THOMAS DOLBY | DAVE CLARKE | ALISON MOYET | KEVIN GODLEY | ANDREW HUNG NOW IN 3D 2 HELLO W E L C O M E T O E L E C T R O N I C S O U N D 3 5 EDITOR hat is a music producer? Yeah, what does a producer PUSH W actually do? Is their role that of technical expert, able @PUSHTWEETING to place microphones in just the right place? Is it their DEPUTY EDITOR deep knowledge of EQ and effects and signal-to-noise ratios that MARK ROLAND @MARKROLAND101 qualifies them to be in charge of a recording session? Or are they some kind vibe master who creates the atmosphere needed to ART EDITOR MARK HALL coax the finest performances from temperamental artistes? Or @HELLOMARKHALL are they strangely skilled in the arcane knowledge of The Song, COMMISSIONING EDITOR constructing with unerring accuracy the necessary key changes, NEIL MASON bridges, until it is a piece of art worthy of pressing into vinyl. @NEIL_MASON Psychologist, accountant, drug hoover, disciplinarian, EDITORIAL ASSISTANT visionary, electronics wizard, radical experimenter, FINLAY MILLIGAN @FINMILLIGAN experienced parental figure, midwife, hand-holder, host, lover, pal, sound obsessive, music lover, deal maker… Conny Plank THANKS TO was all of the above. EMMA GARWOOD With this issue of Electronic Sound, we wanted to place Conny CONTRIBUTORS centrestage and celebrate his work, and we scarcely mention PIERS ALLARDYCE, STEVE APPLETON, MARK BREND, SEAN COEN, BETHAN COLE, Kraftwerk. Plank’s contribution to music is almost immeasurable, STEPHEN DALTON, GEORGE FAIRBAIRN, and although we’ve devoted the cover story to him, and talked to CARL GRIFFIN, ANDREW HOLMES, VELIMIR ILIC, JO KENDALL, SOPHIE LITTLE, BEN MILES, BEN several key players in his life, including his son Stephan, whose MURPHY, KRIS NEEDS, PETE PAPHIDES, ROBIN new documentary about his dad got this month’s ball rolling, we RIMBAUD, CHRIS ROBERTS, WENDY ROBY, FAT ROLAND, SAM ROSE, MAT SMITH, JOOLS STONE, feel we’ve hardly scratched the surface. DAVID STUBBS, BRIAN SWEENEY, NEIL THOMSON, In other news, the ES team decamped to the Indulgence Show SPENSER TOMSON, ED WALKER, BEN WILLMOTT last month in London, and stumbled about being impressed by ADVERTISING the multitude of high-end audio gear on display. We do wonder [email protected] 01354 818 009 what Plank would have made of it all. I expect he would, like us, have sat in stunned wonder listening to the surround mixes of SUBSCRIPTIONS ELECTRONICSOUND.CO.UK/SUBSCRIBE Kraftwerk’s ‘3-D The Catalogue’. [email protected] Also within these pages for your reading pleasure The Don Of 01778 392 462 Techno (or should that be the Jack Dee of Techno?) Dave Clarke PUBLISHED BY shoots the breeze with us, we go backstage with Düsseldorf PAM COMMUNICATIONS LIMITED prepared piano outfit Grandbrothers, visit Claire M Singer’s STUDIO 18, CAPITOL HOUSE, ‘Organ Reframed’ event at Islington’s Union Chapel (her thing is HEIGHAM STREET, NORWICH NR2 4TE, the church organ, which is quite a thing and should be used more UNITED KINGDOM widely, despite them being bloody huge and generally stuck in © Electronic Sound 2017. No part of this magazine may churches), we find out all about the wildly popular ‘Welcome To be used or reproduced in any way without the prior written consent of the publisher. We may occasionally Night Vale’ podcast, Kevin Godley talks us through the making of use material we believe has been placed in the public Godley & Creme’s ‘Cry’, there’s Andrew Hung, one half of 50 per domain. Sometimes it is not possible to identify and contact the copyright holder. If you claim ownership of cent of Fuck Buttons, on his splendid solo album, and we talk to something published by us, we will be happy to make the Thomas Dolby – at last – about his, frankly, amazing life so far in correct acknowledgement. All information is believed to be correct at the time of publication and we cannot accept light of his book making it out in paperback. responsibility for any errors or inaccuracies there may be in All this and so much more. You know what to do. that information. WWW.ELECTRONICSOUND.CO.UK Electronically yours, FACEBOOK.COM/ELECTRONICMAGAZINE TWITTER.COM/ELECTRONICMAGUK PUSH & MARK 3 PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING Eventim Apollo, London 26 October 2017 words: NEIL MASON picture: SHAUN GORDON What J Willgoose Esq, Wriggles- worth and co do on record is one thing, what