RhoDeo 1546 Aetix

Hello,

Today we're back with DVA, that have remained as precursors since it's inception, always a step ahead of current trends, where they force others to make an emulation. Sampled in form and in sound. DVA - music is neither cyberpunk or virtual ambient, not techno - it's all those things and something unique that can only be described by the name - DVA. In this sense they have carved out their own niche. An individual position in a world of Xerox copies and instant video playbacks. Their direction remains a mystery - always anticipated but never guessed. ... N'Joy

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Clock Dva are a futuristic project invariously described by the press as 'cyber punk, techno, electronic, trance", etc., with a glorious past and a brilliant future. They are not simply musicians but the true apotheosis of the new century; a synthesis of science - art, in equal parts. Sheffield, England is their origin and the place where Adi Newton, charismatic leader and soul of DVA, started to be involved in music during the years of the great musical and social revolution, the "punk-age". His first experiences saw among his co-musicians names like Martin Ware, Martin Fry, Genesis P-Orridge in bands like "The Future" and 'Vice Versa", bands that were to become hugely famous under the names "Human League" and "ABC!". Adi Newton didn't follow his friends on the easy road to big bucks, he preferred to go on working without making any compromise on the hard, lonely road of art an experimentation.

 It was 1978 when he founded Clock Dva with his best friend Steven Turner, taking the bands name from Anthony Burgess' novel "A Clockwork Orange" and giving it a meaning of "temporal deviation". The choice of the name intended to make clear the experimental nature of the band and it's strong will to explore every possible for of expression. The first results were two self produced cassettes, "Fragment" and "Deep Floor", which were followed by a contribution to a compilation on Phillip Fichots (Die Form) "Bain Total" label. Another cassette "White Souls In Black Suits" was DVA's first commercial release and appeared on Industrial Records, the famous (of infamous) label of Adi's long time friend Genesis P-Orridge and his Throbbing Gristle.

 All these productions finally attracted the attention of Fetish records - one of the leading British indie-labels that offered DVA a first regular record deal. In 1981 appeared Clock Dva's first mythical masterpiece "Thirst", a milestone for the black-clad generation of white souls. Thirst is their perennial state in their never ending quest for knowledge. Songs like "4 Hours" soon became symbols of a whole generation of true believers in the possibilities of "real" free creativity. This long-selling work (80,000) copies made Clock Dva a very "hot" band for major labels too, and Polydor won the race in 1982 putting them under contract. After a couple of singles, Clock Dva recorded "Advantage", their second LP. Needless to say it's another masterpiece, this time of cold poetry, noire stories and free jazz. The road to success was wide open, songs like "Breakdown' and "resistance" (with it's unforgettable video clip!) were great weapons to storm charts with - Adi started to feel quite uneasy: the direction his music was taking was too safe for his fulfillment and dealing with a major could represent a limitation to his artistic freedom. He left the band after a gig in Paris during their first big world tour, devoting himself to other more experimental musical areas. The band tried to substitute him with a female singer, but the result was embarassing and disappointing (there's a bootleg of the Italian tour witnessing the poorness of the bands musical consistence without Adi). Adi started working on a new project, The Anti-Group, where he began his cooperation with Robert Baker, a musician with his same passions and interests.

 In 1987 finally Adi and his friends Dean Dennis and Paul Browse decided to return to his first love, Clock Dva - this time with a different approach though...

 Years spent studying cybernetics, mathematics and similar disciplines (besides the usual literature and cinema) culminated in an electronic version of Clock Dva, obsessed with the future and the possibilities of exploitation of computers and technology applied to man. This "new" version of Clock Dva started spreading around the world it's new message and after an Anti-Group gig in Berlin, Interfisch Records decided to support the idea of re-founding DVA and signed a contract for forthcoming productions. The result was a series of EP's and highly acclaimed album "Buried Dreams". Press and audience alike were ravished by this unexpected futurist comeback. People started to look at music in a different way. But as often happens, the bands policy didn't satisfy all it's members and 1/3 of Clock Dva - Paul Browse - decided to move to Berlin and without being followed by the rest of the band. As a consequence of this new development, Adi and Dean were joined by Robert Baker of TAG and the new line-up developed a totally new live concept, supporting the musical part of the show with intriguing and fascinating videos.

