Synth Britannia ???

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/6268852/Synth-Britannia-mapping-the-future-of-pop.html

Three decades on, artists such as Little Boots and La Roux are fetishising the early Brit synth sounds. But that’s just pop eating itself. They’re not yet taking us into new territory. As McCluskey says: “People ask why I don’t like La Roux and I say it just sounds like a woman warbling, badly, over an old Depeche Mode record.

That's not why I don't like La Roux.

He's OTM though

As Human League founder Martyn Ware says, the element of risk has gone and watching even the pioneering Kraftwerk on their last tour “was like watching four old guys checking their email”.

Haha this is totally OTM.

just finished the throbbing gristle book Wreckers of Civilization and they mentioned this article from 81 (with the most amazing name) of a meeting of "synth britannia". it pretty much turned into a war between the over represented avant, early industrial types, and the pop types. pretty funny.

http://www.fflintcentral.co.uk/ForgiveSynths.htm

simon reynolds did a piece on this for the guardian guide. not enough mention of grimes use of synths for my liking. or stevie wonders.

oh shit nice find jaxon. worth if for that pic of gen sandwiched between oakey and adrian wright alone!

stevie wonder's from the uk?

that's danielle dax at the bottom? she's kinda hot

nice find jaxon! I remember reading about some beef between the human league & TG in sounds back in the day, but never found out what it actually was, I guess this is it.

I got to admit, much though I <3 them, TG come across as spectacularly arser in that.

+ yeah, danielle dax is v v hot. Def had a bit of a thing for her when i were but a lad.

*arsey

It's mainly GPO that comes across as arsey there, but to be honest it sounds like Phil Oakey is deliberately baiting him ("I like ease. It's easy.")

That's a great article... The TG book is fantastic - I helped a bit with the research of it, the photo of the Subhuman / Something Came Over Me 7" is my actual copy...

Looking forward to the documentary, but this is a bit embarrassing from The Times........

Gary who?

http://i36.tinypic.com/2w71eyv.jpg

rofl

hahahaha

Co-incidentally they also picked a photo of Numan where he looks pissed off oh wait...

+ yeah, danielle dax is v v hot. Def had a bit of a thing for her when i were but a lad.

me too. still do!

http://images.wolfgangsvault.com/images/catalog/detail/WAR910417-01-CP.jpg

This programme should be good if McCluskey and Ware bring the pain as teased in this article.

just finished the throbbing gristle book Wreckers of Civilization and they mentioned this article from 81 (with the most amazing name) of a meeting of "synth britannia". it pretty much turned into a war between the over represented avant, early industrial types, and the pop types. pretty funny.

http://www.fflintcentral.co.uk/ForgiveSynths.htm

Phil Oakey versus Genesis P-Orrige in a synth theory showdown just blew my mind.

(xpost) that would be great...

McCluskey: "Modern music is all shit!" (does teacher dance)

Me: "I don't see why there has to be such animosity."

Gen: "Because they (the League) symbolise the shit of the world!"

Phil: "And you symbolise why people don't go to concerts!"

This is so great

Excellent article which I think I remember the first time round, sigh.

Coats were donned

Naturally.

It's mainly GPO that comes across as arsey there, but to be honest it sounds like Phil Oakey is deliberately baiting him

I think you'll find that at least half of TG at the time thought Gen was an arse too

Great article (jaxon's, not the one in the original post). No photo of unmasked Nash the Slash though ;_;

i'm surprised TG thought john foxx and gary numan were 'the shit of the world'. i mean, i thought what they were doing was pretty dark. referencing jg ballard and stuff? but i guess they also found what kraftwerk were doing was 'ordinary'. i dunno. i think everything gen did was just to be contrary or push buttons.

GPO doesn't like Kraftwerk either.

GPO is a real tw*t here, isn't he?

i'm more surprised at chris carter actually, considering how he was supposed to be into abba and disco while he was in tg, and that him and cosey went on to make some fairly conventional records after tg (in fact they all did, including gen!)

it's a shame sleazy wasn't there in place of gen, i'd imagine he'd have some interesting ideas about electronic music instead of just being bitchy

i think gen only listens to like incredible string band or something

I'm guessing that it being 1981, the year of Dare, is probably a major factor in the way other artists wanted to regard the Human League.