they do live is another beast entirely. Their live shows are a spectacle, with knobs on. Tweed ones at that. Having released their ‘Every Valley’ album back in July, they hit the road on a seemingly never- ending tour. Having ticked off Mexico and the US, their October UK tour culminated in this London date at the venue formerly known as the Hammersmith Apollo. “I feel confident in predicting these will be the best-looking PSB shows to date,” tweeted Mr Willgoose and, well, he wasn’t wrong. With screens everywhere – two large ones at the back of the stage, six seemingly suspended in thin air – and the lighting cunningly disguised as copper-looking miner’s lamps, one of the many highlights was a stomping romp through ‘They Gave Me Lamp’, featuring the excellent Haiku Salut and PSB’s show-stopping brass section. We counted a dozen people on stage, which pales when ‘Take Me Home’ closes the show with an appearance from the Beaufort Male Choir. A dozen people on stage? Try two dozen. “We were in the PSB dressing room 10 minutes before the show,” our man on the inside told us, “and it was all so relaxed and friendly, no one shouting to clear the space so the band could prepare. The show was great, it had a really nice ensemble vibe, and the crowd went absolutely nuts.” You’d think with that level of rabble-rousing, this was the last live show of what’s been a heck of year for the band, but nope, it doesn’t end here. With no more than a few days off, they’re back on the road kicking off a European tour in Barcelona and winding up in Paris on 29 November. We’re booking the Eurostar now. THE OPENING SHOT 5 4 The Opening Shot THE FRONT 8 Reader Offer 11 Gulp 15 Kim Ki O 19 Souns 21 Shelter Point 22 Sean McLusky 24 Jack Dangers 26 Alison Moyet 28 Fat Roland 30 Godley & Creme 32 Synthesiser Dave FEATURES 36 Conny Plank 46 Thomas Dolby 52 Welcome To Night Vale 56 Andrew Hung 58 Organ Reframed 64 Dave Clarke 70 Grandbrothers THE BACK 74 The The 76 A parde, A Year In The Country, The Hacker, Patrick Cowley 77 S un Rose, Visions Of Darkness, Bênní, Blaine L Reininger 78 Tusks, Ross Blake, An Gella, Danny Mulhern 79 Gregg Kowalsky, Matt Berry, Visionist, Jonti 80 F rankie Goes To Hollywood, Snapped Ankles, Partials Vol 1 81 Bill Brewster 82 Vic Twenty, Erol Alkan 83 Steve Cobby, Erland Dahlen, AB2088 84 H ologram Teen, Suzanne Ciani, Reginald Omas Mamode IV 85 Coupler, Spaceship, Zazou/Bikaye/CY1 86 Scanner, Bibio, Twins Natalia 87 I n The Nursery, worriedaboutsatan, Stefan Bachmeier 88 C all Super, NSRD, BRZZVLL, Off World 89 T he Belbury Circle, Hubro 90 Roni Size/Reprazent 91 M auno, Erik Honoré, Chet Doxas, Andrew Heat 92 G olden Teacher, Snow Palms, Penny Rimbaud, Martyn Heyne 93 G ökçen Kaynatan, Necro Deathmort, Siinai, Jabu 94 B arry Adamson + Pan Sonic + The Hafler Trio, Matias Aguayo & The Desdemonas, Future Beat Alliance, Solo Colle 95 J ames Holden & The Animal Spirits, Simian Mobile Disco 96 Needs Must 98 Stockists 6 CONTENTS OCTOPOD | PAGE 14 7 ELECTRONIC SOUND READER OFFER EXCLUSIVE READER-ONLY LIMITED EDITIONS THIS MONTH: A SPLIT SEVEN-INCH SINGLE, ‘THE GENIUS OF CONNY PLANK’, IN A 3D COVER FEATURING GERMAN MUSIC LEGENDS HARMONIA AND DAF 8 READER OFFER HARMONIA ‘NOTRE DAME’ Harmonia were something of a krautrock supergroup, formed when Neu!’s Michael Rother joined forces with Dieter Möebius and Hans- Joachim Roedelius, also known as Cluster. The three musicians, in the mid-1970s hippie spirit and the German affinity for communal rural living, gathered at Cluster’s studio in Forst on the German/Polish border in 1973 and recorded their debut album, ‘Musik Von Harmonia’. It was released in 1974, after which Rother teamed up with Klaus Dinger once more for the third Neu! album, ‘Neu! ‘75’, again produced by Conny Plank. The album marked the end of Neu! for the time being, the fiery Dinger and the more mellow Rother – always a fractious pairing – had exhausted their patience for one another. Dinger went on to create La Düsseldorf, while Rother, Moebius and Roedelius teamed up again for a second Harmonia album, the luscious ‘Deluxe’. It was recorded with Conny’s mobile gear at Forst, and mixed at his studio in Wolperath over the summer of 1975. If ‘Musik Von Harmonia’ was a beautiful ambient work in the Cluster tradition, ‘Deluxe’ created a delightful blend of their lightness of touch, Rother’s celestial guitar and a pulsing