Monday, October 18, 2010

Future Brain by Den Harrow

Den Harrow was an italo project that made an attempt to break out in the mainstream, English-speaking synthpop movement, although unsuccessfully. Although they had a string of hits in West Germany, Switzerland, Italy and other non-English speaking countries, they never found any success in the UK or the US.

Which was kinda ironic, because American born Tom Hooker was the uncredited vocalist and songwriter for much of Den Harrow's output. In a Milli Vanilli like move, they hired a non-singing model to lip synch the songs for "live" performances and video.

As an aside, Den Harrow was a pun, it was meant to sound like the Italian word for money, denaro, which is what the producers hoped to make by carefully crafting this image that they hoped would transcend the previously inaccessible English speaking market with a hired lip syncher. While they weren't successful in all of those ventures (although presumably they did make some money for their central European and Italian success), "Future Brain" is still a great song, and a great example of the musical scene in continental Europe during the mid-1980s.

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