Commercial Music: Volume 3

It’s been a few weeks since I last shared something on this blog (that Spiff record is one of my recent favorites though). So I think the third “Commercial Music” collection of odds and ends – obscure B sides, demos, or good songs on otherwise mediocre albums – is certainly called for.

This one is by far my favorite of these compilations. It’s the most diverse, and almost every song is solid, whether it’s an unheard demo song demo, a new band, or classic post punk. Here’s what’s in store for you:

     Atoms for Peace were a Gainsville, FL based new wave band who self-released one album in 1985 and then.. nothing. The record is pretty obscure, and for the most part it has not held up as well as other new wave records. But the second song on the album, Pictures, is a total classic that builds intensely from a few acoustic guitar strums to a crashing Bunnymen-esque post punk song with some pretty cool vocal delays during the refrain.

   Next is an extremely obscure Belgian band who self-released one LP in 1987 on the ominously-named “Mahomet’s Holy War” label.  Apparently only 50 copies of it were pressed, and it has been pretty unknown (obviously due to its scarcity) for many years. But their sole record is becoming more and more of a holy grail, and this song is a killer post punk song that sounds very similar to the great Dutch band Mecano – huge thanks to Lesypersound for this rip!

       Next up is a forgotten UK new wave band. This song is the B side of their sole 12 inch from 1985. While the A side is really nothing special, the B side is excellent and falls squarely in the Flock of Seagulls vein of synthpop (admit it, you like it).

     Work of Fiction released one song on one of those hundreds of local band compilations that were so prevalent in the 80s. They were from upstate New York. The vocals are quite cheesy (imagine Robert Smith crossed with Rick Astley), but the great synths on the song make it worthwhile.

     Next up is a Missouri-based band who released one 12” EP  that contained three pretty standard AOR pop songs and one quite good new wave song with a nice repetitive synth rhythm.

     That new wave song is followed up with a Florida-based goth band who had a few songs on various compilation records but have otherwises remained quite obscure. These guys were unapologetically, humorlessly goth. And while their earnestness may sound a bit cheesy now, this song inexplicably holds a place in my heart. My cold, black, unbeating heart.

     Many of you will be familiar with the next band, whose style of industrial is heavily influenced by early Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, et al, with all the leather fetishism that comes with the genre. This song is from one of their extremely limited (13 copies only!) demo CDs that were sold on a 2008 west coast tour, when the "band" was just one person singing and thrashing around to prerecorded music.

     We follow that song up with a Detroit band who, had one song on a completely unknown compilation the late 80s, and that’s pretty much it. It’s a shame, since this track “You Make It Hard” is a pretty great synthpop track somewhat in the vein of late-80s Depeche Mode.

     Next is another Michigan band, Clambake, who recorded a couple extremely limited cassettes (including a Christmas album!) and faded into obscurity. Their music was synth-heavy and somewhat industrial, sounding very similar to bands like Gelatinous Citizen. This song became better known after it was re-recorded by the industrial band Shock Therapy, with whom they collaborated.

     Jezebel and the Nudes were your average female-fronted new wave/disco crossover band. They had one 12” EP in 1983 that has three somewhat forgettable songs, and then ends with this great dramatic disco-wave song chock full of synths and electronics.

     The next band was a trio active in the early 80s who released two very limited albums (only 500 copies were pressed of their debut, from which this song Chasing Moroder was taken). For the most part, they played a mix of new age and improvisational jazz, but analog synth nuts will absolutely freak over this song, which features a steady kr-55 rhythm and pulsating, gurgling and crashing electronics and stabs of effected guitar noise. It truly sounds like its namesake – if Moroder was being chased in his nightmares.

     After a deranged electro song, what's more polar opposite than an extremely underrated Manchester indie band active in the early 90s. Their music was a mix of Britpop, shoegaze, and bits and pieces of the Madchester sound.  Virtually everything in their small catalog is excellent, and this is one of my favorites.

     Next is a Texas band who released a very obscure 7” that contained one somewhat bland bar-rock song, and this song, a blistering and absolutely killer blast of post punk fury that sounds like an aggressive version of For Against or Lung Overcoat. VERRRRRRRY great

     Next up is another new-ish band with many hats. Some songs are industrial dance, some are more electro, but this song (my personal favorite), taken from their demo CD, is a post punk tour de force with a wonderfully thick bassline.

     The next band released a demo tape in the mid-80s, with songs that paid a generous homage to The Cure. It’s not too surprising, as the band would soon change their name and release an entire album of Cure-esque goodness. This song was exclusive to the demo tape.

