This has been doing the rounds and I always have time for Noel’s interviews so I gave it a look. It’s a refreshingly honest and self-deprecating look back at his old band with plenty of barbed comments that border on exasperation by the end, you’ll laugh, I promise.
Music
On January 11st, 1984, Radio 1 DJ, Mike Read took Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s debut single, ‘Relax’, off the deck, mid-song whilst live on air, reportedly calling it ‘obscene’ and stating that he wasn’t going to play it anymore. Despite the BBC having played it over 100 times, the band appearing in two sessions, having played Top Of The Pops the previous week and the single then residing at no.6 in the charts, the corporation officially ‘banned’ it from their playlist two days later.
This had the effect of generating enough publicity to push it up to the No.1 spot less than two weeks later on 22nd January and the band and their record company, Zang Tuum Tumb, claimed their first hit single. With a video that was already not deemed fit for TV broadcast, promo photos of the group in S&M gear and two of the band being were openly gay, it was all the press needed to have a field day.
In a stroke of good luck, the band’s producer, Trevor Horn, had remixed the song for a 3rd 12″ that was released just before it hit the No.1 spot. Multiple mixes being a novelty at the time, this version replaced the original ‘Sex Mix’ with a more club-friendly ‘New York Night Mix’, inspiration for which was taken when Horn visited the Paradise Garage club the previous Autumn. ZTT were quick to fan the flames of the ‘ban’ (it was only banned on BBC channels but freely played by other commercial stations) and adverts and posters appeared, flaunting the band’s outlaw status. I vividly remember seeing a huge fly poster proclaiming ‘Big, Banned & Beautiful!’ pasted up in the little town of Reigate where I grew up. In fact, I tried several times, unsuccessfully, to steal it but posters being what they are I just ended up ripping it.
I was fortunate enough to track down the original photographer of the poster’s image – Steve Rumney – for my Art of ZTT blog last year and he’s promised me access to a whole raft of exclusive, unseen/unpublished images that he took back stage at the band’s Camden Palace performance the previous November.
Stephen Rumney: “I used to take photos at the Camden Palace in the mid 80s and I was there the night that Frankie did their first ever performance of ‘Relax’… I think it was the actual release party and as far as I remember I was the only photographer to have back stage and dressing room access. …the pics are pretty wild as they were all drinking champagne and very high spirited as you can imagine… I was right in the thick of it and clicking away madly… there was something in the air that night and you could really tell this was the start of something big…
The photo was not posed … I just caught them before they went on stage… or just after… I may have asked them for a group shot but it was not ‘staged’ as in ‘let’s do a photo shoot’… its why it has that edgy spontaneity… Holly already the gun as he was carrying it around for his performance.
The story is that shortly after the gig I dropped a print off with the Island press office thinking they may like to use it for press… They had commissioned me to do a couple of photo shoots when I was still at college as they had seen my portfolio featured in ‘Blitz’ magazine so I dropped the Frankie photo off with them when I delivered prints for the other photo shoot they commissioned… a week or so later I saw my photo being used all round town on the giant street posters!!!”
‘Relax’ was a pretty big deal for me personally, one of those records that connected on first listen and had to have repeat plays, much to my parents’ annoyance. A song I never tire of and that, with the follow-up, ‘Two Tribes’, probably ranks as one of my top 10 singles of all time. I didn’t hear the ban as we rarely listened to Radio 1 in our house, instead hearing it on Capital Radio who didn’t hold quite such draconian ideals as the BBC. I taped it and would have to play it at least four times in succession after school for weeks on end.
In fact, some of my first pause button tape ‘remixes’ were of the song, made from the various different mixes floating around. It was this too that was one my first exposures to ‘the Remix’ on multiple formats and, coupled with the cryptic sleeve notes and images, it made for a very exciting package to a 13 year old. It was the beginning of a love affair with both the band’s music and their label, ZTT, that has stayed with me to this day. Nothing was more exciting to me in 1984 that Frankie and the other artists on ZTT’s roster – Art of Noise and Propaganda.
‘Big, Banned & Beautiful’ poster design: XLZTT photography: © Stephen Rumney 1983 The photo was taken 24th November ’83 by Steve Romney backstage at a promo gig for the single at the Camden Palace in London. The ‘girls’ in the photo were Ange and Juicy Lucy (the latter actually a man in drag), friends of the band who featured in the original video for ‘Relax’.
