Tag: electronica

Lavington Electronica Composer Moray MacDonald Releases a Wharf Theatre Production’s Soundtrack

Some four years since his last release under his own name, Lavington’s electronica composer Moray McDonald presents a soundtrack; the music he wrote and produced for Devizes’ Wharf Theatre’s production of Kit Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, which was performed back in January…..

It was one of those rare occasions I stepped in to cover the dress rehearsal as our regular theatre critic Ian, was busy, stuffing a bucketload of Rice Krispies in the play! And I’m glad I did. I was uncertain if I’d take to director Liz Seabourne’s recreation of this Elizabethan gothic black comedy, but came out of there thoroughly enthralled. The composition of the play’s many components made it one of the best plays I’ve seen; the script, acting and production, yet it wouldn’t have been half as spookily ambient if it wasn’t for Moray’s soundtrack. 

Image:@jenimeadephotography

They may only be nine snippets of sound, but with the music on Bandcamp at name your price, listening to it took me back to the play, and reminiscing at just how brilliantly sinister it was. Acts of Black Magic starts us off, an eerie soundscape, with harpsichord strings and jingling fool’s caps, Somewhat to Delight has an unnerving medieval court jester feel to it, grinning devilishly, and then we’re back on soundscapes, and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March gets a spooky underscore.

We swap from a soundscape to orchestral with each brief track, The Seven Deadly Sins nods playfully to Celtic folk dance, whereas the following Devil’s Attack lends more to Burana’s O Fortuna, but all are equally unsettlingly devilish or scary faerie. If anything it displays the diversity at Moray’s skilled hands, being his concentration has recently been on his Cephid project, a ground-breaking album of electronica, Sparks in the Darkness, which we fondly reviewed in 2023, and enjoyed a rare and intimate live performance of at Bath’s Rondo Theatre.

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M3G, De-Anchored

At the end of last year Chippenham singer-songwriter M3G released the single Rooks. I felt it set her bar at a whole new higher level.…

Ready for RowdeFest?

Not long now, for Rowdefest! Which, as the name suggests, is in Rowde, near Devizes, on Saturday 30th May, and is a free, community spirited…

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Daphne Oram; Devizes’ Unsung Pioneer of Electronic Sound Part 3

read part 1
read part 2

Oramics and its Place in the Progression of Electronic Music

In 1997 I was a 24 year-old factory worker, keen to learn all tasks on the production line to work my way up, but suddenly the run of the ladder was pulled too high for me to reach. Shift managers who had were axed, were replaced by “team leaders,” that of precisely the same duties and responsibilities, though you needed a diploma to apply.

The government tried to thwart my only other life objective three years past, to party; they had failed. I worked in the factory now for one reason, to fund this escapism. Once free, the Criminal Justice Bill ensured someone profited from our jollity, as rave culture was pushed into nightclubs and legal paid events.

If The Prodigy were right, this was music for the jilted generation, perhaps so too  was Luigi Russolo in his 1913 futurist manifesto L’arte dei Rumori (The Art of Noises,)  when he argued that the ear would become accustomed to a new sonic palette of industrial soundscapes, and musicians would require a new approach to instrumentation and composition. Though I’d not have contemplated the noises of the factory manipulating my music perceptions at the time, I was aware of how Kraftwerk were influenced by the sounds of traffic for Autobahn.

Neither would I have given much thought to the development of electronic music; my time with analogue pop of punk and Two-Tone was short-lived. Through new wave post-punk and electronica to American hip hop and electro, and the rebellion from the hit factories exploiting it; rave culture, I had grown up with  electronics as a staple to music and knew no different.

Pre-internet research on the subject would’ve been a needle in a haystack, even if I’d the motivation to study it.  In my naivety I assumed one thing, that Kraftwerk created  electronic music, because I’d seen a clip of them on the BBC program Tomorrow’s World. Though the show made no claim to this, I was only two on the 25th September 1975, when it originally aired.

Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider’s Kraftwerk were certainly pioneers who popularised the krautrock genre worldwide. The industrial links between  Dusseldorf and Detroit and creative ones between Berlin and New York  were influences reflected, which turned the cogs of hip hop and house. And now, here I was, in a meadow near Luton, at Universe’s Tribal Gathering, where I figured we’d come full circle.

Kraftwerk played their one and only festival, it was monumental. The once monocultured rave phenomenon had divided into copious subgenres, Universe were the first to fully embrace this with a tent dedicated to each division. Yet from each tent masses united at the main stage, some DJs refusing to play their set because they’d miss this performance. Reflecting back on it now, I cannot deny it was something to behold, but I’ve since discovered they wasn’t the complete roots to electronic music I assumed they were. Its complex international evolution includes too many names to mention, but this fascinating insight has been encouraged by my study into one important innovator largely uncredited, born here in Devizes, Daphne Oram.

We outlined her work briefly in the introduction to this series of articles, and with help from Daphne’s niece, Carolyn Scales, we delved into her upbringing in Devizes, and how influences in engineering meshed with her love of music. Now we need to fit her role into this vast evolution of electronic music, by looking at Oramics, discovering how that influenced the progression, and why it is not as well documented and I believe it should be.  

Once Daphne left the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in 1959, she coined the term Oramics, a name for her studio in Tower Folly, a converted oast house at Fairseat in Kent, her technique for creating graphical sound, and the Oramics Machine which spawned from it.  

Carolyn described The Oramics Machine as, “an early synthesiser,” but as with Russian engineer Evgeny Murzin who created photoelectronic instrument the ANS synthesizer, historical records rarely reference them.  The first commercial synthesizer is credited to American engineer Robert Moog a few years later in 1964. Precursors to Moog  mentions Harald Bode who laid the groundwork for separate sound-modifying modules used in the Moog design, the Hammond Organ Company’s Novachord in the late 1930s, Canadian engineer Hugh Le Caine’s Electronic Sackbut, Herbert Belar and Harry Olson’s RCA Mark I and II Sound Synthesizers, and some cite Thaddeus Cahill’s Telharmonium, an electromechanical sound generator from 1897, which weighed in over two-hundred tons.

The original Oramics Machine was the size of an office photocopier, so was also too cumbersome for the average musician. By its definition, it’s a synthesiser but worked differently; the composer/musician drew onto a set of 35mm film strips which ran past a series of photo-electric cells, generating electrical signals to control amplitude, timbre, frequency and duration.

The reason for the omission, Carolyn suggested, was because The Oramics Machine was lost after her passing. “Dr Mick Grierson’s team tracked it down to France in 2008. Working with the Science Museum. Grierson’s study provided the first full contextualisation of the machine, an assessment of its historical importance, and a detailed description of its workings. The machine became a central part of the Science Museum exhibition Oramics to Electronica, originally planned to run for six months in 2011. The show’s press and public uptake saw it extended a further four years.”

Perhaps inspired by Moog’s development of the Minimoog, Daphne worked on a Mini-Oramics, but never completed a prototype. Goldsmiths’ PhD student Tom Richards, who pored over the unfinished project and built it over forty years later, suggested “there were a lot of reasons why she didn’t launch Mini-Oramics. She was working on her own, and wasn’t affiliated to a large organisation or university.  She had ups and downs in her life, and at the time she was working on Mini-Oramics, she also worried that her approach to musical research was out of fashion when compared to chance-based and computerised techniques. She was unable to secure the further funding she needed and she eventually moved on to other research.”

If funding and the ferocity of music technology’s progression at this time surpassed Daphne, both her music and written works were visionary. If you thought Pete Tong’s Heritage Orchestra was pushing new boundaries in 2004, Carolyn noted, “in 1948, Daphne created a piece for double orchestra, turntable and live electronics called Still Point, long thought of as the earliest composition to include real-time electronic transformation of instrumental sounds.” Again, Still Point was never performed and was considered lost. “Dr James Bulley found fragments in the Oram archive,” she continued, “and working collaboratively with Dr Shiva Feshareki, began a reconstruction, later finding the full score in the belongings of composer Hugh Davies.”

