Blog: The Same Mistakes

Orchestral Manouevres in the Dark are set to release a CD and book documenting their performance at the Tempodrome Berlin on 18th November 2010. The package marks the culmination of the band's recent resurgence. Following the reunion tour of Spring 2007, which brought together for the first time in more than a decade the band's founding members, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys , and a well-received album of all new material this past year, OMD are riding high. Once the forgotten sons of the synth pop scene of the eighties, they are [...]

This will be our third and final dip into the world of Virginia Astley after our posts for Promise Nothing and Rarities Part One . These tracks have been gathered from various third-party sources and so some are not up to our usual mastering quality -- but we must be grateful to have them in any form. We thank the primary donor, who apparently wishes to remain anonymous. First we have the Peel session from Virginia Astley, Kate St. John and Nicky Holland, known collectively as The Ravishing Beauties. This was recorded 14 April 1982 [...]

You thought we had gone away, but no, that time is not yet. We still have some goodies for you, this instalment leading the way with some rarities from our own collection. Following on with Virginia Astley we've once again done a special mastering job from a quality vinyl rips where possible, although we start with two cassette originals. Pleasantly Surprised was a Scottish cassette label which put out compilations of some of the best music of the day, largely based on the aesthetic of 4AD. State Of Affairs was released in 1984 and had some [...]

You thought we had gone away, but no, that time is not yet. We still have some goodies for you, this instalment leading the way with some rarities from our own collection. Following on with Virginia Astley we've once again done a special mastering job from a quality vinyl rips where possible, although we start with two cassette originals. Pleasantly Surprised was a Scottish cassette label which put out compilations of some of the best music of the day, largely based on the aesthetic of 4AD. State Of Affairs was released in 1984 and had some [...]

There are some artists who have had a significant presence in pop while staying very much in the shadows. One of these would be Virginia Astley, whose discography is (mostly) unavailable and in any case entirely obscure to most followers of pop. Born to Edwin (Ted) Astley in 1959, he of "The Saint" and "Danger Man" themes, Virginia found herself in a musical family. Her elder sister Karen married Pete Townshend and her brother Jon was a noted producer and mastering engineer. Taking up piano and then flute, Virginia's initial recorded output was as keyboard player with Victims [...]

It remains one of the great mysteries of the age. Like who built the pyramids, or what was the purpose of Stonehenge. How did Phil Oakey come up with Dare! , one of the defining statements of eighties synthpop ? The odds were certainly against him. When the League Mark I split , Ian Craig Marsh and Martyn Ware took all the song writing and production skills with them. Oakey was left only with Adrian Wright, the guy who did the slide projections for their live shows, and his trademark hair [...]

"Dead at age 52, of systematic cancer, Antony Michaelides of Nicosia, Cyprus, lately residing London." This might be any announcement in the obituary columns for 4 January 2011, where it not that this was the alter ego of Mick Karn, a musician everyone reading this site has heard and loved, knowingly or not. Self-taught to a high degree of accomplishment first on the bassoon, Karn rose to prominence as the bassist with Roxy Music disciples Japan. Treading shaky stylistic ground from their 1974 beginnings through to their glam debut Adolescent Sex (1978), this group [...]

Messengers should have had it all. They had the gear, the talent, and the songs. They were a synth pop duo at the very height of the music-buying public's fascination with guys in buttoned-up shirts and monophonic synthesizers. And they had the unstinting support of the prime mover of all things New Romantic, Midge Ure. Ure signed them to his label, produced their records, and even invited them to tour the world with Ultravox. But not everything works out as it should. Messengers were formed out of the ashes of Modern Man, a Glaswegian post-punk outfit that Ure [...]

It would be easy to assume that The Fallout Club was Thomas Dolby's band, the answer to the question, what was the "She Blinded Me With Science" guy doing before he embarked on a solo career? This is certainly how the band is best remembered, but The Fallout Club began as Trevior Herion's effort to break into synth pop. TSM has already blogged about Herion's early career here . Following a spell with power pop combo The Civilians, Herion and drummer Paul Simon formed The Fallout Club as a duo, securing a one-off release through Secret Records, [...]

After 1982's stunning True Romance At The Worlds Fair , the wife and husband duo of Lydia Tomkiw (words and music) and Don Hedeker (music and vice) bided their time. Tomkiw frequently booked friends with bands or poetry into clubs, and even co-owned one (Lower Links) for a period. She was not just a poet and band-member, then, but a tireless promoter of the local Chicago scene. It took three years for the second four-track Algebra Suicide EP to be issued. An Explanation for That Flock of Crows ploughs the same rich furrow of [...]

