvious phantasmatic fea-
ture of this commodity, but also on its destructive power (literalised in the
car-crash), [which] induces excitement and unleashes energy’ (Ibid., 68).
Invocations of machinery and psychosexual themes populate the book, as
the ‘crash’ itself lies somewhere between the destructiveness of both human
desires and technology. Crash is a ‘cautionary book’ (Ibid., 82) in that its
‘depiction of a profound techno-cultural will to destruction marks it out as
a modern morality tale’ (Sobchak 1991, 18).
Vaughan, the book’s central character, embodies this destruction and
that of the ‘body machine complex’:

I knew that Vaughan had retired finally into his own skull. In this over-lit
realm ruled by violence and technology he was now driving forever at
a hundred miles an hour along an empty motorway, past deserted filling
stations on the edges of wide fields, waiting for a single oncoming car. In
his mind Vaughan saw the whole world dying in a simultaneous automo-
bile disaster, millions of vehicles hurled together in a terminal congress of
spurting loins and engine coolant. (Ballard 1973, 16)

Gasiorek (2005) identified the ‘crash’ as having multiple resonances, in that:

It excites to violence and exacerbates desire; couples the board with

the machine; produces physical pain and proclaims human mortality;
78     Chapter 6

transforms lives through the arbitrariness of the roadway collision; stages

theatrical street-happenings for the voyeuristic gaze; and gives rise to
an aesthetics of destruction characterised by unsettling techno-human
sculptures. (Gasioreck 2005, 88)

Novelist Martin Amis was particularly crass in his review of Crash,

referring to it as an ‘indulgent exercise in vicious whimsy, 70,000 words of
vicious nonsense’ (Amis 1992, 92). Ballard scholar Jeannette Baxter, on the
other hand, compared Crash to that of a work of ‘avant-garde performance
art’ (Baxter 2009, 100). Baxter here was taking influences from Goldberg’s
1979 Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present, in her observation on how
performance art is ‘often a permissive, open-ended medium with endless
variables, moreover, the performance spectacle is a testing ground for disso-
nant experimentation and unorthodox expression’ (Goldberg 1979, 9).
When Ballard was developing the book during the 1970s, perfor-
mance art was gaining widespread notoriety, with, as previously discussed,
the COUM Transmissions’ ‘Prostitution’ exhibition in the Institute of
Contemporary Art, London, in 1976, being of particular importance to
the public awareness of performance art, helping it to assume the role of
a new and dynamic platform for expression, one that often went beyond
accepted notions of art.

BACKGROUND(S)

Miller’s The Normal fits into the lineage of the acts discussed thus far in
that his approach was largely influenced by dystopian ideals, subversive art
movements, industrial music, science fiction, and Punk aesthetics. Miller was
making music as the dominance of white Anglo-American rock music was in
decline. As Stubbs (2009) reflects, the impact of Punk on the establishment of
popular music during the 1970s was extensive, observing that:

Rock’s lineage and hierarchy, its modernistic sense of progression based

on hermetic and elitist notions of advanced musical proficiency had been
brought crashing down. Moreover, punk was arguably the soundtrack
to late capitalism in deep crisis. It was the noise of those deemed surplus
to requirement—the people who made it were useless, as citizens and
as musicians. From this, would spring punk’s vitality. (Stubbs 2009, 84)

During the 1970s, capitalism was in crisis, and Punk both reflected and at
the same time, deflected this, providing an escape from the ‘gloom ahead
 The Normal     79

amidst a certain grey, grim texture of everyday life in Britain, a country

that seemed to have given up rationing only reluctantly’ (Fisher 2015, 50).
Rather than the synthesizer playing a secondary or support role, it was
now at the front of the stage, pulsating and disfiguring rock music before
its very eyes.
Technology was ‘conditioning’ the listener/audience, a technique
writer William Burroughs was prone to implement as he used shock tactics
and satire to pull the reader out of the drudgery of modern life. Technology
refers to and reflects many sociotechnical systems and In the 1960s, media
theorists attempted to classify their technologies. McLuhan (1964) first used
the term technophobe, referring to it in that ‘technology had reduced us to
the sex organs of the machine world’ (McLuhan 1967, 46). During this
period, counterculture music and ideals were meditated, lyrically, often
through the denouncement of corporate, bureaucratic, technological, and
governmental control. Through processes such as automation, the concept
that man is simply a control mechanism and that ‘the machine’ is now the
ultimate tool for a tolerant society, was slowly becoming a reality.
For McLuhan, within this ‘machine world’ lay a futuristic, imagined
hinterland, a land in which societal control and oppression are married.
The machine—disciplined, nonverbal—acts as a demigod in a dystopian
society, ready to serve man’s every need, and McLuhan saw that, through
mass media, advertising, and technology, a utopia was being presented to
humans, and through it, the illusion of a perfect society. This, of course, is
what was portrayed. The truth was, in fact, far more sinister.
Further to McLuhan and throughout the 1960s, academics, philoso-
phers, and authors began to express criticism of the social, capitalistic,
consumerist ethos and the supposed freedoms that come with it. Marcuse
(1964) discusses ideas of ‘freedom’ in terms of the commoditization of
technology, commenting:

Technological rationality, which impoverishes all aspects of contemporary

life, has developed the material bases of human freedom, but continues to
serve the interests of suppression. There is logic of domination in techno-
logical progress under present conditions: not quantitative accumulation,
but a qualitative leap is necessary to transform this apparatus of destruction
into an apparatus of life. (Marcuse 1964, 11)

This ‘quantitative leap’ examines the very nature of technology that influ-
ences the demand for labour and capital. These matters, coupled with cuts
in public spending and the struggles with the trade unions, helped shape the
80     Chapter 6

context of what electronic musicians and Ballard were exploring. Whereas

Ballard sought refuge writing about dystopian worlds, musicians with syn-
thesizers explored the realms of futurism to create a sound that referenced
the landscape at that time—disconnected, harsh, and cold. This purports to
the relationship between man and machine, a conversation long documented
throughout both literary and musical outputs.

THE CAR CRASH SET: WARM LEATHERETTE (1978)

One major thread that runs through Ballard’s Crash is that of violence and,
to some degree, varying levels of cruelty. Such themes are the basis of
The Normal’s single ‘Warm Leatherette,’ released on Miller’s own Mute
Records in November 1978. The B side of ‘Warm Leatherette,’ T.V.O.D.,
was originally the lead single, and it was only in further reissues that ‘Warm
Leatherette’ became the A side. Miller used the synthesizer and electron-
ics to produce music without restriction. Miller, as a non-musician, often
relied on accidental or unforeseen processes to help generate sounds, and
this is often due to the performer’s unfamiliarity of the instrument in
question. Therein lies the power of technological change; invention and
innovation allowed Miller to free himself from traditional pop music’s
sound reproduction mechanisms, that of learning how to play an instru-
ment, traditionally. With this new and exotic futuristic tonality, Miller
could extend lyrical detail, and within this, could produce more exotic
and extreme thematic ideals.
The beginnings of the Normal came when Miller came off the road,
along with Scottish musician Robert Rental, after supporting Stiff Little
Fingers on a UK tour in 1979. Upon his return to his home, a number of
cassette tapes awaited him. Miller, impressed with the quality and freshness
of these demos, decided to do something, and soon Mute Records was
born. The label would go on to define the sound of early 1980s Britain
with a roster that included Depeche Mode, New Order, and Yazoo.
Founding an artist-led record label allowed Miller to bypass traditional
music industry mechanics, ultimately allowing for great control of financial
and creative content, again bearing claims of Punk’s independent nature.
Part of what makes a lead vocal so elemental in popular music is that it of-
ten commands our immediate attention, in that it contains the idea, mood,
and subtext of a song, and it’s here that the singer’s personality appears.
Both the lyrical content and the instrumentation of ‘Warm Leatherette’
make the song an exhilarating sonic ride in its very short duration of three
 The Normal     81

minutes and twenty-five seconds. What is striking is Miller’s use of the hu-
man voice, and its presentation contains stimulating physical connotations
and associated images. Images of contorted flesh and metal paint the song’s
lyrical structure, one that portrays the scenarios of a car crash. Through
listening, we are propelled into this, in real time becoming unwilling
passengers.
Vocally, its delivery is static, with repetition playing a key role with
the words ‘Warm Leatherette’ appearing again and again, mantra-like, as
if Miller is programming the words into our brains. The images generated
are so startling that as listeners, we are barraged, from start to finish, with
images of death, sensuality, and violence. Similarly, the abrasive nature of
music throws us back and forth, in flux. We are the victims in some way,
being manipulated through aural stimulation. It draws on many thematic
ideas within both Ballard’s and Miller’s depiction of pain for pleasure.
Miller, like Ballard, takes the central theme of the sexualisation of pain and
death as a lyrical basis, and ultimately, like the central themes in Crash, its
characters strive toward a fusion with their machines in a death pact.
Instrumentally, the song is constant, nonstop, and at times, it’s hard
to catch your breath—one blink, and you might miss a thought central
to its remit. Minimalist concepts are key to the work, although only two
chords are used throughout. Much like the sonic landscape of a car crash,
the instrument’s tonalities are harsh and crass; the kick drum draws on
images of a car’s wheel passing over road markings at speed, acting as a time
maker and providing a sense of duration and metre. The snare drum, on
the other hand, cracks back and forward like a whip, drawing us closer to
the subject matter of the song itself. Melodically, a monophonic synthesizer
wails back and forth, almost like an alarm, provoking a sense of imminent
danger. Further to this, a synthesised bass helps keep a constant presence,
and only temporarily are we relieved of the second, higher oscillating tone
that commands our attention further.

TECHNOLOGY

In 1977, the French composer Pierre Boulez published an article entitled

‘Technology and the Composer,’1 and within this, he questioned the
relationship between the composer, the producer, and the instruments
they employ. Although based on the composition of a more academi-
cally themed electronic music, its concepts parallel similar performance
aesthetics of ‘Warm Leatherette.’ Boulez discussed the dialectical
82     Chapter 6

relationship between both musical material and ideas and proposed that
musical invention must bring about the creation of the musical material it
needs; by its efforts, it will provide the necessary impulse for technology
to respond functionally to its desires and imagination, and this process will
need to be ‘flexible enough to avoid extreme rigidity and impoverishment
of an excessive determinism and to encompass the accidental or unforeseen’
(Boulez 1977, 23).
Boulez highlighted that both the non-musician and the synthesiser
rely on such ‘accidental or unforeseen’ processes to help generate sounds
that are generated by chance, often due to the performer’s unfamiliarity of
the instrument in question, as discussed previously.
Such invention, innovation, and technology allowed Miller to free
himself from traditional pop music’s sound-reproduction mechanisms.
With regard to early electronic music devices from brands such as Korg
and Roland, the sheer abrasiveness of the instrument’s tonality was part
of its selling point. Economic reasons played a significant role in how
‘Warm Leatherette’ actually sounded. This, coupled with a lack of infor-
mal playing, led to the distinctive sound of the Normal and others. Part
of a synthesizer’s power, in regard to the Normal, is this: When prede-
termined conceptual ideas are left out of the equation, real-time reaction
often replaces interaction. This shift allowed Miller to create real-time
responses to the music generated, as, although rigid in the structure, it
could at any moment become flexible and versatile through improvisa-
tion with the machines. Part of the reward in using analogue technology
is its levels of instability and perhaps unreliability in that artists using such
electronic instruments often are learning about their operation during the
compositional process. This can, at times, produce unexpected results, often
leading to new and innovative effects, ideas, and processes that might not
have appeared whilst using traditional instruments. Within this learning
curve, the removal of the ego is born, and gone, for a time, is popular mu-
sic’s ethos of traditionally nurturing an individual’s instrumental dexterity.
This detachment or disconnection from established norms with popular
music made the sound of the Normal so distinctive.
Part of a synthesizer’s power, in regard to the Normal, was that when
predetermined conceptual ideas were left out of the equation, reaction
often replaced interaction, as Miller observes:

The role of electronic music is no longer so distinct; the lines are com-
pletely blurred when everyone is recording using computers, and can
apply however many effects. My personal position in defining electronic
 The Normal     83

music is simply to state everything has to start with a sine wave. (Miller,
quoted in Collins et al. 2003, 292)

Technology allowed Miller to create real-time responses to the music

generated, as, although rigid in the structure, it could at any moment
become flexible and versatile through improvisation with the machines.
Part of the reward in using analogue technology is its levels of instability
and unreliability in that using such electronic instruments often involves
learning about their operation during the compositional process. This
can, at times, produce unexpected results, often leading to new and inno-
vative effects, ideas and processes that may not have appeared whilst using
traditional instruments.
Economic reasons played a significant role in how the Normal sounded,
as Miller used a Korg 700s synthesizer, far cheaper than Moog’s equivalent,
and this, coupled with a lack of informal playing, led to the distinctive sound
of the Normal. The 700s, a monophonic analogue synthesizer used later by
acts such as the Cure and the Human League, was a very primitive machine,
with no performance controls like pitch or modulation. It was the perfect
machine for ‘Warm Leatherette,’ controlled and restricted, and in such, the
beauty of the song is its minimalist approach, encapsulating Miller within the
limitations of the instrument itself.

CONCLUSION

Popular music by its very nature is conservative, and it was through this new
relationship with technology that Miller and others could now free them-
selves of traditional sounds and their reproduction. This alteration and change
within this relationship involved a crucial element, the microchip—the
conduit that made it all possible. The sheer abrasiveness of the instrument’s
quality is part of its selling point. The beauty of these electronic devices
is this: When determined conceptual ideas are left out of the equation,
reaction replaces interaction. This dialogue allowed Miller to create real-
time responses to the music that, although rigid in the structure, could at
any moment become flexible and versatile through the use of the musical
equipment employed.
Part of the reward (for some) in using synthesisers is their level of
instability. This can often produce unexpected results, leading to new and
innovative effects, ideas, and processes that might not have appeared whilst
84     Chapter 6

using a guitar or drum kit. Levels of instability meant the machine could
go belly-up at any minute.
This instability also reflects the times in which ‘Warm Leatherette’ was
created. By working directly with sound, Miller was able to bypass music
theory and notation. In the midst of Punk rock, the song reflects music
and society, providing a soundtrack to the feelings of change and decay.
Within this, the removal of the ego is born, and gone is rock music’s ethos
of nurturing individual instrumental dexterity.
For Miller, the use of the synthesizer allowed for these levels of interac-
tion to remain in human hands, and perhaps this is central to why its sound
was so convincing as a futuristic sonic experience in 1978. Ballard’s ‘Crash’
and Miller’s ‘Warm Leatherette’ embody similar creative and aesthetic ambi-
tions. Through the presentation of a radical document in both text and sound,
they attempted to present to late-1970s Britain the sense of the unknown and,
socially and culturally, the unstable.

NOTE

1. Times Literary Supplement (London), May 6, 1977. See also https://www.jstor

.org/stable/1573509#metadata_info_tab_contents (accessed May 5, 2022).
 7

FAD GADGET
Mechanised Curiosity

T he tools for making electronic music are an interface to ‘ghosts of

technoscientific projects past,’1 and as Cascone (2011) observes, one of
technology’s roles is to hide its failures, in that:

Failure has become an important prominent aesthetic in many of the arts

in the late 20th century, reminding us that our control of technology is
an illusion, and revealing digital tools to be only as perfect, precise and
efficient as the humans who build them.2

Attali (1977) suggests that every code of music is ‘rooted in the ideologies
and technologies of its age, and at the same time produces them,’3 com-
menting:

Economically, the new technology creates a supply of a product, but

it must also create a demand for an object that outlasts its use. (Attali
1977, 100)

Attali saw that music, as a cultural form, was intimately tied up in the mode
of production in any given society and indeed, its cultural stages in its history,
and it is suggested here that it is up to the musicians to question the validity
of a technology and its contribution.
When we define an artist’s work within a category, it is placed within
a genre of ease of access classification. Yet so many factors influence this
process—social relations, class, economics—and through this, ‘popular music
illuminates place, either directly through lyrics and visuals, metaphorically
through heightened perceptions, through sounds that are seen as symbolic
of place and in performances that create spaces of sentiment’ (Connell et al.,
88). We must consider the background of these musical communities, some

85
86     Chapter 7

of which were stuck between the rhetoric of tradition and modernity, the
past and the future, the local and the global, questioning the culture and poli-
tics such musical beginnings caused. Such topics are currently being explored
via the reissuing (and often repackaging) of records made in the past.
The life and times of Francis John Tovey (1956–2002) is often over-
looked with the histories of both early new wave and industrial music,
and much of his back catalogue is now being reissued. Taking more of a
direction from Einstürzende Neubauten, across his discography lies a solid
collection of works that employ a multitude of approaches and genres, from
pop to noise and everything in between.
Of all the acts documented in this book, his work was perhaps over-
whelmingly more direct in terms of social commentary, almost always de-
livered in a monotone and deadpan voice. In what can be seen as verified
and not entirely consistent, within his discography he delivered paintings
washed with a dark dystopia, and with this sentiment in mind, this chapter
explores Tovey’s album Fireside Favourites (1980).
Tovey’s work has been cited as a major influence on upcoming acts
during the early 1980s, like Depeche Mode and Orchestral Movements in
the Dark. It would be the Normal’s and Mute Records’ Daniel Miller who
would prove key to Tovey’s early career, as Miller recalls: ‘Fad Gadget was
the first one (demo) I liked enough to put out. Before I knew it, I was run-
ning a record company—working from home with no staff or anything like
that, but a record label nonetheless’ (Miller, quoted in Reynolds 2005, 99).

INFLUENCES

Extending the idea of live performance was key to Tovey, in particular

with regard to ‘shock,’ and this would play an important role in the early
part of his career. In particular, acts like Throbbing Gristle use this process
most successfully, perhaps more as COUM Transmissions. For many of the
groups documented in this group, as the ‘hippie’ movement fizzled out,
many sought and found influence in the past: the Italian Futurists, Dada to
Situationist Movements. From this, both performative and aesthetical ideals
were formed, and a form of philosophical propaganda was born, which in
many ways established part of their legacies and influence on what was to
come later in the 1980s with acts like Nitzer Ebb and Skinny Puppy.
Reed (2013) presents the writings of Antonin Artaud (1896–1948),
playwright, actor, essayist, and key player in the Surrealist Movement in
Paris from 1924 to 1926, as an interesting, cross-pollinating framework for
 Fad Gadget     87

the works and practices of industrial music, in that ‘Artaud empowers an

aesthetic means of shock, calls on the grotesquery of the gothic, demands the
bodily, and implements this all in a political framework’ (Reed 2013, 169).
Reed offers here a connection to industrial music and the avant garde,
and in particular toward Artaud’s 1932 manifesto that ‘serves as a prescient
blueprint for industrial performance, particularly in its celebration of the
abject and its distaste for camp’ (Ibid., 168).
The Surrealist Movement was deeply influenced by the events of
World War I, and many of its members believed the exploration of the
unconscious mind was the way forward for the arts. Political differences led
to his expulsion from the group by its leader, Andre Breton, and he went
on to found Theatre Alfred Jarry with Roger Vitrac and Robert Aron.
Artaud’s The Theatre and Cruelty (1932) was an intense drama movement
that involved what could be considered a multimedia event, with props,
lighting, and more importantly, the element of shock. Thematically, it
involved themes of introspection, drug use, and mental health, to which
Artaud was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and was unable to adapt to
life. He could not relate to others, and he was not even certain of his own
identity in that ‘Artaud was in essence constructing an entire metaphysical
system around his sickness, or, if you will, entering the realm of the mystic
via his own disease. The focal point of his universe was himself and every-
thing radiated from him outward’ (Knapp 1980, 226). Although he spent
the last remaining years in psychiatric clinics, his influence on the European
avant garde was immense, particularly on writing from Samuel Beckett,
philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and American poet Allen
Ginsberg, whose poem ‘Howl’ (1954) would go on to inspire the beat
generation of writers.
Reed (2013) continues, in that ‘to lovers of surrealism, to the dedicat-
edly paranoid, and to many self-declared freethinkers, Artaud is a symbolic
figure not merely for his writing and theatre but for what they perceive
to be a self-sacrificing commitment to the pan-revolutionary’ (Reed 2013,
171).
The work of Tovey and Fad Gadget moves across the surrealist sphere,
in particular. Tovey used the avant garde for inspiration with both con-
frontational and physical live performances that established him, like many
others of the time, as expressly nonconformist. His identity was born in this
fashion, and his creation of a chaotic and noisy method was to challenge the
aesthetics of the establishment (be it the government or perhaps the music
industry as a whole). Tovey used his body as a platform for expression, and
akin to Artaud, Tovey used his identity as a spectacle. For many in the
88     Chapter 7

current ‘scene’ of acts, with the concurrent movement of Punk occurring

culturally at the same time, attitude and persona was (and perhaps still is)
as valuable as the musical output of an act or group. This type of status
and subversion has now been sadly replaced by social media, and it can
perhaps no longer create this sense of rawness and newness, the esoteric
and misfit.

BACKGROUND(S)

Cox and Warner (2004) point out that, over the past half century, an
emerging audio culture appeared as an ‘explosion of interest in auditory
history and anthropology led by social scientists who have turned their
attention to sound as a marker of temporal and cultural difference.’4
Further to this, the creative possibilities of sound recording and repro-
duction challenged the score-governed field of European art music. This
explosion in sound and its production was viewed by French philosopher
Jacques Attali, akin to both economics and politics, as a system of organ-
isation through dissonance, and that harnessing the power of music was a
reflection of society in that:

With music is born power and its opposite: subversion. In noise can
be read the codes of life, the relations among men. Clamour, Melody,
Dissonance, Harmony; when it is fashioned by man with specific
tools, when it invades man’s time, when it becomes sound, noise is
the source of purpose and power, of the dream—Music. It is at the
heart of progressive rationalisation of aesthetics, and it is a refuge for
residual irrationality; it is a means of power and a form of entertain-
ment. (Attali, 1977, 6)

Attali saw the power of the organisation of sound, its control, and more
importantly, the sense of power it could provide. Even at an early stage,
Tovey was keen to explore this form of power, sound recording, and like
the many acts covered in the book, the tape machine and/or tape recorder
was the technology of choice.
It was during his first experiments with tape machines that the idea
of noise became of interest to Tovey, and this, coupled with the more
subversive elements of his music, became elemental in his early work.
After a period in Leeds Polytechnic studying visual arts, Tovey’s first
experiments with sound and music were very low-key, as ‘there was
 Fad Gadget     89

very little space the house I was living in in London and the only place
I could buy a studio was in my cupboard’ (Tovey 1984, 29). These early
experiments soon evolved into solid tracks, and some time spent recording
in London’s RMS studios produced the single ‘Back to Nature.’ Much of
this recording was both produced and supervised by the Normal’s Daniel
Miller, who signed Tovey to Mute Records and released the single in
October 1979. He was inspired to make music and to start Mute by the
Punk movement, in that:

Punk had this incredible energy, but musically it became very conser-
vitaive very quickly. It sounded like sped-up pub rock, and it was very
exciting for a moment, not just musically, but also just because it was
so disruptive. So I went back to film editing to make some money. I
bought a cheap second-hand synth and a second-hand tape recorder
and started playing around at home. I had no idea what I would be able
to do. I just wanted to try it. And then I started enjoying it. (Tovey,
quoted in Jones 2020, 119)

Punk became, at this stage, an export and a wider repose of

England’s wider social and cultural changes. York (2020) considered it as
such in that ‘you could not just write it off as just tourism; you can’t just
say it isn’t relevant to a discussion of design futures. Because that stuff,
the class stuff, the archaic stuff, the great dressing-up box of the past,
is massively important in selling things and ideas from Britain’ (York,
2020, 95).
‘Back to Nature’ shares the same sound world as the Human League’s
June 1978 single, ‘Being Boiled,’ in its cold and dystopian craftsmanship.
Another single, ‘Ricky’s Hand,’ followed swiftly in March 1980, and it
again featured Miller heavily, writing, playing, and producing. Recorded
in London’s Blackwing Studios, it features more elaborate recording
devices; notably Miller’s Arp 2600 and Roland SH-2 synthesizer, along
with a Black & Decker V.8 Double Speed Electric Drill.5 Having now
established his sound, along with the use of found objects and electronics,
Tovey was invited by Miller to produce his debut LP, Fireside Favourites
(1980). Although it did not reach the commercial charts, it would go on
to set the template for both industrial and Post-Punk records of the early
1980s, in particular in continental Europe with the Anglo-French group,
Hard Corps, and Germany’s Belfegore. More so, it would be Depeche
Mode that would cross over and populate the industrial sound into the
charts, and in the early 1980s this ‘popularity gave mass audiences a
90     Chapter 7

reference point for industrial music’s clear influence, even if they’d never
heard the genre’s name’ (Reed 2013, 232).

PEDESTRIAN WAIT: FIRESIDE FAVOURITES (1980)

Signal processing has the power to take a simple sound like a sine wave
and transform it into something futuristic, unconnected from traditional
instruments. As modes of digital synthesis dominated throughout the 1980s,
in particular with the advent of MIDI in 1983, the role of the synthesizer
changed; it was no longer about obscuring the sound signal; it was more
so reliant on the ‘imitation’ of more traditional instruments. The English
electronic musician Scanner (Robin Rimbaud) discussed such imitations,
arguing that:

Synthetic production presents cultural artifice, the sign, the map of recog-
nition, as a substitution for the real, an alternative vernacular, “as signs of
the real for the real itself: as Baudrillard argued. The erasure of historical
reference points within this imagined synthetic universe has developed
into simulacrum, which differentiates itself from representation in the
sense that a simulacrum marks the absence, not the existence, of the
objects it’s supposed to signify.” (Rimbaud, cited in Demers 2008, 46)

Rimbaud eloquently references Baudrillard’s (1981) Simulacra and Simula-

tion, a philosophical text that examines and explores postmodernity and
the relationships between culture and media. The role of the production
of the ‘synthetic’ via the synthesizer probes cultural production and its
expenditure and claims that much of society has been replaced by signs
and symbols.
Within this translation, much of the human experience was now a
simulation version of reality in that ‘simulation is no longer that of a ter-
ritory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models
of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal’ (Baudrillard 1988, 166).
Baudrillard’s work touches on both mass media and its reproduction, and
it is referenced here as Tovey’s Fireside Favourites was released at the dawn
of the 1980s, a new decade in which both culture and materialism would
shift quite significantly, particularly in London, where a new breed of
social class was developing, as Jones (2020) points out, in that:

Pigeonholing then became something of a ‘thing’, as yuppies (Young

Urban Professionals) were heralded as the unacceptable face of pro-
 Fad Gadget     91

fessional success; few synthesised concepts of class and status have

acquired so much amoral resonance so quickly. They were followed in
quick succession by guppies (gay urban professionals), dinkies (double
income, no kids), donkeys (double income, no kids), dockneys (east
Dockland London yuppies), puppies (Porsche-owning urban profes-
sionals). (Jones 2020, 242)

As parts of London was transitioning from brick and mortar to

glass and modernist façades, Tovey assembled a team of another form of
‘yuppies’: engineers and producers at Blackwings Studios in the summer
of 1980, a team that included the Normal’s Daniel Miller (synthesizer and
electronic percussion), Eric Radcliff (guitar), John Fryer (percussion), and
Phil Wauquaire (bass).
The album opens with ‘Pedestrian,’ and its lyrical theme parallels
with Miller’s, that of the automobile and the dominance of roads and its
associated pollution. Its delivery is authoritative, and the track is upbeat,
which in many ways sets the album up in the Post-Punk genre. Its jagged
and angular guitar parts, more than likely processed by Miller’s Arp 2600,
Tovey supplements and support lyrics of warning:

Every road leads to another,

Juggernaut Noise and Petrol Fumes.

