Search & Destroy: when guitar bands break out the synths on later records

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as far as I can tell, these would mostly fall into 2 categories: 70’s rock dinosaurs throwing synths on their 80’s records to stay current (Born In The U.S.A., Eliminator, 1984), and indie rockers mellowing out and/or 'expanding their sound' (Superchunk, etc), both of which offer a good share of classics and duds.

― Al (sitcom), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Search - Unwound

― Lil' Won Jilliams (ex machina), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Search and then Destroy: Gang of Four

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Search and then Destroy: Milemarker

― Lil' Won Jilliams (ex machina), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:44 (twenty-two years ago)

superchunk had keyboards (played by ash bowie) on their 93 tour.

people never seem to remember that pavement's early records (including and up to slanted & enchanted) are completely drenched in oberheim and moog squelch.

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Destroy everything after the Perfect Sound Forever EP just on general principle regardless.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:48 (twenty-two years ago)

;)

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:48 (twenty-two years ago)

my point: indie rock being detached from keyboards is a very common misperception.

wrt: pavement
actually up to and including watery, domestic which opens with the most crusty prog pling plong tones known to the genre.

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:50 (twenty-two years ago)

The Police

― Johnny Fever (johnny fever), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:51 (twenty-two years ago)

When I was a wee punker (1994-1997), I actively hated on any music that used synths (or any non guitar rock for that matter) and only listened to Sonic Youth and hardcore punk (DEAD KENNEDYS, RAMONES, BLACK FLAG).

― Lil' Won Jilliams (ex machina), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

(x-post)Can we f*ck them?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah i meant to delete the Superchunk ref before posting, poor example. there *are* a lot of guitar-based indie bands that suddenly go synth crazy midway through their career, though.

― Al (sitcom), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:52 (twenty-two years ago)

sonic youth used synths dude! check out evol and sister!

― gygax! (gygax!), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:53 (twenty-two years ago)

All I had was Screaming Fields of Sonic Love, Dirty and Washing Machine then!

― Lil' Won Jilliams (ex machina), Tuesday, 30 March 2004 23:55 (twenty-two years ago)

S: Wire -- "Snakedrill", "The Ideal Copy", approximately 50% each of "A Bell Is A Cup..." and "IBTABA".

D: everything after, until they came to their senses in the 21st century and ditched the synthesizers.

― Nom De Plume (Nom De Plume), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 00:00 (twenty-two years ago)

You wouldn't search Chairs Missing or 154?

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 00:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Still enough guitars, proportionally, on those two to not meet the threshold of "breaking out the synthesizers" for me. They're fucking amazing records, of course.

― Nom De Plume (Nom De Plume), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 00:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh, yes, also: S: Neil Young: "Trans", D: "Landing On Water".

― Nom De Plume (Nom De Plume), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 00:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Trans! I love the line he drew in the sand for the fringe leather boots crowd. Formerly known as his crowd.

There's no reason in the world not to make this the 7th thread this week glorifying Judas Priest - Turbo.

Six Finger Satellite went all-synth and ruled in the mid-1990s.

Why wasn't Van Halen "Jump" the first conversion mentioned?

Moby.

― Ian Christe (Ian Christe), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 02:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Search - Tubeway Army/Gary Numan - 'Replicas'.

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 02:46 (twenty-two years ago)

I was going to post "Jump" but I didn't want to show my age. Though some VH fans were miffed, I loved that number from the get-go.

― jim wentworth (wench), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 03:43 (twenty-two years ago)

the who who's next

...how's that for showing my age 8^)

― william (william), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 04:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Psychedelic Furs did it pretty smoothly. Two good guitar records, two good guitar-plus-synth records. And then crap, of course, but what do you want?

― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 04:50 (twenty-two years ago)

search: the beatles, "strawberry fields forever" and others (in the category of "mellowing out and/or expanding their sound").

search: guided by voices, "sad if i lost it" (in the category of "70s rock dinosaurs throwing synths on their ['90s] records to stay current." you get synth points for casio, right?).

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 04:52 (twenty-two years ago)

The Replacements had arguably the shortest synth phase ever: one song. Great song, too.

― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 04:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, that doesn't even count 'cuz it's not a synth, it's just a flanger with a drum machine.

― spittle (spittle), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 04:55 (twenty-two years ago)

no no, you're right, there is a synth there, 2nd verse.

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Where do synths appear on Evol and Sister?

S: Radiohead only got good when they brought in the electronics, obv. Beatles pick OTM. Joy Division (as long as they were still JD). Miles Davis. Moving Pictures (Rush used synths before but not to that extent.). I actually enjoyed when Sonny Sharrock cheesed it up on Highlife. What about Iggy Pop? I used to enjoy The Idiot a lot. Does Bowie's Berlin stuff count for anything. The Pumpkins' synth tracks, esp on Machina II.

D: The Banshees, Clash, and Bauhaus all clearly got worse the synthier they got. The Ramones. Did any punk group benefit from this?

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Did any punk group benefit from this?

Wire. Arguably, Joy Division was a punk band too.

― hstencil, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh yeah, Wire! In fact I like Immersion, which is all-electronic, a lot more than any Wire I've heard (although I do like 154).

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:21 (twenty-two years ago)

what's Immersion?

― hstencil, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Immersion is Colin Newman's recent project with Malka Spigel. Low Impact, from 2001, is lovely minimal synth drones with sparse beats sometimes.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:24 (twenty-two years ago)

ah, cool. I haven't heard much of Colin's recent solo work, though I'm a fan of a lot of the older stuff. Same with Bruce Gilbert, I think the most recent thing I own by him is the IBM record on Mego that came out a couple years ago.

― hstencil, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:26 (twenty-two years ago)

The older solo Newman I've heard was still song-oriented. Low Impact is instrumental minimal/ambient electronic music, like the prettiest fragments of hooks from "Ceremony" turned into drone spaces. I didn't even know Gilbert was still making records, let alone on Mego!

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:29 (twenty-two years ago)

It's with Panasonic, recorded in '98. Haven't listened to it in ages.

― hstencil, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:37 (twenty-two years ago)

whoops, didn't see sundar's question:

Where do synths appear on Evol and Sister?

read the liner notes dude!

sister: thurston plays moog on the "kill time" section of "pipeline". programming by walter sear.

evol: in the kingdom #19 (mike watt on bass, thurston on prankster pyrotechnics)

evol:

― gygax! (gygax!), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 05:50 (twenty-two years ago)

How about Search: Belle & Sebastian - Tigermilk for "Electronic Renaissance", not necessarily breaking out the synths on later records but shockingly fun nonetheless?

― Dave M. or something, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 08:30 (twenty-two years ago)

I remember Thurston playing synth on stage around the "Experimental, Trash" era, but Sonic's remarkable for never really going synth-crazy, of if they did, changing their name a bit. Ciccone Youth, anybody?

― sexyDancer, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 15:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Most of the Smashing Pumpkins' Adore is pretty good

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Wednesday, 31 March 2004 22:09 (twenty-two years ago)

funny things is, rage against the machine, and i'm sure countless other bands, prided themselves on never using a synth/keyboard. RATM even said so on their cd covers. but really, they may as well have. all the effects pedals he ran his guitar through (digitech whammy, for one) essentially make one big huge synthesizer.

― AaronK (AaronK), Thursday, 1 April 2004 13:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Guided By Voices - Do the Collapse

Oh no!

― Dadaismus (Dada), Thursday, 1 April 2004 13:06 (twenty-two years ago)

SEARCH - Zep - In Through the Out Door

What Replacements song has synths in it? I sure don't remember any.

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:05 (twenty-two years ago)

"within your reach" off hootenany. it has subtle synths on the 2nd verse.

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:21 (twenty-two years ago)

but that was pretty early in their career so not sure if that counts. they had a couple piano ballads too (not tech. synth but w/e)

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:22 (twenty-two years ago)

(The Dandy Warhols on Monkey House. Please don't laff. I blame Nick Rhodes.)

― Super-Kate (kate), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:22 (twenty-two years ago)

the RATM posts reminds me of another one -- Queen, who bragged in the liner notes of the first album that no synthesizers were used in the recording, but a few years later forgot all about the policy.

― Al (sitcom), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:29 (twenty-two years ago)

see, i can't decide whether this RATM kind of attitude (which Queen also used to trumpet in the 70's) is reasonably worthy of ridicule as some half-arsed arbitrary line-in-the-sand idea that as long as the interfaces/actuators are some salt-of-the-earth cerebellum-motor-control driven twanging/scraping/blowing/hitting-with-sticks and as long as there's something mechanically 'physical' about the vibration that initially generates the sound this will somehow grant them the dignity of artisan-craftsmen, regardless of the fact that just as much silicon-based signal processing takes over as soon as the motion is converted into all that inauthentic electricity...

or whether i'm just unreasonably glad that such a load of tin-plated tantrum-throwing scrag-end is voluntarily keeping itself away from synths instead of having to be prevented by law from being allowed anywhere near them

(damn - xpost too late...)

― Snowy Mann (rdmanston), Thursday, 1 April 2004 15:30 (twenty-two years ago)

id' go with the first, but i see your point in the second.

― AaronK (AaronK), Thursday, 1 April 2004 17:06 (twenty-two years ago)

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