Examples of "Proto-Rave" / "Post-Post Punk"

I, like probably a few people here, are of the generation of dorks who was inspired by two major music books, both by Simon Reynolds, namely Rip It Up And Start Again and Energy Flash.

Rip It Up set out the map for a "lost era" of music from around 1978-1987 and made a serious case for post-punk and new wave as dominant forces in pop music.

Meanwhile Energy Flash, written beforehand, picks up where Rip It Up leaves off, covering the various rave and dance scenes that burgeoned from the mid-80s and onwards to current times.

But I've been thinking recently about examples of an "in between" phase here. I keep stumbling on examples of music that straddled post punk and rave, and could arguably be called "proto-rave", or something similar.

Obvious examples come out of black and US electronic music - 'Cybotron', 'Hip Hop Bee Bop (Don't Stop)', 'Acid Trax' - electro and early house/techno/acid tunes that are the clear forebears of what would come to be cemented as rave.

But here I want to focus on examples where punks (or post-punks) started dabbling with electronic dance and rave sounds.

One example is 'Electrica Salsa' by OFF from 1986, a strange industrial-dance tune with all the trappings of early European trance, produced by a young Sven Väth and an Italian production duo who would go on to form the immensely popular Eurodance outfit Snap! While Väth was never exactly a punk, and had been visiting Ibiza since 1980, there's still something gritty and industrial-sounding about this record - it could as easily have been played in a goth club as it could at a New York disco.

I've also been thinking about 'Everything Starts With An E' by Ezee Posse from 1990 - a thrilling ode to ecstasy culture that quotes from a TV Theme of Robinson Crusoe and features an exceptional vocal from London 'toaster' MC Kinky. The track was co-written by Jeremy Healy, who went on to be a celebrated DJ producer throughout the nineties. But in the eighties, he was a member of the short-lived but influential art-pop band Haysi Fantasee, whose B-side 'Sabres of Paradise' spawned an Andrew Weatherall project, but were also part of the new romantic subculture known as the Blitz Kids, who also included Boy George. I quite like this tenuous lost connection between Culture Club (a favourite of my dad when I was a small child), Ezee Posse (who appeared on the first Now compilation I ever bought as a 9 year old) and Two Lone Swordsmen (a favourite of me throughout my twenties), and it's interesting to see this throughline.

Then of course you've got bands like The Shamen, Primal Scream, Pop Will Eat Itself, Soup Dragons - British bands who started out as very much meat'n'potatoes rock but drifted towards electronic music towards the end of the 80s and in many cases abandoned guitars altogether.

I feel like Underworld and Utah Saints also fit in here somewhere too. Maybe Apollo440 and Senser sort of fit in here, even though they're firmly in the 90s.

Obvs, this is all hypothetical, headcanon stuff. YMMV when it comes to how this all fits into your worldview. But any other good examples of punks who went rave, or better still, music that falls between those cracks entirely?

Like Genesis P-Orridge and acid house?

Lots of post punk electronic music had a "dance" element. I don't know if that's what you mean though.

a good link here is maybe the Chakk/FON Studio/House Arrest by Krush/Warp Records story.

Martin Glover/Youth is the first person that springs to mind, very much with deep punk/post-punk roots. He's made a mess of stuff over the decades, although his interests were perhaps more dub-leaning with a dose of psychedelia, but he was 'Blue Pearl' though, which got pretty far up the charts with 'Naked In The Rain.'

I feel like if you invoke bands like Senser though, then you're leaning into festy music which is a whole other tangled world.

whole love a nice 2, or 3, cd set compiling Boy Georges vanity label, More Protein, stuff incl. Ezee Posse

He doesn't quite fit into either the post-punk or proto-rave categories, but I think Mick Harris deserves a mention here.

I have zero expertise here but I'm interested to follow along.

But here I want to focus on examples where punks (or post-punks) started dabbling with electronic dance and rave sounds.

kris needs : post-punk era journo who then became part of the acid house scene, and formed secret knowledge.

looks like richard 'the grid' norris, was a bit of an old punker before he ended up doing the rave excess .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Norris_(musician)

Arthur Baker mid-80s remixes have something to do with this, right?

how does this differ in you mind to the stuff on the New York Noise and No Wave compilations from Soul Jazz? Are you just interested in music made by people who were active in the late 70s making mostly guitar music who then made music with keyboards and samplers in the 80s?