Even though Tovey here points toward his dislike of machinery, along
with these found objects, drills and electric shavers became core to the
album’s overall sound world. Elsewhere, Tovey uses more abrasive and
more shock value:

Don’t breathe the air,

It’s full of lead,
Baby’s sick,
Baby’s dead.

Tovey used an interesting vocal technique by also punctuating the ending

of each bridge by singing the ending lyric with a shout, which is further
processed by reverberation.
The song ends with a wash of white noise and distortion that bleeds
into the next track, and with ‘State of the Nation.’ Here Tovey delivers
lyrics with a deadpan, monotonous leaning. Drums and bass lead with a
dominant swing. However, the synthesizers provide much of the musical
components; further to this, the background noise and electronics wash
92     Chapter 7

across much of the track, crescendoing at the end to a chaotic sound space
that is harsh and abrasive. It can only be assumed here that much of this
has been created by the sound of drills, as mentioned in the LP’s liner
notes, and the addition of the wash of noise supports the song’s pessimistic
overview with Tovey singing, ‘Life begins when you’re ready to face it.’
The song’s title also refers somewhat to the decline and eroding of
the status of the British empire, as Tomlinson (2013) indicates that ‘the
problems of the mid-1970s were not short term but the culmination of a
long-term decline, deeply embedded in British society and in its political
economy’ (Tomlinson, quoted in Black, Lawrence, Pemberton, Hugh, &
Thane, Pat [eds.] 2013, 55). Commenting on consumerism as at the dawn
of a new decade, both banks and government were pursuing a policy of
pushing affluence as ‘domestication, central heating, freezers and home
telephones became more common in British homes’ (Black & Pemberton
2013, 16). Tovey narrates:

Collecting things don’t need

In a room I never use.

As the song peters out, we are left with a stagnant feeling, yet with a sense
of questioning the very nature of being. ‘Salt Lake City Sunday’ jumps into
action, pulling the listener out of a dystopian slumber.
At two minutes and twelve seconds, it’s the album’s shortest track that
combines proto techno, upbeat, and marching band music (that is supported
by Nick Cash’s drumroll) to create a unique and diverse addition at such an
earthly stage of the album. Lyrically, the Church of the Latter-Day Saints
(LDS) are the target here, and Tovey’s presents a wiry commentary: ‘They
want you to repent/they want your ten percent.’ Although not seemingly
religious, Tovey uses this lyrical content to further underpin his distaste
for the organisation of loft spiritual thoughts, including those of the LDS,
which included the ‘baptism of the dead,’ in which individuals who had died
without accepting the church’s gospel and no longer possessed the
physical body for baptism were represented by living proxies.6 A distorted
and improvised synthesizer solo, along with a dynamically changing drum-
roll, takes the track to an anxious climax, in which Tovey gives his ultimatum
to perhaps the LDS: ‘I slam the door in your face.’‘Cotius Interruptus’ begins
with a drum motif that would not be out of place on a disco LP. This soon
alters, and a repetitive synthesised theme begins and continues throughout
the track. Thematically, another concept is tackled: society and that of
empty relationships. Its sound world is full of a deviant coldness, a depraved
sexuality, as Tovey grunts his way through, commenting;
 Fad Gadget     93

The boys sleep with girls

The boys sleep with boys
Never find that high
Never acting coy.

In a 1981 interview, Tovey goes into further detail about the track’s theme:

Coitus Interruptus is about...see, every disco record I’ve ever heard seems
to be about having sex, the girl songs about sex are about being in love,
and the man sex songs are about getting a woman and having your way
and all this. So I thought I’d write a song that was a disco song and that
was really sexual, thumping—I can imagine a lot of people dancing in
discos to it—but which is about not being able to have sex properly—
trying it, but it goes wrong—because all songs seem to be about having
sex. It’s like what Boyd was saying the other day, if you write a song
about hate, hating somebody, people will think, “Oh, it’s really odd,
it’s strange,” but nobody thinks it’s strange writing songs about loving
somebody. Nearly every song in the chart is about love, so why should
it be strange writing something about hate? There are always songs
about sex, so I thought I’d write about sex going wrong, because sex is
not always great.7

The vocal grunts throughout become increasingly guttural, a struggle from

within, faced with the bleak and modernist point of view of intimacy. The
electronically processed guitar adds a significant weight to the clustered
sounds, and Tovey has a call-and-response interaction with this as the song
ends with the vocals pulsating parts of the finishing line. Sex and sexuality
have been extensively explored by other acts documented in this book,
most notably Throbbing Gristle, yet here Tovey explores similar territories;
desire and death are wrapped in a dark and dangerous musical atmosphere.
‘Fireside Favourite’ was released as the album’s first single by Mute in
June 1980, and as the album’s title track, it is perhaps the most quirky con-
tribution to the album. Set amidst a nuclear meltdown, this proto love story
and its lyrical contents are satirical and cynical, and along with the slow and
swinglike waltz timing, the drum machine (unknown model) provides the
main drive for the track. Within this, Tovey is in his own cabaret show,
detailing circumstances of a apocalyptic love:

There’s a mushroom cloud up in the sky,

Your hair is falling out and your teeth are gone,
Your legs are still together,
But it won’t be long.
94     Chapter 7

The themes of human interaction appear again, but here it’s the idea of
conquest and its loss or unattainability in the modern world. Musically, it’s
repetitive, marching along at a midtempo pace, and it sounds very much
like early Human League.
‘Newsreel’ accelerates the intensity of the album upward with
perhaps the most Post-Punk addition so far. The drum machine and live
drums add significant motion to the track, along with the reverberated
percussion, and again it’s hard to distinguish if we are hearing electronics or
processed guitars. Here Tovey expresses his view on the media, his disdain
for the media of television that focuses more on sensationalism than cold,
hard news. Tovey used his nervous energy here to perhaps be as provok-
ing as the tabloids in the track’s open lyrics with: ‘point the camera at the
baby, shoot the mother, giving birth.’ As per ‘Pedestrian’ and ‘State of the
Nation,’ ‘Newsreel’ is social commentary, about slugging through modern
life. Again we must consider the political climate of the time, and during
the period of 1977–1980, the press was largely at fault for propagating levels
of public concern or what led to the phenomenon of ‘moral panic,’ in that:

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral

panic. A condition, episode, person or groups of persons emerges to
become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is
presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the
moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other
right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce and their
diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often)
resorted to: the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates
and becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of the panic is quiet
novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence
long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. (Cohen, quoted in
Osgerby 2014, 188)

This ‘limelight’ was often perpetuated by the media and tabloids that
contributed to the rise and oscillation of social unrest, often misreading
and misinterpreting the events of the world. Further to this, Tovey is,
thematically, battling against an authoritarian form of a political system, as
some of the track’s titles suggest. As the 1980s began, the media’s response
to society’s woes only increased from hooliganism to how the govern-
ment dealt with the AIDS crisis during the early 1980s.
‘Incestiside’ follows, and many of the tracks that appear on the album
are proto or early sketches of future musical genres, in this case electro-
punk. Tovey’s vocals are heavily distorted by both ring modulation and
 Fad Gadget     95

phase effects. Its repetitive melodic theme haunts the sound space as Tovey
now takes lyrical content from the point of view of a fly, as Tovey repeats:
‘smashing my face against the windowpane.’ This claustrophobic and
nervous energy is further supported by a synthesised arpeggiated melody,
which, along with other instruments (including what sounds like the
drill), creates a chaotic and distorted atmosphere. Released as a highly
contrasted B side to the album’s only single, ‘Fireside Favourite,’ in June
1980 and at only three minutes and ten seconds long, it is perhaps the
album’s oddest contribution.
Feelings of claustrophobia and nervousness continue into ‘The Box.’
Again, Tovey takes on another persona, possibly that of a film director, in
which we become privy to a number of death scenes. The track first appeared
as the B side of the single to ‘Back to Nature,’ released in October 1979. As
Tovey exclaims, ‘Let me out,’ it’s easy to assume that ‘the box’ is indeed a
metaphorical one, or perhaps not; it could indeed be a burial of sorts. Musi-
cally, it builds gradually from a more minimal sound stage to, like many of
the tracks so far, a chaotic, nervous building to a climatic and sudden stop,
like slamming the brakes on an uncontrollable car.
The album concludes with the cinematic soundscape of ‘Arch of the
Aorta.’ One can hear elements of David Bowie’s Low (1977), and it can
only be assumed that Gary Numan was influenced by this epic-sounding
contribution. The musical elements are surrounded by a voiceover and a
conversation between a nurse and a doctor that is somewhat distorted at
times. At six minutes, twenty-one seconds, the layered guitars are heard,
and due to their lack of lyrical sound, it perhaps gives us time to reflect on
the album as a whole. It’s evident to hear that this closing track in many
ways solidifies Tovey’s contribution, as this sound would become synony-
mous with the sound of industrial music in the 1990s, in particular with
acts like Nine Inch Nails. Ultimately, Tovey was not particularly satisfied
with the album, commenting:

I think I did the best I could do in that situation at the time, but I’m
never satisfied with anything I do. I can always see how I can improve
it. So I’m never totally satisfied with something, which I think is good
in a way, because if I thought the album was good and something very
special, then there wouldn’t be any point in carrying on. The reason
why I carry on is to improve on what I have already done. That’s why
I tried to redo The Box. I’m not sure if it worked. A lot of people said
they don’t think it’s as good as the original. But what I tried to do
with that was the song was about claustrophobia, about being trapped
in something, and I wanted to try and give it more of a claustrophobic
96     Chapter 7

feeling. I don’t know if I achieved that or not. I actually recorded the

vocals inside a box, I sang in a box so that it would sound like I was
closed in, but you can’t really hear that.8

Aside from Tovey’s more downbeat analysis of Fireside Favourites,

the album was seminal in shaping the sound of both experimental and
industrial bands of the 1980s, including SPK, Front 242, and Nitzer Ebb.
Although forgotten and ignored by both the music industry and his peers on
release, much of Tovey’s legacy lies in what genres the sound of the album
would go on to influence: synthpop, EBM, techno, and more so, acts like
Depeche Mode, that would go on to borrow heavily from Tovey, both
musically and stylistically. In a turn of events, Tovey’s biggest live shows
would be toward the end of his life, supporting Depeche Mode on their
Exciter Tour in 2001. Sadly, Tovey died in April 2002 at forty-five due to
a lifelong heart defect, just as a whole new generation and audience were
beginning to appreciate his brand of subversive and dystopian music.

TECHNOLOGY

Our relationship with technology conditions us, or as Heidegger wrote, ‘the

will to mastery becomes all the more urgent the more technology threatens to
slip from human control.’9 The removal of technologies’ intended functional-
ity, and the creative abuse of it, offers the opportunity to exploit a sounding
object by any means necessary in order to access its potential sonic palette.
Virilio (2003) highlights the loss of physicality within current
electronic musicmaking, commenting that:

The demise of the relative and analogue character of photographic shots

and sound samples in favour of the absolute, digital character of the
computer, following the computer, following the synthesizer, is thus
also the loss of the poetics of the ephemeral. For one brief moment Im-
pressionism—in painting and in music—was able to retrieve the flavour
of the ephemeral before the nihilism of contemporary technology wiped
it out once and for all. (Virilio 2003, 48)

One cannot help but wonder about the possibilities (or lack thereof) of
future formats that may appear. A universal and accepted classification of
Fad Gadgets’ music is not possible due to the proliferation of dialects and
techniques Tovey used in making the music he made within the genre.
In attempting to do so, and with a very limited range of literary sources
 Fad Gadget     97

available, Fad Gadgets’ discography is very much part of the dystopian

sound and a much-valued sonic legacy. What helps Tovey’s music stand
out from the others was his use of nontraditional instruments. More so,
it was the work and additions of John Fryer (producer), who is listed as
adding extra fingers, ashtray, metal chair, and studio to Fireside Favourites.
This, along with Tovey’s use of similar instruments, including the electric
shaver, allowed the album to sonically separate itself from releases within
the genre in 1980, including Swell Map’s Jane from Occupied Europe and
Pylon’s Gyrate.
The subject matter of ‘noise’ in electronic music production has
been discussed previously with Attali’s writings, and a more contemporary
and social overview of noise in music is provided by Russo and Warner
(1987–1988) in an article entitled ‘Rough Music, Futurism and Postpunk
Industrial Noise Bands.’ They refer to the historical term and concept of
‘rough music,’ or ‘charivari,’ in that it was ‘the name given in England for
the practice of noisy, masked demonstrations which were usually held at
the residence of some wrongdoer in the community…involving banging
of saucepans, kettles, the rattling of bones and cleavers, hooting, blowing
bull’s horns’ (Russo & Warner 1987–1988, 47–48).
Such events went on well into the nineteenth century, and much was
born out of a sense of community shaming those who were wrong, and
it in many ways formed a domestic hierarchy. Such a process was also
popular in France, where it took positioning for mocking those who were
in violation of community norms.
The area and study of noise, and its relationship to both social and
community rituals, is very much in line (metaphorically) with Tovey’s rela-
tionship and implementation of instruments that provide the same function;
discourse and instability with the genre of music implied. Tovey’s recorded
output and his use of noise was a demonstration against the tempered scale,
tonality, and Western music, of both signal and noise, and a misuse of
technology.
Fireside Favourites is filled with electronic instruments that were
available at the time. Tovey’s route into electronic musicmaking was
via tape machines and through non-instrument–based soundmaking,
and his approaches to experimentation also mean that different forms of
technology were Tovey’s approaches to the physicality of music and his
manipulation of its format, analog tape, that would be his first condition-
ings of technology, commenting:
98     Chapter 7

I had an old Grundig tape machine and I managed to discover a way of

disconnecting the erase head from the playback head. I built a simple
switch between the two, so I could decide whether or not the sounds
already on the tape would be erased and I spent a while building up
sound collages like that.10

Chris Watson similarly would go through the same experience, using the
tape machine as a conduit into other electronic devices. Again, Bowie, and
to a lesser yet no more important degree, William Burroughs, influences a
generation of musicmakers to experiment with the collage, be it auditory
or just with text alone.
Although Tovey had Daniel Millers Arp 2600 and Roland SH2, he
went alone without Miller on the recording of Fireside Favourites, a decision
that may have compromised the overall output and sound of the album, as
Tovey elaborates:

I felt that I wanted to work on my own and in the end the end decision
had mixed consequences. On one hand, nobody made decisions for
me, so I was able to see through everything myself, which I think was
important, but on the other hand, I was really very green when it came
to how to go about recording in a studio. Blackwing was only an eight
track in those days, but I still felt daunted by the equipment and looking
back on it I did make a few mistakes that I wouldn’t have made if I’d
had someone knowledgeable to help me.11

The role of the producer is evident, or perhaps Tovey was aware that if
Miller was involved, in some way his stamp or signature sounds would be
compromised. Perhaps Tovey also underestimated what the studio would
provide during the compositional process. In The Studio as a Compositional
Tool, Eno was clever to notice that ‘the recording studio allows you to
become a painter with sound, that’s really what you do in a studio, you make
pictures with sound. Making records was quite a different way of compos-
ing from the techniques that we’d been used to in the past. This is different
from the old idea of presenting a record of a performance’ (Eno 1990, 45).
Beyond Fireside Favourites, Tovey would become more interested
with acoustic instruments or the approximation of acoustic instruments
via digital synthesis as both Under the Flag (1982) and Gag (1984) would
employ. Eno perhaps sums up Tovey’s approach and use of technology
in that ‘the technologies we new use have tended to make creative jobs
do-able by many different people: new technologies have the tendency
to replace skills with judgement—it’s not what you can do that counts,
 Fad Gadget     99

but what you choose to do, and this invites everyone to start crossing
boundaries’ (Eno, 1996, 394).

CONCLUSION

Two defining and more tactile elements (portability and the use of presets)
allowed the user of the synthesizer to have more options for it to become a
viable instrument of choice, and as Demers (2010) further explores, it began
to change the production of electronic music, pointing out that:

The year 1980 is a turning point for another reason. Although there are
compelling reasons to respect the divides separating high-art from mass
culture electronic music made earlier in the century, slippage between
the two spheres began to accelerate after 1980. (Demers 2010, 9)

Tovey was in many ways caught within these crossroads, and his work was
made and released during this change in the technological framework. As
Demers points toward, it was also in lieu of changes in consumers’ need
(and want) to propel itself into the digital landscape of the 1980s.
Along with this, mass media outlets like television would go on to
become dominant in the dissemination of electronic music, something on
which Tovey just about missed the boat. A number of other factors are in
play that can in many ways explain why today’s music is not well; Mute
Records (distributed via Rough Trade) was just starting out, with Fireside
Favourites being only its third release. Lack of budgets and publicity meant
that Mute was competing with major labels for space and content. Yet
this cannot and must not alone explain why Tovey became a forgotten
pioneer. It was the discursive nature of his music that meant he could only
sustain a certain level of underground following, unlike acts like Depeche
Mode, that would go on to conquer American audiences in the late 1980s.
Furthermore, in writing this chapter, it was found that very little has been
written about Tovey’s work.
Ultimately, perhaps just being plain weird is not always a bad thing,
as Fisher (2016) observes, in that ‘modernist and experimental works
often strike us as weird when we first encounter it. The sense of wrongness
associated with the weird—the conviction that this does not belong—is
often a sign that we are in the presence of the new’ (Fisher 2016, 13).
100     Chapter 7

NOTES

1. See Cox and Warner (2005), 211.

2. See Cascone (2000), 13.
3. See Attali (1977), 51.
4. Ibid.; Cox and Warner (2005).
5. CD liner notes to Fad Gadget’s Fireside Favourites, Mute Records, November
1980 (author copy).
6. Much of this process meant the dead could join others in heaven. See also
https://www.pbs.org/mormons/faqs/ (accessed February 11, 2022).
7. See also Tovey, quoted in Zigzag Magazine, No 114, June 1981, http://
www.bunnies.de/akiko/Music/interviews/fad2.html (accessed June 2, 2022).
8. See also Tovey, quoted in https://collapsingnewpeople.blogfree.
net/?t=1837756 (Accessed May 6, 2022).
9. See Heidegger (1977), 22.
10. Tovey, interviewed in Electronics and Music Maker, April 1984. See also
http://noyzelab.blogspot.com/2013/11/fad-gadget-e-interview-1984-dan.html
(accessed June 20, 2022).
11. Ibid.
 III

CROSSING THE MAINSTREAM

 8

THE HUMAN LEAGUE

Electronically Yours

T echnology and its effect on electronic music production has a duality

and can be viewed as something that has had a liberating effect on
electronic music production. However, this is also tainted with a pessimistic
viewpoint, in its degrading of the music and/or musicianship of the player
and the development of a mechanised and soul-less by-product. Goodwin
(1992) points toward the production rather than the sound of what tech-
nology can facilitate, in that:

There are clearly dangers in thinking about music as though it were a

free-floating mystery, a social practice unconnected to actual conditions
of production. As students of pop we need to know exactly how the
means of musical production impact upon the sounds themselves. But
in undertaking that task we have to recognize also that the definitions
of music and musician can change. The new technologies of pop music
have not created new music. But they have facilitated new possibilities.
(Goodwin 1992, 97)

Production and process are deterministic matters, with one often facilitating
the other. Into the 1980s, the advent of MIDI, although streamlining pro-
duction and workflow, would further complicate the hierarchical division
between making and producing, and this creation ‘involves technological
dexterity, but is not defined and determined by the technology as human
beings are making deliberate choices about what sound right to them’
(Longhurst 2007, 83).
Working-class identities feature within nearly all of the acts’ docu-
mentation thus far, and such an influx of musicians crossing back to the
1960s with acts like the Beatles. Acts such as Cabaret Volatire are a far
cry from the middle-class smugness from mid-1970s acts like Pink Floyd,

103
104     Chapter 8

and much of this identity is fueled by both antiestablishment attitudes

and the invertatable and inescapable extremes of poverty. George Orwell
considered such conditions and their escapism with great attention in The
Road on Wigan Pier (1937), and he saw that it ‘involved is not merely the
amelioration of working-class conditions, nor an avoidance of the more
stupid forms of snobbery, but a complete abandonment of the upper-class
and middle-class attitude of life’ (Orwell, 1937, 161–62). Such manifesta-
tions continue today in musicmaking, although identity (through social
commentary) has taken a back seat.
Whatever may constitute Englishness and Britishness was certainly by-
passed by the Human League, an act that ignored the established ideals of
popular identity and cultural expression to forge its own version of electro-
futurism, steeped in a coldness that was (commercially) offputting for many.
This chapter chronicles their background, influences, and use of technol-
ogy, and it examines their seminal album, Reproduction (1979), which, after
Travelogue (1980), would see the group change its lineup and direction
toward a sound that would bring about a massive rise in popularity.

INFLUENCES

James Joyce’s modernist masterpiece, Ulysses (1922), ends with the line,
‘Yes I said, Yes I will, Yes,’ and in what at first may seem as just an
abstract exposition, the sentence was full of foresight and the optimism of the
modernist mindset. For many artists, Modernism (c. 1890s–c. 1950s) was a
form of escapism through a changing world via the Industrial Revolution,
war, and urbanisation. For Joyce and many other artists, the sense and needs
of the individual were another key factor, in that this represented more in-
terest than society as a whole. The more dominant strain of art movement
that had come before it, Realism (c. 1840s–1880s), seemed now dated and
obsolete. Here, everyday life was the subject matter, and with this realism, the
sometimes dark and earthly pallets, which Realist painters used, confronted
the ideas and ways of art’s notion of beauty, the notions that every day and
everything is beauty.
Modernism (music) came about via the reconsideration of the old
forms of music and a move away from a more rugged tonality. Percussion
was to now feature more heavily through this break from convention.
Further to this, an emotional provocation was now at the core of this new
musical movement, a movement that, like its counterpart in music, looks
to express the mood of the modern age.
 The Human League     105

Botstein (2001) regards Modernism inherently progressive, in that:

Modernism, throughout the 20th century, retained its initial intellectual

debt to Wagnerian ideas and conceits regarding the link between music
and history. The art of music was perceived to need to anticipate and
ultimately to reflect the logic of history. In Wagner’s view, the
imperative of art was a dynamic originality rooted in the past but tran-
scending it. The history of music developed progressively through time,
rendering initially novel and forward-looking styles dominant, only to
witness that dominance undermined and superseded by the next wave of
prescient change as history moved forwards. Success with the established
audience of one’s time was not a criterion of aesthetic merit or historical
significance. (Botstein 2001, 2)

Composer Edgard Varèse (1883–1965) captured what Modernism

brought about when he wrote: ‘I dream of instruments obedient to my
thought and which, with their contribution of a whole new world of
unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner
rhythm and the very newness of the mechanism of life is forcing our ac-
tivities and our forms of human association to break with the traditions
and methods of the past in the effort to adapt themselves to circumstances’
(Varèse 1966, 11–19). The work of Varèse and the foundations of Mod-
ernism brought about an experimentalism in music that would go on to
influence all and every form of music, including the underlying movi-
nations of the Human League, which took elements from Modernism,
mechanisation, and urbanisation as a starting point to create a truly unique
and signature electronic sound.
Technological achievements in sound can be traced even further back
as far as the World’s Fair in Paris (1900), and the ‘expositions encapsu-
lated and celebrated the achievements of an industrialised modern society,
inspiring artists, engineers, musicians, architects and many others’ (Toop
2018, 20). During this period, film and the beginnings of avant garde music
was taking shape as the Western world was steeped in its own progress, and
as progress and modernism was closely tied to the development and popu-
larisation of science fiction, Schmidt (2010) observed that it was ‘born as a
self-conscious literary genre somewhere in this time period, although it did
not name itself until a few decades later’ (Schmidt 2010, 26).
This exploration was also evident through sound, and if any one in-
strument would go on to define the ‘sound’ of science fiction, it was the
Theremin. Leon Theremin, a Russian physicist and musician, invented the
instrument, one that would break all connections to traditional instruments
106     Chapter 8

in that it truly represented the modernist world; it was at the cusp of radio
broadcasting, and the idea that technological advancements were now
accelerating at advanced paces. The fact that this instrument could
be played without any physical contact was also something truly
revolutionary. With no keyboard or fretboard, the instrument is played
via the manipulation of an electromagnetic field around two anten-
nae, one controlling pitch and another controlling volume. Theremin
accidentally stumbled upon its creation while inventing a device to
measure the properties of gas, and through this process, he observed
that it created a low frequency whose pitch could be controlled by the
movements of his hands.
As a trained musician, Theremin could see the potential of such a
process, although not everyone shared this view, as:

Not only for the physical coordination it requires to synchronise the

hand movements around the two antennae, but especially for the
demands made on the performer’s sense of pitch. The player must
be able to remember precise positions in three-dimensional space,
without reference to frets or a fingerboard. Moreover, small inad-
vertent motions of the right arm will cause the pitch to fluctuate
noticeably. (Leydon 2004, 31)

After performing for Lenin in 1922, it would be his time spent in

New York City that would prove most rewarding, yet not without its con-
sequences, as after nearly a decade of both public presentation and perfor-
mances with his collaborator, Clara Rockmore and a patent deal with RCA
to mass produce the instrument. Theremin was abducted back to the Soviet
Union in 1938, where he was, at first, imprisoned, then hired by the KGB
to make tapping and listening devices. It was only toward the end of his life,
in 1991 at the age of ninety-five, that he would return to the United States
for a series of concerts with Rockmore, and at the cusp of the collapse of the
Soviet Empire, he would go on to see the impact of his device.
What Theremin had created was truly revolutionary, as it suggested
otherworldly ideals: contacting the dead, outer space, and other dimensions.
Its sound was also a complete disruption to traditional norms, and it culturally
became associated with the sounds of space in films like The Day the Earth
Stood Still (1951) and It Came from Outer Space (1953). Ultimately, the instru-
ment represented a tool that allowed electronic sound to become devoid of
classification, pitch, and convention, if only until the advent of the synthesiser
came about.
 The Human League     107

BACKGROUND(S)

Science fiction would also play a more influential role in popular culture,
be it in perhaps a more lowbrow form of entertainment, via the board
game. During the 1970s, the board game company Milton Bradley (MB)
would popularatize this mode of entertainment throughout the globe.
Beginning in 1860, in Springfield, Massachusetts, the company had their first
successful game with the Chequered Game of Life in 1861. A variation of
Snakes and Ladders, this game had players move along a track from early to
old age. The cognitive power of the board game cannot be underestimated;
the naval warfare game Battleship was a complex strategy-building experi-
ence. Players were tasked with concealing and defending their fleet of ships
against their opponents. As a form of entertainment, the very physicality
of the board game would become the basis of computer game technology,
which would go on to replace much of the market during the 1980s.
Science fiction would become a very important target area for
board game manufacturers who were keen to monetize on this wave of
the popularisation of science fiction, and one such game was Star Force:
Alpha Centauri, developed by Simulations Publications (SCI) in 1974.
Designed by Redmond S. Simonsen, the game was made up of a collec-
tion of star systems with earth acting as its centre. Within one of these
star systems was ‘The Human League,’ a society that seeked out more
independence from earth.
Sheffield County Council is largely responsible for bringing both
Martin Ware and Ian Marsh together. Meat Whistle, a youth theatre and
art workshop group set up by the council in 1974, was a breeding ground for
Sheffield youth who did not quite fit in. Set up on Holly Street, the initial
grant was only for a four-month run, but its organisers, Chris and Veronica
Wilkinson, ended up running it for over four years. For all people concerned,
it was a place to experiment, where bands were formed and disbanded over-
night. A number of seminal events occurred during this period. For many in
the group—in particular, Ware—hearing Kraftwerk (via Cabaret Voltaire’s
Kirk) was a turning point.
Similarly, Punk gave rise to a spirit of independence, and the city
offered, as Ware recalls, observing:

