Enski Boski – "I Found Jesus In A Gay Bar" (Hamster Records And Tapes – HAM 13) 1984

Sorry for a prolonged absence on my part,but, these guys are just Krazy.

It sounds like the music a mom's basement dwelling guy with ADHD would send to the recording arm of Sony,fully expecting a lucrative contract in response. A sort of a less processable version of mid-period Associates,but with a mentally ill version of that bloke from Spandau Ballet crooning away instead of Billy Mackenzie; albeit with better song titles.

Whether Enski received the cleansing qualities of the Holy Spirit and accepted it as his own personal saviour is unclear.Or, as more likely, he actually found the son of god cruising for cock in in a Soho gay bar around the time that AIDS was becoming really popular. This would explain the presence of the Son Of God in yer actual Gay Bar,personally helping spread the virus person to person;or should i say Deity-to-Deity.

God himself ,as stated in his manifesto,doesn't have much time for Gay versions of his likeness,even though he allegedly created everything himself(?),also one would not be shocked to discover that he magicked up a lethal virus aimed at promiscuous homosexuals,and wanton womanhood to remove them from his DIY planet.That should teach them a lesson alright.

Rather than just conjure up a virus from nowhere, Jesus, being more moralistic than his dad,took the more virtuous route to mass murder, by actually stuffing his unprotected holy Phallus Dei up as many Gays as possible......a more hands on, pants down affair one could suggest? 

Or, Enski Boski could just be making it all up,taking inspiration from many a 'Holy' book filed in the Fiction Section at your local LGBTQ+ library.

Looking at other releases on this Terry Burrows (Jung Analysts) dominated label, there is an impossible to find compilation cassette called "If God Had Meant Us To Dance He Would Have Given Us Legs", which I think sums up everything very nicely.

Tracklist:

A1 The Amazing Inevitable Engendering Gene
A2 Fourteen With Freckles Eighteen With Acne
A3 Without The Enemy Within
A4 George Washington Said
A5 Chantage
B1 Korer Opportunities In Sinking Communtities
B2 Anodyne Noise Psilocybin Sight
B3 The Mercy Killing Conga
B4 The Importance Of Fraudulence
B5 Grocery Trouble
B6 Skid Row

DOWNLOAD HERE! with the thought that if God had meant for us to listen to music like this he'd have given us ears?

Jung Analysts – "The Wishing Balloons" (Hamster Records And Tapes – HAM 12)

Yukio Jung aka Terry Burrows, international best selling author and music expert...yes...EXPERT!....multi-instrumentalist and the like, so on and so on.

He being the only member of his 'group', Jung Analysts, he likes to chop things up  bruv......sorry, i'm writing this while watching The BRIT awards.I explain this away as 'just waiting for Match Of The Day'.Which, as Terry has creative connections with Leicester,is totally appropriate, as I'm salivating at the prospect of watching the highlights of  Leicester City stuffing pretentious wannabe's Tottenham Hotspur 4-1.A lot better than watching a constant stream of Pop school graduates and talent show runner-ups collecting awards for good behaviour as a small cog in the corporate entertainment machine.(Wet Leg excepted of course!) .....OMFG i'm just watching the most awful toe curling cringeworthy dance routine ever by some chubby but clubby 'out' knob'ead called Sam Smith(!?)acting all sexeh like,with a troupe of dancers clad in shiny PVC?...who ever the Fuck he(They) is or isn't...Fuck Me! Wot a Dick!......great relief...Match of the Day's just starting.....unbelievably The Foxes aren't on first????

I'd like to see some of these poor Dancers choreographing  moves to "Here's Lucifer' by Yukio Jung,which is probably as close as you can get to Dance music on Die or DIY? Lots of funky synth and funny noises with stops and changes of direction,slap bass with tongue in cheek clever clever lyrics,just to show us that, yes, he's really playing that bassoon. Alternative dance music,which means you can't dance to it I assume?The same way as 1980's Alternative Comedians weren't funny....the Jung Ones.

There are parts of this that I could imagine Paul Jung unleashing some blue eyed soul affront of,other parts needed David Sylvian to croon to.

It turns left, it turns right,it stops,and even goes backwards...I kid thee not.Future Disco.

The only thing that's wrong with all this is the tiresome 80's underground requirement of a Margaret Thatcher sample to portray her as some kind of special evil.You can't slag off Thatcher and remain a capitalist consumer,which even Crass were,They own their own commune,bought and paid for thanks to a mortgage arranged with a local bank!?,Which, in the grand definition of things in general makes them "Bourgeois".Whatever happened to Property is Theft?

Good to see the late Jackie Charlton mentioned in the track listing,which brings to mind a rather creepy single released by the deceased world cup winner about the good old days ooop north,sitting on granddad's knee, why aye Man! Thankfully there was no such thing as Pedophiles back then, nor Homosexuals,or them troublesome human rights......"Why Aye,it w'grate back then" slurs an obviously salivating Jackie.
Jackie Charton Says:

"Why Aye Man, it was sunday every day back then" said Jackie Charlton.He would have thought that this album was utter shite man.....but you'd know you were doing something wrong if it was any other way.

Tracklist:

A1 Here's Lucifer
A2 The Cocktail Party
A3 Hello, Dali!
A4 The Executive Toilet
A5 Punishment Is Art
A6 Some Loops
A7 Maggie's Apples
B1 Jackie Charlton Said…
B2 Youth Of A Nation In Heat
B3 Mathew
B4 In Calanda
B5 One Foot In The Greenhouse
B6 Max Pax Fiend
B7 Pluggin' For The Empire

DOWNLOAD jung sam smith's anal cysts HERE!

