It’s been a while since an update, so I figured I’d post up some more excellent videos from the 80s. Watch out for some hotness from The Cure, Blondie, the English Beat, Duran Duran, and Crowded House.
After a short hiatus, music video Thursday has returned. There are so many amazing New Wave videos that it’s difficult to choose sometimes. They are sweet and little poorly produced shorts backed by radical tunes, what more could you ask for? This week I selected some lesser known (possibly?) bands, along with A-ha and one of the most famous music videos ever. After the jump there is The Style Council, Figures on a Beach, Missing Persons, English Beat, and A-ha.
The Radiophonic Workshop was a studio at the BBC that was created in the late 1950s to produce sound effects and experimental music for various radio and television programs. Their task was to find the right sounds to accompany the new wave of programming coming out on the BBC, especially science fiction shows.
One important early member of the Radiophonic Workshop was Delia Derbyshire, who joined the group in 1962. She was a mathematician and composer who was actually turned down a job at Decca Records before joining the workshop; Decca did not employ women in their recording studios at the time. To listen to a good range of her work, download or try to find a copy of‘Music From The BBC Radiophonic Workshop’, which was released on Rephlex Records in 2003.
Her most famous work for the BBC was the Doctor Who theme song. Originally composed by Ron Grainer, the song was truly realized through the hands and ears of Delia (sadly, she never received any credit for the song during her lifetime). Without synthesizers or drum machines available, she experimented with musique concrète, or the sampling of sounds from everyday objects (and not so much everyday objects such as oscillators), and then tweaking them through pitch bending and various other audio manipulation techniques. At the time there were also no sequencers available, so she would have to record a single note and then play that note back on magnetic tape loops to create a beat. Multiple tape loops were then manually synced and layered to create the composition.
It’s hard to think of all this as too impressive, but at the time everything was completely new and some real tinkering, experimentation, and ingenuity went into the work coming from the Radiophonic Workshop. Not much is known to the general public about the workshop, but the work done there in the 50s, 60s, and 70s played a prominent role in the furthering of electronic music. After the cut there is the seven part BBC documentary ‘The Alchemists of Sound’, which showcases a complete history of the workshop and those whom were involved. For the parts about Delia, check out the end of part 4 and beginning of part 5.
Pleix films, a community of motion designers from Paris, has just posted another kick ass video. It’s for a song called Get Down by Groove Armada and was produced by Chased by Cowboys. After watching it, I just want to party with a bunch of bunny rabbits. Other Pleix hits include Birds, which features an all star cast of different dog breads, and Beauty Kit, which educates young girls on the advantages of plastic surgery.
It’s been a long week and I have a few other things I want to post, but first let me get some videos on here. I decided to keep going with new wave/pop groups from the 80s. This week there is Tears for Fears, China Crisis, Bill Nelson, A Flock of Seagulls, and Phil Collins. Word.
Apparently I only post on days that begin with the letter T. This week I selected five more rockin’ 80s videos, from five different artists. I’ve also included a commercial this week. It’s for Kirin beer from Japan, and it features the Yellow Magic Orchestra. Behind the cut there is Information Society, Erasure, Alphaville, Nena, and Falco. I think that next week I may switch it up to a different genre of music videos . . . or maybe not.
Another Thursday has arrived, and I have selected another set of sweet music videos. Hopefully I will have a chance to write some other entries that aren’t music video related in the near future. Behind the cut there is Kraftwerk, Fad Gadget, Kas Product, Cabaret Voltaire, and Duran Duran.
It’s Thursday again. That means more Aeron chair dance party fun. There are a good number of rockin’ New Order and Depeche Mode videos out there, but I wanted to try and find some new artists so I wasn’t repeating myself so soon. Behind the cut there is the Human League, John Foxx, Soft Cell, Ultravox, and Bronski Beat.
Super_Collider is the combination of electronic/experimental music producers Cristian Vogel (Tresor/NovaMute) and Jamie Lidell (Warp). In 2002, the German television channel ‘VIVA’ aired an hour long special called SC_TV, which is an experimental audiovisual collage based on Super_Collider’s Raw Digits album. The audio is a mix from Vogel/Lidell that combines their older work with various influences that inspired Raw Digits. The video, animation, and editing for SC_TV were all done by ZEROH and red design, the British design studios that also did the album artwork for Raw Digits. There is a ~2 minute preview available, as well as the entire hour broken into eighteen separate sections.
Today is New Wave/Synthpop/Whatever music video day. I found so many good ones, but I selected just five for now. Maybe next Thursday? Behind the cut there is Peter Schilling, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, New Order, and Visage.
Depeche Mode covering Billy Joe Royal’s ‘Down in the Boondocks’? Yup. Last night I discovered a random folder on a French web server, with no explanation, containing about a dozen demos with Martin Gore singing. Although Gore is their main songwriter, Depeche Mode’s lead vocals are generally handled by David Gahan. Gore does manage to hold his own though, singing on two of my favorite DM tracks, ‘Sweetest Perfection’ and ‘Any Second Now (Voices)’. In the demos be sure to check out the version of ‘Enjoy the Silence’ — it includes a harmonium and is especially creepy.