Things are beginning to feel very early Eighties now, with what is predominantly a synth-driven album creating poppy, and surprisingly funky, grooves. Side One of the album features John Wilson on guitars and bass, and so has a funkier and more fusion sound. The track (We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang, with its funky bassline and repeated refrain of “Brothers, sisters, we don’t need this fascist groove thang” is a little like one of George Clinton’s projects. Throughout, the lyrics tend to come back to easy to remember repeated refrains, but they don’t shy away from making a political point, be it about corporatism or nuclear war - Let’s All Make A Bomb for example with its refrain that “It’s time to vapourise”.
Side Two becomes entirely synth-based, although I think that the percussion is still analogue judging from the music credits. Martin Wayre and Ian Craig Marsh were also behind The Human League, but by the time this album came out I think they’d moved across to this project entirely (also known as BEF – British Electric Foundation); there’s a sense of them trying to find their voice and make it heard.
This type of synth-pop has never really been my kind of music (although there are individual tracks that I like), and listening to a whole album of it, while it made me appreciate that there could be more depth to it than I suspected, didn’t make me love it. But then, I said that about jazz at the start of the project, and I was won over so maybe by the time this genre is beginning to die out in the mid-late Eighties I will start to miss it.
Comments
Post a Comment