Tag Archives: Andy Bell

Documentary Evidence 2016 Top 10 Albums: 4. Reed & Caroline ‘Buchla & Singing’ // Erasure ‘From Moscow To Mars’

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I felt a little conflicted about including these two on my list, for reasons which I will attempt somewhat clumsily to explain. I then reasoned that this is my list, I’m kind of really proud of what I’ve done to support both these releases, and so on the list they shall remain. I’ve also linked them together for the purposes of convenience.

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“It might have the look and feel of a futuristic tombstone, but From Moscow To Mars, as its title from the oft-forgotten single ‘Star’ indicates, represents a thirty year journey – a journey that the duo are very firmly still on with a new album in the works and plenty more rocket fuel left in the tanks.” – This Is Not Retro

“What emerges here is a distinct sense of loyalty – from Vince Clarke and Andy Bell to one another, and to the enduring art of writing emotional pop music.” – Electronic Sound

First up, the mammoth and some would definitely argue long overdue Erasure box. This was finally released in December after production delays and I reviewed this – atypically for me – for two places: Electronic Sound and then a slightly more personal piece for This Is Not Retro. I am, and forever will be, a massive Erasure fan first and foremost, so my ability to be objective about From Moscow To Mars is one possible conflict of interest. Personally, I think I pulled it off, but you can judge for yourself. The review for This Is Not Retro can be found here. Back issues of Electronic Sound are over at www.electronicsound.co.uk

The second reason for feeling slightly conflicted came in November when I found myself in Birmingham as a guest of the Erasure fan club at the official launch party for the boxset. I was there nominally as a guest but found myself helping out in a couple of ways – blowing up some very sorry balloons (I apologise to anyone who attended and laughed at those) while listening to Vince Clarke and Andy Bell soundcheck their set (including a new song) and then helping out with three hours of meet and greets. It was a special, and slightly surreal experience.

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Second, Buchla & Singing by Reed & Caroline, a charming album of compositions for the Buchla by Reed Hays with beautiful singing by Caroline Schutz. The album was released on Vince Clarke’s Very Records back in October to universal acclaim. I didn’t get to review this one, but trust me, had I done so I would have called it out as very special indeed.

I wrote the press release for Very Records for this album and enjoyed a very pleasant Skype chat with Hays in order to prepare that. Of all the things I have done this year, getting handed that job and helping support the release of Buchla & Singing – in a way somewhat different from just scribing a review – was right up there as a major career highlight, and I’m eternally grateful for the opportunity.

One of the best tracks on the album is ‘Henry The Worm’. Reed and I spoke about that track at length but I just couldn’t find a way of fitting it into the press release, so here is that little off-cut. I thought it was a nice story. Music sometimes needs to take itself less seriously.

“Around the time my son was born, I wrote a song that’s on the record called ‘Henry The Worm’,” explained Reed. “We named Henry, my son, after a little caterpillar that was crawling around a Mexican restaurant. When we saw the first sonogram I thought he looked like a little caterpillar.”

(c) 2016 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Shelter – Ascend (Ministry Of Pop album, 2016)

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Shelter are a familiar name to anyone with a passing interest in the solo work of Erasure’s Andy Bell given his collaboration with the duo on 2014’s iPop album, another in a series of extra-curricular projects from the Erasure frontman that have started to emerge in the past few years.

The team of Mark Bebb and Rob Bradley describe Ascend as a more mature offering, and while that might be true in the sense of its slightly more emotional, slowed-up moments, the album is also 100% true to the Shelter sound – namely slick, polished, generally upbeat electronic pop songs that lean heavily toward modern hi-NRG club-friendly structures (see the vaguely ‘Jump’-referencing ‘This Must Be Love’) – but also finds the collaborations that have coloured their previous releases consciously absent.

