+ CITIES IN QUESTION is my latest original track, composed in my head with no access to equipment, and has been realised in less than three days of studio time so far. It's my most commercial piece to date, and I'm told it's one catchy sonofabitch. 'Cities in question, providing no answers / Demanding attention, taking no chances...'
+ ARTIST/ARCHITECT is a tribute to the design brains behind my favourite buildings. The subject and lyrics suggested a Kraftwerkian style, so the track doubles as a tribute to the most influential of all electronic bands, Die Mensch Maschine. 'Designing the future, shaping our world...'
+ REAL POLITIKS is rooted in 1979, with nagging jagged bass and wailing oscillator leadlines. It's about the futility of war and my healthy distrust of the corporate/political machinery: THE ENEMY IS THE STATE.
+ DUMBING DOWN - the Human Condition ain't a pretty sight and the frustration & anger of the lyrics led to an EBM/industrial approach. More synth harmonies will flesh out the bass-heavy demo, and the vox will get further treatment. 'Everyone dreads being alone in their heads / Without our home comforts we're better off dead...'
+ WHAT AM I? builds slowly from atmospheric tonalities to an insistent, almost tribal rhythmic beat, hypnotic interlocking bass pulses and choppy sequences. No lyrics, just a healthy smattering of found vocal samples. Sources include Cronenberg's 'Videodrome', American daytime game shows and assorted oddments. 'You wanna try a few things..?'
+ PLEASE LEAVE COMMENTS OR SEND MESSAGES if you like what you hear, and please play 'em LOUD!
Remember most of these tracks are DEMOS and will sound tighter and more polished when the final additions and mixes are done. Please keep dropping by, as new material will surface soon.
Check out my late 70s/early 80s electro cover versions via the COVERS PROJECT link and my personal page via the JOE CHIP link on my top friends.
+ JOHN COSTELLO: WHERE I'M COMING FROM
+ THE FIRST SINGLE I BOUGHT, aged 10, was 'Virginia Plain' by Roxy Music. The first album was Bowie's 'Aladdin Sane'. Both respectable, if glam, first steps on the path to the musical genres I would later embrace - electronica and post-punk new wave. I felt at the time and I feel even more now, looking back through rose-tinted lenses, that the late 70’s ushered in the greatest-ever creative explosion in music. Art school dropouts and clever punks were experimenting with synthesizers. John Peel was fast achieving Godhood. The culturesphere seemed to be moving in the right direction with individual creativity, self-expression and difference atop the agenda.
Then, after a too-short while, the bubble burst - as it always does - and we entered the Time Of Great Disaffection. Thatcherism and Reaganomics ravaged society and launched their poisonous acquisition at all costs, greed-is-good, step on your fellow man to get above him on the ladder mentality. The likes of Wham!, Culture Club, Spandau Bollocks, Kajagoogoo(!), Phil Collins, Sting and Prince (to name but a few of the guilty), dumbed music down and drop-kicked it back into the moronic inferno. The mainstream Empire struck back with a vengeance, rolling us into a huge bland snowball of corporate dollars and sickly yeah-yeah-baby anti-thought aural candyfloss.
+ THOUGH PUNK HAD BEEN LIBERATING FOR A WHILE, it was just too one-dimensional (like, let's be honest here, most of the popular music it rebelled against). By design and nature it was a brief flare rather than a lasting flame. And, in retrospect, much of it was rubbish. But the experimental tornado that formed in its wake blew so many of us away! Those divine moments: Devo’s ‘Jocko Homo’ on Anne Nightingale’s Sunday afternoon Radio 1 show; Ian Curtis' 'dancing' epileptically through Joy Division's 'Transmission' on early evening BBC2; Tuxedomoon’s razor-edge soundhowl ‘No Tears’ and The Human League’s DIY sequencer-driven ‘The Dignity of Labour’ eps, bought on the same day; the meaty electronics and caustic intellect of the UK's mutant Mr Punch, Fad Gadget; the brittle frozen fingers of Cocteau Twins’ 'Garlands' and first Peel session; the alienated electropose of Tubeway Army’s ‘Replicas’; the cerebral prog-punk swagger of Magazine’s ‘Secondhand Daylight’; the powerhouse pomp of Simple Minds’ ‘Empires and Dance’; the frigid cobwebbed gloom of The Cure’s ‘Pornography’, the glam pretentiousness that couldn't mask the sheer genius of Japan's 'Gentlemen Take Polaroids'.