“A performance was commissioned by BBC Proms and performed by turntablist Shiva Feshareki, Bulley, and the London Contemporary Orchestra in 2018 at the Royal Albert Hall, reaching a substantial audience live and via BBC Radio 3,” Carolyn explained. “The reaction was one of awe, with the piece described as “thrilling”. Critical responses suggested that this realisation of Oram’s previously untested ideas represented a challenge to electronic music’s received history.”

The more I research the more I find examples suggesting Daphne’s work was so avant-garde, abstract or insistent on anthropological creativity against trending dehumanised mathematical methods, she was set apart from the contemporary canon of self-generating computer music, positioning her work in a kind of unique scientific-spiritual space, combining technical rigor with a romantic model of artistic expression. This would frustrate her, when projects were either underfunded or too radical for others to follow, and they were consequently lost in time.

In 1971 she authored a book titled An Individual Note of Music, Sound and Electronics, wherein lies a quote often cited in discussions about music technology: “We will be entering a strange world where composers will be mingling with capacitors, computers will be controlling crotchets and, maybe, memory, music and magnetism will lead us towards metaphysics.”

Daphne visiting her parents in Devizes

It was also her dedication to  authorial control, while cybernetic-influenced composers embraced self-generating systems with indeterminacy, which caused Oram’s approach to differ from the era’s prevailing trends, despite this cybernetic orientation. Exemplifying the generosity of her father, James, Mayor of Devizes, Daphne actively supported composers’ rights to royalties while she was a Trustee of The Performing Rights Society in the 1970s.

Daphne Oram suffered two strokes during the nineties, and passed away in Maidstone on the 5th January 2003. Yet on Daphne’s centenary, where much of the world remains dubious about the ethics of artificial intelligence, we must debate her legacy, for my final part of the series.

Oh, and if you were wondering, all I saw of Kraftwerk at Tribal Gathering was the fluorescent outlines of their boilersuits!

Daphne Oram; Devizes’ Unsung Pioneer of Electronic Sound

Part 1: An Introduction

March 1936: newlywed French telecommunications engineer Pierre Schaeffer relocates to Paris from Strasbourg and finds work in radio broadcasting. He embarks on early radiophonic experiments. Fifteen years of his research, his inventions of various electronic instruments, and collaborations with Pierre Henry would lead them to found Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète. Musique concrète would be the root of the utilisation of modified recorded sound through audio signal processing and tape techniques.

Across the channel, it’s the St. Clement’s Fair in Devizes. The town hall is decorated with a foliage of oranges and lemons, and the “Bells of St Clement’s” was recited with handbells to declare the fair open. Devizes Congregationsts arranged a small eisteddfod, which would be the origins of today’s Devizes Eisteddfod, founded ten years later to raise funds for the Congregational Church, opposite Wadworth’s Brewery.

The connection? Well, two cups were awarded by the minister Rev. W.S.H Hallett; one for Ruth Mead for a vocal solo, and the second to eleven-year-old Daphne Oram, for a pianoforte solo. The daughter of James and Ida Oram, Daphne was educated at Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset, where she was tutored in piano and musical composition.

Daphne Oram as a young girl dressed as Alice in Wonderland with family, for the Devizes Carnival: Source Wiltshire Museum

At seventeen Daphne moved to London, turned down a place at the Royal College of Music, to become a junior sound engineer at the BBC, where she would “shadow” concerts with a pre-recorded version, allowing the broadcast to continue despite interference or blackouts due to air raids.

Throughout the 1940s Daphne devoted herself to the pioneering of electronic sound, labouring into the night composing various pieces, most far too avant-garde for the traditionalist BBC bosses to consider publishing. Promoted to music studio manager after a decade, she eventually convinced the BBC to the benefits of electronic music and musique concréte for use in programming; particularly for The BBC Third Programme, replaced by BBC Radio 3. By 1957 they caved, and Daphne was appointed the original co-director of The BBC Radiophonic Workshop with Senior Studio Manager Desmond Briscoe.

Their early efforts were for radio: radiophonic poems, effects for prevalent sci-fi serials like Quatermass and The Pit, and comedy sounds for The Goon Show. Yet Daphne’s motivation remained in electronic music production, and she resigned in 1959 to freelance, moving again to Kent.

Daphne Oram was way ahead of her time, a visionary frustrated with the direction The Radiophonic Workshop was heading, because electronic music was still in its infancy, especially the acceptance of it. The workshop continued without her and eventually branched into music, as television took over.

A trainee assistant studio manager called Delia Derbyshire joined the workshop, creating numerous scores and effects for television programmes. Most notably in 1963, when Derbyshire electronically modified Ron Grainer’s Doctor Who theme, hailed as the pinnacle moment in the advancement of electronic music in Britain. Though, BBC bureaucracy as it was, Delia was never credited on-screen for it until twelve years after her passing, in a 2013 fiftieth anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor. Her work has since been acknowledged and revered, whilst Daphne Oram remains a relatively unsung heroine in the development of electronic music.

Image: Daphne Oram

Futurist Luigi Russolo argues in a 1913 letter to composer Francesco Pratella, a manifesto referred to as The Art of Noises, that the ear will become accustomed to noises of urbanisation and industrial soundscapes, and thus mankind will develop a new sonic palette as technology progresses. A fascinating and accurate theory into the evolution of sound, in which Russolo encouraged musicians to listen to city sounds, which will putatively be the cymatics of future music.

I find myself reasoning if this explains why electronic music today is most popular in urban environments rather than rural. Due to music famed promoter Mel Bush, Devizes retains an affection for the blues, using authentic analogue instruments. Producers of electronic music are rare here. If you want dance music, which greater acquires the usage of technology than rock, blues, or folk, you may need to head towards Bristol, Swindon, or Salisbury.

But coming from a more urban background and growing up in the eighties and nineties, personally I’ve never outcasted electronics in music. Even if a musician is using analogue methods to create music, they will at the least use the internet to promote them. With eclectic tastes, I also love electronica, hip hop, dub, and dance music, and I love to explore the origins of it. So, this research project has me fascinated, the life and work of Daphne Oram, and her growing up in Devizes. I wondered how she became involved.

A graphical sound technique where shapes etched into filmstrips are read by photo-electric cells and transformed into for various parameters of sound is called Oramics, after its creator Daphne Oram at her Oramics Studios in Kent. She expressed hope that her work on Oramics would “plant seeds that would mature in the 21st century.” Her legacy is commemorated in the annual Oram Awards, and the 2022 BBC Masterbrand Sonic, was internally known as “Daphne,” but still in her hometown she’s not widely known, neither are her early years spent in Devizes well documented.

This month, Daphne would have celebrated her one-hundredth birthday. So, join me in an exploration of her life and work in a series of articles. We will talk with Daphne’s niece, Carolyn Scales, about her early years in Devizes, explore her work further, and talk with a local producer of electronic music about her legacy and the impact her work has on them. Because one thing is certain, without Daphne Oram music today would sound vastly different, at least it would in the UK, and during the boom of pop, as you should be aware, Britain led the way. I believe that it is worth commemorating and honouring her here in her birthplace, Devizes.

read part 2 here

Pet Shop Boys, Actually with Talk in Code at the Tree House

Having to unfortunately miss Devizes’ blues extravaganza on Friday, I crossed the borderline on Saturday to get my prescribed dosage of Talk in Code…with a Pet Shop Boys tribute thrown in for good measure…..

Two classic tracks into their set at Frome’s little sister venue to the Cheese & Grain, The Tree House, Pet Shop Boys, Actually from Shropshire hailed their support act as better than them. Self-deprecating isn’t unheard of, rare for music acts, but the bottom line is, I’ve heard far worse tributes than The Pet Shop Boys, Actually, actually. 

For Talk in Code, though, it was an accolade fully deserved, as they did what they do as fantastic as ever, and thrilled more than their fanbase at the modest venue. The other attendees, there for classic pop they cherish, found Talk in Code fitted like a glove, despite their songs being original, because they have a timeless universal appeal, and their unique synth-pop spin on indie provides it with a defining eighties feel.

