Erasure – I Say I Say I Say (Mute Records album, 1994)

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Erasure 'I Say I Say I Say' LP artwork

mute records | lp/cd/lcd/c stumm115 | 16/05/1994

Erasure‘s 1994 album found Andy Bell and Vince Clarke getting warm and tender. Compared to the previous album, Chorus, which had a grit to its analogue construction, the oddly named I Say I Say I Say – whose electronic backdrops were again created entirely using retro synths – has a serene, enveloping tone. Andy’s lyrics too veer toward the affectionate and romantic. Rightly or wrongly, I like to think of this as Erasure’s album of love songs, eschewing some of the more wordly-wise themes of the previous albums.

Curiously, this is also the Erasure album I have listened to the least. I put this down to the limited edition CD that I bought – a beautifully-designed 12″ box with a pop-up fairytale castle with the CD itself intended to look like a shimmering lake at the foot of the castle, everything swathed in shades of blue from a gibbous moon. Great idea, but it meant that this got stuck in a box with my vinyl for safekeeping, rather than being accessibly on the shelf with my other CDs. ‘Fairytale’ is not a bad description for this album, as producer Martyn Ware (ex-Human League and Heaven 17 and future project partner of Vince as The Illustrious Company) wraps a dream-like, sommnambulent atmosphere around many of the songs, particularly those featuring St. Patrick’s Cathedral choir (‘So The Story Goes’ and ‘Miracle’). I Say I Say I Say yielded three singles – the gorgeous ‘Always’, the chart success of which Erasure would not match until 2005, ‘Run To The Sun’ and ‘I Love Saturday’ – but sadly marked the start of a long period of poor singles success for the duo.

‘Take Me Back’ has a beautiful, extended introduction, which unfolds into a multitude of cascading melodies, Andy delivering a strident, impassioned vocal, wishing to return to the safety of his childhood. There is a brief section where the layers are sloughed off, leaving an intricate drum pattern built of springy, metallic synth sounds and what can only be described as a distorted attempt to replicate vinyl scratching using a synth. ‘Man In The Moon’ runs in waltz time and includes some almost classical keyboard work (albeit an elastic synth rather than piano or harpsichord) and a melody played on a flute-esque synth, while Andy delivers a cosy, romantic lyric. The track concludes with Andy singing solo over what sounds suspiciously like the tinkly opening bars of the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sunday Morning’, and overall this track has a quirkily similar, enveloping sound. ‘So The Story Goes’ is another waltz, and the first to feature the choir. Andy’s vocal is full and theatrical, while Vince offers a deep bassline similar to Chorus‘ ‘Turns The Love To Anger’ and flutters of synth arpeggios. Andy delivers a solo monologue at the end of the song, while the choir achieve an atmospheric discord that is as much mysterious as it is chilling.

‘All Through The Years’ has a country twang to it, and plenty of sterling synth work from Vince. Its autumnal imagery and warm tones mark this out as one of the best songs on the album, Andy bathing the track with mystery and misery with the addition of some beautiful backing vocals. ‘Blues Away’ is also one of the outstanding tracks here, a mellow soulful tune with sparse synths and a vocal from Andy delivered in a difficult falsetto while his own backing vocals cover all the mid- and low-range harmonies – he single-handedly (single-voicedly?) covers the full range without any signs of difficulty, and rightly so Vince takes a back seat on this song, although there is another great midsection that finds shards of electronics pealing off in random directions over a detuned beat.

‘Miracle’ is simultaneously inspiring and moving, a beatifully simple electropop track blessed by a harmony-filled chorus where Andy is ably aided by the St. Patrick’s choir. ‘We’ll be going home / Where the passion finds the perfect love‘ runs the chorus, sung with a melody similar to The Cranberries’ ‘Dreams’. Closing track, ‘Because You’re So Sweet’ is a sugary sweet ballad with some very meditative synthwork from Vince and an innocence and naivety that is both brave as it is beguiling.

***

I’m reposting this review since its now twenty years since I Say I Say I Say was released. It’s nearly ten years since I wrote this review, and my opening comments about not having listened to this that much compared to other Erasure albums still holds.

