All My Stars (31)

By: Joanne McNeil
August 4, 2016

stars

One in a weekly series in which Joanne McNeil recommends books, films, exhibitions, and more. You can also subscribe to the All My Stars newsletter here.

numan

This month, Hilobrow is running a series of posts in appreciation of New Wave hits from 1977–1982. Yesterday, my post on Gary Numan’s “Metal” went up.

I know these songs from that brief early-aughts revival known as electroclash. The actual electroclash bands were not so great but the DJs would cut in Italo disco, various new wave artists, post punk, and goth-twinged electronic music. Consequently, most of the music that reminds me of parties in my youth was actually released about the time of my birth.

That’s what I imported into whatever janky mp3 player I had at the time because an iPod was $400. (“In my day, an iPhone weighted seven pounds, didn’t take calls or have internet, and only held 1,000 songs….”) This was the only period of my life that I closely followed music and it reflects now in what I tend to turn on. Still, Cabaret Voltaire’s “Red Mecca” is my ultimate chilling-at-home record. I went to some epic parties back then, but now it’s over.

Perhaps no one will revist artists like Felix Da Housecat or Mount Sims, because the scene was so derivative of another period — I wonder. It felt like cosplay even at the time. There were a few songs that were very, very good like Solvent’s “My Radio”, but even then they weren’t particularly popular. Freak folk, emerging right on the heels of electroclash, was similarly nostalgic. But electroclash, as far as I can tell, never had its Joanna Newsom, whose records might deservedly sit alongside Sibylle Baier or Vashti Bunyan, despite the decades that separate them.

In addition to “Metal,” here are several other good synth heavy songs. I’ll inevitably write more about John Foxx and Anne Clark soon:

Human League (so many great tracks, but this one is peculiarly uplifting), “Empire State Human”
John Foxx, “Underpass”
Fad Gadget, “Collapsing New People”
Neon Judgement, “Chinese Black”
Anne Clark, “Sleeper in Metropolis”

***

ALL POSTS IN THIS SERIES

All My Stars (31)

Categories

Tags