Well, the North in general is like that but Sheffield in particular is a city
of unexpected juxtapositions. Because part of it is good, honest, work-
ing class, put a lot of effort into it and it will sound great, craftsmanship
and on the other hand, at the time, a desire to escape from the mundan-
108     Chapter 8

ity from unemployment and a lack of prospects. Of course it’s changed

now and we’ve obviously done a lot of recontextualizing of it over the
years but looking back now that seems to be what was going on. But
that wasn’t what was driving us at the time. You just do it at the time.
You don’t theorise about it. You just do it. In the fullness of time you
can analyse why.1

A computer operator by day, Ware had an interest in electronics and

electronic devices, and the first incarnation of the Human League, with
Ian Marsh, was the Dead Daughters. A combination of tamla motown
and avant-garde electronic music, the group didn’t achieve much in their
short life span. The next variation, the Future, formed in 1977 with Adi
Newton, who would go on to form Sheffield’s Clock DVA, was far more
formative. Although they released no material and had no interest from
labels, they did record demos that would only see the light of day twenty-
five years later, when they were released as The Golden Hour of the Future
on Black Melody Records in 2002.
These recordings are an amazing auditory document of what the
Human League would eventually form into, but far more sinister and
darker, with tracks like, ‘Looking for the Blackhair Girls,’ sounding just
as menacing as Throbbing Gristle’s ‘Persuasion.’ The sense of comradery
and mutual support in Sheffield during the period of 1977–1979 has been
previously documented in this book, in particular, that of Voltare’s studio
Western Works, which also acted as a hub of communities, in that:

Relationships are better described as ambivalent and variable; some-

times competitive, antagonistic and elitist; other times cooperative,
friendly, supportive, generous, and mobilised by collective identification.
Resources and favours were exchanged and this was crucial to the flour-
ishing of both the world as a whole and the artist within it. Artists cannot
go it alone—music does not work like that—and they know it. Whatever
their differences, other artists and bands are useful allies and their common
interests and involvement in shared activities inevitably generates empathy
and friendship between them. (Crossly 2015, 7)

During the period of 1977–1980, the record industry was at a cross-

roads as the traditional models of recording, producing, and distributing
records were breaking down, and more and more innovation was now
being segmented into the hands of the makers, which, in turn, led to
changes in market structures, as Ross (2005) observed:

Changes in market concentration lead to diversity in musical form,

which in turn leads to musical innovation; this musical innovation leads
 The Human League     109

to market competition, which results in further musical innovation as

each record company attempts to find a new musical form to stimulate
consumer demand; innovation slows down as record companies strive
to gain the largest share of the market for the most popular new musical
forms (secondary concentration) and finally, this market concentration
starts the cycle over again. (Ross 2005, 478)

During 1977, a collection of demos that were shipped around labels in Lon-
don and to their loss, no one was interested, and Newton left to form Clock
DVA. To both Ware and Marsh, it was apparent they needed not only more
accessible songs, but also a lead singer who had some kind of unique contri-
bution. At first, a mutual friend, Glenn Gregory, was the choice, but he was
unavailable at the time. Ware suggested Phil Oakley, who was also at Meat
Whistle, who was known not for his musical abilities at the time, but for his
eccentric dress style around the Sheffield social scene.
Oakley’s stylistic approach would be key to the early success of the
Human League, and Eno (1996) observed some interesting relationships
between the values of appearance and individuality, in that:

Pop has always involved a melange of at least the following: melodies,

sounds, language, clothes, fashions, lifestyle, attitudes to age, authority,
relationships, the body and sex, dancing, visual imagery and the reassess-
ments of value in all these things. (Eno 1996, 393)

Oakley accepted, and in mid-1977, the Human League (version one) was
born. The same demos were repackaged and sent around to labels, again
with ‘Being Boiled’ featuring as a standout edition. Somewhere between
Kraftwerk and Funkadelic, its slow, hammering electronic percussion
creates a stark and dense sound world while Oakley presents an array of
lyrical subjects. With the majors still hesitating, the demos found their
home in Scotland’s Fast Products.
Released in June 1978 (and rereleased in 1982), ‘Being Boiled’ was
truly unique, and like many other singles released by artists documented
in this book, it failed to chart. Its liner notes featured a computer printout
of the following: ‘The League would like to positively affect the future
by close attention to the present, allying technology with humanity and
humour. They have been described as “Later Twentieth Century Boys”
and “Intelligent, Innovatory and Immodest”.’2
The single would go on to influence countless others to form their
own electronic music outfits. DJ John Peel invited the group to record a
version that was broadcast on the BBC on August 16, 1978. It appeared
again in 1980 on the EP Holiday 80, where it would go on to have more
110     Chapter 8

chart success, reaching fifty-six in 1980 and peaking at number six in 1982.3
Reviews were somewhere in between not knowing how to define the act
and perhaps the most amusing was John Lydon’s short July 1978 NME
review of the single, in which he referred to them as ‘trendy hippies.’4
Bowie was far more complementary, referring to the single as ‘the future
of music.’5
The Dignity of Labour EP (April 1979) would portray a band that
seems to go back toward more abstract and experimental material.
Loosely based on a story of Vostok, a Russian spacecraft, and its astronaut,
Yuri Gagarin, the four tracks (mostly composed on the Roland System
100) seem to be a step away from what had come previously. In any case,
major labels were now looking at the act in a different light, and in May
1979, the band signed to Branson’s Virgin Records. In a bizarre turn
of events, Virgin had wanted to act and become more traditional and
more commercial as a result. This process ended up producing their first
single for Virgin, ‘I Don’t Depend on You,’ which, due to its complete
turnaround in both sound and style, was released under the name ‘The
Men’ in July 1979. Having failed to chart, Virgin could see that a mistake
had been made, and they allowed the act to continue on their own path,
and what followed in August 1979 was their first album, Reproduction, an
album that although perhaps devoid of humanity, the atmosphere and
arrangements are truly futuristic, even by today’s standards.

BLIND YOUTH: REPRODUCTION (1979)

A central pretext behind this book is technology’s role in facilitating the

acts’ intentions and secondly, for it to disrupt or break away from the tra-
ditions of popular musicmaking. For the Human League, image and the
activities centred around this were perhaps just as important as Oakley,
in his androgynous presentation, further challenged associated traditions.
Through this, Oakley managed to obscure both contemporary place and
identity to create an alternative image of the nation’s future. At the cusp
of the 1980s, perhaps it was time to do such a thing, to distance itself from
its own past, as Rose (2011) suggests:

The term ‘national identity’, as scrutinised by recent literary theory,

has undergone a strange and uneven division of roles. Identity—as a
psychic phenomenon in its coercive, self-contradictory ambivalent
contours, or more simply identity gone mad—has taken off to the
 The Human League     111

post-colonial; while “national”—as in the cultivation of virtue and char-

acter—has tended to remain at home. So Englishness, while subject to
historical and political critique, has escaped psychic exposure. Or to put
it another way, in discussion of Englishness, relatively little has been said
about the potential insanity of moral life. (Rose 2011, 76)

To understand and detail what ‘Englishness’ connotates goes beyond the

aims of this book. However, the inception of the Human League repre-
sents a fascinating, if not psychoanalytical look into both the subjective
and individual sense of identity through musicmaking, one that would
become more evident throughout the 1980s.
This identity, aided by the associated technology (synthesizers) used by
the Human League, made a statement within sociocultural contexts, and as
Jones (1992) suggests, the sonic characteristics of popular music have been
informed by the processes and technologies of audio recording, in that:

It is the technology of popular music production, specifically the

technology of sound recording, that organises our experience of
popular music. Popular music is, at every critical juncture of its history,
determined by the technology musicians use to realise their ideas.
(Jones 1992, 1)

The making of Reproduction was produced almost entirely by synthetic

means; hence, this is why it is a truly unique document of both composition,
arrangement, and performance. This process draws on a number of points
worth noting; the system in which it was recorded gives the record a
particular sound, and in the case of Reproduction, it was recorded in the band’s
‘workshop’ or rehearsal space. The album was not recorded in a high-end,
technically complex environment, like a professional studio, and secondly,
the lack of live or acoustically recorded instruments (apart from Oakley’s
vocals) extends both the sound and aesthetics of the album.
The album was coproduced by the English engineer Colin Thurston,
who had previously worked on ‘I Don’t Depend on You’ and was perhaps
not keen to repeat the experience. His experience of working with Tony
Visconti on Bowie’s Heroes (1977) and Iggy Pop’s Passengers (1977) and his
relationship through producing Wire’s second album, Real Life (1978), and
Virgin Records, brought him closer to the band. It’s worth noting the role
of the producer here, often ignored as a core element of any production, as
Frith & Straw (2001) observed, commenting:

I still think that record producers achieve a miracle every time they
capture the spirit of a song or an idea; when they make it ‘work’ for
112     Chapter 8

the rest of us who listen to the record; and that they will eventually be
recognised as having been more important that many of the artists who
received all the attention at the time. (Frith & Straw 2001, 119)

Reproduction has several distinct factors: Its rhythmic organisation, flatness

(dynamics), and lack of silence and breaks makes it a very forward motion
and continuous journey. The album opens with ‘Almost Mediaeval,’ and
it begins with what sounds like a melodic motif of court music from that
period, a pulsing krautrock beat, generated by the Roland System 100. Its
tight, punchy, aggressive, and formal pop structure fools the listener into
thinking that this is perhaps the trajectory for the entire album. It’s certainly
a take on the production techniques developed by Kraftwerk in Kling
Klang Studios in Dusseldorf in the mid-1970s, but with a more distressed
and dystopian slant, and its brutal and pounding electronic minimalism is
not far off the work on Miller’s Warm Leatherette (1978).
Further to this, it’s a statement on musical and technological approach;
with no traditional instruments being used, it perhaps signalled a change to
this listener in that music can still be made upbeat and engaging without
them. ‘Circus of Death,’ which initially featured as the B side to the ‘Being
Boiled’ single (June 1978). More interestingly, the single version contains
a more striking opening, as Oakley announces, ‘This is a song called “The
Circus of Death”. It tells the true story of a circus we met. The first two
verses concern the actual arrival at Heathrow Airport of Commissioner
Steve McGarrett. The third emotionally describes a map showing the range
of the circus. The fourth and fifth were extracted from an article in The
Guardian of March the 19th, 1962. The last is a shortwave radio message
from the last man on Earth.’6
The album version provides a shorter interlude with a voice over from
LWT (London Weekend Television) presenter Peter Lewis, and it transitions
into sound collage of recordings from recordings and announcements from
Heathrow Airport. Lyrically, it presents a science fiction scenario in which
the human race is poisoned by a drug called ‘Dominion.’ Unfortunately, the
story is a surrealist tale that seems to end before it has begun. At only three
minutes and fifty-five seconds, it seems unfinished, and again, musically, it’s
dark and morbid. The electronic percussion beats heavily, and the synthesiz-
ers dance around this with motifs of, as the title suggested, fairground tunes,
although a macabre Human League interpretation of such. For Oakley, it was
as much about being serious, but also playing on these ideals as this NME
interview from March 1979 suggests, in that ‘we’re into cheap culture but
not in a cheap sense. We respect our audience. We have to. If people come
 The Human League     113

back a second time maybe they’ll begin to understand that there is humour
involved in what we do. But possibly at the moment we’re not very good at
putting it across. People think we’re trying to be enigmatic. But we’re not.’7
In the same interview, Ware gives some insight into, in particular,
how the live rendering of works of Reproduction, considered now liberating
synthesizers were to use, in that:

Musicians do hate us. People want to surround playing musical instruments

with a certain amount of mystique. All this ‘we are better that you’, there’s
no chance of us getting bogged down in technology and technique. We
play our musical instruments because it’s so easy. More people ought to do
it. People should go out and buy their own synthesisers and create their
own music.8

‘The Path of Least Resistance’ follows and again is minimalist, utilising a

monotonous electronic percussion such a song would not feel out of place on
the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Lyrically, Oakley
considers a mindless, controlled life, a life of ignorance and indifference:

So sad, the early grave,

When all the fun’s for free,
Start digging the early grave.

Its apathy toward the listener is almost suffocating, in that what you
have in this life is an early grave and its heavyhanded approach could fall
apart at any moment, yet this is saved, musically, by its production, which
much of Depeche Mode’s Speak and Spell (1981) references.
‘Blind Youth’ is perhaps the track most resembling the established
sound of another. Devo’s album Q: Are we not Men? A: We are Devo (1978)
sonically shares a number similarities, in particular in the electronic bass and
percussion. The proceeding doom and gloom is replaced here now with the
album’s most upbeat number with Oakley singing: ‘High rise living ain’t so
bad.’ Oakley sounds more confident here, as his vocal range extends upward
in pitch as compared to the more monotonous delivery thus received so far,
and although it’s tongue and cheek, it is perhaps the most coherent track
on the album. So far the use of consistent electronic rhythmic patterns gives
Reproduction a sense of immediacy and the consequence of this is a part of why
the album is successful. As it breaks apart the mundane relations of daily life,
we become aware of how both routine and time are inherently interlinked,
and as Frith (1998) observes:
114     Chapter 8

The individual and the social, the mind and the body, change and stillness
and the same, the already past and the still to come, desire and fulfilment.
Music is in this respect like sex and rhythm, is crutial to this—rhythm not
as releasing physical urges but as expanding the time in which we can, asit
were, live in the presence tense. (Frith 1998, 157)

Similarly, the rhythmic structure of ‘Blind Youth’ negotiates our experi-

ence of time and links us to aspects of both social and personal memory, and
as Cohen (1997) considered this, as ‘spatial-dynamics,’ in that ‘music fills and
structures space within us and around us, inside and outside. Hence, much
like our concepts of place, music can appear to envelop us, but it can also
appear to express our innermost feelings/beings’ (Cohen 1997, 286).
‘The Word Before the Last’ is one of the early pieces of the band that
existed previously under the title of ‘Again the Eye Again,’ recorded as part of
a BBC session recorded for John Peel in August 1978. We return to a slower
pace of life, and it is a song that includes excerpts from television during the
intro: ‘You will notice that very appropriately I’m left-handed’ and more
fittingly, at the outro with: ‘and described Mrs Thatcher’s first three months
in power as disastrous.’9 Lyrically, it focuses on an existentialism that Oakley
delivers, abstractly, singing:

The eternal moment laid bare,

No time to heal,
Continual pain, continual pain, continual pain, continual pain.

Surrounding these lyrics are synthesised melodies that are cold and
distant, especially the electronic bass that stabs the air between the rhythmic
elements. Monophonic instruments populate the album, and that is perhaps
why the listener is left with such a black-and-white listening space, a space
that draws on the power of minimalism.
‘Empire State Human,’ the album’s single, released in October 1979
(and subsequently rereleased in June 1980), begins with an air of optimism,
and after a proto-techno introduction, It’s at full-tilt eight seconds in, and
this sense of immediacy is one of the album’s strengths; even though the lyri-
cal and content are dark, the upbeat nature of the musical material (mostly)
allows for a contrasting soundscape to appear dark yet light, and vice versa.
Musically, it’s perhaps the most simplistic presentation on the album as an
electronic bass arpeggiation drives it forward, while a chime-like lead syn-
thesiser line runs behind Oakley’s vocals. Lyrically, Oakley considers how
tallness (physically) leads to a sense of power and/or domination. This is pre-
sented through chant and repetition, as Oakley uses both ‘Tall’ and ‘Wall’ for
 The Human League     115

musical punctuation. ‘Empire State Human’ did have commercial potential,

yet it failed to chart on release, and as Ware explains, it was perhaps just a
matter of the world being not quite ready, in that:

I think everything we did at the time sounded alien and we wanted

that, but we believed in our own ability to make that work and we
liked it. We were encouraged by the record company and although it
was still within our parameters, we honestly thought we had made a
hit. So we basically wrote a nursery rhyme and made it quite fantastic
in the literal sense of the word and Phil, to his eternal credit, came up
with the words that were absolutely brilliant. The backing track is just
great, but it was the classic right song at the wrong time.10

‘Morale/You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ is a song of two worlds.

‘Morale’ starts with a beautiful synthesiser-arpeggiated melody and sounds
very much like the tones found on Japan’s Tin Drum (1981). This is
generated via Ware’s newly purchased Roland Jupiter 4, and its sparse
production leaves ample room for Oakley’s vocals, which largely pertain
to regret:

I don’t forget,
The light growing weak now,
Experience is useless.

It is hard to pinpoint the content or subject matter of the song, and

perhaps this was Oakley’s attempt to abstract the listener away from it,
and it is the only track on the album where he purposefully interjects
rising dynamics (volume) and feelings into the vocals. However, at
approximately two minutes, fifty-six seconds, ominous tones begin to
appear accompanied with electronic metallic tonalities, and from this,
an electronic bass line appears, followed by Oakley presenting us with
a very famous opening line: ‘You never close your eyes anymore when
I kiss your lips.’ In comparison of what has come previously on Repro-
duction, the inclusion of the cover version of the Righteous Brothers’
‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’ (1965), is a truly baffling addition.
Written in 1964 by Spector/Mann/Weil, Phil Spector’s ‘wall of sound’
production is epic, as it is awash with reverb, giving it its angelic and
ethereal sound. Not the case here, and in fact, the direct opposite as the
non-use of reverb in this version makes it a very cold and lonely place.
If the Righteous Brothers version is a rupture of emotions, the Human
League’s version is more reflective of a cold winter’s morning.
116     Chapter 8

Oakley’s vocal presentation is deadpan, and it’s the album’s first

duet, with Ware adding harmonies. One cannot help feeling like being
in a karaoke bar while listening to it, and its daring arrangement makes it
feels like it stands in isolation from the rest of the album, and perhaps the
inclusion of this cover is a statement on the technology versus humanity
ideal; a provocation and exploration of the mechanism of modern repro-
duction, one that is devoid of feeling and emotion.
‘Austerity/Girl One (Melody)’ again is a track that has two trajec-
tories, a medley if you will. Firstly, it’s upbeat and driving and has the
same sense of immediacy as ‘Empire State Human’ in that it’s mechanical
and functional. The narrative of the lyrics have a duality as they deal with
austerity and ‘girl one.’ The elders (or the austerity) cannot seem to get a
grasp of youths and/or youth culture, and the daughter ‘girl one’ seems
so very distant from their way of life. Again, the minimalist nature of the
music or its backdrop allows Oakley to take centre stage, singing:

The father thinks in sadness,

On why his daughters went away,
On youth and other madness.

It’s a tale of attempting to do your best, yet failing, and it’s a story that
perhaps many parents can relate to, losing touch with a child who is tran-
sitioning into adulthood.
‘Zero as a Limit’ ends the album with a dark and marching beat
opening; the track takes quite some time to get up and running, almost two
minutes, and is the most Kraftwerk-inspired track on the album, as it also uses
a gradual increase in tempo, similar to ‘Ohm Sweet Ohm’ from their 1975
album, Radioactivity, although there, the Human League increases the tempo
into an upward chaotic climax that Oakley has trouble, at times, keeping up
with. Ware explains the concept behind the piece, commenting:

‘Zero As A Limit’ was always the track we finished our live shows with;
we had this idea of doing a track that accelerated towards the end and
that was the climax of our show. The contrast between the edginess and
the live feel with the glacial emptiness is missing because the mixing and
mastery didn’t accommodate it. So the way we conceptualised it in the
sequence, it felt a bit like a damp squib on the record.11

Reproduction captures the Human League, musically, between two worlds:

both experimental and on the cusp of commercialism, and critically, the
resultant outcome was largely misunderstood, as Sound Magazine of August
 The Human League     117

1978, where Chris Westwood contributes an uninspired analysis, in that:

‘Simply, The Human League have adopted the synthetic/mechanistic disco
stance and beaten Kraftwerk at their own game.’12
Andy Gill’s review in NME in October 1979 was far more enlight-
ening and considered not only the musical contents, but what Oakley was
achieving, commenting:

A lot of the blame for this lamentable state of affairs has to rest on the
vocalist Philip Oakey’s shoulders. As the possessor of a natural singing
voice, he has the ability to give their material some emotional sting, to
lend a sharp cutting edge of uncertainty to the ponderous inevitability
of the music. But instead of feeling the songs, he runs through them:
there’s no projection in his singing, just enucleation. He remains re-
strained, impersonal, distanced from the subject-matter, unwilling to
break the rules the way Sinatra, Crosby, Dylan, Buckley, Lydon, Pres-
ley, Waytt and a whole host of others did, and until he does, he won’t
come near recognising his full potential. The Human League story, so
far, is one of missed chances combined with unclear thinking and lack of
forethought. Rather than readdressing the balance, Reproduction only
serves to throw their shortcomings into sharper focus.13

Although the album does have its faults, this would seem to be an overes-
timation of what the next album Travelogue (1980) would entail, an album
that would be both Marsh and Ware’s last before the Human League
became household names. Reproduction remains a fascinating glimpse in a
band pioneering their sound with technology and propelling synthesiser
music into the next decade and is perhaps the all-encompassing dystopian
sound of Britain at the cusp of the 1980s.

TECHNOLOGY

Cultural theorist and critic Raymond Williams suggests that technology can
and does affect the development of societal conditions and that changes in
technology causes social changes, in that:

The basic assumption of technological determinism is that new tech-

nology—a printing press or a communications satellite—‘emerges’ from
technical study to experiment. It then changes the society of the sector
in which it has ‘emerged’. ‘We’ adapt to it because it is the new modern
way. (Williams 1985, 129)
118     Chapter 8

During the late 1970s, popular music making was adapting to the inclu-
sion of electronic devices in musicmaking. However, minus technology,
popular music presents us with the familiar, but it must also present us
with something that will attract our attention, and this allows for its com-
mercialism to appear. A distinctive character, front man, act or sound, will
ultimately make it stand out from the crowd.
Popular music has traits that allows it to become easily consumable;
limited vocabulary and well-defined musical parameters (verse, chorus,
verus), and concealed inside of this is the power and potential of style and
its marketability. As we have seen, the acts documented in this book were,
in many ways, enslaved to technology, as it was a large component as to
how the sound was produced and executed, and for many this alignment
‘blurred the distinction between live and recorded sound, between musi-
cians and engineers, between composition and performance, between the
natural and unnatural noise’ (Frith and Horne 1987, 174). The machines
and technology they used not only changed the sound of popular music
during 1977–1980, and the new classifications of electronic music produc-
tion generated during this period can be broadly defined as follows:

1. Structure: use of repetition and minimalism

2. Timbre: little acoustic elements
3. Rhythm: electronically generated
4. Ensemble: traditional roles neglected

The Human League, which produced Britain’s first album recorded entirely
by electronic means, relied most notably, for the production of Reproduc-
tion, on the sound of the Roland System 100. Produced from 1975 to 1979,
this semimodular monophonic synthesizer features on nearly all the songs.
It consists of five modules: the Synthesizer 101, Expander 102, Mixer 103,
Sequencer 104, and Monitor Speakers 109.
Mostly, the machine was used for drums and percussion sequencing
via the 104 module. Ware comments on its use and the reasoning why they
did not employ drum machines on the album, such as the Roland CR78
Compurhythm, which was available from 1978 onward. He comments:

I was never really interested in that because we knew the uniqueness

of the hardware sequencers that were attached to the System 100. We
could drive everything off the CV/Gate and the timing was super per-
fect, we could have whatever sound we wanted on the end of those
triggers. So it was more interesting to design your own sounds from
 The Human League     119

scratch rather than use a drum machine. My attitude changed about that
when the Linn Drum came out in 1981.14

Further to this, Oakley expands on the use of the System 100 and further
clarifies the manual use of the machine as the main percussion device, in that:

This is what Ian Craig‑Marsh used to use for our drums on the first two
albums. He used to have it addressing the filter for both bass drum and
snare sounds, and adjusting the timing with the second row of knobs
coming out of channel B and going into the CV to clock. And that
was how we did our drums—by ear. Ian had to have an amazingly fine
touch just to get the intervals right.15

The Korg 700 was also another key synthesizer used on Reproduction, pri-
marily on bass and lead lines. Due to its affordability, it was one of the first
synthesizers purchased by Ware. Produced in 1974, it was a monophonic
synthesizer that contained two voltage-controller oscillators and can be
heard on tracks like ‘Blind Youth’ and ‘Almost Mediaeval.’ More so, it was
the sound of ‘Being Boiled,’ and it was this machine that made the bass
so distinctive on the single. Other instruments like the Roland Jupiter 4
featured on the album, but it was both the System 100 and Korg 700 that
provided a truly unique timbre and sound world.
If we consider the milestones made by Reproduction, in the studio, this
is where their contributions can truly be felt, technologically. Specifically,
this is the space that inhabits where the synthesizer musician becomes the
engineer, as they have the power and ability to shape and equalise their
instruments before they reach a recording device.
In the production of Reproduction, Ware, Wright, Oakley, and Marsh
distorted the roles of producer and engineer, as they, within their roles, as
programmers and/or performer-programmers, fully illustrated that this new
way of working, electronically, proved that both the technical and the aes-
thetic can work in harmony. Ultimately, the recording and production of
Reproduction was a clear illustration of the democratisation of technology that
allowed the Human League to create unique forms of expression, musical
creativity, and sound experimentation, unheard of in Britain until that time.

CONCLUSION

The popularisation of British popular music throughout the 1970s was

aided and expanded by the mainstream media. Top of the Pops, which ran
120     Chapter 8

from 1964 to 2006, was a conduit for the expression of national identity
through sound. In this, the acts that appeared, who were beamed into the
home of millions of Britons per week, helped form identity and character
for musical acts who were navigating through massive social, economic,
and political upheaval. For acts pushing musical boundaries, the Old Grey
Whistle Test on BBC2 would provide a much more significant platform on
how its musical character was changing, particularly throughout the years of
1977–1980, as it focused on albums rather than the singles and chart areas
that Top of the Pops broadly covered.
Bob Harris, its presenter from 1972 onward, would go on to leave
in 1978 due to his distancing and dislike from the ‘new guard,’ which
included Roxy Music and the New York Dolls. Reynolds (2005) ob-
serves ‘as a distinct pop and cultural epoch, 1978–1982 rivals those fabled
years between 1963 and 1967 commonly known as the “sixties”’ (2005,
XIV). Much of this musical discourse was exported to the world stage, in
particular to the United States as Morra (2014) observed that ‘the inter-
national reception and reputation of British popular music has enabled an
overtly nationalisatic celebration of that culture and the national identity
it assumedly articulates’ (Morra 2014, 11).
The Human League, a small collective of musicians/programmers,
disconnected themselves from past musical pathways, broke through and
represented a significant shift in British music production. The sense of
possibility delivered via the release of Reproduction in 1979 became the
score of the possible futures for other acts to follow, something that very
much distanced itself from the dominance of the traditional guitar, drums
and bass format or what NME journalist Stuart Macoine observed as ‘ev-
ery generation throws four or five skinny young men, learning on a wall
in a back alley, all cheekbones and self-possession and desperate glamour’
(Macoine 2004, 243–44).
Cultural transitions came exponentially with the Punk movement,
allowing for a reexamination of musical heritage. In the 1970s, others,
like the Rolling Stones, would go on to use images and iconography from
aristocracy, and John Lydon was quick to point out their distortions of
both hierarchy and reality, observing:

Music became as remote from the general public as you could possibly
get. They became like little royal families unto themselves. They carted
themselves around the country, waving to us occasionally. They bought
immense houses, joined the stockbrokers’ belt and sent their kids to
public school. See? The system! They became it!16
 The Human League     121

Oakley sang phrases on Reproduction, which sums up the unlimited

possibilities of what the sound of the Human League represented and rather
than an antiestablishment ethos, the Human League embraced progress,
one that harnessed the nation’s growing obsession with wealth, and as they
moved toward a more technological-reliant 1980s, there was no more time
for nostalgia or a harping back to the past.
In Sheffield in 1979, to the Human League, the past was dead and
gone, and the future came from an intellectualist and individualist spirit
of possibilities, free of traditions and imposed restraints. This approach,
adopted by many electronic musicals discussed in this book, was partly
due to the school systems failing to embrace and nurture the individual.
Ultimately, the Human League produced a musicality that was facilitated
through technological change, mediated by the use of the synthesiser
and their music represented, as Morra (2014) eloquently argues a music
represents ‘the continuation of a tradition that enshrines the performance
or pretence of rebellion within a proud heritage of contemporary national
expression’ (Ibid., 89).