This Heat 24 Track Loop

cab voltaire -> sweet exorcist

Martyn Young went from The Bollock Brothers to Colourbox to M|A|R|R|S

He also did the Afro Acid remix of Mory Kante's Yeke Yeke

Pump Up The Volume is literally a collaboration between two 4AD groups.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1VP_xTKdLg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo8is1XSTSc

Martyn Young went from The Bollock Brothers to Colourbox to M|A|R|R|S

wow! i never knew he was in The Bollock Brothers.

i think FON as mentioned above (Rob Gordon should get a mention), and Richard H Kirk are great examples.

The Shamen, Primal Scream, Pop Will Eat Itself, Soup Dragons

apart from PWEI, these all had their damascene moment due to rave / acid house. PWEI were early sampler adopters and of course worked with FON extensively.

i guess deciding when 'rave' began is kind of crucial. 'raves' really started in 87/88 so both acid trax and ezee posse could be construed as rave really, or do you meant later eg 1990 on? that reminds me, i must tell my disgusting mc kinky story some day!

i was about to post dancing ghosts too but sleeve got there first!

anyway, here's an example of some proto belgian rave and the origin of that T99 massive choir rave stab -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVBl92hoq7k

ok, i know its a cliche re my historical postings,
but if we are doing the whole pwei thing re dance groove discovery.
and given clint/graham dropped clues on the first pwei album.
from c86 to this release in 1987 was a very short journey ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfM1t_b9CUc

wow! i never knew he was in The Bollock Brothers.

he allegedly plays synths on 'Drac's Back' and also on 'The Prince & The Showgirl'. possibly him on this clip here...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnKUeiqOUVM

could be!

Ok, let's expand on this, sure this will be basic stuff to some here, but may be news to others.

a good link here is maybe the Chakk/FON Studio/House Arrest by Krush/Warp Records story.

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Wednesday, April 26, 2023 12:18 PM (nine hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Chakk were a Sheffield band at the tail end of the post-punk/industrial/funk thing in the early 80s, they only really had one single that did anything, Out Of The Flesh from 1984, and it didn't really do much, though it is good.

Chakk - Out Of The Flesh (Mix 1)

MCA signed them and gave them an advance, which they then spent on building a studio in Sheffield instead of recording an LP. A couple of years later they had some music recorded but none of it was very commercial and MCA soon cut their losses. This is one of the few things they put out, I think it's excellent but it's still more post-punk/industrial/funk than it is "rave"

Chakk - Take Your Time

The band officially split after they were dropped by MCA in 1986 but the studio they'd built was much more important. It was called FON ("Fuck Off Nazis") and was run by the band and their manager Amrik Rai. Mark Brydon from Chakk* had by this time started working with Rob Gordon, and one of their projects was a production team called Krush, who had this surprise hit with House Arrest at the end of 1987, I don't think it's the first big house hit in the UK, but it's one of them at least.

Krush - House Arrest

There weren't really any more hits coming out of FON, but they did loads of production work in 88 and 89, they were called in to produce most of the first Yazz LP for example, she'd had a hit with The Only Way Is Up but this single is obviously a house record with added Yazz.

Yazz - Where Has All The Love Gone?

And please excuse the self-indulgence, but here is a song by Pulp produced at FON in 89, bear in mind this is a weird gothy slavic-themed indie band on Fire Records, and spin forward to 3:20 on this track!

Pulp - Death Goes To The Disco

So anyway, Amrik Rai was also running the FON record shop, and working there were Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell. Together with Rob Gordon they decided to launch a record label, and they put out a record by Rob Gordon and two other FON employees as their first release, which became a very important record in the history of Uk techno.

Forgemasters - Track With No Name

The record label was of course Warp, and you know what happened there.

*Mark is probably best known now as one half of Moloko

simon topping from a certain ratio was involved in this early acid house monster as part of t-coy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntfsxi0oQUM

always loved how vini reilly responded to house music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03BoQ8IKgiU

Gabi Delgado of DAF made lots of great acid house era tracks under multiple pseudonyms.

very advanced house music -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoOyFCTDmIo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17CkzZ2oQwM

more manchester business: biting tongues started out in about 1981 as a kind of a punk-funk experimental jazz thing, but by the late 80s their guitar player graham massey had ditched that instrument and was neck-deep in house music as part of 808 State. this tune's from 1989 and i think really shows the sound of the two worlds colliding:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMMKrqt89EM
Biting Tongues - Love Out (Brainwash Mix)

agree re the excellent detailed re FON history.

however, one small aspect that massively helped re their £££ :

https://www.discogs.com/master/134375-Age-Of-Chance-Kiss

sorry for being a pain re them, but the ££ frpom this release really helped in regards to the FON studios/warp etc ..

sorry yes, should have included that too. for people who seemed chronically unable to put out finished versions of their own music they were very busy.

