In Memoriam: The Canadian Disco Dance Legend "Denyse LePage" Dies At 75

 

Denyse LePage, the Canadian singer, songwriter and disco performer best known as one-half of the influential dance duo Lime, died May 20 after suffering a stroke. She was 75.

Family members, fans and music industry figures confirmed her death in online tributes this week. Messages posted on social media described her passing as sudden and noted that she died shortly before a planned birthday celebration.

 

LePage helped define the Hi-NRG and post-disco sound of the early 80s through her work with Lime, the iconic Montreal-based group she formed alongside then-husband Denis LePage. Together, the pair produced a string of club hits that became staples in dance venues across North America and Europe.

Born in Canada, LePage built her music career during the rise of disco and electronic dance music. Before forming Lime, she and Denis LePage collaborated on several musical projects in Montreal’s vibrant club scene. Their work drew inspiration from European electronic acts and producers such as Giorgio Moroder while developing a distinctly Canadian dance sound. 

 

Then it came Lime to rose to international prominence in 1981 with the hit single "Your Love," peaked No. 1 on the Billboard Dance chart and earned gold-record status in the United States. The duo keep releasing successful dance-floor favorites such as "Babe, We're Gonna Love Tonight," "Unexpected Lovers," and "Angel Eyes."  Critics and DJs praised the duo for combining pulsing synthesizers with LePage's commanding vocals.

 

Fans remained devoted to the duo's energetic sound, and modern DJs frequently sampled or remixed Lime tracks for contemporary dance audiences. Music historians often credited the group with helping shape the development of electronic dance music and Hi-NRG production.

 

LePage's death comes less than three years after the death of Denis LePage, who died of cancer in 2023 at age 74. The pair remained closely linked in the public imagination because of their decades-long musical partnership and influence on disco culture.

New Music: Secret Dreams Of Thieves

           

The Liverpool-based band Ladytron are back again to release their new single track "Secret Dreams Of Thieves" taken from the band's new album, it's a tune soaked into 80's synth new wave, the video has been Directed by Daniel Hunt. 

New Music: No Fear

            

The Danish outfit Iceage has released their new album, For Love of Grace & the Hereafter. And yet, the Danish band's return to basics isn't necessarily a return to their basics instrumentation and mixes certainly depart from the complex arrangements and higher production values of recent work. Also, the band shares "No Fear" that opens with an engaging juxtaposition between a Young Marble Giants-esque bass line and clean guitar runs that trendily cross roadhouse rock and studio country. The video has been directed & shot by Mishael Oladipo Fapohunda.

 

New Music: Dark Eyed Junco

           

Kristin Hersh has announced new solo album Sugar on Blackstone  due out August 18 via Fire Records. She produced it herself and made it with regular collaborators Rob Ahlers on drums and cellist Pete Harvey. The album draws on themes of memory, home and displacement, with Hersh revisiting the home and neighborhood of her adolescence. The first single from the album is "Dark Eyed Junco," a typically eerie Hersh number.

Rocktrospectiva: The Richer And Engaging "Amnesiac" Turns 25

Released on 30 May 2001 "Amnesiac" wa the 5th., studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was recorded with the producer Nigel Godrich in the same sessions as Radiohead's previous album, Kid A (2000). Radiohead split the work in two as they felt it was too dense for a double album. As with Kid A, Amnesiac incorporates influences from electronic music, 20th-century classical music, jazz and krautrock. The final track, "Life in a Glasshouse", is a collaboration with the jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his band.

After having released no singles for Kid A, Radiohead promoted Amnesiac with the singles "Pyramid Song" and "Knives Out", accompanied by music videos. Videos were also made for "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates", as well as "I Might Be Wrong", which was released as a promotional single. Radiohead also launched GooglyMinotaur, a chatbot with which fans could interact on AIM. 

Amnesiac debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number two on the US Billboard 200. By October 2008, it had sold over 900,000 copies worldwide. Amnesiac was named one of the year's best albums by numerous publications. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize and several Grammy Awards, winning for Best Recording Package for the special edition. 

Radiohead and their producer, Nigel Godrich, recorded Amnesiac during the same sessions as their previous album, Kid A, released in October 2000. The sessions took place from January 1999 to mid-2000 in Guillaume Studios in Paris, Medley Studios in Copenhagen, and Radiohead's newly built studio in Oxfordshire. The drummer, Philip Selway, said the sessions had "two frames of mind ... a tension between our old approach of all being in a room playing together and the other extreme of manufacturing music in the studio. I think Amnesiac comes out stronger in the band-arrangement way."

The sessions drew influence from electronic music, 20th-century classical music, jazz and krautrock, using synthesisers, ondes Martenot, drum machines, strings and brass. The strings, arranged by the guitarist Jonny Greenwood, were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church close to Radiohead's studio.

Radiohead considered releasing the work as a double album, but felt it was too dense. The singer, Thom Yorke, said Radiohead split it into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things" and came from "two different places". He felt Amnesiac offered a "different take" on Kid A and "a form of explanation". The band members stressed that they saw Amnesiac not as a collection of Kid A B-sides or outtakes but an album in its own right. Yorke said the title was inspired by a Gnostic belief that the trauma of birth erases memories of past lives, an idea he found fascinating.