It’s an ideal opportunity to reopen the perpetual debate I have with myself over the worth of tribute acts, even cover bands too, against those producing original music. Like any tribute act, the value of their performance hinges predominantly on the individual and their association with the act they’re attributing. Whether a tribute act is good is far more subjective than an original act; based upon personal reflection. “It’s comfort music,” Talk in Code guitarist Snedds expressed to me outside the venue; agreed, personally I’m impartial to The Pet Shop Boys, therefore passably comforted.

They broke through in the middle of electronica. I brought and loved my 7” of West End Girls in 85, others did too as it hit number one, and the duo walked away with awards. Though the Pet Shop Boys created their own take on electronica, much like Madness did with Two-Tone, were hugely successful with it, and again like Madness, they continued the template way past the trend fizzling the competition out. Such a practice causes division, you attain a fan following, whereas mild observers tend to consider if the uniformed style gets repetitive, especially over decades. I’m of that mindset, hence my impartiality.

So here at this rather snazzy tree house, carpeted and significantly more congenial, hospitable than the big cheese, but smaller and rather more conventional than Frome’s hipster and counterculture reputation, being situated within a housing estate fashioned sports bar, The Vine Tree, a fair crowd of Pet Shop Boys diehards gathered amidst regulars and “Talkers” for a cracking night in a nice, welcoming and universal pub.

Often to miss the support act is unfortunate, for this gig it would’ve been sacrilege. Talk in Code were on fire as ever, blasting out their cheerful tunes, frontman Chris wiggling moves in his Adidas uniform and rightfully boasting of their success at The Wiltshire Music Awards, outside our county! It’s a lively show I will never tire of, and if I have to witness tribute acts too, if by some miracle I make eighty, will someone please wheel me over to a tribute act show to Talk in Code?!

As for The Pet Shop Boys, Actually, prior I considered if The Pet Shop Boys is quite a simple act to make a tribute from, compared to other eighties acts; call up a proficient keyboardist, buy him a BOY cap, don a tuxedo and white scarf and play musical statues! Although they tended to lightheartedly play their accomplishment down, they made a brilliant job out of it. As those pop classics came through adept and nimble, I paused to consider if my opinion of the Pet Shop Boys isn’t a smidgen harsh; through the splendour of this tribute I saw them in a refined light, and that is a true sign of a proficient tribute act, and their worth. 

Interestingly, they adopted a female singer too, to soften the vocals to match Neil Tennant’s camp tones, and to play the incredibly tricky part of Dusty Springfield for What Have I Done to Deserve This? Likely the trickiest part of the show. To my approval, Pet Shop Boys, Actually covered a Beloved track too, a kind of raver’s answer to The Pet Shop Boys, and they thumped out the newer, technologically progressed tunes after a workout of eighties classics, and returned to the hits for an outstanding finale; someone get me one of those jackets that looks like I got stuck in a carwash!

If you go to see a tribute act with expectations of precisely recreating the magnitude of the original act, you’re an idiot and will be let down in most cases! If you go to see a tribute act open-mindedly, with your priority on having fun, nine times out of ten you will, especially if you hold a passion for the act being attributed. Use your noddle, don’t see Pet Shop Boys Actually if you’re hoping for a tribute to Slipknot, but do if you like The Pet Shop Boys, and you’ll find they’re really rather good!

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Radium on Liddington Hill

Swindon-based adrenaline pumping five-piece Liddington Hill released their first EP for three years, and Radium is highly radioactive….. For most on the North Wessex Downs,…

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Cephid’s Sparks in the Darkness Goes Live at Bath’s Rondo Theatre

Best part of a year has passed since Cephid released the groundbreaking electronica album, Sparks in the Darkness. At the time I said of West Lavington’s musician and composer Moray Macdonald’s alter-ego’s masterwork, it was composed of “gorgeous complex structures and intense electronic textures,” and comparing it thus: “like Jean Michel Jarre came after dubstep, as if 808 State created Tubular Bells!” On February 8th 2025, Cephid is coming to life, live at The Rondo Theatre in Bath……

Yeah, so I waffled in the review, from Dadaist Art of Noises to Delia Derbyshire and onto Kraftwerk, but it was hard to describe this album, to convey how technically constructed it was, because while contemporary, we usually associate electronic music with dance music ever since the slapadash rave era. While it’s certainly danceable, it also relies heavily on the ambience of prog and space-rock soundscapes of yore, and creates this timeless classic impossible to pin down.

The show will likely be that rare and unmissable occasion, Moray said he’s “very excited and a little nervous to announce the first ever Cephid live show!” but that he feels, “lucky to have such a great space to perform in, and I’ll be using light shows, projections, and more to bring the album to life.”

Partner Charlotte is producing the show with Nick Beere on sound. Graham Brown of Grace and Fire and The Paradox Twin will be on percussion and keys, and there’s a solo support performance by ex-Enid’s That Joe Payne.

Since releasing Sparks in the Darkness, Moray has spent a lot of time explaining his thought processes while producing it, and remixing Kleptocracy, the new single from Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark which charted at number 1 in the Official Vinyl Singles Chart in May. If you’re an OMD fan, or just have the slightest interest in any subgenre of electronic music, this will be an unmissable show. 

Tickets are HERE.

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Westbury Trance Masters Hedge Monkey Reunite For Hometown Gig

If rural West Country had a penchant for trance in the happy daze of the mid-nineties, heady nights of fluorescent-clad crusties with eyes like flying saucers and gyrating like robots at the UFO club down Longleat’s Berkeley Suite, or bumbling around a nearby forest afterparty keeping Wrigley’s in business, trance-techno, it could be debated, tended to be heavily influenced by German Tekno and of Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream which predated it, and in doing so, often felt rather soulless when compared to rivalling subgenres spawned from the rave era, of house or drum n bass, but there’s an alternative, Hedge Monkey….

House, jungle, happy hardcore, et al, they all had their pros and cons, but I tended to saunter them all with equal love, as I arrived on the rave scene at its inception, acid house, and if any splitting subgenre related closer to those roots it was trance and techno. Lou’s smooth vocal chants on Westbury’s electronic dance music ensemble Hedge Monkey blesses it with something bands like Eat Static lacked, a soulful voice and meaning. With an underlying base of trance-techno of yore, Hedge Monkey’s engineer Jase cherry-picks other dance music influences and moulds them into the melting pot. If Massive Attack came from rural Somerset, their sway to hip hop might be lessened, and you might find yourself with a sound not so unlike Hedge Monkey.

Being honest, I hadn’t heard of them until last night; I may have completed my rave honeymoon when Hedge Monkey was blossoming. They’ve three tracks on SoundCloud worth checking out, two new and one being a “samba dub” of an older tune. “We were a band years ago,” Lou explained, “even played Glastonbury festival twice! But this was before social media, really. I’ve been recording music with Jase the whole time, but we never did anything with it. Just recently we decided to get it all back together and it’s been fab, so we decided that we need to have a comeback gig!”

The comeback gig is Saturday November 30th at Westbury Cons Club, tickets are £8, from HERE. There’s DJs until 9pm, then Hedge Monkey swings on stage. If you’ve a passion for dance music of any pigeonholing subgenre, you should take note of this gig.

Based on the tunes, there’s more going on than mindless techno stomp, the vocals on the first tune Deeper Meanings, echoes out as 808 squeaks build in layers to a bouncing beat akin to Leftfield. It’s uplifting, euphoric trance, like Warp’s early days, elements took me back, conjured happy memories of fluffy nuggets like Tuff Little Unit’s Join the Future, (or am I showing my age now?!) which used subtle piano to give balance to the hypnotic ambience. Similar here, actual drum beats, guitars, and vocals give it body, makes it a band, which it is, rather than the sole bedroom producer flouting the usual samples.

The second tune, Lou’s Samba Dub Lung, shakes up more experimentally and contemporarily, dubbing a chemical breakbeat. There’s absolutely no reason for Plump DJs or The Chemical Brothers not to spin this one in my humble opinion, yet still, there’s still something underlyingly faithful to the trance techno of its roots, the dirty little tent on a muddy Somerset field!