Biting Tongues - Love Out (Brainwash Mix)

all time fave. hugely underrated.

thanks for posting those gabi tracks stirmonster! hadn't heard either of those before. you reminded me too that i have robert gorl's 'copycat' album here somewhere, one that i always found impossible to listen to but maybe now's the time to pull it out again?

I have that purple book about the history of bleep techno that is probably relevant here, I think someone around here may have penned the intro? ;-)

this one's a bit of a wacky one and not especially good but kind of endearing all the same - it's an alias of the mid-to-late 80s uk industrial funk band Slab!, whose members went on to be in a whole bunch of noisy things like God and Mass and Ice...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfdZ8BTSsDs
Taz Dee & The Acid MCs - Up And At Om

i know of 2 such books : one by matt anniss and the other by joe muggs ..
i provided detail for matt re one experience in leeds in downbeat re when unique 3 came to downbeat in leeds and dropped their newly cut dubplate 12" of 'the theme' and rewound the track 3 times while the place when wild.
was quite the experience to say the least ..

yep the anniss book! very cool, mark!

i was a weird loner indie kid who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
i often went to downbeat cos i knew the AOC/Nightmares on Wax crew, and the main man who was in charge : 'DJ Fat Mark'.
there was one time i turned up at the door and was refused entry cos i was white, and the doorman said it would not be safe for me.
then dj fat mark arrived and told the doorman to let me in.
weird times.
so, yeah, one time i was there, NOW were doing their thing when this crew walked in with a box of 12".
they went to the to DJ booth and the next thing : 'the theme'.
dancefloor went absolutely insane.
track got rewound and replayed, rewound and replayed.
the crew were selling their 12" out of the box.
i now realise i should have grabbed a copy.
still was quite the experience.

This is *exactly* my sort of thread but I'm too busy to be able to focus on it rn :(

Then of course you've got bands like The Shamen, Primal Scream, Pop Will Eat Itself, Soup Dragons - British bands who started out as very much meat'n'potatoes rock but drifted towards electronic music towards the end of the 80s and in many cases abandoned guitars altogether.

I feel like Underworld and Utah Saints also fit in here somewhere too. Maybe Apollo440 and Senser sort of fit in here, even though they're firmly in the 90s.

What I will say is the latter three bands - more a development of what I call (to borrow Age of Chance's term) crush collision, as opposed to baggy/madchester - definitely, increasingly operated (in my mind) in that 90s category of almost purely electronic groups with an ineffable rock taste and, more pertinently, live shows where they transformed into bands, probably with guitars and everything. Lionrock and the Aloof would be other examples. Bridging Age of Chance/PWEI and so on with Lo-Fidelity Allstars/Campbag Velocet/Space Monkeys/skunk rock.

The other ingredient there would be crusty followings. Senser are major culprits themselves, but so would be Dreadzone, Back to the Planet, Eat Static.

It's startling to me how Apollo 440 really flaunted their 'band' nature - early magazine features emphasise it, videos likewise - having minor hits with Shamen-ish cuts like Astral America and (Don't Fear) the Reaper. Come 1996 and this is more or less binned - 'Krupa', 'Ain't Talkin' Bout Dub' etc betray no obvious signs of being by a 'group'.

(Ofc Howard Gray produced AoC, which was what really allowed him to come out of his sell with samplers and electronics for the first time, so it all fits.)

Dr Calculus' Designer Beatnik is a quite distinctive filled blank between indie/post-punk and rave. Because that's Roger Freeman representing the punk-funk pedigree and Stephen Duffy the rarer pin-up journeyman one.

This and the follow-up are amazing comps cf
https://www.discogs.com/release/3207755-Various-Fac-Dance-Factory-Records-12-Mixes-Rarities-1980-1987

Nation 12

John Foxx / Tim Simenon collab from 1990

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H3p-RjPyIo

Dr Calculus' Designer Beatnik is a quite distinctive filled blank between indie/post-punk and rave.

such a wonderfully mad and brilliant album.
i still listen to it regularly.

another entrant : derek thompson.
started off as SPK, then joined the cure, but then formed sample/beats crew hoodlum priest.

