Factory Records Pt. 1 - A Brief Audio History

Manchester, England is probably best known for grey skies, football hooligans and for being the birthplace of the industrialized city. For a majority of us reading this, Manchester (or Mad-chester) played a substantial role in our musical education and adolescent woes. For me it was a series of records with often cryptic, yet stunning artwork and glorious waveforms. The sounds were similar from LP to single to EP albeit radically different from one another in myriad ways. When Tony Wilson, a media figurehead and Alan Erasmus, an out of work actor and band manager started Factory Records, little did they know how they would influence the terrain of independent music for years to come. Today Factory’s influence can be heard across a broad spectrum of artists today including !!!, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire, and of course, Interpol.

Factory’s aesthetic both sonically and visually can be traced back to the team of Martin Hannett and Peter Saville, also partners in the label. Hannett, a rogue recording engineer and record producer developed a unique style that is best represented by early A Certain Ratio and Joy Division releases (and drugs and guns legend has it). Often sparse with heavily effected drums and frequent use of delays were just two of Hannett’s signatures. Combined with Peter Saville’s stunning prowess for design, it wasn’t rare for an absence of title or band name on a majority of sleeves with an emphasis on New Order’s releases. Hannett and Saville working in concert created a mystique to this young label, which would ultimately suffer from its unorthodox business practices.

While most labels struggle at birth, Factory found success quickly with Joy Division and its troubled leader Ian Curtis. The caveat was written in blood, literally, when Tony and Joy Division entered into an agreement that basically gave Factory little to no control over their properties. This was just the first in a queue of monumentally bad business decisions by Tony Wilson. From the onset Factory engaged in a policy of no contracts with its roster. This policy, or gross lack of, directly attributed to the demise of the label. Factory’s two most bankable acts New Order and the Happy Mondays along with escalating gang trouble at the legendary club the Hacienda eventually bankrupted the label. Factory closed its doors in 1992 but left a mighty legacy that continues to inspire. To be continued..

Tune of the Weekend.

In the last few years a savage amount of chinstroking has transpired in relation to anything Cosmic or Balearic. In fact, you could say that a lot of folks have contracted Balearia. However, what shouldn’t be forgotten is that a lot of this music was unadulterated cheese, though it is magnificent in its fromageyness. Despite the fact that countless experts (usually guys with beards…and me) will attest to the significance of Italo in the development of Chicago house and how it allowed Ron Hardy to create long dialogs of electronic tension and soulful release with his crowd – in the context of blah blah blah, ad nauseum – some of us remember records like Sabrina’s “Boys,” or Ryan Paris’s “Dolce Vita,” (I mean for god’s sake who would call their kid Ryan Paris. Oh, I see, it was a stage name. I think Tarquin Verona has a nice ring to it). And we remember the things that accompanied those tunes; rah-rah skirts, mesh tops, “Frankie Says” t-shirts, long summers of no irony and layers and layers of glorious, luscious cheese.

William Pitt’s “City Lights” is cut from this cloth too, it’s a de facto Ibiza classic, a Balearic nugget, with corny melodies, a bassline ripped from Dennis Edward’s “Don’t Look Any Further,” and Euro accented lyrics detailing the ennui of life in opulent surroundings amid a beautiful European city. It’s totally cheesy, and I love every second of it. If you have it, bust it out, get out in the sun and listen to it on your player, ask the dj to take off that bloody Mariah Carey record about touching her bod (at a galloping 79 beats per minute zzzzzzzzzzzzzz) and stick this baby on. It’ll send most of the “we need corporate music that’s been drilled into our brains” contingent running to the bar – the dj will get paid more as a result – and you can stand on the dance floor in perfect bliss, pretending it’s 1987, you’re in San Antonio (Ibiza that is, Texas would be completely out of context, blah, blah ad nauseum), Oakenfold and Weatherall’s arrival on the island is imminent and it isn’t overrun with Euro lager hooligans. Yes, get out and see some citeeeee liiiiiights!!!!!

Orr


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John Tejada Where

John Tejada’s new album, Where, is his eleventh, and the fiftieth release on his Palette label. The LA based musician has been producing music for over fifteen years and his label was founded in 1996. The beauty of Tejada’s work is that he tips his hat to Orbital, Carl Craig, Derrick May, and Hardfloor, amongst others and doesn’t just adhere to a narrow techno sub-genre, as is currently the norm. These influences are clearly evident in his tough but melodic productions and because of these, and his vision, Tejada’s music has a timeless quality.

