Damned Don't Cry by Visage

Woah!  I almost forgot I had this blog!  After listening to a bunch of more modern synthpop and futurepop type stuff, I stumbled back into the arms of some of my older 80s music recently, though--right now I have in my car Book of Love's Book of Love, Anything Box's Peace, Pet Shop Boys' Actually and Erasure's Wonderland... and I intend to pack those away when I'm done and get a few more; the next Erasure CD (maybe I'll go through most of their 80s and 90s catalog, even, before I quit!), some Real Life, maybe some Alphaville, and maybe some other "junior" synthpop groups, like Seven Red Seven or Cause & Effect.  That's got me thinking historically about synthpop, which reminded me that I had a blog.

From my perspective, at least, synthpop has gone through four distinct (and fairly broad) stages since it's debut in the late 70s--not counting the very earliest years when it was still struggling to find a place.  Certainly by the time The Human League released Dare in 1981, synthpop was mainstream successful (at least in Britain, with a slightly more subdued yet comparable reaction in America.  In some other markets--notably Germany--it was even more mainstream successful.)  Despite that, synthpop remained a somewhat "fringe" element of mainstream music; more influencing it than cranking out hit after hit in it's own right.  In the US, we didn't yet use the label synthpop; I called this stuff New Wave and had to then qualify it as "synthesizer New Wave" to distinguish it from other proto-Alternative groups, like The Church, or The Alarm or REM, or pre-Joshua Tree U2, or whatever--which were also lumped into New Wave.  This first phase--emergence--is characterized by steadily growing popularity and mainstreamization of synthpop type sounds and conventions, as well as a steadily higher peaking chart positions, and gradually more and more bands operating in the arena.  However, it was still dominated by a mere handful of guys who were the "elder statesmen" if you will of synthpop--Depeche Mode, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, OMD, etc.  Near the end of the Emergence phase, a number of smaller "copy-cat" bands started putting out stuff too, to slightly lesser acclaim, but which had modest commercial success--guys like Anything Box, T-4-2, Cause & Effect, Seven Red Seven, Red Flag, Camouflage, etc.

Following the "synthpop crash" of the early 90s, major labels dropped most of their synthpop bands, with the exception of the very top tier folks--who even then saw a massive down-surge in popularity and sales.  This is the period I call underground--a nascent Internet connected a few distributors like A Different Drum, who managed to gather synthpop from independent labels around the world, as well as release a few items itself as a label.  In this phase, the so-called "elder statesmen" of the past either chugged along or released items that abandoned their synthpop sound.  For a little while, some of the lower tier guys from the past became "elder statesmen" of this phase.  By and large, the scene was very indie, fairly underground, online, and dominated by a handful of labels and their output.  In the US in particular, A Different Drum as a label (not to mention as a store/distribution point) was an important leader, and whatever A Different Drum released was bound to get plenty of attention. 

Some new rising stars from this era include De/Vision, Mesh, Iris, Cosmicity, and more.  Eventually, as the Internet became itself more mainstream, and digital music distribution became more commonplace, synthpop emerged a bit from this underground obscurity and entered two new phases--which kind of overlap with each other.  First, there's increasing diversification and independence of the modern synthpop scene.  As it merges with other electronic genres, producing narrowly defined subgenres like futurepop (which later migrates into an even more synthpop like sound over time), electroclash, and more, a number of bands come to surprising prominence, and they are mostly new bands, unrelated to the earlier phases.  There also comes to be a great proliferation of bands; right now (since this phase is still ongoing) we are really spoiled for choice when it comes to synthpop.  There are tons of new guys to discover, and there's no longer any need to really dig back into 80s back catalogs to find nifty stuff to listen to.

Not that you wouldn't want to anyway for other reasons--but  you don't have to.  The other interesting phase that's also going on right now is the curious mainstream faddishness of overtly retro synthpop.  Artists like Little Boots, La Roux, Owl City, Hurts, The Presets, and even Lady freakin' Gaga are all putting out mainstream hits that are quite clearly synthpop.

Wherever it goes from here, it seems unlikely that another descent into underground obscurity seems eminent.  The mainstream faddishness may indeed prove to be a short-lived fad (or it may not; in many ways, synthpop sensibilities have so thoroughly infused pop music overall that at least one reviewer has claimed that it's already "won" and taken over the world permanently) but the very diverse and thriving not-quite-mainstream scene seems unlikely to go away soon.

But even so, there's a recognition amongst many of these artists that they're building on the groundwork laid in the 80s by synthpop pioneers, and it's not unusual for many of them to do cover versions (sometimes only live, as a tribute to the fans) of 80s synthpop favorites.  Just recently, in fact, I picked up some Mark Oh' and The Flash remakes of some Visage classics (actually, I've had their "Fade to Grey" covers for some time, but I just got "The Damned Don't Cry."  Vocals by Marcus Fellechner of Rename.)  And while it's a really pretty cool cover, the original is still... well, it's the original.  One of my favorite 80s synthpop songs of all time, in fact.  It's haunting, melodic, and danceable; it's got everything you want a good synthpop song to do.