From my viewpoint, the Punks -> Rave link runs primarily through EBM and New Beat. The likes of DAF and Front 242 were 100% punks, and the scenes they spawned in Belgium and Germany (Techno Club, Dorian Gray, with the "second gen" EBM guys like Talla 2xlc, Sven Väth, Torsten Fenslau etc) were all steeped in the dystopian (post-)punk/DIY ethos and fashion. Playing 45 rpm EBM singles at 33 rpm created New Beat and its massive popularity fed that 100 bpm tempo back to all EBM. The TB303 very quickly got integrated, only a year or so after it was first used in the US acid house records.

In the end, the faster and brighter techno/rave revolution felt like daylight into the dungeon, all that slow hollow-eyed dystopian stomp was gone almost instantly. What was left of EBM (the 303, the minor-key arpeggiator melodies and pads) got fused with detroit-style techno to create Trance in 1991-1992 (you can hear that in transitional tracks like The Overlords - Sundown (Babymix) and Abfahrt - Alone).

Interesting listening material is the three The Sound Of Belgium (TSOB) comps (& the documentary) and the various German comps like Welcome To The Technodrome and Technopolis from 1988-1990, it really illustrates the EBM -> Techno shift.

Is there a reason why Liaisons Dangereuses haven’t been mentioned? “Los Ninos del Parque” is absolutely a punk track but also very much a techno track. Hell there are definitely people slamdancing in some of the popular live vids of the track, like my favorite here

Also wonder about all the synth-punk stuff Pink Section, Cold Dogs, German Shepherds, The Units, the whole west coast wave.

Good article here: https://www.electronicbeats.net/frankfurt-diy-history/

I always find it funny that two members of Bigod 20 ended up founding microhouse label Perlon.

Some lovely responses here. So little I know about. So little of it on Spotify too.

I've started throwing what I could find into a playlist in case it interests anyone:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7zRSdNpuj3z3WxoCUeD9FR?si=28969ec3a82f48b7

feel like you might strike some gold in this comp that came out a few years ago.

https://shop.mentalgroove.ch/album/dj-athome-presents-spaced-out

it's a top comp and i wish there was a vol 2 but it's more hippies / free festival freaks, no?

First three discs of this seem relevant https://www.discogs.com/master/141105-Various-The-History-Of-The-House-Sound-Of-Chicago

I don’t know if there’s any post punk lineage on that set apart from maybe kissing the pink or telex

man do I love that dj international disc 3, though

ta siegbran for the new beat reminder.
i totally agree with the points you raise.
also, you reminded me i have this comp in the archive, and have only just now found out that several tracks on this were made by biosphere in a previous guise.

i still love the gruesome twosome track.
for a few years samy was in regular contact with me, and once sent me some brilliant cd-rs of minimal compact remixes.

https://www.discogs.com/release/618831-Various-The-New-Beat-rEvolution-SSR-Compilation-1

and have just checked, one of the remixes is by thread participant stirmonster ..

actually it's not! that caused confusion for years. :)

i do appear in that sound of belgium doc though.

Liaisons Dangereuses were MASSIVE among the first wave of Detroit Techno visionaries. "Peut Etre Pas" in particular.

actually it's not! that caused confusion for years. :)

i do appear in that sound of belgium doc though.

Liaisons Dangereuses were MASSIVE among the first wave of Detroit Techno visionaries. "Peut Etre Pas" in particular.

bugger, sorry stirmonster.
have just clicked through on the discogs listing to find out the truth.

no need to apologise. easy to be confused, which is why the other one kindly opted for a name change.

I don’t know if there’s any post punk lineage on that set apart from maybe kissing the pink or telex

Matt Black of Coldcut was in a post-punk band called the Jazz Insects... hold on, with Mark Sinker!???!!

Two Men a Drum Machine and a Trumpet was David Steele and Andy Cox from the Beat/Fine Young Cannibals.

MARRS was AR Kane and Colourbox... and on 4AD.

Paul Rutherford is, er, Paul Rutherford.

