Disc of the day
Chavez - Ride The Fader
Post-hardcore masterpiece by today’s go-to guitarist, Matt Sweeney…
Features Disc of the day
The Human League
Travelogue
(Virgin, 1980)
Sheffield’s synth-wizards’ second. Listen to the voice of Buddha…
They were clearly simpler days 28 years ago, when you could threaten reality itself by your singer sporting the biggest wedge haircut ever and having someone showing slides while the band played. But The Human League, who defied orthodoxy by using only synthetic instruments, can still jar the senses in ways that say, Boomtown Rats pianist Johnny Fingers’ pyjamas cannot. Usually regarded as less strictly electronic and cold-sounding than their first, also-fab album Reproduction, the fact is that Travelogue still sits at the JG Ballard end of synth pop, with visions of the future that are ambivalent to say the least. For example: the nightmarish Twilight Zone-esque opener The Black Hit Of Space envisages a vinyl record so dull it turns into a black hole, that goes to Number 1 and then “into minus figures” and which freezes singer Phil Oakey in time (“get James Burke on the case” he advises with a delivery so sonorous you can’t help but take him seriously). W.X.J.L Tonight, meanwhile sees Oakey as the last DJ on earth, broadcasting to no-one. You also get a surprisingly heartfelt cover of an advertising jingle for Gordon’s Gin and, on the CD reissue at least, a stunningly wrong glam-electro take on Gary Glitter’s Rock And Roll Part Two. After Travelogue the group would split into the planet-conquering League of Don’t You Want Me and Heaven 17, but this is more than just a sparser, cheaper blueprint for Dare! Certainly, you can hear murmurings of the band’s later incarnation, but aren’t things generally more interesting when in the process of becoming? The future never sounded like this afterwards, or since.
Ian Harrison
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 28/06/2008
Further Listening
The Human League – Reproduction (Virgin, 1979)
OMD – Architecture & Morality (Virgin, 1981)
The Fat Truckers – The First Fat Truckers Album Is for Sale (Roadtrain, 2003)
Previous Disc of the day
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Tom Waits - Mule Variations
The gruff one emerges from the shouty art ditch with a varied, heartfelt album that’s among his best
6:00 AM GMT 25/07/2008
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Julian Cope - Fried
Naked under a giant turtle shell, Cope gets to grips with psychedelic roots of oak.
6:00 AM GMT 24/07/2008
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Various - Heartworn Highways
2006 reissue of songs from Jim Szalapski’s now-legendary document of ’70s ‘progressive country’.
6:00 AM GMT 23/07/2008
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Jackie Lomax - Is This What You Want?
The forgotten soul of the Beatles vanity label.
6:00 AM GMT 22/07/2008
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Jody Wildgoose - Afterlife
Super-charming cottage-psych from Sheffield. Tells Eminem “it’s OK to be gay”
6:00 AM GMT 21/07/2008
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Various - So Young But So Cold – Underground French Music 1977-1983
Like a French Futurama festival. On CD.
6:00 AM GMT 20/07/2008
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