An example of this is “La Mer;” the closing track of Where, which is a beautiful, modern acid tune; a sound capsule, built from an alloy of Phuture and Robert Armani, gliding effortlessly into aquatic segments that hint at The Black Dog. It is inexorable, alluring in its repetition, and possessed of the robotic beauty that informs every track on this record. On Track five, “Desire,” Tejada places the ghostly but soulful vocals of singer Nicolette over 808 bass drums, and then takes the beats out until halfway through the track when they kick in again and shunt her spectral voice over a dais of bleeps and lush, electronic strings.

“Turning Point,” is comprised of clanking melodies, glassy keys, and an impossibly tough bassline, making it the epitome of abstract dance music. Ditto for “Raindrops;” a lush but electric prayer to an opening sky that is obviously brand new but could have been the b-side of a long lost release on the Retroactive label. It dashes, thuds and throbs through hazy textures until steely, luxated chords scatter its virtual precipitation. “Pivot” rolls around like a rubber box full of metal balls, its chunky but hollow square wave bass conspiring with airy strings, fidgety melodies and what sounds like molten steel spittle pinging off a shiny spittoon until spooky synths join the cartoon ensemble to create the soundtrack for a club where Deunan Knute works as security and Aeon Flux is the dj.

These five tracks, -- and there are five more to languish in -- from Where, show that not only has John Tejada paid close attention to the electronic music that has gone before but he is very capable of adding his own nuances, and when these talents are fused the result is a rich, electronic sound so graceful and melodic that it soars above the majority of techno tracks out there at the moment. This album will work equally well on a crowded dance floor at 4 AM as it will in headphones on a crowded street at 4 PM or on a sparsely populated sofa at midnight. And there’s double vinyl on this baby too! Oh yeah!!

Orr


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Extreme Cuisine and Food Jams

I was just outfitting my new web properties with dual overhead cam, fuel injected, V-8 space probes coated with 7 layers of delicious chipotle extreme jack cheese dipping sauce in a low-fat sour cream, guacamole, triple bacon flash-fried tortilla-wrap and it occured to me how bizarre the dual trends of threat oriented extreme food consumption and their bizarrely conceived and value marketed meal deals are.

Please enjoy this list of food jams, where the food sounds quite edible. Let's kick things off with some Camembert Electrique. If you want to contribute to Food Force who fights global hunger, click the image above.

LinnDrum: The Forgotten Classic

The LinnDrum is a piece of majestic musical machinery oft-forgotten in the timeline of electronic/pop music. It bears the name of its founder, Berkeley's own Roger Linn, who applied the foundation and concepts he pioneered in that instrument to the later blockbuster Akai MPC series of sampling workstations. It seems as if it has been cast permanently under the shadow of its much more popular little brothers the MPC's 60, 500, 1000, 2000, and 3000. Although never quite a workstation, that little wonder box laid the groundwork for the features that would later be implemented in the MPC series, such as sampling, tuning and volume control over individual sounds, external triggering of sounds (pre-midi), and the ability to load new sounds into the machine. It went through three iterations in four years- the Linn LM-1, the LinnDrum, and the Linn 9000.

As the first sampling instrument, it is a transition instrument that bridges the link between the early drum machines like the Rhythm Ace, a box that had fixed sound and rhythm patterns that sounded much like the ones that emanated from your grandma's home organ- and the powerhouse musical swiss army knives of today- sampling MIDI workstations equipped with tons of onboard memory, advanced sequencing, and banks of realistic-sounding drums.

But there is a certain characteristic that defines the LinnDrum. When one talks about the LinnDrum, the first thing that your brain conjures up is “that sound,” and the next is trying to remember all the songs that it was featured on. Most recognizable is that knocking kind of “boxy clank” rhythm best represented by the song “When Doves Cry,” by Prince. The unique sound of the LinnDrum was probably the reason for Prince's decision to leave a bass line entirely out of that song and to feature those drum sounds, center stage.

Prince is the artist most closely associated with the LinnDrum sound, seeing that it was featured on every 80's record of his, save for Dirty Mind (because it wasn't invented yet). He put it into service with every artist he is closely associated with, and that is a long list: Vanity 6, Apollonia 6, The Time, Shelia E, Jesse Johnson, Sheena Easton, He even used it with other artists that he produced, like Andre Cymone and Patti Labelle.

The LinnDrum touched almost every corner of popular music- its sounds were heard in Rock, Pop, R&B, Hip Hop and even soundtrack music- witness the Giorgio Moroder track from the movie “Cat People” and the ubiquitous hit “Miami Vice Theme.” John Carpenter and Vangelis also put the box into service as a compositional tool. A whole new branch of synth-flavored R&B dance music was ushered in due to its usage (check out the classic electro track “Freak-A-Zoid” by Midnight Starr) . Again, much of that credit is due to Prince. He first used the LinnDrum on his 1981 album “Controversy” on the song “Private Joy.” The stiff (in a good way) drum sounds complement the rest of the synth-funk track quite handily.

Prince was certainly amongst the first to use the LinnDrum on an album, but the distinction of first goes to Steve Hackett, a guitarist with the band Genesis. On the track “Overnight Sleeper” he manages to make innovative usage of its sound with intricately programmed drums in a Prog-Rock style in the vein of say, Tangerine Dream or Synergy.

The first appearance of the LinnDrum to surface on the mainstream charts was in the song “Don't You Want Me” by The Human League. A huge hit, but one that severely underutilized the capabilities of that machine. Really all the drums are doing in this song is keeping time.

You'll notice that a lot of LinnDrum drum tracks are recorded extremely dry to enhance the direct gritty, dirty quality of the sounds. Many of the tracks were programmed to utilize the machine's mechanical “funk.” Prince, being the musician that utilized the instrument the most, is also the one who worked the hardest on pushing the sounds and rhythms into a new realm. The LinnDrum's sequencer was said to have time lag limitations, but many musicians turned that supposed weakness into a strength. The LinnDrum was one of those legendary machines that is said to have strong “feel.”

Some producers used it to augment the sound of real drums. Listen to the way it's used on the Todd Rundgren song “Bang the Drum All Day.” The distinctive whomp of the snare is right there underneath the regular drum kit. Sometimes producers would layer drum sounds from this and other machines, so on a few of these tracks, you might not be hearing just the Linn.

The 80's (especially the mid-80's) were definitely the time for the LinnDrum. They would have not sounded the same without it. It helped push music into sonic territory that had yet been unexplored, even on a “Pop” level. Artists like Madonna, Midnight Star, Peter Gabriel, Prince, and The Thompson Twins created major hits with it. Would Michael Sembello's hit “Maniac” from the movie Flashdance have sounded the same if not for the LinnDrum? The rolling percussion of that song virtually defines it.

There are new artists that go the LinnDrum for that certain sound as well. Check out the song “Burn Rubber” by Dam-Funk. It is a retake on the classic by the Gap Band, given a modern run-through, but retaining its ties to the past through its use of the simple LinnDrum patterns and that distinctive “thwak.”

After 20 years, the old LinnDrum is making a comeback. Only now its taking the innovative mindset that started with the original and applying it to a whole new generation of music makers. The LinnDrum ll is a meeting of the minds, a collaboration between Mr. Linn and Mr. Dave Smith of Sequential Circuits and Prophet 5 fame. The machine was created from the idea that with so much electronic music being performance based, why not have a machine that caters to it? I'm sure this new instrument will do as much for music in the 2000's and beyond as the LinnDrum did during its heyday.

Here's a little musical tribute to the beautiful machine that Roger Linn created- the LinnDrum.

-Marcel Grimsley

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Apple II Forever and Ever!

Is Apple II really forever? We're not entirely sure about that. But, please come with us to a very different time. The land of corporate zeal and inspired power balladry..this is titillating stuff, Irene Cara meets Bonnie Tyler meets 4KB RAM! (Thanks DC for finding this.)

Disco Italia

Italo disco has been a catch phrase for a while now among trainspotters who obsess over records that were cast into the abyss of high energy by the earnest, chin stroking dance music programmers of the nineties, and are now returning to the crates of serious collectors and djs whose love never faded. Whereas nineties holdouts would gladly dwell on the efficacy of Jeff Mills’ crunchy loops and their effect on the dance massive, it’s not unusual for their peers in this decade to ponder the depth of lyrics like “You look like Nostradamus, although you’re not as famous,” or other pearls of Italo lyric writing.

And though it is easy to regard this European dance music as mere cheese, there has been some excavation of the genre and more than a few absolute gems have turned up. Italo disco didn’t just disappear to be replaced by house and techno but rather, the latter genres were influenced by the much maligned European disco styles hammered in the clubs of the ‘80s by djs who – not so coincidentally – pioneered both house and techno (and that includes Jeff Mills btw).

Thankfully some of the most influential tracks have been committed in recent years to retrospective collections, which have given the younger – and often more passionate – collectors and djs a chance to fall in love with the music for the first time. A new release that is worthy of investigation is !K7/Strut’s Disco Italia – Essential Italo Disco Classics 1977 – 1985, a thirteen track collection compiled by Steve Kotey of Chicken Lips. Kotey has done his homework on this one and dug deep into his disco collection to pull out a selection of Italo numbers that reflect the more soulful side of the genre, as opposed to the robotic and New Wave tendencies that were featured on the fine I-Robots and Confuzed Disco collections; both released on the Italian imprint IRMA.

With Disco Italia you get a perfect amalgam of the intensity of New York and the balmy Mediterranean overtones of Rimini or Ricione, complete with that bewildering, yet endearing, penchant for pidgin English lyrics. The groove was everything in Italo and if the lyrics didn’t make sense (because neither the producers nor the singers could speak English) then so be it. And when that groove is as infectious and devastating as it is on tunes like Kano’s “Now Baby Now,” – from their self-titled album from 1980, which also contained “It’s A War,” – “Dreaming” by Rainbow Team and “The Kee Tha Tha” by Five Letters, who’s complaining? You’re too busy dancing to be bitching about grammatical train wrecks.

There is such a thing as poetic license and a dip into the annals of Italo disco will show that it was exercised with liberal abandon. However, there aren’t really too many tunes on here that will have you running for the Webster’s Dictionary or The Elements of Style, but plenty of numbers that will have you running to the nearest dance floor or open area of carpet. Primary among those that radiate with a rug cutting fervor is “Let Me Be Your Radio (Part 1)” by Red Dragon Band. This baby, released on the tiny Italian indie label, Atlas Records, is a tough and percussive slice of funk infused with that special Italian touch. Radio style voice over vocalizing and shouted chants echo over rolling drums, lush keyboards and sharp horn stabs, and all this will keep it at the front of your crate.

Kotey also pulls gems from the discography of some of the more famous Italian producers of the late 1970s and early 1980s. “1979, It’s Dancing Time” by Revanche was produced by Mauro Malavasi, who is renowned for his work – often in conjunction with fellow producer, Jacques Fred Petrus -- as B.B. & Band, Brooklyn, Bronx & Queens Band, Change, Macho and Peter Jacques Band. This Revanche number is a straight-up good time party banger with a bass-line that brings Chic to mind and a vocal that brings banging, good time partying to mind.

Maurice Cavalieri and Maurizio Sangineto (aka Sangy) were another Italo powerhouse production team and their boogie standard, “Love (Is Gonna Be On Your Side)” by Firefly is included here. These guys, under various guises, crafted some very forward looking records in the ‘80s. Sangy produced Vallery Allington’s “Stop,” and “Sounds Of Humanoid Kind” by E.T.M.S., while Cavalier was behind such epic Italo tracks as Charlie’s legendary “Spacer Woman,” and Daniele Baldelli favorite “Stand Up” by Nexus.

And a compilation of Italian dance music would be sadly lacking without the inclusion of at least one track by Claudio Simonetti, and Giancarlo Meo. Thankfully two are featured, “Brazillian Dancer” by Kasso and “Do It Again” by Easy Going. Meo and Simonetti also recorded as Capricorn, a project, which spawned “I Need Love,” a driving electro disco cut from 1983 that made a huge impression on the nascent Chicago and Detroit dance scenes. Simonetti was a member of Italian doom rockers and soundtrack legends, Goblin, and together with Meo he produced Italo diva, Vivien Vee.

This is the kind of caliber that Kotey has actively sought out, and on Disco Italia, this type of quality is threaded through all thirteen tracks. Though he is probably the consummate collector, Kotey concentrates on tracks that contain a definite sense of fun, including, “Burning Love,” by D.D. Sound (aka La Bionda), which was written by the La Bionda Brothers and engineered by Harry Thumann of “Underwater,” fame; and Tullio De Piscopo’s grandly titled, “E Fatto 'E Sorde! E? (Money Money).” De Piscopo is a drummer of some note who played on early records by Kano and was responsible for the Balearic classic, “Stop Bajon (Primavera).” This compilation finishes on an appropriately high (and somewhat silly) note with Valentine’s “Tina Are You Ready,” a chunky, loping electro disco cut released on Banana Records (home to Vivien Vee and other Meo and Simonetti productions) in 1983 that seems to be about a lady friend who takes an eternity dolling herself up for a night out (on the dance floor of Discoteca Cosmic or Tenax, no doubt).

If you need a summer soundtrack for your dancing pleasure then you’ve definitely found it in this top-notch record. Hopefully Strut will be coming up with more releases like this one in the near future. If their past record is anything to go by, that is undoubtedly a given.
-Orr
http://www.strut-records.com/discoitalia/