The album turning twenty years old inevitably encourages comments of the ‘where does time go?’ variety; for me it signifies that it’s twenty years since I went to look around the university campus that would become my home from 1995 to 1998. My family and I drove from Southend-on-Sea, where we were staying in a guest house, to Colchester to visit the university, and I insisted on playing the cassette of this album that had come out that week.

Some years after I wrote this review I alighted upon an old VHS video cassette which included a short interview with Andy Bell and Vince Clarke on some Saturday morning kids’ TV show; Andy attempted to explain the title of the album using a joke. It fell flat on its face, wasn’t funny and didn’t help explain the daftness of this title. It’s always struck me as odd – this is a comparatively serious LP, but its title suggests a lightheartedness that just isn’t there in the music.

Track listing:

lp/cd/lcd/c:
A1. / 1. Take Me Back
A2. / 2. I Love Saturday
A3. / 3. Man In The Moon
A4. / 4. So The Story Goes
A5. / 5. Run To The Sun
B1. / 6. Always
B2. / 7. All Through The Years
B3. / 8. Blues Away
B4. / 9. Miracle
B5. / 10. Because You’re So Sweet

First published 2005; edited 2014

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, All Saints Church, Hove 15/05/2014

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DSC_1960 DSC_1954 Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, All Saints Church, Hove 15/05/2014 - (c) Andy Sturmey Will Gregory Moog Ensemble, All Saints Church, Hove 15/05/2014 - (c) Andy Sturmey

Will Gregory Moog Ensemble performing at All Saints Church, Hove 15/05/2014.

Photos used with kind permission of Andy Sturmey (Brightlights-Darkroom Photography).

Click individual images to enlarge.

(c) 2014 Andy Sturmey / Brightlights-Darkroom Photography

2K – ***k The Millennium (Blast First single, 1997)

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2K '***k The Millennium' 12" artwork

blast first / mute records | 12″/cd bffp146t / bffp146cdk | 29/09/1997

‘What Time Is Love?’, ‘3AM Eternal’, ‘Last Train To Trancentral’ – all songs synonymous in my memory with my first love affair with music generally and dance music specifically. The late eighties, and the ensuing dance-tinged early nineties were a great time for an electronically-minded boy to be getting into music, and The KLF played a major role in piquing my curiosity. Later, at university I managed to track down original 12″ versions of the re-released ‘What Time Is Love?’ and ‘3AM’ and, in my first and only attempt at DJing, managed to beat-mix the two tracks perfectly using the campus radio station’s decks and cross-fader. Good times.

On the back of the three classic singles above, I bought The White Room, and was hugely disappointed; the straightahead dance tracks were nowhere to be seen, and the whole album hung together disjointedly. The anarchistic / artistic events that followed, the dead sheep and thrash-metal with crutches and rifles version of ‘3AM’ at the Brit Awards, the Tami Wynette version of ‘Justified And Ancient’, the whole Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu faux-cult thing generally; all of this left me thinking The KLF a little silly, and it altered my affections toward the triumverate of singles above.

Nevertheless, by 1997, my addiction for buying all things Mute and a renewed interest in the ‘mythology’ I suppose you’d call of it of The KLF, I was really excited by the prospect of this single. Adopting the moniker 2K, Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond reunited specifically for one single on Blast First, following the inclusion of ‘What Time Is Love?’ on the Jeremy Deller-compiled Acid Brass album.

With the combining together of the music I loved as a teenager and my favorite record label, I was pretty excited about this single. I remember vividly the day I bought this. I also bought the second volume of Nick Cave‘s King Ink lyrics collection, and it was during a period where futures were being decided and graduate placements were being applied for. There was a rising level of noise around the coming new millennium and the unifying celebrations that would be had that year, the Millennium Bug was being lauded as the end of modern civilisation, and this single aimed to tap into that excitement. And just like most of those supposedly exciting things, none of which lived up to their hype, neither does the 2K single.