+ SO MANY VITAL MEMORIES, so many unmissable moments.
+ FROM THE MID-80'S, like many of my contemporaries, I became a hapless spectator as the potential of the preceding years dissipated into apathy and ennui. Intellect was marginalised. Post-punk, like punk before it, was quickly assimilated into the capitalist machinery. Experimental music was sidelined once more. Sales fell. Synths became studio tools to create bland pop or lifeless dance music. Britain and America suffocated in a political and cultural vacuum. Thatcher told us there was no such thing as society: she knew; she was busy dismantling it. Greed and mediocrity reclaimed their positions at the heart of the party, and music stagnated into foul-smelling pondscum.
C’est la guerre.
+ 1997: AFTER 18 LONG YEARS under the gloomy tory gulag, the government changed but, to my horror, the script remained the same – power corrupts absolutely, doesn't it Tony? Social justice and honesty are just as far off the radar under new labour (pardon me if I don’t dignify with capitals) and the ideological similarities between those dinosaur tribes by now far outweigh the differences.
The 90's through early 2000's must rate as the most Godforsaken musical drought since records began (arf). A handful of interesting artists (incl. Massive Attack, early Manics, Aphex Twin, 808 State, Nine Inch Nails, Laibach, Orbital, Prodigy and Euro/US EBM & Industrial) propped up a huge bloated deadweight of recycled-60s guitar Britpop and lazy club 'dance' music. And don't ever get me started on hip-hop 'culture'.
Lately though, old spirits have been stirring. The electro virus has returned, stimulating a renaissance of 70's/80's electronic and new wave music. A new breed of contemporary artists has surfaced, sleeves plastered with direct influences. Vitalic, M83, Ladytron, LCD Soundsystem, Goldfrapp, Royksopp – the spirit of 79 lives again. As do the personnel: recently I’ve seen Kraftwerk in London, Minimal Compact in Paris, Tuxedomoon in Amsterdam & London, Severed Heads in Antwerp, Neon Judgement, Gang of Four, John Foxx, Soft Cell, Dead Can Dance, Karl Bartos, Pere Ubu, B-Movie, The Weathermen, Skinny Puppy, Portion Control – a new cycle is well underway, led by the old guard. Long may it flourish, and grow into a pandemic, because it's my best and maybe only hope for a worthwhile musical culture.
+ JOHN COSTELLO: WHERE I CAME FROM
+ 1986: I STARTED MAKING ELECTRONIC MUSIC, having been a fan since buying Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' single in my early teens, a dozen years before. My first recording sessions were at the 16-track Rhythm Studio in Leamington Spa, laying down instrumental music for the soundtrack to a corporate video I had made. The session was produced by studio owner PAUL JOHNSTON, mad Bill Nelson fan and session drummer who played with Fashion among others.
The company had paid for three days studio time but I completed the soundtrack in one, so I used the extra two days to record my own music. It was all original, except for a dashed-off cover (about three hours from start to finish!) of Dutch band Minny Pops' 'Tracking' that has often been compared favourably with the original.
These tracks, along with a couple of home 4-track recordings using a borrowed Roland JX3P, were released as a cassette, CANTOS, in an edition of 50 (the Big Time!). CANTOS was odd and undisciplined and low-fi, but reached the ears of a strange/nice guy from Cornwall, CLIVE LITTLEWOOD, who liked it enough to distribute. I received a few complimentary letters from electronic music fans in Europe (despite post-punk and new romanticism, experimental electronic music was never that popular in Britain). By this time I'd begun assembling a basic home studio and was able to create audio sketches before going into the studio - these first tracks at Rhythm were composed and recorded from scratch.