Starsign by Apoptygma Berzerk

Back in this post, I gave a history of sorts of the futurepop movement, and cited a number of artists who operated in that sphere.  I haven't, however, revisted them, which is a shame.  The albums that most got me into the futurepop scene were VNV Nation's Praise the Fallen and Apoptygma Berzerk's Welcome to Earth and The Apocalyptic Manifesto (although that's a compilation of older stuff that sounds a bit more traditional Front 242 style EBM, frankly.)

For today, here's "Starsign" by APB.

Gapul remixes (italo disco)

Because I've been listening to them in the car lately, I've had italo disco on my mind for a while now.  The history of italo disco is somewhat unusual.  For the uninitiated, here's a brief capsule review:

Everyone's familiar with disco, of course.  Disco was a big hit in the 70s, and a bit into the 80s throughout most of western culture.  However, in the US and to a slightly lesser extent in the UK, there was a major backlash against disco, and it came to be viewed very negatively by about 1980 or so, including Bee Gees record burning sessions, and all kinds of other promotional events, including the infamous "day that disco died" when nearly a hundred thousand disco anti-fans showed up at "Disco Demolition Night" in Chicago.

Of course, disco didn't die in much of Europe; in fact, it continued to evolve into numerous forms.  Importantly, it lost much of its funk patina, and became a much more recognizably European, dance music form of music.  Although I used to take umbrage, during my pretentious younger years, at hearing music critics of the time refer to songs by Depeche Mode or Yaz as "disco" songs, quite frankly, that's pretty much what they were.  Disco evolved into electronic dance music, gradually.

As part of this evolution of disco into more modern forms of music, such as Eurodance, came the sideline called italo disco.  Italo disco wasn't necessarily all that different from other forms of disco in the early 80s, and its genesis was specifically rather prosaic and even banal rather than artistic.  Specifically, the exchange rate between the US dollar and the Italian lira made importing of American music very expensive, and sales plummeted, even though demand remained strong for new music.  Local record companies met this demand by having local DJs, producers and other not-quite musicians whip up quick and dirty dance tracks.  Many of these artists were disposable (Den Harrow was actually a model who lipped synced in videos, while three different vocalists actually sang and many artists produced a remarkable variety of tracks under several names.)  In fact, italo disco became, in a sense, like punk for electronic music--the first "garage band" type of electronic music that was made quick, cheap, and by anyone with a drum machine and a synthesizer.

The vocals were treated more like a another instrument--lyrics were usually in English, but the grammar was often atrocious, the lyrics frequently nonsensical, and they were sung in such a strong accent that you couldn't be sure what they were saying anyway.  This quick and dirty Italian music, made primarily in the north (curiously, it was often difficult to find in southern Italy) was originally referred to as spaghetti dance, but when German music label ZYX started importing the music as compilations, they coined the term italo disco, and popularized it throughout central and eastern Europe, as well as much of the Spanish speaking world.

Shortly after ZYX starting bringing it to the rest of Europe, "italo" disco started being made by plenty of non-Italians--Sandy Marton was a Croatian, Fancy was German, Desireless was French, Bad Boys Blue were multinational (but mostly British) who formed in Germany, Sandra was German (with a French mother, and she lived on the French border--and relocated to Ibiza anyway), Baltimora was mostly Italian, but had an Irish frontman, and Taffy and Laura Branigan were American.  For instance.  Arguably, some of them aren't really italo disco, but on the other hand, how can you really tell?  I've never seen that anyone's been rigorous about insisting that their italo disco artists all be Italians.  Although curiously, if you don't, then you also run into other problems, i.e., how do you distinguish italo disco from some early Hi-NRG stuff, and other genres that sounded exactly like it?  Other than arguably better lyrics (and certainly better pronunciation of them) how is the majority of the Bobby O output really different than italo disco, for instance?  Laura Branigan isn't often thought of as an italo disco artist, but c'mon--she mostly sang songs that italo disco artists had written; in fact, her hit single "Self Control" was out literally at the same time as genuine italo disco artist (and songwriter) Raf's version of it was also in the charts--although her version "won" the chart wars everywhere except in Italy.  Stuff like Koto could as easily be called space disco (another somewhat obscure genre that actually predated italo disco by a few years) as italo disco, and what do you call stuff like Trans X who actually were native English speakers from Canada?  Although not really considered italo disco proper, that kind of music is also strongly associated with it, and most of the internet radio stations I've seen that play italo disco also play Hi-NRG (as per their mandate) and several other closely related and sonically kind of indistinguishable other genres without bias.  So clearly the exact boundaries of the subgenre are a bit vague.

For me, I consider italo disco to largely be made up of the guys--and their closely related label-mates and whatnot--that I first heard on the Gapul releases in Argentina.  Gapul was also a mixer, and much of what he (she? they?) did was "megamixing"--longish songs made up of portions of italo disco (and occasionally Hi-NRG) tracks.  Apparently, italo disco enjoyed some mainstream success in Argentina and Brazil and elsewhere in the Latin world, although by the time I heard it there, it was already kind of old news.  I picked up a few megamix compilations that had blatantly obviously gratuitously scantily clad women on the covers and often mangled song and artist crediting, which only made my tracking down of the actual songs a bit more difficult to do.  But at the same time, it gave me a strong corpus of songs, at least snippets of which I had heard, that I could track down, and then spread out from there.