The central ‘point’, if indeed there is one, of ‘***k The Millennium’ is the line ‘F**k the millennium / We want it now‘, which is meaningless and also fundamentally impossible to achieve. The duo also take the opportunity – chortle, chortle – to open the track with a shouted ‘1997 – what the f**k’s going on?‘, referencing the album from a decade before with which the ‘controversy’ that often circled Cauty / Drummond (and which now seems childish) began.

At almost 14 minutes, ‘***k The Millenium’ is an in-joke taken too far, combining pointless sloganeering and the same form of pompous spoken word passages that ruined the rocked-up version of ‘America : What Time Is Love?’. The only redeeming feature of this song is the usage of a section of acid-house burbling from the original, rare as hen’s teeth, ‘What Time Is Love?’; but when placed alongside shouted nonsense, horns and repeated expletives one has to ask: what’s the point? Far better to track down that original classic than indulge this disappointing nail in the Koffin.

Alongside a single edit, and a radio-friendly swearing-free version thereof, there’s an alternative version of the Williams Fairey Brass Band‘s take on ‘What Time Is Love?’. With so much rear-view mirror action going on, one is left with the inescapable notion that this was a parting shot from a duo who were looking back fondly on their achievements from yesterday, themselves wondering where the ideas went and what the point of this single actually was. (The 12″ includes a Pan Sonic remix of the Acid Brass track which is probably worth owning; I still don’t know whether I’ve got it or not.)

Track listing:

12″:
A. 2K – ***k The Millennium
B1. Acid Brass – What Time Is Love? (Version K)
B2. Acid Brass – What Time Is Love? (Version P – Royal Oak Mix by Pan Sonic)

cd:
1. ***k The Millennium
2. Acid Brass – What Time Is Love? (Version K)
3. ***k The Millennium (Radio Edit)
4. ***k The Millennium (Censored Radio Edit)

First published 2008; edited 2014

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

The Psyclops Trees – All Back To Spikes (Flying Saucer Records single, 2014)

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The Psyclops Trees 'All Back To Spikes' 7" artwork

flying saucer records | 7″ flys5001 | 30/05/2014

Lee Curtis is a producer and DJ who has released records as Lee Curtis Connection on the venerable Ninja Tune and who also formed one half of Flavournaughts with Dave Priseman. His latest project is Psyclops Trees, prefacing a much-anticipated track for Gary Asquith‘s Le Coq Musique imprint called ‘I’ll Surrender’ which will see Curtis collaborating with the erstwhile Renegade Soundwave / Rema-Rema frontman as Renegade Connection.

‘All Back To Spikes’ is like a time machine back to the halcyon big-beat / trip-hop days of 1994 – Athletico compilations, The Chemical Brothers back when they still lived on Planet Dust, Mo’Wax before megastardom etc. Curtis himself describes these tracks as ‘funky psychedelic breaks’ which is completely apt – on ‘All Back To Spikes’ the (block rocking) beats are rich, hypnotic and chunky, while deep textures that shimmer, twist and loop suggest movement through multiple dimensions.

The single is backed with ‘Beak Street’, which earns the distinction of being this author’s summer anthem. On this particular street the beats are slower, the vibe funkier; the melodic hooks sits somewhere between Stevie Wonder circa ‘Sir Duke’, the theme tune to Grange Hill and the Pierre Henry piece that Fatboy Slim ripped off shamelessly. ‘Beak Street’ casually pulls off this mood with a cheeky swagger, making this a perfect soundtrack to sipping cocktails by the pool.

Check out videos for the two tracks below. The single can be purchased from Rough Trade here or Flying Saucer’s own website here.

Track listing:

7″:
A. All Back To Spikes
B. Beak Street

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

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David Baker (Komputer) – Dirty Contacts 2 DJ Date

Dave Baker from Komputer / Fortran 5 / I Start Counting DJs at London electronic music night Dirty Contacts 2 at The Boogaloo in Highgate, London on 1 May.

Details can be found through this link, which also includes an extract from my Mute Short Circuit review from 2011.