I looove TG, but I looooooooooooooooove the Human League. Also lol at 'we don't even use synthesizers...' Genesis can't seem to figure out if other synth users aren't avant garde enough, or if they lack musicianship, or if they are too polished, or not polished enough, or too fake, or lack authenticity, or...
I dunno, just kinda seems like he wanted to argue with the Human League.

I guess if they fell off the stage more often...?

I'm guessing that it being 1981, the year of Dare, is probably a major factor in the way other artists wanted to regard the Human League.

Not sure about that, this interview was January '81 which was before anything released by the League mk2, and 'Boys and Girls' wasn't much of a stylistic shift from the Reproduction/Travelogue era. The antipathy between Gen P and Oakey seems far more personal than mere artistic differences. Quite what Gen P thought of 'Dare' would be interesting.

hot on the heels of love isn't much different than early HL. besides maybe better lyrics.

yeah there's all that 'dignity of labour' type human league that sounds an awful lot like the cabs, tg, etc.

plus I could imagine Genesis singing on 'being boiled'

Human League founder Martyn Ware says, the element of risk has gone and watching even the pioneering Kraftwerk on their last tour “was like watching four old guys checking their email”.

LOL

Were Kraftwerk ever that exciting to actually watch, in terms of them onstage? Sounds like he's missing the point somewhat.

It wasn't a bunch of old guys with laptops, I think that's what he means

what's the difference? other than now you can just see more of them

Well they used to do this kind of thing, which is marginally more exciting I guess:

http://www.currybet.net/images/blog2008/20080511_old-school-live.jpg

In fact I think they did that when I saw them in 91.

They always did that and Florian often used to play his pocket calculator thing behind his head like Hendrix

moving sliders with his teeth

Although he apparently hated playing live, Florian was the generally the one who looked like he was enjoying himslef

that is certainly true from when i saw them in 2004

It might just be his face, that kind of amused look he always had

Old guys and laptops + phenomenal PA + awesome visuals + 3D + cyclists at M/cr Velodrome was ok by me in July. Clearly I am not jaded enough.

did anyone else just watch the BBC 4 documentary about this?

Yes, I thought it was pretty good. I had reservations about watching a 90 min docu, feeling that it might drag a bit, but it turned out to be a good idea because a lot was packed into the programme without the interviewees pontificating too much.

The one real problem is that it ended with the Pet Shop Boys, when really there could have been a second programme going from 1986 up to the present. Instead there was Andy McCluskey saying "Oasis grumble grumble..."

It didn't say anything that I hadn't hears before but it was nice to see the archive footage. Even just the stuff of streets, crowds, clubs and such.

hears = heard obv.

also watching it couldn't help thinking 'what a piece of piss, if only i'd been born 20 years earlier...' tbh

Y' what, it took Barney two months to build that synth!

He's lucky he didn't try building something from Elektor magazine, otherwise he'd probably still be sitting there with a soldering iron.

Ha! I still have a set of plans for the Elektor Formant Synthesiser. Somebody obviously managed it:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_FMBJEkaC8Lw/SAgdtSmpkII/AAAAAAAASec/shngLJwOvXQ/s400/3ea9_1.JPG

The maplin one was an even worse DIY prospect.

it's a shame they never re-use previous interview clips e.g. Sumner on the BBC's 'Planet Rock' (as part of the mid-90s 'History Of Rock N' Roll' series) talking about Kraftwerk coming into a studio NO were in to interrogate them about the 'Blue Monday' drum programming

Those "cheap" synths, not the DIY ones, they were still pretty expensive I would have thought

I think that McCluskey mentioned in the programme that the Korg Micro Preset they bought was £300 new. Taking into account inflation, that would be ~£1200 today.

...and the Korg was pretty much the cheapest "pro" synth you could buy that didn't require soldering skills.

Really wish I'd seen this. But then again, the article in the Guardian Guide this past weekend made it seem, well... kind of annoying.

This why I don't read the Guardian anymore, even the Guide

because it's, well...kind of annoying

I just watched it on iPlayer, it passed the time nicely.

its online if you want to watch it http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n93c4/Synth_Britannia/

ha ha, you got a point there, judge.