Transparent Illusion – "Still Human" (Vex Records – VEX 3) 1981

Although, the question, why anyone actually wants to be a Human begs analysis, the 'Human' factor,however, is very much in evidence with this quaintly charming off the shelf electronic one man band,amusingly monikered 'Transparent Illusion' . One Synth, one extremely cheap Drum box, and one human....Roy Young. About whom nobody knows anything about,except that he's Human, and probably still is.

Obviously Roy has been listening rather too much to his Gary Numan records, track 2 especially must have been recorded immediately after a lengthy session at home annoying the wife with Numan's "Pleasure Principle" on repeat....he sounds like he's got a wife somehow, rather than some spotty oik laying down tracks in his bedroom at mum and dad'd gaff.

All done and paid for by his good self,and solidly DIY in its sound, artwork and execution. Maybe even his wife paid for it all?

She must have regretted it when a thousand copies of "Still Human" arrived on the doorstep with no prospect of selling any of them.

Roy may have still been human back in 1981,as he evidently plays the synthesizer himself,with his own fingers (Who's a clever boy then?), with no aid from machines,but there are arguments for man and machine to evolve into one entity,unhindered by inappropriate emotions and keeping the creativity.

There would be clear advantages to being a machine,no emotional pain,hate or love,irrational or otherwise,eternal existence,providing the raw materials are available for repairs, and more topically,a lessened threat of self destructive wars. No machine, to my knowledge would ever entertain the prospect of open warfare due to the undeniable fact that it's totally Illogical and, sorry Humans, completely fucking STOOPID!

Synthesizers are hard wired to be diplomatic with each other,be it CV and gate, or MIDI, they always,get on....the only time they don't is usually due to Human Error.

Tracklist:

A1 Sections
A2 Incubus
A3 Nuclear Release
A4 Killing Time
A5 The Age Of Ridicule
A6 Malice Way
B1 Demented
B2 The Human Cage (Still Human)
B3 We
B4 I Dream I'm You
B5 Is There Hope
B6 Vortex

DOWNLOAD the delusion of being human HERE!

Ende Shneafliet – "Animals From Outer Space" (Trumpett – trum 0003) 1981

The titles of A lot of the greatest shite-fi movies end with the epithet "From Outer Space"; "Teenagers from...." "Plan Nine From...", "It Came From..." etc, so one must welcome a DIY minimal synth tape from Holland onto the pantheon of low budget genius and be suitably deferential.

You know what you're gonna get with this C-60 on the near faultless Trumpett label; cheap drum machines, uncrowded analogue synth monophonia, and plenty whispering Dutch robo-geezers keeping the noise down so as not to annoy their parents watching Dutch TV downstairs in the windmill. Sounding not unlike a bunch of circuit bent speak and spell machines.

I was gonna say '...and then they got a job'....but, it seems they are still at it today!?
Tracklist:

A1 Animals From Outer Space
A2 Alien
A3 Midnight Train
A4 The Day Detlef Macha Won
A5 Macho Japanese
A6 Ant People
A7 Hangman
A8 Elephant's Cakewalk
A9 Zitronen Riolplastik
B1 Crüsoe's Roots
B2 Panzerfaust 60 M
B3 Mein Gänschen
B4 Der Blöde Hund
B5 Twistin On The Tombstones
B6 Vampirella
B7 Aeroplane
B8 My Mother Sells Tuperware
B9 Charybass
B10 Elephant's Cakewalk
B11 Tupperware

DOWNLOAD some dutchmen from outer space HERE!

Drinking Electricity – "Overload + Singles" (Pop:Aural / Survival) 1980/1982

Inmates of Bob Last's Pop:Aural imprint,whose professed aim was to get a leftfield act into the pop charts by stealth.

Having been robbed of The Human League by Virgin,an independent label who had subverted the Pop Charts many times before already....a fact that went unnoticed in the Last household it seems.It didn't stop him from ruining The Fire Engines,among others, in his quest for Pop mogul-ism in the guise of the hip priest of 80's pop.

Nonetheless, Bob Last was responsible for some the greatest hip-pop failures of the early part of the decade.

Drinking Electricity, from somewhere in downtown Surrey,had the perfect set-up;guy and gurl with tech who weren't too harsh on the eye. A lot of the tunes sound like you've heard them before elsewhere,there's hints of "Assault On Precinct 13" and the main riff of "Being Boiled" appears(I guess that Bob felt it was his property?) ,but transferred to a funky bass guitar.

In all, its a fine collection of wonderfully analogue minimal electronics coupled with spiteful robo-bitch vocals treading on the heavily mined no-mans land of too "kool for skool" territory.....(for a fine dissertation on the pitfalls of being too kool for skool click HERE;)

There's also an irreverent cover of Brit Rock'n'Roll classic, Johnny Kidd's "Shaking All Over", which gives me an opportunity to direct you to a funny story concerning said tune which one had recounted earlier in the vast archives of this blog HERE!

But don't let all this nostalgia divert you from the fact that this Drinking Electricity collection is rather flipping GOOD, Flamin' Nora it is...there's even a Flamin' Groovies cover too?)...Don't wanna sound too enthusiastic,but these kids sound slightly more like a Belgian twosome than UK Synth duo;not that there's anything wrong with that,just two different beasts. the UK version got lots of hits and got rich,but the Belgian equivalent got ignored and poor....mainly because when they sang they sounded like a motor neuron disease sufferer's speech synthesizer;which was briefly novel once upon a time if it was only for a couple of tracks......which Drinking Electricity did conversant as they obviously were in the do's and don't of pop music.....there you go....too kool for skool again!