NOTES

1. See also https://thequietus.com/articles/04817-heaven-17-interview-pent-

house-and-pavement (accessed August 3, 2022).
2. Liner notes to ‘Being Boiled’ single, Fast Products (1978), author copy.
3. See also https://www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/being%20boiled/
(accessed August 3, 2022).
4. See also https://www.fodderstompf.com/ARCHIVES/INTERVIEWS
nmesingles78.html (accessed August 3, 2022).
5. See also https://www.heraldscotland.com/life_style/arts_ents/13124152.
not-fade-away-1978-boiled-human-league/ (accessed August 3, 2022).
6. Author’s audio transcription from ‘Being Boiled’ single, Fast Products
(1978).
7. See also https://www.the-black-hit-of-space.dk/articles_1979_nme.htm
(accessed August 5, 2022).
8. Ibid.
9. Transcribed by the author from the recording of ‘The Word Before the
Last,’ Reproduction (1978) Virgin Records.
10. See also https://www.electricityclub.co.uk/martyn-ware-the-reproduction-
travelogue-interview/ (accessed March 8, 2022).
11. Ibid.
12. See also https://www.the-black-hit-of-space.dk/articles_1978_zig_zag.htm
(accessed August 25, 2022).
122     Chapter 8

13. See also https://www.the-black-hit-of-space.dk/reproduction_review.htm

(accessed August 25, 2022).
14. See also https://www.electricityclub.co.uk/martyn-ware-the-reproduction
-travelogue-interview/ (accessed September 26, 2022).
15. See also https://www.soundonsound.com/people/phil-oakey-human
-league (accessed September 26, 2022).
16. John Lydon, quoted in Heavy Metal Britannia, BBC, broadcast March 2010
 9

GARY NUMAN
Subhuman in Suburbia

T he equipment used in electronic musicmaking has become more readily

available, and it is impossible to separate this progress from the people
behind the machines, and as Brend (2012) observed that ‘within this appa-
ratus; there is a symbiotic relationship’ (2012, X). Within the weight of the
significance of the machines that facilitated this, we must always consider the
humans behind them.
The work of the acts documented in this book are core to today’s
global electronic music landscape, and the current proliferation of these acts
is largely due to the internet. Listeners, in an instant, are able to access early
demos, thus being able to hear the incarnations of a band being created,
piece by piece. In this, we can also hear the technologies of the past, and
as Stubbs (2018) highlights, to what he refers to today as ‘analogue vogue,’
the means of production, in that:

The tendency towards analogue and vintage electronics might feel like
a passing fad, indulged by musicians and audiences of a certain age who
would, if they could, opt out of the twenty-first century altogether. For
them, these instruments represent more equitable, pre-neo liberal times,
a period coasted, moreover in the grainy fuzz of nostalgic hankering
for youth and a time when there was a future to gape in awe. (Stubbs
2018, 404)

The development and interest in our culture of ‘analogue vogue’ in

modern-day electronic music production, points toward what Reynolds
(2012) discusses as culture’s addiction to things, in that:

Is nostalgia stopping our culture’s ability to surge forward, or are we

nostalgic precisely because our culture has stopped moving forward and

123
124     Chapter 9

so we inevitably look back to more momentous and dynamic times.

(Reynolds 2012, 22)

Considering the past begs the question if we have now become ‘cultur-
ally conditioned’ in that, if through nostalgic approaches, synthesizers and
electronics of the past become far superior to digital- or computer-based
approaches. Reynolds continues:

Not only has there never been a society so obsessed with the cultural
artefacts of its immediate past, but there has never before been a
society that is able to access the immediate past so easily and so copi-
ously. (Ibid., 56)

Mark Fisher, along with Reynolds, refers to such processes as hauntol-

ogy; a lost future that haunts society, a return to elements of the past,
first introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1993 book,
Specters of Marx.
Fisher, however, highlighted something core to the above discussion,
and toward the era in which the larger discussion is taking place in this
book, he observed that ‘in the 1970s, certainly, culture was opened up to
working-class inventiveness in a way that is now scarcely imaginable to
us’ (Fisher 2014, 26). With this in mind, this chapter examines the work
of Gary Webb, as known as Gary Numan, his background and influences,
and discusses The Pleasure Principle (1979), an album that crossed into main-
stream and into the popular zeitgeist, a place where image becomes as much
currency as musical progression.

INFLUENCES

Defining the ideology and aesthetics of popular music is complex, and

as its discourse is so varied, considering all its social and historical con-
tributions, forming a singular definition is impossible. However Birrer
(1985) attempted to do so with a summary of its main definitions, and it
is documented as follows:

1. Normative definitions: Popular music is an inferior type.

2. Negative definitions: Popular music is music that is not something
else (usually ‘folk’ or ‘art’ music).
3. Sociological definitions: Popular music is associated with (produced
for or by) a particular social group.
 Gary Numan     125

4. Tecnologico-economic definitions: Popular music is disseminated by

mass media and/or in a mass market (Birrer 1985, 104).

None of these definitions satisfactorily defines popular music, but they are at
least good conversation starting points. Take point four, Tecnologico-economic
definitions: This affects all forms of popular music and has been a commodity
from its very birth (c. 1798). However, what is important here are the insti-
tutional factors (record companies, TV and radio stations) that helped mould
early careers via the tecnologico-economic pathways, as without such, many
acts’ beginnings would not have made such a successful impact. As the decade
of the 1970s ended, an array of genres was now at the forefront of popular
culture: disco, Punk, rock, and reggae. Many mainstream bands of the day,
including the Clash and the Police, cherry-picked musical elements from
each genre and blended them into a successful commodity. Again, Punk was
the channel that allowed for a new transition that came with the onset of a
new decade, when a number of subgenres were born, including new wave,
synth pop, and the new Romantic Movement.
Numan began his musical career with Tubeway Army (1977–1979)
and would go on to take a number of these genres as points of departure.
He used many forms, most notably alienation, as an aesthetic approach.
This was largely perpetrated via his cold presence onstage, a disconnect
from Numan himself. His work with the Tubeway Army would become
transitional, as it was ‘hard rock with a futuristic sheen, rooted in the clean,
punchy riffs of glam’ (Reynolds 2005, 323).
Yet, even from an early stage, he was branded as a Bowie ripoff, so
much so that Bowie’s advertising for his 1980 album, Scary Monsters, came
with the tagline of ‘often copied, never equaled.’1 Bowie, suspicious of his
sudden rise to fame, weighed in on his opinion of Numan, as this NME
interview from 1980 suggests:

Mac Kinnon: It’s a rather sterile vision of a kleen-machine future

again…
Bowie: But that’s really so narrow. It’s that false idea of hi-tech
society and all that which doesn’t exist. I don’t think we’re anywhere
near that sort of society. It’s an enormous myth that’s been perpetuated
unfortunately, I guess, by readings of what I’ve done in that rock area at
least, and in the consumer area television has an awful lot to answer for
with its fabrication of the computer-world myth.2

This sense of futurism for Numan was rooted in his interest in science fic-
tion, with Phillip K. Dick being his greatest influence, as similar thematic
126     Chapter 9

areas of relationship with postmodernism technology, alternate realities, and

authoritarian states. Tubeway Army’s debut, ‘Listen to the Sirens,’ references
Dick’s novel Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974). While later Numan is
referring to ‘friends,’ it’s Dick’s ‘replica’ or android from Do Androids Dream
of Electric Sheep? (1968). The role of the replica (or replicant) is beautifully
played out in Ripley Scott’s Blade Runner. Produced by the Tyrell Corpo-
ration, these fictional, bioengineered replicants were genetically modified
humans, although they are far superior as they have vast advantages over their
human counterparts: speed and strength, to count a few.
The difference here is that in the novel, the androids are not so
much not-human as they are inhuman, as ‘the crucial difference is the
ability to feel empathy’ (Fitting 1987, 343), as Dick’s novel points toward
and this extract displays:

He had wondered precisely why an android bounced helplessly about

when confronted by an empathy-measuring test. Empathy, evidently,
existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to
some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order
including the arachnida. (Dick 3:27)

Some models of the replicants only had a four-year lifespan, and it was the
job of the Blade Runner ‘Deckard,’ played by Harrison Ford, to hunt them
down, as:

Deckard is forced out of retirement to hunt and retire replicants against

his will, while the androids themselves are nothing more than slaves;
and Rachel is the product of a cynical psycho-technological experiment.
Paradoxically, the film identifies and nourishes our fantasies of refusal
and revolt against a system which uses and manipulates us, by allowing
us to empathise for a time with the four androids and their desperate
rebellion. But as they are retired one by one, the film forcibly reminds
us of the futility of struggle. (Fitting, 348)

These dystopian ideals are born and conveyed within the songs, as the
lives of these creatures within sprawling metropolises, and much of
Numan’s songs, often revolve around the following: isolation, disconnec-
tion, and paranoia.
Dick’s influence on Numan is evident across a number of works.
These aliens are categorised into a number of different forms: The ‘friends’
of ‘Are Friends Electric’ are cyborg buddies or sexpals; the ‘Grey Men’
perform the IQ tests that determine who is culled first; and the ‘Crazies’ are
 Gary Numan     127

‘resistance guerilla hip to the machine’s master-scheme’ (Reynolds 2005,

324). Another elemental part of Numan’s creation of his persona was that
of the androgyny. This was by no means new, having already been tried
and tested with great success by Marc Bolan and then Bowie.
Whereas the above used a more effeminate approach, Numan used
disconnection and coldness as part of his visual language, which was further
supported by his ‘angular’ use of the synthesizer. Numan was positioned
at the forefront of this movement within popular music streams due to the
commercial effect and appeal of his music. Yet, undoubtedly he was influ-
enced by what had already come before, as Kraftwerk, the Human League,
and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark had already established themselves
firmly. Numan was keen to use these machines to achieve an electronic
sound that had a greater emotional involvement than the acts above. More
so, it was through the very use of the instrument that Numan believed it
would be possible to channel something more, commenting:

By pressing one key you could unleash something you never heard
before and then, by simply holding that key down, you could manipu-
late the sound and allow it to change. I became a firm believer in the
idea that sometimes one note is not enough. Let that sound evolve–let
that be the drama. (Numan 2020, 55)

Such statements validate the collective thinking and singular attitude adopted
by the acts reviewed in the book, in that their music(s) was a rebellion
of progressive rock of the 1970s, when the virtuoso approach was more
dominant. The values and contributions of musical expression here become
important, as any instrument can make a range of timbres and pitches, yet
most are inherently limited. It takes the combination of both the composer
and a mass of instruments (like a symphony orchestra) to extend the capa-
bilities of musical sound. Composer György Ligeti achieved this in his piece
Atmosphères (1961), where harmony, melody, and rhythm are disregarded
in favour of what Ligeti terms as ‘micropolyphonic’84 processes. These mass
textures become core to the piece itself, and ultimately the piece ‘scarcely
hints at forward movement. Rather the listener hears an all but motion-
less series of sound evolutions unfolding at various moments’ (Woodstra,
Brennan & Schrott, 746).
Perhaps unrelated, the piece highlights how the synthesizer is also
capable of an enormous range of pitches, sounds unobtainable from any
traditional instrument, and beyond the complexity and speed of human
performance. The Moog synthesizer, or the miniMoog in particular, would
128     Chapter 9

become for Numan the vehicle for change and would help him reinvent
himself.
Like Bowie, critics were quick to downplay, or strike off, Numan’s
ability to use both the visual and musical languages he was developing,
as they were seen as a pastiche of what had come, or indeed, what was
happening around him at the time, as this review of his album Telekon
(1980) prescribes:

All non-musical considerations temporarily to one side, I’d say that it

was a woefully dull and monotonous album, pompous in the extreme
and exceptionally limited in its range of tempi and tonalities (how a
man who owns so many different synthesizers can be satisfied with
so few noises is utterly inexplicable). His mannered whine drives
me completely up the walls, and titles like ‘I Dream of Wires’ and
‘Remember I Was Vapour’ seem almost risible. Moreover, Numan’s
work seems almost entirely untainted by anything even faintly resem-
bling wit or passion. (Murray 1980, 44)

While it is clear that Numan had a large collection of nonbelievers during

this early period, his effect on the new metal scene of the mid-1990s, histori-
cally, is greatly acknowledged. Numan had actually announced his retirement
after the release of Telekon in 1980, and then, bizarrely he ‘rescinded on the
decision, releasing a series of albums that saw him diversify his musical range
but which were entirely eclipsed by the 1980s synth pop that actually came
in his wake’ (Stubbs 2018, 235). With all this in mind, Numan is key to the
dystopian sound of Britain in the late 1970s, primarily in his use of science
fiction as a route to mapping out the oncoming role of automation in industry
during the next decade and indeed the reign of Thatcherism that would
follow.

BEGINNINGS

Gary Numan was thrust into popular music culture at the cusp of
electronic music technology during the last year of the 1970s, and like
many, the conditions and the limitations of traditional instruments (the
guitar in particular) led Numan to the synthesizer. He essentially stumbled
upon a Mini-Moog synthesizer while in a recording studio during the
late 1970s, and he was captivated by its sonic expressiveness. Soon after,
the machine helped him slip into the pop mainstream, and its sound led
him to massive chart success in the UK with Tubeway Army’s Are Friends
 Gary Numan     129

Electric? (1979) and Numan’s Cars (1979) on Beggars Banquet Records.

With this unprecedented success, Numan became the accidental synthesizer
spokesman, recalling that:

I went from having never seen a synthesizer before to becoming

the number one expert on synthesizer in the UK. I had a number
one electronic album and people were talking about me being an
electronic expert and all that, and I’d only spent about eight hours
with a synthesizer because I could not afford to buy one. (Numan,
quoted in Collins et al. 2003, 92)

From an early stage, thematically, his lyrics involved the removal of the
human through automation and robotics, and our overreliance on and love
affair with the automobile. Although Numan’s band did not fully become
an electronic outfit, its sound went on to influence an array of new wave
and synth pop bands, including Ultravox and Visage.
Numan’s background is working class. He was born in Hammersmith
and educated in the greater Surrey area. His passion for flying was induced
by his father, who worked at Heathrow Airport, and during his teens, he
enrolled with the Air Training Corps. However, it did not last, and a long
array of menial and mundane day jobs followed.
Numan was gifted a guitar by his parents, and this rather revealing
quote demonstrates that, from an early age, the search for new sounds
always there, in that:

If I’m honest, I was spending a lot of time not exactly playing it but
plugging it into a variety of effects pedals and making noises. I was,
even then, more interested in the sounds that instruments could
make than I was learning scales and becoming proficient as a player.
(Numan 2020, 15)

Numan began his musical career fronting the short-lived Mean Street,
and shortly after, along with bass player Paul Gardiner, he formed the
band the Lasers in late 1976. After shopping around demos and a rename
to Tubeway Army, in early 1978, Beggars Banquet signed the group, and
the single ‘That’s Too Bad’ followed in February.
The song failed to chart, but it sold quite well considering its
limited distribution. However, during this period, Numan questioned
their adoption of Punk, where many bands had to navigate the grimy
backroom pubs of London to make a name for themselves.
130     Chapter 9

Such conditions came as part of the Punk movement, and the

audience that came with it was confrontational and violent. For Numan,
it was far too much to deal with, and at this stage, he decided the group
would be far more suited as a studio-based project.
During July and August 1978, their debut album, Tubeway Army, was
recorded at Spaceward Studios in Cambridge. It was during this period that
Numan attempted to remove himself from both the Punk scene and indeed
their sound. Numan suggested to Beggars that the band’s name should be
replaced with his new persona. They were not keen on the idea, however,
and as such, it was rejected by the label. The single ‘That’s Too Bad,’ released
in February 1978, failed to chart and was not received well critically.
Although much of their sound was guitar-heavy, the MiniMoog syn-
thesiser made its appearance on the single record. Much of Numan’s early
interaction with the synthesizer came from a similar aesthetic shared by other
musicians discussed in the book, that of Punk approaches and aesthetics.
Having no rules to play by, it was an open forum in which to explore the dy-
namics of sound, an open-ended platform in which experimentation played
a major role, and much of the soundworlds created by both Numan, as he
points out, came first by playing the MiniMoog. He comments:

The room shook and you felt the sound as much as heard it. I had never
experienced anything like it, and I was absolutely blown away. This
was everything I’d been looking for. The sheer weight of the sound
was shocking. It was like a huge bulldozer of noise, a vast wall of
sound. It was a sonic assault on the ears. It felt unstoppable, immensely
powerful and totally exhilarating. For me, everything changed in that
one moment. (Ibid., 50)

Not everyone was fully convinced about this sudden change in

musical direction, in particular his label, Beggars Banquet. This machine
would largely dominate its followup, Replicas (1979); so, too, would
Numan’s interest in referencing science fiction, as lyrically, it’s far more ma-
ture than Tubeway Army in that a lot of its content reflects his fascination
at the time, including that of the man/machine principle. As the cover
points toward, the androgynous look that Numan would adopt from this
point onward.
Numan and his bandmates would be shocked, to say the least, with
the success of the single ‘Are Friends Electric?’, released in May 1979. This
would be their last recording under the name Tubeway Army. This was
quickly followed by another single, ‘Cars,’ in September 1979, which went
to number one in the UK and Canada. It was here that Numan crafted
his sounds to make it his own. The following years would witness many
 Gary Numan     131

changes, from flying a plane around the world and a number of subsequent
albums that did not have the same approach or success as earlier releases.
Numan’s retirement from touring, the last of which saw three nights at
London’s Wembley Arena in April 1981, was perhaps ill-informed, as
Numan was later reflective on the decision, contributing that:

I really did believe that it was the root of all my problems, and I still
believe that getting out was a wise decision. But what I should have
done was just back away, given it some time, done some growing up,
waiting to see how I felt in another year or two having not toured for
a while. Making a big announcement like that I was going to retire
was stupid and childish. But I was still so young, and the overwhelm-
ing effects of a rapid onslaught of a newfound fame were still raw and
painful. (Ibid., 110)

Much of Numan’s bad experiences from touring stemmed from the

expensive tour rigs he employed during both The Touring Principle
(1979) and Teleklon in his 1980 UK tours. The latter made use of radio-
controlled robots, pyrotechnics, and a mass of articulated trucks to trans-
port around. Moreso, Numan’s leap into the spotlight simply put him
in a position with which he was not entirely comfortable. This, coupled
with his love for the studio and experimenting with sound, meant that
touring became a chore for Numan. This would eventually lead to more
expressive studio work appearing like the jazz and funk influenced Dance
(1981) I, Assassin (1982) and Warriors (1983).

REACTIONARY FUTURISM:
THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE (1979)

The work of the Belgian Surrealist artist René Magritte (1898–1967)

took objects of the ordinary—such as hats, clouds, or apples—and turned
them into the uncanny, placing them in the arena of the extraordinary.
By 1926, Magritte began to reinvent himself as a figurative artist, and his
most famous and instantly recognizable piece, Man in a Bowler Hat (1964),
would become his most recognized. Although he had used the ‘man in
a hat’ theme in other paintings, most notably, The Son of Man, from the
same year, this piece is centred on the theme of obscurity, as the passing
dove is ‘snapped’ and covers the man’s face. This man, dressed in the
uniform of suit and bowler hat, allowed Magritte to distort the everyday
and dehumanise normality. Such a technique is used again in The Pleasure
Principle: The Portrait of Edward James (1937).
132     Chapter 9

James was one of the key patrons within the Surrealist Movement.
Commissioned directly by him, the painting depicts an image of James,
re-rendered by Magritte with the head missing, and in its place, a blinding
white light. It captures the unconscious, although Magritte was weary of
such interpretations, in that:

The titles of pictures are not explanations and pictures are not illus-
trations of titles. The relationship between title and picture is poetic,
that is, it only catches some of the object’s characteristics of which
we are usually unconscious, but which we sometimes intuit, when
extraordinary events take place which logic has not yet managed to
elucidate. (Levy 2016, 112)

Magritte’s work is cinematic in nature, as objects and people often find

themselves in scenarios that are mystical and thought-provoking. His
work would prove for Numan to be a chance to explore, visually, the
world of the solo artist. With this, he took The Pleasure Principle: The
Portrait of Edward James (1937) as direction for the cover of 1979’s The
Pleasure Principle, an album that would now fully embrace synthetic sound
worlds in which Numan attempted to present the future of pop as cold,
dark, and oblivious to mainstream rock.
By July 1979, Replicas had made the number-one position on the UK
charts, and Numan was in a very strong position career-wise after proving
his worth to his record label, Beggars, both financially and commercially.
Recorded at the now-defunct Marcus Music AB in London in mid-1979,
Replicas saw Paul Gradiner (bass) and Cedric Sharply (drums) as now-
permanent members. They would be core to the album’s sound and key to
understanding the album’s aesthetics: Despite a focus on synthetic sounds, led
by Numan, bass and drums are at the heart of this album, sound that Visage,
the act reviewed in chapter 10, would follow on later that year. Perhaps it
is this duality that made Numan as commercial as he would become, even
though his lyrical disposition (isolation, paranoia, robots) was far from what
would be primarily heard on the radio in Britain at the time.
The album opens with ‘Airlane,’ in what has been suggested as a nod
toward Numan’s flying career, as he had now obtained his flying licence.
An instrumental at only three minutes, eighteen seconds, it introduces the
listener to the album’s sound world, with drums and bass playing a large,
if not dominant role, setting the stage for this interplay between human
and synthetic approaches. The lead synthesizer line, played now with the
addition of a PolyMoog synthesiser, is to become the leading instrument
 Gary Numan     133

on the album. Ethereal and part-symphonic, its proto-disco beat and bass
ground the track as the synthesizers glide across them, and from here on in,
the album’s signature sounds is this created. ‘Metal’ defines this synthetic
world in its opening melodic statement, and the sound of steel helps and
aids toward the introduction of the other instruments. Soon the opinions
of the android are apparent, as Numan sings: ‘Plug me in and turn me on,’
attempting to communicate the android’s attempt to become human.
As referenced earlier in the chapter, much of this was borrowed from
science fiction writing, in particular from Phillip K. Dick, and the sonic
effects, like phase and flanging, are introduced here, giving the song an
otherworldly feel. This helps create an almost ice-cold sensation, which
allows Numan to communicate feelings of isolation and paranoia quite
successfully. As a fan of Ultravox, Numan was no doubt influenced by
their 1978 album, Systems of Romance, recorded with producer Conny
Plank. Markedly different from Ultravox’s earlier work, it brought syn-
thesisers to the forefront of the group’s sound. ‘Metal’ would have a new
lease on life when in 2009, American industrial rock act Nine Inch Nails
began to feature it in their live set, opening up Numan’s music to a whole
new (and much younger) audience.
From the very opening bars of ‘Complex,’ the sounds of Bowie’s
Low (1977) and Heros (1977) are evident, and the track would become
the second single from the album, after the release of ‘Cars’ on August 21,
to be released, on November 16, 1979. The piano and synthesizer duet
open immediately, allowing the listener to understand that this is a more
traditional approach to songwriting. Ultravox’s Billy Currie adds violin
and viola, and together with the reverberated and phased synthesizer, it
paints a surreal and disconnected sound world, one slightly removed from
both ‘Airlane’ and ‘Metal.’ Lyrically, it’s a little confusing, as its subject
matter can only be proposed, as Numan sings:

Please keep them away,

Don’t let them touch me,
Please don’t let them lie.

Such lyrical content could be directed toward anything or anybody:

fans, the media, critics. Perhaps it is a more global statement on alienation,
and to a lesser degree, states of paranoia, as Numan discusses, commenting:

‘Metal’ was about a machine created to be human-like but very aware

that it wasn’t. It was sad, frightened of the engineers who made it and
confused by the fact that it cried without really understanding why. It
134     Chapter 9

wanted to be human but knew it could never be and so could only

look forward to a life of regret and disappointment. (Numan 2020, 76)

‘Films’ brings us back again to the dominant drum and bass format
and is the most upbeat track to date. Again the PolyMoog synthesizer plays
a central figure as lead instrument, and so, too, do the song’s thematic
elements, as Numan states: ‘I don’t like the film.’ This idea of a ‘film’ could
be taken quite literally; perhaps Numan himself is in the spotlight, as the
line ‘Turn off the lights’ again perhaps points toward his view of stardom
and fame. He continues with:

Now it’s over,

but there’s no-one left to see,
And there’s no-one left to die,
There’s only me.

‘M.E.,’ a track that has perhaps the most distinctive sound on the
album, apart from, of course, ‘Cars,’ tells the story of the last machine
left on earth. The machine has ‘turned off’ all the other humans, and he
is the only one left standing. The dominant synthesizer lead line almost
overwhelms the drums and bass, which almost seem to struggle at the 109
bpm. Ultravox’s Billy Currie adds some violin to make this sound world
seem a little more human, yet it fails, as the lyrical details, that of alienation
and paranoia, seem to go directly against the opposing musical forces. Like
much of Numan’s work, the track would go on to have a new lease of life,
when, in 2001, a sample of ‘M.E.’ was used by Basement Jaxx’s in ‘Where’s
Your Head At?’ (2001).
In considering the cultural associations in which the synthesizer
existed during this period, we see that Numan was using these machines
to connect to another reality, and they were new and alien. As Rimbaud
(2010) has suggested, synthesizers always expose the absence of the instru-
ments they are supposed to imitate, in that:

Synthetic production presents cultural artifice, the sign, the map of

recognition, as a substitution for the real, an alternative vernacular, ‘as
signs of the real for the real itself’ as Baurdrillard argued. The erasure
of historical reference points within this imagined synthetic uni-
verse has developed into simulacrum, which differentiates itself from
representation in the sense that a simulacrum marks the absence,
not the existence, of the objects it is supposed to signify. (Rimbaud,
quoted in Demers 2008, 46)
 Gary Numan     135

This statement only makes sense when considered within a historical

context, as ‘some constructed electronic sounds are desirable because they
are approximations imitations of acoustic instruments rather than faithful
reproductions’ (Ibid., 46).
Such contradictions appear on ‘Tracks,’ and its introduction, a blend
of both acoustic and electronic instruments, is short-lived. What appears is
another, almost floating and flying epic soundtrack. The combination of
both electronic and traditional instruments here can appear now to some to
be what you might call listening fatigue. Both ‘Airlane’ and ‘Tracks’ have
many similarities; both use powerful percussion to drive the momentum
forward. Numan’s vocal presentation is somewhat muted, and the theme of
‘Tracks’ is hard to decipher as the lyrics seem to meander with a collection
of unanswerable questions, as Numan sings:

Where are the tracks?

Where are the lines?
Where are the tracks, dear?
Where is the time?

