Equal parts Twin Peaks and Jesus and Mary Chain. Exactly the kind of hissy, sludgy, recorded-from-another-room, shoegaze crap that I’m totally in the mood for right now. “Candy Girl” and two more tracks of the same ilk are up on their Myspace page.
[ thx to T.V. / via Seven Noises ]
Check those lucite guitars and Orange amps! Curved Air’s “Back Street Luv,” from their aptly titled second album, Second Album, hit number four on UK charts in August of 1971. The vocals on the album version have a groovy stereo effect going for them, though the rest of the LP is a bit middling. However, definitely scope the punchy, propulsive “Everdance.” I’d bet $10 that Stereolab has jonesed on it pretty hard at some point.
Curved Air - Second Album (1971)
01. Young Mother
02. Back Street Luv
03. Jumbo
04. You Know
05. Puppets
06. Everdance
07. Bright Summer’s Day ‘68
08. Piece of Mind
[album via Rock Revolt]
On the Jools Holland hosted show The Tube, UK DJ Greg Wilson shows off his wheels of steel, complete with tape effects (!), with a bit of simple mixing of David Joseph’s “You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me).”
Joseph’s classic single hails from his boogie-drenched album The Joys of Life:
David Joseph - The Joys of Life (1983)
01. No Time to Waste
02. Joys of Life
03. Guiding Star
04. Baby Won’t You Take My Love
05. You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me)
06. Dreaming
07. Be a Star
08. I’m so in Love
09. Do You Feel My Love Now Baby
10. Discover (Bonus)
11. You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me) (Extended)
[album via Edufunky]
Broadcast on BBC Four this past October, Synth Britannia gives a decent, straightforward overview of the emergence of synthesizers in popular British music in the late 70s/early 80s. Time has been rather kind to most of the musicians interviewed, including Phil Oakey, John Foxx, Gary Numan, Andrew McCluskey, Martin Gore, Vince Clarke, etc, and most seem like pretty ok guys who very much believed in the direction they were taking music. Nobody interviewed, however, seemed to be able to pronounce “Moog” correctly … but I digress.
Worth a watch if you’ve ever gotten all dreamy eyed while thinking about the Mute Records catalog, or, alternately, if you’re into peeking at sexy close ups of Fairlight CMIs and B roll of London streets.
Synth Britannia - 90 minutes:
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 / Part 5 / Part 6 / Part 7 / Part 8 / Part 9