Tracklist:

1 Breakout 3:25
2 Discord Dance 3:27
3 Good Times 3:34
4 Colour Coding 3:33
5 Fall 3:53
6 Breakout II 1:56
7 Countdown 4:09
8 News Peak 3:46
9 Twilight Zone 3:11
10 Superstition 3:35
11 The Promise 4:11
12 Subliminal 7" 4:08
13 Random Particles 3:23
14 Shaking All Over 3:07
15 China 2:53
16 Cruising Missiles 3:50
17 Shaking Dub 4:15
18 Good Times 12" 4:38
19 Breakout 12" 5:05
20 Subliminal Radical Re-mix 6:12
21 Shake Some Action (Demo Version) 3:30

DOWNLOAD something shockingly good HERE!

The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor – "The Best Of The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor" (Self-Released) 2014 / 1980-1982

Owner of ,probably, thee very worst band name ever conceived , The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor ( TNGWAM ) made some rather uninspired Synth-pop to rival fellow Sheffield pop-synthers Human League's exceedingly crap "Hysteria" album, or anything by the truly terrible Heaven 17.

As they didn't have a bloke with a silly lop-sided haircut,or a pair of utterly talentless Townie dancers, TNGWAM never got whisked into the studio and have all their hits written by Martin Rushent.The result being, no-one remembers them no more outside of Southern Yorkshire....but,by 'eck, maybe a shrewd name change would have helped them commercially? If you want a hit never have a band-name that doesn't bore the punters three words in.A fine example of how not to do it,to be taught in a lecture at one of those ridiculous Pop academies that are replacing really useless stuff like Engineering Degrees at universities all across the western world.

The name, I am Told, comes from a series of children's books written by nasty Nazi sympathizer Enid Blyton.The 'monitor' part being a reference to the poor sods who had to go and collect the Milk and distribute it to the other kids in the class...until Margaret Thatcher stopped this Free Milk for kids nonsense;so not only did Thatcher liberate the miners from the pits,she also liberated the minors from the humiliation of being the Milk Monitor.

I was once press ganged into being the Coffee Monitor for, and by, the staff in the Staff room...don't worry none of the fuckers touched me up or anything;despite the head master being a weirdo god squad nutjob.Luckily i went to a grammar school after my hard time in the primary school system, to attend a strictly secular institution full of us supposedly intelligent kids...so no stupid fuckers to pander to with the patently absurd tales contained within any Holy books.The wheat was sieved from the chaff,and we had science lessons.Who says I'm not Elitist?

Enid Blyton's Tory Propaganda,and civil service training manual for any hooray hennrietta's gulping down the Pimms for throwing Lockdown parties during any future pandemic at number 10 Downing street..... very good for starting fires i've heard

Sheffield, of course, is one of the major gene-pools of Synth pop,post-punk and Industrial culture,so naturally TNGWAM were gonna struggle,and inevitably sank without trace,not even an oil slick left on the vast ocean of popular music;and no-one is gonna be bothered to send a submersible either...for a reason.....which I wager you can guess.

  

Tracklist:

1 All The Naked Heroes 2:30
2 Diary 5:02
3 Front 2:37
4 Is All I Need 2:29
5 Marcella Ball 4:56
6 Sensation / No Sensation 2:54
7 So Far Away 3:12
8 Wax Museum 2:48
9 What We Don't Want To See 3:34
10 Panthea

DOWNLOAD to hear some naughty girls on your monitors HERE!

Doxa Sinistra – "Newsflashes" (Trumpett – TRUM 0031) 1988

More Dutch pals in the form of smartarse Industrial Electronic quartet Doxa Sinistra.Who treat us to an off kilter excursion down the Paul Hardcastle n-n-n-n-n-n-n-Nineteen route,by sampling off the telly,specifically news broadcasts,and some Clint Eastwood samples,adequately Hardcastled on a couple of tracks. It sounds as if they mostly still adhered to the old Skool Industrial technique of using magnetic tape  rather than shelling out for an Ensoniq Mirage,as featured by the bloody fucking awful Big Audio Dynamite group around this time, featuring the Posh Rasta himself, Don Letts. I even bought one when it was cheap in 1989,cost me £500 quid from the big music shop in the centre of Town;...you know,one of those places that leave you standing there like a plonker while the shop assistant plays a Rick Wakeman number on the latest Yamaha digital piano .

"Alright mate, wot can I do you for?" it quipped;.....they are all 'funny' of course,....and pretentiously laid back as if on weed like the failed pop stars the staff of these horrendous places, without exception, were.

"He wants to buy a Mirage!" he shouts across the shop floor."Ha Ha Ha! responds the rather unoccupied staff.

"You're lucky, there's one left, and its on sale", says Dick Wakeman...."Sure you don't want an Emulator 2?"..."er no?"I mumbled,reluctantly revealing my wad of fifties clutched tightly in my fist.

One of the best things about the Internet is that all these places and their equivalents, have now become figments of their own non-existent imaginations,and are now ,thankfully, bankrupt.

The Mirage worked just fine for a while, until the Floppy Disc Drive died. The keyboard was actually rather good,so i used it as a master controller,more than a crap sampler.

One did actually go back to that very same musical emporium to purchase an Akai sampler in the 90's,but this time i was served by a rather attractive young lady,the failed poop-stars were now noticeably absent,who proceeded to sell me anything she could think of,and largely succeeded.The flirting ended as soon as the transactions were registered.....her choice/loss. 