It's one of those decisive musical moments. You pick up a record with scarred cover that you found hidden in the back of a large disused collection. It looks completely generic, uninteresting, bland. When you pull out the vinyl it's gouged and barely wants to sit still in the record player. Nervous vinyl. You cue up the first selection with no special anticipation. You've listened to thousands of records like this one, issued from bedrooms and garages all over the North American continent. It's 1982; everyone is doing it. When the sound trickles out of the grey speakers, [...]

This is the fourth and final vinyl disk included in Trial By Intimacy . What is there left to say after hearing many dozen similar Bill Nelson instrumentals? Only, perhaps, that if you enjoyed the previous volumes you will enjoy this as well. It is certainly not the weakest offering, even if it treads the familiar path of clockwork rhythm boxes, languid synth melodies, vaguely oriental sonorities and mysterious titles. I particularly enjoy the sequencer interplay of "Happily Addicted To You" and "Initiation Of The Heart's Desire". The melody winding through "Birds In Two Hemispheres" is lovely. [...]

Pavilions of the Heart and Soul is the third album in Bill Belson's luscious box set Trial By Intimacy . With its photo-montage cover, recalling the avian preoccupations of Max Ernst, and elliptical song titles, such as "Meshes of the Afternoon", a nod in the direction of Maya Deren's spellbinding film, the album offers itself as kind of alchemical mystery. Everything here seems to have meaning, but only for those who are already initiated into its occult practices, or are willing to follow the trail of clues toward those artists, writers, and filmmakers who might [...]

Our series of posts from Bill Nelson's instrumental box set, Trial By Intimacy (The Book of Splendours) continues with the second of four albums, Chamber of Dreams . Nelson writes in the liner notes: In 1981 and 1983, I organized a series of live performances under the general title of The Invisibility Exhibition. This event toured throughout Great Britain and included contributions from the Yorkshire Actors Company, Richard Jobson, Frank Chickens and David Claridge as well as myself and Ian Nelson. Besides theatre, poetry, mime, and musical performances, there were eight TV screens [...]

Best known as the front man for Be Bop Deluxe, and for his production work with numerous bands, Bill Nelson established himself as a notable composer of instrumental music in the eighties. Though not his first such effort, Trial By Intimacy (The Book Splendours) is perhaps his most significant statement of a certain fondness for spontaneity and ephemera. This boxed set, released in 1984, consists of no fewer than four albums. That's over 80 tracks, issued from his private studio like so many falling petals from a cherry tree past its bloom. The set, which we [...]

Armed with stacks of vintage electronic gear, from Boss Flangers and Dr. Rhythm drum machines to Arp Odyssey synthesizers, John Foxx played an all-analogue set at The Roundhouse, London, on June 5th, 2010. Gary Numan and Ade Fenton worked the turn tables and the evening began with a panel discussion featuring author Iain Sinclair, and the leading lights of the Ghost Box label, Jim Jupp and Julian House. The Second Chameleon and I were there on behalf of TSM to report. If you don't know Ghost Box, you should. They're responsible for what has become known as "hauntology," [...]

The pop charts of the mid-eighties were crowded with electro crooners, their unabashedly romantic yearning standing in stark contrast to the icy and distant synthesizers and white boy funk grooves that filled out the sound. David Sylvian hoped for visions of China. Peter Godwin wished for images of heaven. And Midge Ure longed for Vienna. But no electro crooner could touch the heart strings better than Trevor Herion. Born in Cork, Ireland, Herion moved to London in the late seventies, and was living in a squat with members of The Psychedelic Furs when he hooked up with drummer [...]

Bruce Gilbert was always an odd fish, even in Wire, the oddest punk band of them all. Already 30 when they formed, he seemed more like a college professor than a band member. When he later began to release music under his own name it was apparent that he was more at home in electroacoustic and noise music territory than in anything resembling pop. Gilbert released a flood of material, starting in 1980. Together with co-conspirator Graham Lewis, he recorded four albums as Dome, their lo-fi music sounding like tape scrapings from Wire sessions, odd vocal exercises, frustration [...]

The electronic scene of the late seventies and early eighties was led by a new kind of man. Sure there were some notable synth bands, The Human League, OMD, Depeche Mode, but the quiet man, labouring alone with his battery of monophonic synths and drum machines, was somehow closer to the alienated spirit of the age. Gary Numan, John Foxx, Thomas Dolby, Fad Gadget, these were the names that captured the popular imagination of the day. Thomas Leer looked set to join the upper echelons of electro auteurs following the success of his debut single, "Private Plane." Recorded [...]

The great thing about art school is not that it produces great artists. The great thing about art school is that it produces so many wonderful bands. Being in an environment of intense study, exposed to the entire scope of twentieth-century thought, expands the horizons of the participants. Support for quirky works of strong subjectivity, from an institution no less, validates the individual. No longer circumscribed by petit bourgeois concerns, art students then believe they have the freedom to do anything. And what that often meant, in the heady years of the late seventies, was getting together with [...]