On "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box", Radiohead used the pitch-correcting software Auto-Tune to process Yorke's vocals and create a "nasal, depersonalised" sound. "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" began as an attempt to record another song, "True Love Waits". It features keyboard loops recorded during the OK Computer sessions; Radiohead disabled the erase heads on the tape recorders so that the tape repeatedly recorded over itself, creating a "ghostly" evolving tape loop, and manipulated the results in Pro Tools. Deciding that the arrangement did not fit "True Love Waits", Radiohead used it to create a new track. Yorke added a spoken vocal and used Auto-Tune to process it into melody. According to Yorke, Auto-Tune "desperately tries to search for the music in your speech, and produces notes at random. If you've assigned it a key, you've got music." The "True Love Waits" version of "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" was eventually released on the 2021 compilation Kid A Mnesia.

For "You And Whose Army?", Radiohead attempted to capture the "soft, warm, proto-doowop sound" of the 1940s harmony group the Ink Spots. They muffled microphones with egg boxes and used the ondes Martenot's resonating palme diffuseur loudspeaker to treat the vocals. Unlike many tracks from the sessions, the band recorded it live. The guitarist Ed O'Brien said: "We rehearsed it a bit, not too much, then just went in and did it. It's just us doing our thing as a band." It was influenced by the guitar work of Johnny Marr of the Smiths. Yorke said "Knives Out" did not depart from Radiohead's earlier style, and "survived because it was too good to miss". "Dollars and Cents" was edited down from an eleven-minute jam, inspired by the krautrock band Can, who would record extensively and then edit their recordings. 

"Like Spinning Plates" was the result of an initial attempt at recording "I Will" with synthesiser arrangements. Dismissing this recording as "dodgy Kraftwerk", Radiohead reversed it and created a new song around it. Yorke said: "I was in another room, heard the vocal melody coming backwards, and thought, 'That's miles better than the right way round', then spent the rest of the night trying to learn the melody."

For the final track, "Life in a Glasshouse", Jonny Greenwood wrote to the jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, explaining that Radiohead were "a bit stuck".  Lyttelton agreed to perform on the song with his band after his daughter showed him Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer. According to Lyttelton, Radiohead "didn't want it to sound like a slick studio production but a slightly exploratory thing of people playing as if they didn't have it all planned out in advance". The recording session lasted seven hours, and left Lyttelton exhausted. "I detected some sort of eye-rolling at the start of the session, as if to say we were miles apart," he said. "They went through quite a few nervous breakdowns during the course of it all, just through trying to explain to us all what they wanted."

Amnesiac was described as experimental rock, electronica and alternative rock, with elements of jazz.  Colin Greenwood said it contained "traditional Radiohead-type songs" alongside more experimental work, and said that in both albums "the guitar becomes one more texture, difficult to separate from other textures". because it sounds like a recurring dream.""Hunting Bears" is a short instrumental on electric guitar and synthesiser.

Reviews agreed that the album was far beyond better than Kid A, this was a richer, more engaging record, its austerity and troubled vision enriched by a rousing of the human spirit", some felt that Amnesiac returned Radiohead to "their role as the world's most intriguing and innovative major rock band ... [It] strikes a cunning and rewarding balance between experimentation and quality control. It's hardly easy to digest but nor is it impossible to swallow." On the other hand some dismissed Amnesiac as a collection of Kid A outtakes, also that the was less cohesive than Kid A. 

 

Amnesiac Track List:  

 

1. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box

2. Pyramid Song

3. Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors

4. You And Whose Army?

5. I Might Be Wrong

6. Knives Out

7. Morning Bell/Amnesiac

8. Dollars And Cents

9. Hunting Bears

10. Like Spinning Plates

11. Life In A Glasshouse

New Music: Liars

           

The legendary Manchester post-punk act, The Durutti Column are back and have announced Renascent, their first new studio album in 16 years. The new record, led once again by the unmistakable guitar work of Vini Reilly, is due this summer via London Records, with Bandcamp currently listing the digital release for July 10 and physical editions shipping around July 31. The album follows 2010’s A Paean to Wilson and arrives after the recent expanded reissue campaign surrounding the band’s Factory Records-era catalog. Alongside Reilly, Renascent features longtime Durutti Column percussionist Bruce Mitchell and producer/multi-instrumentalist Keir Stewart. To mark the announcement, The Durutti Column have shared the first single, “Liars,” a graceful return set to a low, downtempo beat with a faint trip-hop sway and a touch of dream-pop atmosphere. Reilly’s smoky, close-miked vocals are counterbalanced by feminine sighs and warm electronic washes, but the center remains that guitar: clean, fluid, and instantly recognizable, with elaborate yet controlled melodic phrases that breathe like poetry.

News: The Durutti Column Announces First Studio Album Since 2010

The Durruti Column will release a new studio album, Renascent – their first in 16 years – in July. The initial single from the album, "Liars", is out now.

As with 2010's A Paean To Wilson, Vini Reilly is backed by Bruce Mitchell (drums/percussion) and Keir Stewart (producer/multi-instrumentalist). The album took shape over several years, with sessions often taking place in Reilly's own kitchen. This time around, they’re joined by Manchester-based singer-songwriter Caoilfhionn Rose, who sings on "Agonistes" and plays piano on "Sargasso Sea". Long-standing fans of Reilly will be intrigued by "For Friends Everywhere", which rearranges ‘For Belgian Friends' (from 1980’s A Factory Quartet) for an orchestral octet. 

Every single piece of music writes itself,  Reilly comments in the album's press release. "From the moment we're born we're never ever instigative, only ever reactive. It's like Newton's law of motion, if you’re not pushing against anything, you lose momentum."

Renascent also looks to Reilly's roots, with artwork from Factory Records designers Mark Holt and Hamish Muir of 8vo. Meanwhile, the album will carry a ‘Factory Too’ catalogue number. The album will be available on CD (with bonus track "All They See is Fire"), three vinyl variations (yellow vinyl; bottle green vinyl with alternate artwork and booklet; and Rough Trade exclusive split purple / green vinyl with flexi-disc featuring ‘All They See Is Fire’, limited to 500 copies. There's also a white cassette. 

Renascent is out 31 July 2026 via London Records.

Track List:  

Echoes In The Memory

Your Shadow At Morning

Time Present And Time Past

Agonistes

Liars

Vapour In A Matchbox

Your Shadow At Evening

Sargasso Sea

Scammer

For Friends Everywhere

All They See Is Fire (CD / digital bonus track)

Rocktrospectiva: The Indie Classic "EVOL" Turns 40

Released on May 1986 "EVOL" was the 3rd., studio álbum by the US alternative rock band Sonic Youth, the album was Sonic Youth’s first album on SST Records, and also their first to feature drummer Steve Shelley, who would remain a member of the band until their dissolution in 2011. The album spawned the single "Starpower."

By this point, the band had developed a cult following in the underground US music scene, but their style had begun to evolve from their earliest recordings. In retrospective reviews, critics cite EVOL as marking Sonic Youth’s transition from their no wave roots toward a more pop-influenced sensibility, with Shelley's drumming style a key aspect of this change.

Sonic Youth was coming off of a string of underground hits, becoming a popular underground live act as well as earning critical acclaim. In June 1985, during the Bad Moon Rising tour, Bert left the band and was replaced by Shelley. The new lineup quickly began working on new material for their third album.

The band signed to SST as, by 1986, label founder Greg Ginn was anxious for the label to move away from its American hardcore roots. Sonic Youth took a break from the tour and finished the writing for EVOL. In March 1986, the band recorded the album at BC Studio with Martin Bisi. EVOL was the second time that the band had worked with New York singer and performance artist Lydia Lunch. Lunch had shared vocals on Bad Moon Rising's "Death Valley '69", and on this record, she co-wrote the song "Marilyn Moore".

Mike Watt played bass guitar on the tracks "In the Kingdom #19" and the band's cover of "Bubblegum". The band encouraged him to play on the former track shortly after Watt's Minutemen bandmate D. Boon died in a car crash. Watt had entered a severe depression following Boon's death and was considering leaving music; he credited the time he spent with the members of Sonic Youth during the recording of EVOL as a major factor in his decision to resume his music career. Watt's next band, Firehose, would support Sonic Youth on their Flaming Telepaths tour.  

During this time, the band began the Ciccone Youth side project, which featured all members of Sonic Youth and Watt. They released a single consisting of three tracks: "Into the Groove(y)" (a cover of Madonna's "Into the Groove") and the short "Tuff Titty Rap" on the A-side (both performed by the Sonic Youth members), and "Burnin' Up" (performed by Watt and Ginn) on the B-side. The project later resulted in 1988's The Whitey Album.

On the vinyl version of the album, the time length for "Expressway to Yr. Skull" was indicated by the infinity symbol (∞); the final moment of the song featured a locked groove. The CD and cassette versions added a cover of Kim Fowley's "Bubblegum" as a bonus track. According to Watt, he and Shelley played the basic rhythm track over Fowley's recording, which was afterwards removed when the other members added their parts.

The album cover features a picture of model/actress Lung Leg in a still taken from the Richard Kern film Submit to Me. Leg had previously appeared in the "Death Valley '69" music video (directed by Kern and Judith Barry). The back cover shows a black-and-white picture of the band in a heart-shaped frame. The album's 10 songs are listed in a different order than the actual track listing. The members' names are listed on the back cover as well, although no instruments are assigned for them. It reads "guitars, vocals, drums", with "bass" hidden beneath the photograph of the band. 

The insert features the lyrics to the songs and the A-side depicts Thurston Moore, with eyes drawn on his hands, holding them up to his face. This photograph was later used for the cover of the "Starpower" single. To the left of this photograph is a panel from the Marvel comic book The New Mutants (found on the second page of issue #14, published April 1984). The other side contains pictures from horror films Friday the 13th Part 2 and Children of the Corn, with a still photo from the 1962 film House of Women featuring Constance Ford and Barbara Nichols. This image is only featured on the initial SST vinyl pressing and vinyl reissues after 2010, and was blacked out for all other releases.

The album has been well received by critics called it a remarkably strong effort, and sets the stage for crystallizing ideas that would soon result in what many considered the band's finest work." Like most Sonic Youth albums, EVOL is packed with so many ideas, so much rigor and obsession, it is too absurd to begin to wonder what they would have done in our current era of endless information. EVOL was described as a noise rock album and a "art punk masterwork" and it was considered as the true departure point of Sonic Youth's musical evolution – in measured increments, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo began to bring form to the formless, tune to the tuneless, and with the help of Steve Shelley's drums, they imposed melody and composition on their trademark dissonance.

 

EVOL Track List: 

 

1. Tom Violence

2. Shadow Of A Doubt

3. Starpower

4. In The Kingdom # 19

5. Green Light

6. Death To Our Friends

7. Secret Girl

8. Marilyn Moore

9. Expressway To Yr. Skull

Rocktrospectiva: The Spiritual "Gish" Turns 35

 

Released on 28 May 1991 "Gish" was the debut studio album by the US alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins, released on May 28, 1991, by Caroline Records. The album was produced by Butch Vig and frontman Billy Corgan, with the latter describing Gish as a "very spiritual album" and "an album about spiritual ascension". The album spawned two singles "Siva" & "I Am One". 

Despite initially peaking at only number 195 on the Billboard 200 upon its release, Gish received critical acclaim, with particular praise directed at the band's distinctive psychedelic sound. It has since been ranked by multiple publications as one of the best rock albums of the 1990s, with Pitchfork deeming "without Gish, there would probably be no Nevermind as we know it."

Musically, Gish has been described as an alternative rock,  hard rock, grunge, stoner rock and art rock album. As a writer, Billy Corgan wanted to find the balance between classic rock of bands playing heavy riffs like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, and the sensuality and grace of alternative bands like the Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and My Bloody Valentine. 

"For us, it was trying to become this balance point between what felt like dumb riff rock and then the stuff we were really attracted to coming out of the U.K. And then we put those pieces together with the Beatles somewhere in the middle". A song like "Rhinoceros" reflected that balance and what Corgan wanted to achieve: "we could be beautiful, pretty, psychedelic, and then flip the switch and be heavy and play a ripping lead." When composing the songs, Corgan was experimenting taking LSD to get a psychedelic feeling: "LSD gave me the confidence to attempt these things on kind of a weird tightrope wire act".

Gish was recorded from December 1990 to March 1991 in Butch Vig's Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin, with a budget of $20,000. Vig and Corgan worked together as co-producers. At the time, Vig was still a relatively unknown producer. The longer recording period and larger budget were unprecedented for Vig, who later recalled: (Corgan) wanted to make everything sound amazing and see how far he could take it; really spend time on the production and the performances. For me that was a godsend because I was used to doing records for all the indie labels and we only had budgets for three or four days. Having that luxury to spend hours on a guitar tone or tuning the drums or working on harmonies and textural things... I was over the moon to think I had found a comrade-in-arms who wanted to push me, and who really wanted me to push him.

The inclusion of a massive production style reminiscent of ELO and Queen was unusual for an independent band at the time. Whereas many albums at the time used drum sampling and processing, Gish used unprocessed drum recordings, and an exacting, unique guitar sound. Corgan also performed nearly all of the guitar and bass parts on the record, which was confirmed by Vig in a later interview.

Regarding the album's thematic content, Corgan would later say: The album is about pain and spiritual ascension. People ask if it's a political album. It's not a political album, it's a personal album. In a weird kind of way, Gish is almost like an instrumental album—it just happens to have singing on it, but the music overpowers the band in a lot of places. I was trying to say a lot of things I couldn't really say in kind of intangible, unspeakable ways, so I was capable of doing that with the music, but I don't think I was capable of doing it with words.

The album was named after silent film icon Lillian Gish. In an interview, Corgan said, "My grandmother used to tell me that one of the biggest things that ever happened was when Lillian Gish rode through town on a train, my grandmother lived in the middle of nowhere, so that was a big deal

The record was met with largely enthusiastic reviews and credited producer Butch Vig for helping the band achieve a "clearly defined" and "big, bold, punchy" sound for the album, the eclectic mix of musical style on Gish as well, complementing its "pummeling hard rock", "gentle interludes", and "psychedelic crescendos".

 

Gish Track List:  

 

1. I Am One

2. Siva

3. Rhinoceros

4. Bury Me

5. Crush

6. Suffer

7. Snail

8. Tristessa

9. Window Paine

10. Daydream

Rocktrospectiva: The Impressive "Electronic" Turns 35

Released on 28 May 1991 "Electronic" was the self-titled debut studio album by the British group Electronic, consisting of Bernard Sumner, the former guitarist and keyboardist of Joy Division and the lead singer and guitarist of New Order, and Johnny Marr, the former guitarist of the Smiths. It was first released in May 1991 on the Factory label.

The album was a commercial and critical success, spawning originally three singles "Get The Message", "Tighten Up", & "Feel Every Beat", the 1989's "Getting Away With It" was later included, this aided the album to reach number 2 in the United Kingdom and selling over a million copies worldwide

The alliance between Marr and Sumner first dated back to 1983 when Bernard was producing Quando Quango and asked Johnny to contribute to two tracks – Love Tempo and Atom Rock. Although mutual admirers of each other's work, both had reservations about whether they would actually get on. Sumner thought Marr would be “a stuck-up little twat who lived in Altrincham”, while Johnny's perception of Barney was as a  "post-industrial doom merchant who wore jackboots".

Surprising to both parties, they shared a lot musical influences and that became the basis for a long-term (if often long-distance) friendship. Over the course of the next few years, their paths occasionally crossed as each traversed their own path to musical infamy (they next shared a bill at Manchester's G-Mex for the Festival of Tenth Summer in 1986), or discovered the latest happenings in each others' lives as they were relayed via Chinese whispers throughout Manchester’s incestuous clique of artists, roadies and liggers. Everyone knows everyone in Manchester,” Sumner said. Even though it’s a big city, it’s like a village with a small musical community. The Smiths and New Order nearly always used the same road crew.

By 1988, both Sumner and Marr had found themselves in a state of limbo. Relations within New Order were fractious to say the least, with the band's creative disagreements turning their recording sessions into a pressure cooker environment threatening to boil over at any minute.

Feeling his ideas to introduce a more up sound into the next New Order record were too good to waste, Bernard began working on tracks with a view to releasing them as a solo album (an early version of Gangster was one of these ideas), but the solitary nature of spending drawn-out days in New Order's rehearsal rooms, ostracised from any other signs of life – literally, as the studio backed onto a huge graveyard, proved too much for him.

Meanwhile, the death of The Smiths was equally problematic for Marr, who dragged himself out of an alcohol and drug-fuelled quagmire to act as professional guitar-slinger for artists such as The Pretenders, Billy Bragg, Bryan Ferry and Kirsty MacColl before joining Matt Johnson's The The.

"Playing guitar as a session musician was all I wanted from life at the time," Marr later told Melody Maker.  "I'd had enough of being in groups – I didn't want the responsibility. With Electronic, I set out to prove something to myself – that I needn't be so disillusioned making and putting out my own records."

After hearing that Bernard wanted him to collaborate on some music he was working on, Johnny flew to San Francisco where New Order were on tour with Echo & The Bunnymen to discuss it, with the idea of a union emerging as an attractive prospect for both. Sumner realised he hadn't worked well in exile and "needed someone to bounce off", while it was an opportunity for Marr to flex his creative muscle again on a commitment-free basis after two years of playing sessions. After discussing a direction, the pair agreed that the project should be electronic in nature as well as name, with an emphasis on dance music, a genre they were both passionate about.

After wrapping the New Order tour, Bernard returned home to begin work with Johnny on Electronic. Though they developed an instant musical rapport, Electronic got off to a few false starts with both frequently called on to fulfil obligations with their other bands – Bernard with New Order's World In Motion, and Johnny with The The. Finding themselves restricted to odd weekends or short periods of time to work on music, they deduced if the band was to succeed, they needed to allocate lengthy periods to focus solely on their new venture, at which point everything began to click into place.

While working on artwork for a forthcoming Pet Shop Boys release, Factory Records designer Mark Farrow mentioned Electronic to Neil Tennant, who contacted the guys to express an interest in working on the project, too. A hastily arranged writing and recording session with the Pet Shop Boys resulted in Electronic's debut single, Getting Away With It.

Materialising within hours of their first meeting, Sumner referred to the session as "coming up with the goods on demand" as time in the studio together was limited. Released in December 1989, it reached No.12 in the UK, sold over 350,000 copies and made an impact Stateside, marking the official launch of the group.

The release of the single offered a beacon of hope to fans that an album was imminent while the truth was it was nowhere near completion. Though they had worked on music, the manner in which they did so meant that there were very few complete songs ready. The main concept behind the album was independence – a sense of freedom away from groups, sessions and preconceived notions, Bernard explained: "The album wasn't actually demoed – we kept everything on computer as long as possible to enable arrangements and keys to be altered when the vocals were written. On parts that were performed live, there was no rehearsal. Once the words were written they were recorded immediately to tape."

With endless hours of music recorded during jam sessions and get-togethers with musician mates, Bernard and Johnny were forced to begin formulating it into finished tracks in the spring of 1990 when they were presented with the offer of opening for Depeche Mode on the Los Angeles dates of their mammoth Violator Tour. "Basically, we committed ourselves to playing a gig in LA in front of 60,000 people so we thought we’d better finish the songs off," 

By the time they took to the stage at LA’s Dodger Stadium on 4 and 5 August 1990 (both, they later admitted, off their faces – Marr on acid and Sumner so drunk he "filled the shower in the dressing room full of puke" afterwards, they had not only completed the tracks, but also had to work out a way to create the studio wizardry live. Having formulated a semblance of what the record was going to sound like, Electronic played eight new songs at the gigs, alongside Getting Away With It.

While fans and critics alike raved over the new tracks (even though some were adapted further and/or renamed before release), the shows revealed aspects to some of the songs that Johnny and Bernard weren’t completely happy with.

Upon returning home, they worked tirelessly to finish the album. “In the early stages, we were taking our time, messing about and collecting ideas because we were enjoying it,” Johnny told Melody Maker. “But later we worked really hard on it – we’re both perfectionists.”

The album opener "Idiot Country" was audacious and daring, in an arresting manner befitting its subject matter – the criminalisation of public gatherings in the late-80s that was a direct attack on the rave scene. It fused blistering beats and Marr’s wah-wah guitar, over which Sumner delivered an impassioned rap lamenting the downfall of rave. "Reality" was the first song Marr and Sumner wrote together, cementing their instant musical chemistry. Based on a sparse beat, it draws heavily on a Euro-dance influence and bears a passing resemblance to Sumner’s Rockin’ Over Manchester Remix of Technotronic’s Rockin’ Over The Beat, next was "Tighten Up", typified the sound expected by fans when Electronic was first conceptualised – a seamless fusion of The Smiths'  guitars and New Order's emotive dance. An opening salvo of stabbing synths dissipates to give way to a classic slice of guitar-driven punchy-pop with Marr's unmistakable strumming evoking some of his best work with The Smiths. 

"The Patience Of A Saint" as if the alliance of Sumner and Marr wasn't enough to justify Electronic's supergroup credentials, the addition of the Pet Shop Boys’ Tennant and Lowe was affirmation. Regarded by many as the weakest of Electronic’s Tennant-voiced trilogy, The Patience Of A Saint was nevertheless a solid slice of dance pop, with a hypnotic dance beat and lush synths pulsing beneath a subtle exchange between Tennant and Sumner about insensitivity and selfishness, "Gangster" was one of the earliest tracks written for the album, Gangster began life as a solo Bernard Sumner composition when he was planning to release an album. It was later reworked with Marr for the Electronic album. Dealing with the subject of injustice, Gangster was born of frustration after a friend of Sumner's was jailed for minor drug offences, receiving a harsher sentence than criminals who had committed far worse crimes. "Soviet" perhaps the most harshly criticised song on the album – with many complaining that earlier single Getting Away With It would have been better on the record – this two-minute instrumental represented the political issues in Russia at the time. "Soviet was a point where we met in our love for Ennio Morricone and instrumental mood music, not ambient but atmospheric music," said Marr. 

Next was "Get The Message" which was the perfect fusion of The Smiths' guitar pop and New Order's electro leanings, completed by a typically acerbic delivery from Bernard Sumner, before culminating with an incredible vocal from singer Denise Johnson, previously best known for her work on Primal Scream's Screamadelica. According to Sumner, Marr created the music first and he recorded the lyrics as he wrote them, "Try All You Want" was based on a house beat, a strong synth line and emotive vocal dealing with the complexities of relationships. The final version of the song differed wildly from the original idea, which was much more guitar-based. It had some really great guitar on it, but I took it off, and that’s the only time I’ve ever done that, Marr recalls, "Some Distant Memory"
was an album highlight, lamenting the disintegration of a meaningful relationship, longing for a return to the euphoria of new love with a clipped beat before succumbing to an unexpected glorious oboe finale, concluding the song on a sombre note, and finally "Feel Every Beat" it was raw, funky groove, a dance-rock hybrid which only opener Idiot Country can competed with stylistically, the pair of tracks acting as sonic bookends to the emotional journey that takes place between them. 

The album received the maximum five stars cause its strength is in conflict ... The inexorable pounding of the beatbox versus the fragile sadness of Sumner's voice and the he's/she's leaving stories; the symmetry of the synthesized or sampled sounds versus the sheer blood and bone physicality of Marr's guitar", same praise receives in the USA regarding the record as an impressive and irresistibly tuneful.  

The standard edition of "Electronic" was released initially in May 1991, internationally (with the noticeable absence of "Getting Away with It" on the original UK release). It was remastered and reissued many times in different regions, such as in Europe in 1992, with the non-album single "Disappointed" being added as a bonus CD, in the UK in 1994 (remastered by the album's engineer Owen Morris), and Japan in 1995.

 

Electronic Track List: 

 

1. Idiot Country

2. Reality

3. Tighten Up

4. The Patience Of A Saint

5. Getting Away With It (Did not appear on the first UK Edition)

6. Gangster (replaced by "Getting Away With it" in some places)

7. Soviet

8. Get The Message

9. Try All You Want 

10. Some Distant Memory

11. Feel Every Beat

Rocktrospectiva: The Seminal And Influential "C86" Turns 40

Released on this month 40 years ago, "C86" was a cassette compilation released by the British music magazine NME in 1986, featuring new bands licensed from British independent record labels of the time. As a term, C86 quickly evolved into shorthand for a guitar-based music genre characterized by jangling guitars and melodic power pop song structures, although other musical styles were represented on the tape. In its time, it became a pejorative term for its associations with so-called "shambling" (a John Peel-coined description celebrating the self-conscious primitive approach of some of the music) and underachievement. 

The C86 scene is now recognised as a pivotal moment for independent music in the UK, as was acknowledged in the subtitle of the compilation's 2006 CD issue: CD86: 48 Tracks from the Birth of Indie Pop. In 2014, the original compilation was reissued in a 3CD expanded edition from Cherry Red Records; the 2014 box-set came with an 11,500-word book of sleevenotes by one of the tape's original curators, former NME journalist Neil Taylor.

The C86 name was a play on the labelling and length of blank compact cassette, commonly C60, C90 and C120, combined with 1986.

The C86 tape was a belated follow-up to C81, a more eclectic collection of new bands, released by the NME in 1981 in conjunction with Rough Trade. C86 was similarly designed to reflect the new music scene of the time. It was compiled by NME writers Roy Carr, Neil Taylor and Adrian Thrills, who licensed tracks from labels including Creation, Subway, Probe Plus, Dan Treacy's Dreamworld Records, Jeff Barrett's Head Records, Pink, and Ron Johnson. Readers had to pay for the tape via mail order, although an LP was subsequently released on Rough Trade on 24 November 1986. The UK music press was in this period highly competitive, with four weekly papers documenting new bands and trends. There was a tendency to create and "discover" new musical subgenres artificially in order to heighten reader interest. NME journalists of the period subsequently agreed that C86 was an example of this, but also a byproduct of NME's "hip hop wars" – a schism in the paper (and among readers) between enthusiasts of contemporary progressive black music (for example, by Public Enemy and Mantronix), and fans of guitar-based music, as represented on C86.

NME promoted the tape in conjunction with London's Institute of Contemporary Arts, which staged a week of gigs in July 1986, featuring most of the acts on the compilation.

The tape included tracks by some more abrasive bands atypical of the perceived C86 jangle pop aesthetic: Stump, Bogshed, A Witness, the Mackenzies, Big Flame and the Shrubs. C86 was the twenty-third NME tape, although its catalogue number was NME022 (C81 had been dubbed COPY001). The rest of the tapes were compilations promoting labels' back catalogues and dedicated to R&B, Northern soul, jazz or reggae. C86 was followed up with a Billie Holiday compilation, Holiday Romance

Ex-NME writer Andrew Collins summed up C86 by dubbing it "the most indie thing to have ever existed". Bob Stanley, a Melody Maker journalist in the late 1980s and a founding member of pop band Saint Etienne, similarly said in a 2006 interview that C86 represented: The beginning of indie music... It's hard to remember how underground guitar music and fanzines were in the mid-'80s; DIY ethics and any residual punk attitudes were in isolated pockets around the country and the C86 comp and gigs brought them together in an explosion of new groups.

Martin Whitehead, who ran Subway in the late 1980s, added a new political dimension to the importance of C86. "Before C86, women could only be eye-candy in a band; I think C86 changed that – there were women promoting gigs, writing fanzines and running labels."

Some are more ambivalent about the tape's influence. Everett True, a writer for NME in 1986 under the name "The Legend!", called it "unrepresentative of its times . . . and even unrepresentative of the small narrow strata of music it thought it was representing." Alastair Fitchett, editor of the music site Tangents (and a fan of many of the bands on the tape), takes a polemical line: "(The NME) laid the foundations for the desolate wastelands of what we came to know by that vile term 'Indie'. What more reason do you need to hate it?"

The significance of C86 was recognized by several events marking the 20th anniversary of the compilation's release in 2006. Sanctuary Records released CD86, a double-CD set compiled by Bob Stanley. The ICA hosted "C86 - Still Doing It For Fun", an exhibition and two nights of gigs celebrating the rise of British independent music.

Cherry Red's 2014 expanded reissue was marked by an NME C86 show on 14 June 2014 at Venue 229, London W1; acts from the original compilation included The Wedding Present, David Westlake of The Servants, The Wolfhounds and A Witness.

NME C86 Track List: 

 

Side One 

 

1. Velocity Girl - Primal Scream

2. Happy Head - The Mighty Lemon Drops

3. Pleasantly Surprised - The Soup Dragons

4. Therese - "THe Wolfhouds

5. Law - The Bodines

6. Buffalo - Mighty Mighty

7. Run To The Temple - Bogshed

8. Sharpened Sticks - A Witness

9. Breaking Lines - The Pastels

10. From Now On, This Will Be Your God - Age Of Chance 

 

Side Two  

 

1. It's Up To You - Shop Assistants

2. Firestation Towers - Close Lobsters 

3. Sport Most Royal - Miaow

4. I Hate Nerys Hughes (From The Heart) - Half Man Half Biscuit

5. Transparent - The Servants

6. New Way (Qucok Wash And Brush Up With Liberation Theology - Big Flame

7. Console Me - We've Got A Fuzzbox And We're Gonna Use It

8. Celestial City - McCarthy

9. Bullfighter's Bones - The Shrubs 

10. This Boy Can't Wait - The Wedding Present

Rocktrospectiva: The Rare Truly Essential "Into The Light" Turns 40

Released on 27 May 1986 "Into The Light" was the 8th., studio album by the British-Irish singer Chris de Burgh. The album is notable for featuring de Burgh's biggest hit, "The Lady in Red." The album spawned other three singles "Fatal Hesitation", "Say Goodbye To It All" & "Fire On The Water." The album peaked at number two on the UK Albums Chart, becoming de Burgh's first studio album to enter the top ten.

 

Chris De Burgh's career was a bit like a long Shakespearean monologue, a grand, lyrical flight imbued with romantic poetry who uses his words to channel his testosterone-fueled passion, and this album had a lot of this. "Into the Light" contained Chris de Burgh's highest-charting single with the ballroom elegance of "Lady in Red,"  the song had a sweeping romantic tempo and classy feel. Besides the hit single, much of the album remained lush and mellow in the style of de Burgh's usual ballads and although the music on the album was slow paced, this doesn't take away from de Burgh's appealing blend of dignified lyrics and late-night sound.

 

Another highlight on the album was the energetic "Say Goodbye To It All," one of the best tracks on this album, as much as he's a hopeless romantic, good old Chris doesn't use his feelings as an excuse for silly, saccharine melodies. Instead, he crafts a rich musical repertoire, teeming with diverse moods and instruments, all blending into a benevolent harmony that, precisely, evokes that overwhelming feeling of love. It's a complex undertaking. His charisma and warm, powerful voice work wonders on the haunting "Fire On The Water," with its compelling chorus. Resolutely calm, both rhythmically and in its soaring vocals, this album transported the listener to delicate atmospheres that were sure to resonate.  

 

"For Rosanna," a piano/vocal ballad dedicated to the singer's daughter was enough to realize the sincerity that carries Chris, who is completely immersed in his message. If you're not hard-hearted, you can't help but be won over by this little gem with its understated lullaby feel. The same was for "What About Me," the closing ballad (a genre in which the singer excels), which the electric guitar interludes transform into a breathtakingly beautiful epic. Love gives you wings. 

 

The album found Chris De Burgh to transcend himself, a man who, before becoming a crooner for retirement homes, was one of the most fervent advocates of this intoxicating feeling. The vocals were impeccable, offering a wealth of noteworthy tracks, the singer delivered with Into The Light one of his most remarkable works, and one of his rare truly essential albums.

 

Into The Light Track List:  

 

1. Last Night

2. Fire On The Water

3. The Ballroom Of Romance

4. The Lady In Red

5- Say Goodbye To It All

6. The Spirit Of Man

7. Fatal Hesitation

8. One WOrd (Straight To The Heart)

9. For Rosanna

10. The Leader

11. The Vision

12. What About Me?

New Music: Drag The Bag

           

Inspiral Carpets have returned with their first new single in 12 years – "Drag The Bag" which is inspired by the grind of life and the universal idea that everybody is carrying something according to a press release. The anthemic track is direct, melodic and built for live crowds, it captures the classic immediacy of Inspiral Carpets while sounding completely of the present. Also the indie veterans are hitting the road for a UK tour starting next month.

Rocktrospectiva: The Considered Rap's First Masterpiece "Raising Hell" Turns 40

Released on 15 May 1986 "Raising Hell" was the 3rd., studio album by the US hip hop group Run-D.M.C. The album was produced by Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin. Raising Hell was notable for being the first Platinum and multi-Platinum hip-hop record and it was widely considered to be one of the greatest and most important albums in the history of hip-hop music and culture.

Raising Hell peaked at number three on the Billboard 200, and number one on the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums (at the time known as the "Top Black Albums") chart, making it the first hip-hop album to peak atop the latter. The album features four hit singles: "My Adidas", "Walk This Way" (a collaboration with Aerosmith), "You Be Illin'" and "It's Tricky".

It was "Walk This Way" the group's most famous single, being a groundbreaking rap rock version of Aerosmith's 1975 song "Walk This Way". It is considered to be the first rap/rock collaboration that also brought hip-hop into the mainstream and was the first song by a hip-hop act to reach the top 5 of the Billboard Hot 100. Raising Hell has been ranked as one of the greatest albums of all time. In 1987, it was nominated for a Grammy Award, making Run-D.M.C. the first hip-hop act to receive a nomination.

Returning home to Queens in late 1985 after their extensive touring, they soon put themselves on lockdown at Chung King studios in Manhattan for three months. In place of producer Larry Smith, a cocky new maverick was brought in: Rick Rubin. Even though Rubin's and Russell's names were on the production marquee, the two non-group members oversaw and added to the music on Raising Hell more than created it. "Rick and Russell got production credit, but we [the group members] really did everything", DMC states. "We did that album in like three months. It was so quick because every rhyme was written on the road and had been practiced and polished. We knew what we wanted to do. Rick was all music and instruments. Jay was music and DJing. And me and Run was lyrics. We definitely had a game plan."

Raising Hell features the well-known cover "Walk This Way" featuring Aerosmith (largely the work of its leaders, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry). While the song was not the group's first fusion of rock and hip-hop (the group's earlier singles "Rock Box" and "King of Rock" were), it was the first such fusion significantly impacting the charts, becoming the first rap song to crack the top 5 of The Billboard Hot 100. