John Foxx - Burning Car Mini-LP

Armed with stacks of vintage electronic gear, from Boss Flangers and Dr. Rhythm drum machines to Arp Odyssey synthesizers, John Foxx played an all-analogue set at The Roundhouse, London, on June 5th, 2010. Gary Numan and Ade Fenton worked the turn tables and the evening began with a panel discussion featuring author Iain Sinclair, and the leading lights of the Ghost Box label, Jim Jupp and Julian House. The Second Chameleon and I were there on behalf of TSM to report.

If you don't know Ghost Box, you should. They're responsible for what has become known as "hauntology," a concept associated with artists such as The Focus Group, The Advisory Circle, Belbury Poly, and The Moon Wiring Club who mix seventies instructional films and the sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop to imagine an alternate past, one where parish churches sang hymns to oscillators and school children learned the gospel of video tape. The panel discussion, called Moving Through Old Daylight, was a thoughtful exchange on the ways in which mass media shapes our conception of the past, and featured some especially fascinating short films by both Sinclair and Jupp. Check out their new web site here.

Following a quick dinner in Camden Town, we made our way into the fabled space of The Roundhouse. Pink Floyd and The Soft Machine launched The International Times here, The Doors played their only UK show, and of course Hawkwind recorded the legendary "Silver Machine." A former railway shed, its circular structure was used to house the massive turntable on which Victorian locomotives were turned around. Today it fully lives up to its reputation, its dome ceiling billowing like a canopy above the punters gathered below. Jori Hulkkonnen played a tasteful opening DJ set, but his follow up, Gary Numan, got stuck in traffic, leaving us in the hands of some preening jester in a leopard print coat who saw fit to play minimal synth standards, from The Normal to Fad Gadget. Oh, and plenty of bass feedback from the over worked sound system.

A short break, and the screen behind the stage flickered with Steve D'Agostino's brilliant remix of "Film One", an early Foxx b-side. As the strangely animated images of Alex Proyas's video sputtered and jerked in the night, Foxx's band assembled on stage, coaxing the ancient circuitry gathered on the stage into life. The twin tape reels of a Revox began to slowly revolve and the opening beats of "Plaza" boomed into the vaulted space of The Roundhouse. Expectations were running high on such a strong opening, and as Foxx himself came to centre stage a huge cheer went up from the crowd. He looks great for a man in his fifties, still a compelling figure behind the microphone. Too bad, then, that the mix was so murky, as if the sound system was not really up to the task of meeting the challenges of the cavernous venue. Foxx's vocals, bathed in a variety of harmonizers and filters, didn't really help matters, simply contributing to the indistinct and hazy sound.

The gig was billed as a celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of Metamatic, Foxx's groundbreaking debut, but the set list was more wide ranging then this would suggest. After five tracks from the Metamatic era, we were treated, if that's the right word, to three songs featuring Louis Gordon, with whom Foxx has recorded several albums since his return to music in the late 1990s. With his fist pumping in the air as he twisted the beleaguered VCF knob on his CS1X, Gordon's risible antics stood in marked contrast to the aloofness and diffidence of Foxx's sense of modernity. As The Second Chameleon noted above the din, "He just doesn't get it, does he?"

More promising was the clutch of songs from Foxx's forthcoming collaboration with a young group of analogue fetishists called The Maths. Where the techno-tinged beats of Louis Gordon seemed well past their best before date, the new material had both a freshness and edginess that has been largely missing from Foxx's most recent work. The album, which is due in October, will be worth seeking out.

The crowning glory of the evening, however, was the appearance of Robin Simon, whose psychedelic fretwork helped lift Ultravox's third lp, Systems of Romance, to such empyrean heights. As a ticking synth set the stage for "Dislocation," Simon appeared to rapturous applause. Foxx too seemed well pleased to have his erstwhile guitarist at his side again, and we were treated to several Ultravox-era faves, including a rare outing of "The Man Who Dies Everyday," a track dating back to the band's second lp, Ha! Ha! Ha! Simon leaned into the proto-punk riff with gusto, Foxx ditched the harmonizers, the crowd went mad, and, for a moment, the great dome of The Roundhouse seemed to levitate into the air.

