Listening to the Music the Machines Make - Inventing Electronic Pop 1978 to 1983: Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983

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The SPANDAU BALLET versus DURAN DURAN thing has been well documented, but what about SOFT CELL versus DEPECHE MODE?

With a foreword by Vince Clarke and a focus on source material such as the music press and the charts, this is a detailed and thorough exploration of how a number of bands, mainly British, developed their sounds from 1978 – 1983. I don’t think it was on the cards either… I think everyone was surprised and backfooted by it, particularly the major labels who struggled to keep up with it, in exactly the same what they had struggled to keep up with punk! But then, those pressures were happening within the bands themselves, THE HUMAN LEAGUE are a great example of this. You’re right to say she was probably among the first journalists to talk to DEPECHE MODE, certainly one of the first to talk to SPANDAU BALLET, to SOFT CELL and JAPAN… she was very vocal and very reasoned.

After 1984 and then into the new decade, a lot of people were trying to kill off electronic pop, especially around Britpop but was there a point later, and this might tie in with Remember The Eighties, when you thought “this stuff has value and people are liking it again”, that there might actually be a legacy? It might seem that there is nothing new to say about the UK electronic pop music scene in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Even if they were rock things like ’Owner Of A Lonely Heart’ by YES which was produced by Trevor Horn, I was obsessed.

I also think that having worked with Erasure for as many years as I have definitely represents a career peak. Richard’s book is a thorough, well-executed delight for fans of the electronic music genre and puts together all the pieces of information which you possibly already knew in the correct sequence, with myths dissolved and facts confirmed.There were quite a few artists that I wrestled with myself over whether to include or not and ultimately decided leave out – I’m not going to mention them because that will draw attention to the fact that they’re not in the book – but I don’t think I’ve missed out anyone whose contribution to the story was crucial. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I looked at all the NME, Sounds, Melody Maker, Record Mirror, Smash Hits, The Face, New Sounds New Styles from 1978 to 1983, everything I could lay my hands on that was music or popular culture related. Highly anticipated… as a book which dissects the ‘golden age’ of British music between 1977-1983, it’s a must-read. Through working with Erasure I’ve also got to know people like Daniel Miller from Mute Records and the producer Gareth Jones, and they both made themselves available to answer any questions too.

A comprehensive and highly readable overview of a once-future' - Mojo; 'A scroll of chronological, interwoven, but often disparate stories featuring every purveyor of synthpop you can possibly think of. I also realised that lots of my original knowledge of the bands I wrote about came from their singles rather than from knowing their albums, so it was great to broaden my musical knowledge by listening to lots of albums which I should have heard years ago but only discovered now.SL: On 6 th November there will be a special event in London to launch your book “Listening To The Music The Machines Make” where you will interview Andy Bell and Martyn Ware (The Human League, BEF, Heaven 17) about their lives in electronic music. Rex, Roxy Music, and Alice Cooper, who similarly paved the way for the future stars of electronic music by appending their retro-futurist sound with Moogs and mellotrons. There are two reasons for it; one is this period started 45 years ago, you’re not going to remember these details. But Simon Reynolds said in ‘Synth Britannia’ that it was Howard Jones that made him feel that electronic pop was now no longer special and part into the mainstream… was there a moment when this music changed for you? I realised it wasn’t going to be particularly useful to go to the original people and say “tell me that story again” because they’ve told it that many times that they probably aren’t really feeling it and it gets reshaped over the tellings.

Listening to the Music The Machines Make covers a defined time period and focuses on electronic pop in the UK. Record covers were similarly embracing the DIY ethos with letrasets and freehand drawn record covers being de rigeur. One of the things that irked Branson in particular was how OMD were the biggest selling act in the Virgin group in 1980 via the Dinsdisc subsidiary. The only downside to Evans’ archival approach is that occasionally the narrative slips into a slightly predictable descriptive routine of single/chart placement/TV appearance/tour/next single, but there are enough intriguing characters and pithy illustrative quotes to keep the reader’s interest.This was a thing for a while although there would be a backlash later on, like when OMD appeared with a double bass, sax and xylophone for ‘Souvenir’! Many synth pop acts have continued to make music 40 years on, clearly displaying their enduring spirit. In 1998 he set up marketing consultancy The Fan Base and has been connecting musical artists with their audiences ever since. I don’t know that I have a biggest hero as such, but in the summer Karl Bartos from Kraftwerk published a book, ‘The Sound of the Machine’, with Omnibus Press, the same publishers who are putting out my book ‘Listening to the Music the Machines Make’, and I was able to go to one of Karl’s events and was introduced to him afterwards which was a huge thrill. I was listening to the album in the car one day and that song came on and I immediately loved the idea of using that lyric as the title for the book.