‘Observer’ could be mistaken for ‘Cars,’ as it seems to be a melodic

inversion of the letter’s musical phrasing. A strong lead synthesizer takes
the foreground, complemented by a phased and reverberated poly-moog.
Here the protagonist is the observer, standing around watching, and
perhaps it gives us a further indication of who is the voyeur, yet in such a
short time for its theme to be established, vocals are only present from one
minute, twenty seconds, to one minute, fifty seconds, and as per ‘Tracks,’
any subtext of an overarching message is hard to decipher.
‘Conversion’ has such a similarity in sound that it could perhaps be
a reimagining of ‘Observer.’ Again, the theme of surveillance comes to
the fore, as Numan presents: ‘You’re just the viewer, so cold and distant.’
Structurally, it’s more expensive than others, yet again it lacks the addi-
tion of a chorus, and this is perhaps what makes these songs so compel-
ling; Numan is on the outside looking in, and as the album gets closer to
completion, the songwriting quality reaches its peak, as ‘Cars’ no doubt
demonstrates.
Released on August 21, 1979, the track would propel Numan into
the limelight, including Numann’s first US chart success. An ominous
synthesizer intro leads us into what can only be described as a theme that
is both memorable and recallable, which is provided by a PolyMoog with
the bass line supported in unison by the Mini-Moog synthesizer. The
136     Chapter 9

machine/human duality is further supported with the addition of the live

drums. Where most might have used a chorus after the first verse, Numan
wastes no time in the delivery of its melodic content, and a two-bar phase
is smartly inserted at an early stage. Mostly instrumental, the song ends in
eloquent and blissed-out duelling synthesizer lines, washed in both reverb
and phase effects. This is part of its commercial appeal, along with discuss-
ing a subject to which everyone can relate: the car. Whereas the Normal, as
discussed in chapter 6, used the car as the subject of mechanophilia and death,
Numan uses the car here as a place of sanctuary, a place of safety away from
the prying eyes of the world, as the lyrics here confirm: ‘Here in my car/I feel
safest of all.’ Numan also used the car to protect himself from society in gen-
eral, along with a nod to Kraftwerk’s 1977 homage to motoring, ‘Autobahn,’
a symbol of mobility and freedom. What separates Numan’s and Kraftwerk’s
vision of the car is that the latter saw a fusion and idealism between nature
and technology, but for Numan, the car was a place to protect oneself from
society in general.
Like many other tracks on The Pleasure Principle, ‘Cars’ would have
many new leases on life. It was used in commercial advertising works,
including American Express and Carling Lager, but it would reach even
further when Nine Inch Nails included it in their live set, introducing and
exposing Numan to a whole new audience and level of appreciation.
The album ends with ‘Engineers,’ a strict marching-tempo song that
counterbalances thematic elements while Numan contemplates, lyrically,
a final dystopian message, singing: ‘All that we know, is hate and machin-
ery.’ Thematically, it is an odd way to end an album of such contradictions,
surrounded by the sounds of electrification and industrialization. The Pleasure
Principle put Numan on the map, and the album helped alter the public’s
perception of the synthesizer, as even though there is an overreliance on the
synthetic instruments used, the interplay with the human elements (drums
and bass) really are also core features of the album.
Numan’s thematic ideals of coldness, disconnection, and alienation
centrally reflect the climate of late-1970s Britain, a time in which the sepa-
ration of both public and state was cold, distant, and beyond reflection of
reality. It is this iciness that proves to be the album’s most successful trait,
and it encapsulates the man-machine paranoia. With the lack of deviation
(sonically), it’s an album that has stood the test of time, even though Nu-
man used the themes of Phillip K. Dick and other science-fiction writers to
escape the mundane reality of a changing world. Ultimately, with The Plea-
sure Principle, Numan used electronic means in an attempt to make popular
music more ambitious, more epic, and more reflective of a technological-
driven world.
 Gary Numan     137

TECHNOLOGY

Whereas other acts documented in this book exploited both homemade

electronics and more affordable synthesiser brands (Roland, Korg), it is
no understatement that the success of Numan’s sound was derived pri-
marily from the Moog synthesizer, and moreso, the MiniMoog Model
D and the addition of the PolyMoog. Indeed, much of Numan’s use of
these machines was only facilitated by his request to the record label to
have them initially rented during studio sessions, as they were horrifically
expensive at the time. It would seem, as Brend (2012) suggests, resistance
was still evident, in that:

There was a lingering suspicion and sense of otherness surrounding the

music. Critics continued to routinely air all the time-honoured worries
about machines taking over, musicians being out of work, of music los-
ing its soul. There was no eureka moment in between, just a speeding
up of the advance of the art and the apparatus. (Brend 2012, 209)

RA Moog Co. began its life in 1954, when nineteen-year-old

electronics enthusiast Bog Moog began selling Theremin kits. Composer
Herb Deutsch asked Bob Moog to build something to create complex and
experimental sounds, tones not easily created by other instruments or with
studio trickery. The development of large-scale modular synthesizers saw
them be used by sound research departments in US universities and by the
few composers who could afford them, Wendy Carlos being one of them.
As discussed in chapter 3, the release of Switched on Bach (1968)
would alter the public’s perception of the synthesizer and throw it and
an unsuspecting Wendy Carlos into the limelight. Even with this success,
public perception was still at a low, in particular the musicians union in
the United States, where ‘the Moog synthesizer was for a time banned
from use in commercial work. This restriction first surfaced in a contract
negotiated between the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) and
advertising agencies and producers in New York City in 1969. The union
was worried that following on from Carlos’s success, the synthesizer was
going to replace musicians’ (Pinch & Trocco 2002, 168).
Simple economics would keep much of both the musical community
and electronics enthusiasts away from Moog. This was supplemented, in
the United States initially, with the release of the ARP 2500 in 1970.
Although still expensive, the 2600 model that came in 1971 provided a
smaller, more mobile version of the 2600. However, even as Moog was
busy developing the MiniMoog Model D, by the late 1960s, the company
138     Chapter 9

was losing money. Moog engineer Bill Hemsath developed a prototype,

but with Moog being slow at first to see its potential, the company strug-
gled to get the model off the ground and release it in 1970. Thirteen thou-
sand Model Ds would be produced between 1970 and 1981 (Ibid., 215).
One of the original MiniMoog engineers, Jim Scott, reflected on its
unique character, commenting:

It was something like vacuum tubes, in that the circuitry would not
suddenly go into clipping, it would distort gracefully.... Also, the
circuitry was inherently wide band.... It passed frequencies far beyond
the audio range.... And we’re getting into guess work here, but the
feeling is that there were things that happened up in the ultrasonic
range that can cause inner modulation and distortions, [this] reflects
back and can be heard in the audible range. (Scott, quoted in Pinch
& Trocco 2002, 252)

Struggling to keep up with demand for the production of the MiniMoog,

the company would be sold to a venture capitalist in 1971, and although
they went on to make numerous models, including the PolyMoog (1975–
1980), the MicroMoog (1975–1979), the MemoryMoog (1982–1985), the
Prodigy (1979–1984), and the Rogue (1981), under financial difficulties,
the copyright of their name brand would end up in the most unlikely place
in the early 1980s: Caerphilly, Wales, under the ownership of Alex Winter,
who would go on to produce the MiniMoog 204e3 in 2003.
This machine would blueprint the sound of 1970s soul and funk music
in the United States, through Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, and Parlia-
ment. Even the great jazz astral traveller Sun Ra would go on to use it as an
early test user of the machine. However, it would be its use in progressive
rock, through Rick Wakeman of YES and Keith Emmerson of Emmer-
son, Lake and Palmer, and via Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, and Giorgio
Moroder, that would allow Numan to first hear its signature sound. And it
would indeed become a core part of his commercial sound, thus facilitating
this crossover into the mainstream.

CONCLUSION

Marxist theorist Guy Debord, who would go on to be instrumental in the

formation of the Situationist International Movement, and who in turn
provided great influence to Throbbing Gristle, coined the term ‘psycho-
geography’ in 1955. The area examines our psychological experience of
 Gary Numan     139

the city, highlighting elements of a landscape, within a city, for example

buildings of forgotten and discarded times.
London during the late 1970s was a tale of two cities, both Victorian
and brutalist,86 just at the onset of the 1980s, when it became transformed,
architecturally, by both financial and technological change. Michael Brace-
well’s Souvenir (2021) eloquently paints a picture of London in the late
1970s and expresses how, here at the twilight of one era and the dawn of
another, the city was transforming, transformed. The city had an aura, an
atmosphere of change, in that:

Oxford Street—the shabby end—the busy shops are ablaze with light:
window displays, interiors and entrances, each asserting a world—all
new and white, yet already worn-down thoroughfares, makeshift,
scuffed and flimsy. Gloss-black mannequins, gunmetal cassette players,
dancewear and album sleeves. Cosmetics and electronics, books and
shoes; then the blank facade of a band and the dank yeasty smell of a
pub…. And the steady crowds and the ceaseless shuddering lines of traf-
fic: headlights and brake lights, the beginning of a fiune sleet blowing
across the beam. (Bracewell 2021, 6)

This vivid portrayal of a city is a window into Numan’s world, and

it is brutalist in so many ways. With tracks like ‘Cars’ and others, he man-
aged to hone into collective feelings of society’s apparitions and fears—
past, present, and future—all at the cusp of the oncoming digital capital-
ism that would wash over London in the early 1980s. Numan’s creation
of a ‘reactionary futurism’ in sound is, as Fisher (2013) points toward,
‘long since ceased to refer to any future that we expect to be different’
(Fisher 2013, 9). Even with this sense of foresight and with the themes he
tackled, Numan was slated by the press as he pursued these ideas in later
albums like Dance (1982) with Richard Williams of the Times of London
describing it as ‘irredeemable nonsense; not even funny anymore.’4 Nu-
man, however, did suffer from a very sudden swing into the highlight,
and perhaps it was this immediacy of fame that made the reviewers take
such a hardline, observing that:

My rise was sudden, meteoric almost. I was totally unprepared for the
reality of fame, and I had no experience of anything. I was young, na-
ive and with a mental condition that, although I would never wish to
change it, was crashing around in my head like a wounded elephant. I
would not recommend that I made it to anyone, not that we ever really
have a choice. (Numan 2020, 75)
140     Chapter 9

His musical career throughout the remainder of the 1980s would

be varied. He collaborated most notably with Bill Sharpe as ‘Sharpe
and Numan,’ releasing the single ‘Change Your Mind’ in 1985. As the
decade came to a close, the low-charting releases in the States with I.R.S.
Records, Metal Rhythm (1988), and the Sharpe and Numan LP Automatic
(1989) on Polydor Records, positioned Numan unfavourably career-
wise. However, the next decade saw Numan finally gain more acknowl-
edgement worldwide from endorsements from acts like Fear Factory,
Nine Inch Nails, and the Nu-Metal movement.
In its exploration of what the future would bring, Intruder (2021) sees
humanity now not as the domination and/or alien of the world, as per
Replicas (1981), but as the destroyer and self-destructor. Nineteen albums
into his career, Numan has contributed a wide body of work, more so than
any other act reviewed in the book. Perhaps now part formulaic, what
Numan delivers throughout his discography is this: a reliable and focused
exploration of futurism and apocalyptic moods and atmospheres, be it a
more controlled sense of paranoia, and perhaps what stands to Numan is his
long-standing vision, even in times outside of the mainstream, and a sense
of despair, to which he now, perhaps, is willing to surrender.

NOTES

1. Advertisement. See also https://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=663174

(accessed July 11, 2022).
2. See also http://www.bowiegoldenyears.com/press/80-09-13-nme.html
(accessed July 20, 2022).
3. For further information, see: https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews
/moog-minimoog-204e (accessed May 15, 2022).
4. See Sutton (2016), 63.
 10

VISAGE
The New Guard

H ebdige (1979), in Subcultures: The Meaning of Style, defined culture as

an organic society in that:
Culture is a notoriously ambiguous concept as the above defini-
tion demonstrates. Refracted through centuries of usage, the word has
acquired a number of quite different, often contradictory, meanings. Even
as a scientific term, it refers both to a process (artificial development of
microscopic organisms) and a product (organisms so produced). (Hebdige
1979, 5)
The formation of any subcultural movement is interdependent on
many factors, and from traditional movements come new and alternative
modes of expression. Hebdige (1979) pointed out what Punk brought
about and explained how ‘punks were not only directly responding to
increasing joblessness…. They were dramatising what had come to be
called “Britain’s decline” and had “appropriated the rhetoric of crisis
which filled the airwaves and editorials throughout the period and trans-
late it into tangible (and visible) terms”’ (Ibid., 87).
Punk dramatised many political and economic events throughout
the 1970s, which was influenced by media induced ‘moral panic’ and
political campaigns. All this further cemented Punk’s being labelled a
conflicted subcultural movement, and as Osgerby (2013) suggests, the
media played on this and used Punk as a conduit to fan the flames,
observing:

Rather than simply reacting to an existing condition of tension and

anxiety, therefore, these responses can be seen as strategies that actively
sought to bring about such a condition, deliberately heightening a sense

141
142     Chapter 10

of apprehension as a means of garnering attention and support. (Osgerby

2013, 202)

Visage would use fashion and changing societal and cultural ideals to form
a sound that was a departure from the dystopian, using elements and no-
tions of grandeur and escapism to create Visage (1980), an album that paved
the way and produced a road map for the next generation of electronic
musicmakers to follow.

INFLUENCES

Figures and acts documented in this book have used major art move-
ments (Surrealism, Dadaism) as points of influence for either aesthetics
and/or performative approaches. For Visage’s Steve Strange (1959–2015),
it would be a mixture of fashion and futurism that would inform not
only the music but more importantly, stylistic elements of what Visage’s
aesthetic would evolve into. As such, a number of influences are pre-
sented here for discussion and consideration.
Dandyism, or in some fields ‘Eccentricity,’ traces its roots back to
the mid- to late 1880s, when certain men were known for a certain style
of dress. To be ‘dandy’ was in many ways to be a person who placed
significant importance on his appearance. Often of middle-class stat-
ure, a ‘dandy’ would often be seen attempting to appear as part of the
aristocracy. Baudelaire (1970) observed this as:

Dandyism appears above all in periods of transition, when democracy

is not yet all powerful, and aristocracy is only just beginning to totter
and fall. In the disorder of these times, certain men who are socially,
politically and financially ill at ease, but are all rich in native energy,
may conceive the idea of establishing a new kind of aristocracy, all the
more difficult to shatter as it will be based on the most precious, the
most enduring faculties, and on the divine gifts that work and money are
unable to bestow. Dandyism is the last spark of heroism and decadence.
(Baudelaire, quoted in Hauk 1997, 28)

The aesthetics of living, a romantic notion of life, one for which Lord
Byron and Oscar Wilde would become most famous, would become
popular within literary circles. More contemporary examples, as per George
Walden’s essay ‘Who’s a Dandy?’ (2002), points toward both Andy Warhol
and Quentin Crisp, while musically, Dandyism can be traced back to the
 Visage     143

roots of Glam rock (c. 1971–1975). As Glam Rock swept across Britain (c.
1971–1975), it represented a cross-segmentation of influences from popular
culture: science fiction, 1950s rock and roll, and much more. It relied on
fashion as its main conduit, with platform shoes, makeup, and questionable
hairstyles all playing their part. Moreso, Glam Rock paved the way, perhaps
for the first time in popular music culture, toward the look of androgyny,
a more fluid and playful approach to gender roles, often played, quite con-
vincingly, by heterosexual males. Much the same as Dandyness, Glam Rock
celebrated the extravagant, the decadent, unlike the macho approach of 1960s
rock, and within this, both Marc Bolan and David Bowie stand tall in the lin-
eage of influence. Bowie, as Ziggy Stardust (1972–1973), as Bennett (2017)
points out, stood out from the surrounding competitors, in that:

The Ziggy image was undoubtedly deeply inspired by the visual indul-
gence of glam while also referencing Bowie’s interest in science fiction
themes, comic books and Kabuki theatre. While a more studied take on
the glam image, and one that began a career-long obsession for Bowie
in combining highbrow and lowbrow taste, Ziggy’s image melded seam-
lessly with those of other glam artists of the day.1

Terrestrial television would again play a huge part in the distribution to the
nation of Glam Rock’s expedition of new styles and musical adventures. The
fateful evening of July 6, 1972, would go down in popular music history,
when Bowie performed ‘Starman’ on the BBC’s Old Grey Whistle Test,
a performance that would go on to inspire countless thousands to either
change with current fashion, form a band, and/or completely change and al-
ter its direction. Guardian Magazine features writer David Hepworth saw this
moment as pivotal, in that:

That was the moment Bowie went above ground and nationwide. The
hype may have led us to expect something edgy and challenging. The
record was as simple and hummable a radio hit as you could possibly
desire. For the post-Beatles generation coming into their albums-buying
majority, the record wasn’t really the point. The point was the way he
looked at them.2

Further to this, Bowie seemed to be intentionally, as Hepworth observed,

pointing at the viewers, directly looking down into the camera and singing
the lyrics: ‘I had to phone someone, so I picked on you.’3 As Marc Bolan
was priming the nation with a string of hits in the charts during 1971 with
‘Hot Love’ and ‘Get It On,’ Bowie was exploring fashion sensibilities via
144     Chapter 10

Fred Burrett, or Freddie Burretti as his persona called him. They ran into
each other at the Sombrero, a gay club where Bowie would drink by
influence and reference from Hollywood drag queens and fashion freaks
and geeks.
Not only would Fred influence Bowie’s style, but he became part
of his temporary band, Arnold Corns Band, formed due to legal reasons.
Burrett would remain at the side of Bowie from Diamond Dogs (1974) right
through to his ‘Plastic Soul’ period (1974–1976).
Additionally, as discussed previously, another terrestrial television was
evident as seminal in the influence and formation development of a more
opulent and indulgent form of synthesiser music during the late 1970s.
Roxy Music’s appearance on the Old Grey Whistle Test in June 1972 (a
month shy of Bowie’s appearance), an art school sonic experiment, was
beamed into millions of home, and as Phil Manzanera, guitarist for the
band, fondly recalled: ‘a lot of people say to me, the first time I saw you on
Top of the Pops, I realised there’s hope for a person like me, in Sheffield
or Scunthorpe or wherever.’4

BACKGROUND(S)

As the 1980s hit, the legacy and influence of acts discussed in the book was
beginning to appear. All around the country, new acts, and in particular,
new clubs began to act like cultural hotspots, where fashion and trends
would be as quickly formed as they were denounced, as Steve Dagger
(Spandau Ballet) fondly recalls:

In early 1980, I heard there was another group in Birmingham: Duran

Duran. As I perceived it, they had a disadvantage as they weren’t in
London. My whole thing was we had to be quick because there were
starting to be a lot of others. There were similar sorts of clubs start-
ing to be a lot others. There were similar sorts of clubs in every big
city—you had Pips in Manchester, The Rum Runner in Birmingham,
Maestro’s in Glasgow, Valentino’s in Edinburgh and there were various
clubs in Sheffield. The idea of playing keyboard-orientated electronica
came from those clubs. And so it was very quick. Some of those bands
already existed—Depeche Mode. We [Spandau Ballet] had the first hit
record, but we were followed very quickly by Duran Duran and also
by Visage, Soft Cell, but I wasn’t in the least surprised. (Dagger, quoted
in Jones 2020, 140)
 Visage     145

Strange, before his fame in Visage, started out promoting punk con-
certs in his hometown of Caerphilly, Wales, which eventually led to a key
position of cultural power: working for Malcom McClaren in London in
1977. His first act, the Moors Murderers, included an array of future stars,
including Chrissy Hynde, but it failed to make any real inroads musi-
cally, as a review by Andrew Gallix from Sound Magazine suggests: ‘The
band played the Roxy on 13 January 1978, supporting Open Sore. Steve
Strange was on vocals (calling himself Steve Brady) and Hynde was on
guitar. Bob Kylie (Open Sore): They were terrible! Absolutely dreadful!
On 28 January 1978, Strange told Sounds that he had left the band.’5 It
was Strange’s interaction with Rusty Egan (then drummer with the Rich
Kids) that would become most influential, essentially kicking off the New
Romantic Movement from a basement bunker in London’s Soho, where
the pair hosted a David Bowie night, aptly named ‘A Club for Heroes.’
At Billy’s, attendees were exposed to the mechanics of Kraftwerk, the cold
steel of the Human League, and the magic of Giorigio Morroder, and soon
Billy’s became the epicentre for this new movement, as Gary Kemp from
Spandau Ballet recalls: ‘The first time we went to Billy’s, Steve Dagger said
we should go and get some synthesizers’ (Kemp, quoted in Jones 2021,
140). Writer and academic Iain R.Webb recalls what Billy’s provided and
represented for youth culture:

The whole thing was about reinvention is very important, plus the fact
that it all grew out of punk, which a lot of people don’t think it did.
You have to remember London was very grey at the time, grey and
bland and conservative and locked down, and there weren’t the outlets
for people there are now. The New Romantic idea, with its flounces
and the big bows and the crimped hair, was a reaction to our surround-
ings as much as anything Self-expression through adversity. (Webb,
quoted in Jones 2021, 200)

So much so was the importance of the movers and shakers of Billy’s that
Bowie himself was an attendee, and on one occasion there, he picked
extras (including Strange) to feature in the music video for ‘Ashes to
Ashes’ (1980).
Between 1979 and 1980, Billy’s moved to the Blitz Club, on Great
Queen Street, Covent Garden, London, and it would become a subcultural
magnet where both the sound and the style of the New Romantic Move-
ment formed. In this new home, Strange, who manned the door, had a
strict entry policy, in that: ‘I ran a very tight ship in terms of door policy. I
wanted creative-minded pioneers there who looked like a walking piece of
146     Chapter 10

art, not some drunken, beery lads. The best move I made was turning Mick
Jagger away at the door. He was wearing trainers’ (Strange, quoted in Jones
2021, 197). More importantly, its core attendees, referred to as ‘The Blitz
Kids,’ and who included Boy George, Midge Ure, and Barry Adamson,
would have a monumental effect on the fashion of the New Romantic
Movement. Here, fantasy, escapism, homemade costumes, makeup, and a
highly androgynous style distinctly announced that Punk’s more stringent
uniform and look was now officially dead, and a article from the Daily
Mirror featuring writer Christiana Appleyard announced that the Blitz
Kids were ‘the new wave that even made punk look normal.’6 The period
of the Blitz was also soundtracked, not only by Bowie and others, but by
the group of which both Strange and Egan were a part. Visage and their
breaking into the charts in 1980 can be viewed as a monumental shift as
the role of the synthesizer changed, bringing about the sound of a more
a more open-ended and optimistic future.
It was Ure and Egan who essentially began Visage as a studio project,
as they were keen to play original music, with the intention of playing
in clubs like the Blitz. Both were still part of the Rich Kids, formed by
ex–Sex Pistols Glen Matlock in 1977, along with guitarist Steve New.
Their debut album, Ghosts of Princes in Towers (1978), while well received,
failed to gain any real momentum. The real breaking point came when
a synthesizer, a Yamaha CS50, appeared within the band. Although both
Ure and Egan were keen to incorporate it, Matlock and New were not as
motivated. They preferred the power pop direction, as Ure elaborates, in
that: ‘Technology broke us up in the first place, when I bought a synthe-
siser, which Glen and Steve absolutely hated. Would I be going against ev-
erything I stood for back then?’7 This eventually led to the band’s breakup,
and during this period, Ure and Egan had recorded demos, including ‘The
Dancer,’ which featured on Visage’s debut album. Egan suggested Steve
Strange as frontman, as his flamboyant persona would certainly fit the role,
and along with core members Billy Currie (Ultravox), John McGeoch
(Magazine), Dave Formula, and additional musicians Chris Payne and
Barry Adamson, the lineup fluctuated throughout the period of the group.
It would be producer Martin Rushent (1948–2011) who would be
the first to both demo and finance their first recordings. Their first single,
‘Tar,’ released in November 1979 on Radar Records, was as much of a
public service announcement as a traditional song, as lyrically it was about
the dangers of smoking. The single did poorly on release, but in parallel,
between late 1979 and 1980, at Genetic Studios, the band, now on Polydor
Records, recorded their debut album, which included the single ‘Fade to
 Visage     147

Grey,’ and when it was released on November 14, 1980, it shot them
to success and fame, reaching the Top Ten in the UK and number-one
positions in Germany and Switzerland.
Unfortunately, this fame was not built to last. Essentially a studio-
based project, the recording of the second album, The Anvil (1982), would
see many of the original members departed, as Ure had decided to spend
more of his time developing Ultravox, of which he was now its front
man and dealing with the fallout of their hit ‘Vienna’ (1980). Creative
and personality differences between Strange and Egan also led to a split.
Ure described this breakup as a combination of time and too many strong
personalities, in that:

The trouble with Visage was that there were too many chiefs, six char-
acters all wanting an equal say without putting in an equal amount of
work. I was doing most of the writing and producing, and we all knew
Steve [Strange] was the frontman, but when it became successful, jeal-
ousy and the nasty side of the business crept in. That was never the way
it was intended.8

Visage would continue to operate throughout the 1980s, but with Strange’s
battle with heroin addiction and failing chart success, the impetus and im-
mediacy of the first album became hard to match. Like many acts discussed
in the book, Visage would have a second life, and a whole new generation
would appreciate their sound in the 2000s when they reformed and toured,
albeit with none of the original lineup. The release of Orchestral (2014)
would be Strange’s last release, as he died from a heart attack in Egypt in
2015, while Ure would go on to have a string of hits with Ultravox. Visage
was in many ways a training ground for Ure and others, as along with the
stylistic elements they employed, they represented the new wave, a new
romantic sound that is still as influential as it was over forty years ago.

FEEL THE RAIN LIKE AN

ENGLISH SUMMER: VISAGE (1979)

Plasketes (2013) describes the debut album as ‘cultural artefacts that capture
the popular imagination especially well. As a first impression, the debut
album may take on a mythical status, whether the artist or group achieves
enduring success or in rare cases when an initial record turns out to be an
apogee for an artist.’9 Debut albums represent moments of a time in which,
148     Chapter 10

collectively, a number of people can capture parts of the populist zeitgeist.

A debut album represents many things, either a summation of years of work
and development, or a hurried cross-combination of ideas, ideals, and half-
baked thoughts. It’s a significant milestone as it also has to prove to the
record label that the act they have signed will pay off. Further to this, it’s
a callsign and a statement of intent, and it can often be hard to follow for
some acts, especially if it propels the act directly into the mainstream and
public consciousness. It’s an integral stage, one that often cuts a path for the
artist and their future direction. Visage’s debut album is more of a demon-
stration of collaborative ideas, a test bed and a hint of things to come, yet
for many, The Anvil (1982), although not as commercially successful, would
be more musically in tune and consistent with both itself and the albums
released during that year.
The cover of Visage, designed by the band and illustrated by Iain
Gillies, shows two dancers, mid-pose, in front of a silhouetted band. In
an open interpretation, it feels like it does indeed see the new guard
replacing the old, and even though the album heavily features traditional
instruments, it perhaps now time for these musical entities to move on.
Co-produced, recorded, and mixed by Martin Rushent between 1979
and 1980 at Genetic Studios in Reading, Berkshire, the album is es-
sentially a combination of Ure’s production skills. The session players
skillfully interplay between instruments and electronics and Strange’s vi-
sion, a mix between cabaret, futuristic, and the cryptic.
The album’s opening track, ‘Visage,’ is daring, optimistic, and full of
hope. Musically, it’s full of opulent ideas, and as pointed out previously,
it sets down the path (contextually) of the remainder of the album. This
is bookended by the lyrics, which bookmark a sense of oncoming change,
as the lyrics of ‘Stranger’ point toward:

New styles, new shapes,

New modes, that’s the role my passion takes,
Oh my visage.