To commemorate this one-off gig, we are including here one of the rarest items in the Foxx canon (the sole copy for sale on discogs is listed at $229). The "Burning Car Mini-LP" was a Japanese-only release, gathering together two post-Metamatic singles: "Burning Car" b/w "20th Century" and "Miles Away" b/w "A Long Time." Two older b-sides filled out the release: "This City" and "Mr. No." These tracks have all been reissued as bonus tracks on the various cd reissues and compilations in recent years, but never sequenced together again in this way. And they never sounded so good as on this sublime slab of Japanese vinyl, with its over-sized picture label and superb mastering at the disc cutting stage. Here's to thirty years of the Quiet Man!

-- Crash the Driver

John Foxx - Burning Car Mini-LP

01 Burning Car
02 20th Century
03 This City
04 Miles Away
05 A Long Time
06 Mr. No

Japan Mini-LP: Victor Musical Industries [VIP 5903] 1981

Trevor Herion - Beauty Life

The pop charts of the mid-eighties were crowded with electro crooners, their unabashedly romantic yearning standing in stark contrast to the icy and distant synthesizers and white boy funk grooves that filled out the sound. David Sylvian hoped for visions of China. Peter Godwin wished for images of heaven. And Midge Ure longed for Vienna. But no electro crooner could touch the heart strings better than Trevor Herion.

Born in Cork, Ireland, Herion moved to London in the late seventies, and was living in a squat with members of The Psychedelic Furs when he hooked up with drummer Paul Simon, brother of Robin Simon, the guitar player who would would later have notable stints with both Ultravox and Magazine. Together with Mark Scholfield on guitar and Michael French on bass, Herion and Simon formed The Civilians, and released a single for Arista entitled "Made For Television" (1980). The singer and his drummer friend left the band before its sophomore single had appeared, and joined with Matthew Seligman and Thomas Dolby to form The Fallout Club. Here Herion's powerful voice, every note seemingly touched with some irrepressible sadness, came most fully to the fore, offering a powerful embellishment to Dolby's rapidly maturing song writing and arranging abilities. The analogue joys of "Pedestrian Walkway" have been recently rediscovered by a generation of Dolby fans thanks to its inclusion on the remastered, 2 cd version of The Golden Age of Wireless, while its majestically over-the-top follow up, "Wanderlust," has graced several minimal synth compilations in recent years.

Herion's solitary solo album has been less well remembered, however. Released in 1983 on Interdisc Records, Beauty Life is a highly polished slice of electro pop. Graced with a Peter Saville cover, it featured a stellar cast of backing musicians, including another Dolby alum, Kevin Armstrong, and Martin Young of Colourbox. Moreover, the label brought in one of the most in-demand pop producers of the day, Steve Levine, who had previously worked with Culture Club and China Crisis among others. But the album is still very much Herion's, his powerful voice surging up as from some unknown depths of world weary despair, gliding effortlessly over the thick slab of eighties beats, and ascending to its own lonely orbit.

Among its many highlights, the album included "Kiss of No Return," a pre-album single released by Imperial Recordings and distributed by Island in 1982. Arranged by Thomas Dolby (the drum program has a distinct resemblance to some of the beats heard on "Europa and the Pirate Twins"), and produced by Mike Howlett (who also lent his talents to Martha Ladly's sublime solo debut), the song somehow manages to transcend its faux Parisian instrumentation (accordians and violins), and become something almost otherworldly, a loving lament to a more elegant age.

Three further singles were released from the album: "Dreamtime" and "Love Chains" are cast very much in the ABC - Heaven 17 mould, replete with gated snare drums, funky guitars, and towering backing vocals, while the dreamy chord progressions and slap bass of "Love Chains" are strikingly reminiscent of Levine's work with China Crisis. Gathered as the first three tracks on side one, these singles make a muscular statement of purpose, but in some ways it's the album tracks on the second side, full of European longueur and jazzy interludes, that more fully capture the essence of Herion's sound. "Big City," "Betrayed," "The Jazz Age," the titles alone evoke the elongated shadows and dimly lit alleys in which Herion's imagination preferred to walk.