Final tune to mention, then you can go take your meds; Turkish E, take us back to trance.  It’s seven minutes of bliss, retaining uplifting vocals, squidgy 808s, shroom-inspired twirls and block rockin’ beats. You know, I might have an efficacious relapse if I attend this reunion-type gig, just try to prevent me from waffling Uncle Albert moments; “when I was in the rave,” type stuff! Ruffle your matted dreadlocks, unearth your tie-dye T-shirt from the loft, ignore me best you can, and I might see you there!  

Deadlight Dance New EP Chapter & Verse

Marlborough gothic duo Deadlight Dance are due to release an EP of new material. It’s called Chapter & Verse and it’ll be out on Ray Records on 13th September 2024……

Nick Fletcher and Tim Emery, aka, Deadlight Dance, stripped back a collection of their favourite new wave-goth classics and recorded them at the 12th century All Saints Church in Alton Priors last November, releasing them as an album, The Wiltshire Gothic, in March. If the Wiltshire Gothic excelled in uniqueness for acoustically recreating the sounds which inspired them, Deadlight Dance prove they’re no one trick pony with this new EP, as while it equals to the eminence of The Wiltshire Gothic, it does so for entirely the opposite reasoning.

After this acoustic beauty of echoing mandolins the effect is immediate, Deadlight Dance pull out heavy synths on this EP, a stark difference you may also find in their live gigs, swapping from acoustic to synths at the halfway house. It’s electronica punchy and as positively eighties as the original new wave and gothic songs they covered for The Wiltshire Gothic, of Joy Division, Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim, et al, but all five tracks are their own work, completely original.

The only similarities with the last album is that there’s a theme, this time within the subject matter rather than the production, and naturally, it’s as proficiently entertaining. The concept here is something to appease their old English Lit teachers at the Sixth Form where they met, as each track is inspired by a book character, in one word titles. So, the tracks are Montag, Rosemary, Charrington, Judas and Monster, leading me to rustle my mind’s archives as to the books they represent; I got four out of five without Google, honest, sir, do I get a merit mark or something like that?!

Opening sonic, like OMD in their prime, book-burning firefighter Guy Montag of Fahrenheit 451 is the first subject and this is the only tune here which uses a sample, from the 1966 film adaptation I’d imagine, but I’ve not seen it, only read the book like a good boy! Obviously, futurism fears, flames and the controversial connotations of Ray Bradbury’s magnum opus is ideal for a gothic related song, and we are off to an engagingly good start.

The second song is the one I guessed incorrectly, it’s the girlfriend of the neurotic Gordon Comstock in Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Rosemary Waterlow. Concentrating on her relationship frustrations, the song is a haunting echo in plodding synths, again, an ideal candidate for Nick’s howlingly vocals.

Sticking with George Orwell, though this one remains instrumental, the antique dealer come undercover Thought Police agent in Nineteen-Eighty-Four, Mr. Charrington is the next subject. Again, it’s a haunting sound enough, it needs no vocals, it twists in metallic scraping undertone, dark and mysterious futurism, it would evoke the perfect mood for the score to any possible remake, or in turn the soundtrack to the previous UK government who seemed to view Orwell’s masterpiece a self-help guide; apologies, couldn’t resist adding that!

Fourth tune in, is called Judas, no prizes for citing the book it comes from, but after the gloom of Charrington, the sound is surprisingly uplifting, capturing the pop side to classic goth rock, like The Cure. I’m undecided if the song is sympathetic to the actions of Jesus’ grass Judas Iscariot, if it furthers to question the integrity of the bible more generally, or both. But it’s an interesting atheistic angle, and an astutely written song.

There’s a bass stomp verging on techno intro to the final song, Monster, reminding me of a fast coming of Jaws, then the synths swirl and Nick’s off thirty seconds into the melodic narrative of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, or the The Modern Prometheus, a gothic novel indeed. It caused me to consider Frank Miller’s reinvention of Batman, a character who’s mysteriously shadowy edge was lost through the passage of commercialisation, particularly via TV, and how he gifted us The Dark Knight version.

Frankenstein portrayals are so commonplace, and often comical, it obscures the harrowing nature of the original story. As they do with all the book characters here, Deadlight Dance captures the mood, the intensity and torment of Mary Shelly’s monster, through music, as by Sergei Prokofiev captured the characterisations of Peter, the Wolf and other animal side characters. It’s an absorbing prose, excellently manufactured, and brings gothic rock of yore back into the forefront. Not forgoing, when contrasted with the Wiltshire Gothic, it shows diversity in Deadlight Dance, both are returns to “concept” in albums, something dearly overlooked in today’s one track Spotify world. It leaves me wondering where they’ll go next, but feeling confident each new progression will contain cognitive connotations amidst this hail of gothic rock, and these are the elements which makes each release a treasure.

Chapter & Verse will be released on Ray Records on 13th September 2024, across streaming platforms and available to buy on Bandcamp. Follow Deadlight Dance socials to keep in the know.

Find Deadlight Dance supporting Canute’s Plastic Army at the Tuppenny, Swindon on 19th September. 

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Sparks in the Darkness: Cephid Takes Electronica to New Dimensions

Just when I think every musician within a ten-mile radius is under our radar, another one pops up, and usually, they produce electronic music. So, I say, look, I know Devizes is a blues town, but Devizine covers all arts, and besides, I’m an old raver; ergo, if you’re creating music, electronic or not, you’re very welcome here….

Proving I’m an old raver, for photographic evidence is nil and memories vague, West Lavington’s musician and composer Moray Macdonald’s alter-ego Cephid’s forthcoming album, Sparks in the Darkness had me pondering a post on a Facebook group for ravers, which I wouldn’t be on if I wasn’t! Someone posted a video highlighting the work of Delia Derbyshire at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, another commented rightly she was a pioneer of electronic music, a second added “erm? Kraftwerk?” causing me to rant; it doesn’t take much these days!

Yeah, I’ll give you, Kraftwerk were the primary electronically generated pop group, but Derbyshire’s magnum opus, the Doctor Who theme, an electronic rework of a Ron Grainer composition, predates Kraftwerk’s first commercially successful album Autobahn by eleven years.

This raises a fascinating point; at electronic music’s clunky inception few sought it viable for commercial pop. Fatboy Slim pointed out, You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. The BBC Radiophonic Workshop created sound effects ideally for sci-fi series. Lesser-known German electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream only became familiar to the masses during the eighties for their numerous Hollywood film scores. Organisation zur Verwirklichung gemeinsamer Musikkonzepte, Kraftwerk’s quirky and pre-synthesizer antecedent, was the crème-de-crème of kosmische Musik, Dusseldorf’s experimental scene of the sixties, but while it took psychedelia and space-rock to another planet, Melody Maker mocked it “krautrock,” a name which stuck as its genre.

Seems rock’s phobia of electronic progression was the reason for Britpop’s retrospection to acoustic instruments once rave came of age. The chalk and cheese mingle side by side in today’s pop; David Gray’s self-dubbed style, folktronica hammered that last nail in.

The relevance of all this is, while immersed in Cephid’s gorgeous complex structures and intense electronic textures, one cannot help but contemplate the combined efforts involved in contributing to this development, as it harks it’s influences and indulges those passed, no matter by Sparks in the Darkness comparisons all would sound timeworn. From the impact the Doctor Who theme must’ve had on the English television-watching nation, to The Art of Noise and Yello, and from avant-garde American electro outfit Newcleus, to Universe’s Tribal Gathering 1997, when I observed every raver ascend from their chosen subgenre tent to pay respects to Kraftwerk. Cephid encompasses these, yet is ultra-modern, uses tech as orchestral, and is as fresh as the Buxton spring; like Jean Michel Jarre came after dubstep, as if 808 State created Tubular Bells!