Judging by the lyrics and phrasing on tracks like the opener ‘Breathless’ or ‘Do You Remember’, Shelter’s time in the company of Andy Bell has evidently rubbed off on them. Mark Bebb’s vocal on these songs has the same thwarted, disappointed, defenceless quality – they’re love songs, for sure, but they seem to be delivered from a unrequited vantage point. Bell has made a career out of that bruised, fragile quality, amplified by Vince Clarke’s sympathetic synth melodies, and what you have here is a decent emulation of that latter-day Erasure style. It’s a formula that Shelter revisit throughout the album, but without ever making them sound like one trick ponies or like they’re just trying to rip off their mates.

Elsewhere, there are moments of rapturous surrender, pitched perfectly for the secret corners of nightclubs; tracks like ‘In The Dark’ might have the rhythm and pace demanded by clubland, but the tone is sullen, dangerous, edgy. Some of the best moments on Ascend happen when Shelter slow things right down and eschew the politics of the dancing for the type of pop music that seemed to wither and die about thirty years ago. ‘Figaro’, for example, is all Latin-inflected rhythms and sun-baked summery heartbreak. The track has that whole ‘La Isla Bonita’ mystery thing down to a fine art, with the juxtaposition of jangly guitars and melodramatic, shimmering melodies more than enough to get a jaded pop music fan like me properly wistful.

It may be a simple product of my general disdain for a pop music landscape which feels duty-bound to use collaborations as the only way to keep things vaguely interesting, but the most compelling moments on Ascend are undoubtedly those that find Shelter operating as a self-contained unit. When they lock the doors to the studio and leave the collaborators outside, Ascend is a smart, well-crafted, confident electronic pop album with plenty of fine songs that suggests a duo finding their own voice.

(c) 2016 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Various Artists – Fly : Songs Inspired By The Film ‘Eddie The Eagle’ (Universal album, 2016)

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I reviewed the soundtrack to the film Eddie The Eagle for This Is Not Retro. Fly features a who’s who of Eighties music, including everyone from Martyn Ware‘s Heaven 17to Paul Young, most of whom have recorded exclusives for the album.

Erasure‘s Andy Bell delivers the title track, while Nik Kershaw’s ‘The Sky’s The Limit’ (from his 2012 album Ei8ht) steals the show as perhaps the best song ever written about following your dreams. Kershaw said he wrote this song to his child to show that you really can be whatever you want, and as a father to two growing little girls, I can’t listen to this song without getting emotional.

My review can be found here. 

(c) 2016 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence 

Andy Bell – Torsten The Beautiful Libertine (Strike Force Entertainment / Cherry Red album, 2016)

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Erasure‘s Andy Bell has recorded the follow-up album to Torsten The Bareback Saint, written by Barney Ashton-Bullock with music by Christopher Frost. Bell performed the first chapter in the life of the colourful polysexual Torsten at the Edinburgh Festival in 2014 and will perform this next installment during March 2016 at Above The Stag in London’s Vauxhall.

I reviewed Torsten The Beautiful Libertine for This Is Not Retro. My review can be found here. Also on This Is Not Retro is my interview with Andy from last year and a review of the Variance remix collection.

(c) 2016 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Electronic Sound – Issue 18

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Electronic Sound Issue 18 is now available, with a major focus on fifty years of electronic music, and as ever its delivered with the magazine’s usual depth of focus.

For the latest issue I reviewed albums by Africaine 808 (a crazy musical gumbo drawing from a whole world of sonic soundclashes), Duke St Workshop (a truly terrifying setting of horror writing by HP Lovecraft to electronics), Deux Filles (the long-awaited return of Simon Fisher Turner and Colin Lloyd Tucker), Wild Style Lion (dirty electronics with contributions from Sonic Youth‘s Kim Gordon and Dinosaur Jr.‘s J Mascis) and an improv set from Klaus Filip and Leonel Kaplan for trumpet and sinewaves.

Also in the magazine is a short feature I wrote on the acid- and Salinger-influenced duo The Caulfield Beats, and the third of my 2015 interviews with Erasure‘s Andy Bell, where he explains three of his foremost influences. Prepare to be somewhat surprised by what Bell was inspired by. I know I was pretty taken back.

Electronic Sound is available at the iTunes App Store or at electronicsound.co.uk

(c) 2016 Mat Smith / Electronic Sound

Dinger – Sunsets Pink (Moulin Blanc download, 2011)

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ep // Sunsets Pink

le moulin blanc records | download | 11/03/2011

Sometimes iTunes has a wonderful way of completely justifying its existence and its impact on the music industry. The relative efficiency with which bands / artists without a record label can just get music out there for people to buy with a few clicks is part of its universal appeal, especially where releasing rare or hard to find material that would be costly to press up for a relatively small audience remains the preserve of the short-run musical underground – The Wire is filled with small-run releases on tiny labels, mostly on CD-R or cassette. iTunes therefore is perfectly suited to efficiently releasing out-of-print items, especially where they are heavily bootlegged.

Still, even with iTunes’ utilitarian dimension, I never expected to be able to download five tracks from Dinger, the duo of Andy Bell and Pierre Cope that existed before Bell’s fateful audition with Vince Clarke that led to the formation of Erasure; the duo’s moniker came from Bell’s nickname, presumably a play on his surname. Previously I’d only managed to download ‘I Love To Love’ and ‘Air Of Mystery’ from some dodgy Erasure fansites, and presumed that the two tracks (which I seem to recall formed the only official 7″ release by the band) were the only songs they recorded. So three additional tracks is a bit of a bonus.

The principal curiosity value of this EP is being able to hear a young Andy Bell making his first foray into the world of pop music, ahead of that audition, audio evidence of which has also come available thanks to the Erasure Information Service. It was often said, by Bell and others, that it took pretty much the whole of Wonderland before Andy found his ‘own’ voice, claiming that the voice he adopted as his ‘own’ was modelled on Alison Moyet‘s. On the strength of the tracks compiled on Sunsets Pink, I’m not so sure. It is different, certainly, but not unrecognisably so. If anything, Bell sounds like a cross between David Bowie, David Sylvian and the guy from Our Daughter’s Wedding that sang that ‘Lawn Chairs’ track, very melodramatic and engaging, especially on the slinky and dangerous ‘Air Of Mystery’. It’s very of it’s time, unlike the voice that brought Vince’s songs to life on Wonderland.

The point about sounding of its time is most enforced by the sound of Cope’s backing; the whole thing has a very 1984 / 85 vibe, particularly in the use of funky slap bass, a sound that hasn’t aged well. When used in a controlled manner it sounds sublime – ‘I Love To Love’ still sounds to me like an early, shimmering OMD cut, though the middle eight – with a slap bass solo – is a bit much. Erasure could have easily recorded this for Wonderland – the one note synth melodies are right up Vince’s street and I swear he has actually co-opted that descending hook since. ‘The China Song’ (about, er, going to China) sounds like an attempt to distill the sound of the (Expanded) Talking Heads of Remain In Light, and has that cute sense of awe that the early Eighties had for all things foreign and ‘exotic’ (and that presumably explains the palm trees and holiday sunset on the sleeve image). That same funk vibe propels ‘Kettle Of Fish’ whilst also referencing the stuttered S’Express beat that Bell’s future collaborator Pascal Gabriel would develop for ‘Theme From S’Express’.

‘Dance’ is a seedy number with a Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret feel, Bell imploring us to ‘dance, dance, dance‘ while far-off chatter and voices mutter away in the background. It’s the least straightforward pop song here, the most uncompromising, and probably my personal favourite, even if I did wish the low end of the beat was more prominent.

A single track download of ‘I Love To Love’ was released on iTunes on 4 March 2011.

