aeolianblues

This one just somehow sounds better on vinyl :) I’m lucky that through the radio station, we have some original vinyl from the 80s that I’ve actually first heard in vinyl rather than digitally. You can’t go back!

This reminds me a lot of Visage's Fade To Grey! This was an electropop, synthpop group from Montreal called Nudimension.

They were largely a studio group, primarily made up of a singer-drummer Louie Louie and a non-musician and manager Marc Fontaine. They were occasionally joined, as a 'co-vocalist', by model and TV presenter Anne Marie Cyr, who appears in the music video here and talks (like the French spoken-word verses in Fade To Grey) while Louis sings, because she wasn't a singer and was apparently 'unable to sing'.

Louis previously drummed in Montreal's first punk band, the 222s, who had split up in 1981, and as one of the band's principal songwriters along with guitarist Pierre Major, before singer Chris Barry joined the band, Louis had been keen on writing pop songs even with the 222s, and he was keen on exploring the new synth pop direction, so he formed Nudimension (literally a new dimension to the music). The band mostly wrote in French, and became popular in Francophone Quebec and France, and coming out around the time of the rise of synthpop and the music video, as a band with a visual presence made them stand out quite a bit. Recording a few English language songs and versions of French songs also got them some success across North America.

The spark had gone out by 1989, members went on to focus on other projects. Louis rejoined the 222s on their reunion tour with Asexuals from 2009 to 2011, when the band played Osheaga, one of Canada's premiere indie music festivals.

This song was a bit of a hit, Amour Programmé. Very futuristic and warning of a loss of connection— in a very 80s way. Lyrics by a youtube commenter under the cut

I enjoyed this episode so much! John Savage dives into the punk movement of the 60s, 70s and later post punk and New Romantic movements of the 80s, and how they have roots in the queer scenes of the time. From Andy Warhol's Factory to David Bowie's declaration of his sexuality only a few years after homosexuality was partially decriminalised in the UK, to New York Dolls, Max's Kansas, Wayne later Jayne County, Vivian Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's SEX clothing shop and the gay clubs, which ended up becoming stops frequented by queer folks in London. I also really appreciate the way everyone interviewed about it talks about how there was this aspect of the weirdos and the freaks sticking together: everyone who didn't fit in had a place in punk initially, because that's where punk's roots lay.

It's available for the next 4 days, if not message me for it (if I still have it)

Pet Shop Boys - Being Boring (Marshall Jefferson 12'' mix)

This was a 9:03 alternate mix of Being Boring, on Side 2 of the single How Can You Expect To Be Taken Seriously?, sent to our radio station in 1991!

@confusedazai

Our radio station has a few Madness albums on vinyl too!

Mad Not Mad. Amongst thousands of other records!

Our radio station is super old and has received thousands of submissions in physical formats over the years: CDs, LPs, for as long as the formats have existed because we are 100 years old.

Thought I’d pick out something for the Smiths fans today!

This is just 1/10th of our station library! I’m sure you can see a little bit of The Queen Is Dead and Rank sticking out…

Aha!

It was a promotional copy, sent to us in the late 80s… it’s clearly had so much use and love, that the stamp indicating the year it was sent to us has smudged!

Copie promotionnelle. Enjoy!

RPM Weekly, showing the Top 100 albums in Canada for the week of 10 March, 1984.

You can tell the 2nd British Invasion of the charts was in full swing: Culture Club, Pretenders, Eurythmics, UB40, Duran Duran, Billy Idol, Police, The The, Spandau Ballet, Queen, David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Elton John, Paul McCartney... many bands with more than one album in the top 50!

Really, really, massively underestimated the intro to Fade To Grey the first time I heard it... fucking hell. Those opening synth notes? Smooth, ambient, sweet, hollow, euphoric? That ticking-clock of a high synth? How carefully and considerately the drums kicked in?* The way the synths just hold their notes as more join in, become more detached, more suspended (in sound, musically speaking), just filling up the space over the groundwork of the drums, becoming richer and more harmonic, until suddenly, just one falls out of line, becomes that little bit minor; dissonant, and then it's gone. The whole image, the whole world you built in 16 seconds, it's gone. It fades away. Fades to grey, even. That synth flute (as best as I can I could place it), it's no more. The more distorted, lower-pitched, meatier synthbass line replaces it. The euphoria is fleeting. Nothing is perfect, except in little moments that stick in your head long after they're gone. I haven't heard Fade To Grey in months.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the song, I love the whole song. But the parallel universe that is the first fifteen seconds... wow.

(do you hear it?)

*Tbh Trevor Horn has talked about the drum machines of that era of the New Romantic, synth wave 80s, which he preferred to work with as a producer in the studio, because it was just a lot less of a hassle than session drummers. So it's quite possibly a drum machine. But we do still appreciate good arrangement and production in this house, don't we?

I don't think a song can hits harder and in a more relatable manner than when Matt Johnson sings "Another year older and what have I done? My aspirations have shrivelled in the sun. I'm crippled by guilt, blinded by science; I've been waiting for tomorrow all of my life."