Futurism and sci-fi remains a large part of marketing presentation for electronic dance music, from the eerie android on the cover of Kraftwerk’s We Are the Robots, to Phil Wolstenholme’s Vergina sun spaceship on the Orb’s 1992 album U.F.Orb, Sparks in the Darkness follows suit with a mysterious red sphere projecting across a cityscape for its cover, strikingly designed by Tiago Marinho.

The album commences akin to ambient house’s finest, floating or bubbling spooky and mysterious layers of atmospheric swirls, but its orchestral build indicates time has passed since the fluffiness of The KLF and Orb. Moray Macdonald cut his teeth touring with progressive rock and metal artists such as That Joe Payne, Godsticks, Kim Seviour and Ghost Community. This is sharper, unsubdued, his harder-edged rock influences will insure bands like Pink Floyd, Hawkwind and the Ozric Tentacles will be acknowledged here; erm, The Prodigy’s punk fusion post-Jilted Generation too, in part. The opening track To Catch the Eye of the Heaven flows into the next, as a raver I note Leftfield, and I’m holding out for it kicking in.

Thirty seconds into the second tune, the single Worlds Before, and it does, and when it does it’s immense, a stomp to make New Order blush, with all the workings of modern technology, you are encased in this, what is a culmination of many years of work, and there’s no going back.

Moray defines it, “soaring melodic leads cutting through spacious washes of synths, while propelled by layers of sequencers, drums, and percussion. Pulverising techno seamlessly giving way to complex progressive workouts and moody, groove-driven soundscapes, all packed with lasting melodic hooks.” Yeah, I’ll go with that! It has the concept album quality in which you must indulge in it completely. By Terminus we’re nodding to up-tempo trance-techno, breaking with vocal coach Angel Wolf-Black’s celestial chants, but behind its entrancing bleeps binds this driving rock drum, either by Emily Dolan Davies, who has drummed for Bryan Ferry, The Darkness and Kim Wilde, or Graham Brown of The Paradox Twin.

Midway the pace lessens and Of Promises trickles into something definably more electronica, of Tangerine Dream’s sombre movie moments, of Don Johnson contemplating his fate as he leans on his white Ferrari looking out across Miami harbour’s night sky. Moray Macdonald has created music for film, theatre and art installations, and it shows.

Strobe takes off from where Of Promises lands us, like the later track Dead Hand’s Decree, it’s The Chemical Brothers on their best behaviour. Moray states, “the Cephid was created as an opportunity to bring diverse influences together into a single coherent artistic statement.” From his work with artists across the modern progressive scene, to his early love of experimental electronic music, many musical facets are represented, but still it flows in one radical and unique package impossible to pigeonhole.

There’s no surplus of talent left out of this project, Placebo’s Shelby Logan Warne, and Jerry Kandiah producer of Killing Joke and The Futureheads have mixed and mastered this, and while its not commercialised, just like Delia Derbyshire’s work in the sixties, it’s too groundbreaking to be ignored.

As The Old Me, plays out, even its name prompts me to imagining myself hearing this in a field somewhere in 1991, amidst matted trilby wearing juniors, eyes the size of saucers and dribbling on a Wrigley’s, it is so innovative, so radical, I’d probably have had a seizure!

“What’s wrong with him!” one raver asks another as I lie comatose.

“He’s had a premonition of the future of electronic music and his fragile mind cannot handle it; somebody get him a Technotronic album, pronto!!!”

The single Worlds Before is out now. Sparks in the Darkness will be released 9th February 2024. Find out more about the project HERE.

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Beyond Reverence: Deadlight Dance’s Debut Album

According to the confines of youth cultures of yore, I shouldn’t like Marlborough-based duo Deadlight Dance’s debut album, Beyond Reverence, as while attempts to fit into my new surroundings of Marlborough meant my teenage musical tastes meandered in a rock direction, I drew the line at “goth,” but on matured and eclectic reflection, still don’t like this, I love it……

Released on Friday (15th September 2023) the sublime Beyond Reverence will be digitally available via Ray Records. You can download it via Bandcamp, stream from all platforms, and a special small run of limited-edition CDs will be available through the band; I suggest you take one of these options, it goes way beyond my expectations.

The two-and-a-half-minute sombre bassline peregrination overture to the opening track, Nice Things sets mood and pace, and I’m knee-deep in retrospective melancholy, the desired effect I’d imagine. Contemplating growing up in suburban Essex, a friend of my elder brother, so cool attired in the look of the new romantic, all frilly shirt sleeves, black eyeliner, all Adam Ant, whereas I? Standard hand-me-downs! He gave my brother a new wave electronica mix tape I adored. Echoing the pop of the era, ergo, I was unaware though already accustomed, to a degree, just later washed away with the carefree and whimsical hip hop and electro fashion, pre-acts jumping the incensed bandwagon post Grandmaster Melle Mel’s The Message.

To reaccept the dejected goth element of new wave electronica would take puberty, frustration at the bling and gun direction hip hop was heading and attempts to acclimatise to the west country rural village I found myself dumped in. Solace in the wild romantic fantasy of soft metal and general rock like Springsteen I discovered, but those “goth” pupils of St Johns would require a radical shift to modify myself to. One of those St John’s pupils was Tim Emery, one half of the Deadlight Dance duo, something we can laugh about now, but then, I wasn’t ready for the plunge, no matter how newfound schoolfriends supplied me with Sisters of Mercy and The Fields of the Nephilim tapes. I ventured as far as the Cure, but only to improve my chances of getting off with girls; it failed miserably, but that’s another story for another time!

The origins of Deadlight Dance stem back to 1989, the year I left St Johns, when Tim formed a short-lived Sixth Form goth band with Nick Fletcher. Friends for the best part of thirty-five years, the two periodically worked on music together. Born from lockdown, Deadlight Dance is a project to merge their favoured retrospective bands, The Cult and The Mission, with contemporary acts like Bragolin, Actors, Twin Tribes and Molchat Doma.

Story goes, during an initial jam Tim “finally convinced Nick to sing,” a turnaround from the original collective idea to source guest singers. But it’s in Nick’s deep growling vocals and the elegant synths of the second tune, Innocent Beginnings, and up-tempo haunting Infectious where I get these reflections of the roots of gothic, the ominous, Bowie-esque component of new wave electronica, particularly of Joy Division, and herein lies my reasoning for taking to Beyond Reverence, even if I’m not about to dye what’s left of my hair black anytime soon!

At eleven tracks strong the album is epic, evolved from an original intention to record an EP, another crisp and proficient achievement for Nick Beere’s Mooncalf Studios. While the sound is retrospective themes are of contemporary social conscience, Innocent Beginnings comments on the environment, the following, Dark Circles about autism. Though the single Missives from the Sisters sticks to true goth prose, a classic tale of misogyny set in the time of witchcraft, and being “goth” it levels on this topic appropriately, and duly sullen. Though there’s a lot here which suggests you need not be in the niche, it has wider appeal than I imagined it might.

There’s an interesting instrumental interlude, Samuri Sunrise, which reprises a Sunset at the finale, with four tunes between them, two unorthodox cover choices. A quirky interpretation of Lou Reed’s I’m Waiting for my Man I get, but the latter I was far from suspecting, a sorrowing rendition of Heartbreak Hotel you must hear for yourself!

Deadlight Dance are picking up radio play, and while usually they go out with pre-recorded synths and drum tracks, they equally operate acoustically on mandocellos and mandolins. If you came to my birthday bash early enough to find me semi-sober, you’ll have seen them, they’re opening the Saturday shift at the Beehive at Swindon Shuffle this weekend, alongside Concrete Prairie, the Lonely Road Band, Atari Pilot and Liddington Hill. Thursday 21st sees them at Nick Beere’s open mic at the Mildenhall Horseshoe, and Saturday 23rd they support Ghost Dance at Bath’s coolest record shop Chapter 22. They are delighted to be included on the bill of the legendary All that is Divine VI Festival in London in 2024, and with big plans I’m left with no doubt this album will push this the maximum.

Beyond Reverence is up for pre-order on Bandcamp, released tomorrow 15th September 2023. Find Deadlight Dance’s Website HERE, and on Facebook & Instagram. Find your inner goth and cheer them up a bit with this nice present, I enjoyed it so much I’m going to see if my lace trim gothic corset still fits and try it with this spikey rivet leather neck collar; somebody draw me a pentagram pronto!  