One must say, there doesn't seem to be that much News sampling going on in these Doxa Sinistra tracks,I thought I'd mention them by name to remind you of the subject of this waffle,but there is quite a bit of that Dutch ability to talk like an automated voice program going on.The electronic,mostly analogue,backing tracks would have benefited greatly from no speaking Dutchmen or news samples polluting the nicely minimal EBM Industrial tunage of this,lets face it,it's a concept album innit?...but that's always been the downfall of many a concept album is it not? The reliance on filler tracks to convey a story-line that no-one gives a flying duck about.

The Who's "Tommy" being a prime example....or is that atrocity better described as a 'Rock Opera',like Jesus Christ Superstar, or a lurid example of why Concept albums are generally as terrible as they seemed to obviously be on paper? Tommy would have benefited greatly by the violent death of the title character by the end of track one,then cut it down to be the marvelous EP it certainly should have been.....as for Quadrophenia.....don't get me started!

Tracklist:

Channel One
A1 Station Call
A2 Newsflashes
A3 Media Bomb
A4 Remote Birth Control
A5 Foreign Correspondent
A6 Swindle
A7 The Sky Is The Limit

Channel Two
B1 Televisor
B2 Call Now!
B3 Cocoon World
B4 International Cycling Sport
B5 Il Spirito Di Sergio Leone
B6 The 12 Miss Pelicoes

DOWNLOAD to interrupt your normal program HERE!

Gerry And The Holograms – "The Lost 1979 L.P. By Mancunian D.I.Y Sarcastic Synth-Pop Anonimites" (Finders Keepers Records – Cache018LP ) 2017/1979

 

Blimey, just when you thought the well was dry, up pops a lost album by Absurd records' Situationist-indebted masked art-eynth studio duo from Manchester,England...Gerry and the Holograms!

Yes the very same Gerry and the Hollograms who released a conceptual and unplayable anti-record in that nutty situationist art tradition so beloved of Malcolm Maclaren. Each record came glued into its picture sleeve, rendering the disc completely unplayable ,called, if i'm not mistaken "The Emperor's New Clothes" .Oh,those wacky but anonymous Krazy Kats.

Q: How many Situationists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: If 'changing a light bulb' is already in everyone's head, why do it at all?

Like The Residents, the veil of secrecy has now been stripped away, revealing  Gerry to be none other than that bloke and resting actor,C.P.Lee from  satirical rock band  Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias;and ,it says here,electronica excursionist John Scott...yeah... THAT, John Scott?!

More Residents references were abound on their only ,playable, release on the great Absurd Records,in 1979, "Meet The Dissidents"......Meet The Residents?....Geddit?

Of course CP Lee made a career out of making subtly satirical piss takes of many genres that were easily confused with the actual  targets of their biting wit. like the "Snuff Rock" EP which was punkier than most of the 'real' punks,and had a track covered by the Damned no less("Kill"); Another song of note is their Status Quo pastiche,"Heads Down No Nonsense Mindless Boogie", a fine tune.

It's basically a tongue in cheek version of the synth-duo's/groups that were gaining popularity in 1979,and without knowing what we know, this stuff could easily have scraped the bottom end of the charts had they been on Virgin,and not Absurd Records.

The unplayable single makes its debut appearance on track 8 as two minutes of silence...so don't think your media player is fucked 'cus its only dem zany situationists innit,reaping havoc with your reality.

Q: No,Really, how many Situationists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Zero. They all have day jobs, or classes, are at the café, or are expelling each other - and find lights inauthentic.

Tracklist:

1.Gerry And The Holograms
2.Tubular Belles
3.Curiosity Killed The Gath
4.Fake Moon
5.The Forty Three
6.Increased Resistance
7.Jeep
8.The Emperor's New Music
9.Just Desserts
10.Space Invaders
11.Gerry And The Holograms (Alternative 1979 Drumbox Version)

DOWNLOAD the hollow world of gerry exposed HERE!

Space Art – "Trip In The Center Head" (IF Records) 1977

The French have a nasty habit of electronic duo's who wear disguises ,suggesting that they all could possibly the same pair of mutherfukers doing all of 'em. Along with Space "Art", we had the similarly monikered  'Space', no art involved, who hit the top of the world charts with the catchy astro-instro "Magic Fly";also from the golden year of '77. One would suggest that Space Art had to add the 'ART' part when Magic Fly hit the charts just before they had an album out.......unless they were the same duo pretending to be two different entities. This could also explain the inexplicable phenomenon that is,and thankfully, now in the past tense, Was , the bloody awful, Daft Punk.

 

Not Daft Punk......possibly!?

As the Residents demonstrated,wear a mask and you become ageless.The residents will likely still be performing into the 22nd century,and I hear that Space Art are back too!I like the concept.Pub Rock Bands do the same thing, but without the masks,and without any original members.

Often described as cosmic synth-pop, The duo are considered pioneers of the electronic genre,by French people....and you know they might be right for once?The Froggies reckon they invented everything,and they do love their genre's,but get confused if any music they encounter doesn't fit snugly in a comfortable bracket.

"What music iz zis",they inquire,"Rock?Punk?Psychedelic?Chansons Francais?"......yes Punk is different to Rock in the very French world of the Frenchy,and all Americans are English,and Canadians are French....they're a bit weird.I blame the cheese.They should import more proper cheese from the world's biggest Cheese producer,the allegedly crap food experts, Les Anglais!