Amid the welter of electro crooners, however, Beauty Life seems to have gone unnoticed, its failure to dent the charts not helped by a feud with Levine that resulted in his name being removed from the album's credits. In the aftermath of its failure, Herion slipped into a prolonged period of depression. He took his own life on October 1, 1988. A retrospective anthology of his best work, including both his solo recordings and contributions to The Civilians and The Fallout Club, is long overdue.

-- Crash The Driver

Trevor Herion - Beauty Life

01 Dreamtime
02 Love Chains
03 Fallen Angel
04 Success, and the Decline of the Western Man
05 Big City
06 Betrayed
07 The Jazz Age
08 Legends
09 Kiss of No Return

UK LP: Interdisc [INTO 3] 1983

Bruce Gilbert - The Shivering Man

Bruce Gilbert was always an odd fish, even in Wire, the oddest punk band of them all. Already 30 when they formed, he seemed more like a college professor than a band member. When he later began to release music under his own name it was apparent that he was more at home in electroacoustic and noise music territory than in anything resembling pop.

Gilbert released a flood of material, starting in 1980. Together with co-conspirator Graham Lewis, he recorded four albums as Dome, their lo-fi music sounding like tape scrapings from Wire sessions, odd vocal exercises, frustration devices, aversion therapies.

A 12" as Cupol combined an almost pop rant on one side with an extended ethnic forgery noise field on the other. Credited to BC Gilbert & G Lewis, the album 3R4 contains two excellent noise ambient soundscapes with shorter tracks. Together with the single "Ends With The Sea", these formed the CD compilation 8 Time.

After seven releases in two years Gilbert showed no signs of slacking. The random noises that formed gallery installation MZUI stormed the charts (not!) in 1982. Gilbert then teamed with Lewis and Mute label boss Daniel Miller for Duet Emmo, who issued the excellent Or So It Seems and companion 12" in 1983. That same year he was in the band P'o, featured on this blog last June.

The two albums Gilbert released on Mute following this unorthodox period of music-making are likely more palatable. Commissioned by choreographer Michael Clark, "Do You Me? I Did", filled 30 minutes of the album "This Way", issued on Mute in August 1984. This is currently available on Austrian label Editions Mego, remastered and with new artwork. This piece is one of the absolute highlights of the Gilbert canon.

Conceived by Angela Conway, whose own musical career we have profiled, the dance "The Shivering Man" provided the title for the follow-up album. Released on vinyl by Mute in April 1987, the record is full of insistent pulses and fragmented instruments. One can hear guitar, bass, drums and vocals but their spectra are not used in conventional ways, nor in conventional structures. The album begins with "Angelfood", which goes through several distinct musical stages, as though replicating Gilbert's oeuvre in toto. It is one of his best pieces.

Following this, the title track sounds like cartoon characters slowly getting dragged under the earth to be buried alive. "Net in the Feather" welds bagpipes to a skipping CD, later to be jeered and whooped. "There Are" starts with something like Frippertronics until Gilbert's toneless voice begins a recitation. Then, unexpectedly, the machinic enters this organic realm. "Hommage" [sic] might be Throbbing Gristle while "Eline Cout II" sets the template for the solo AC Marias record: girl-next-door ambient vocals over insistent pulsing loop. Finally, "Epitaph For Henran Brenlar" evolves out of a dark shambles into something resembling a pop song. Graham Lewis appears half-way through and sounds great.

The Shivering Man has only been issued on CD as part of a limited three disk set in Japan. In the UK four of the seven tracks found their way to the compilation This Way To The Shivering Man. As that is also out of print, we are bringing you the record in full, restored to its original running order.

P.S. A video excerpt of "The Shivering Man", danced by Michael Clark, Julie Hood and Ian Longmuir, may be found on YouTube. Hood is also the dancer in the brilliant A.C. Marias video "One Of Our Girls Has Gone Missing".

-- Second Chameleon

The Shivering Man

A1 Angel Food
A2 The Shivering Man
A3 Net In The Feather
B1 There Are
B2 Hommage
B3 Eline Cout II
B4 Epitaph For Henran Brenlar

LP UK: Mute [STUMM 39] April 1987

Thomas Leer - Singles 1983-85

The electronic scene of the late seventies and early eighties was led by a new kind of man. Sure there were some notable synth bands, The Human League, OMD, Depeche Mode, but the quiet man, labouring alone with his battery of monophonic synths and drum machines, was somehow closer to the alienated spirit of the age. Gary Numan, John Foxx, Thomas Dolby, Fad Gadget, these were the names that captured the popular imagination of the day.