Here's Side A of "Lo Mejor de Gapul II"--"The Best of Gapul II."  If you like, I can identify any of the tracks on this megamix properly--although I was only ever marginally interested in "Spaghetti" and I never liked anything Spagna did at all.

We'll Be Together by Sandra

I've said many times that we had an unusual lack of exposure to some European megahits in the US, and the career of German-French artist Sandra is clear evidence of that.  Billed as the European Madonna, Sandra had an impressive string of hits, including nearly two dozen charting singles, and half a dozen charting albums.  However, US success eluded her (or she never pursued it, I'm not sure) and her only brush with fame here is when her husband and producer, Michael Cretu, had her on vocals for the massively successful Enigma single "Sadeness (Part I)"--the Gregorian/techno dreamy single that refers to the Marquis de Sade in Latin and French lyrics.

However, for American audiences looking for some pretty smart electronic 80s pop songs that they missed in the 80s, Sandra's discography is loaded with material to be mined.  From 1985's "(I'll Never Be) Maria Magdalena" to 1992's "Johnny Wanna Live" when Sandra took a hiatus to raise her twin boys (a move from which her career never recovered, despite several attempted come-backs) there's plenty of great songs to discover.  My favorite, though, is "We'll Be Together"--one of the few in which Sandra herself shares co-writing credit.  Here, check it out:

Guardian Angel by Alphaville

I only have one Alphaville song on this blog, and the video I linked is now gone.  So, you can't listen to any Alphaville!  That's not right.

The prior post I made was for "Forever Young", their major claim to fame.  Perhaps a too easy choice.  I've actually got quite a bit of Alphaville material, and I think a lot of it is really good.  Some of it is, in fact, quite a bit better than "Forever Young" which suffers a bit from over-exposure.

Alphaville is one of those bands that continued on after the "synthpop crash" of the early 90s.  Although they were never big hitsters to begin with, their incarnation during the 90s was marked by being even further underground.  I bought a German import in about 1997 of Salvation.  It was, about three or four years later, released domestically for less money and with bonus tracks.  Grr.

Anyway, an interesting thing about Alphaville, or at least that album, is that the more "old fashioned" songs, including especially "Guardian Angel" and "Control" are quite a bit better than the more "modern" sounding ones, like "Monkey in the Moon" or "Wishful Thinking" work, but not as well.  In general, Salvation is considered a back to roots album, but relative to what, exactly, I wonder (since I never picked up Breathtaking Blue or Prostitute; the albums that came out between Afternoons in Utopia and Salvation.  To me, most of the album feels more then-current techno/club focused rather than back-to-roots synthpop.)

Perfect Girl by the Ultrasonics

I just discovered this group not long ago, and downloaded their debut album from Amazon. It only has 10 songs, and the average song length is less than 3 minutes, meaning that the entire album is just under half an hour. This is a remix of what I believe to be the best song on the album. Parralox, who I blogged about last time, remixed it also, and quite nicely. This one is a more "friendly" length, though.

Don't know much about the Ultrasonics themselves--their website and facebook and myspace pages are all pretty slight on personal information. I'm not even entirely sure who's in the group other than the lead singer, naturally.

Isn't It Strange by Parralox

Well, I just discovered Parralox and I have to share the love.

I didn't literally just discover them, of course. Heck, I bought the mp3 of "Sharper Than a Knife" way back almost exactly two years ago (and even then it wasn't exactly brand new either; it'd been out for the better part of a year.) But for whatever reason, even though I absolutely love that song, I didn't further explore Parralox until just recently, when I acquired their first three albums, Electricity, State of Decay and Metropolis. There's actually a fourth album that came out last February, but it's only about half new and the other half is remixes, so I'm not sure that it really counts.

Parralox is a new band; their debut stuff only came out in 2008, but it's really good stuff. There's a fair bit of retro-80s feel to some of their stuff, mixed with some very advanced and sophisticated newer electronic music influences. They've got a great vocalist. Heck; I told my wife the other day that Parralox, in very general terms at least, is sorta like what Lady Gaga would be like if Lady Gaga concentrated more on developing her talent instead of trying to shock us all the time to get us to pay attention to her. Maybe that's not actually true, but it's close enough. Parralox have also, apparently, gotten into the remixing business, which is interesting, because that's something that you're usually only invited to do if you're musicality as instrument players and producers has really impressed the biz.

My favorite Parralox song is... still... probably "Sharper Than A Knife" but I've got a lot more that are working their way up through the ranks as I get to know them better. "I Heart U" is a great one too that I would have included on this update if I could have found a youtube or dailymotion video of it, but I couldn't and I didn't want to whip one up myself. I included "Isn't It Strange" from their State of Decay CD. Lots of others were contenders, though--as I discover more and more of how deep their work is (surprisingly quite a lot considering their recent vintage; these guys are pretty productive).