 This was of working was experimented successfully on the following tour and has now become a distinctive part of Clock Dva's genial activity. As a result of the big success of DVA's first tour since 1983, Interfisch released a live album witnessing the genial evolution of the band ("Transitional Voices" - without the permission of the band... As an immediate consequence DVA cancelled all contracts with Interfisch and started to negotiate with Contempo Records.

 A contract was signed in early 1991 and an agreement with Interfisch at the end of the same year allowed Contempo for the first time to concentrate all Clock Dva releases from 1978-1992 in one company.

 Backed by this new, strong support, Clock Dva prepared a new act of digital terrorism under then name of "Final Program" (single) and "Man-Amplified" (album). The music is pushed so far forward that "soundtrack for the year 2001" is an apt definition for these two releases. "Man-Amplified" with sons like "Bitstream", "NYC Overload" or "Technogesit" allowed the band to storm the European indie-charts and to penetrate, at last, in a triumphant way also the U.S. Market with incredibly high sales and great acclaim form both press and audience. 1992 finally also saw the band extensively touring the world including America where they hadn't been since 1983. On that occasion they also headlined a new music seminar at the Limelight in New York.

At the end of the year DVA release "Digital Soundtracks", a side project they had been working on for a long time. "Digital Soundtracks" represents the intermediate interests of DVA with the concepts and techniques of the visual realm as utilized in the classic science films of the 40's and 50's. The album lays somewhere within and beyond what can be termed Techno of Ambient and has been described as "Music for the inner cinema". In this interest for new musical forms lays the inspiration for the new studio album "Sign" - released in June 1993. Due to musical differences during the recordings bass player Dean deis leaves the band. which chooses to not replace him. "Sign" is undoubtedly Clock Dva's carrer high. They have been working at this true masterpiece harder than on any DVA release before, building every song brick by brick, intuition after intuition. The result is amazing and moving at the same time. In 1993 DVA sounded different by maintaining their good old technoteric soul with a new. exciting touch of genius.

The first single taken from the album "Voice Recognition Test" is both catchy and commercial and tops indie-charts throughout the world. The album itself is released for the first time also on new musical territories such as Argentina, Mexico, Czechoslovakia - a compilation covering the period 1981-1983 entitled "Horology" has been designed for major release in South America only - a new step towards worldwide DVAiation.

1993 ends with a highly successful 6 week European tour through 11 European Countries and the release of "Eternity", the latest DAV single. The tour schedule includes - amongst many others - all major European capital cities in east and west like Paris, Berlin, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Amsterdam, Zagreb, Ljubijaria. Live onstage with Adi for this tour: His wife Ari Radion, Andrew Mackenzie (Halfer Trio) and Maurizio Fasolo (Pankow).

Following Dennis's departure from the group, Newton and Baker produced the album Sign (1993). After the release of Sign and related singles, Clock DVA toured Europe (line-up: Newton & Baker with Andrew McKenzie and Ari Newton) and Newton relocated to Italy. However, their Italian record label at the time, Contempo, folded which caused a number of problems. Collective, an anthology album and a box set was released in 1994. Newton began working on new material with Brian Williams, Graeme Revell (from SPK) and Paul Haslinger but continued problems with record labels eventually caused Newton and Clock DVA take a long break from the music scene.

In 1998, Czech record label Nextera released a reissue of Buried Dreams, sanctioned by Dean Dennis and Paul Browse but not by Newton. Adi Newton reactivated Clock DVA along with his creative partner Jane Radion Newton in 2008. Since 2011 Clock DVA has performed at several electronic music festivals and venues throughout Europe [6][7][8] with a new line-up consisting of Newton, Maurizio "TeZ" Martinucci and Shara Vasilenko. In November 2011, a new Clock DVA track "Phase IV" was featured on Wroclaw Industrial Festival compilation album. In January 2012, German record label Vinyl on Demand announced Horology, a vinyl box set compilation of early (1978–1980) Clock DVA material.

A historical overview exhibition of Clock DVA (photographs, video and audio) took place at the Melkweg cultural centre, Amsterdam, Netherlands in February/March 2012. In July 2013, a new Clock DVA album called Post-Sign was released on Anterior Research. It was produced and composed by Adi Newton in 1994–95 as an instrumental companion album to Sign, though it remained unreleased at that time due to problems with record labels. According to Adi Newton, Mute Records were set to re-release the eight Clock DVA albums remastered in a box set in 2012.