You can also read my interview with Anne Yvonne Gilbert – the illustrator of the iconic image on the cover of ‘Relax’ – on ArtofZTT.com
February 14th sees the release of yet another 12″ of the single for the 30th anniversary, this time with a recently discovered remix from ’84 which was lost in the vaults. More info HERE.
The artist Black Swan has (re)posted a tribute album he made based on The KLF‘s ‘Chill Out’ album back in 2001 when we went under the moniker, Apparition. It’s downloadable for free from his site and is a dark, ambient nod to the KLF meisterwerk rather than a straight cover. Here’s the suitably sedate cover art to go with it.
Out on Feb 14th, 2014 – 30 years after the record was banned by the BBC and still sitting at No.1 in the charts – yet another version of Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s notorious ‘Relax’.
This time it’s ‘The Sex Mix’ (Edition 3) – formerly known as ‘Sex Mix Edit’, a hitherto undiscovered mix that first surfaced on a Japanese compilation called ‘Return To The Pleasuredome’ a few years ago. The original ‘Sex Mix Edit’ (or Edition 2) is a little known 8 minute odd edit of the original 16 minute ‘Sex Mix’ that came and went (pun intended) in late ’83 before being replaced by a 7.20 minute ‘US Remix / New York Night mix’ which many consider as the definitive 12″ of ‘Relax’.
This new mix (Edition 3) had been created by Trevor Horn session man and renown percussionist Luis Jardim in December ’84 – who knows what for? It was then filed away, forgotten, later mislabeled and then extracted over 25 years later to end up on a compilation on the other side of the world. Hardcore fans from The Alternate ZTT Board soon spotted the difference and this sent the reissue curator, Ian Peel, back into the ZTT archives to search for more info and tapes that would lead to this previously unheard remix being given a proper vinyl release nearly 30 years after it was created.
Confused? This isn’t even half the ‘Relax’ mix story but I’ll save that for another time. Here, the original XLZTT artwork and Anne Yvonne Gilbert illustration have been tweaked by Element Series designer Philip Marshall to mirror the colour scheme for the 2012 Frankie rarities compilation, ‘Sex Mix’. The tracklist is: A. Relax ‘Sex Mix’ (Edition 3) B1. Ferry Cross the Mersey B2. Relax ‘The Instrumental’. You can pre-order it from Amazon here
Last night was quite something. I headed to the Southbank to meet up with Mark Nicholson aka Osymyso for the 19 Eighties gig that was part of The Rest Is Noise festival. Mark is my usual companion in most things electronic and 80’s-related, the last time we were here it was to see Alan Howarth perform selections of his scores for the films of John Carpenter and we have a similar appreciation of all things synthesized.
So, a free talk by Martyn Ware (The Human League / B.E.F. / Heaven 17) and Peter Howell (Radiophonic Workshop) beforehand in the foyer was right up our street. They talked about vintage synths, drum machines, samplers and the like for an hour and the highlight was when Martin got up to recreate the intro to ‘Being Boiled’ on the original mini Korg 700 and Roland System 100 machines that they made it on – (see video clip at the bottom). We were in hog heaven and even had a little play with it afterwards before heading into the concert hall for the main event – passing Trevor Horn on the way in (as you do).
The main event was something quite unique: two pieces by composer Andrew Poppy, one by Michael Nyman, a new piece by Anne Dudley and Paul Morley centered on the music of the 80’s and the thing we had most come to hear – the world premier of Art of Noise‘s ‘Into Battle’ scored for orchestra! How this last piece was going to work we had no idea but the chance to hear a full orchestra playing ‘Moments In Love’ or ‘Beatbox’ was too good an opportunity to miss.
Andrew Poppy – resplendent with long white hair these days – was first up as the orchestra started with a version of his ’32 Frames for Orchestra’ piece from his ‘The Beating of Wings’ LP on ZTT and it was damned near a perfect reproduction. Next, Poppy – who had been sitting center stage behind the mixing desk for this – then took to the stage and played piano in an incredible composition called ‘Almost The Same Shame’ which was new to me but became one of the highlights of the night.