Thomas Leer looked set to join the upper echelons of electro auteurs following the success of his debut single, "Private Plane." Recorded in his bedsit apartment, he had to nearly whisper the vocals so as not to wake his girlfriend sleeping in the next room. But the NME named it single of the week, and soon Cherry Red, the much respected indie label, offered him a deal. "4 Movements" and "Contradictions" saw him leaving behind the proto-industrial experiments of his earlier collaborations with Robert Rental, in favour of an angular, funk-inspired sound that seemed to mix a love of Sly and the Family Stone with a more poppy take on Cabaret Voltaire's Red Mecca. It was a brave experiment, especially given the primitive nature of the drum machines with which he was trying to approximate funk grooves, but they failed to translate into serious sales. As 1982 wound down, Thomas Leer seemed to have lost his way.

Then, suddenly, he reappeared two years later, having reinvented himself as a computer-savvy, sampler-wielding sophisticate, more Trevor Horn than Richard H. Kirk. Major label Arista was so taken with Leer's new worldly traveller image that they bank-rolled a series of glossy twelve inch singles to be released on a reactivated version of the Oblique label, which had last seen service for "Private Plane." Recorded with the latest in synthesizer technology, the Fairlight CMI digital sampling keyboard, these three singles offered a master class in mid-eighties pop elegance, the equal in many respects to the finest efforts of ABC, Propaganda, or Frankie Goes To Hollywood. The future must have seemed bright indeed for the former Thomas Wishart, but Arista appears to have lost confidence in Leer by the time these singles were compiled into an album. The Scale Of Ten was slipped into record stores without much fanfare in 1985, and then, just as quickly, disappeared.

Collected here are the singles that Leer released between his major releases from these two periods, Contradictions and The Scale of Ten. They not only offer a glimpse of his musical development in these, his missing years, but represent some of his most signficant achievements as a solo artist.

"All About You," his last release for Cherry Red, is the real standout, a plaintive synth ballad that is as understated as it is unforgettable. But the three singles from the reactivated Oblique label are no less striking, full of inventive arrangements, strong melodies and exquisite productions. The extended versions are especially notable, forgoing the more obvious tricks of the remix trade in favour of intriguing dub experiments and rhythmic work outs. As a bonus, we are including "Who's Fooling Who," a song released only as a flexi-disc that acccompanied a Dutch music magazine in 1983. Though not as polished as the other songs here, it offers something of a missing link between his Cherry Red and Arista incarnations.

After many years out of the music biz, Leer is back now, and recording again. Check out his web site here.

-- Crash The Driver

"All About You"

01 All About You
02 Saving Grace

UK 12" Cherry Red [12 Cherry 52] 1983

"International"

03 International (Global Mix)
04 Easy Way

UK 12" Arista/Oblique [LEER 121] 1984

"Heart Beat"

05 Heart Beat (Extended Mix)
06 Control Yourself

UK 12" Arista/Oblique [LEER 122] 1985

"No. 1"

07 No. 1 (Extended Version)
08 Trust Me
09 Chasing The Dragon

UK 12" Arista/Oblique [LEER 123] 1985

"Who's Fooling Who"

10 Who's Fooling Who

Netherlands Flexi Vinyl Magazine 1983

The Changing Tableaux of Martha and the Muffins

The great thing about art school is not that it produces great artists. The great thing about art school is that it produces so many wonderful bands. Being in an environment of intense study, exposed to the entire scope of twentieth-century thought, expands the horizons of the participants. Support for quirky works of strong subjectivity, from an institution no less, validates the individual. No longer circumscribed by petit bourgeois concerns, art students then believe they have the freedom to do anything.

And what that often meant, in the heady years of the late seventies, was getting together with a bunch of friends and trying out a few tunes.