At Rebel Rebel, Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, NY

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At Rebel Rebel, Bleecker Street, Greenwich Village, NY

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

At Rough Trade NYC, Williamsburg

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At Rough Trade NYC, Williamsburg

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Rema-Rema – International Scale / Short Stories (Inflammable Material / Le Coq Musique single, 2014)

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Rema-Rema 'International Scale / Short Stories' 7" artwork

inflammable material / le coq musique | 7″ burn017 | 04/2014

‘Can you imagine what these beautiful songs would sound like if we’d done them in a 24-track recording situation?’ ponders Gary Asquith by email when I let him know that the copy of Defiant Pose Eight with its accompanying Rema-Rema 7″ he sent me has arrived. ‘It’s so sad that the most beautiful creations that I’ve ever made are just demo quality-lo-fi. They’re the pinnacle of my musical thinking.’

Rema-Rema’s recorded output, until the release of this 7″, was confined to the Wheel In The Roses 12″ that effectively properly launched the 4AD label; apart from a couple of live tracks on a very underground cassette and an alternative version of one track on a Japanese 4AD compilation, that was it. And yet, as future Wolfgang Press member and Rema-Rema founder Mick Allen recounts in the interview with him and Gary Asquith in the Defiant Pose fanzine, this post-punk unit seemed to have developed a cult following that even these two members are surprised about. Allen recalls Nick Cave talking to him about his time in the band whilst his Bad Seeds were on tour with Allen’s Wolfgang Press, and Steve Albini‘s Big Black covered one of their tracks. I can vouch for their status: when I posted a review of Wheel In The Roses last year, including some insightful information from Asquith, I received emails from people enquiring about whether the band had any other recordings that might see the light of day.

Which brings us on to the exciting prospect of two hitherto unheard Rema-Rema tracks, rescued from cassette demos and pressed onto heavyweight vinyl to accompany the Defiant Pose feature and interviews. ‘International Scale’ is a breathtaking moment of sparse robotic motorik rock underpinned by squealing synths from Mark Cox, a taught, sinewy guitar riff from Marco Pirroni and a Mick Allen bassline that dominates with ground-out, low-slung angsty prominence. Asquith prowls above the mix, his vocal somewhere between punky snarl and wide-eyed wonder, offering repeated phrases and complex wisdom. Like all the best post-punk this feels like a head-on collision of ideas: the edginess of punk and the regimented rhythms of German electronic pop (thanks to a skeletal beat from Max) and a leaning into artsy esoterics. It’s not hard to see why Asquith considers his Rema-Rema period his best – ‘International Scale’ suggests a raw confidence and effortless cache of ideas that could have served this band very well had circumstances been different. It’s a travesty of grand proportions that we’ll never get to hear a finalised version of ‘International Scale’ but this is more than adequate aural evidence of what makes Rema-Rema so compelling a proposition.

‘Short Stories’ clocks in at just under two minutes and has a much rawer, embryonic sound to it, Asquith sounding not dissimilar to Wreckless Eric with an emotional, almost anguished vocal. Slow, gravelly and murky, ‘Short Stories’ feels like a single evolution away from the pure punk of The Beastly Cads / Models and Manic bands from which Rema-Rema were formed. No surprise, perhaps – in the accompanying interview we learn that Allen and Asquith brought fragments from unused songs from their former bands to the studios as the genesis for the Rema-Rema material.

Asquith turns more sanguine as our brief email exchange concludes. Hey, we have these moments and we get respect – because you can’t be in a band with Marco Pirroni and Michael Allen playing guitar and bass that isn’t worth a listen. Because those two people exude class. That’s the moment I live for, and when I die I will say “please God, can we cut a deal and you play me some Rema -Rema?”‘

Buy this; it’s important.

Get it at Defiant Pose

Track listing:

7″:
A. International Scale
B. Short Stories

Thanks to Gary

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Goldfrapp – Tales Of Us (Mute Records album, 2013)

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Goldfrapp 'Tales Of Us' LP artwork

mute artists | lp+cd/cd/dl/box stumm356 | 09/09/2013

Apparently neither Alison Goldfrapp nor Will Gregory were happy with Head First, their 2010 ballsy, largesse-filled electronic disco album. Tales Of Us is, compared to that record, a much more subtle affair, closer in hue and texture to Felt Mountain‘s glacial soundscapes or Seventh Tree‘s naturalist folk leanings.