Next was a John Tavener piece called ‘The Lamb’ which was short but beautiful and then we were into battle. Except it wasn’t exactly ‘Into Battle’, it was more ‘Who’s Afraid’ as the orchestra opened with ‘Bright Noise’ and then segued into ‘A Time For Fear (Who’s Afraid)’ which was more than a pleasant surprise as it opens their debut LP rather than the EP advertised. Pushing through elements of ‘Beatbox’ and ‘Moments In Love’ the medley made you realise that this was a sort of logical conclusion seeing as Art of Noise had originally sampled so many orchestral sounds on their records. The transition to the concert hall environment was almost invisible with the horns, harps and strings of the originals deftly recreated, the only slight failing being the somewhat stilted drum beats. This is something that I find happens a lot when orchestras are trying to approximate contemporary beat-based music, they seem stiff, almost too regimented because you can’t approximate the subtleties of a groove on the written page. Even a drum machine can be made to swing and next to the power of a gated, over compressed Oberheim DMX very few rhythm sections are going to cut it.
‘Rhythm’ was the recurring element of Paul Morley‘s narrative during his and Anne Dudley‘s ode to the 80’s which was a fun hit and miss jaunt through the much derided decade, flitting between classics of the age of opportunism interspersed with a ‘Losing My Edge’-esque stream of conscious from Paul. At one point I expected him to break into the ‘Rhythm is the song’s manacle…’ speech from Grace Jones‘ ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ and this was about the only glaring omission in the piece as he proceeded to cram as many people, events, lyrics and memes from the eighties into the ’19 minutes and 80 seconds’ allotted. Sometimes his voice was lost in the sonic landscape but it didn’t matter as your attention was constantly being diverted elsewhere as snatches of recognisable pop hits came into focus.
With Anne Dudley on stage behind the piano, starting out with the intro to ‘Two Tribes’ was a no-brainer but surprises came in the form of John Foxx‘s ‘Underpass’, Soul II Soul‘s ‘Keep On Moving’ and 808 State‘s ‘Pacific State’, beautifully transposed for orchestra. Some were less successful as, again, the drum machine rhythm of ‘Blue Monday’ was a pale imitation and parts of it came off as a little bit ‘mega-mixy’ next to the subtleties of the Art of Noise performance. Morley, his usual playful self during the concert interludes, was obviously nervous during the last performance, his continual agitated movement back and forth from his notes a dead giveaway. But he added the much needed humour and context to the event, without which is may have ended a little po-faced and dry, as in the Art of Noise, his presence actually added another dimension.
But make up your own mind as, if you’re in the UK, you can hear the concert on the BBC iPlayer for the next week. Overall I felt the whole concept and execution was excellent, daring and an unqualified success with everyone playing incredibly. But the night didn’t end there, repairing to the bar we were surprised to see the missing two Art of Noise members, Gary Langan and JJ Jeczalik joining Anne Dudley for a chat and seemingly in good spirits. So all five original members had been in the same building that night? For the first time in how long we wondered? Meeting up with ZTT reissue curator Ian Peel and designer Philip Marshall we decided to follow the pack to a nearby bar where Paul Morley joined the AON table with only Trevor Horn sadly absent (he’d gone for dinner shortly after the concert). There where photos taken with all four in attendance with Morley in high spirits, mugging for the camera much to Dudley’s delight. Meanwhile Philip and Mark were bonding over obscure Pet Shop Boys remixes to the exclusion of all others, and Ian revealed plans for a ZTT release next year which I may have a part to play in the creation of. It was some night, roll on Xmas and 2014 …
Moon Wiring Club does it again with another package – this time on CD and Cassette only – no vinyl. I’m not quite sure what the difference in names means between the two formats but I’m assured they are different in sound as well as shape. Order here, there are three new prints too…
We’ve all done it – made cassette tape ‘covers’ for our taped compilations of yesteryear. I first got a tape recorder around the 1980 mark and here are some of my designs from the following decade. Note the attention to detail with the backwards ‘D’ on the ‘Adam’ 
This Frankie compilation was supposed to reflect the different singles left to right: Relax, Two Tribes, Power of Love, Welcome to the Pleasuredome.
You can see how much I was into the design work of XL back then and, subsequently Accident (the same team under a different name) for 808 State later.
I loved Sigue Sigue Sputnik‘s info-overload graphics, the Hockney-esque polaroids and the futuristic sense of it all, something The Designers Republic took to another level later.
Love this oversize clam shell cassette packaging and design from Andy Votel‘s Cache Cache label. The artist is Clone – aka Gary Sloane of last years ‘Harmonitalk’ and this is 26 minutes of electronic jam sessions from 1976 supposedly. Inside each box is a bonus plastic skeleton to keep with the Halloween theme. Still in stock over at Finders Keepers but limited to only 100 copies.
