Hello this post has gotten a bit of a read, but then there's plenty of music to accompany it with.
Sheffield, had become a dreary place in the seventies, the towns steel mills running down, unemployment high, youths looking for a way out, in short a fertile ground for music.. this is blog is about a bunch of them that 30 years ago were very close and mixed their ideas and equipment and found a way out thru their drive to make music in a different way, electronic music. I've used and condensed an extensive 10 page article at ex-rental.com to tell the story of the Future and the Human League, spinning off Clock DVA and Heaven 17. Cabaret Voltaire were in there too, but slightly ahead, they helped Hula find their way and finally In the Nursery they tagged along initially, but ended up favouring theatrical atmospherics over industrial clatter, culminating in Koda
The story of England's first true electronic pop group begins in the industrial South Yorkshire city of Sheffield, in the early 1970s. Ian Craig Marsh joined the local civic youth theatre group, Meatwhistle. Here, he met Mark Civico, with whom he would form a satirical 'theatre-rock' group named Musical Vomit. Ian got expelled from his school having been branded 'an undesirable subversive element'. At this point, Ian left Musical Vomit and Meatwhistle in search of work, though Mark kept the band going in various forms, recruiting other Meatwhistle friends such as Paul Bowers, Haydn Bowes-Weston, Adolph 'Adi' Newton, Glenn Gregory and newcomer Martyn Ware.
Meanwhile, Ian had found work and was able to afford the do-it-yourself synthesizer kit he'd seen in the local library's copy of Practical Electronics magazine. Having bought and constructed the primitive synthesizer, he struggled to get it to work particularly well, though "it made very good motorbike noises". Soon afterwards, he returned to Meatwhistle, taking his synthesizer with him, and was persuaded to play the instrument with the ever-changing line-up of Musical Vomit. They
seemed to have been the primary musical collective from this Sheffield scene, as in 1976, they were booked to appear at the famous Reading rock festival. Here they were spotted by future X-Ray Spex leader Poly Styrene, who would later claim Musical Vomit were the very first punk band.
By 1977, both Ian and Martyn were working as computer operators. They enabling them to buy the first commercial synthesizers - cheap ones - a Korg 770S, which cost £800 - a lot of money in 1977, but still far less expensive than most other synthesizers. Ian, Martyn and Adi now set about the business of creating pop music using only electronic instruments - a very common practice nowadays, but virtually unheard of in 1977. At that time, only a few artists, such as German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk, were daring to make pop music this way; most purely electronic music was being made by avant-garde artists with little interest in taking the form into the mainstream. Most of 1977's electronic pop would emerge from the disco scene; for instance, Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's ground-breaking classic I Feel Love.
Having no formal musical training, the group opted to use affordable and easily-mastered synthesizers rather than guitars. ." Besides, given their interests and location, the group's sound made perfect sense in many ways. In Sheffield, one was surrounded by strange sounds, with the steel works all the time, in a way by music concrete, the sound of machinery .
Around this time, The Future teamed up with Cabaret Voltaire, 2.3's drummer Haydn Boyes-Weston and Glenn Gregory to support Mancunian punk band The Drones at Psalter Lane art college. Calling themselves VD K & The Studs, they played mainly cover versions, such as Lou Reed's Vicious and Iggy & The Stooges' Cock In My Pocket, plus a number entitled The Drones Want To Come On Now. Haydn, being a butcher at the time, thoughtfully splattered the audience with pigs ears. The performance was recorded, though it has yet to be released in any form.
The Future began recording demos in a semi-professional studio in the house of a local recording engineer, as there were no other affordable studios in the area. Martyn and Ian played their synthesizers, while Adi made use of the tape collection he was steadily amassing. Ian: The group developed a computer system for the production of lyrics - CARLOS (Cyclic And Random Lyric Organisation System). Words and phrases would be fed into the system and assembled at random into sentences by the computer, in the manner of a fruit machine, the experiment was short-lived .
Adi rented some rooms in a disused factory , where all The Future set up a base for their equipment. Adi: "It became a social focus, a location of many wild parties and a drug experimentation zone." Before long, they had recorded eight compositions and decided to contact the major record companies in London. Keen to make an impression, they sent the companies notification of their forthcoming day trip to London, suggesting that interested parties should make appointments to meet with the group on that day. Many companies were presumably intrigued by the fact that this communication was issued as a computer print-out and arranged meetings with The Future, despite not yet having heard any of their music. Well it all turned out rather disastrous and it led to Martyn and Ian deciding that this wasn't really going to work with Adi as a 'singer' . They decided to eject him from The Future by temporarily moving all their equipment out of their Devonshire Lane base and leaving a note on the door for Adi, breaking contact with him until his initial anger subsided.
Adi went on to form Clock DVA, while Martyn and Ian carried on as a duo for a short while, recording instrumentals such as Dancevision. Ian: "And then we thought 'No, we really do need a vocalist'". Ian and Martyn initially considered asking their friend Glenn Gregory to join them as a vocalist, but at that time, Glenn was busy in London with his own band, 57 Men. So instead they invited Martyn's friend Philip Oakey, who was then working as a hospital porter, to join the group. Philip later admitted that "if it wasn't for Ian and Martyn, I'd still be wheeling bodies around a hospital ward... I was completely without ambition..." Martyn: "I used to go to school with Phil, from the age of 16 probably, and he looked like a pop star."
Ian: "We wondered what role he was going to have because he hadn't got any money to buy a synthesizer or anything. He had a saxophone which he couldn't play." But when Philip came up with lyrics for Being Boiled, his future as lead vocalist was secured. And he certainly looked the part...
Determined to produce pop music in a modern and original way, the group then spent two thousand pounds on new hi-tech gear. Although their financial situation forced them to buy most of it under 'hire-purchase' agreements, they were soon the proud owners of a two-track tape recorder and a 100 System Synthesizer (with sequencer module). Asked years later about the group's original choice of instrumentation, Philip remarked, "We really liked what pop music had turned into with David Bowie - suddenly there were new sounds. I lived my life for Bowie and Roxy Music for four or five years ."It's funny that people call us an Eighties group when in fact we were a Seventies group. Our influences were massively progressive. I loved King Crimson, I loved The Nice, but the band we really cared about was Van der Graaf Generator - that music was so committed."
With this new line-up, the group decided to change their name. They chose The Human League, a name taken from a science-fiction board game called Star Force.They then spent time writing and recording material for a demo tape in a disused factory on Devonshire Lane in the centre of Sheffield. The demo tape featured Being Boiled, Circus Of Death and Toyota City, all recorded in mono on their new two-track tape recorder and all later commercially released The group's demos came to the attention of Bob Last through Paul Bowers of Sheffield band 2:3. He ran a small independent record label, Fast Product (then home of the influential Gang Of Four and Mekons, as well as 2:3), in Edinburgh, Scotland and was impressed by the tape. He immediately offered them a recording contract.