     Day & Age were a San Francisco area band from the mid to late 80s who self released one LP full of midtempo jazz-pop songs and one great (but definitely cheesy) synthpop song. Their bio states that they were proud to announce that it was played on Live 105 during a midday program, so perhaps SOMEONE else out there heard it.

     After that is a UK new wave band who released a couple extremely obscure and  LPs. Their first one was a dark, if amateur, Joy Division-inspired album; their second LP (from which this song was taken) found them a lot more matured but still with a dark edge. I’m only sharing one song of theirs because you can buy their entire recorded output at CD Baby  –it is highly recommended!

     Unless you collect Christian ska compilations , you’re quite likely to have missed the next band's only recorded output. Contrary to the rest of that compilations, this band played a dramatic and quite dark synth-heavy post punk full of reverb.

     The last band is filed under “freestyle” pretty much 100% of the time they are mentioned on the net. Freestyle fans apparently know a good thing when they hear it, but I have to say that this is “freestyle” the same way that 90s synthpop bands like Cause and Effect or Red Flag were “freestyle”. Which is to say… not really that much. But no matter how you want to label this song, it is pretty much the best synthpop song of the early 90s – an absolutely beautiful, epic, melodic and perfect synthpop masterpiece. HUGE thanks to Lesypersound for this one!

Where can you hear this treasure trove? Right here!

Spiff: Music At Last!

We cannot always judge a book by its cover, nor an album on its artwork. I know this from experience, as all record collectors surely do. I’ve purchased countless cheap records completely unheard, based upon their promising cover art, only to cringe when my needle hit the wax and the hideous sounds of Air Supply-esque wuss-wave spewed from the speakers. Conversely, sometimes an uninspired cover can actually hide a surprisingly excellent record. This record by Spiff is a perfect example. Although its simplistic cover looks like it may have come from a mid-80s AOR pop band from Iowa that recorded an album of soft rock jams with lyrics about how much they want to rip off your teal jumpsuit and muss up your feathered hair as they rock your body (gently, of course… they’re soft rockers, after all), in reality the record is a completely unknown, Southern Californian one-man synthpop extravaganza.

While the prospect of late-80s synthpop leaves a very sour taste in most of our mouths, let me assure you that this guy was the genuine article. It sounds as if he worshipped in the church of Vince Clarke and Paul Humphreys. While other kids in his school band were learning to play Stars and Stripes Forever, he was trying to convince the music teacher that the composition sorely lacked a Jupiter 8 solo. And while other kids recited the US Pledge of Allegiance every morning at school, he probably sang Just Can’t Get Enough.

Truly, there is not a dud on this album. The only criticism I really have is that it is not a very dynamic record – most songs are about the same BPM and sound vaguely similar to one another, and the same drum fill is used on almost every song. Of course, given the choice between listening to a slightly redundant late-80s record heavily influenced by Speak and Spell, or a third-rate Quiet Riot clone singing their last remaining brain cells out, I certainly prefer the former. And there are songs that stand out from the rest here – Phon is eminently danceable, with silly lyrics and samples of telephones ringing. Follow Me has an absolutely killer bassline and is prefect for any synthpop dance club (especially since most of the lyrics simply say “get up, get up, get up and dance”).

The more I listen to this record, the more I appreciate the mysterious Spiff's completely earnest take on a style of music that was certainly passé when he released it. He was 10 years too late to enjoy any sort of renown with this record, and at least 10 years too early to take advantage of any sort of early-synthpop resurgence. In a way, I suppose he was one of the very first people to revive this style of electro-pop, albeit at the worst time possible (commercially, at least). At the beginning of “Clauge”, he declares “In the late 70s, no-one understood… there was a new age dawning. And this is what it sounded like” just before a barrage of (kind of cheesy) analog-sounding electronics smacks your ears. With this statement, you know that Spiff is trying desperately to recapture the sound of a bygone era. And I’ll be damned if he doesn’t succeed wonderfully.

Spiff: Music at Last EP

1989, self-released

Feel Spiffy here.

Human Trapped Rhythms mLP

Here’s a release from 1985 that’s so far out in left-field that it has pretty much left the ballpark. Combining industrial noise with minimal electronics, mantra-like chants and primal screams, utterly unrefined singing and creepy tape loops - all of which come together in the most barebones of musical structures - this record is less a collection of “songs” than an amateurly sinister (or sinisterly amateur?) foray into avant garde atmospherics.