Subtle is the operative word here. Throughout Tales Of Us there’s an impression of much larger songs, great, strident moments even, but with few exceptions everything feels like it’s been rubbed away, leaving just an ethereal impression of what might have been there before. Guitars are strummed gently, sounds quietly murmur in the background fleetingly and Alison’s voice is delivered as little more than a ruminative whisper throughout most Tales Of Us. I’ve always found it difficult to decipher what she is singing about, and that’s even more of a challenge here; short of the word ‘caribou‘ on ‘Ulla’ which stands out almost preposterously on ‘Ulla’, I really struggle to crack the quiet musings across Tales Of Us.

Tales Of Us is presented as a series of ten character studies, each one a story about, or delivered by, the person named in the track’s title, making for – at least on paper – a personality crisis of multiple imagined identities, while the list of names might be the register of a private school classroom in a posh part of West London. As above, I can’t really make out anything in particular from the lyrics I can hear, but suffice to say the resultant theme is one of mournful serenity. That theme is evoked most prominently by the use of string arrangements, which I’m sure will get described as ‘lush orchestrations’; combined with the gentle guitar chords Tales Of Us runs the risk of sounding a little bit like it should be filed under the easy listening section (‘Drew’ even seems to remind me of ‘Strangers In The Night’ at one point).

Aside from the unassailable, ephemeral beauty of ‘Annabel’ or the ‘Blue Room’ dub pulse of ‘Thea’, taken as a whole I do find Tales Of Us a little safe. That these songs are pretty, delicate things is without question, but it just doesn’t feel terribly new. ‘Stranger’, for example, sounds like it was lifted straight from Felt Mountain. It’s undoubtedly arresting, undeniably emotional, but just a bit unadventurous after the brash pop of Head First. For me it proved to be the perfect soundtrack to watching clouds moving imperceptibly from 30,000 feet up.

Tales Of Us was released in several formats including the by now obligatory overstuffed, expensive, probably handmade boxed edition. A video was made for ‘Drew’, which can be viewed below.

Track listing:

lp+cd/cd/dl:
1. Jo
2. Annabel
3. Drew
4. Ulla
5. Alvar
6. Thea
7. Simone
8. Stranger
9. Laurel
10. Clay

First published 2013; edited 2014.

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

S.C.U.M – Again Into Eyes (Mute Records album, 2011)

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S.C.U.M 'Again Into Eyes' LP+CD artwork

mute artists | lp+cd/cd/i stumm327 | 12/09/2011

Things I’m reminded of when listening to S.C.U.M‘s Again Into Eyes – Joy Division, Gary Numan, Sheep On Drugs, early OMD; when I look at the layered, intertwined half-naked bodies on the sleeve of the gatefold LP, I’m reminded of the film adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel The Informers. In fact I’m reminded of most of Bret Easton Ellis novels when I look at that sleeve. Plus, for some reason the pastel colouring reminds me of fruit Mentos.

But those synaptic connections are not intended to imply that this debut album for Mute makes me think I’ve heard (and seen) this all before. Far from it. Again Into Eyes is a truly original suite of ten tracks, and none of them sound anything like Joy Division, Gary Numan or Sheep On Drugs – it’s just that I hear an essence of Joy Division’s flatline pulse and restlessness, the robotic detachment of Gary Numan’s vocal entwined with the cynical snarl of Sheep On Drugs’ Duncan X / King Duncan and the synths – especially on the second single ‘Whitechapel’ – of OMD. Meanwhile, the effect, the personal impact if you like, of listening to these obliquely nihilistic tracks is similar to how listening to Interpol always affects me, namely nudging my mood in negative directions and making me want to pick up the pieces of my as-yet-uncompleted novel. But again, S.C.U.M are nothing like Interpol. They are like S.C.U.M.