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Only The Brave Burn The Midnight Oil

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Dylan Smith: Cruel to be Kind

Yeah, the title of Dylan’s debut album, Cruel to be Kind could be an insight into how we conduct our reviews, but being as I missed him yet again when he came to the Southgate, I should really be kind to be kind, asides, there’s nothing in this album to be cruel about….

My excuse was festival season, I was invited to The Devizes Scooter Rally the weekend his name was chalked upon the Gate’s blackboard. Looking for a skinhead friend of mine there proved impossible amidst a sea of skinheads! Without this turning pythonesque, dwelling on Dylan’s fantastic beard, the likes of which I’d have spotted him straight away with, should he have been there, allow me this brief Arthur Twosheds Jackson moment, and we’ll digress onto his music!

While listening I’m contemplating his very name suggests he comes from a musical family, or fans of the Magic Roundabout at the very least. It could be duly noted Dylan these days may well be a name given by parents with no clue to the legendary folk singer, a Dylan the age of Dylan Smith would suggest otherwise. This I haven’t asked him about, I’m making an assumption here, because this album is so eclectic, yet from whichever angle a track off it comes at you, it’s proficiently delivered with the seemingly ease to justify the notion Dylan Smith was born for this.

The title track opens this fifteen track musical marathon. It’s the nice, smooth and breezy folk-rock I was expecting, it’s Tom Petty, vocally, and with a similar hook. However the one time I did meet Dylan, which was when he was backing Becky Lawrence on guitar at the Female of the Species annual fundraiser in Seend, and I asked him to summarise his sound, he was rather generalised and heterogeneous about pigeonholing it. The intro of the second tune, Play the Game, was unexpected, until I recalled that conversation. I mean, through to its conclusion it holds a strong wailing guitar riff, but it kicks in as if I’m about to listen to Orbital, or some other nineties downtempo slice of electronica. It is at this conjunction you accept Cruel to be Kind is going to be a ride through musical influences.

Dylan with Becky Lawrence at the Female of the Species Halloween Party in Seend!

Then, we’re back into rock citing Nashville country by the third tune, with a drifting sound and a reminiscing theme. If you were a nipper in 1983, as is its title, you’ll nod, and perhaps think the witty cultural references are wicked (in the eighties ironic slang usage of the term!) younger listeners may need Google, but I’d predict the effect remains the same; this tune celebrates the diversity Of Dylan’s work, and his ability to apply ruminative narrative.

By now you’re immersed in Dylan’s world, and willing to accept whatever he deems appropriate to throw at you. Check You Out, is quirky and the tad saucy of ZZ Top in content, followed by a beautiful ballad, or two, but we’re only halfway through and anything could happen. Memory Lane again focuses on retrospective reminiscences, with a bouncy acoustic number, I’m awash thinking of classic influences, yeah, Dylan and Cash, but the experimental side of the Beatles and Beach Boys too, and this one finishes on a whistle akin to Otis sitting on the dock of the bay. 

In conclusion to citing influences, a Nils Lofgren of Trowbridge, and as a guitar teacher too I guess Dylan needs to be diverse, perhaps, but there’s so much going on here, stop the press; nine tunes in and Living Fantasy is funky electronica pop! Then whoa, bluegrass supersedes, and we’re back in Dylan’s comfort zone, this Tom Petty folk-rock rings throughout, but there’s no accounting where he’ll go next. A man after my own heart, I feel, as I couldn’t do desert island discs, couldn’t bear to reduce myself to a few genres, let alone a few albums!

But there’s thoughtful prose, genius writing, and adroit guitar work throughout this musical melting pot, even if Dylan can’t decide on moderating to a subgenre; his style is unique and detectable from whatever pigeonhole you care to plonk a particular tune into. The album drifts along in similar fashion to the close, it’s beguiling, yet as there’s a lot of it, you begin to take Dylan’s talent for granted, until it’s over. There is a pocket of variation when Lucie Reyonds vocals on a song called Something to Share. Now, if this one doesn’t standalone to prove the wealth of Dylan’s virtuosity in composure and writing, nothing will.

It’s wonderfully enchanting, as is the album, an interestingly diverse treasure you’ll return to and discover more to, like gags in an Airplane movie! Now who’s taking us back to 1983, and if we could, Dylan, just return to your fantastic beard for a moment?!

For more info on Dylan Smith and to buy the album, see Dylan’s Website HERE

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Recreational Trespass with N/SH

Arriving just in time to catch Swindon schoolteacher Garri Nash by weekday, ambient acoustic musician N/SH by gig-nights, at one of the early mini-festivals of The Crown at Bishop’s Cannings this summer, I’d missed local covers band Paradox play before him. It perhaps wasn’t the most appropriate follow, Paradox roused the audience with lively renowned covers, and N/SH is at best a niche market of downtempo original compositions.

Though it’s in the recording studio, or at a music venue geared towards original and acoustic artists where we see him shine. Recreational Trespass is out today, up on Bandcamp with pressings forthcoming from Genepool Records in Plymouth. It’s an album amidst a prolific discography, though Garri himself states he’s “still the ‘new boy on the block’ out there as far as music is concerned.”

And what he does is new, not least unique, if the track Afterstorm on this release gives you goosebumps about the intro to U2’s The Streets Have no Name, yes, it sounds similar, but stays with that intro’s mood, symbolically N/SH’s style, it doesn’t bang into the heavy rock riff, it rarely “goes off.” Neither is dub a component, with its wildly adjusting tenors and erratic tempo changes. This just softens, simple as electronica outfits such as Tangerine Dream, but with rock’s ingredients to boot.

They all glide mellowly, fragments of abstract thought, and also, unlike the ambient house of The Orb, or KLF, I find myself scrambling for comparisons with, neither do they linger too long. There’s no soundscape of winds blowing, or a dog barking in the distance for twenty minutes prior to a beat kicking in, they’re comparatively shorter, clips, often hazy and artistically composed; when one chain of thought expires, the song does too, occasionally abruptly, and it’s onto the next, like a rough book of juxtaposed ideas.

If I’m to make comparisons, you’d have to imagine Cat Stevens with modern tech. N/SH’s innermost mind must be a perpetual swirl of ideas, if he wrote comedy, it’d a sketch show rather than a sitcom. But comedy doesn’t come into play here, dunno why I mentioned it really! Solemn and dejected the themes wallow, often hinging on limb, lo-fi and distant, as if you’re only a passer-by in this reverie.

I tried to address where this inimitable style came from. Passing off my ambient house acquaintance, of student days of yore, Garri explained “for me, the ambient is more influenced by Sigur Ros, Fink, etc, which is more chilled. I know Ambient House has its own genre but I’m told mine is indie, alternative. BBC use this for my genre, and now some electronic.”

“Folktronic,” I said was a term penned by David Gray, and I like this tag, but N/SH felt it sounded too Americana to suit. “I’m definitely not that,” he expressed, “or folk, which I’ve been labelled with before but hey, it’s what people hear.” Though a lengthy conversation pursued around precise genre-labelling, we found common ground on the ethos of nah, mate, against pigeonholes, they’re for pigeons only; I’m just trying to pin it down for descriptive purposes here.

Yet I find myself troubled in pinning it, it’s acoustic with soundscape backing tracks, it’s artistic expression equally as much as music, and I’m a sucker for the alternative rulebreakers. For others, I guess it’s Marmite; that said, I blow their advertising slogan out of the window, because I can take it or leave it!

Engulfed in this album though, it takes a few listens, adjustments from the norm, and there’s a lot going on subject matter-wise, poetically dishevelled and sporadically misplaced, it makes for an interesting listen. Alone on a showery eve, it’ll make your cup of tea go cold, as you stare at raindrops descending down the window, consenting it to draw you into its melting portrayals.

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The Bakesys, Thursday Night on my Television

The Bakesys have a new album out this week, to get your flux capacitor firing on all cylinders……

Though Perry Como got the ball rolling for a possible “10 songs which stick in your head” nonsense article today, I’ve been pleasantly reminded of eighties German outfit, Trio. A kind of poor man’s Europop Ian Dury, their only UK hit ‘Da Da Da’ definitely fits the bill.

But in turn it reminded me I’ve an album review to prioritise, a track on which reeks of Trio, and not the popular chocolate biscuit of the era. With its upfront ZX Spectrum game backbeat ‘Six O’clock Already‘ is like techno never happened; you can virtually see Jet Set Willy entering the banyan tree.

If you need Google to comprehend that reference, Newbury’s The Bakesys’ ‘Thursday Night on my Television,‘  might skyrocket over your head. Inspired by late eighties third wave ska bands, The Bakesys formed in 1990, and frontman Kevin Flowerdew is now editor of the superlative ska-zine ‘Do The Dog.’
I fondly reviewed their last outpouring, Sentences I’d Like To Hear The End Of, in which a variety of sixties news headlines are given a fourth gen ska makeover to poignant and danceable effect. This latest album is a different ballpark.

Through retrospective compilation, Thursday Night on my Television, relies entirely on that post-punk pop era, where no subgenre in the clutter of youth cultures could avoid the onslaught of electronica. It was a do-or-die age of experimentation, free of the trend of sampling. And unlike the previous Bakesys’ album, there are no samples, just rich of culture references harking of the kind of sounds dripping from that era, and deliberately clunky.


Fun Boy Three’s Our Lips are Sealed gets a counter-reaction, Molly Ringwald gets a mention, in a song akin to Kirsty McColl’s guy down the chip shop, and the best ballad themes around the subject of Bunking Off School, Jumping on Buses, leaving no doubts The Bakesys are either Dr Who, or lived this time, and are reminiscing on both reality-driven romance and fantasising, of John Hughes characters.

With shards of Two-Tone, new wave and post-punk, no pre-electronica subgenre is left behind, as it merges into this experimental period, this album will have you recollecting all from The Damned and The Beat, to Blancmange and Sparks, if you don’t remember ‘Beat the Clock,’ your memory will be jogged by this retrospective outpouring, and in the words of Kenny Everett, “all in the best possible taste!”

For it might take a couple of listens to be fully immersed, for what was avantgarde might now be cliché, The Bakesys home in with such a degree you’re drawn into reliving rather than attributing, like your Harrington jacket, Doc Martins and Fred Perry polo shirt have been hanging in your wardrobe all this time, waiting for you to stop staring at that fading Kim Wilde poster on your wall, and nip to the arcade to play some Space Invaders until a fight breaks out….. which kinda makes it alright.

But, it took me by surprise, expecting ska, when even the most ska-ish track, Money all the Time, has the electronic plod of Depeche Mode. It’s a synth-pop marvel, with a notion to matured retrospection, rather than delinquent melancholy, and it works on a level above the archetypal 80s tribute, to the point I’ll be avoiding white dog shit on the street, and I can smell that bubble gum you used to get in trading cards!

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On The Road With Talk in Code!

You know that millennial movie, Almost Famous, set mid-seventies, where Rolling Stone Magazine mistake a nerdy teenager for a music journalist and send him on the road with an outrageous prog-rock band? It was nothing like that. Neither did it resemble 200 Motels, where a man dressed as a vacuum cleaner convinces you Ringo Starr is actually Frank Zappa in some freaky acid flashback. But I did have an awesome adventure yesterday, on the road with local premier indie-pop favs, Talk in Code.…..

There were no campervans with CND slogans painted on the side-door, no sign of Goldie Hawn’s daughter unfortunately, and though my bubbles of anachronistic pre-imaginings burst, it allowed me to chart the regular labour of a touring band, rather than my usual practise of slouching up halfway through a performance with lame excuse. For if I’m going to write on the subject, I need to comprehend the inner workings, and the thoughts of a band going to a gig; even though I’m far from teenage music journalist with an advance from Rolling Stone!

So, by dinnertime I’m lone with guitarist Alastair Sneddon at the steering wheel, hereafter referred to as “Snedds,” with an amp case knocking in the rear of his car, and distracted by my inane waffling, weaving between musical subjects, badly following his sat-nav to Portsmouth.

Likely the eldest of this four-piece band, Snedds is a family man with a wealth of musical experience. He fondly recalls playing in cover bands, jazz and blues groups and our chat swifts across his past, musical influence brushing off on his children, current past gigs and local venues, to the importance, or insignificance of pop culture, the mainstream music industry and current trends of listening to music from streaming platforms to amplification to listening through phone speakers; we could’ve chatted all night on his passionate chosen subject, least it perceived to reduce the travel time.  

Before I knew it, we were awkwardly parked on a busy street in Southsea. Awash with cheesy club type pubs, restaurants, kebab houses and chippies, lies an equally misplaced theatre to our right, and a more traditional looking city tavern, The Lord John Russell, which will be our venue for the evening. Like a true roadie I felt a sense of haughtiness as I assisted lugging equipment through the already bustling pub; make way, yes, I’m with the band, ladies control yourselves!

But nothing felt ostentatious for the band as they amassed their kit in a corner, greeted each other and the promoter; here’s a tight working team despite the geographic distance between them. Talk in Code are part from Swindon, Reading and Devizes, but here they are with an excited air of anticipation brewing. There’s a trio of bands on tonight, Talk in Code are second on, while the first are already sound checking, locally based to Portsmouth, Southerlies are a seven-piece covers band, fusing Americana with punchy hooks into contemporary pop; they proficiently delivered their set with good male-female vocal harmonies, and being local I observe they attracted a fanbase.

Quite eclectic then, to switch to Talk in Code’s more electronica indie-pop, which as I discussed in the car with Snedds, perpetually seemed to fuse conventional nineties indie sound to a more inimitable eighties synth-pop style with every new tune. Yet tricker still was the notion the Talkers insist to play only their originals, which would be unknown to this rather heterogenous crowd. Besides, frontman Chris gets his fill of covers with the Britpop Boys.

Seems Friday live music nights are relatively new-fangled for the Lord John Russell, with a promoter keen to create the venture, the pub also adhered to cater for the pull on it’s street with screens showing sport and archetypical club music between acts. As much as market town pubs like Devizes’ Southgate work here, with a penchant for original live music and solely that, it wouldn’t work in this busy city location judging by the footfall. But a splendid, convivial and dynamic pub it was with a wide demographic.

One thing I was keen to gage from Talk in Code, the priorities and feelings towards playing a gig outside their usual stomping ground as opposed to returning to a venue like Swindon’s Victoria where a fanbase would be welcoming. They stressed the importance of both, and being their recent connection to Regent Street Records, there’s a keenness in the band to grab wider-appeal in anticipation of the forthcoming album. The release of which has been pushed back to accommodate this collaboration.

Still, all the band are united in praising recent local gigs, particularly Trowbridge Town Hall where they supported The Worried Men, and were keen to pick out the importance of the many locally-based festivals they’re booked at, from Minety to Live at Lydiard and IWild in Gloucestershire. And with appearances at places like Oxford’s HMV, things are really looking up for them post-lockdown.

And it’s easy to see why when they bounced on stage last night at the Lord John Russell, after their virtually nail-biting eagerness while the Southerlies launched into their final song, Chris already polishing his guitar and Snedds confessing the waiting game is a pet hate. A technical issue with leads to the backing tracks solved, the band applauded the previous and proficiently executed their thing, introducing themselves and delivering their songs with panache.

For me it was a blessing, being I’m aware of much of their discography, to finally get to witness them do it live, and had to stop to ponder their stage presence is as exhilarating as their recorded work. Yet, my view of the performance differed from the crowd as the band were likely new to them. Still, they got the place jumping, sprightlier, and louder than the previous band. They confessed a spirit of fair competition was unavoidable in them, yet affirmed their ethos to never do their set and bunk, in respect for other bands; Talk in Code come off as outgoing throughout and it was an honour to be welcomed into their web.

