Lent 2026

Give me new noise, give me new affectionStrange new toys from another worldI need to see more than just three dimensionsStranger than fiction, faster than light These lyrics come from the final verse of Tuxedomoon’s ‘What Use’, included on their 1980 debut album Half Mute, and they nicely encapsulate the …

Something i haven’t drawn attention to in this Lent Series is the fact that almost every album i’ve explored has been a debut. It’s the case with Suicide, Sakamoto, P-Model, Human League, Leer & Rental, Der Plan and Fad Gadget. John Foxx and Bill Nelson’s Red Noise clearly pick up …

During the critical period i’m exploring in this Lent Series, 1977–81, alongside the assorted group divisions, schisms and reformations i’ve mentioned previously, another recurring problem was artists finding it difficult to get their music heard. San Francisco synthpunk band Units – led by husband and wife Scott Ryser and Rachel …

i’m not sure anyone in 1977, listening to Ultravox’s spectacular album Ha! Ha! Ha!, could have imagined what the band’s lead singer, John Foxx, would be doing in just three years’ time. One of the most pumped-up albums of the late ’70s, Ha! Ha! Ha! was partly fuelled by the …

Where some artists saw electronics as a means to undermine or break entirely from existing pop and rock tropes, UK musician Frank Tovey assimilated them in his work as Fad Gadget. His output under that nom de guerre – four albums, beginning in 1980 with Fireside Favourites, before continuing using …

Liminal times be liminal. If there’s one thing that typifies the period i’m focusing on in this Lent Series, 1977–81, it’s the extent to which, with the proliferation of electronics, more than usually strange and wonderful things suddenly seemed to be possible. As i’ve explored previously, this led to some …

For the next album in the Lent Series – and this won’t be the only time – the chronology becomes more fluid. Cabaret Voltaire, comprising Richard Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson, formed in Sheffield in 1973, but it would be five more years before their music would start to …

Many of the albums i’m featuring in this year’s Lent Series feel as if they came out of nowhere, less part of a process of evolution than a sudden, out-of-the-blue flash of something fully-formed and entirely new. That’s very much the case with The Bridge, a remarkable one-off creation resulting …

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To view this content, you must be a member of Simon Cummings’s Patreon at £5 or more

To view this content, you must be a member of Simon Cummings’s Patreon at £5 or more

To view this content, you must be a member of Simon Cummings’s Patreon at £5 or more

To view this content, you must be a member of Simon Cummings’s Patreon at £5 or more

To view this content, you must be a member of Simon Cummings’s Patreon at £5 or more