Cluster tried the same thing as Space Art, in trying to make some accessible cosmic synth pop with "Zuckerzeit" in 1974,but lacked the power of a real drummer,which Space Art had, and,more importantly, the catchy tunes,which Space Art also had.

Alas, now everyone owns a copy of Zuckerzeit,and Space Art are well and truly forgotten.

Who wants their album stuck on a alaphabetically filed record rack with a bunch of trendy Krautrock and Italian Prog anyway.Fuck that Shit!

Tracklist:

A1 Speedway 2:53
A2 Odyssey 4:00
A3 Eyes Shade 6:47
A4 Watch It 3:00
B1 L'Obsession D'Archibald 5:30
B2 Hollywood Flanger 3:50
B3 Psychosomatique 10:52

DOWNLOAD into your art space HERE!

Cardboards ‎– "Greatest Hits Volume Two" (Mom's Records ‎– MR253) 1981

The synth-punk thing wasn't just confined to California, for a start we had Suicide in New York for the previous decade up to 1981 and beyond,Crash Course In Science were in Philly. In Pittsburgh there was The Cardboards.

No guitars in this ignored group, among the cheap organs and synthesisers......real drums were the only real option in 1981.....they had a tone generator.....how Synth-Punk is that?

Naturally the American angle on Synth's was to make something rocky and exciting, unlike in the UK, who saw another opportunity to make classic 'Pop' and sell it back to the USA. For some reason, this angle didn't occur to American musicians or businessmen.Its the same story for many other American innovations, especially Musical ones.

One can only think of West Germany and maybe Belgium,where there was something synth-punky going on...but not really...the Rocky bit had been never really manifested itself on the Germanic musical chromosome,over-ridden by the dastardly Wagner gene.

Tracklist:

A1 On The R=>Z*
A2 Electrical Generator
A3 Copa Cobana
B1 Gravity's Still Working
B2 Bill's Rap

DOWNLOAD in recyclable digital cardboard HERE!

Perrey & Kingsley ‎– "The In Sound From Way Out!" ( Vanguard ‎– VSD-79222) 1966

From the 'Stereolab' (now where have we heard that before?) of  Gershon Kingsley and Jean-Jacques Perrey....fine american names both.....we bring you "The In Sound From Way Out!";probably one of the top ten album titles of alllll time. It even got used twice when The Beastie Boys brought out an album with the same name,same cover, but far far shitter music inside.
Using all those avant garde Musique Concréte techniques made famous by lofty com-poseurs like Pierre Schaeffer nigh-on twenty years previously.Perrey and Kingsley did the american thing and made the silliest music possible with kilometres of magnetic tape and a razor blade.I say 'silly', but if some French bloke fresh out of the Conservatoire de Musique made this in 1952,it would still be hailed as a ground breaking work of art-sonique to this day.
Instead it's filed in the Novelty section as a rediscovered piece of cheese to break the ice at your soirée...in fact exactly what it was created for in 1966.Forget History and we're doomed to repeat it.....oh shit,was that my right wing ignorance and a reference to Statue toppeling again??? In which case I don't apologize.


Tracklist:

1.Unidentified Flying Object 1:55
2.The Little Man From Mars 2:25
3.Cosmic Ballad 3:24
4.Swan's Splashdown 2:15
5.Countdown At 6 2:49
6.Barnyard In Orbit 2:24
7.Spooks In Space 2:00
8.Girl From Venus 2:21
9.Electronic Can-Can 2:00
10.Jungle Blues From Jupiter 2:55
11.Computer In Love 2:03
12.Visa To The Stars 2:13

DOWNLOAD the out sound from way inside HERE!

Kraftwerk ‎– "Autobahn" (Philips ‎– 6305 231) 1974

Yeah I know,yawwwn....It's Kraftwerk, that unappreciated electro-motorik krautrock fourpiece from Dusseldorf.Everyone keeps banging on about how influential they were,but,predictably I'm not having it.

Afika Bambatta says he heard Trans Europe Express and blah blah blah. Well, Trans Europe Express was basically a remake of "Autobahn",using the same mechanical electronic rhythm to suggest travel by various horseless carriges. The darker side of it all is the Trans-Europe Express as the Iron Horse that sped jews to their deaths thirty years earlier via Auchwitz and the semi-mythical Treblinka.

A theme also explored by Steve Reich's 'Different trains' was it not?(The minimalists also had a great influence over all this repetitive German music too don't forget). It helps that Kraftwerk had a better image in 1974 than their later showroom dummies period,when they looked, basically, like Nazi's.

"Autobahn" is also the album that inspired the UK proto-synth popsters like The Human League,Ultravox,but not apparently Tubeway Army,who insisted that he(Gary Numan) had never heard of Kraftwerk.

The reason this album was Kraftwerk's most influential was because they performed this on primetime BBC popular science programme,Tomorrow's World;which also incidently was broadcast in the slot before Top Of The Pops on a thursday evening.Just when the uk youth were sitting in front of the idiot box. then they had Delia Derbyshire's Doctor Who Theme to absorb every saturday tea-time.

Because of "Autobahn"s sucess, they repeated themselves with the next album....so much for experimentation then fella's?

The obvious 'Synth-Pop' album was "The Man Machine", which came out the same time as The Human League's own version of Synth-Pop 'Being Boiled',so that can hardly be called the first Synth-Pop album either.Then Gary Numan appeared at slightly later in the day,claiming no other influence than...yes....Ultravox!Whose 'Systems Of Romance' album of the same year was very synthesizer based.