Future- Human League - Golden 1st Hour (flac 455 mb)
01 - Dance Like A Star ( 4:21)
02 - Looking For The Black Haired Girls (The Future) ( 3:40)
03 - 4JG ( 4:36)
04 - Blank Clocks (The Future) ( 3:20)
05 - Cairo (The Future) ( 3:08)
06 - Dominion Advertisement ( 0:25)
07 - Dada Dada Duchamp Vortex (The Future)
08 - Daz (The Future) ( 3:40)
09 - Future Religion (The Future) ( 3:44)
10 - Disco Disaster ( 5:06)
11 - Interface ( 2:59)
12 - The Circus Of Dr. Lao ( 3:58)
13 - Reach Out (I'll Be There) ( 3:55)
14 - New Pink Floyd ( 2:14)
15 - Once Upon A Time In The West ( 1:53)
16 - Overkill Disaster Crash (V.1) ( 2:02)
17 - Year Of The Jet Packs ( 5:26)
18 - Pulse Lovers (The Future) ( 4:02)
19 - King Of Kings ( 1:56)
20 - Last Man On Earth ( 9:41)
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Between the recording and the release of Being Boiled, the group began to reconsider their stance on live performance.They had previously decided against playing live, primarily because they felt uncomfortable on stage However, frustrated at their lack of progress at the time, the group were eventually persuaded by friends to play live, assisted by backing tapes. Their first show took place at Bar 2 in Sheffield's Psalter Lane art college (above) on June 12th 1978, in front of a bank of deliberately badly-tuned television sets. The event is now marked by a plaque at the venue. Ian, describing the group's early live shows: "The tape recorder would be placed centre stage, where a drummer would be, deliberately, and all the rhythms and bass would be on there. The show started with us deliberately walking on and turning the tape recorder on, and the stuff would start without us playing anything... which was pretty provocative at the time."
In the audience at the first show was art student Philip Adrian Wright, who lived in the building in which the group rehearsed and worked in an ice cream van around nearby Wakefield.Philip: "We accidentally picked up Adrian" (as he became known) "after about the third show, 'cause we were totally boring on stage. We asked him- why don't you come and project your slides behind us and liven us up?'" Adrian agreed to this and was appointed Director Of Visuals in the group, making his debut at a show at Sheffield's The Limit. His slideshows immediately made a huge difference to the group's live appearances. His slide collection included hundreds of photographs taken from television, such as Star Trek, Batman, Captain Scarlet and Doctor Who, and it would later expand to include many other images from popular culture, including films and other musicians, such as Gary Glitter, Iggy Pop and the Bay City Rollers.
The group's first London show took place at the Music Machine on August 17th 1978, two months after the release of Being Boiled. There they supported The Rezillos, who were managed by Bob Last and whose guitarist, Jo Callis, would join a future incarnation of The Human League in 1981.Following a support slot with Pere Ubu, the group were then asked by Siouxsie & The Banshees to support them on a December tour of Britain, along with new wave band Spizz Oil. The League, although slightly apprehensive, accepted the offer, fearing that the punk element of the Banshees' audience would shower them with spit and beer bottles. Prepared for the worst, they constructed special fibreglass 'riot-shields' to protect themselves on stage, and after the first few shows dropped many of the unpopular instrumental tracks in favour of crowd-pleasing material, such as a cover of Gary Glitter's Rock 'N' Roll. The tour was a great success for the League and brought them many new admirers from the Banshees' audience.
Following the release of The Dignity Of Labour, the group decided they needed stronger backing than the tiny Fast Product label could offer. So, keeping Bob Last on board as their manager, they decided to put together a new demo tape with which to impress the major record companies. A number of record companies were soon offering The Human League recording contracts, and after much talk of a deal with new Polydor imprint Fiction (who had just signed The Cure), the group chose to sign with Virgin Records, who had had a hand in the release of The Dignity Of Labour and whose publishing arm had recently signed the group. They selected this label primarily because Virgin's Simon Draper offered them the level of creative control they desired. After the signing, the group embarked on an eventful European tour with one of their heroes, 'godfather of punk' Iggy Pop, the League enjoyed the tour. On their return to England, Martyn declared, "It's great touring there. Pretty magnificent. It never stopped happening - complete excess from beginning to end."
Back in Sheffield, the group began recording for their new record label. Curiously, the group's first Virgin release was issued under the pseudonym of The Men. The single, I Don't Depend On You, was recorded to appease those at Virgin who feared that the public would not accept a synthesizer-only group. The track featured a live rhythm section and female backing vocalists, and was decidedly more commercial than the group's previous releases.
The release of the group's ground-breaking debut album, Reproduction, in October 1979 was met with a number of unenthusiastic reviews. Although promoted with the subsequent release of the Empire State Human single, taken from the album, sales of Reproduction were substantially lower than Virgin had anticipated. As a result, Virgin decided to cancel all but two dates of the group's proposed UK tour. At the remaining shows, Adrian's short film Zero As A Limit was shown on a 21' by 14' screen and Teardrop Explodes provided support. Virgin instead arranged for the group to support Talking Heads on their November tour of the UK. However, things changed again soon after Bob Last issued this press release to announce the group's plans for the tour: "The Human League, intrigued to experience their own performance themselves, have designed a remotely controlled touring entertainment. Therefore, 30 Human League minutes will be available on the upcoming Talking Heads tour. Someone somewhere was clearly not amused by this concept of live performance and the League were dismissed from the tour shortly before the first show.
Their next challenge was to persuade Virgin to finance the establishment of their own personal recording studio in Sheffield. Virgin were eventually convinced, realising that it would cost less to set up the group with their own studio than it would to hire other studios for future recordings..The League spent the early part of 1980 recording their second album the group's electronic sound was now beginning to grow again in popularity, as interest in the burgeoning New Romantic / Futurist scene developed. This movement had grown out of London's glamorous Blitz club, which spawned a number of the characters who would rise to fame in the early part of the new decade, such as Steve Strange of Visage and Boy George of Culture Club. But The League had little time for these so-called Futurists...
When the group's second album, Travelogue, was released in May that year, it was more warmly received than Reproduction, reaching Number 16 in the UK charts and eventually spending an impressive 42 weeks in the Top 75.The album was generally brighter in tone than its predecessor, and most agreed that Travelogue demonstrated that the group were finally fulfilling their potential. In support of the album, the group undertook what would be their final UK tour . This was followed by dates in mainland Europe, including an Amsterdam show on June 10th, which was broadcast on Dutch radio.
The Human League - Travelogue (80 flac 398mb)
01 - The Black Hit Of Space (4:11)
02 - Only After Dark (3:50)
03 - Life Kills (3:07)
04 - Dreams Of Leaving (5:49)
05 - Toyota City (3:24)
06 - Crow And A Baby (3:43)
07 - The Touchables (3:21)
08 - Gordon's Gin (2:58)
09 - Being Boiled (4:21)
10 - W.X.J.L. Tonight (4:40)
Xs
11 - Marianne (3:18)
12 - Dancevision ( The Future) (2:22)
13 - Rock 'N' Roll / Night Clubbing (6:23)
14 - Tom Baker (dr. Who) (4:01)
15 - Boys And Girls (3:15)
16 - I Don't Depend On You ( The Men) (4:35)
17 - Cruel ( The Men) (4:42)
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Martyn: "We were on thirty quid a week each. Ian: "Our intention was to become the first popular synthesizer band that was doing songs with vocals, as opposed to experimental stuff, and we'd been doing a couple of albums and thought that we'd released things that could do that, and nothing ever quite became a hit. "And then, out of nowhere, Gary Numan came along and stole our glory. He used to be a rock act, really, then he seemed to take on our clothing and suddenly became incredibly successful... and we were, I think, quite miffed about that, because until that point, it had been a laugh, and art and everything. From that point, that's what really broke the morale, looking back on it now... all right, so we were mentioned as being influential and everything, but in reality, we were poor. We weren't earning any money out of what we were doing."
"We must be the only group in the world whose fourth member was a slide projectionist... who then went on to get writing credits! Excuse me? That was the point where I left the group, thank you very much! We were completely 'on a mission'..."