In 2014, Clock DVA released the album Clock 2 on a USB drive through their label Anterior Research. This limited edition release consists of 3 new studio tracks and various remixes of them, in addition to 4 video files. A 12" called Re-Konstructor / Re-Kabaret 13 was released shortly after. Another EP, Neo Post Sign, containing tracks recorded 1995-96 but omitted from the Post-Sign album, was released early 2015.


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In 1987, Newton reactivated DVA and invited Dean Dennis and Paul Browse back into the fold to aid Newton's use of computer aided sampling techniques which he had been developing in The Anti Group. In 1988 they released the sample-fueled EP's The Hacker and The Act, gathered here in one package.

some prescient lyrics from 1988

A digital murder
Programmed by mathematical terrorists
Outside of mortal bounds
Silently hacking
A binary plague
Serving information
This is the time of the hacker
This is the code of the hacker
This is the hacker
An algebra of fear

Within the language of machines
Uninfringed my human emotions
Within global systems
Silently moving
A digital maze
Cutting information
This is the way of the hacker
This is the extremity of the hacker
This is the hacker
Protect now or be erased forever

A binary virus
Unleashed by subversive programmers
Inside corporate systems
Silently eating
The endemic wave
Erasing information
This is the sign of the hacker
This is the genius of the hacker
This is the hacker
Learn now
Or be cut down forever

Clock DVA - The Hacker / The Act  (flac 246mb)

01 The Hacker 7:27
02 The Act 6:30
03 The Connection Machine 5:57
04 The Hacker (Hacked Version) 7:27
05 Re/Act 6:29
06 Sonology Of Sex 4:27
07 Re/Act 2 6:28

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This band, and in particular the albums "Buried Dreams" and "Man-Amplified" made electronic music in the late 80's and early 90's that was light years ahead of its time, and yet went largely unrecognized--the sophistication of their electronic wizardry puts much of the primitive rave culture of the day to shame--the beats used on this album are fairly simplistic--what makes it stunning is the DVA-unique, rhythm oriented synth work--not to mention the sound experimentation and sampling--this is dance music with a purpose--maybe it went largely unrecognized because industrial music was going the metal route, this band was content with exploring the world of a gothic techno, given the violent imagery and sound of the album, all components come together to create a theme that could only be described as brooding and scary. Clock DVA  played vintage electronic through analog equipment which gives this album a very retro feel without sounding dated--it really is rare for electronic music to have so much atmosphere--Clock DVA pulled it off big time.

Clock DVA - Buried Dreams  (flac 439mb)

01 Buried Dreams 4:01
02 Hide 4:30
03 Sound Mirror 5:43
04 Velvet Realm 6:44
05 The Unseen 5:19
06 The Reign 5:26
07 The Act 5:22
08 The Hacker 7:23
09 Connection Machine 5:55
10 The Sonology Of Sex I 4:23
11 The Sonology Of Sex II (Le Comtesse De Sang) 3:45
12 The Hacker (Video Mix) 3:24
13 HackerHacked 7:19

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Transitional Voices is a quickie live album from Adi Newton's Clock DVA project. How much of the material is truly live is up for grabs with heavily sequenced music like this, but there are enough flourishes and frills that the essence of a live performance is almost assured. So then why a live album from Clock DVA, as the music they produce is so reliant on sequencing? "Sound Mirror" appears here in a nascent version of what would appear on Buried Dreams, with a vastly different bassline and a different bridge than the final studio version. Others for the most part are very similar, especially the icy filter sweeps and unremitting electro-bass pulse of "N.Y.C. Overload." Probably the last release from Clock DVA to pick up, because the low fidelity of the recording at times masks the stunning electronic programming that this group is known for.

Clock DVA - Transitional Voices  (flac 349mb)

01 Transitional Voices 6:29
02 Sound Mirror 5:49
03 Syntactic 6:13
04 N.Y.C. Overload 5:11
05 Fractal 9 6:14
06 Technogeist 5:50
bonus Sounds Mirror EP
07 Sound Mirror I 5:42
08 Sound Mirror II 5:42
09 The Sonology Of Sex II (le Comtesse de Sang) 3:42
10 Hacker (Hacked) Reprogrammed 7:20

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