Available now via their FSOLDigital site is the next installment of The Amorphous Androgynous‘ Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble project. Instead of a compilation of others’ music they’ve made their own in the form of 2 CDs worth of freaked-out Blacksploitation cop soundtracks called ‘The Cartel’ vol. 1&2.
You can download it now or pre-order CDs from HERE and there will be a third volume next year with remixes, one of which I have been very excited to contribute. There’s also the rumour of a mix forthcoming on a certain radio show in the not too distant future too…
Posthuman and Balkan Vinyl have put together a new charity compilation of electronic music, raising money & awareness for Médecins Sans Frontières. If you like high quality techno and electronica then this is your bag, barely a duff track on it, which is rare for comps like this where artists are giving work for free. This is no collection of off-cuts with stand out tracks by Shadow Dancer, Posthuman, B12, Jokers of the Scene and Radioactive Man.
Médecins Sans Frontières – also known as ‘Doctors Without Borders’ – is an impartial, independent, and neutral organisation that provide medical and humanitarian aid wherever needed, across the globe. With the current civil war in Syria, much of the media focus has been on the political aspects, often forgetting the tens of thousands of victims and refugees. Médecins Sans Frontières, and their volunteers, are still on the ground in the region providing aid.
It’s available on a ‘pay what you choose’ basis – you can download for free or any amount you decide at the balkanvinyl bandcamp page and they will donate here (and claim gift aid) on your behalf or you can go to Just Giving.com and donate directly. All profits go directly to MSF. All of the artists have contributed their music for free. It is entirely digital to ensure as much money as possible goes to charity
Artists on the 18 track compilation include: Posthuman, Hrdvsion, Echaskech, Trackman, Global Goon, B12, Plaid, Milanese, Radioactive Man
Beautiful new sleeves for a slew of releases on Finders Keepers and associated sub-labels like Cacophonic and Cache Cache. Explore for more here.
Out today, another Hip Hop sureshot from DJ Format, this time teamed up with Phill Most Chill for a straight up rap album, the way they used to make ’em. Here’s an exclusive peek at the back cover artwork below by the on-the-money Mr Krum, love the biro touches.
Available on vinyl LP or CD here or all good records shops and for download from the usual sources. Format will be doing an exclusive mix for Solid Steel in the coming weeks mixing new and old UK and Philadelphia rap to mirror the sources for the album.
This is great, perfectly in time for Thursday and any horror-themed DJ sets you might have, free download for the master masher Osymyso.
Robin The Fog has just released the follow-up to ‘The Ghosts Of Bush’ LP on his Fog Signals label which I’ve featured previously on this blog. ‘Secret Songs Of Savamala’ was recorded entirely in the flooded basement underneath a ruined customs house in Belgrade.
Like ‘Ghosts…’, it was made using reel-to-reel tape machines with all artificial and additional effects strictly forbidden. It’s a short, three track affair with a beautifully desolate haunting ambiance that’s already drawn comparisons to Philip Jeck, Morton Feldman and, bizarrely, the sculptures of Rachel Whiteread. I will be purchasing a copy forthwith, you can too as a download or LP but vinyl is very limited.
Among the many other areas he specialises in, Robin also writes, and his recent piece on Public Information Films (PIFs) had me literally crying with laughter. I didn’t know that a new attempt had been made to reach kids and teach them on the dangers of the railway, you have to see it to believe how wrong they got it and Robin’s gently mocking tone makes it all the funnier.
I once took on a jigsaw of a Jackson Pollock painting, I forget which one exactly but it took me something like three months to finish, slowly chipping away every day, finding where the next blob of paint belonged. The same day I placed the final piece it seemed like a burden was lifted and I started and finished a vintage 500 piece Vaughn Bodé jigsaw in a few hours. This book was the Bodé puzzle equivalent after finishing Julian Cope‘s monster-sized book from the previous post.
Up until this point, Cope had been the clear front-runner for book of the year, his exhaustive, multi-genre compilation easily fending off all others by size and heaviness alone (of the Rock kind as well as weight). But John Higgs‘ far-reaching yet concise, ‘The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned A Million Pounds’, is going to pip him to the post by sheer force of ideas and vision.
My love of the KLF and all things related is well documented in the hoax soundtrack and visuals I created with Mr Trick some years back so it’s no surprise that this was on the reading list. The e-book version emerged a year ago to great acclaim and a printed edition followed shortly after with many trumpeting it as a unique view on their well-worn tale.
Rather than trot out a regular history of the duo, detailing all their adventures, hits and misses, Higgs chooses to expand outwards from the band, both back and forward in time. If there’s one event that the book centers on it’s the burning of a million pounds and from there he draws clear lines to Robert Anton Wilson & Robert Shea, Alan Moore, Ken Campbell, the number 23, Dr Who, magical thinking, The Dadaists, the Devil, Discordianism, the assassination of Kennedy, Wicker Men and the banking crisis of the late 20th Century.
Not your average KLF biography then? Higgs places the band in amongst all of these and more, highlighting the synchronicities and coincidences surrounding them and showing you a bigger picture which may or may not have influenced their actions. He’s also not a fawning fan boy ready to mythologise their back catalogue with rose-tinted spectacles either. He describes their first album, ‘1987’, as ‘shit’, ‘Doctorin The Tardis’ as ‘a novelty record’ and wonders if Drummond and Cauty aren’t just ‘attention-seeking arseholes’. On the first two counts he’s mostly right.
No more to say, I don’t want to spoil it, go and find the book and I guarantee you’ll see the band in a different light, even if you’re the most hardened fan. Also check Higgs’ website as it’s full of great articles related and unrelated including an automated, self-referencing tumblr dedicated to quotes from the book that generates random gifs regularly.
This book has taken me the best part of the year to finish, it’s been sighted in most rooms in the house since Xmas and probably has more soup and cereal encrusting its pages than any other book I own. It’s a huge 700 page collection of Julian Cope‘s album reviews from a decade of writing for his Head Heritage site and it’s easily one of the books of the year.
If you’ve never read Cope before he’s in a different league from any other music critic you’ve ever read. Frequently laugh out loud funny, researched up to the hilt and with a Hunter S. Thompson-esque sense of urgency that swings between over-excited teenager making their first discoveries to seen-it-all-before-couldnt-give-a-fuck posturing. His prose is peppered with references to Norse mythology so he invokes Loki and Odin constantly whilst lovingly referring to the reader(s) as ‘children’, ‘babies’ and ‘motherfuckers’. He casually drops anecdotes about all and sundry from the Liverpool scene and knows his shit inside out. The great thing about this is that you can drop in and out of it with ease and each page, let alone each chapter, will have you scurrying to Google to look up records he describes that cannot possibly live up to his out of this world comparisons.
He starts at the end of the 50s with some Lord Buckley and proceeds, decade by decade, to rifle through the forgotten, the neglected and the just plain unknown music that he deems at least worthy of the same accolades afforded the Mojo-endorsed rock gods we all see peering out of Classic Rock-type magazines every month. Most of his sentences are really long too. After the 00’s (sorry, I can’t say ‘noughties’) we get condensed versions of his Krautrocksampler / Japrocksampler format for Detroit Rock, Post Rock, Hard Rock, Glam Rock and Dansk Rock (Danish in case you were wondering).
For serious music fanatics wishing to read an alternative take on the history of rock in the 20th Century rather than those wanting a light read, this will come to be seen of equal importance as ‘Krautrocksampler’ in time. If you still need convincing then read what the Quietus had to say about it and then Treat yourself.
Not one but two albums were just released by JG Thirlwell aka Foetus / Steroid Maximus / Manorexia etc. etc. The first is ‘Soak’, continuing the tradition of four-letter titled LPs, and is an 11 track follow up to his last Foetus album, ‘Hide’.
The second is his original score for the Eva Aridjis film ‘The Blue Eyes’. You can listen and buy over at the Foetus shop now. I’ve not got them yet but I buy everything the man does and have rarely been disappointed in over 25 years.
I was lucky enough to hear this in full the other night and it is stunning. Straight up Hip Hop, the way you like(d) it but far from an old school nostalgia-fest. One producer, one MC and only one track featuring guests – it’s 10 tracks of no nonsense beats, rhymes and the odd scratch. Fast and funky as fuck with a Mr Krum sleeve to boot – another addition to the ever-growing list of great albums released this year. Out 28th October 2013 on Project Blue Book on Vinyl, CD and Download. Check out the video sampler below.