+ I RECORDED MORE MATERIAL AT RHYTHM, including a nine-minute cover of John Carpenter's 'Halloween' theme, and a longer, disturbingly unpleasant suite based around real dirty sounds and samples from Tobe Hooper's peerless horror movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
My newer original material ('Surface Tension'; 'Gormenghast') was developing nicely and attracting some attention, being reviewed favourably in fanzines like STEVE & ALAN FREEMAN's underground oracle, AUDION.
Cardiff-based synthesist KEVIN O'NEILL included 'Surface Tension' on a compilation album he was putting together for his musicians' collective, NETWORK 23, which released material by themselves and others whose music they liked. The tape, REMOTE VIEWING, was received well in EM circles and sold strongly.
+ 1989: KEVIN INVITED ME to take part in an electronic concert at Cardiff Chapter Arts Centre. There were four acts on the bill: myself, Scottish synth wizard GREG TRUCKELL, STEVE & LINDA HILLMAN and Kevin himself. I had never played solo in front of an audience before (the very early DIY days and low-key gigs of my first band Captain Black don't really count), and in truth I was a bag of nerves, barely able to hold it together. But I did, the event attracted a healthy audience, went down well, and I'm told was the only independent electronic music concert in the UK to show a profit that year.
Next I was invited by UK Electronica organiser MARK JENKINS to play the major UKE all-day event in October with MARK SHREEVE headlining, but it was unfortunately cancelled at the last minute for technical reasons.
+ I RELEASED THE CHAPTER CONCERT material later in 1989 as one side of my next cassette, HALFLIFE; the other side contained the 'Halloween' and 'Texas Chainsaw' suites. Again distributed by Clive Littlewood, this time in an edition of 200, HALFLIFE generated some heart-warming correspondence, again mainly from Europe, and received a glowing review in Spanish fanzine SINTETIZANDO. Editor Jorge Munnshe sent me a few wonderful letters from Barcelona that I still have somewhere, in the most hilarious OTT Spanglish. [If you're out there somewhere Jorge, hola!]
+ 1990: I WAS COMMISSIONED BY animation supplies company CHROMACOLOUR to compose the soundtrack for a video showreel of their products. It was animated by my friend SIMON MADDOCKS, who designed a striking early CGI cover for HALFLIFE and provided the visual accompaniment for my Cardiff performance. The track, 'Last Flight Out', was recorded at Greg Truckell's studio in Dumfries. Greg had offered to produce my next recording while we were both drunk after the Cardiff concert, but was as good as his word.
I spent four great but tiring days before Easter with Greg in his music/games shop in the daytime, at home with his wife, kids and loud Siamese cats for dinner, then back to the shop/studio to record all night! Chromacolour were happy with the music, and the video played at trade fairs all over the world. [Greetings Greg if you ever read this...]
+ THAT WAS ABOUT AS GOOD AS IT GOT. The rest of 1990 saw my personal life become somewhat fucked-up and I had little time or money to spare. In fact I had to sell my home studio (based around an Akai S950 sampler, Kawai K4 and Roland JX8P with various outboard FX), which at the time was like having a limb amputated. I lost interest in making music for a long time and failed to capitalise upon the impetus I'd been building, such as it was.
+ 1996: I BEGAN A COLLABORATION with ATTRITION's MARTIN BOWES, at his Cage Studio in Coventry. Martin & I met at the FE college where we both lectured. Of course I was familiar with Attrition's music and I was grateful to Martin for liking my material enough to collaborate, for taking a back seat on composition while he mainly engineered and produced, and for finding the time to fit the project into his busy schedule.