Personally I prefer the early Kraftwerk,Krautrock period, from 1970 to 74, but you have to admire the beautiful glacial but phat and warm synth noises they committed to tape from 1978 to 1981. "Computer world" was their best synth-pop album,but in 1981 everyone was doing it by then.The year of Human League's "Dare",which involved much more danceable beats and no-one dressing up as silly Robots.

The most influential part of their canon was the compact portable tech.That's what Hip-Hop took from this honky music. And the less portable,but syncable tech is what influenced the producers of House and Techno,that, and the small matter of Georgio Moroders "I Feel Love".....technology has a lot to answer for!

By 1981, Kraftwerk had ran out of ideas,in fact, by 1978 they had ran out of ideas.You could have found most of their ideas in the works of Tangerine dream and Klaus Schulz anyway,mostly from before "Autobahn".

Alas, as a piece of prime late period electronic Krautrock, this holds up as the missing link between the Berlin School and Gary Numan.....who was also a major influence on early Electro and Hip-Hop.

Kraftwerk...Good...but not that good.

RIP Florian and Kraftwerk.

Tracklist:

1. Autobahn 22:30
2. Kometenmelodie 1 6:20
3. Kometenmelodie 2 5:44
4. Mitternacht 4:40
5. Morgenspaziergang 4:00
DOWNLOAD from the information super autobhan HERE!

Silver Apples ‎– "Silver Apples" (Kapp Records ‎– KS-3562) 1968

I figure that they got their name from Morton Subotnick's album, via the W.B.Yeats' poem,"Silver Apples Of the moon" released the previous year.
Siver Apples were the very first electronic rock duo and an obvious precursor to Suicide,who began their long career of sonic terrorism a year after Simeon and drummer Dan Taylor called it a day after getting sued by Pan-Am.
Simeon Coxe, the singer and electronicist, made his own proto-synth from a bunch of Oscillators and had a variety of levers,knobs and pedals to control the sound of the box of tricks which he named after himself...."The Simeon".
The persussion heavy repetitive sound reminds one of krautrockers CAN more than Suicide,but the influence on Vega and Rev is undeniable.
The original line-up got back together in the mid-nineties, of which I was much privileged to see perform in a pub in Leicester,uk, around 1998 (at the much missed Physio and Firkin), and got to chat with Simeon after saying that me and my buddy were from the Observer.He was much amused by the fact that I referred to himself as "The Simeon" like his machine was called,but I rather liked the ape-like connotations,as in Simian. Thats what happens when you invite drunken Observer reporters backstage when you don't drink yourself and you have a complimentary crate  of beer just waiting to be drank. I thought Simeon looked rather like an urbane Ozzy Osbourne,with his dyed black long hair and round tinted glasses,but he certainly wasn't as thick as Ozzy. I'm not sure if Windy and Carl,and some Spacemen Three offshoot were supporting that night, or was that the gig they did a year or so before,with the new band members,which wasn't so good.
Sadly Dan died a few years after, and Simeon broke his neck in a car accident. This duo were cursed.

Tracklist:

A1 Oscillations 2:47
A2 Seagreen Serenades 2:53
A3 Lovefingers 4:10
A4 Program 4:05
A5 Velvet Cave 3:28
B1 Whirly-Bird 2:39
B2 Dust 3:42
B3 Dancing Gods 5:55
B4 Misty Mountain 2:38

DOWNLOAD the silver apples of the earth HERE!

Doris Norton ‎– "Personal Computer" (Durium ‎– DAI 30413) 1984

Italian by marriage,Doris Norton originated in ye olde London Town,which is not surprising with a name like that. After a dalliance with Prog Rock as the obligatory keyboard player surrounded by machinery,and often playing two synths at once, Doris took the popular Kraftwerk-y route and made a handful of heavily programmed minimal synth albums....sponsored by Apple Computers!?
I guess that Apple were expecting her to sell a bucket load of music software for their nascent computer system.Alas they were sadly mistaken,as no-one's ever heard of her outside of Italy.
Lots of luvly phat analogue synthesis is going on here,from the year before Digital synthesis fucked up all the fun.


Tracklist:

1 Personal Computer 4:39
2 Norton Apple Software 6:30
3 Binary Love 5:18
4 Parallel Interface 4:27
5 Caution Radiation Norton 3:21
6 Personal Computer 4:45
7 A.D.A. Converter 3:50

DOWNLOAD dotty doris and her tasty Apples HERE!

Yoko Ono ‎– "Starpeace" (Polydor ‎– 422-827 530-1 Y-1) 1985

Oh No it''s Ono!
Feeling particularly sick of music and musicians this morning. So who pisses off more of the consuming public than anyone else....almost effortlessly. Yes, the best thing that happened to the Beatles,non-musician, Yoko Ono.....she stole our Beatle they cried.
One draw back is her constant referencing of Lennon, or 'John',rather like George Martin, who could turn any conversation towards the Beatles. She even manages to get a 'John said' moment on the bonus track "Imagine"...can't imagine who wrote that one?
This is probably her most despised outing, in her long line of despised recordings.The shrieking and caterwauling remains, amid a wall of electronic simmons drums,FM synthesis and tuneless singing.....all disguised as 'Pop'.....and Eighties 'Pop' at that!?
Oh Fuck, it's got Sly and fucking Robbie on it....are they really responsible for those turgid drums and people pleazin' basslines?...Oh Christ, it gets worse,.....'Produced by Bill Laswell...like everything was in the eighties....even that terrible album by John Lydon and backing band 'PiL mark 5 or 6'.The Bill Laswell Collaboration syndrome,that still blights some mainstream artists to this very day!?
Just as you thought it couldn't get any worse....Sean Lennon aged 8 is on it too....I'm gonna be sick!And the cherry on top is that it's full of hippy-drippy peace and love talk.
However, don't get me wrong, this is all I require in a Pop album.It manages to piss off virtually everyone, but keeps those toes-a-tappin'. I Love it.
If you're wondering why I've posted this, apart from it being brilliant anti-music, she's a woman in electronic music! It's synth-Pop innit, Einstein!?
Apart from that there are few women in the arts who have been as roundly vilified and subjected to as much naked institutional racism and Misogyny than that poor sad lonely lickle millionaire widow Yoko.

Tracklist:

1 Hell In Paradise
2 I Love All Of Me
3 Children Power
4 Rainbow Revelation
5 The King Of The Zoo
6 Remember Raven
7 Cape Clear
8 Sky People
9 You And I
10 It's Gonna Rain (Living On Tiptoe)
11 Starpeace
12 I Love You, Earth
13 Imagine

DOWNLOAD because john said so HERE!

Ruth White ‎– "Short Circuits" (Angel Records ‎– S-36042) 1971

After she finished her two occult inspired 'Experimental' albums for Limelight, Ruth White resorted to more comfortable territory in music for kids and families, where she spent most of her career.
This is basically one in a long line of electronic novelty records from the post war years. It's not unlike that classic Perrey and Kingsley album "The In Sound From Way Out", and i think they even did a version of  "The Flight Of The Bumblebee" on one of their multitundenous other albums. The difference is that Perrey and Kingsley made their albums from hours of painfully slow tape editing,splicing together thousands of short one-note long pieces of tape which contained an oscillator tone,and making a tape patchwork that became a tune.Amazing dedication to novelty music which deserves a medal.
Ruth, did no such thing for her novelty electronic album...she actually played a syntheziser,something that didn't exist in the fifties and early sixties.The only tape trickery she did was to slow the tape speed down so she could appear to play faster.
She still manages to sound a bit wierd anyway,and there are plenty of classic Modular Moog sounds to please even the most travelled samplist.
This one got lost amongst the tidal wave of 'Moog'plays the classics records of the early 70's.


Tracklist:

The Flight Of The Bumblebee 1:20
Gymnopédie No. 1 2:30
The Snow Is Dancing 2:07
Variations On Couperin's Rondeau 1:38
The Butterfly 1:37
Anvil Chorus 1:25
Tempo Di Ballo 2:48
Etude In G Flat 1:32
Solfeggietto 1:50
Prelude In E Minor 2:14
Polka From "The Age Of Gold" 2:10
The Ball 1:36
Sonata In G 1:58
Asturias 5:20

DOWNLOAD the out-sound from way-in HERE!

Various Artists - "Soviet Synth Wave Vol. 3" (2019)

Having lived my young adulthood throughout the 1980's, and am now listening to the pain that my compatriots in the Soviet Union had to endure behind that silly ol' Iron Curtain thingy, I can now fully appreciate how fucking WEIRD pop music was between 1983 and 1989.
Of course at the time I hated all this shit,and could look down on it all because I liked Coil,Einsturzende Neubauten and The Birthday Party,....what a twat was I?
Secretly to myself, I thought that a Flock of Seagulls, Classix Nouveaux, Japan, Simple Minds and the like were rather marvellous. All this stuff sounded even more ridiculous in the 90's when 'real' drummers made a come back,and guitars were played properly again......how fucking boring was that shit? Especially that ridiculous Brit-Pop torture.
Well, you know how kids start listening to music via their parents record collections?.....it was jaw dropping to hear teenagers playing 80's Futurist pop in the early 2000's. It all goes round in circles they say....well they're correct....whoever 'they' are,but 'they' are apparently genius's.,or geni?
Like Punk never happened 'They' said, but this stuff was a direct result of the 'Punk' ethic.....in other words it was 'Punk',but weirder.
Amid the massive gated snares, Simmons electronic kits, digital synthesis,cavernous reverbs,warbley vocals and fretless basses lay something beyond normal comprehension,something genuinely weird....how did it come to this.How did Kajagoogoo happen?
Luckily for any English speaker,listening to this Soviet Wave stuff,the truly terrible lyrics that came with the package are incomprehensible.Something that made the Western Futurists harder to listen to or take seriously.
Simon Le Bon being the new romantic laureat of terrible poetry......"You're just about as easy as a Nuclear War" said the Bard of Brum.
Its no coincidence that Duran Duran were formed not too far from the birthplace of William Shakespeare, the worlds most famous West Midlander,followed by the next most famous West midlanders,Duran Duran;just pipping Black Sabbath,Slade,and half of Led Zeppelin for second place.
Yep,prepare yourself, Duran's debut album was a truly great record!?

Tracklisting:

01.Rock-September "Discorobot"(1982)
02.The Time Machine "He was one of the first"(1983)
03.The doctor "The moon in the sky..." (1985)
04.The airport "To stay children"(1984)
05.Activity zone "I fly like a fireball" (1986)
06.The Model "Again 25"(1987)
07.Edward Artemiev "Picture No. 7"(1978)
08.Ubermannequin "Nightporter"(1987)
09.Michail Muromov "The Earth will return in May"(1985)
10.Dynamic "The light of your windows"(1984)
11.Rondo "Ring off"(1986)
12.Igor Talkov "Lifebelt"(1989)
13.The class "Great!" (1989)
14.Boris Deart "Ecology" (1991)

DOWNLOAD the alternative future of the ussr HERE!

Various Artists - "Soviet Synth Wave Volume Two " (2019)

Like a wave of electronic tanks sweeping across the Kursk salient,pushing aside the far superior German Synth wave, the Soviet synth forces ejected the inovative manoeuvres of the Neue Deutsche Welle,and ignored the East German equivalent, to produce an unstoppable tsunami of eurovision contest inspired electro-schlager.
They cleared their territory of the invaders,and like the aftermath of actual Battle of the Kursk, the Russian forces stopped at the Elbe,leaving the west to their over-rated qualities of good taste,free speech and fashion sense. Dooming this wave of incredibly naff nonsense to fester in the gulag of iron curtain pop,until now.
These communist electro-protagnoists found it very difficult to avoid the stomping beat of Cossack culture,best demonstrated by the opening track,which sounds like both a kids action TV series about our Cossack chums, and a winning entry at Eurovision in 1994.
Back in the eighties there used to be a male vanity product called 'Cossack', which was basically,hairspray for men.......no it wasn't a popper for fucks sake, I said Hairspray!
Presumably, it didn't work on womens hair?
I did,however, use Cossack to maintain my Sidney Vicious hairstyle,even though it cost more than ladies hairspray, to avoid embarassment.
I'm told that Sid was also a 'Cossack' man?
Check out this advert for this classic male grooming product,which inevitably involves a bloke,dressed as a Cossack of course, on a horse, kidnapping a young blonde lady,for what reason I shudder to imagine!(Click Here)

Tracklisting:

1-The Cossack Song -Sector Gaza
2-Nautilus - The Nentre
3-I Haven't Noticed - Theatre
4-The Telephone - Primus
5-Давайте созвонимся! (Lets Call Up) - Forum
6-Going Crazy - The Electro Club
7-B2 - Argo
8-Anything You Want - Technology
9-Simple Words - Arrival
10-The Time Calls Me - NRG
11-Surrealism - Goodbye Youth
12-Romantic Express - New Collection
13-The Robot - Interview
14-The Aesthete - Bioconstructor

DOWNLOAD some wave surfing ussr HERE!

Various Artists - "Soviet Synth Wave Volume One (1980-88)" (2019)

The Soviet approach to making pop music was very similar to their apprach to architecture,as featured on the accompanying photo with this compilation. Brutal,formulaic,structually unsound ,with humans reduced to nothing more than an after-thought. There are no Yazoo's, Pet Shop Boys,or Gary Numanski's on here, just a jumble sale of imported music tech let loose in the hands of young(the 35-45 demographic) socialists with little or no idea of how to write a catchy tune......sounds good huh?
This all sounds like a whole music culture based on catching a brief snippit from a western radio transmission of a post Vince Clark Depeche Mode tune,merged with a three second snatch of a Classix Nouveaux track.
However, the Mumii Troll track is a urainium tipped classic.
Yep, leave the timeless electro-pop hits to those pale eye-liner wearing English Kids, and leave the Russians to do what they do best.....clearing a room.

Track Listing:

01. Alisa - Experimentator (1984)
02. Nautilus Pompilius - Eta muzyka (1985)
03. Nochnoi Prospect - Ansambli (1986)
04. Nikolai Kopernik - Liudi mira (1985)
05. Alians - Govoriashchaia golova (1984)
06. Agata Kristi - Vtoroi front (1988)
07. Mirazh - Okolo polunochi (1987)
08. Kino - Poslednii geroi (1985)
09. Televizor - Chelovek iz vaty (1985)
10. Zvuki Mu - Yezhednevnyi geroi (1987)
11. Mumii Troll - Saionara diska (1987)
12. Avia - Urok russkogo yazyka, par (1986)
13. Pop-kombinat - Telefonnyi robot (1987)
14. Zodiak - Zodiak (1980)

DOWNLOAD these dancefloor emptiers HERE!

Jürgen Ecke ‎– "Sound-Synthese" (AMIGA ‎– 8 56 171) 1986

DDR synthesist,Jürgen Ecke, dared to do what even Paul 'N.N.N.N.N.Nineteen' Hardcastle would never consider with a Fairlight.Almost every horrible eighties production value has been turned up to the max on this East German manual on how NOT to do electronic music.
Like a soundtrack for a bad 80's Madonna Movie, or the music for an endless love-making scene in Miami Vice, the music spews forth hefty Gated Reverb snare sounds,with the despised Fairlight sampler Orchestral Stab.
It smells of the "Well we've bought all of this latest equipment so we might as well use it......a lot" syndrome.....and yes there's a syn-drum in use too. 
Its absurd datedness make this album almost avant-garde its unintentional self-parody;but also charming in its quaint cluelessness.When this hit the dancefloor (singular tense is intentional) of downtown East Berlin,the Polit Bureau would have lapped it up as a demonstration of how socialism is more than capable of keeping pace with the west in all technological areas; be it Chemical Weaponry,mass surveillance techniques or Popular Music styles."You Young people WILL be happy,and You will DANCE with your socialist Joy!!"

Tracklist:

A1 HAYH-HAYH 4:11
A2 Auf Der Suche Nach... 5:00
A3 Irritation 2:54
A4 Der Letzte Tag 4:40
A5 Über Allem Ist Ruh' 4:14
B1 Über Dem Nördlichen Wendekreis 4:04
B2 Bolero 3:53
B3 Kulmination 3:02
B4 Der Ewige Traum Des Ikarus 3:59
B5 Illumination 3:55

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