Sonically, it begins quite traditionally: a piano motif on top of a 4/4 beat,

interrupted by European influences; electronic percussion, elements of
Kraftwerk and/or krautrock. However, it is new wave and Post-Punk
straight off. Adamson’s bass and Egan’s drums serve as a template for the
aforementioned genre’s rhythmic unit.
This is augmented by a lead synthesised line that lifts and elevates.
Strange’s vocal presentation makes use of Bowie’s euphoric vocal cho-
 Visage     149

ruses, certainly a homage to his idol and now cultural collaborator. At two
minutes, we enter a completely different zone, one much akin to Giorgio
Morroder, 4/4 kick drum and arpeggiated electronic bass. It has the same
sonic exploration and futurism as Bowie’s Heroes (1977), yet the amount of
musical breakdowns, particularly at the beginning, somewhat stuns the mo-
mentum of the track. However, this is made up toward the end as a sense of
climax returns, making up for lost time. A fast-paced arpeggiated sequence
links between this and ‘Blocks and Blocks.’ Here, the link between Magazine
and Visage are clear. Both Adamson (bass) and Egan (drums) provide a solid
back beat. What becomes established early and is perhaps overused is elec-
tronic percussion (snares) washed through long reverb effects; while attention
grabbing, it is perhaps distracting at times. Synthesised strings lead the chorus,
augmenting Strange’s lyrics, which are difficult to penetrate. Again, breaks
are used, and in this case, a middle section is filled with an array of electronic
sounds. The track ends with a guitar solo by McGough that sounds like a
last-minute overdub.
There is a sense of melancholy, a reflective quality in Strange’s lyrics.
If the essence of the New Romantics’ sound was escapism, an optimistic
view on the world (as per ‘Visage’) is odd. As Reynolds (2005) points out,
‘For all its brisk electro disco rhythms, Visage’s music was sepia-toned and at
times almost funeral, with Strange’s vocals exuding a fey sadness’ (2005, 326).
‘The Dancer,’ the album’s first instrumental, is a truly odd addition. It begins
as a traditional rock song, with a distorted guitar providing the main lead.
Ultimately, it is a piece produced by Ure and a demonstration of his develop-
ing his production skills in the studio.
This could be the soundtrack for the Blitz and was perhaps played
back at either Billy’s or the Blitz. Indeed, Rushnet first heard Visage’s
mixes at Billy’s, and this would be pivotal for other labels to get a taste
of the act, including Polydor, whom they signed in 1980. Ure was
acutely aware of the value of the clubs, and to a lesser degree, Strange’s
contributions to the group, commenting:

He was a blank canvas, him and his connections and, I suppose, the
buzz that was coming out of the end of Billy’s and the beginning of the
Blitz. That whole thing was invaluable. That was his contribution. He
didn’t write the lyrics and he wasn’t really a great singer. I had to sing
the songs first and then pump my voice into his ear, and what came out
of his mouth was a close enough representation. His value was the face,
the connections, the make-up artists, the clothes, the style, the look—all
of that stuff was just as important. So there was no question of me doing
this as a vehicle for myself. (Ure, quoted in Jones 2020, 181)
150     Chapter 10

Ure’s ambition was twofold: professional development and the atten-

tion and label support he needed to take Ultravox into the charts. ‘Tar,’
first released on Radar Records in November 1979, was the first single, and
a rerecorded version appears here on the album. The difference between
them is both pitch, as the 7-inch version is lower and the timing differences
on the LP version are slightly faster, along the obvious production values
that Rushnet brought to the table. Part infomercial, part futuristic, it’s an
interesting addition to the LP. It is perhaps the closest track on the album
that resembles the sound of Japan’s Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO). Their
self-titled album, released in 1978, featured the single ‘Firecracker,’ which
was an international success.
YMO marked a more upbeat and positive sound, using electronic de-
vices as opposed to the sound of the cold and distant European acts. Next,
the album takes a U-turn, into a place of epic creation and to a track that
would go on to define the careers of all the band members.
Strange laments in ‘Fade to Grey’ with: ‘Feel the rain like an
English summer.’ These lyrics clearly define the melancholy and
magic the group, along with Strange, captured with this track, and
as of September 2022, the current total streamed plays on Spotify
of ‘Fade to Grey’ was 53,135,913,10 obviously displaying the track’s
long-encompassing inspiration and admiration. The background of the
song is washed with as much mystique as the atmosphere of the song
itself. Released as the second single from the LP in November 1980, it
began its life as an instrumental, developed and co-written by Payne and
Currie, and Ure, who carried out much of its production, could hear its
potential upon first listen, as he recalls:

It was a lovely instrumental piece when I first heard it. Billy was tour-
ing with Gary Numan’s Tubeway Army and he and the other keyboard
player Chris used to jam this little piece of music at soundchecks. They
recorded it when they finished the tour and they played me the piece
of music and I just fell in love with it—I thought it was fantastic. So I
wrote the lyrics and the top line melody to Fade to Grey and turned it
into a Visage song.11

Its palatial opening, as a drifting synthesised string sound begins, is

closely followed by what sounds like an electronic pulse, more than likely
generated so the other members of the band could keep time with the
synthesised bass line. A drum machine accompanies this bass line, which
follows the phrase, ‘Devenir gris,’ wistfully sung by Egan’s girlfriend at the
time, Brigitte Arens. It’s icy, cold, and already sounds like a future classic.
 Visage     151

Part of its originality is the seamless flow between electronics and instru-
ments, much of which is thanks to Cedric Sharpley’s metronomic and
soulful drumming. Lyrically, it’s melancholic and reflective:

One man on a lonely platform,

One case sitting by his side,
Two eyes staring cold and silent,
Show fear as he turns to hide.

It’s filled with a romantic classicism and sound symphonic, as it is

the only track on the album that seems orchestrated, and as discussed at
the beginning of this chapter, it has a ‘dandyist’ atmosphere. This was
personified in the video for ‘Fade to Grey,’ which featured Strange and
friend Julia Fodor. It was the first video to be directed by Godley and
Creme (10cc), who would go on to define the music video in the 1980s,
directing for Duran Duran and the Police. It places Strange in a kabuki
style (Japanese dance-drama) dress as Fodor mimics the French lyrics. The
video would be another reason for the popularity of the song, particularly
in Germany and Switzerland. The would become the New Romantics’
anthem, and it is still widely influential, so much so that Strange would
go on to release an orchestrated version of the track in 2014 as part of the
‘Fade to Grey’ orchestral suite.
While Ure and others can indeed be credited as producers and co-
writers, it is important to acknowledge Strange’s contribution here of
aesthetics, style, and presentation, all of which determined his success and
legacy. The popularity of the song had taken Strange and the band by
surprise, and it sparked a rivalry within the scene, with Strange suggesting:

Visage had grown beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Fade to Grey

had been a hit and we had stolen a march on the rest of the New
Romantic Scene, getting our debut album out long before Spandau
Ballet released theirs. There was always an element of friendly rivalry
between us. We didn’t mind the others doing well, as long as we did
better. (Strange 2002, 68)

‘Malpaso Man’ follows, and the album returns to its powerhouse sound:
loud drums and wailing guitars. An arpeggiated pulse accompanies Strange’s
vocoded vocals, and like many other tracks on the album, it is part art rock,
part Post-Punk. What it does have is a broad sound design; apart from the
traditional instruments, it is populated with an array of sounds and vocal
samples that help populate the sound stage.
152     Chapter 10

Along with this, synthesised trumped elements allow for it to have

an almost regal and triumphant sound. Malpaso (translated from Spanish
to ‘badstep’ or ‘slipup’) mostly is a homage to Clint Eastwood, it seems, as
the lyrics suggest:

Small cheroot, black hat, cold eyes,

(Malpaso man),
Pointed boots, no heart, never cries,
(Malpaso man).

The album seems to sway between powerhouse, production lead (via

both Rushnet and Ure) and that of fully fledged and well-conceived tracks.
This is the case with ‘Mind of a Toy,’ the third single release from the album,
released in March 1981. A drum machine and a synthesizer lead the way
during its introduction, before a familiar drum and bass rhythm take charge.
What’s striking is the juxtaposition of these worlds; the introduction is mel-
ancholic and distant, and this is then interrupted by a more forward motion
verse. This motif becomes part of the overall language of the album. Yet,
what comes in the midsection, a reintroduction of the intro, is perhaps the
most well-crafted section on the album: a combination of duelling chime-like
synthesisers, interspersed by recordings made in a children’s playground. The
track ends with distant music boxes that spill and fall into the next produc-
tion. Again, the single did well, peaking at number thirteen in March 1981.12
This was aided no doubt by another video produced by Godley and Creme
that featured Strange as a Little Lord Fauntleroy, a giant child’s toy house, and
Strange being pulled around like a puppet.
‘Moon over Moscow’ follows, which takes a cross-section of influ-
ences and assembles them together; Giorgio Moroder, Sparks most notably,
Yellow Magic Orchestra. An instrumental, its title suggests its theme, that
of escapism. The production levels are high, and it is obvious that Ure here
is in the driving seat, testing out and experimenting with the studio. Like
the other instrumentals on the album, they are stark contrasts to what the
other more fully developed productions provide. ‘Visa-Age’ brings the more
complete sound into focus again. An interesting mix between Post-Punk and
proto disco, it also leans heavily on Numan’s sound: that of the electric and
electronic working in harmony. Science fiction and futurism, themes previ-
ously explored, return here to the fold, yet the lyrics are uninspiring, perhaps
rushed, as Strange sings:

Visa-age,
(I know the place),
 Visage     153

Visa-age,
(I can’t forget).

There is not much more to say about tracks such as ‘Visa-Age’ as they
represent moments in time in the studio environment, demonstrations
of musicians’ ability. However, the song does contain some interesting
sound effects: a lone whistler, falling rain, and the sound of a passing train
that is perhaps a homage to Kraftwerk’s Trans Europe Express. The album
ends with the wonderfully apocalyptic ‘The Steps.’ It’s both eerie and
frightening, almost like the sound design of a cheap horror soundtrack,
then fanfared synthesisers fill the space.
Musically, no doubt, again heavily influenced by the B side of Bowie’s
Low (1977), it is a truly epic track to place at the end of the album due to
its atmospherics, as it, like many others, sits so starkly against the rest of
the productions. Visage represents the most commercially successful debut
album documented in this book. Commercially, it would go gold in both
France and Germany.13 Critically, it would be less well received, as Mike
Nicholls from Record Mirror from November 1980 suggests:

I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Visage are amongst the new masters
of rock–they are decorative and they have too many of their own
commitments anyway. But this is a highly listenable album of quality
background music.14

TECHNOLOGY

Music sampling instruments have come a long way and can be traced back
to the American inventor Harry Chamberlin. Produced between 1949 and
1956, the ‘Chamberlin’ was a traditional keyboard instrument, with a revo-
lutionary difference. Underneath each key was a tape machine mechanism
that played prerecorded loops when the key was depressed. The tape head
was then amplified and passed through a loudspeaker, and although each
tape loop was only a few seconds long, it meant you could have an entire
orchestra at your fingertips. In the early 1960s, his business partner and
salesman Bill Franson had a number of disagreements with Chamberlin, and
soon Franson shipped a number of units across the pond.
The Chamberlin then became the ‘Franson,’ and eventually, via
Norman and Les Bradley’s Bradmatic LTD, the ‘Mellotron Mark I.’ It
would not be until the mid- to late 1960s that the Mellotron would enter
154     Chapter 10

into popular musicmaking via multi-instrumentalist Graham Bond, and

most notably, in 1966, on the Beatles’ ‘Strawberry Fields Forever.’ The
sampler would go digital on the banks of the Thames, London, in 1969,
with the help of British inventor and EMS (Electronic Music Studios)
owner Peter Zinovieff. Along with David Cocherell and software engineer
Peter Gronogo, the EMS Musys System ran on two PDP-8 computers.
Cumbersome and expensive, it failed to achieve commercial success, and
it would not be until 1979 that the first polyphonic digital sampler would
become commercially available.
The Fairlight, developed by Peter Vogel and Kim Rykie in Australia,
would change the face of musicmaking in the 1980s, as it was not only a
computer but a digital audio workstation. It featured a lightpen that could
input commands directly into the computer itself. In 1979, Vogel demon-
strated it to Peter Gabriel, who was making Peter Gabriel (1980) at the time,
and he was so overwhelmed with the instrument, he offered to become a UK
sales representative to promote it. At 12,000 pounds, it would only be sold
to rock’s royalty at the time, which included John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin)
and Rick Wright (Pink Floyd). Egan, in Electronic Sound Maker Magazine
from August 1984, discussed some of the technological assistance used on the
production of Visage, which included the Fairlight CMI:

We used everything on that album. We had a GS2, two Yamaha grands,

two ARP Odysseys, about three Yamaha string synths, a CS80 and a
Minimoog. We used a Fairlight on that album, we had the first one that
came over from Australia.15

As the drummer, Egan often had to play along with electronic percussion
generated by drum machines, which was no mean feat in the late 1970s,
as Egan expands:

I was using a Roland CR78 drum machine. This was before the TR808
came out remember. Of course in those days it was difficult to get ev-
erything in sync—life before the Linn drum!16

Egan also used Simmons Drums on the production of Visage. Used as a

replacement for traditional drums, Dave Simmons developed the SDS-
3, 4, and SDS-8 in 1979 while working at an St.Albans company called
Musicaid. The SDS-V would become a very popular drum kit in the
1980s, where each drum head was connected to a ‘drum brain’ or part-
synthesizer that would trigger the synthetic sound. As a keen technologist,
Egan soon was introduced, commenting:
 Visage     155

The drums didn’t present any problems because just before the start of
recording Visage, Richard Burgess had introduced me to Simmons per-
cussion. I remember him showing me this piece of board, which turned
out to be the SDS4, I think. It wasn’t properly finished at that time—it
was just a board with some wires hanging off it and the numbers 1-4
printed on it. I asked Richard what they were and he said “they’re the
outputs”, so we plugged them in, used a Roland Microcomposer to
clock everything, and every time I wanted to change one of the sounds
I had to get a little screwdriver out and adjust the pots.17

The Roland Microcomposer would be key to the production of Visage

as it was used by Rushnett to keep the electronic instruments in time
and allowing the user to use many instances of the pitch CVs to a single
Gate channel, which could create polyphonic parts. Rushent used the
Microcomposer in a similar fashion when working with the Human
League, effectively to keep synchronisation:

The timecode is generated by the MC8, the Roland Microcomposer.

If the song is 180 bars long, we feed in ‘180’. If there’s any 2/4 or 3/4
bars, they get written in as well. So on the tape we now have the time-
code, and from that we can run the Microcomposer which will drive
the synthesisers, and we can run the Linn drum machine.18

In many ways, the Roland’s Microcomposer became an additional player,

as what could be done by the keyboard player could now be done by a
machine, as Rushent explains:

The MC8 really replaces the keyboard, it sends out exactly the signals
the keyboard would send out if you were playing it. There are three
parameters that are important to a synthesiser in terms of the signal that
it gets from the keyboard. In fact on some synths there are more than
that, but the basic three are: control voltage, which denotes the pitch
of the note; the gate, or trigger pulse, which denotes how long the
note’s going to sound for, coupled with the ADSR which will give
you attack, decay and so on; and step time, which denotes the length
of time that the note occupies—it may not sound for that long, but it’s
a crotchet, say, and that’s its value. The control voltage is very simple,
you just program in all the notes in sequence that you want. Gate time
then denotes how long you want each to last.19

Ure saw technology as an extension of what he could already do, and it was
perhaps this parallel between the past and the future that made Visage sound
156     Chapter 10

more current at the time. Ure certainly saw this as a building block for the
formation of the band. Perhaps this is what such machines brought about.
In all, Egan, Ure, Rushent, and Formula used technology as a collaborative
partner, domesticating cutting-edge technology, a story and process that is
still evident in the sound of today’s electronic music production.

CONCLUSION

The different spheres in which electronic music production exists today is

overwhelming, and ‘much of the difficulty in talking about electronic-music
aesthetics lies in identifying what electronic music is and deciding whether
it is too big to discuss as one entity’ (Demers 2010, 135). Electronic music
today is very much about placing its production style in a genre, a classifi-
cation as a tool for marketing or so Apple Music or Spotify can classify an
act and playlist them to potential streamers and listeners. Frow explains that
genres are all about the communication of knowledge, in that ‘genre, we
might say, is a set of conventional and highly organised constraints on the
production and interpretation of meaning’ (Frow 2005, 10). Visage took
genre and split it across cultural, technological, and fashion-based ideolo-
gies, and indeed, its revolving scenes. For Strange and Egan, it was the club
scene in London; for Ure and the other musicians, it was about not only an
exploration of technology and the studio, but an exploitation of that space,
not only as a creative exercise, but also as a means to make financial reward.
One could say that Visage was made to make hits, to trial and error
how music(s) could break into the mainstream, which they both did, to
levels of which they could have only dreamed. However, as Visage did not
function as a normal band, they, more than any other act, depended on
their equipment more than anything else, as it was the apparatus through
which success would come. Even though their sound was only partly
electronic, the work that Ure and others made during the production of
Visage continues to inform the sound of today, a sound in which musicians
interact with technology, an arena where musicians, much the same as the
members of Visage, are still open to suggestion.

NOTES

1. A. Bennett (2017), Wrapped in stardust: glam rock and the rise of

David Bowie as pop entrepreneur, Continuum, 31:4, 574–82, DOI:
10.1080/10304312.2017.1334371 (accessed March 12, 2022).
 Visage     157

2. See also https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/jan/15/

david-bowie-starman-top-of-the-pops (accessed September 8, 2022).
3. Ibid.
4. See also https://www.anothermanmag.com/life-culture/10164/the-song-
that-shot-roxy-music-to-stardom (accessed September 8, 2022).
5. See also https://dangerousminds.net/comments/steve_strange_chrissie_
hynde_offend_all_of_england_as_punk_band (accessed March 21, 2022).
6. See also https://shapersofthe80s.com/2015/11/09/%e2%9e%a4-princess-
julia-relives-the-day-when-1980-went-boom/ (accessed May 6, 2022).
7. See also https://www.classicpopmag.com/2022/08/midge-ure-inter-
view/ (accessed September 6, 2021).
8. See also https://recordcollectormag.com/articles/days-ure (accessed
March 8, 2022).
9. See also https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290804434_Please_
allow_me_to_introduce_myself_Essays_on_debut_albums (accessed April 11,
2022).
10. Streaming data available at: https://open.spotify.com/
album/6NsHH43MNyI3q6Uv53jSDf (accessed September 14, 2002).
11. See also https://www.henleystandard.co.uk/news/music/114165/we-ll-
have-a-grey-old-time-pledges-synthpop-pioneer.html (accessed September 12,
2022).
12. See also https://www.officialcharts.com/search/singles/mind%20of%20
a%20toy/ (accessed August 2, 2022).
13. See also https://infodisc.fr/Chanson_Certifications.php (accessed Septem-
ber 15, 2022).
14. See also https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Record-Mirror/80s/81/Re-
cord-Mirror-1981-02-21-OCR.pdf (accessed September 19, 2022).
15. See also http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/searching-for-the-perfect-
beat/3385 (accessed September 21, 2022).
16. See also http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/behind-visage/7949 (ac-
cessed September 21, 2022).
17. See also http://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/human-league-in-the-stu-
dio/4246 (accessed September 21, 2022).
18. Ibid.
19. See also https://www.soundonsound.com/people/martin-rushent-pro-
ducer (accessed July 20, 2022).
 11

CONCLUSION
Influence and Afterword

E lectronic musical instrument technology evolves with each passing

decade. At the dawn of the 1980s, the analogue synthesisers discussed
in this book—the MiniMoog, for example—were in line for slaughter, as
MIDI and digital platforms would soon replace them. Analogue synthesiz-
ers and their associated workflows have not only survived numerous evo-
lutions, but they have also regained a somewhat mythological status. Over
the last decade, as CPU and RAM-processing power has become faster and
cheaper to implement, this status has been turned into a very direct and
profitable selling point by brands such as Arturia, which have developed
VST (Virtual Studio Technology) plugin versions of many of the synthe-
sizer brands and models. What can only be termed as ‘boutique’ processes
and effects in contemporary electronic music production are becoming
more and more incorporated into virtual synthesizers, and such develop-
ments and trends have largely been, as Toffler (1980) suggests, ‘informed,
supplemented and aided by pro audio marketing, where both the profes-
sional and consumer merge as “the prosumer”’ (Toffler 1980, 101).
Current electronic music producers now very much rely on emula-
tions of analogue synthesisers, as the originals are very much out of reach
financially, so the field position, economic class, and habits within current
electronic musicmaking reveals a vigorous battle between the so-called
prosumer by considering a new socio-historic subject (the prosumer) and
the space of production (the project studio).
Cole (2011) defines this as:

The project studio and prosumer reconfigure some, but not all, of the
dominant relations within the wider social or economic field. Thus, we
can see that although prosumers are not economically determined, their

159
160     Chapter 11

relative autonomy is itself directly tied to changes in the structure of

social production and consumption (Cole 2011, 458).

If we consider Gary Numan, who had access to instruments like the

MiniMoog, and more cottage or industrious bands like Throbbing Gristle,
who built a lot of their own devices, the ideal of cultural ‘capital’ comes
into focus. Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement
of Taste (1984) considers different forms of ‘capital’ in terms of ‘economic,
cultural, social and symbolic relationships, referring to the fact that they are
all utilised by members of the social field in order to attempt dominance for
their judgements’ (Bourdieu 1984, 1). Bourdieu also points toward what
he referred to as ‘social assets’ (in arts and education) that allow for social
mobility beyond economic means.
These, it seems, are most likely to determine what constitutes taste
in cultural fashion. This, in turn, allows it to become a form of cultural
capital, in that:

There is an economy of cultural goods, but it has a specific logic. So-

ciology endeavours to establish the conditions in which the consumers
of cultural goods, and their taste for them, are produced, and at the
same time to describe the different ways of appropriating such of these
objects as are regarded at a particular moment as works of art, and
the social conditions of the constitution of the mode of appropriation
that is considered legitimate. But one cannot fully understand cultural
practices unless ‘culture’, in the restricted, normative sense of ordinary
usage, is brought back into ‘culture’ in the anthropological sense, and
the elaborated taste for the most refined objects is reconnected with the
elementary taste for the flavours of food (Ibid., 1).

If we consider Bourdieu theory more closely, we can see that social

and, indeed, geographical issues perhaps conditioned the users of these
machines, be it Sheffield or London, into using brands based on this.
There is another interesting note to this that relies on the knowledge
base of the user, as both Chris Carter and Chris Watson were electronics
hobbyists and had an understanding of not only their instruments, but
also of the technology and circuitry behind it, whereas Gary Numan and
Daniel Miller did not possess these skills.
Gaining such knowledge did and does not immediately make you
a better performer and composer, but perhaps had its advantages. As
Zagorski-Thomas (2014) suggests, expanding further on Bourdieu’s notion
of ‘capital,’ it could be linked with a person’s social and cultural ‘position,’
commenting:
 Conclusion     161

On an economic level, the spending power of an audience and its abil-

ity to buy the output and thereby confer value on it is one fundamental
use of capital. On the other hand, cultural capital relates to the tacit and
explicit knowledge that confers power to an individual; social capital
relates to power that stems from a person’s position within some social
grouping and symbolic power relates to ideas such as prestige and hon-
our. (Zagorski-Thomas 2014, 131)

As both Carter and Watson never made it to Top of the Pops, Numan
was in a dominant position of cultural capital, in that his label, Beggars,
was in a position to provide more social positioning and prestige. It is
possible this dystopian sound was informed by those who have cultural
capital, well-known producers for example, who in turn ‘inform the
practises of a cohort of mastering engineers who admire those in question
or the individual’s work, mediated by the social field, which affects a part
of the cultural domain’ (Ibid., 131). For today’s producers of electronic
music, many machines discussed in this book are far beyond the reach of
many, a similar factor also during 1977–1980.
However, what has changed is computational technology. Thanks
to companies like Arturia, modern electronic music producers now have
access to digital plugins, or VST (Virtual Studio Technology) versions of the
MiniMoog, Roland 606, System 100, and EMS Synthi, and for many, this
is where the great debate on the use of electronic musicmaking, of whether
using hardware or software for production begins. Kaiser (2017) attempts
to define the relationship between capital and the user’s relationship with
technology, and he argues there are many aspects of analogue software that
cannot be emulated by software plugins, suggesting that:

The credibility gap of software emulation in music production com-

prises tentative, olfactory and gustatory sensations, process-oriented
aspects of workflow, as well as aspects of a hardware’s physical charac-
teristics, and time-dependent aspects. (Kaiser 2019, 3)

Many of the musicians or nonmusicians documented in this book had

no real formal musical training; they learned to play their synthesisers
and electronics of choice via interacting with physical hardware, in that
the physicality of turning knobs to make sonic adjustments and proce-
dural processes, changing tape or waiting for valves in amplifiers to heat
up. Such processes can help us define some of the aesthetic differences
between using hardware and software devices, and here the role of ergo-
nomics helps clarify the relationship between the musician and the job at
162     Chapter 11

hand. It focuses on the design of work areas or work tasks to improve job
performance and the ergonomics of each process, both physical and virtual.
Both approaches are broadly defined as follows:

• Physical Processing: the tactile and hands-on process of using faders

and knobs to adjust parameters to make electronic music.
• Virtual Processing: the non-tactile process of using a mouse or a
touchscreen to adjust parameters to make electronic music.

While virtual processes can make workflow more streamlined (via automa-
tion and digital recall), electronic musicmakers of today generally use an
ergonomically hybrid approach, via the use of both physical and virtual mu-
sicmaking tools. In the end, ‘cultural capital’ is not just about simply buying
or accumulating technology; it’s about people having access to technology,
or more so, processes that would usually be unavailable to them.
Free multitrack electronic music production platforms like ‘Reaper,’
which offer a suite of free VST, composed in a very smartly designed
program, have had a huge and profound impact on the electronic music
production industry. In order to differentiate themselves, companies like
Arturia lean heavily on taglines like ‘authentic,’ ‘warm,’ and ‘vintage’
to help market and sell their virtual synthesizers. One of the possible
contributing factors to this is the collective consideration that these
analogue technologies and processes of the past provide a more distinctive
sound, and standing out ‘sonically’ from the crowd becomes more and
more important.
One fundamental separation between both physical and virtual
electronic musicmaking still exists: the role of human objectivity. As
much as virtual synthesizer plugins can offer, a plugin preset cannot make
experienced and informed musical decisions on the fly or offer years of tried
and tested methodologies made by the likes of Carter, Watson, Numan,
Miller et al. Any musician knows that a new plugin or piece of hardware
can bring about new possibilities, but that it can, at the same time, bring
about limitations. Perhaps these levels of human objectivity are at an end,
as Birchnell (2018) suggests, ‘in some instances, technologies are the root
cause of human obsolescence and drive redundancies in occupations, skills
and livelihoods’ (Birchnell 2018, 22).
The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in current
electronic musicmaking brings many considerations. Algorithmic con-
trol of what has primarily been a human-driven enterprise will see the
domain drastically shift over the next decade. Stern and Razlogova (2019)
 Conclusion     163

suggest AI and machine learning ‘devalues the people’s aesthetic labour

as it establishes higher standards for recordings online.’1 Nonetheless, it
is important to recognize that perhaps AI and machine learning are just
variants of traditional electronic musicmaking in that far from the
spectacular rhetoric around AI as an emergent form of nonhuman
agency, we find a very familiar set of agencies—financial, corporate,
technical, musical, and human—hard at work in a new setting. Emergent
technologies have led to the development of extended electronic
and industrial musicmaking over the last number of years, and these
technologies have played a role in shaping the sounds of today and of
tomorrow.
AI and machine learning will undoubtedly change the way in which
the electronic music of the future will be produced, and going forward,
electronic musicians will have to fight and strive toward keeping it a
human-centred process, and if required, incorporate algorithmic
approaches that include collaboration with humans rather than attempting
to replace or outsell them.
Many of the acts discussed in this book relied and utilised an opera-
tional language, control voltage, which allowed synthesisers, sequencers,
and drum machines to communicate with each other. However, due to
the lack of standardisation, each manufacturer essentially had to develop
their own protocol, which included CV/Gate and Digital Control Bus
(DCB), as ulatized by Roland. CV/Gate was the more common option on
many devices throughout the late 1970s; it works primarily by the voltage
controlling the pitch and the gate controlling the note on/off functionality.
Much of what this process uses is essentially what the modular systems built
by Moog in the late 1960s implemented; a patch cord could interconnect
each module. Thus, the control voltage would allow a synthesiser and drum
machine to communicate with one another while the gate function simply
communicated when the signal went high and to turn off when the signal
went low. Chris Carter of Throbbing Gristle would have used this process
extensively on 20 Jazz Funk Greats to allow his Roland 808 to commu-
nicate with this modular synthesizer. Control Voltage was an extremely
expressive functionality that allowed new electronic groups to have a much
more synchronised sound. However, due to the instability of analogue ma-
chines, it was never quite as reliable as it should have been.
Roland first considered a new approach, and in 1981 its president,
Ikutaro Kakehashi, proposed to an American manufacturer, Oberheim
Electronics, the development of a universal protocol for synthesisers to
use. The involvement of Oberheim brought about a more complicated
164     Chapter 11

and costly process, which led Kakehashi to Sequential Circuits and Dave
Smith, and in October 1982, Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)
was developed and implemented by Roland, Yamaha, Korg, Kawai, and
Sequential Circuits. MIDI, unlike CV/Gate, does not use audio signals to
communicate information. Instead, a MIDI cable can carry up to sixteen
channels of information, including pitch and volume. Still in use today, its
most common function is to send pitch information from a MIDI keyboard
to a VST (virtual synthesizer) in an application like Abelton Live. Due to its
ease of use, levels of manipulation, and small file size, it is now the domi-
nant communication language for electronic music producers.
It is not the objective of this book to go into great technical detail.
However, the implications of the advent of MIDI during the early 1980s
had a near-monumental effect on the resulting sound of the decade. Once
the MIDI information is recorded in a digital sequencer or computer, it can
be played back, and it is perfectly in time as it has been quantized.2
While this process indeed made electronic musicmaking and its work-
flow much easier, it produced a more regulated and conservative music(s),
and as a result, the majority of electronic music today somewhat lacks the
experimental nature and technological unpredictability of what acts like
Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire achieved during the late 1970s. So
as technological advances came via the microchip and processor, so, too,
did a change and/or an alteration of the timbre and experimental nature of
synthesised and electronic music produced in Britain.
The acts documented in Dark Waves created little sense of community,
yet at the same time, they embodied the cultural, social, and economic
climate of Britain in the 1970s. For them, the dystopian sound of Britain
was the ambition to express and communicate subject matter and content
not yet addressed in popular musicmaking. As technology would dominate
much of this music(s) progression in the 1980s, the legacy of the acts in
Dark Waves blurs the borders between noise and music, as much of their
work would go on to inspire the coming decades and much of the context
of this would inform its progression, practises, and history. All this was
placed in dystopian times as the Cold War struggled on until 1991, and it
was as this ended that a new global economy was born. At this stage, as
Reed (2013) suggests:

The genre’s widespread momentary popularity peaked at that pre-

millennial moment of eclipse, but since the dreamed-of future became
the past, industrial music hasn’t changed its time much, which is why it
can see past in the twenty-first century. (Reed 2013, 315)
 Conclusion     165

From their earliest inceptions, the acts made propositions and acts of
nonconformity through modern means, and as times changed, so did the
machines facilitating this. On a musicological level, the area of musicmaking,
documented in this book, has little academic profile. The approaches of the
background of the artists documented, along with their use of technology, all
happened in the midst and correlations between Punk, Post-Punk, DIY, and
electronic music in 1970s Britain.
Frith (2017) identifies music as a special type of aesthetic product be-
cause it ‘cultivates a sense of community while facilitating transcendence of
community’ (Frith 2017, 73), and as many of the albums reviewed in this
book were recorded and produced in London, through this, there is a sense
of awareness that what they created was based on their experience of living
during that period in Britain. Many of the acts reviewed were influenced by
major art movements (Surrealism, Dadaism), and to a lesser degree, science
fiction; thus what they produced was defined by the art they consumed.
From this, an inherent sense of experimentalism was born, and as Demers
(2019) points out, ‘experientialism occurs in any attempt to experiment,
to take risks, to do the unexpected. As such, experimentalism can occur
anywhere, in any economic class or social situation, and with any type of
technology’ (2019, 141). Elements of the dystopian sound of remain in
contemporary electronic music, and as Fisher (2006) points out, while on
first listening to London’s Burial:

Near future, maybe... But listening to Burial as I walk through damp and
drizzly South London streets in this abortive Spring, it strikes me that
the LP is very London Now—which is to say, it suggests a city haunted
not only by the past but by lost futures. It seems to have less to do with
a near future than with the tantalising ache of a future just out of reach.3

Acts like Belbury Poly and Pye Audio Corner tap into these ‘lost futures’
and reference a hauntological sound world that fully makes use of a sense
of place, and much of their productions channel public service advertise-
ments and supernatural stories from television like Children of the Stone
(1976) and the Owl Service (1970). However, as Fisher points out, besides
the above acts’ adaptation of retrofuturism, innovation seems to have been
misplaced and/or lost, in that, as Fisher (2012) elaborates:

What haunts the digital cul-de-sacs of the twenty-first century is not so

much the past as all the lost futures that the twentieth century taught us
to anticipate. The futures that have been lost were more than a matter
of musical style. More broadly, and more troublingly, the disappear-
166     Chapter 11

ance of the future meant the deterioration of a whole mode of social

imagination: the capacity to conceive of a world radically different from
the one in which we currently live. (Fisher 2012, 16)

Dark Waves has considered technologically the synthesiser, not only as a

musical instrument but as a tool that soundtracked a changing time. The
synthesizer’s current resurgence brings about new (and old) processes,
reconnecting it to the past, again providing outlets for gesture, feedback,
and physicality in both electronic music compositional and performance
paradigms. Throughout the history of software synthesis, obsolescence
has put hardware devices into the backrooms of studio and research labs.
Further to this, some of the operating systems that run hardware synthe-
sizers often go obsolete, leaving their usage limited.
Key to understanding the role of the synthesizer is its sense of indepen-
dence from updates and software, in that it allows the machine to become, in
a way, immune to the rapid pace of technology, as most of their architecture
and inbuilt circuits remains fixed and autonomous, unreflective of change.
One cannot help but wonder about the possibilities (or lack thereof) of future
ways of musicmaking that may appear, which will again provide electronic
musicians with the opportunity to exploit technology on such a physical level,
or indeed, if the listener can again be so closely aware of sound and its produc-
tion mechanisms. Ultimately, Dark Waves presented the synthesizer, and in
some degree the acts discussed within, as immune from technological retire-
ment and significance, allowing both to remain seminal within the histories of
popular electronic musicmaking both now and into the future.

NOTES

1. See also J. Sterne and E. Razlogova, Machine Learning in Context, or

Learning from LANDR: Artificial Intelligence and the Platformization of Mu-
sic Mastering, Journal of Social Media and Society Vol. 5, No. 2. https://doi.
org/10.1177/2056305119847525 (accessed March 11, 2022).
2. Quantization (via MIDI) positions data on the nearest grid position that is
musically relevant and is largely designed to correct errors. It can also be used in
a creative way, like altering the rhythmic timing of MIDI data (swing).
3. See also http://k-punk.abstractdynamics.org/archives/007666.html (accessed
September 6, 2022).
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aaronovitch, Sam. 1981. The Road from Thatcherism: The Alternative Economic Strat-
egy. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Allen, Robert C. 2011. Global Economic History: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Amis, M. 1992. “Hard Shoulder,” New Review, 10 October.
Attali, Jacques. 1977. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Paris: Presses Univer-
sitaires de France.
Ball, Hugo. Dadaist Manifesto. Read at the first public, Zurich, July 14, 1916.
Ballard, J.G. 1973. Crash, 1st ed. London: Picador.
Baxter, J. 2009. J.G. Ballard’s Surrealist Imagination: Spectacular Authorship. London:
Routledge.
Beer, Stafford. 1972. In the Brain of the Firm. London: Allen Lane.
Benjamin, Walter, & Rolf Tiedemann. 1999. The Arcades Project. Harvard: Belknap
Press.
Benn, Tony. 1989. Against the Tide. Diaries 1973–76. London: Hutchinson.
Berman, Marshall. 2010. All That Is Solid Melts into Air. London: Verso Publishing.
Birrer, Frans A. J. “Definitions and research orientation: do we need a definition
of popular music?” in D. Horn, ed., Popular Music Perspectives 2 (1985): Gothen-
burge, Exeter, Ottawa and Reggio Emilia, 99–106.
Birtchnell, T. 2010. “Listening without Ears: Artificial Intelli-
gence in Audio Mastering.” J. Big Data & Society 4, no. 2, https://doi
.org/10.1177/205395171880855.
Bishop, Claire (ed). 2006. Participation. Boston: MIT Press.
Black, Lawrence, Hugh Pemberton, & Pat Thane (eds). 2013. Reassessing Britain.
Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Botstein, Leon. 2001. “Modernism.” Grove Music Online. Accessed Septem-
ber 30, 2022. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093
/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040625.

167
168     Bibliography

Boulez, Pierre. 1977. Technology and the Composer. Times Literary Supplement,
May 6.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.
Harvard, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2010. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Rout-
ledge: Abingdon Oxfordshire.
Bowlby, Rachel. “‘Half Art’: Baudelaire’s ‘Le Peintre de La Vie Moderne.’”
Daedalus 143, no. 1 (2014): 46–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43297285.
Bracewell, Michael. 2020. Souvenir. London: Orion Books.
Brend, Mark. 2012. The Sound of Tomorrow: How Electronic Music Was Smuggled
into the Mainstream. London: Bloomsbury.
Budd, Alan. 1980. The Politics of Economic Planning. London: Fontana, 1978.
Burk, Kathleen, & Alec Cairncross. 1992. Goodbye, Great Britain: The 1976 IMF
Crisis. Yale: Yale University Press.
Butler, M.J., ed. 2012. Electronica, Dance and Club Music. Farnham: Ashgate.
Cascone, Kim. 2000. “Aesthetics of Failure: Post-Digital Tendencies in Contem-
porary Computer Music.” Computer Music Journal 24, no. 4, 12–18.
Cohen, Stanley. 1972. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. London: Taylor & Francis.
Cole, S.J. 2011. “The Prosumer and the Project Studio: The Battle for Distinction
in the Field of Music Recording,” Journal of Sociology 45, no. 3, 447–63.
Collins, N., M. Schedel, & S. Wilson, eds. 2013.Electronic Music: Cambridge Introduc-
tions to Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Connell, J., & C. Gibson, C. 2013. SoundTracks: Popular Music Identity and Place.
London: Taylor and Francis.
Cox, Christopher, & Daniel Warner (eds.). 2007. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern
Music Paperback. London: Continuum.
Crossley, Nick. 2015. Networks of sound, style and subversion: The punk and post-
punk worlds of Manchester, London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975–80. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
CSE London Working Group. The Alternative Economic Strategy: A Labor Movement
Response to the Economic Crisis. London: CSE Books.
Dafoe, Allen. 2015. On Technological Determinism: A Typology, Scope Condi-
tions, and a Mechanism, Science, Technology, & Human Values 40, no. 6, 1047–76.
Daniel, Drew. 2003. Throbbing Gristle’s Twenty Jazz Funk Greats (33 1/3). London:
Continuum.
Debord, Guy. 1994. The Society of the Spectacle. Boston: MIT Press.
Deen, R.T. 2009. The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Demers, Joanna. 2010. Listening Through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental
Electronic Music. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
De Maria, R., C. Heesok, S. Zacher (eds.). 2013. A Companion to British Literature,
Volume 4: Victorian and Twentieth Century. London: John Wiley & Sons.
 Bibliography     169

Dick, Philip K. 2012. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. First Mariner books ed.
Boston: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Dick, Philip K. 2010. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 1st ed. Los Angeles:
Boom! Studios.
Emmerson, Simon (ed.). 1986. The Language of Electroacoustic Music. London:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Eno, Brian. 1996. A Year with Swollen Appendices. London: Faber & Faber.
Feenberg, Andrew. 1999. Questing Technology. London: Routledge.
Fish, Mick. 2002. Industrial Evolution: Through the Eighties with Cabaret Voltaire.
London: SAF Publishing.
Fisher, Mark. 2016. The Weird and the Eerie. London: Repeater Publications.
Fitting, Peter. 1987. “Futurecop: The Neutralization of Revolt in ‘Blade
Runner’.” Science Fiction Studies 14, no. 3, 340–54. http://www.jstor.org
/stable/4239842.
Forster, E.M. 2011. The Machine Stops. London: Penguin Classics.
Frith, Simon, W. Straw, & J. Street (eds.). 2001. The Cambridge Companion to
Pop and Rock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frith, Simon (ed.). 2004. Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural
Studies. London: Routledge.
Frith, Simon. 2017. Taking Popular Music Seriously. London: Routledge.
Frith, Simon, & H. Horne. 1987. Art Into Pop (1st ed.). Routledge: London.
Frith, Simon. 1998. Performing Rites on the Value of Popular Music. Harvard: Har-
vard University Press.
Gasiorek, Andrjez. 2005. J.G. Ballard. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Goldberg, R.I. 1979. Performance Art: From Futurism to the Present. London:
Thames and Hudson.
Goodwin, Andrew. 1992. “Rationalization and democratization in the new
technologies of popular music,” in Popular Music and Communication, Second
Edition. London: James Lull.
Hall, Joseph. 1981. Mundus Alter ET Idem (The World Different and the Same).
Yale, CT: Yale University Press.
Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen.
Hegarty, Paul. 2007. Noise Music: A History. London: Bloomsbury.
Hickson, Kevin. 2005. The IMF Crisis of 1976 and British Politics: Keynesian Social
Democracy, Monetarism and Economic Liberalism: The 1970s Struggle in British
Politics. London: I.B.Tauris.
Holland, Stuart. 1975. The Socialist Challenge. London: Quartet Books.
Houk, Deborah. 1997. “Self-Construction and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-
Century French Dandyism.” French Forum 22, no. 1, 59–73. http://www.
jstor.org/stable/40540408.
Huxley, Aldous. 1947. The Perennial Philosophy. London: Harper Perennial.
Huxley, Aldous. 2006. Brave New World. London: Harper Perennial.
170     Bibliography

Jones, Dylan. 2021. Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics. London: Faber
& Faber.
Jones, Steve. 1992. Rock Formation: Music, Technology, and Mass Communication. 3
vols. Foundations of Popular Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications,
Inc., https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483325491.
Joyce, James. 1990. Ulysses. London: Vintage Press.
Keane, David. 1981. The Quest for “Musically Interesting” Structures in Computer Music,
International Computer Music Conference, 3–18.
Knapp, Bettina L. 1980. Antonin Artaud Man of Vision. Cleveland: Ohio University
Press.
Kunz, W.M. 2006. Culture Conglomerates: Consolidation in the Motion Picture and
Television Industries. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lay, Paul. 2007. “Reading Camus in Salford—Steeped in European culture, Ian Curtis
epitomized the 1970s young British working-class intellectual,” Prospect, November
25, accessed July 12, 2022. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine
/readingcamusinsalford.
Leydon, R. 2004. “Forbidden Planet: Effects and Affects in the Electro-Avant-
Garde,” in Off the Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema, edited by P.
Hayward. London: John Libbey.
Longhurst, Brian, & Danijela Bogdanovic. 2014. Popular Music and Society, 3rd edi-
tion. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishing.
Low, Setha, & Neil Smith. 2006. The Politics of Public Space. London: Routledge.
Maconie, Stewart. 2005. Cider with Roadies. London: Ebury.
Marcuse, H. 1964. One-Dimensional Man. Boston: Beacon Press.
Martinetti, F.T. 1973. In U. Appolonio, ed., Futurist Manifestos. London: Thames
and Hudson.
Marx, L. 2011. “Technology: The Emergence of a Hazardous Concept.” Social Re-
search 64, no. 3.
Mayr, Erasmus. 2011. Understanding Human Agency. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
McLuhan, Marshall. 1967. The Medium Is the Message, 9th ed. Berkeley: Gingko Press.
Merton, Robert. 2018. Social Science Quotations: Who Said What, When, and Where.
London: Routledge.
Middleton, Richard. 1990. Studying Popular Music. London, McGraw-Hill Education.
Morra, Irene. 2013. Britishness, Popular Music, and National Identity: The Making of Mod-
ern Britain (1st ed.). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203503218.
Moylan, T. 2002. Scraps of the Untainted Sky: Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia. Boulder:
Westview-Perseus Press.
Numan, Gary. 2020. (R)evolution: The Autobiography. London: Constable.
Ogburn, W.F. 1947. “How Technology Changes Society.” The ANNALS of the
American Academy of Political and Social Science 249, no. 1, 81–88. https://doi.
org/10.1177/000271624724900111.
Ogburn, W.F. 1964. Culture and Social Change: Selected Papers. Chicago: Chicago
University Press.
 Bibliography     171

Orwell, George. 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin.

Orwell, George. 1937. The Road to Wigan Pier. London: Penguin Classics.
Pahl, R.E., & J.T. Winkler. 1975. “The Coming Corporatism.” Challenge 18,
no. 1, 28–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40719271.
Pinch, Trevor, and Frank Trocc. 2004. Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the
Moog Synthesizer. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Plasketes, George. 2013. Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself: Essays on Debut Albums.
Farnham: Ashgate.
Prendergast, Mark. 2013. Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby—The Evolution of
Sound in the Electronic Age. London: Bloomsbury.
Pressing, J. 1992. Synthesizer Performance and Real-Time Techniques. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Reed, Alexander S. 2013. Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Reynolds, Simon. 2009. “One Nation Under a Moog.” Guardian. October 10. Ac-
cessed September 5, 2002. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/oct/10
/synth-pop-80s-reynolds.
Reynolds, Simon. 2016. Rip It Up and Start Again. London: Faber & Faber.
Reynolds, Simon. 2011. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to Its Own Past, 1st
American ed. London: Faber & Faber.
Reynolds, Simon. 2017. Shock and Awe: Glam Rock and Its Legacy: From the Seventies
to the Twenty-First Century, paperback ed. London: Faber & Faber.
Rose, N. 2011. “Identity, Genealogy, History.” In S. Hall & P. du Gay
(eds.), Questions of Cultural Identity. SAGE Publications, https://dx.doi.
org/10.4135/9781446221907.n8.
Rowthorn, Bob. 1980. “The Politics of the Alternative Economic Strategy.” Interna-
tional Socialism 2, no. 8 (Spring 1980), 85–94.
Russo, Mary J., & Daniel Noam Warner. 1988. “Rough Music, Futurism, and Post
Punk Industrial Noise Bands.” Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and
Culture 10, no. 3.
Savage, Jon. 1988. Industrial Culture Handbook. San Francisco: Research Publica-
tions.
Shelley, Mary. 1991. Frankenstein. Dover: Dover Publications.
Sobchak, V. 1991. “Baudrillard’s Obscenity.” Science Fiction Studies 18, no. 3.
Sommer, Robert. 1969. Personal Space: The Behavioral Basis of Design. Hoboken,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
Spencer, R. & E. 2000. Paolozzi: Writings and Interviews. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Strange, Steve. 2002. Blitzed: The Autobiography of Steve Strange. London: Orion
Books.
Stubbs, David. 2018. Mars by 1980: The Story of Electronic Music. London: Faber
& Faber.
172     Bibliography

Sutton, Paul. 2016. Understanding Gary Numan: An Essay on the Machine Quartet
(1978–1981). Cambridge, UK: Buffalo Books.
Swift, Jonathan. 2003. Gulliver’s Travels. London: Penguin Classics.
Tambling, Jeremy. 2018. “Baudelaire: The Painter of Modern Life.” In J. Tam-
bling (ed.). The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Urban Literary Studies, Palgrave Macmillan,
Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62592-8_83-1.
Toffler, Alvin. 1980. The First Wave: The Classic Study of Tomorrow. New York:
Bantam Books.
Toop, David. 2018. Ocean of Sound: Ambient Sound and Radical Listening in the Age of
Communication. London: Serpent’s Tail.
Tutti, Cosey Fanni. 2017. Art Sex Music: Cosey Fanni Tutti. London: Faber & Faber.
Tzara, Tristan. 1918. Dada Manifesto. Publisher unknown. 23rd March.
Virilio, P. 2003. Art and Fear. Trans. Julie Rose. London and New York: Continuum.
Ware, Martin. 2022. Electronically Yours, Volume One. London: Constable.
Warner, T. 2003. Pop Music, Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital
Revolution, Farnham: Ashgate.
Wells, H.G. 2013. When the Sleeper Awakes. London: Penguin Classics.
Whitney, Carl. 2019. Hit Factories: A Journey Through the Industrial Cities of British Pop.
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Wickham-Jones, Mark. 1996. Economic Strategy and the Labor Party: Politics and Policy-
Making, 1970–83. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Winkler, J.T. 1975. “Law, State and Economy: The Industry Act 1975.” British Jour-
nal of Law and Society 2, no. 2, 103–28.
Wiener, Norbert. 1965. Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the
Machine. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Williams, Raymond. 1985. Towards 2000. London: Penguin.
Wishart, T. 1994. Audible Design. London: Orpheus–The Pantomime Press.
Woodstra, Chris, Gerald Brennan, & Allen Schrott (eds.). 2005. All Music Guide
to Classical Music: The Definitive Guide to Classical Music. Berkeley, CA: Backbeat
Books.
Zagorski-Thomas, Simon. 2014. The Musicology of Record Production. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
 INDEX

2nd Annual Report (album), 63 ‘analogue vogue,’ 123–24

20 Jazz Funk Greats (album), 56, 60, Anarchy in the UK (album), 18
61–62, 63–69, 72, 163 The Anvil (album), 147, 148
‘20 Jazz Funk Greats’ (song), 63–64 Appleyard, Christiana, 146
The Arcades Project (book), 10
ABC, 41 ‘Arch of the Aorta’ (song), 95
A Clockwork Orange (film), 113 ‘Are Friends Electric?’ (song), 126,
Adamson, Barry, 146, 149 128–29, 130
AES (Alternative Economic Strategy), Arens, Brigitte, 150
the, 13, 15–16 Arnold Corns Band, 144
aesthetics and cybernetics, 27, 30 Aron, Robert, 87
aesthetics and technological Arp, Jean, 39
determinism, 25 ARP 2500 synthesizer, the, 137
AFM (American Federation of ARP 2600 synthesizer, the, 91, 98, 137
Musicians), the, 137 Art and the Automobile (book), 75
‘Again the Eye Again’ (song), 114 Artaud, Antonin, 86–87
agency and the synthesizer, 25–26 artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
‘Airlane’ (song), 132–33, 135 learning, 162–63
Allen, Robert, 35 The Art of Noises (book), 76
All That Is Solid Melts into Air (book), Arturia, 159, 161, 162
72 ‘Ashes to Ashes’ (song), 145
‘Almost Mediaeval’ (song), 112, 119 Assimilate–A Critical History of Industrial
Amateur Tape Recording (ATR) Music (book), 61
(magazine), 42 Atmosphères (musical piece), 127
Amis, Martin, 78 Attali, Jacques, 30, 44, 85, 88, 97
Amphitryon (radio play), 28 ‘At the Threshold of an Aesthetic’
analogue technology, 82, 83, 123, 159, (essay), 24
161–62 Atwood, Margaret, 7

173
174     Index

audio dissonance and music, 88–89 Birchnell, Thomas, 162

audio experimentation, 42–43, 49, Black Melody Records, 108
58–59, 70–71, 88, 97–98, 165 Black Mirror (TV series), 7
‘Austerity/Girl One (Melody)’ (song), Blackwing Studios, London, 89, 91, 98
116 Blade Runner (film), 126
Authority, Liberty & Automatic MachineryBlake, William, 35
in Early Modern Europe (book), 26 ‘Blind Youth’ (song), 113–14, 119
‘Autobahn’ (song), 136 Blitz Club, London, 145–46, 149
Automatic (album), 140 ‘Blocks and Blocks’ (song), 149
automation and the ‘machine world,’ Blonk, Jaap, 38
79, 128 board games, 107
avant garde, the, 87 ‘body machine complex,’ the, 77
Bolan, Marc, 127, 143
‘background music,’ 29–30 Bond, Graham, 154
‘Back to Nature’ (song), 89, 95 Botstein, Leon, 105
Ball, Hugo, 36–37 Boulez, Pierre, 24, 81–82
Ballard, J.G., 23, 75, 77, 80, 84 Bourdieu, Pierre, 160
Bangs, Lester, 62–63 Bowie, David, 38, 110, 111, 125, 127,
Basement Jaxx, 134 128, 143–44, 145, 146;
Battleship (board game), 107 as an influence, 95, 98, 133, 148–49,
Baudelaire, Charles, 9–10, 142 153
Baudrillard, Jean, 90, 134 ‘The Box’ (song), 95–96
Baumann, Peter, 59–60 Boy George, 146
Baxter, Jeanette, 78 Bracewell, Michael, 139
BBC, the, 18 Branson, Richard, 59
BBC Radiophonic Workshop, the, Brave New World (book), 8
27–28 Brend, Mark, 23, 123
‘Beachy Head’ (song), 64, 65 Breton, Andre, 87
Beatles, the, 154 Brooker, Charlie, 7
Beckett, Samuel, 87 Brown, Robert, 43–44
Beer, Stafford, 2, 27 Brownian motion, 43–44
Beggars Banquet Records, 129, 130, Buchla, Don, 23
132, 161 Burgess, Richard, 155
‘Being Boiled’ (song), 89, 109–10, 112, Burrett, Fred, 144
119 Burroughs, William, 38, 47, 65, 79, 98
Belbury Poly, 165 Byrd, Joseph, 22
Belfegore, 89 Byron, Lord, 35, 142
Benjamin, Walter, 9, 10, 43 Bysion, Brian, 47
Benn, Tony, 15, 16
Bennett, Andy, 143 Cabaret Voltaire, 11, 12, 28, 36, 38–41,
Berman, Marshall, 72 44–52, 71, 72, 103, 107, 164
Bertrand, André, 39 Callaghan, James, 16
Birrer, Frans A.J., 124–25 Can, 46
 Index     175

‘Capsules’ (song), 48 ‘Convincing People’ (song), 66

Cardew, Cornelius, 57 Copland, Aaron, 22
Cargo Recordings Studios, Rochdale, corporatism, 14–15
41 ‘Couming of Age’ (stage performance),
Carlos, Wendy, 22, 137 57
‘Cars’ (song), 129, 130, 133, 135–36, ‘Couming of Youth’ (stage
139 performance), 58
Carter, Chris, 28, 40, 56, 59, 67, 68, COUM Transmissions, 56, 57–59, 64,
160, 161; 73n3, 78, 86
and the building of electronic The Covenant (album), 51
sounds, 42, 58, 60, 70–71, 162, 163 The Crackdown (album), 43, 51
Cary, Tristram, 42 Crash (book), 75, 77–78, 80, 84
Cascone, Kim, 85 Creme, Lol, 151, 152
categorisation of music into genres, Crisp, Quentin, 142
71–72, 85–86, 96, 156 critical reviews, 45, 110, 128, 153
Chamberlin, Harry, 153 cultural ‘capital,’ 160–61, 162
‘Chamberlin,’ the. See Mellotron Mark cultural lag theory, 11–12
I, the culture and subcultural movements,
‘Change Your Mind’ (song), 140 141–42, 145–46
‘charivari.’ See ‘rough music’ culture in 1970s Britain, 12–13, 164
Chelsea, 58 Cure, the, 83
Children of the Stones (TV series), 165 Current 93, 67
Chris and Cosey, 71, 72 Currie, Billy, 133, 134, 146, 150
Christopherson, Peter (Sleazy), 56, CV/Gate, 163
57–58, 61, 68, 70–71 cybernetics, 21, 27, 29, 30
‘Circus of Death’ (song), 112
Clash, the, 125 Dadaism, 36–38, 86, 142, 165
classical music and the synthesizer, 22 Dada Manifesto (book), 47
Clock DVA, 39, 41, 108, 109 Dafoe, Allen, 25–26
Cocherell, David, 154 Dagger, Steve, 144, 145
Cohen, Stanley, 18, 114 Dahl, Steve, 73n10
Coil, 71, 72 Dance (album), 131, 139
‘Coitus Interruptus’ (song), 92–93 ‘The Dancer’ (song), 149
Cole, S.J., 159–60 Dandyism, 142–43
‘Complex’ (song), 133 Daniel, Drew, 62, 66, 68, 69, 72
compositional processes, 28, 29, 40–41, The Dark Side of the Moon (album), 29
42, 98, 127. The Day the Earth Stood Still (film), 106
See also production and the musical DCB (Digital Control Bus), 163
process Dead Daughters, the, 108
computer-aided musical composition, ‘Death Disco’ (song), 67
24 Debord, Guy, 9, 10–11, 39, 138–39
Conservative Party, the, 17 debut album, the, 147–48
‘Conversion’ (song), 135 Deleuze, Gilles, 87
176     Index

Demers, Joanna, 71, 99, 134, 165 ‘elevator music.’ See ‘background
Denny, Martin, 61 music’
Depeche Mode, 80, 86, 89, 99, 113, Emerson, Keith, 138
144 Emerson, Lake and Palmer (ELP), 22,
Derbyshire, Delia, 28, 42 49, 138
Derrida, Jacques, 124 EMI Records, 17, 18
Deutsch, Herb, 137 ‘Empire State Human’ (song), 114–15,
Devo, 113 116
Diamond Dogs (album), 144 EMS (Electronic Music Studios), 12,
Dick, Phillip K., 125–26, 133, 136 29, 154;
diffusion among cultural groups, 11 Musys System, 154;
The Dignity of Labour (EP), 110 Synthi AKS synthesizer, 29, 40, 49,
‘Discipline’ (song), 59 161;
‘Disco Sucks’ movement, the, 67, VCS3 synthesizer, 21, 28, 40, 47, 49
73n10 ‘Engineers’ (song), 136
Discrete Music (album), 29 Eno, Brian, 27, 38, 62–63, 98, 109;
Distinction: A Social Critique of the appearance on Old Grey Whistle Test,
Judgement of Taste (book), 160 21, 28;
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? as influence on Cabaret Voltaire, 40,
(book), 126 41, 49, 50;
‘Do the Mussolini (Head Kick)’ (song), and the synthesizer, 21, 29, 30, 31,
49 40
Dr. Who (TV series), 28 environmental psychology and human
Duran Duran, 144, 151 behaviour, 64–65
Durutti Column, the, 39 Erasure, 23
dystopian themes in popular culture, establishment and Punk, the, 78–79
7–9, 22, 23 eurorack modules, 70, 73n12
exotica, 61, 73n8
Eastwood, Clint, 152 ‘Exotica’ (song), 66, 67
‘Eccentricity.’ See Dandyism ‘Expect Nothing’ (song), 48
EEC (European Economic Extended Play EP (album), 45, 49
Community) the, 13 ‘Eyeless Sight’ (song), 47
Egan, Rusty, 145, 146, 147, 149,
154–55, 156 Factory Records, 41
Einstein, Albert, 43, 44 ‘Fade to Grey’ (song), 146–47, 150–51
Einstürzende Neubauten, 86 Fad Gadget, 86, 87–97
Electronic Music and Musique Concrete Fairbairn, Sir Nicholas, 58
(book), 42 Fairlight, the, 154
electronic music production methods, Fanfare for the Common Man (album), 22
31, 156, 159–60, 161–64 Farfisa R10 drum machine, the, 50
Electronic Sound Maker Magazine Fast Products, 109
(magazine), 154 Fear Factory, 140
Electronics Without Tears (album), 42 feminism and women’s liberation, 17
 Index     177

‘Films’ (song), 134 Gillies, Iain, 148

‘Firecracker’ (song), 150 Ginsberg, Allen, 87
‘Fireside Favourite’ (song), 93, 95 Glam Rock, 143–44
Fireside Favourites (album), 86, 89, 90, Godley, Kevin, 151, 152
91–96, 97, 98, 99 Goldberg, R.I., 78
Fisher, Mark, 99, 124, 139, 165–66 The Golden Hour of the Future (album),
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said 108
(book), 126 Goodwin, Andrew, 103
Fluxus movement, the, 56 Grainer, Ron, 28
Fodor, Julia, 151 Granada Television, 18
Folk Devils and Moral Panics (book), 18 Gregory, Glenn, 109
Ford, Harrison, 126 ‘Gristleizer’ (Grizzilizer), the, 42, 70–71
Ford, Simon, 55 Gronogo, Peter, 154
Formula, Dave, 146, 156 Grundy, Bill, 18
Forster, E.M., 8 Guattari, Felix, 87
The Founding and the Manifesto of Gulliver’s Travels (book), 8
Futurism (book), 76 Gwinn, Roy, 70
‘Fourth Shot’ (song), 46 Gyrate (album), 97
Franke, Christopher, 59
Frankenstein (or The Modern Prometheus) Hall, Joseph, 7
(book), 35–36 Hancock, Herbie, 138
Franson, Bill, 153 The Handmaid’s Tale (book & TV
Fripp, Robert, 50 series), 7
Frith, Simon, 113–14, 165 Hannet, Martin, 41
Froese, Edgar, 59, 60 Hard Corps, 89
Front 242, 96 hardware obsolescence, 11, 162, 166
Fryer, John, 91, 97 Harris, Bob, 120
Funkadelic, 109 hauntology, 124
Future, the, 41, 108 Hausmann, Raoul, 37
Future Sounds Systems, 70 Heath, Edward, 14, 16
Futurism, 76–77, 80, 140. Heaven 17, 48
See also Numan, Gary ‘Heaven and Hell’ (song), 46–47, 49
Hebdige, Dick, 141
Gabriel, Peter, 154 Hegarty, Paul, 39, 44
Gag (album), 98 Heidegger, Martin, 96
Gagarin, Yuri, 110 Helliwell, Ian, 42
Gardiner, Paul, 129, 132 Hemsath, Bill, 138
Gare, Lou, 57 Hennings, Emmy, 37
Gasiorek, Andrzej, 77 Hepworth, David, 143
Genesis P-Orridge. See Megson, Neil Heroes (album), 111, 133, 149
Andrew (Genesis P-Orridge) Hit Factories: A Journey Through the
Ghosts of Princes in Towers (album), 146 Industrial Cities of British Pop (book),
Gill, Andy, 45, 117 51
178     Index

Hitler, Adolf, 38 Italian Futurist Movement, the, 76–77,

Holiday 80 (EP), 109–10 86
Holland, Stewart, 17 It Came from Outer Space (film), 106
‘Hot on the Heels of Love’ (song),
66–67 Jagger, Mick, 146
‘Howl’ (poem), 87 James, Edward, 131–32
Human League, the, 41, 48, 83, 89, 94, Jane from Occupied Europe (album), 97
107, 108, 109–10, 121, 127, 145, Japan, 115
155; Jones, Dylan, 90–91
influences on, 39, 105; Jones, John Paul, 154
and Reproduction, 104, 111–17, 118– Jones, Steve, 111
19, 120 Jones, Steve (musician), 18
The Hunger Games (film), 7 Joyce, James, 104
Huxley, Aldous, 8, 43 Joy Division, 61
Hynde, Chrissy, 145 Judd, F.C., 42

I, Assassin (album), 131 Kakehashi, Ikutaro, 163, 164

ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art), Keane, David, 24
London, 58, 78 Keats, John, 35
‘I Feel Love’ (song), 67 Kemp, Gary, 145
Impressionism, 96 Keyboard Magazine (magazine), 70–71
Industrial Culture Handbook (book), 55 Keynesian Economics, 16
industrial music, 39, 51–52, 71–72, 87, KGB, the, 106
89–90, 95, 164 Kiepenheuer, Irmgard, 37
Industrial Records, 60, 70 King Crimson, 50
Industrial Relations Act (1971), 13, 14, King Tubby, 46
15 Kirk, Richard H., 36, 40–41, 43, 45,
Industrial Revolution, the, 35 46, 47, 48, 49, 52
industrial unrest in the 1970s, 13, 14, Kirlian, Semyon, 45
16 ‘Kirlian Photograph’ (song), 45–46
Industry Act (1975), the, 14–15 Korg, 12, 67, 82, 83, 137, 164;
inflation in the 1970s, 13–14, 17 700s synthesizer, 83, 119
innovations and cultural lag, 11–12. Kraftwerk, 60, 66, 107, 109, 112, 116,
See also musical innovation 127, 136, 138, 145, 153
‘Insectiside’ (song), 94–95 Krautrock (Kosmische Music), 60, 68
International Monetary Fund, the, 16 Kubrick, Stanley, 113
international reputation of British Kylie, Bob, 145
popular music, the, 120
In the Brain of the Firm (book), 27 Labour Party, the, 15, 17
Intonarumori, 77 Lacey, John, 58
Intruder (album), 140 LDS (Church of the Latter-Day Saints),
Iron and Coal (painting), 35 the, 92
Lenin (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), 106
 Index     179

Le Retour de la Colonne Durutti (collage), ‘M.E.’ (song), 134

39 Meat Whistle, 107
Les Fleurs du Mal (collection), 9 media propagation of ‘moral panic,’ 94
‘Le Soleil’ (poem), 9 Megson, Neil Andrew (Genesis
Lever, Harold, 58 P-Orridge), 56–57, 60, 62, 65, 66,
Lewis, Peter, 112 67, 68, 71
Ligeti, György, 44, 59, 127 Mellotron Mark I, the, 153–54
Lilleker, Martin, 39 Merz (Dadaist group), 37
‘Listen to the Sirens’ (song), 126 ‘Metal’ (song), 133–34
location and ‘dystopian sound,’ 9, 11, Metal Rhythm (album), 140
12 Methodology: ’74–’78 Tapes (album),
London in the late 1970s, 139. 41, 45
See also political and economic micropolyphonic musical processes,
policy in the 1970s 127.
‘Looking for the Blackhair Girls’ (song), See also electronic music production
108 methods
Low (album), 95, 133, 153 Middleton, Richard, 43
Lydon, John, 110, 120 MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital
lyrics about love and sex, 93 Interface), 12, 90, 103, 159, 164
Miller, Daniel, 78, 86, 89, 91, 98, 112,
The Machine Stops (short story), 8 160, 162;
Macoine, Stuart, 120 and ‘Warm Leatherette’ (song), 75,
Magazine, 149 80–81, 82, 83, 84
Magritte, René, 131–32 ‘Mind of a Toy’ (song), 152
Mallinder, Stephen, 36, 40, 41, 43, 45, Mix Up (album), 36, 44, 45–48, 49–50,
46, 47–48, 50, 51–52 51
‘Malpaso Man’ (song), 151–52 Modernism, 9–10, 72, 104–5
Man in a Bowler Hat (painting), 131 Moog, Bob, 22, 23, 137
manufacturer protocols, 163 ‘Moon over Moscow’ (song), 152
Manzanera, Phil, 144 Moors Murderers, the, 145
Marcuse, Herbert, 79 ‘Morale/You’ve Lost That Loving
Marinetti, F.T., 76 Feeling’ (song), 115
Marsh, Ian, 107, 109, 117 More Songs About Buildings and Food
Marsh, Richard Elvern, 46 (album), 48
Matlock, Glen, 146 Moroder, Giorgio, 67, 138, 145, 149,
Max/MSP, 31 152
Mayr, Erasmus, 26 Morra, Irene, 120, 121
MB (Milton Bradley) company, the, Mountain Hardware, 71
107 Muhl, Otto, 56
McCay, Andy, 28 Mundus Alter ET Idem (The World
McClaren, Malcolm, 145 Different and the Same) (book), 7–8
McGeoch, John, 146, 149 musical development and evolution of
McLuhan, Marshall, 79 bands, 49–51, 63
180     Index

musical innovation, 9, 80, 82, 108–9, and The Pleasure Principle, 124, 132–
165–66 36
musical performance, 25
musical training, 62–63, 161 Oakley, Phil, 109, 110, 112–13, 114–
musicmaking platforms, 31, 159, 162 15, 116, 119, 121
Mute Records, 41, 80, 86, 89, 99 Oberheim Electronics, 163–64
‘Observer’ (song), 135
‘Nag Nag Nag’ (single), 40, 45 Ogburn, William F., 11, 12
national identity and ‘Englishness,’ ‘Ohm Sweet Ohm’ (song), 116
110–11 Oldfield, Mike, 59
New, Steve, 146 Old Grey Whistle Test (TV show), 21,
Newby, Christine Carol (Cosey Fanni 28, 30, 120, 143, 144
Tutti), 56, 58–59, 60, 62, 65, 67–68, On Culture and Change (book), 12
69–70 ‘One Nation under a Moog’
New Order, 80 (newspaper article), 22–23
New Romantic Movement, the, ‘On Technological Determinism:
145–46 A Typology, Scope Conditions and
‘Newsreel’ (song), 94 a Mechanism’ (article),
Newton, Adi, 108, 109 25–26
New York Dolls, the, 120 ‘On the Run’ (song), 29
Nicholls, Mike, 153 Oram, Daphne, 27–28, 42
Nine Inch Nails, 95, 133, 136, 140 Orchestral (album), 147
Nineteen Eighty-Four (book), 8 Orchestral Movements in the Dark,
Nitsch, Hermann, 56 86, 127
Nitzer Ebb, 86, 96 Orwell, George, 8, 104
NME (magazine), 45, 110, 112–13, oscillators, 22, 27, 28, 49, 50, 119
117, 120, 125 Osgerby, Bill, 141–42
‘No Escape’ (song), 46, 49, 50 outsider (flâneur) and experimental
Noise: The Political Economy of Music music, the, 9, 10
(book), 30, 44 The Owl Service (TV show), 165
noise and the evolution of music,
43–44, 71, 97 Parliament, 138
‘non-musician,’ the, 23–24, 62–63, 82. Passengers (album), 111
See also Eno, Brian; Miller, Daniel ‘The Path of Least Resistance’ (song),
No Pussyfooting (album), 50 113
Normal, the, 75, 78–79, 80, 82, 83, 86, Payne, Chris, 146, 150
136 Pearce, Steveo, 51
Numan, Gary, 22, 95, 125–28, 131, ‘Pedestrian’ (song), 91, 94
138, 152, 160, 161; Peel, John, 109, 114
and criticism and sudden rise to performance art, 55, 78.
fame, 125, 128–29, 131, 139; See also Throbbing Gristle
later career and legacy, 128, 139, Performance Art: From Futurism to the
140, 161; Present (book), 78
 Index     181

Personal Space: The Behavioural Basis of ‘Protect and Survive’ (public service
Design (book), 65 television information), 47, 53n15
‘Persuasion’ (song), 67–68, 108 Provost, Eddie, 57
Peter Gabriel (album), 154 Psychic TV, 71, 72
Phaedra (album), 59–60 ‘psychogeography,’ 7, 9, 10–11, 138–39
‘Photophobia’ (song), 47–48 Public Image Limited, 67
Piatti, Ugo, 77 Pulp, 39
Pink Floyd, 29, 49, 103 Punk movement, the, 23, 30, 51, 58,
Piss Action (performance artwork), 71, 88, 125, 129–30, 145;
56 as a subculture, 17–18, 78–79, 89,
Plank, Conny, 133 120, 141
Plasketes, George, 147 Pye Audio Corner, 165
Plastic Exploding Inevitable (multimedia Pylon, 97
performance), 58
The Pleasure Principle (album), 124, Q: Are we not Men? A: We are Devo
132–36 (album), 113
The Pleasure Principle: The Portrait of
Edward James (painting), 131 Radcliff, Eric, 91
plugins, 159, 161, 162 Radioactivity (album), 116
Police, the, 125, 151 Radio France, 24
political and economic policy in the RA Moog Co., 12, 22, 23, 83, 137–38,
1970s, 13–17 163;
The Politics of Public Space (book), 64 MiniMoog, 127–28, 130, 135, 137,
Polydor Records, 149 159, 160, 161;
Pop, Iggy, 111 MiniMoog 204e³, 138;
popularisation of electronic sounds, MiniMoog Model D, 137–38;
the, 27–29 Moog synthesizer, 127–28, 137;
popular music definitions, 124–25 PolyMoog synthesizer, 132–33, 134,
pornography and technology, 77–78 135, 137
P-Orridge, Genesis. See Megson, Neil RCA records, 106
Andrew (Genesis P-Orridge) ‘reactionary futurism,’ 139.
Practical Electronica (documentary), 42 See also Futurism
Practical Electronics (magazine), 42, 70 Realism, 104
Prado, Prezez, 61 Real Life (album), 111
price controls, 15 Record Mirror (magazine), 153
Private Dreams and Public Nightmares Red Mecca (album), 43
(radio play), 28 Reed, Alexander S., 86–87, 164
producer, the, 111–12, 119 Reilly, Terry, 62
production and the musical process, Rental, Robert, 80
103, 108–9. Replicas (album), 130, 132, 140
See also compositional processes Reproduction (album), 104, 110, 111–17,
Prometheus Unbound (radio play), 27–28 118–19, 120, 121
Prostitution (show), 58, 78 Revox A-77 Tape Machine, the, 50
182     Index

Reynolds, Simon, 22, 23, 45, 60, 120, science fiction in popular culture, 106–
123–24, 125, 127, 149 7, 125–26, 128, 133, 143
Rich Kids, the, 145, 146 Scott, Jim, 138
‘Ricky’s Hand’ (song), 89 Scott, Ripley, 126
Righteous Brothers, the, 115 Scott, William Bell, 35
Rimbaud, Robin. See Scanner (Robin SDS-V drum machine, the, 154
Rimbaud) The Second Annual Report (album), 60
‘Rip it Up’ (song), 45 Seeds, the, 46
The Road to Wigan Pier (book), 104 The Seeds (album), 46
Rockmore, Clara, 106 Selmer MR 101 drum machine, the, 50
Roeg, Nicholas, 68 ‘The Set Up’ (song), 49
Roland, 12, 67, 69–70, 82, 137, 163, Sex Pistols, the, 17–18
164; Shaefer, Pierre, 46
CR78 Compurhythm drum Shapeero, John, 57
machine, 118, 154; Sharpe, Bill, 140
Jupiter 4, 119;
MC8 Microcomposer, 155; Sharpley, Cedric, 132, 151
SH2 synthesizer, 98; Sheaff, Lawrence, 57
System 100 synthesizer, 110, 112, Sheffield and modern urban planning,
118, 119, 161; 36
TR-808 synthesizer, 63, 154, 163 Sheffield County Council, 107
Rolling Stones, the, 120 Shelley, Mary, 35
Romantic Movement, the, 35–36 signal processing, 21, 23, 90, 163
Rose, Nikolas, 110 Simmons, Dave, 154
‘rough music,’ 97 Simonsen, Redmond S., 107
‘Rough Music, Futurism and Postpunk Simulacra and Simulation (book), 90
Industrial Noise Bands’ (article), 97 Situationist International Movement,
Rough Trade, 45, 50, 99 the, 38–39, 138
Rowe, Keith, 57 ‘Six Six Sixties’ (song), 68
Roxy Music, 21, 28, 49, 120, 144 Skinny Puppy, 63, 86
Rubycon (album), 59 Sleazy. See Christopherson, Peter
Rushent, Martin, 146, 148, 149, 150, (Sleazy)
152, 155, 156 The Sleeper Awakes (book), 8
Russolo, Luigi, 44, 76 Smith, Dave, 164
Rykie, Kim, 154 social assets as cultural capital, 160–61
Social Change with Respect to Culture and
‘Salt Lake City Sunday’ (song), 92 Original Nature (book), 11
sampling devices, 71, 153–54 social conditions and influence on
Savage, Jon, 55 sound, 36
Scanner (Robin Rimbaud), 90 The Socialist Challenge (book), 17
Scary Monsters (album), 125 The Society of the Spectacle (book), 39
Schwitter, Kurt, 37 Soft Cell, 23, 144
SCI (Simulations Publications), 107 Some Bizzare Records, 51
 Index     183

Sommer, Robert, 65 Swell Map, 97

The Son of Man (painting), 131 Swift, Jonathan, 8
sound and location, 43, 64, 65 Switched-On Bach (album), 22, 137
sound creation, 70, 139 The Sword and the Arm of the Lord
Sound Magazine, 116–17, 145 (album), 51
‘The Sound of Tomorrow: How synthesizer, the, 21–28, 79, 82–85, 89,
Electronic Music Was Smuggled 99, 134, 136, 166;
into the Mainstream’ (article), 23 and Brian Eno, 21, 29, 30, 31, 40;
sound-poems, 37 and MIDI, 11–12, 90, 159, 164.
Souvenir (book), 139 See also EMS (Electronic Music
Space Patrol (TV series), 42 Studios); Korg; RA Moog Co.;
Spandau Ballet, 144, 151 Roland
Speak and Spell (album), 113 Systems of Romance (album), 133
Spector, Phil, 115
Specters of Marx (book), 124 Talking Heads, 48
SPK, 63, 67, 96 Tangerine Dream, 22, 59–60, 138
sponsorships, 69–70 ‘Tanith’ (song), 65–66
Star Force: Alpha Centauri (board tape loops, 50, 70
game), 107 ‘Tar’ (song), 146, 150
‘Starman’ (song), 143 taxation, 14
‘Start Again’ (song), 45 TD (technological determinism), 21,
‘State of the Nation’ (song), 91–92, 94 25–26, 31, 117
‘The Steps’ (song), 153 technology:
Stiff Little Fingers, 80 and the human condition, 8–9, 19,
Still Point (musical composition), 28 52, 76, 96;
‘Still Walking’ (song), 65, 66 and innovation, 11–12;
Stockhausen, Karlheinz, 24, 49, 59 and labour and capital, 79–80;
Stout, William B., 75 and music, 69–71, 79, 80, 81–83,
Strange, Steve, 142, 145–46, 147, 149, 98, 103, 111, 118, 121, 146, 153–
150, 151, 152–53, 156 56, 162, 164, 166
‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (song), 154 ‘Technology and the Composer’
Stubbs, David, 78, 123 (article), 81–82
The Studio as a Compositional Tool tecnologico-economic definitions of popular
(lecture), 98 music, 125
Studio Sound (magazine), 42 Telekon (album), 128
Subcultures: The Meaning of Style (book), Thames Television, 18
141 Thatcher, Margaret, 16
subliminal messages on album covers, ‘That’s Too Bad’ (song), 129, 130
61–62 Theatre Alfred Jarry, 87
Suicide, 46 The Theatre and Cruelty (play), 87
Summer, Donna, 67 theme songs and soundtracks, 1, 28,
Sun Ra, 138 42, 113
Surrealist Movement, the, 86, 87, 131– Theremin, Leon, 105–6
32, 142, 165 Theremin, the, 105–6, 137
184     Index

Throbbing Gristle, 28, 41, 45, 55–56, Varèse, Edgard, 105

93, 108, 138, 160, 164; Velvet Underground, The, 62
and 20 Jazz Funk Greats, 56, 60, ‘Vienna’ (song), 147
61–62, 63–69, 72, 163; Vienna Actionists, the, 56
and building of electronic sounds, Virant, Christian, 70
40, 42, 58, 60, 70–71, 162, 163; Virgin Records, 59, 71–72, 110, 111
and COUM Transmissions, 56, Virilio, Paul, 96
57–59, 64, 73n3, 78, 86 ‘Visa-Age’ (song), 152–53
Thurston, Colin, 111 Visage, 132, 142, 144, 146–53, 155–56
Tight Spaces: Hard Architecture and How Visage (album), 142, 148–53, 154
to Humanise It (book), 65 ‘Visage’ (song), 148–49
Tin Drum (album), 115 Visconti, Tony, 111
Toffler, Alvin, 159 Vitrac, Roger, 87
Top of the Pops (TV show), 119–20, vocals in popular music, 80, 117
144, 161 Vogel, Peter, 154
Tovey, Francis John, 86, 87, 88–89, Voice of America (album), 38
91, 92–93, 94–98, 99 Vox Continental organ, the, 50
‘Tracks’ (song), 135 VST (Virtual Studio Technology), 159,
Trans Europe Express (album), 60, 153 161
Transmedia Explorations, 56
Travelogue (album), 104, 117 Wagner, Richard, 105
Tubeway Army, 125, 128–29, 150 Wakeman, Rick, 138
Tubeway Army (album), 130 Walden, George, 142
Tubular Bells (album), 59 Walkabout (film), 68
Tutti, Cosey Fanni. See Newby, ‘Walkabout’ (song), 60, 68
Christine Carol (Cosey Fanni Tutti) Ware, Martin, 107–8, 109, 113, 115,
‘T.V.O.D.’ (song), 80 116, 117, 118–19
Tzara, Tristan, 36–37, 47 Warhol, Andy, 58, 142
Warm Leatherette (album), 112
Ultravox, 133, 147, 150 ‘Warm Leatherette’ (song), 75, 80–81,
Ulysses (book), 104 82, 83, 84
Under the Flag (album), 98 ‘Warning Sign’ (song), 48
unemployment, 13, 14 Warp Records, 40
‘United’ (song), 60 Warriors (album), 131
United States of America, the, Watson, Chris, 28, 36, 45, 46, 98, 160,
21–22 161, 162;
universal protocol standards, 163–64 and building of electronic sounds,
University of Sheffield Music 40, 42, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52;
Department, the, 49, 50 and Western Works, 41, 43, 44
Unknown Pleasures (album), 61 Wauquaire, Phil, 91
Ure, Midge, 146, 147, 148, 149–50, WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk), 24
152, 155–56 Webb, Iain R., 145
Ursonate (musical piece), 37 Wells, H.G., 8
 Index     185

Western Works, Sheffield, 39, 41, 42, World War I, 87

43, 44, 50, 51, 108 World War II, 36
Weston, Haydn Boyes, 48 Wreckers of Civilization (book), 55
Westwood, Chris, 117 Wright, Richard, 49, 154
‘What a Day’ (song), 68
When the Sleeper Awakes (book), 8 Yamaha, 164;
‘Where’s Your Head At?’ (song), 134 CS50 synthesizer, 146
Whitney, Carl, 51 Yazoo, 23, 80
‘Who’s a Dandy?’ (essay), 142 YES, 138
Wiener, Norber, 27 YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra), 150
Wilde, Oscar, 142 Young, La Monte, 62
Wilkinson, Chris and Veronica, 107 youth culture on television, 18.
Williams, Raymond, 117 See also Punk movement, the
Williams, Richard, 139 ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’
Wilson, Harold, 14 (song), 115–16
Winter, Alex, 138 yuppies (Young Urban Professionals),
Winter of Discontent (1978–1979), 17 90–91
Wire, 111
Wonder, Stevie, 138 Zagorski-Thomas, Simon, 160–61
‘The Word Before the Last’ (song), 114 ‘Zero as a Limit’ (song), 116
working-class identities, 103–4 Zinovieff, Peter, 154
World’s Fair (Paris, 1900), the, 105 ‘Zyklon B Zombie’ (song), 60, 70
 A BOU T T H E A UTHO R

Dr. Neil O’Connor is an electronic music producer and academic

at DMARC (Digital Media Research Centre), Department of Com-
puter Science, University of Limerick, Ireland. Neil has published
with Bloomsbury, Taylor & Francis, Routledge, and Cambridge
University Press.

187