Liaisons Dangereuses were MASSIVE among the first wave of Detroit Techno visionaries. "Peut Etre Pas" in particular.

chicago too - i heard glenn underground play that tune on the radio once and say that ron hardy used to torture people with long edits of it at the music box

Pete Shelley was making funky electronic jams throughout the 80s but this is what he was up to in 1986:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgalioM-cw0

Billy Mackenzie put out an album of gorgeous downtempo housey stuff with production by Moritz von Oswald and Orb-collaborator Thomas Fehlmann (and let's not forget that they were both in NDW avant-weirdos Palais Schaumberg):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVz_utTeg60
Billy Mackenzie - Colours Will Come

And talking about the Associates, I was dicking about on discogs the other day and found this great proto-vaporwave ambient synth tune by Leslie Grantham(!!!) that Alan Rankine produced

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKjuZYuxkT0
Leslie Grantham – Winners and Losers

£25 quid for a Leslie Grantham 7" and I'm so fucking tempted

that is a bit off-topic though so apologies and all that

!!!

Maybe that rumoured Hiroshi Yoshimura & Dirty Den collab will finally surface one of these days.

just realised it sounds a lot like Gigi Masin but maybe with a slightly sinister edge

talking of weird tv celeb records, did you ever hear this wayne sleep one stirmonster? some dark cold wave shit for real

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf3l2hYtjCw

^ even more OT

I had only ever heard the other side before, which is ok, but this side is great! i'd love to know the backstory to it coming about.

yeah me too! was so close to tweeting him about it. he sounds completely off his biscuit though so god knows how much he'd remember

I feel like some of the On-U Sound stuff might fit in here? In my mind it’s a label that inhabited a space in the time between post punk and rave. Tackhead and Clail maybe, possibly others?

yeah and Test Dept as well, now that I think abt it, even more clearly as they themselves followed the general trajectory

1986:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ypw3uZlk20Q

1990:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiCo2rlLvxw

I feel like some of the On-U Sound stuff might fit in here? In my mind it’s a label that inhabited a space in the time between post punk and rave. Tackhead and Clail maybe, possibly others?

― Position Position,

100%

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soefk8z_2AU

I feel like some of the On-U Sound stuff might fit in here? In my mind it’s a label that inhabited a space in the time between post punk and rave. Tackhead and Clail maybe, possibly others?

i think On-U Sound came close but ultimately failed to inhabit that space, despite a few Gary Clail hits. Pre-Rave, On-U Soundsystem gigs, mainly hosted by Clail were pretty big events (at least around my way) drawing 500 - 1000 people a few times a year. When Rave properly hit in 90/91 it pretty much klled off these gigs as that audience moved en masse to attending different kinds of club nights. i was a huge ON-U acolyte but my attention definitely wandered around '91.

est Dept. did embrace it and played at some raves (and put some on themselves too) but were not altogether successful at making that transformation. This is pretty weak -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj4ENcfsUlc

feel like Esplendor Geometrico and Muslimgauze also relate to this whole trajectory/evolution in sound

Muslimgauze track he had said he made in 1985!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hg0PWLAKuuk

Of all the old industrialists who embraced the Rave, i think Greater Than One did it best -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPI2Qym07iQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGACDxuA0Os

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmnab8vQKXs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yi3mV6Qnjc

goddam I love “tricky disco” so much

agreed.
its just so much fun.
i realise we are moving away from the core groove of the thread, but hey ..
best bleep mixtape ever :

https://soundcloud.com/the-black-dog/the-black-dog-arranging

Not sure how much post-punk cred Nightmoves had, but they were supposedly inspired by a Tubeway Army.

Nightmoves - Transdance 7" (1981)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pq-c-0twrk

The proto-rave sound is still there (barely before getting cut off by the fade-out) in that early mix compared to the 1982 "UK Disco" mix (~3m53s):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocXzdQh7whc

Paul Rutherford's Get Real was co-produced by Martin Fry, putting him somewhere in between Rutherford and Duffy in these stakes (and in some sense setting the stage for brother James).

re:tricky disco Whenever I hear that now I think fondly of watching TOTP '90 a few years back with that and LFO seemingly appearing every week. Along with Hardcore Uproar. All duos who had sadly lost a member at some point.

this just got posted.

as per my post earlier re NOW vs Unique 3 :

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/may/03/bleep-dance-music-80s-yorkshire

Great idea for a thread. Here's Acid Angeles (which featured The Jesus and Mary Chain bassist Douglas Hart)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMM-oTkJfyo

It might have been mentioned already but I was only recently reminded about Andrew Weatherall's 9 O'Clock Drop, which would be very much this thread