‘Air Of Mystery’ and ‘I Love To Love’ were originally issued as a 7″ single by SRT / Face Value Records in 1985. a quick glance at Discogs suggests that getting your mits on an original of the single will set you back around GBP55.

  
download:
1. Kettle Of Fish
2. Dance
3. Air Of Mystery
4. I Love To Love
5. The China Song

Originally posted 2011; edited 2015

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Erasure – Snow Globe (Mute album, 2013)

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As its Christmas, I’ve found myself listening to Erasure‘s 2013 seasonal collection Snow Globe more than anything else over the last few weeks. I truly think it is one of the best Christmas albums ever made.

Here is the small review of the album that I wrote for Clash upon its release.

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

A Conversation With Erasure’s Andy Bell

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I recently spoke to Erasure‘s Andy Bell about his role in Barney Ashworth’s musical theatre show Torsten – The Bareback Saint. The show ran during the 2014 Edinburgh Festival and was accompanied by an album of the songs from the production, released via Strike Force / Cherry Red.

Upon the release of Variance, a collection of remixes and new versions of songs from the album, and ahead of Bell treading the boards again next year for the follow-up instalment, Torsten – The Beautiful Libertine, I interviewed Andy for This Is Not Retro. The conversation can be found here.

Anyone who knows me remotely well will know that Erasure have always been, and always will be, my favourite band. To get the opportunity to talk to someone whose work you’ve literally grown up with is always a privileged moment, and I am continually grateful for such chances.

I had always intended to write up a review of the performance of Torsten that a friend and I watched in Edinburgh last year, but never did. In its place, these are the rough notes I took at the time, along with a text message to a friend, all of which would have become a review if I’d just bothered to finish it.

Andy Bell – Torsten The Bareback Saint, Edinburgh 13 August 2014

In the introduction to the programme that accompanied Andy Bell’s first Edinburgh Festival show, he described taking on the role of Torsten in this song cycle as a challenge. As he climbed up the stairs to the small stage in full top hat and tails while singing the song ‘Teacher Teacher’ it was pretty obvious to the twenty or so people in the lecture theatre-cum-studio that this came pretty naturally to Bell.

‘It was really good. He came on in hat and tails, at one point was in heels, a vest and a sparkly pair of pants and ended up killing himself in a dressing gown. Very dramatic, quite funny, stirring and emotional. Boy can he sing! Only about twenty of us there.’ – text to a friend immediately after watching Torsten The Bareback Saint on 13 August 2014.

Suicide. Robin Williams.

Sax

Showgirl headgear.

Snarl. Disgust. Rage.

Weston-Super-Mare.

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence // interview (c) 2015 This Is Not Retro

Andy Bell – Non-Stop (Mute Records album, 2010)

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mute records | stumm316 | 07/06/2010

Electric Blue, Andy Bell‘s debut solo album, was a hedonistic club-friendly affair (mostly) that signalled a significant departure from his day job as one half of Erasure. Recorded with Manhattan Clique, who had remixed tracks from Erasure’s return to form Other People’s Songs and supported them on that album’s tour, the album saw Bell collaborating with Propaganda’s Claudia Brucken and head Scissor Sister Jake Shears. It felt like Bell was getting something out of his system, scratching an itch if you will, and the chances of a second solo album seemed slim; though undoubtedly a good album, Electric Blue was at times a little inconsistent.

This is not a charge that could be levied at Non-Stop, Bell’s second album. Recorded with Pascal Gabriel, still affectionately remembered as producer of the string of hits by S’Express (although I love him best as a member of Peach and producer of Inspiral Carpets‘ Revenge Of The Goldfish), Non-Stop is a much more focussed dancefloor affair. I haven’t kept up with dance music trends since about the mid-Nineties, so I’ve no idea what particular sub-genres this would fit into, but what I do know is that this is a 4/4-fest that operates about a million miles away from the electronic pop of Erasure.

Across ten tracks (eleven if you buy the non-physical version from iTunes), the pace only drops with the delicate slow-mo electro of ‘Slow Release’. The rest is a slew of quality, thudding upbeat dance tracks, including the low-key two singles – ‘Running Out’ and ‘Will You Be There?’ – released under the alias MiMó.

What’s perhaps quite unusual is that given the genre’s obsession with euphoric themes, Non-Stop is altogether quite dark; there are few overtly love-themed tracks here. Since I Say, I Say, I Say, Bell’s lyrics for Erasure have – in the main – focussed on the trials and tribulations of finding, being in and falling out of, love; unless you count the edgy hotel rendezvous with a cigar-smoking, moustachioed character on the track ‘Subject / Object’, the vibe is in places much more overtly sexual than Erasure would dare. ‘Touch’, with its buzzing synths, is possibly sinister, until Bell’s lyrics about not wanting to be a ‘loser‘ kick in (delivered in Bell’s best ‘Mockney’ accent).

Probably my favourite tracks here are the title track, with its deep bass loops and ‘Lost In Music’-meets-Kraftwerk wide-eyed absorption, and ‘Cosmic Climb’ – the iTunes-only bonus track – which is a straightahead, no holds barred, club track. The lyrics on the latter are the only set I can hear that align with Bell’s claim that he was going for pure throwaway on this album – the rest of the album’s lyrics are very clever actually. I’m also a fan of ‘DHDQ’ (‘Debbie Harry Drag Queen’) which is gleefully observant of certain niche areas of clubland’s eclectic nightlife; imagine a dance-music version of Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ hitched to a disco rocket and relocated from Downtown Manhattan to London’s Soho on a Friday night.

Much has been made of the frankly bizarre collaboration with Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell on ‘Honey If You Love Him (That’s All That Matters)’, and it’s a good track, just not up there with my personal favourites. Apparently Farrell, an avowed fan, suggested the collaboration and wrote the track; his contribution is certainly more significant than Shears’ almost absent contribution to Electric Blue.

Pre-orders of the CD album from Mute Bank came with a download of a Vince Clarke remix of ‘Non-Stop’; on recent mixes Vince has displayed a knowing ability to knock out sterling dance floor grooves, and his version of ‘Non-Stop’ is a perfectly minimal, sparse take on the more dense, robotic Pascal Gabriel version, with few of Clarke’s signature squiggles and sequences.

First published 2010; re-edited 2015

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence

Andy Bell – I’ll Never Fall In Love Again (Sanctuary single, 2005)

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sanctuary records | sanxs425 | 29/06/2005

If anyone can explain the lengthy gap between first single, ‘Crazy’ and this, I’d really appreciate that. Just when it looked like Sanctuary had resigned themselves to the fact that Electric Blue, despite carrying a decent suite of (mostly) dance-oriented tracks – of which ‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again’ is a strong example – was never going to shift in massive quantities outside of Andy Bell‘s Erasure fans, along came a second single.

‘I’ll Never Fall In Love Again’ is an excellent up-tempo number in its original guise which is given a more housey treatment by Goetz on his generally quite laissez faire single mix, but perhaps the biggest draw is an exclusive new track ‘Back Into The Old Routine’ which finds Andy softly celebrating the advent of autumn, although his pastoral lament for finding his usual place in the park does concern me that he’s referencing the sort of acts that some people get up to in such places. That aside, this gentle little song, with its soulful bridge and ‘Don’t Dance’-esque melody, is a fitting full stop to a good first solo album from Bell.

Two further mixes are available from various download sites, including iTunes – the Goetz Extended Mix, which is literally (and nothing more than) just that, and a remix by Mr Do which actually does try to do something slightly different by changing the melodies and augmenting the chorus with a tinkly refrain, but there is something not quite right about the way the vocals are mixed in, as if they were pasted in as an afterthought onto an existing track. In all, it’s worth getting the CD for the B-side, but the mixes are hardly essential.

First published 2005; re-edited 2015.

(c) 2015 Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence