I've got two tracks today, good for when you realize it's about 1:30 or 2 in the morning and you've been up for longer than you expected but aren't quite ready to go to bed yet. Maybe you've got the last of a glass of wine to finish, maybe you're on the last few pages of your book (or maybe, with pleasant synchronicity, both). Or maybe other people don't sit up all night reading and listening to ambient music and drinking wine.
They're both beat-driven, but quietly so. They don't pound, they throb and pulse. They're subtly insistent, taking you with them while they go somewhere and look around and then bring you home again. The first, "Electro Dreams," is a brisk walk at night, past people moving through their own lives and doing whatever it is they need to do separately from any observer and from one another, while the second, "Introspection Part 1," is a look around the cannery sometime in the very early morning when even the people at work are asleep on their feet, dreaming themselves into the machinery in a way the daytime workers never experience.
Both of these appear to be out of print. If you find them in the used bins or feel like dropping the 7 bucks Amazon sellers seem to want for the first Fax compilation, I'd say go for it.
Zenith - Electro Dreams (FAX Compilation)
Salt Tank - Introspection Part 1 (United States of Ambience 2)
]]>Like any other morbid curiosity, thought, I can't resist poking around, just to see what crimes have been perpetrated against my favorite songs. Here are some tracks I've found that I think are interesting, amusing, and non-obvious enough to point out.
Policy of Sweet Dreams -- Depeche Mode and the Eurhythmics. Synthpop power mix, yeah! I especially like how the opening hooks have been interlaced to form a sort of uber-hook. And the Eurhythmics "Ooohs" and Depeche Mode chorus mix nicely. Recommended.
Never Float On -- The Assembly and Modest Mouse. Mixing two super-popular synthpop acts is too obvious? Well, okay. How about the band Vince Clarke was in between Yaz and Erasure? With Feargal Sharkey on vocals, The Assembly recorded and released one single, "Never Never." Here it is, mixed with Modest Mouse's recently-popular "Float On." A little time-stretched, sure, but it works.
Devil Went Down To The Beach -- New Order and the Charlie Daniels Band. Synthpop and indie rock was too obvious? Sure, okay. Here you go! The instrumental B-side version of "Blue Monday" and some hardcore country music! Take that!
All right. That's probably not my final word on mashups, but now I can claim I have followed internet trends and talked about mashups in my mp3 blog. Now I just need to set up an Amazon wish list and post topless pictures.
They released another album, All The Naked People, which included actual production values, but it was far less interesting than their first. Thus, the three tracks here are from Organic? The Overlords appear to have pretty much vanished since then.
]]>Between 1987 and 1990, cEvin Key and Dwayne Goettel recorded enough tracks on their own to fill out an album and an EP. Key's percussion and Goettel's sampling combine to form an equisitely-crafted set of what they called "soundtracks for movies that never existed." The Infidel is dark, percussive, and lush, and the carefully-chosen snippets of movie dialog serve to add extra layers of expression to what might otherwise be just another set of almost ambient instrumental tracks (although an exceptionally lush and complex set).
I'm including a few tracks here-- "Naugal Tone" and "Come in Piece" from The Infidel and the extended version of "Father Don't Cry" from the Father Don't Cry EP.
In 1995 Dwayne Goettel died of a heroin overdose at his parents' house, where he had gone in an attempt to kick the habit.
]]>Exit is notable for being written largely using the PPG Wave 2 synthesizer-- it's a striking and distinctive sound. It was one of the first (if not THE first) synthesizer to use digital wavetables, but it processed them through an analog signal chain, making it an incredibly versatile and expressive synth. The sounds are undeniably digital, but the analog filters warm up the sound and keep it from being too sterile. Here's the page at Vintage Synth Explorer. It's pretty! And blue!
In the two tracks here, most of what you hear is generated by the PPG Wave. Even the most digital sounds are, while clean and undeniably digital, not sterile or static. No simple looped waveforms here-- nope, this is MODULATION.
I love this album, and I hope you, my loyal readers, enjoy it as well.
The album goes in and out of print-- I can't recommend it enough.
]]>The PostPunkJunk archives are well worth trawling for music, too...
]]>First, Lali Puna doing a super-quiet, almost ambient, cover of Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder's title song for the movie Electric Dreams, which, in a heartless crime against culture, isn't out on DVD. How could they release Short Circuit, but not Electric Dreams? It's got a MUCH better soundtrack, especially with that wonderful cello/computer jam session. That and the closing number in Revenge of the Nerds were the most influential pieces of movie music in my formative years. Make of that what you will. And now, on the "Reproductions" Human League tribute album (which is generally quite good), Lali Puna has made it quiet and pretty, for times when you want to express how lonely it can be to be far from somebody you love and miss but huge throbbing analog synths just don't fit the mood.
Lali Puna -- (Together In) Electric Dreams
Next up, more unabashed 80's cheese, complete with chunky octave basslines, sampled guitars and a hook so hooky that I had to dig up the song more than 15 years later to find out if it was as great as I remembered. Yep, it was. I don't really feel like searching out any info about Baltimora right now. Presumably they were from Baltimore, released this song and the requisite 12" remix (which you're getting here-- dig it, synthesizer monkey noise breakdown at 4:49), and vanished. Who knows? Thank you, "Maximum 80's," for bringing us this nearly-forgotten delight. And oh look, there are Baltimora videos on YouTube. Cool. Baltimora! Top of the Pops!
Baltimora -- Tarzan Boy (12" remix)
Finally, another piece of catchy 80's synthpop, from Blue Clocks Green, who until a couple of years ago didn't even have a web presence. They do now, and there's been some vague mention of a comeback, although I think that would imply that they'd actually been here in the first place. There's an extensive biography here, and I deeply regret not stealing the "Hemingway" 12" vinyl from WBUR when I had the chance. Alas, my morality. Anyway, it's a cute and bouncy little tune, and very catchy indeed. Highly recommended, and mirrored here in case the upenn.edu link (where I got the file) goes away.
Blue Clocks Green -- Hemingway
Regardless of my previous threats, these are all mp3 files, so non-itunes users can relax-- for now.
]]>I may post things here in .m4a format. This means that iPods are pretty much the only portable that can play them. Plus, it's possible that there are people whose software might not handle the format. Most players have plugins or some sort of method for playing .m4a files, at least.
Would there be massive outcry if I were to post music in .m4a format? I'm inclined to go ahead and do so, but if it would be WAY TOO ANNOYING, I'd go to the trouble of digging out CDs and re-encoding them. It would take longer, since I couldn't just upload what's on my laptop now, but for you, my beloved readers, I would do this thing.
Currently considering for upcoming posts: Shriekback, I Start Counting, A.C.Marias, You Shriek, and some others. Any requests? (I think I Start Counting will be next.) Plus, special guest posters Joe and Nik have accounts, whenever they feel like posting anything.
Let me know...
Frustration and artistic differences took their toll and Think Tree broke up in 1994. Keyboardist Krishna Venkatesh formed El Dopa, while front man Peter Moore, guitarist Will Ragano, and drummer Jeff Biegert created Count Zero (who have a MySpace page here).
Think Tree released two albums, the first, eight/thirteen, on their own label and the second, Like The Idea on Caroline. Both are out of print.
Hire A Bird (eight/thirteen)
The Word (Live) (eight/thirteen, CD version only)
Eye For Eye (Like The Idea)
Everything Is Equal (Like The Idea)
Short post today (better than no post since last week, I guess), and ideally Joe will post some early-90's Boston Industrial sometime soon. He's got some DDT and some Joy and some others lined up, I think. I guess we'll see...
For now, though, Edelweiss! One-hit wonder Bavarian synthpop dance frenzy! Yes indeed.
]]>I see from the logs that people are reading these and actually downloading the files. If you're leaving comments on livejournal, I can't see them (and they eventually get deleted as the syndicated posts expire), and none have been left on the actual solipsism.net site, so I have no idea what you, my few but undoubtedly loyal readers, have liked or would like to see more of from this here blog.
So, any comments on the handful of songs so far? I haven't set things up for recording from vinyl yet (or tape, for that matter), so these have all been tracks that have been kicking around in mp3 format already. It's mostly been synthpop, and mostly C'Est La Mort.
Any requests? Any comments? Please post.
I've got some DDT lined up, but I'm going to let Joe post those. That should be coming in a couple of days...
]]>"Crowd of Drifters" is Stephen Merritt's first release, from the 1990 C'est La Mort compilation "Doctor Death's Volume 4: The Marvels of Insect Life." This version features Susan Anway on vocals and very different production from the version released much later on Charm of the Highway Strip.
"I Die, You Die" is from the Gary Numan tribute album, Random.
Crowd of Drifters (C'est La Mort)
I Die, You Die (Gary Numan cover)
Handful of Snowdrops wasn't a great studio band. Land of the Damned suffers from very raw production-- lots of big dry synths, fakey choir samples (not that I don't love fakey choir samples...) and very mechanical drums and sequences. Dans L'Oeil De La Tempete was almost overproduced and sounds way too clean and deliberate, and the drum programming is still very mechanical. Drum machines aren't necessarily bad, but the rest of the instrumentation seems to be striving for lushness and expression and the drums just don't support that well.
It's no surprise, I guess, that Mort en Direct really stands out as the best document of the Handful of Snowdrops sound. Even the sequenced parts sound better onstage, and rather than sampled guitars, they appear to be playing with a live guitarist. If you'd heard their studio albums and wondered what the big deal was, Mort en Direct could convince you that they really were worth paying attention to.
Here are a couple of Handful of Snowdrops songs. "Now, Then, and Forever" was only available on Volume 4 of the Doctor Death compilations, Marvels of Insect Life. "Land of the Damned" is the Mort En Direct version of the title track from their first album. "Godhood" is also live, and doesn't seem to have been released elsewhere.
]]>I've been a big fan of Men Without Hats since, well, a long time ago. Not as long as they've been around, but when somebody on the MWH mailing list offered to make CDs of a couple of live shows plus their FIRST release (the Folk of the 80's EP, although in the form of the 1985 re-release, the Freeways EP), I jumped at it. The two concerts were from 1983 (the Rhythm of Youth tour) and 1985 (the Freeways tour).
The Freeways EP included 5 songs-- "Modern(e) Dancing", "Utter Space", "Antarctica" (a different version on Rhythm of Youth), "Security (Everybody feels better with)", and "Freeways (Euromix)." An extended version of the EP included 3 other versions of "Freeways," in French, German, and English. Of these, it appears that only "Freeways (Euromix)" was ever released on CD.
I would love it these were re-released on CD. I'd buy them in a second. The CD copies I have are old CD-Rs, from the days when CD burners were expensive and rare, and I don't know how long they'll last. I've made a backup, but I'd rather have a real CD of them. The 80's revival is here-- can we have good reissues of the old MWH material? How about a domestic reissue of Folk of the 80's (Part III) and Rhythm of Youth? You CAN buy them on CD, from Canada (and I have), but not in the US. And the Freeways material appears to be totally unavailable anywhere.
"Utter Space" is one of my favorite MWH songs ever, and was also released as a B-side on the "I Got The Message" single. This is the version from Freeways. The other two are live versions from the Freeways 1985 tour, another otherwise-unavailable Freeways track and the live version of their cover of Roxy Music's "Editions of You."
Utter Space
Security (Everybody feels better with) (Freeways 1985)
Editions of You (Freeways 1985)
The second thing I'm going to post today I, well... I guess I found it somewhere. It's a mashup, or, as we called them in the 80's, a "megamix." And once I get set up for recording from vinyl, I'm going to post my TOTALLY AWESOME Depeche Mode/Nitzer Ebb/Front242/oh and some Laibach for good meaure megamix 12" I picked up a few years ago. Yeah, I can hear you drooling out there.
This is floating around on the internet, usually labelled "Eins Zwei Mix (Long Version)." Some misguided fool seems to have decided it must be somehow related to Einstuerzende Neubauten, which seems to imply that they've never even listened to Einstuerzende Neubauten.
In it, I can pick out Front242 (I guess that 10 minutes of raw beat on the Never Stop! EP was useful after all), Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, Enya, Delerium, Art of Noise, Erasure, Mo-Do, and, to tie it in with Men Without Hats, a good chunk of one of Ivan Doroschuk's solo releases. Yeah. I have no idea who made it, but they sure did a good job.
Here you go:
...and, an administrative note: I am attempting to host these on gweep.net after all. If the bandwidth usage gets too high, I'll move them somewhere else.