Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
The Human League
Dare
(Virgin, 1981)
Steel City sybarites' synthpop supreme.
After the release of Dare and its club-mixed companion Love And Dancing, producer Martin Rushent retired from studio work for years. Maybe that's what happens when you help create a masterpiece like The Human League's immaculate synth-conception. A UK Number 1 album in October 1981, it contained the brain-burrowing big hits Sound Of The Crowd, Open Your Heart, Love Action and the US/UK Number 1 Don't You Want Me. But there was more to it than simply irresistible tunes - Seconds concerned the assassination of John F.Kennedy, I Am The Law was sung from the perspective of 2000 A.D comic's shoot-first lawman Judge Dredd and a sparse cover of Roy Budd's Get Carter theme (played on the cheap and cheerful Casio VL-Tone) lent a pleasingly discordant whiff of violent Geordie hoodlums to the smooth pop sounds. There had already been warning signs of their abnormality; until October 1980 the group was an all-male affair with a more sinister, sci-fi leaning agenda, and when deep-voiced frontman Philip Oakey had gone on Top Of The Pops in make-up and asymmetric wedge hair-do he beat the rest of the '80s gender benders by a year. This chemistry wasn't going to last, though; fluctuating fortunes and line-ups followed Dare's triumph, as did the perplexing spectacle of the group playing nostalgia tours in the '00s. Oakey and vocalists Susanne Sulley and Joanne Catherall haven't released a new long-player since 2001, but prompted by the future-retro moves of La Roux, Little Boots and the rest, they've just signed a new deal with the Wall Of Sound label. They could do worse than give Martin Rushent a call, we're saying.
Clive Prior
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 08/02/2010
Further Listening
The League Unlimited Orchestra – Love And Dancing (Virgin, 1982)
ABC – The Lexicon Of Love (Neutron, 1982)
Pet Shop Boys – Please (Parlophone, 1986)
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Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
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A truly classic album, and I still have my Casio VL-Tone keyboard as well!
Posted by Alexander Meerkat at 8:59 PM GMT 08/02/2010 Report Abuse
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