The situation was further complicated by the friction between Martyn and Philip (always a problem, but one which had now become unbearable) and with Philip making attempts to kick Martyn out of The Human League, there was no chance of the group continuing in this format.
At first, Bob suggested that perhaps the way forward was for the group to split into two new bands, neither of them named The Human League, but both of them releasing material on a new imprint of Virgin which would be called Human League Records, thereby preserving the 'brand name' they had established. Bob: "It felt like a pressure cooker, and I felt the smart thing to do was to pre-empt this, and split into two bands. Martyn was losing interest in this very strict set of rules about absolutely no organic authentic instrumentation, whereas Phil was very keen on sustaining those rules, and that was a kind of battleground." While it was clear that Philip and Adrian no longer wished to work with Martyn, Ian remained keen to continue working with both Martyn and with Philip and Adrian.
In November 1980, Martyn and Ian announced the formation of their British Electric Foundation production company, which would be "a cross between what PiL (Public Image Limited) should have been before they became just another group, and the business suss of Chic." This left Philip and Adrian to deal with the group's forthcoming European tour, which was due to begin about two weeks later. Philip and Adrian agreed with Martyn and Ian that they would continue to use the Human League name, on the condition that Martyn and Ian would receive 1% of the League's future royalties, though the group's financial debt to Virgin would remain the responsibility of the new League line-up.
The two began seeking new members for the impending live shows. Philip famously recruited two teenage girls (Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall) his girlfriend spotted dancing at Sheffield's Crazy Daisy disco. Even Bob had some concerns about the new format of the group, but staunchly defended Philip's decision in the face of negative reaction from Virgin Records. Bob: "I understood that Phil had very interesting instincts which should be backed, but the fights I had with Virgin! They loved the idea of where Phil wanted to take The Human League, but they were completely baffled by the girls and why they were suddenly presented as a core part of it. But Phil's instincts were right there. The girls' role was to bring a kind of accessibility to this quite difficult and cold perception people had of the band."
The two groups now found themselves in the slightly strange position of having to share the studio they jointly owned, taking turns to use the equipment to record demos for their next albums. During this time, much bitching took place in the music press, mainly from the B.E.F. corner...The bickering eventually subsided and Bob Last continued to manage the new incarnation of The Human League, even though he was now a director and shareholder in the B.E.F. (many people, including the group themselves, suspected him of having engineered the split anyway!).
The new-look Human League went on to huge worldwide success with the single Don't You Want Me and the third Human League album, Dare!, which sold five million copies and is hailed by many as one of the definitive pop albums of the 1980s. The group (now essentially just Philip, Susanne and Joanne, plus collaborators) have also scored hits with most subsequent albums and singles. Adrian eventually left the League after the making of 1986's Crash album, during which he found that producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had no need for his keyboard contributions, having drafted in session musicians. Adrian returned to film-making and has worked as a director in the fields of both film and music video.
Both The Human League and Heaven 17 continue to record occasionally, and attract large audiences whenever they tour. The League's impact continues to be felt today. Ultimately, the original Human League line-up achieved their ambition after splitting - mainstream success came when the re-issued Being Boiled single entered the UK Top 10 in 1982... a song both The League and Heaven 17 now play at their live shows.
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In November 1980, Martyn and Ian announced the formation of their British Electric Foundation production company. They signed a production deal with Virgin, under which they would steadily accumulate a roster of 'commercial' acts, one per year, delivering an album by each act every year, along with up to twelve 'arty' albums of their own each year. Initially, they formed a new group (or 'business subsidiary', as they called it) named Heaven 17 after a fictional band from Stanley Kubrick's cinematic adaption of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange.
Their old friend Glenn Gregory from the Meatwhistle days joined them to handle lead vocals and Martyn and Ian began seeking a full band to back Glenn in live performance (they had no plans to be full-time members of Heaven 17 at this point).As Martyn explained, "Heaven 17 is a 100% serious attempt to be incredibly popular, whereas B.E.F. is no less serious but tends to be involved with more experimental projects."
By March 1981, the first Heaven 17 single [We Don't Need This] Fascist Groove Thang was in the shops (though not on the radio very often - the BBC banned it for its anti-Reagan lyrics), along with an instrumental B.E.F cassette entitled Music For Stowaways...Chart success came slightly later for Heaven 17; after disappointing sales of their debut album, Penthouse And Pavement (side two of which Martyn has described as "like a continuation of Travelogue"), they scored three Top 20 singles in 1983 (including the Number Two hit, Temptation) from their best-selling album, The Luxury Gap.
The B.E.F. have also had success, both as a recording act (with many famous guest vocalists) and also as producers (after a low-key debut with dance troupe Hot Gossip's Geisha Boys & Temple Girls album, which included new versions of early League songs). Martyn has produced many artists, such as Erasure, Tina Turner, Marc Almond and Terence Trent D'Arby, as well as two singles for his favourite soccer team, Sheffield Wednesday. Ian has also worked on other projects, programming Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy and Scritti Politti's version of The Beatles' She's A Woman.
Heaven 17 disbanded in 1988, following the commercial failure of their last studio album "Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho". They reformed briefly in 1996 and released the album "Bigger Than America", since then there have been several remix and live albums released
Heaven 17 - Endless (81 flac 396mb)
01 - We Live So Fast (6:07)
02 - Penthouse & Pavement (6:33)
03 - Let Me Go (6:47)
04 - Temptation (4:39)
05 - Who'll Stop The Rain (6:06)
06 - (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang (4:15)
07 - Let's All Make A Bomb (New Version) (5:09)
08 - Counterforce (2:59)
09 - Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry (5:56)
10 - And That's No Lie (5:59)
11 - Sunset Now (5:16)
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Clock DVA - Thirst ( 81 flac 287mb)
In June of 1977, Adi Newton, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, formed a group called The Dead Daughters, their next incarnation was the Studs. The group which consisted of Adi Newton, Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh (The Future), Glen Gregory (Heaven 17), Richard H Kirk, Stephen Mallinder, Chris Watson (Cabaret Voltaire), and Hayden
Boyes eston (2.3). For a short period prior to forming Clock DVA, Adi Newton was one of the three members of the Future who later went on to form The Human League / Heaven 17. Adi Newton teamed up with his friend Stephen "Judd" James Turner and formed ClockDVA and recruited two additional members David James Hammond for guitar and Simon Mark Elliot Kemp for electronics. In 1980 Paul Browse joined Clock DVA and remained a constant member until relocating to Berlin in 1989 where he began his Effective Force project for MFS.
The group was originally known for making a form of experimental electronic music involving treated tape loops and synthesisers. Clock DVA became associated with industrial music with the 1980 release of cassette album White Souls in Black Suits on Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records. The album Thirst, released on Fetish Records, followed in 1981, reaching the top of the NME Indie Charts, by which time the band had combined musique concrète techniques with standard rock instrumentation. In 1983, Newton formed a new version of the band. First releasing the single "High Holy Disco Mass" on the major label Polydor Records under the name DVA, the band then released the album Advantage (with several singles) under the name Clock DVA. After a European tour, however, the band split acrimoniously.
After the 1983 breakup of Clock DVA, Adi Newton formed The Anti-Group or T.A.G.C. They released several albums continuing in a similar vein to the early Clock DVA, yet more experimental. In 1987, the Clock DVA reformed with a lineup of Adi Newton, Dean Dennis and Paul Browse and moved in a different direction with the single "The Hacker" and the album Buried Dreams, a heavily electronic industrial music and EBM influenced album that became their defining sound for years to come. As of 2007, Clock DVA have not released an album since 1993's Sign..