Key to the mood here is the grinding, itchy drone-punk track ‘Summon The Sound’, which was in circulation much earlier this year and which featured on the Mute Artists compilation Vorwärts. ‘Summon The Sound’ is the connective tissue that binds this LP together; it sent out a very clear signal (pun intended) that S.C.U.M are anything but cheerful optimists with its beautifully cloying stop-start rhythm, urgent low-end and mysterious, sneering vocal. Then again, naming your band after Valerie ‘I shot Warhol’ Solanis’s feminist manifesto – her Society for Cutting Up Men – was never likely to produce anything remotely upbeat. Just a glance at the lyric sheet reveals the elusive, poetic depth of these songs. The spiky ‘Amber Hands’, the first single proper from Again Into Eyes, likewise pointed to a richly bleak outlook for the album. In fact, it’s only the second single ‘Whitechapel’ that has anywhere near a sense of positivity attached to it.

Again Into Eyes, metaphorically speaking, is an album of two sides. The first five tracks are uniformly dark. ‘Faith Unfolds’ opens with some shimmering, elegiac keyboard patterns from Bradley Baker – cf OMD’s ‘Joan Of Arc’ / ‘Maid Of Orleans’ – which remain throughout the song but soon get subsumed by whining guitar textures from Samuel Kilcoyne (son of Add N To (X)‘s Barry 7 and also credited with keyboards), Psychocandydrumming from the elfin Melissa Rigby and a powerful bass undertow from Huw Webb. Meanwhile vocalistThomas Cohen sings an elliptical tale of faith and fate and love. There’s barely a pause before the colour washes away into ‘Days Untrue’, all icy synths, twitchy drums and heavily-reverbed vocals. ‘Cast Into Season’ begins with those ‘Joan Of Arc’ / ‘Maid Of Orleans’ textures and appends cello sounds, ‘Atmosphere’-esque funereal drums and a prominent vocal in the mix from Cohen; it feels like a ritual or a sacrifice or an alternative soundtrack to Eyes Wide Shut. Or The Informers‘ vampiric passages. It’s also my favourite track on Again Into Eyes.

The second half of Again Into Eyes is less obviously dark, but nevertheless retains a seam of black colour. ‘Sentinal Drift’ starts with subtle drumming and gentle, polite synth melodies a la Yazoo‘s Upstairs At Eric’s, but in the end – almost inevitably – the song becomes dominated by swathes of droning noise and pounded drums; the brief ‘Requiem’ may have beautiful piano passages from Huw Webb, but those notes are submerged under hissing distortion and reverberating processed noise in the foreground. ‘Paris’ was previously available in far simpler form as part of the Signals series and was originally produced by Gareth Jones. It is a poignant, reflective ballad – again dominated by Webb’s piano and still containing plenty of gritty noises – which seems to strain toward the light but alas never quite reaches it. ‘I will never bear my skin for you,‘ sings Cohen in one of the most evocative lyrics on the album. ‘Water’, in contrast, is just harmonically-interwoven droning noise, but it makes complete sense after the emotional ‘Paris’.

Again Into Eyes was produced and mixed by Ken and Veryon Thomas, with additional mixing by Mute MD Daniel Miller. Keeping it in the (Mute) family even more, the album was pre-produced by Jim Sclavunos, he of recent Bad Seeds / Grinderman fame.

Note
Thomas Cohen & Peaches Geldof (c) Getty Images

I listened to Again Into Eyes today in the wake of the death of the death of Peaches Geldof, wife of S.C.U.M’s Thomas Cohen and the mother of their two sons. Cohen and Geldof married in 2012, by which time S.C.U.M had either already split up or were on their way to being so.

The news sites quoted Cohen’s heartfelt statement about his wife’s passing: ‘My beloved wife Peaches was adored by myself and her two sons. I shall bring them up with their mother in their hearts everyday. We shall love her forever.’

Track listing:

lp+cd/cd/i:
1. Faith Unfolds
2. Days Untrue
3. Cast Into Seasons
4. Amber Hands
5. Summon The Sound
6. Sentinal Bloom
7. Requiem
8. Paris
9. Water
10. Whitechapel

First published 2011; edited 2014

(c) 2014 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence