Listening to the Music the Machines Make: Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983 by Richard Evans

Author:Richard Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

1981.2 Some Bizzare / Stevo / Depeche Mode / Soft Cell / Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark / Laurie Anderson / Blancmange

AT THE END OF January, Sounds reported that ‘A dozen Futurist bands have been garnered together for a compilation called ‘Some Bizzare Album’ which has been put together by futurist DJ and entrepreneur Stevo,’ to which they added, ‘To coincide with the album’s release 20 “Bizzare Evenings” have been lined up at clubs around the country and two of the bands appearing on the album will be playing at each event.’ The piece also listed the dates and venues for nineteen shows, of which the first ten also appeared in a series of display adverts in the concert pages of the music press. ‘Different bands on different nights’ enthused the adverts, which then went on to list the twelve acts involved under a large picture of a fish: Fast Set, The Loved One, Blah Blah Blah, Illustration, Depeche Mode, The The, B-Movie, Jell, Blancmange, Soft Cell, Neu Electrikk and Naked Lunch. ‘Which bands will be appearing where hasn’t been revealed,’ the report continued. ‘Stevo says that it doesn’t matter “because people should be into the whole scene and not just individual groups”.’

The following week, reviews of the Some Bizzare Album started to appear in the music press. The release scored just two of a possible five stars from Record Mirror’s Chris Westwood, who suspected that the album was simply designed to profiteer from the ‘futurist’ fashion that was being spearheaded by Spandau Ballet, and rejected the release in his brief review as a collection of ‘stale and trivial and – above all – loveless songs wrapped around cold, hollow images, no flair, no fight’. Sounds, more promisingly, gave over most of a page to their review of the album, which Betty Page mischievously ran under the title ‘Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Stevo’, a nod to the founder of the Some Bizzare label, and the sometime compiler of Sounds’ new Futurist Chart, Stevo Pearce. Opening her review with an introduction to the eccentric maverick behind the release, Page wrote, ‘In the dim and distant early months of 1980, a lone figure entered the Sounds scenario. Self-styled electro-entrepreneur Steve, complete with his half a lank fringe, offered up a chart the like of which had never before been witnessed,’ she deadpanned. ‘Full of bands who didn’t fit the alternative label, weren’t smart enough to be on Rough Trade.’

Page identified three tracks from the Some Bizzare Album for particular praise: Depeche Mode’s ‘Photographic’ – ‘the only featured band to make their synths go with beauty, bouncy energy and harmony’; B-Movie’s ‘Moles’ – ‘much more rock’n’roll than the rest’; and the ‘quite charming’ ‘The Girl With The Patent Leather Face’ from Soft Cell, whose ‘crooning vocals from Marc Almond soar away close to the edge singing a stunningly visual fetishistic lyric’. Sounds’ review was overwhelmingly supportive of the Some Bizzare project, Page ending her piece by celebrating the album’s ‘balance between fun, dance and thoughtfulness’.

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