UK

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 …

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 …

The encroachment and infiltration of electronics into pop and rock caused, among other things, a whole lot of disquiet, disagreement and division. One of the recurring themes of this most liminal period are band shake-ups and break-ups, in which opinions about the presence, role and importance of electronics were often …

Through the 1970s, Bill Nelson was the driving force behind Be-Bop Deluxe, a band that took art rock in some highly progressive directions. Futurama (1975), though conventional, had as its highlight ‘Sound Track’, energised, expansive and imaginative, showing off Nelson’s outstanding guitar skill. Sunburst Finish (1976) included ‘Sleep That Burns’, …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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