The return of Student Selection - a series that never really got started (just one post I think - actually two) but was intended to showcase cool music that my students have turned me onto.
Quite a few classes are based around a prompt - send me a clip of your favorite tune in such-and-such a genre, or sometimes a specific artist (Bowie or Joni). For a recent class on New Wave / Postpunk, a student who is very knowledgeable about the genre nominated this from a Japanese group that shamefully (what with being a postpunk historian and all) I'd never heard of.
Listening it struck me initially as "none-more-New-Wave" - like how could anything be more New Wave than this? The angularity, the synth bit, the strained vocals....
But then, listening more, I discerned an odd resemblance to Led Zeppelin - the beat reminded me of "When the Levee Breaks" (or Billy Squier's Zep-clone "The Stroke"). The vocals get quite soaring and Plant-y. And when the noisy guitarburst comes in, it's excitingly noisy but it's definitely a solo - not so far from something Jimmy Page might let loose.
And what d'ya know? As the knowledgeable student revealed, P-Model is a classic example of the Old Wave / New Wave switcheroo. Before, they had been an unsuccessful prog band and like so many Western counterparts (Police, Cars, etc) they wholesale embraced the New Aesthetic - sonically, sartorially, in terms of record design.
Geometrics heightened by the obi-strip
None-new-wavest of all time, possibly, this back cover:
And not least a significant element of the total make-over is the band name P-Model, which is "we are product" / "we are machines" in its oblique sleekness.
But you can tell these dudes can really really play - they got the chops and in classic crypto-Oldwaver fashion are shoving all that snazz into the strictures of the New Thing.
Listen to the demented clockwork virtuosity of this one
Are there any bands that can be said to have swam upstream to spawn, i.e. new wave-to-old wave? Thinking of ABC on the second album, though that direction didn't take. In the 80's it didn't seem like too many bands were "selling their turntables and buying guitars", so to speak, but there must have been others.
ReplyDeleteWell the classic example is the trajectory of Talk Talk - they start as pretty characterless New Wave / New Pop and then the records subsequent get a bit jazzy and expansive - and then, bang, Spirit of Eden - it's like a flashback to Island Records in 1972, Jade Warrior, John Martyn, Traffic, etc. Flute and oboes and cor anglais. A breath controlled synth called the Variophon. Long tracks, huge expanses of sound designed for your hi-fi and Dark Side of the Moon style stoned / immersive listening. I think they actually employed someone who engineered one of the groups of that era of Island / Pink Label progginess. Or was it that Danny Thompson plays? That kind of music - Martyn, Roy Harper, etc - was definitely what they took their bearings from.
DeleteMeanwhile probably the actually existing and still recording survivors from that Old Wave were still trying to sound New Wave or at least taut, modern soul-dance. Talk Talk are making a record that could sit along Traffic's post-psych run of records. Steve Winwood is making slick R&B using the latest drum machines.
The Prodigy? Not going the whole distance, perhaps, but definitely heading in a more trad-rock direction circa Fat Of The Land. And they added a guitar player for their live shows.
DeleteLive instruments seem pretty common for hip-hop these days: eg Public Enemy when I saw them earlier this year. IIRC the line-up was bass, drums, keys and two DJs behind Chuck and Flav.
I was going to mention Primal Scream circa Give Out… But they have had so many directions it hardly seems fair to pick on one particular transition.
And then there are the great cycles for bands like Rush, who went New Wave with synths and drum machines in the 80s, and then back to gtr/bs/drums rock in the 90s.
Depeche Mode were a cute modern techno-pop band who became stadium-shaking rockers.
DeleteBut that was the Mode going a la mode - adjusting to grunge, the new thing. Right down to Gahan's narcotic adventures.
DeleteI think with Primal Scream we are firmly in the age of retro where ideas of Old Wave and New Wave collapse.... the late 80s is in many way all about reversing on the New Wave aesthetics (New Wave by that point has now been around long enough to be its own Old Wave - Boring Old Farts like Psychedelic Furs and the Banshees trudging out to tour their 8th or 9th albums, just as tedious as Page doing The Firm or Robert Plant's attempts to be with-it on his solo albums). Late 80s young upcoming bands bring in pre-punk influences that actually seem fresher.
The Cult's album with Rick Rubin producing might be a pivotal point but then there are many others. Sabbath-riff recycling by Buttholes et al.
Groups in the late Eighties want to sound like 1969 rather than 1979 - in the weirdest way, 1979 seems further back in time, or at least, more out-moded (mode as in a la mode as in fashion-logic)
Yeah, Mark Hollis even grew his hair out and started wearing denim jackets and beaded necklaces. As opposed to the skinny ties and straight-leg pants that the rockers were donning in order to look "edgy."
ReplyDeleteSimon, Ed, Phil, and everyone else who comments on this blog, I've a real favour to ask of you. A dear friend of mine has just lost his mum, and I want to show him how much I care about him. He's a dance music obsessive (I got him Energy Flash as a present), and he has howitsered a multitude of times as to why hard house is a million billion times better then progressive house. So, if you lot were to name the five best hard house tracks, I could relay your choices to him and say that I was thinking of him.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that
DeleteI honestly couldn't name 5 hard house tracks, it's not a genre I followed
BUT I did love this track "Don't You Want My Love" by Felix, which was particularly big in the gay clubs in 1992 like Trade. The sound was called Nu-NRG I think, and associated with the deejay Tony de Vit. Actually looking him up, he's considered a pioneer of hard-NRG and hard house. The Felix tune's tempo is quite leisurely compared to hard house proper, but for its time it was considered "slamming".
https://youtu.be/nBRxhl9xtYQ?si=VK2hfFfikOM2ay5j
I guessing the regular blog commenters are even less likely to be able to nominate hard house classics, but maybe we have some secret fans of Mrs Wood and Lisa Lashes and Ann Savage here.
DeleteThe top female deejays for hard house all seem to have names connoting S&M and discipline - Mrs. Wood Teaches Techno was her big compilation.
To be honest, I can't tell you the distinction between hard house and progressive house, so you could just name 5 house tracks. I mean, the point of the exercise is to show that I care about my friend.
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