Although we only managed enough time to complete one track, 'What Am I?' (under the moniker of ENGRAM), found a home on a compilation album, ALLEVIATION, released by SILBER RECORDS in the USA. It was really no more than a demo, but Brian the label boss liked it so much he didn't want anything changed, much to my amazement.
+ 2004: OLD FRIEND RICHARD IZZARD AND I began an intermittent recording project using his lovely toys at his home studio in East Sussex. I met Richard in about 1983 through a letter published in Electronic Soundmaker magazine, to which he responded. We wrote to each other from then on, swapped hundreds of tapes, and met up fairly frequently at electro gigs in London. He's the only guy I know (who isn't a professional musician, producer, dj or label boss), with a larger music collection than mine.
Like me, Richard worked full time and made music as and when he could. Over the years he's built up a very respectable home studio and produced music in partnership with his friend DAVID MANNING who supplies lyrics and vox. (As DANCEVISION they have produced two cd releases - SINISTER RESONANCES and 2006's TANZKREIS).
+ COLLABORATION HAS PROVED DIFFICULT because of distance, lack of time and my lack of equipment to adequately prepare sketches for our sessions. To date we've managed only a handful of days in a few years, but we've created some promising material. In a return to my original method the music was composed from ideas in my head, and this time I supplied lyrics and provided effected/vocoded vocals. My favourite track is the near-finished 'ARTIST/ARCHITECT' that I wrote as a tribute to Kraftwerk, and, er, architects. The half-complete and naggingly insistent 'REAL POLITIKS' has a lot going for it too in a 1979 kind of vibe. The third piece, the industrial 'DUMBING DOWN', has a way to go but could shape up. Our goal is to record enough material to release a cd, hopefully sometime this century, under the name SCHEMATIC.
+ MY OTHER ONGOING PROJECT is 'THE GLORIOUS FIVE-YEAR PLAN, 1978-1983'; cover versions of late 70's/early 80's electro tracks that have been gestating for many years. It's a tribute to artists whose pioneering music will live with me forever, including BRIAN ENO, THE CURE, THOMAS LEER, SEVERED HEADS, THE HUMAN LEAGUE, TELEX, VICE VERSA, PETER HAMMILL, SIMPLE MINDS and others.
FOLLOW THE JOHN COSTELLO COVERS PROJECT LINK ON MY TOP FRIENDS TO LISTEN.
+ I'M RECORDING THIS PROJECT WITH the multitalented GEOFF PINCKNEY, ex-of GLASSHOUSE, THE NINE and ALIEN..SIX13, now a musician/producer under the ALIEN 6 alias. Geoff, who recently co-produced the new TIK & TOK cd, is a superb producer who works fast and is totally into the project. He contacted me through MySpace, proof I guess of its occasional usefulness. So far we've completed three tracks; JOHN FOXX's '030' from METAMATIC, SOFT CELL's early demo 'METRO MRX', and FAD GADGET's 'THE BOX' - closer to the B-side of 'BACK TO NATURE' than the album version on FIRESIDE FAVOURITES.
+ I'VE ALSO RECENTLY COMPLETED a cover of VLOR's track 'Wires' for a compilation album released on Silber records: www.silbermedia.com, and my most commercial original track: 'CITIES IN QUESTION', a catchy electro epic about travel and restlessness. Both were recorded with GP at Alien 6 studio.
Lastly, I'm preparing a cover of TUXEDOMOON's 'EGYPT', for a compilation cd by members of CULT WITH NO NAME mainman ERIK STEIN's TM Yahoo group, to be released November 07.
+ MY AIM IS TO CREATE electronic music to a high standard of composition and production, and to find ways to devote more time to it, so please send a message or comment if you like it - all encouragement is gratefully received. To enable me to spend longer on individual tracks, cash and/or sponsorships are better still...