01 - Uncertain (7:04)
02 - Sensorium (2:38)
03 - White Cell (4:38)
04 - Piano Pain (3:15)
05 - Blue Tone (5:57)
06 - North Loop (4:50)
07 - 4 Hours (4:00)
08 - Moments (6:25)
09 - Impressions Of African Winter (5:26)
10 - 4 Hours (Original Single Mix) (3:54)
11 - Sensorium (Original Single Mix) (2:39)
Clock DVA @ Base
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Cabaret Voltaire - Drinking Gasoline (85 fully flac 363mb)
"Initially a three piece, Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson began by playing around with recorded sounds manipulated by basic reel-to-reel recorders in Sheffield in 1973. "Way ahead of their time, these ideas culminated in 1975, when the three staged their first performance of these sound experiments and assumed the name Cabaret Voltaire, taken from the name of the club started in Zurich by the principals of the Dada art movement during the First World War. As part of the confrontational energy of punk, the early titles of the records didn't mince words - 'Baader Meinhof' and 'Do the Mussolini (Headkick)' were indicators that were bound to lead to a certain notoriety. To the press they appeared to be immersed in a world of paranoia fed by conspiracy theories, political control and the use of drugs to both free and inhibit the individual.
"The band began working with Rough Trade in 1978, producing the now seminal triumvirate of albums, 'Mix Up' (1979), 'Voice of America' (1980) and their most prophetic album 'Red Mecca' (1981), an album released to an excellent response from the music press. All these recordings were assembled in the seclusion of the band's own studio in Sheffield called Western Works. "Chris Watson left the group in October 1981 on the eve of an international tour to pursue a career in television sound recording. This departure left Kirk and Mallinder free to commit to a long-term struggle with the 'pop music' industry under the protection of Stevo's Some Bizarre label, via a Virgin Records distribution deal. By December 1982 they were in the midst of recording the 'Crackdown' album in Trident Studios, London with the producer Flood.
Cabaret Voltaire were always strongly rooted in the Dada-ist tradition and nowhere was this more evident than in their rare but much anticipated live performances, with their innovative use of film and video documented in the three live albums, 'Live at the YMCA' (1979), 'Live at the Lyceum' (1981) and 'Hai' live in Japan (1982), and the 90 minute video 'Doublevision Presents...'
At the dawn of a new decade, Cabaret Voltaire, now Stephan Mallinder and Richard H. Kirk (Chris Watson left to take a more scientific curve with experimental/noise group 'The Hafler Trio'), started to ease from techno/bleep into trance/ambient. The results were quite startling and Cabaret Voltaire finally regained the attention they deserved. At the height of the trance/ambient wave, Cabaret Voltaire parted ways. While Mallinder went off to Australia to study, Kirk continues on with solo projects (Richard Kirk, Sandoz, etc
Crackdown Bonus EP 83
01 - Diskono (5:44)
02 - Doublevision (4:09)
03 - Moscow (5:24)
04 - Badge Of Evil (4:51)
05 - The Dream Ticket (7:48)
Drinking Gasoline (85)
06 - Kino (8:34)
07 - Sleepwalking (8:26)
08 - Big Funk (8:14)
09 - Ghostalk (7:57)
Kirk @ Base
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Hula - Cut From Inside ( 83* 72mb)
The Sheffield based band Hula was founded in 1981. Three members (Mark Albrow, Alan Fish and Ron Wright) lived with Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire) and Paul Widger (They must be Russians, Clock DVA, the Box) in a villa called Hula Kula. After trying the bass players Alan Watt, the notorious Chris Brain (Tense, NOS) and Mark Brydon (Chakk, Moloko), and after the replacement of Alan Fish by Nort (both drummed for the Cabs), Hula recorded the impressive album Murmur. Ingredients like cut ups, steady rhythms, and paranoia vocals were blended together into a unique white funky sound. Hula recruited John Avery as a bass player. A bass player was necessary for the exciting live shows with lots of video material (Peter Care). Hula continued to bring out danceable 12 inches and more experimental albums. With this line-up Hula was more or less successful. International tours were made. Radio sessions for VPRO and John Peel were recorded and broadcasted. Being a support act for Depeche Mode implied performing live in Wembley Arena for huge crowds.
After Nort left the band in 1986 the music changed, but still remained interesting. Later on Mark Albrow quit as well. When their record company Red Rhino went bankrupt they moved on to Wax Trax. They released the last Hula record: a Jimmy Hendrix cover of Voodoo Chile. The 12 inch did not sort out the desired effect. Eventually Hula broke up.
01 - Flesh Metal (4:01)
02 - Mother Courage (5:17)
03 - Church Juice (2:18)
04 - Murder In The Clean States (4:16)
05 - Release The Grip (4:10)
06 - Dirt Talk (3:19)
07 - Stretch The Attitude (3:21)
08 - Subliminal (4:07)
Xs - Black Pop Workout (Ft. Stephen Mallinder) ( 82)
09 - Feeding The Animal (3:22)
10 - Ignoring The Famine (3:18)
11 - Sacred Serials (Circuits On Full Gush) (5:32)
12 - Junshi (4:11)
Hula @ Base
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In The Nursery - Koda (88 * 254mb)
Twin brothers Klive and Nigel Humberstone and guitar player Anthony Bennett formed this Sheffield, England-based band in 1981. The trio originally tagged along with the UK's industrial music scene, releasing the six-track When Cherished Dreams Come True in June 1983. The "Witness (To A Scream)" single and Sonority EP followed before the band moved to the Sweatbox label for the fearsome Temper EP. The full-length Twins was recorded without the departed Bennett, the subsequent Stormhorse, the soundtrack to an imaginary film that provided the cinematic blueprint for all their future recordings. The quartet's final recording for Sweatbox, 1988's Köda, completed the transition to a classical instrumental sound and utilised computer sequencing in the recording process for the first time.
Following the collapse of Sweatbox the band moved to Third Mind Records to complete the delicate L'Esprit. The album was recorded with engineer Steve Harris who had contributed to Köda and would feature on all the band's subsequent releases. Sense and Duality were followed by a logical progression to real soundtrack work on 1993's psychological drama An Ambush Of Ghosts. In the late 90s the band was commissioned, as part of the Optical Music Series, to provide new scores for the silent classics The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Asphalt, and Man with a Movie Camera. Anatomy Of A Poet, a concept album about the creative psyche, featured author Colin Wilson reciting romantic poetry A retrospective compilation of their work was the first release on their own ITN Corporation label. Further concept albums have included Deco and the ambitious Lingua, an exploration of language featuring vocal contributions from around the world.
01 - Rites ( 3:38)
02 - Maidens ( 0:58)
03 - Te Deum ( 3:08)
04 - Triumph ( 1:14)
05 - Burnished Days ( 2:22)
06 - Ascent ( 7:06)
07 - Scherzo ( 6:18)
08 - Guarded Rites ( 2:51)
09 - Suspire ( 1:55)
10 - Kotow ( 2:09)
11 - The Seventeenth Parallel ( 5:01)
Bonus From "The Compulsion" 12"
12 - Compulsion 4:03
13 - Libertaire 4:45
In The Nursery @ Base
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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !
Sheffield, had become a dreary place in the seventies, the towns steel mills running down, unemployment high, youths looking for a way out, in short a fertile ground for music.. this is blog is about a bunch of them that 30 years ago were very close and mixed their ideas and equipment and found a way out thru their drive to make music in a different way, electronic music. I've used and condensed an extensive 10 page article at ex-rental.com to tell the story of the Future and the Human League, spinning off Clock DVA and Heaven 17. Cabaret Voltaire were in there too, but slightly ahead, they helped Hula find their way and finally In the Nursery they tagged along initially, but ended up favouring theatrical atmospherics over industrial clatter, culminating in Koda
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The Future and; The Human League - The Golden Hour Of The Future
Human League - Travelogue
Heaven 17 - Endless
Clock DVA - Thirst
Cabaret Voltaire - Drinking Gasoline, Crackdown EP
Hula - Cut From Inside
In The Nursery - Koda
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The Golden Hour Of The Future
The Future and; The Human League - The Golden Hour Of The Future
Human League - Travelogue
Heaven 17 - Endless
Clock DVA - Thirst
Cabaret Voltaire - Drinking Gasoline, Crackdown EP
Hula - Cut From Inside
In The Nursery - Koda
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The Golden Hour Of The Future
The story of England's first true electronic pop group begins in the industrial South Yorkshire city of Sheffield, in the early 1970s. Ian Craig Marsh joined the local civic youth theatre group, Meatwhistle. Here, he met Mark Civico, with whom he would form a satirical 'theatre-rock' group named Musical Vomit. Ian got expelled from his school having been branded 'an undesirable subversive element'. At this point, Ian left Musical Vomit and Meatwhistle in search of work, though Mark kept the band going in various forms, recruiting other Meatwhistle friends such as Paul Bowers, Haydn Bowes-Weston, Adolph 'Adi' Newton, Glenn Gregory and newcomer Martyn Ware.
Meanwhile, Ian had found work and was able to afford the do-it-yourself synthesizer kit he'd seen in the local library's copy of Practical Electronics magazine. Having bought and constructed the primitive synthesizer, he struggled to get it to work particularly well, though "it made very good motorbike noises". Soon afterwards, he returned to Meatwhistle, taking his synthesizer with him, and was persuaded to play the instrument with the ever-changing line-up of Musical Vomit. They
seemed to have been the primary musical collective from this Sheffield scene, as in 1976, they were booked to appear at the famous Reading rock festival. Here they were spotted by future X-Ray Spex leader Poly Styrene, who would later claim Musical Vomit were the very first punk band.
By 1977, both Ian and Martyn were working as computer operators. They enabling them to buy the first commercial synthesizers - cheap ones - a Korg 770S, which cost £800 - a lot of money in 1977, but still far less expensive than most other synthesizers. Ian, Martyn and Adi now set about the business of creating pop music using only electronic instruments - a very common practice nowadays, but virtually unheard of in 1977. At that time, only a few artists, such as German electronic pioneers Kraftwerk, were daring to make pop music this way; most purely electronic music was being made by avant-garde artists with little interest in taking the form into the mainstream. Most of 1977's electronic pop would emerge from the disco scene; for instance, Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder's ground-breaking classic I Feel Love.
Having no formal musical training, the group opted to use affordable and easily-mastered synthesizers rather than guitars. ." Besides, given their interests and location, the group's sound made perfect sense in many ways. In Sheffield, one was surrounded by strange sounds, with the steel works all the time, in a way by music concrete, the sound of machinery .
Around this time, The Future teamed up with Cabaret Voltaire, 2.3's drummer Haydn Boyes-Weston and Glenn Gregory to support Mancunian punk band The Drones at Psalter Lane art college. Calling themselves VD K & The Studs, they played mainly cover versions, such as Lou Reed's Vicious and Iggy & The Stooges' Cock In My Pocket, plus a number entitled The Drones Want To Come On Now. Haydn, being a butcher at the time, thoughtfully splattered the audience with pigs ears. The performance was recorded, though it has yet to be released in any form.
The Future began recording demos in a semi-professional studio in the house of a local recording engineer, as there were no other affordable studios in the area. Martyn and Ian played their synthesizers, while Adi made use of the tape collection he was steadily amassing. Ian: The group developed a computer system for the production of lyrics - CARLOS (Cyclic And Random Lyric Organisation System). Words and phrases would be fed into the system and assembled at random into sentences by the computer, in the manner of a fruit machine, the experiment was short-lived .
Adi rented some rooms in a disused factory , where all The Future set up a base for their equipment. Adi: "It became a social focus, a location of many wild parties and a drug experimentation zone." Before long, they had recorded eight compositions and decided to contact the major record companies in London. Keen to make an impression, they sent the companies notification of their forthcoming day trip to London, suggesting that interested parties should make appointments to meet with the group on that day. Many companies were presumably intrigued by the fact that this communication was issued as a computer print-out and arranged meetings with The Future, despite not yet having heard any of their music. Well it all turned out rather disastrous and it led to Martyn and Ian deciding that this wasn't really going to work with Adi as a 'singer' . They decided to eject him from The Future by temporarily moving all their equipment out of their Devonshire Lane base and leaving a note on the door for Adi, breaking contact with him until his initial anger subsided.
Adi went on to form Clock DVA, while Martyn and Ian carried on as a duo for a short while, recording instrumentals such as Dancevision. Ian: "And then we thought 'No, we really do need a vocalist'". Ian and Martyn initially considered asking their friend Glenn Gregory to join them as a vocalist, but at that time, Glenn was busy in London with his own band, 57 Men. So instead they invited Martyn's friend Philip Oakey, who was then working as a hospital porter, to join the group. Philip later admitted that "if it wasn't for Ian and Martyn, I'd still be wheeling bodies around a hospital ward... I was completely without ambition..." Martyn: "I used to go to school with Phil, from the age of 16 probably, and he looked like a pop star."
Ian: "We wondered what role he was going to have because he hadn't got any money to buy a synthesizer or anything. He had a saxophone which he couldn't play." But when Philip came up with lyrics for Being Boiled, his future as lead vocalist was secured. And he certainly looked the part...
Determined to produce pop music in a modern and original way, the group then spent two thousand pounds on new hi-tech gear. Although their financial situation forced them to buy most of it under 'hire-purchase' agreements, they were soon the proud owners of a two-track tape recorder and a 100 System Synthesizer (with sequencer module). Asked years later about the group's original choice of instrumentation, Philip remarked, "We really liked what pop music had turned into with David Bowie - suddenly there were new sounds. I lived my life for Bowie and Roxy Music for four or five years ."It's funny that people call us an Eighties group when in fact we were a Seventies group. Our influences were massively progressive. I loved King Crimson, I loved The Nice, but the band we really cared about was Van der Graaf Generator - that music was so committed."
With this new line-up, the group decided to change their name. They chose The Human League, a name taken from a science-fiction board game called Star Force.They then spent time writing and recording material for a demo tape in a disused factory on Devonshire Lane in the centre of Sheffield. The demo tape featured Being Boiled, Circus Of Death and Toyota City, all recorded in mono on their new two-track tape recorder and all later commercially released The group's demos came to the attention of Bob Last through Paul Bowers of Sheffield band 2:3. He ran a small independent record label, Fast Product (then home of the influential Gang Of Four and Mekons, as well as 2:3), in Edinburgh, Scotland and was impressed by the tape. He immediately offered them a recording contract.
Future- Human League - Golden 1st Hour (flac 455 mb)
01 - Dance Like A Star ( 4:21)
02 - Looking For The Black Haired Girls (The Future) ( 3:40)
03 - 4JG ( 4:36)
04 - Blank Clocks (The Future) ( 3:20)
05 - Cairo (The Future) ( 3:08)
06 - Dominion Advertisement ( 0:25)
07 - Dada Dada Duchamp Vortex (The Future)
08 - Daz (The Future) ( 3:40)
09 - Future Religion (The Future) ( 3:44)
10 - Disco Disaster ( 5:06)
11 - Interface ( 2:59)
12 - The Circus Of Dr. Lao ( 3:58)
13 - Reach Out (I'll Be There) ( 3:55)
14 - New Pink Floyd ( 2:14)
15 - Once Upon A Time In The West ( 1:53)
16 - Overkill Disaster Crash (V.1) ( 2:02)
17 - Year Of The Jet Packs ( 5:26)
18 - Pulse Lovers (The Future) ( 4:02)
19 - King Of Kings ( 1:56)
20 - Last Man On Earth ( 9:41)
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Between the recording and the release of Being Boiled, the group began to reconsider their stance on live performance.They had previously decided against playing live, primarily because they felt uncomfortable on stage However, frustrated at their lack of progress at the time, the group were eventually persuaded by friends to play live, assisted by backing tapes. Their first show took place at Bar 2 in Sheffield's Psalter Lane art college (above) on June 12th 1978, in front of a bank of deliberately badly-tuned television sets. The event is now marked by a plaque at the venue. Ian, describing the group's early live shows: "The tape recorder would be placed centre stage, where a drummer would be, deliberately, and all the rhythms and bass would be on there. The show started with us deliberately walking on and turning the tape recorder on, and the stuff would start without us playing anything... which was pretty provocative at the time."
In the audience at the first show was art student Philip Adrian Wright, who lived in the building in which the group rehearsed and worked in an ice cream van around nearby Wakefield.Philip: "We accidentally picked up Adrian" (as he became known) "after about the third show, 'cause we were totally boring on stage. We asked him- why don't you come and project your slides behind us and liven us up?'" Adrian agreed to this and was appointed Director Of Visuals in the group, making his debut at a show at Sheffield's The Limit. His slideshows immediately made a huge difference to the group's live appearances. His slide collection included hundreds of photographs taken from television, such as Star Trek, Batman, Captain Scarlet and Doctor Who, and it would later expand to include many other images from popular culture, including films and other musicians, such as Gary Glitter, Iggy Pop and the Bay City Rollers.
The group's first London show took place at the Music Machine on August 17th 1978, two months after the release of Being Boiled. There they supported The Rezillos, who were managed by Bob Last and whose guitarist, Jo Callis, would join a future incarnation of The Human League in 1981.Following a support slot with Pere Ubu, the group were then asked by Siouxsie & The Banshees to support them on a December tour of Britain, along with new wave band Spizz Oil. The League, although slightly apprehensive, accepted the offer, fearing that the punk element of the Banshees' audience would shower them with spit and beer bottles. Prepared for the worst, they constructed special fibreglass 'riot-shields' to protect themselves on stage, and after the first few shows dropped many of the unpopular instrumental tracks in favour of crowd-pleasing material, such as a cover of Gary Glitter's Rock 'N' Roll. The tour was a great success for the League and brought them many new admirers from the Banshees' audience.
Following the release of The Dignity Of Labour, the group decided they needed stronger backing than the tiny Fast Product label could offer. So, keeping Bob Last on board as their manager, they decided to put together a new demo tape with which to impress the major record companies. A number of record companies were soon offering The Human League recording contracts, and after much talk of a deal with new Polydor imprint Fiction (who had just signed The Cure), the group chose to sign with Virgin Records, who had had a hand in the release of The Dignity Of Labour and whose publishing arm had recently signed the group. They selected this label primarily because Virgin's Simon Draper offered them the level of creative control they desired. After the signing, the group embarked on an eventful European tour with one of their heroes, 'godfather of punk' Iggy Pop, the League enjoyed the tour. On their return to England, Martyn declared, "It's great touring there. Pretty magnificent. It never stopped happening - complete excess from beginning to end."
Back in Sheffield, the group began recording for their new record label. Curiously, the group's first Virgin release was issued under the pseudonym of The Men. The single, I Don't Depend On You, was recorded to appease those at Virgin who feared that the public would not accept a synthesizer-only group. The track featured a live rhythm section and female backing vocalists, and was decidedly more commercial than the group's previous releases.
The release of the group's ground-breaking debut album, Reproduction, in October 1979 was met with a number of unenthusiastic reviews. Although promoted with the subsequent release of the Empire State Human single, taken from the album, sales of Reproduction were substantially lower than Virgin had anticipated. As a result, Virgin decided to cancel all but two dates of the group's proposed UK tour. At the remaining shows, Adrian's short film Zero As A Limit was shown on a 21' by 14' screen and Teardrop Explodes provided support. Virgin instead arranged for the group to support Talking Heads on their November tour of the UK. However, things changed again soon after Bob Last issued this press release to announce the group's plans for the tour: "The Human League, intrigued to experience their own performance themselves, have designed a remotely controlled touring entertainment. Therefore, 30 Human League minutes will be available on the upcoming Talking Heads tour. Someone somewhere was clearly not amused by this concept of live performance and the League were dismissed from the tour shortly before the first show.
Their next challenge was to persuade Virgin to finance the establishment of their own personal recording studio in Sheffield. Virgin were eventually convinced, realising that it would cost less to set up the group with their own studio than it would to hire other studios for future recordings..The League spent the early part of 1980 recording their second album the group's electronic sound was now beginning to grow again in popularity, as interest in the burgeoning New Romantic / Futurist scene developed. This movement had grown out of London's glamorous Blitz club, which spawned a number of the characters who would rise to fame in the early part of the new decade, such as Steve Strange of Visage and Boy George of Culture Club. But The League had little time for these so-called Futurists...
When the group's second album, Travelogue, was released in May that year, it was more warmly received than Reproduction, reaching Number 16 in the UK charts and eventually spending an impressive 42 weeks in the Top 75.The album was generally brighter in tone than its predecessor, and most agreed that Travelogue demonstrated that the group were finally fulfilling their potential. In support of the album, the group undertook what would be their final UK tour . This was followed by dates in mainland Europe, including an Amsterdam show on June 10th, which was broadcast on Dutch radio.
The Human League - Travelogue (80 flac 398mb)
01 - The Black Hit Of Space (4:11)
02 - Only After Dark (3:50)
03 - Life Kills (3:07)
04 - Dreams Of Leaving (5:49)
05 - Toyota City (3:24)
06 - Crow And A Baby (3:43)
07 - The Touchables (3:21)
08 - Gordon's Gin (2:58)
09 - Being Boiled (4:21)
10 - W.X.J.L. Tonight (4:40)
Xs
11 - Marianne (3:18)
12 - Dancevision ( The Future) (2:22)
13 - Rock 'N' Roll / Night Clubbing (6:23)
14 - Tom Baker (dr. Who) (4:01)
15 - Boys And Girls (3:15)
16 - I Don't Depend On You ( The Men) (4:35)
17 - Cruel ( The Men) (4:42)
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Martyn: "We were on thirty quid a week each. Ian: "Our intention was to become the first popular synthesizer band that was doing songs with vocals, as opposed to experimental stuff, and we'd been doing a couple of albums and thought that we'd released things that could do that, and nothing ever quite became a hit. "And then, out of nowhere, Gary Numan came along and stole our glory. He used to be a rock act, really, then he seemed to take on our clothing and suddenly became incredibly successful... and we were, I think, quite miffed about that, because until that point, it had been a laugh, and art and everything. From that point, that's what really broke the morale, looking back on it now... all right, so we were mentioned as being influential and everything, but in reality, we were poor. We weren't earning any money out of what we were doing."
"We must be the only group in the world whose fourth member was a slide projectionist... who then went on to get writing credits! Excuse me? That was the point where I left the group, thank you very much! We were completely 'on a mission'..."