Will check it out online at work tomorrow. Thanks for the link.

bloody hell, we gathered round a friend's on saturday expressly to watch this on virgin catchup. after three songs we were all "Is this it?", having expected a bit more than an extended TOTP2. Now I read this thread and see the music vids were just an afterthought to a documentary. Oh well.

Yep, two programmes, "Synth Britannia" (1.5 hour documentary) and "Synth Britannia at the BBC" (an hour of archive TOTP / Whistle Test footage with irritating TOTP2-esque LOL FACTS captions)

docu: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n93c4/Synth_Britannia/
vids: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n93c6/Synth_Britannia_at_the_BBC/
should be online until Friday evening

Felt a bit sorry for Richard H Kirk, filming him buggering about by a canal trying to look covert with a super-8 camera. I understand the inspiration but it came across as really odd.

I feel like paying to see Pop Life, seeing the Cosey bit and walking off.

Excellent bits on this was footage of Ballard and Chris & Cosey's appearance. I hated the token way in which they appeared at first, however I did end up wanting to re-watch some footage of Throbbing Gristle in this late night documentary I saw on C4 I saw years ago of really shifty looking people (the only time I felt like I wished to have gone back in time to take part in a who with an audience from the past, the 'violent' vibes was the thing that did it) on it and wanted that squared against the school disco-y Depeche Mode show.

Hate the narrative of these shows => 70s, nothing in London, strikes, Old Labour; 80s, loads of money, Thatcher - and the music REALLY REFLECTS this!!! Whereas synth/Kraftwerk has a futurist undercurrent that could've been linked to a lot of the music. Its way more complicated and while you are constrained by time I think an effort should be made to get something else to spice things up.

Lots of other bits, special mention goes to Gary Numan's hair

Well that was entertaining enough. Like Julio, the narrative makes my ass drag a bit & seemed (as it often does) way oversimplified. (& I could certainly have done w/o the clip of the clash too) I liked the 2 women from the human league & could have done w/more of them being interviewed. Young W Carlos was an amazingly beautiful dude as well. Triggered a bunch of nostalgic shit, like I remember hearing that dep mode track off that synthpop comp on the radio & thinking holy fuck, these guys are amazing, also, dep mode's "everything counts" getting me back into them when I'd kind of lost interest a bit. All this stuff was some of my formative music, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it's 30 years ago, that really freaks me out.

> i would've thought Derbyshire and the Radiophonic Workshop would've at least been mentioned at some point too.

Dr Who and Quatermass got given props by people, and tiny clips. but most of that seminal RW stuff isn't synth based but more tape manipulation. keys down pianos, lampshades being pinged, bottle related sounds...* ok, some of it was oscillators but those were more the kind of things you'd find in a lab than in a recording studio. (they got a delaware later, there's a great version of doctor who theme done on one, but the famous early stuff is all tapes)

(* there's a track or two on the john baker compilations where he explains for the radio 4 audience how he created the various theme tunes. processed recordings of water being poured out of a bottle, popping a cork, blowing across the top of a bottle etc. then the liner notes talk about his alcoholism...)

plague pits.

plaque pits plaque pits plague pits...

I loved the bit where John Foxx said "I came from Lancashire and ended up in an even more sinister place (East London)"

I feel like paying to see Pop Life, seeing the Cosey bit and walking off.

You would pay £12 just to see Cosey flash her gash in a 1970s copy of Knave?

I feel like paying to see Pop Life, seeing the Cosey bit and wanking off.

It was all repeated on BBC4 last night, so I DVDed it.

I did see most of the docu first time..

that omd bloke, what a clot. he slags off la roux yet he's the writer of the godawful Sailing On The Seven Seas. if that's not 'warbling badly over an old depeche mode record' (personal jeseus to be exact) i don't know what is. miserable old sod.

Saw this on BBC4 last night, quite enjoyed it but this:

Hate the narrative of these shows => 70s, nothing in London, strikes, Old Labour; 80s, loads of money, Thatcher - and the music REALLY REFLECTS this!!!

Also the stock footage is all wrong - they're talking about 1981 and they're showing yuppies at the Lloyds building, which opened in 1986.

yeah and the everything counts(1984)/ Loadsamoney (1988) bit.

Man, don't get me started on the way the 70s and 80s are presented on programmes like this and TV and the media in general

McCluskey has turned into Porridge, to La Roux's Oakey.

Except Genesis was not responsible for Atomic Kitten.

On the contrary, I hear they were heavily influenced by "Foxtrot"

Well, they 'couldn't dance' etc...

never knew that gary numan had asperger's before that. kind of seems obvious once i heard it.

Anyone knows where I can watch this besides the BBC website? (BBC player does not work outside the UK)?

i hear it is on uknova

Christ, there's some miserable-soddism on this thread! Of course it didn't offer a robust overview of the many different social and political factors that defined Britain in the late 1970s and 1980s: it was called Synth Britannia, not A Robust Overview Of The Many ... ach, you get the idea.

I just like seeing old footage, they should really cut and paste stuff together and let the viewer write the story out of that <--- Click here for something that will BLOW YOUR MIND :)

As I've said elsewhere, for me half the *fun* was being obsessive enough to bother with minor factual errors/pop stars' selective memories/Andy McCluskey [1]/the fact there wasn't enough Bowie or Blancmange [2] or whatever. And as superimposed narratives go, I thought it worked pretty well: the influence of Ballard had been obvious to me but brutalism not so much, for example.

The one thing that was truly revelatory was the Eurythmics performance from the clip show: absolutely captivating. Even Dave Stewart didn't seem too much of a tit.

[1] Piscesx, if you thought he was a clot there, you should have watched him piss all over his legacy on the Architecture & Morality tour.
[2] No, really.

Dave Ball has a funny raspy voice

It's a good solid Blackpool voice, that! Sea air and 40 Rothmans a day.

(I actually have no idea the last time Dave Ball went back home to Blackpool. Probably even less frequently than I do.)

I just stuck it on again, oo look there's Daniel Miller and TVOD..

am wondering whether the ballard thing they kept labouring (convincingly i must admit) was because they had all that footage of him and of people rubbing themselves up against cars.

for all the people (myself included) complaining about omissions the thing was 90 minutes long. if it had everything in it that we all wanted it'd be six hours long.

(maybe it should be a series. wasn't folk brittania 3 episodes? didn't that cover beginnings and modern folk, not just the middle bit?)

am wondering whether the ballard thing they kept labouring (convincingly i must admit) was because they had all that footage of him and of people rubbing themselves up against cars.

... and of Nick Drake's sister

Don't know what Grimey Simey was doing on it, I'm really not sure he knows what he's talking about a lot of the time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/oct/10/synth-pop-80s-reynolds

Problem with all of these kind of docs is that creating a narrative = getting shit wrong

and missing shit out

am wondering whether the ballard thing they kept labouring (convincingly i must admit) was because they had all that footage of him and of people rubbing themselves up against cars.

not seen this yet simon reynolds prob had something to do with that.

Part of me was a bit sad to see certain people lose their mystique, simply by coming on a documentary and talking like sensible, genial human beings.

I know that Kraftwerk, for example, are actually just people, but seeing Wolfgang looking older and wiser and offering anecdotes about life back in the day wasn't a very pleasant experience.

Perhaps I'm just getting old myself.

Oh he's a silly old fool anyway, Wolfgang

I mean that story about OMD coming backstage at Kraftwerk's first gig in Liverpool was obv. complete bollocks

Nowadays Karl Bartos looks like the villian from The Spy Who Loved Me!

Though I did like his careful, thoughtful pronunciation of Orchestral... Manoeuvres... In Ze Dark

torrented this last night and watched it twice already. So great to see so many heroes of mine talk about how their music came about. And some of the archival footage is just w 0-0 w to these American eyes.

good news for non-brits - some scamp has uploaded it in chunks on their blog: http://coincidencevsfate.blogspot.com/2009/10/synth-britannia.html

Just watched this finally (whole thing is on youtube). Which of the other music ones are worth seeing? I'm curious about the pop one, but its ilm thread makes it sound terrible.