So it was at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, now a landmark building of great vivacity, then a dour series of brick barracks. Guitarist David Millar asked his friend Mark Gane, sometimes to be found splicing tape in the college Sound Lab, to start a band. Gane grabbed high-school friend Martha Johnson, then a student at York University in the north of the city. Once in the band Oh! Those Pants, she settled into keyboards and vocals -- because no-one else dared sing. She in turn pulled in her friend Carl Finkle as bassist as Mark's brother Tim Gane filled out the band on drums.

Rehearsals took place in an unheated stable. Named as a joke from a list of equally impossible monikers, they made an anti-punk statement by going for the softest label possible. Their debut was at the college Halloween party... yes, I remember the days when people did stuff like that.

This line-up expanded by two more bodies, likely because the parties were more fun that way. Martha Ladly, another friend from high school, joined on keyboards and additional vocals. And so the name Martha & the Muffins now took on extra resonance. Which Martha? Ah, a political question and a potential time-bomb perhaps.

Andy Haas, saxophonist extraordinaire, completed the line-up. At the time several live bands in the area had permanent sax players, a by-product of the strong Ontario jazz-blues scene. Chicago hipsters would regularly sally on up to Toronto, stopping at London, Guelph or Kitchener-Waterloo on the way. But not many sax-fueled bands made it to record; Andy's exploratory jazz leanings gave the band a distinct sound.

Insect Love 7"
A1 Insect Love [original version] (3:54)
B1 Suburban Dream [original version] (2:56)
7" Canada [MM001] 1978

This extended line-up trimmed somewhat when Millar switched to an off-stage role as sound man. It was this band that recorded and self-released a single with a punky black & white cover. "Insect Love" b/w "Suburban Dream" laid things on the line in 1978. The a-side is quirky and impossible, a deviant fantasy, but a naive and coy one. "I took a chance / on interspecies romance" declares the (male) narrator, though the song is sung by Martha Johnson. It's too silly to be kinky. Martha and the Muffins are, after all, a pretty nice bunch of people.

The b-side is where the action is: a new wave (by way of pub rock) dagger in the heart of all they had escaped from when leaving high school. The scenario is portrayed with razor-sharp lyrics:

Strolling through the plaza in the cool twilight
Sucking on a synthi-shake
Hidden in the ambient florescent night
High school boys are on the make

The topical references to the CN Tower and Hockey Night In Canada demonstrate that the Muffins are one of us, not some faceless band from anywheresville. And then there is the priceless couplet "thinking 'bout evolution puts me in a sweat / the price a city dweller pays". This was the Canadian version of XTC: acerbic lyrics sneered out of pursed lips, odd keyboard runs and pounding energy. Even if recorded fairly poorly this single makes a statement.

Insect Love 7"
A1 Insect Love (4:10)
B1 Cheesies And Gum (3:05)
7" UK Dindisc [DIN 4] 1979.10

A demo made its way to Robert Fripp and this secured them a date at Hurrah's in NYC. Then everything moved at light speed. Their gig in March of 1979 was witnessed by an A&R rep from Virgin, who snapped them up immediately, whisked them off to England and got an album in the can. Engineered by Richard Manwaring and produced by Mike Howlett, this did a reasonable job of capturing the songs, even if the energy of their live performances was muted

The first single was a re-recording of that hexapodous love song. It's available on a Virgin compilation, so we do not include it here. The b-side, "Cheesies And Gum", is a reference so Canadian that no-one in the UK actually knew what it meant when it showed up on the debut album Metro Music. After three songs by Mark Gane, this tune is co-credited to Martha Ladly.

Echo Beach 7"
A1 Echo Beach (3:38)
B1 Teddy the Dink [early version] (3:29)
7" UK Dindisc [DIN 9] 1980.01

And then it happened. "Echo Beach", that perfect snatch of summer longing, was issued in the dead of winter 1980 when everyone was sick of the holidays and the rain and wanted nothing more than to get away from it all. It comes in like a breeze through an open window and kick starts any heart. "Aaaaah, she's a romantic fool -- so am I but nobody knows it yet!"

Covered many times, first by Fripp's wife Toyah Wilcox in an execrable version, this remains the pinnacle of new wave pop. That little catch in the voice when the Martha's sing "clerk". The soaring sax solo. The close harmonies on the chorus. The chiming guitar. Yep, you could base a career on that sound.

Or it could be your albatross, as many one-hits are for the wonders who produce them. A huge hit creates expectations, creates pressures. Record bosses want more, more, more. They're not happy with a single vacation in the sun, they want a churning solar ball of hits all the time. So you go on tour, you go on TV, you go back into the studio. As the label issues single after single in the hopes of topping the charts a second time.

"Teddy the Dink" is not a response to that, but it might have been. Co-written with a certain "B. Harvey", it is literally the underside of that nice beach. It's about a nasty person stuck in a nasty life, but this time with no way out. It reminds me of some of those perfect bedsit dramas Squeeze were so good at writing. Later re-recorded to fill out the second album, this version hits harder and has a more chilling laugh.

Saigon 7"
A1 Saigon [single version] (3:51)
B1 Copacabana (1:22)
7" UK Dindisc [DIN 17] 1980.05

Personally, if I worked for Virgin, I would have tried "Paint By Number Heart" as a single. Instead we have the lovely, "Saigon", another travelogue, hinting at exotic possibilities in foreign lands. The single version has some great horn squawks in the second verse and I prefer it to the less flavoursome mix on the album.

The b-side is not the only double-tracked single I own, but it is the only one where one drop of the needle gets you "Copacabana" and another drop will get you the same song... backwards! Intriguingly, both sides were written by David Millar, the latter with Martha Johnson.

About Insomnia 7"
A1 About Insomnia [single version] (3:09)
B1 1 4 6 (4:45)
7" UK Dindisc [DIN 19] 1980.07

Issued on green vinyl with a lovely cover, "About Insomnia" is a perfect pop tune, with a loping beat and elliptical lyrics. And once again "the chimes of foreign places call for a changing tableau... do you suppose?" This single version has a surprisingly brash sax break which really should have been reigned in. But it acts as a great taster for the second album, Trance and Dance, issued quickly to keep the pressure on the market.

The b-side, "1 4 6" is a jam session, punctuated by odd vocal samples and noises. It could just as readily be found on a Flying Lizards album. But the Muffins were always an art school band. If they wanted to make noise for five minutes then they would make noise for five minutes. It is regrettable that the need to produce "Echo Beach Part Two" saw them increasingly trapped in a certain new wave production formula that was at odds with the more experimental content.

Suburban Dream 7"
A1 Suburban Dream [single version] (2:56)
B1 Girl Fat (4:00)
7" UK Dindisc [DIN 21] 1980.08

This single follows the same formula. The a-side is a compact would-be hit by Mark Gane and the b-side is a more sprawling jam, credited to the entire band, but with bass prominent. Here the need to come up with material quickly led to the re-recording of a song at least two years old. Though this version is the definitive take.

Was Ezo 7"
A1 Was Ezo [single mix] (3:22)
B1 Trance and Dance [edit]
7" UK Dindisc [DIN 27] 1980.10.30

The last single from the band's "English period" is as good as they get. The b-side is Martha Johnson's title track from the album cut down to fit (so we don't include it in our compilation). The a-side is Martha Ladly's tale of Hokkaido -- which once was called Ezo, hence the cryptic title. The version here, with bountiful reverb drenching the vocals, provides the template for Ladly's first solo single.

In 1981, as their second album was being released, the band ran away from increasing pressures and returned to Canada, less Ladly. There was a change of bassists and the group jumped right back into the studio with then-unknown producer Daniel Lanois. The result is one of the most astounding albums ever laid to vinyl, This Is The Ice Age. You should drop everything RIGHT NOW and buy the impeccable re-issue.

In the meantime, relish these eleven tales of changing tableaux.

-- Second Chameleon

Martha and the Muffins: Changing Tableaux
01 Insect Love [original version]
02 Suburban Dream [original version]
03 Teddy The Dink [early version]
04 Saigon [single version]
05 Copacabana [forwards]
06 Copacabana [backwards]
07 About Insomnia [single version]
08 1 4 6
09 Suburban Dream [single version]
10 Girl Fat
11 Was Ezo [single version]

These rarities, uncollected on any official release, have been ripped from our own collection. The copy of "Insect Love" used has a glitch that we've repaired as well as might. If you want to own a slice of history, go on over to the band's official site, where you can still buy this vinyl.

You will also find there details of Martha and the Muffins' brand new album, the first in eighteen years.