The situation was further complicated by the friction between Martyn and Philip (always a problem, but one which had now become unbearable) and with Philip making attempts to kick Martyn out of The Human League, there was no chance of the group continuing in this format.
At first, Bob suggested that perhaps the way forward was for the group to split into two new bands, neither of them named The Human League, but both of them releasing material on a new imprint of Virgin which would be called Human League Records, thereby preserving the 'brand name' they had established. Bob: "It felt like a pressure cooker, and I felt the smart thing to do was to pre-empt this, and split into two bands. Martyn was losing interest in this very strict set of rules about absolutely no organic authentic instrumentation, whereas Phil was very keen on sustaining those rules, and that was a kind of battleground." While it was clear that Philip and Adrian no longer wished to work with Martyn, Ian remained keen to continue working with both Martyn and with Philip and Adrian.
In November 1980, Martyn and Ian announced the formation of their British Electric Foundation production company, which would be "a cross between what PiL (Public Image Limited) should have been before they became just another group, and the business suss of Chic." This left Philip and Adrian to deal with the group's forthcoming European tour, which was due to begin about two weeks later. Philip and Adrian agreed with Martyn and Ian that they would continue to use the Human League name, on the condition that Martyn and Ian would receive 1% of the League's future royalties, though the group's financial debt to Virgin would remain the responsibility of the new League line-up.
The two began seeking new members for the impending live shows. Philip famously recruited two teenage girls (Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall) his girlfriend spotted dancing at Sheffield's Crazy Daisy disco. Even Bob had some concerns about the new format of the group, but staunchly defended Philip's decision in the face of negative reaction from Virgin Records. Bob: "I understood that Phil had very interesting instincts which should be backed, but the fights I had with Virgin! They loved the idea of where Phil wanted to take The Human League, but they were completely baffled by the girls and why they were suddenly presented as a core part of it. But Phil's instincts were right there. The girls' role was to bring a kind of accessibility to this quite difficult and cold perception people had of the band."
The two groups now found themselves in the slightly strange position of having to share the studio they jointly owned, taking turns to use the equipment to record demos for their next albums. During this time, much bitching took place in the music press, mainly from the B.E.F. corner...The bickering eventually subsided and Bob Last continued to manage the new incarnation of The Human League, even though he was now a director and shareholder in the B.E.F. (many people, including the group themselves, suspected him of having engineered the split anyway!).
The new-look Human League went on to huge worldwide success with the single Don't You Want Me and the third Human League album, Dare!, which sold five million copies and is hailed by many as one of the definitive pop albums of the 1980s. The group (now essentially just Philip, Susanne and Joanne, plus collaborators) have also scored hits with most subsequent albums and singles. Adrian eventually left the League after the making of 1986's Crash album, during which he found that producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had no need for his keyboard contributions, having drafted in session musicians. Adrian returned to film-making and has worked as a director in the fields of both film and music video.
Both The Human League and Heaven 17 continue to record occasionally, and attract large audiences whenever they tour. The League's impact continues to be felt today. Ultimately, the original Human League line-up achieved their ambition after splitting - mainstream success came when the re-issued Being Boiled single entered the UK Top 10 in 1982... a song both The League and Heaven 17 now play at their live shows.
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In November 1980, Martyn and Ian announced the formation of their British Electric Foundation production company. They signed a production deal with Virgin, under which they would steadily accumulate a roster of 'commercial' acts, one per year, delivering an album by each act every year, along with up to twelve 'arty' albums of their own each year. Initially, they formed a new group (or 'business subsidiary', as they called it) named Heaven 17 after a fictional band from Stanley Kubrick's cinematic adaption of Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange.
Their old friend Glenn Gregory from the Meatwhistle days joined them to handle lead vocals and Martyn and Ian began seeking a full band to back Glenn in live performance (they had no plans to be full-time members of Heaven 17 at this point).As Martyn explained, "Heaven 17 is a 100% serious attempt to be incredibly popular, whereas B.E.F. is no less serious but tends to be involved with more experimental projects."
By March 1981, the first Heaven 17 single [We Don't Need This] Fascist Groove Thang was in the shops (though not on the radio very often - the BBC banned it for its anti-Reagan lyrics), along with an instrumental B.E.F cassette entitled Music For Stowaways...Chart success came slightly later for Heaven 17; after disappointing sales of their debut album, Penthouse And Pavement (side two of which Martyn has described as "like a continuation of Travelogue"), they scored three Top 20 singles in 1983 (including the Number Two hit, Temptation) from their best-selling album, The Luxury Gap.
The B.E.F. have also had success, both as a recording act (with many famous guest vocalists) and also as producers (after a low-key debut with dance troupe Hot Gossip's Geisha Boys & Temple Girls album, which included new versions of early League songs). Martyn has produced many artists, such as Erasure, Tina Turner, Marc Almond and Terence Trent D'Arby, as well as two singles for his favourite soccer team, Sheffield Wednesday. Ian has also worked on other projects, programming Right Said Fred's I'm Too Sexy and Scritti Politti's version of The Beatles' She's A Woman.
Heaven 17 disbanded in 1988, following the commercial failure of their last studio album "Teddy Bear, Duke & Psycho". They reformed briefly in 1996 and released the album "Bigger Than America", since then there have been several remix and live albums released
Heaven 17 - Endless (81 flac 396mb)
01 - We Live So Fast (6:07)
02 - Penthouse & Pavement (6:33)
03 - Let Me Go (6:47)
04 - Temptation (4:39)
05 - Who'll Stop The Rain (6:06)
06 - (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang (4:15)
07 - Let's All Make A Bomb (New Version) (5:09)
08 - Counterforce (2:59)
09 - Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry (5:56)
10 - And That's No Lie (5:59)
11 - Sunset Now (5:16)
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Clock DVA - Thirst ( 81 flac 287mb)
In June of 1977, Adi Newton, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, formed a group called The Dead Daughters, their next incarnation was the Studs. The group which consisted of Adi Newton, Martyn Ware, Ian Craig Marsh (The Future), Glen Gregory (Heaven 17), Richard H Kirk, Stephen Mallinder, Chris Watson (Cabaret Voltaire), and Hayden
Boyes eston (2.3). For a short period prior to forming Clock DVA, Adi Newton was one of the three members of the Future who later went on to form The Human League / Heaven 17. Adi Newton teamed up with his friend Stephen "Judd" James Turner and formed ClockDVA and recruited two additional members David James Hammond for guitar and Simon Mark Elliot Kemp for electronics. In 1980 Paul Browse joined Clock DVA and remained a constant member until relocating to Berlin in 1989 where he began his Effective Force project for MFS.
The group was originally known for making a form of experimental electronic music involving treated tape loops and synthesisers. Clock DVA became associated with industrial music with the 1980 release of cassette album White Souls in Black Suits on Throbbing Gristle's Industrial Records. The album Thirst, released on Fetish Records, followed in 1981, reaching the top of the NME Indie Charts, by which time the band had combined musique concrète techniques with standard rock instrumentation. In 1983, Newton formed a new version of the band. First releasing the single "High Holy Disco Mass" on the major label Polydor Records under the name DVA, the band then released the album Advantage (with several singles) under the name Clock DVA. After a European tour, however, the band split acrimoniously.