Also present, I spent time chatting connections, her background as music journalist and her fanzine making past, with manager Lyndsey. From Milton Keynes she avidly followed the group in their early years, falling in love with their sound it seemed only natural to mutually agree for her to manage. And part-time freelance photographer Helen, whose PolarPix Facebook page is dominated with Talk in Code shots. I put it to her she seems to have another band photographed then a Talk in Code one, then another Talk in Code one, then another random band. She acknowledged most of the other bands were on the same bill as TIC! A true “Talker,” as is their fanbase appellation.

Percival Elliott

A pleasant change from trudging the local circuit, as the finale was a euphoric rock band named Percival Elliott, who, with barefoot frontman on keys, executed a sublime set, the like you’d want Coldplay to achieve. In many ways here was a band apt for our own fond venues such as aforementioned Southgate and Trowbridge Town Hall. Without boast, coming highly recommended by yours truly occasionally has some clout, though there was part of me who, if in control of this triple-bill, would’ve put Talk in Code as the final band, being more upbeat popish.

We give no more review of The Lord John Russell for the sake of it being outside our boundaries, but if you’re Pompy bound this would be an ideal pub to consider, offering a variety of free live music dates on Fridays. Now I’m home, unpacked my Peppa Pig bucket and spade, but while I unfortunately didn’t see the seaside, or Kate Hudson, I was in good company with a band which goes from strength-to-strength.  

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Crossed Wires with a Timid Deer

OMG, and coming from someone who refuses to use OMG on principle, rather than its blasphemous connotations, that old dogs, new tricks, I don’t usually conform to trending words or abbreviations. I just don’t get the irony. I mean, kids use the word sick to mean something that’s good. Why can’t they just use wicked like we used to do?

Anyway, it’s my third music review of the day, and while I may be knocking them out, tangents tend to creep in without apologies. But here’s my new favourite discovery while washing the dishes, Salisbury’s Timid Deer, a band I’ve seen listed here and there, supporting our Lost Trades, a track I loved on Screamlite’s New Hero Sounds NHS fundraising compilation, et all, but had yet to delve fully into. And the result is the reason I used OMG despite all I said about it.

Ah yeah, at the Lost Trades launch at the Pump!

All I will say is, if our mission is to seek out new local music, new bands and boldly go where no blog has blogged before, Captain Kirk needs a crew therefore so do I. Mind you, my own daughter suggests I look more like Suru on Discovery, which I beg to differ; the guy walks like the back end of a donkey while I’ve got the more Charlie Chaplin swagger, and I excuse another tangent. Why didn’t someone least hint, oi, Worrow, I reckon you’d like Timid Deer, reckon its right up your street?

Before I’d even put the fairy liquid in the sink, I’m warmed to these mellow electronic and soulful vibes. Akin to Portishead and Morcheeba, without the need to be locked in the nineties trip hop era, Timid Deer is a blessing in the indie-fuse of euphoric keys by Tim, with Tom on double bass, guitarist Matt, drummer Chris, and the mind-blowingly gifted vocals of Naomi, who has the vocal strength of Mayyadda, but with the childlike uniqueness of Bjork.

The name-your-price single Crossed Wires came out end of last month, unbeknown to me. An uplifting piano three-minute masterwork, engulfing your soul and building layers with smooth electronic beats. Evocative as Enya without the orchestrated strings, as expressive as Clannad without the folk roots, and closer to Yazoo via electronica, rather than the aforementioned influences of Portishead and Morcheeba. Ticks all my boxes.

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A figure appears through the labyrinth of florescent drapes, strobing with ultra-violet lights. She’s void of expression, hypnotised in her individual realm she perpetually gyrates, wearing a black figure-hugging bodysuit, highly decorated in costume jewellery constructed from glowsticks. It’s not the image families would conceive of when thinking of Longleat, rather a cheeky posse of rhesus macaque monkeys ripping the rubber insulation off their Volvo.

Yet the Wiltshire raver of yore will note, and reminisce, to trek to Swindon’s Brunel Rooms would be to face happy hardcore, jungle or house, whereas there was a tribal movement of tranced techno-heads, a conglomerate of Wilts and Somerset rural ravers in the basement of the Warminster manor, and it took on a wildlife of its own; the UFO Club at the Berkley Suite. Memories of it flood what’s left of my neurons, I’m halfway into Trowbridge DJ and Producer, Neonian’s debut EP Vaxxor, released this coming Friday (5th March.)

Not before the opening title track, that is, which detonates a more breakbeat house prose at you, something for the peaky middle of a set by Plump DJs in a glasshouse club off Brighton beach in the latter nineties. There’s a lot going on here, for a four track EP, and it’s having all subgenres large.

Released through Weatnu Records, there’s parts of Vaxxor where I thought a more conventional and contemporary danceable beat might rear its head, but it doesn’t, it solidly rides a wave of classic electronic dance music with a penchant for the techno-trance feel, hence my memories of the UFO Club. That said, Vaxxor, as a tune contains definite traces of punky chemical beats, akin the Prodigy or Chemical Brothers, yet rather than a gimmicky vocal or sample element for possible mass-appeal, Neonian seems aware pop has detracted from this trend of recent, ergo its concentration is on perusing a consistent beat and sonic hi-hats.

This leaves you semi-prepared for the more trance-techno sound of the following tune, Glow. For this it is thumbs up as the most poignantly danceable, in the four-by-four psytrance fashion akin to Goa trance. Hypnotic Jerk takes elements of this, and slides into a downbeat “hypnotic cocoon teetering on the edge of normality.” Imagine Nightmares on Wax if triphop hadn’t been invented.  We’re in the chillout tent, Eat Static are playing a Sunday morning set, that’s where it is; yeah, I’m with you, mate, got a flyer I can roach?!

All these four tracks were recorded during the lockdowns, and together are a glorious testament to the psych-subgenres of the UK underground dance scene. But if you’ve any misgivings to the variety of the melting pot, I’ll confirm Neonian blends and crafts it with distinct precision. To affirm he’s clearly nodding to his influences, the testament comes to a finale like a returning migratory bird to its nest. Proof to the Tower finishes this short journey off with something, though layered with aforementioned influences, strips the sound back the subgenres’ combined roots.

Proof to the Tower drips with elegant attributes of post-punk electronica, aligning New Order, Depeche Mode and even the stiffer originators, Kraftwerk and The Art of Noise. The EP is getting radio plays from BBC Radio Wiltshire, Kinetic7Radio (Bleeps & Beats show), Radio TFSC and Radio Wigwam, and I’m far from surprised.

Neonian is the work of Ian Sawyer, who has previously released a few singles, a mini LP ‘Treasure’ and provided remixes for Frannie B, NNYz?, Sergeant Thunderhoof and James Harriman. “I make music, for myself,” Ian explains, “I can’t really describe it but it’s mainly made with synthesisers, loops and samples. Influences include New Order, Boards Of Canada, Coil, Pye Corner Audio, Factory Floor, and Russ Abbot.” Unsure about citing that last one, though Vaxxor certainly has an atmosphere!

Nonetheless these tributes to the pioneers of electronica and nineties trance, techno and breakbeats are often viewed as rather soulless, this does what it says on the tin while retaining something fresh to boot. Clearly, four tracks with Neonian aren’t enough, I’d like to hear a fully-mixed electronic concept album, perhaps, to be fully sucked into its deep and hypnotic grooves.

Excuse me for being so fussy, but some uplifting sections, with gimmicky elements such as female vocals would be advantageous. Not solely for my own palate, rather in hope it’ll attract the attention of a wider audience. As, like William Orbit did when he got the phone call from Madonna, I think while Vaxxor is damn cool with florescent socks on, Neonian, I feel has yet to achieve his magnum opus, but when he does, judging by this EP, you’ll want to standing in the middle of it, making boxes and reaching for the stars.

Available on all Digital Platforms March 5th 2021; ‘Vaxxor’ is now available to Pre-Order on Bandcamp via the following link.  You get to download the track ‘Glow’ now and the rest of the EP when it is released on March 5th.