+ ALL PHOTOGRAPHS BY AND (C) JOHN COSTELLO
+ THINGS I LOVE:
+ 'NEW WAVE' BRITISH:
The Human League (pre-split) / Cabaret Voltaire / Magazine / Ultravox! / John Foxx / Soft Cell / Dave Ball / The Grid / Data / Japan / David Sylvian / Mick Karn / Rain Tree Crow / Adam &; the Antz (early) / Simple Minds (till 84-ish) / Cocteau Twins / Associates / Billy MacKenzie / Alan Rankine / The Cure / The Glove / Heaven 17 (early) / Torch Song / The Normal / Metabolist / Joy Division / New Order / Revenge / Throbbing Gristle / Chris &; Cosey / Dead Can Dance / A Flock of Seagulls / Gang of Four / Section 25 / OMD / Echo & the Bunnymen / Talk Talk / Duran Duran (early) / Siouxsie &; the Banshees / Steve Severin / Pete Shelley / Fad Gadget / Play Dead / 1919 / Danse Society / Kissing the Pink / This Mortal Coil / Wire / Colin Newman / He Said / Dome / Punishment of Luxury / Family Fodder / PIL / Tubeway Army / Gary Numan / Peter Godwin / Clock DVA / XTC / Shriekback / Killing Joke / Attrition / Southern Death Cult / Thomas Dolby / Landscape / Hard Corps / Artery / Diagram Brothers / Eurythmics (early) / This Heat / Camberwell Now / Bauhaus / Josef K / Paul Haig / Bill Nelson / Vice Versa (not ABC) / B-Movie / Eric Random / Renaldo &; the Loaf / Code / The Passage / Thomas Leer / Robert Rental / Depeche Mode / Recoil / Martin L Gore / Client / Blancmange / Dalek I Love You / Repetition / Art Of Noise / China Crisis / It's Immaterial / The Shamen / Modern English / The Comsat Angels / Dif Juz / Fashion / In the Nursery / Rosetta Stone / The Sound / Psychedelic Furs / Coil / Finitribe / Brian Eno / Luxuria / Biting Tongues / Nitzer Ebb / Portion Control / Solar Enemy / Komputer / Legendary Pink Dots / Stereolab / Thule / Pink Military / Apollo 440 / The Prodigy / Leftfield / 808 State / Havoc / Porcupine Tree / Massive Attack / Appliance / William Orbit / Ladytron / Terminal Power Company / Manic Street Preachers (early) / Add N To (X) / Aphex Twin / Synthetic / Unkle / Goldfrapp / DJ Shadow / Diamanda Galas /
+ 'NEW WAVE' NORTH AMERICAN:
Tuxedomoon / Blaine L Reininger / Steven Brown / Nine Rain / Minimal Man / Winston Tong / Peter Principle / Devo / Chrome / Pere Ubu / Talking Heads / Laurie Anderson / Sparks / Wall of Voodoo / Stan Ridgway / Drywall / The Residents / Snakefinger / Art Bears / Fred Frith / Material / Bill Laswell / FM / Psyche / The Fibonnacis / Nash the Slash / B-52's / Richard Bone / Suicide / Martin Rev / Abecedarians / DIN (Pupka Frey) / Men Without Hats / Ike Yard / Our Daughter's Wedding / MX-80 Sound / Factrix / Anna Domino / Meat Beat Manifesto / They Might Be Giants / Bowery Electric / Manufacture / Prima Donnas / Mentallo &; the Fixer / Yeht Mae / Data-Bank-A / Machines of Loving Grace / Skinny Puppy / Cevin Key / Adult. / Fischerspooner / Moby (early) / Frontline Assembly / Noise Unit / Intermix / Will / Delerium / Prayer Tower / The Faint / Trans-Am / Laptop / Ministry / Nine Inch Nails / Thick Pigeon / Vast / Yo La Tengo / Interpol / Mr Bungle / Fantomas /
+ 'NEW WAVE' EUROPEAN/WORLD:
Minimal Compact / DJ Morpheus (Samy Birnbach) / Bernard Szajner / Hypothetical Prophets / DAF / Kraftwerk / Elektric Music / Karl Bartos / Kraftwelt / Aksak Maboul / The Names / Minny Pops / Yello / Carlos Peron / Telex / SPK / Force Dimension / Metal Urbain / Nasmak / Rhine River III / Marine / Neon Judgement / Malaria! / Severed Heads / Scattered Order / Mathilde Santing / Xmal Deutschland / Mau Mau / Clan of Xymox / Liaisons Dangereuses / Yellow Magic Orchestra / Ryuichi Sakamoto / Yukihiro Takahashi / Ippu Do / The Metronomes / Icehouse (early) / Die Krupps / Ralf Doerper / Propaganda / Fra Lippo Lippi / Gina X Performance / Laibach / Vomito Negro / Haujobb / Palais Schaumburg / Holger Hiller / Paracont / A Split Second / X10 / Leaether Strip / Klute / KMFDM / Der Plan / Lassigue Bendthaus / Bel Canto / Tilt! / X Marks the Pedwalk / Hyperdex 1-Sect / Orange Sector / Wolfsheim / Covenant / In Strict Confidence / Kreidler / Wumpscut / Icon of Coil / Armageddon Dildos / Bjork / Kode IV / Front 242 / Cyber-Tec &; C-Tec / The Weathermen / Benjamin Lew / M83 / Vitalic / Air / Le Syndicat Electronique / Diskonnekted / SoldOut / Royksopp / Erlend Oye / Rammstein / Monolith / Timo Maas / Tujiko Noriko / Hector Zazou / Placebo /
+ ELECTRONIC INSTRUMENTAL:
Klaus Schulze / Synergy / Michael Hoenig / Jean-Michel Jarre / Vangelis / Baffo Banfi / Tangerine Dream / Johannes Schmoelling / Peter Baumann / Axxess / Patrick Mimran / Zed / Michael Garrison / White Noise / Klaus Doldinger / Michael Rother / John Carpenter / John Harrison / Irmin Schmidt / Tim Blake / Mark Shreeve / Ian Boddy / Neu! / La Dusseldorf / Rolf Trostel / Patrick O'Hearn / Conrad Schnitzler / Harald Grosskopf / Cluster / Biosphere / Boards of Canada / Sect / Beaumont Hannant / Orbital / FSOL / Exquisite Corpse / Mark Isham / Node / Optic Eye / Wolfgang Duren / Mark Jenkins /
+ PROG-ROCK/JAZZ-ROCK/AVANT-ROCK/INSTRUMENTAL/OST:
Magma / Weidorje / Benoit Widemann / Paga Group / Heldon / Richard Pinhas / Patrick Gauthier / Art Zoyd / Univers Zero / Didier Bocquet / Francois Breant / Jean-Paul Prat / Gabor Presser / Peter Frohmader / Stomu Yamash'ta / Koenjihyakkei / Altais / Troll / One Shot / John Trap / Can / Le Orme / Popol Vuh / Passport / Gong / National Health / Startled Insects / Man Jumping / Colosseum II / Van Der Graaf Generator / Peter Hammill / Captain Beefheart (esp. Clear Spot &; Bat Chain Puller) / Steely Dan (the most intelligent 'mainstream' band ever) / Donald Fagen / Ben Folds Five / Goblin / Simonetti, Pignatelli, Morante / Al DiMeola / Amon Duul II / Yes (circa Going For the One - definitely not Genesis) / Gary Boyle / King Crimson / UK / Brand X / Focus / Blue Phantom / Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells & Ommadawn) / Faust / Hawkwind (circa Quark, Strangeness &; Charm) / Goran Bregovic / Howard Shore / Philip Glass / Ennio Morricone / Nino Rota / Maurice Jarre / Jerry Goldsmith / Elmer Bernstein / Wim Mertens / Michael Nyman / Barry Adamson / Mychael Danna / Cliff Martinez / Thomas Newman / Trevor Jones / Carter Burwell / Danny Elfman /