After the 1983 breakup of Clock DVA, Adi Newton formed The Anti-Group or T.A.G.C. They released several albums continuing in a similar vein to the early Clock DVA, yet more experimental. In 1987, the Clock DVA reformed with a lineup of Adi Newton, Dean Dennis and Paul Browse and moved in a different direction with the single "The Hacker" and the album Buried Dreams, a heavily electronic industrial music and EBM influenced album that became their defining sound for years to come. As of 2007, Clock DVA have not released an album since 1993's Sign..
01 - Uncertain (7:04)
02 - Sensorium (2:38)
03 - White Cell (4:38)
04 - Piano Pain (3:15)
05 - Blue Tone (5:57)
06 - North Loop (4:50)
07 - 4 Hours (4:00)
08 - Moments (6:25)
09 - Impressions Of African Winter (5:26)
10 - 4 Hours (Original Single Mix) (3:54)
11 - Sensorium (Original Single Mix) (2:39)
Clock DVA @ Base
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Cabaret Voltaire - Drinking Gasoline (85 fully flac 363mb)
"Initially a three piece, Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson began by playing around with recorded sounds manipulated by basic reel-to-reel recorders in Sheffield in 1973. "Way ahead of their time, these ideas culminated in 1975, when the three staged their first performance of these sound experiments and assumed the name Cabaret Voltaire, taken from the name of the club started in Zurich by the principals of the Dada art movement during the First World War. As part of the confrontational energy of punk, the early titles of the records didn't mince words - 'Baader Meinhof' and 'Do the Mussolini (Headkick)' were indicators that were bound to lead to a certain notoriety. To the press they appeared to be immersed in a world of paranoia fed by conspiracy theories, political control and the use of drugs to both free and inhibit the individual.
"The band began working with Rough Trade in 1978, producing the now seminal triumvirate of albums, 'Mix Up' (1979), 'Voice of America' (1980) and their most prophetic album 'Red Mecca' (1981), an album released to an excellent response from the music press. All these recordings were assembled in the seclusion of the band's own studio in Sheffield called Western Works. "Chris Watson left the group in October 1981 on the eve of an international tour to pursue a career in television sound recording. This departure left Kirk and Mallinder free to commit to a long-term struggle with the 'pop music' industry under the protection of Stevo's Some Bizarre label, via a Virgin Records distribution deal. By December 1982 they were in the midst of recording the 'Crackdown' album in Trident Studios, London with the producer Flood.
Cabaret Voltaire were always strongly rooted in the Dada-ist tradition and nowhere was this more evident than in their rare but much anticipated live performances, with their innovative use of film and video documented in the three live albums, 'Live at the YMCA' (1979), 'Live at the Lyceum' (1981) and 'Hai' live in Japan (1982), and the 90 minute video 'Doublevision Presents...'
At the dawn of a new decade, Cabaret Voltaire, now Stephan Mallinder and Richard H. Kirk (Chris Watson left to take a more scientific curve with experimental/noise group 'The Hafler Trio'), started to ease from techno/bleep into trance/ambient. The results were quite startling and Cabaret Voltaire finally regained the attention they deserved. At the height of the trance/ambient wave, Cabaret Voltaire parted ways. While Mallinder went off to Australia to study, Kirk continues on with solo projects (Richard Kirk, Sandoz, etc
Crackdown Bonus EP 83
01 - Diskono (5:44)
02 - Doublevision (4:09)
03 - Moscow (5:24)
04 - Badge Of Evil (4:51)
05 - The Dream Ticket (7:48)
Drinking Gasoline (85)
06 - Kino (8:34)
07 - Sleepwalking (8:26)
08 - Big Funk (8:14)
09 - Ghostalk (7:57)
Kirk @ Base
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Hula - Cut From Inside ( 83* 72mb)
The Sheffield based band Hula was founded in 1981. Three members (Mark Albrow, Alan Fish and Ron Wright) lived with Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire) and Paul Widger (They must be Russians, Clock DVA, the Box) in a villa called Hula Kula. After trying the bass players Alan Watt, the notorious Chris Brain (Tense, NOS) and Mark Brydon (Chakk, Moloko), and after the replacement of Alan Fish by Nort (both drummed for the Cabs), Hula recorded the impressive album Murmur. Ingredients like cut ups, steady rhythms, and paranoia vocals were blended together into a unique white funky sound. Hula recruited John Avery as a bass player. A bass player was necessary for the exciting live shows with lots of video material (Peter Care). Hula continued to bring out danceable 12 inches and more experimental albums. With this line-up Hula was more or less successful. International tours were made. Radio sessions for VPRO and John Peel were recorded and broadcasted. Being a support act for Depeche Mode implied performing live in Wembley Arena for huge crowds.
After Nort left the band in 1986 the music changed, but still remained interesting. Later on Mark Albrow quit as well. When their record company Red Rhino went bankrupt they moved on to Wax Trax. They released the last Hula record: a Jimmy Hendrix cover of Voodoo Chile. The 12 inch did not sort out the desired effect. Eventually Hula broke up.
01 - Flesh Metal (4:01)
02 - Mother Courage (5:17)
03 - Church Juice (2:18)
04 - Murder In The Clean States (4:16)
05 - Release The Grip (4:10)
06 - Dirt Talk (3:19)
07 - Stretch The Attitude (3:21)
08 - Subliminal (4:07)
Xs - Black Pop Workout (Ft. Stephen Mallinder) ( 82)
09 - Feeding The Animal (3:22)
10 - Ignoring The Famine (3:18)
11 - Sacred Serials (Circuits On Full Gush) (5:32)
12 - Junshi (4:11)
Hula @ Base
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In The Nursery - Koda (88 * 254mb)
Twin brothers Klive and Nigel Humberstone and guitar player Anthony Bennett formed this Sheffield, England-based band in 1981. The trio originally tagged along with the UK's industrial music scene, releasing the six-track When Cherished Dreams Come True in June 1983. The "Witness (To A Scream)" single and Sonority EP followed before the band moved to the Sweatbox label for the fearsome Temper EP. The full-length Twins was recorded without the departed Bennett, the subsequent Stormhorse, the soundtrack to an imaginary film that provided the cinematic blueprint for all their future recordings. The quartet's final recording for Sweatbox, 1988's Köda, completed the transition to a classical instrumental sound and utilised computer sequencing in the recording process for the first time.
Following the collapse of Sweatbox the band moved to Third Mind Records to complete the delicate L'Esprit. The album was recorded with engineer Steve Harris who had contributed to Köda and would feature on all the band's subsequent releases. Sense and Duality were followed by a logical progression to real soundtrack work on 1993's psychological drama An Ambush Of Ghosts. In the late 90s the band was commissioned, as part of the Optical Music Series, to provide new scores for the silent classics The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Asphalt, and Man with a Movie Camera. Anatomy Of A Poet, a concept album about the creative psyche, featured author Colin Wilson reciting romantic poetry A retrospective compilation of their work was the first release on their own ITN Corporation label. Further concept albums have included Deco and the ambitious Lingua, an exploration of language featuring vocal contributions from around the world.
01 - Rites ( 3:38)
02 - Maidens ( 0:58)
03 - Te Deum ( 3:08)
04 - Triumph ( 1:14)
05 - Burnished Days ( 2:22)
06 - Ascent ( 7:06)
07 - Scherzo ( 6:18)
08 - Guarded Rites ( 2:51)
09 - Suspire ( 1:55)
10 - Kotow ( 2:09)
11 - The Seventeenth Parallel ( 5:01)
Bonus From "The Compulsion" 12"
12 - Compulsion 4:03
13 - Libertaire 4:45
In The Nursery @ Base
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All downloads are in * ogg-7 (224k) or ^ ogg-9(320k), artwork is included , if in need get the nifty ogg encoder/decoder here !