rhythmic heart thanks to that other krautrock drum genius, Mani Neumeier. ‘Deluxe’ is one of the very finest albums of the Conny Plank era of German experimental music. “It’s impossible to say something about Neu!, and Harmonia, without mentioning Conny Plank and his contribution,” says Michael Rother in the new documentary, ‘Conny Plank: The Potential Of Noise’. “There is huge respect worldwide for everything Conny did.” DAF ‘DER MUSSOLINI’ It’s a testament to Conny Plank’s dedication to sound, in particular to the edges of what people found to be acceptable, that in 1981 he was in the studio with a band from Düsseldorf called DAF, producing their first major label album, ‘Alles Ist Gut’. The sessions would result in a barnstorming stone-cold electronic music classic, the fearsome stomp of ‘Der Mussolini’. H OW DO I GET THE After their debut album in 1979, the band decamped to London in 1980. By being based in the musical capital of the world, they hoped ELECTRONIC SOUND they would create some heat. It worked. They caught the attention of Mute’s Daniel Miller, who signed them to the label for the ‘Die Kleinen READER OFFER? Und Die Bösen’ album. In the new documentary, Miller recounts how DAF told him Plank was going to produce the album: “I got a call from Robert Görl, saying, ‘Conny Plank wants to produce our album’,” says Miller. “I said, ‘Very THREE EASY WAYS… funny!’. He was this mythological figure. I had no money, how are we 1 going to do it? They said ‘Don’t worry, Conny says he can do it in three Buy the latest issue directly days’. So I said, ‘Wow, OK, let’s do it!’.” from electronicsound.co.uk as a Miller flew to Cologne to see how the sessions were coming along, mag and vinyl bundle, so that’s only to find DAF arguing. “I’d never made an album before and I was the magazine and Reader Offer sitting next to my hero producer and my band weren’t even in the seven-inch, for just £9.99 studio, they were in the house arguing or discussing or whatever they 2 fucking did. Conny said, ‘Don’t worry, it will be fine’.” Subscribe to the magazine at Nothing happened for the first two days of the three-day session. electronicsound.co.uk/subscribe Miller was getting frantic, but Plank was calm. As Görl says, “Conny and you’ll get an early bird email left the musicians to their own devices, and then gave their stuff a offering you the latest Reader boost”. In the event, half the album was recorded at Conny’s, the Offer at half-price each month other half was a live recording. The record was a critical success, 3 and enabled DAF to sign a major label deal with Virgin. Now with Visit electronicsound.co.uk and a major label budget, who else to get to produce? The great Conny snap up the single on its own for Plank did not disappoint, creating the full-blooded powerhouse sound £5.99. Hurry though, stocks are of DAF. Play loud! very limited 9 READ (RICHARD AND) JUDY IN DISGUISE THE BOOK OF THE YEAR HAS ARRIVED Well, ‘Mute: A Visual Document, From 1978 – Tomorrow’ is quite the treat. The definitive visual chronicle of Mute, it says here, and isn’t it just. You know it’s going to be good when on the opening page there’s an image of a sheet of Letraset, and right at the bottom, three Mute logos, the distinctive walking man. Nice touch. The book is the story of Mute Records, written by Terry Burrows with Daniel Miller. It’s 320-pages are packed with all sorts of fascinating Mute-y paraphernalia, artwork, flyers, press shots and the like, interwoven with an extensive introduction and commentary by Miller, who curated the visual material in the book. Talk about from the horse’s mouth, right? There’s a ton of stuff on the main attractions, so the likes of Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, Yazoo, Nick Cave, Erasure and Goldfrapp, but there’s just as much about the Mute artists you might’ve forgotten. Silicon Teens! Smegma! Non! The book features comprehensive discographies, a Mute family tree (we got stuck on that page for a while let us tell you) and lots and lots of great stories. There’s also contributors from photographers Anton Corbijn and Brian Griffin without whose work Mute simply wouldn’t be Mute. If there’s one book you need on the old Xmas list this year, make it this one… then again, just over there we’ve rounded up a bunch of other books you should also be asking Santa for. thamesandhudson.com/mute.com 10