Many of the tracks here are little more than synth lines over which male or female vocals sing, talk, shriek, or all of the above. Some sound a bit ridiculous and cross the terrain into simple pretension, but there are some tracks that are both stark and beautiful. “No Words” is about two or three notes played on the low end of a synthesizer, with the female vocalist slowly reciting poetic lyrics. “The Message” is the closest this record comes to an actual song, with thudding sparse industrial percussion, hints of an ominous rhythm in the background, and male vocals repeating the words “roll back… and die”. “Blood Run” is nothing more than white noise and chimes, as a cacophonic chorus of ghosts tunes their vocals.

The title track is particularly odd and interesting, awash in sampled noise and echoing laughter, child’s-toy instruments, and vocals that vaguely recall traditional British folk music. It’s a pretty strange and slightly creepy track. It kind of sounds like those brief 5-10 seconds of hushed music played at the end of horror movie trailers. You know those trailers that begin with a narrator whose vocal tone implies profundity, but whose words are cliché, bordering on inane? They start with “In a world… where there is no line… between life and death”, and then there’s a minute of action and suspense scenes. Then the trailer cuts the sound to a minimum, and a quiet, spooky song (a song quite similar to the title track on this record) is the only sound in the theater, played at a low volume to build suspense, as the camera zooms in on a lone figure in an austere room illuminated by a moonlit window, and maybe the eerie music is accompanied by vocals of a little girl with a British accent, whose otherwise innocent and sweet singing sounds vaguely evil as the shadows of dying trees dance in the moonlight, playing across the mystery figure’s visibly trembling silhouette, and the camera moves slowly but steadily closer to them, and you wonder if the figure is perhaps the singing girl, or a monster, or a figment of someone’s imagination and then the figure slowly turns, and they're revealed to be a girl in her late teens, her vacant sheet-white face glowing a ghostly blue in the moonlight and the vocals fade and all music fades aside from a lone suspenseful shimmering note and then out of nowhere BAM!!!!! a sparkling vampire grabs the figure you realize it’s a trailer for a new Twilight movie. Goddamn it.

Listen to the mLP here.

The Black Box: Fetish#1 7”

Out of Australia comes this obscure and rare 7” by a band called The Black Box. Their influences are quite obvious – very Birthday Party and somewhat deathrock sounding stuff here. It’s grinding, screeching, noisy guitar rock, with vocals that seem primed for attack, drums occasionally pounded so hard you feel sorry for them, and short sax interludes. It’s actually the band’s perfect use of the sax that sets this release above so many similar “me-too” bands. The instrument goes from short aggressive bleats to tuneful melodies in the space of a few seconds. It makes both songs much more dynamic and interesting.

The record was self released in 1989 on Claude Records. There is not too much information to be found about this band – it seems they released only this 7” (although I’d certainly like to hear more if it exists) and then toiled in obscurity. It’s time to rediscover them now. This record is a bit scratchy, so excuse the static and clicks that are mainly at the beginning of each song.

Black Box: Fetish#1 7”

1989, Claude Records

Fetish#1

Poison Shadows

Click here to listen!

Nullset: Debut 7"

For some reason, my initial post of this record disappeared... Here it is again. This is the exceedingly rare and practically unknown debut 7” from obscure New Jersey synth band Nullset. In the past, I posted their Unisphere 12” and Forget You First 7”. Those records found the band in pop-ish new wave territory (although Unisphere is still has some pretty nice DIY sounding synthpop tracks). But this 7” is much more electronic, and features one of my absolute favorite synthpunk song.

The A side is a good lo-fi synthpop song that sounds very much like their material on their 12” released later in the year. It’s somewhat tinny and not recorded particularly well. The low production value adds to the song's charm, though.

The B-side is the truly kickass song though. Unfortunately, it is a live recording (begging the question, why could they not have recorded this song in a proper studio? Did they only have time for one song when they recorded the A-side?). Aside from being mixed VERY low (allowing for even light surface noise to be noticeable at the beginning), the sound is not that bad for a live track recorded in 1981 or so in a tiny club. And the song packs a punch – it is fast-paced synthpunk, with some great synth lines and loads of KR-55 drum machine fills. If there is somehow an unreleased studio recording of this, perhaps someone out there has it?

This record was released in 1983, shortly before the Unisphere 12”, and has been largely forgotten. I can imagine that only a few hundred of these were ever pressed, and I have only ever seen one copy in my life – which I grabbed without hesitation and have ripped here.

Nullset: Debut 7"

1983, JRM Records

Click here to listen!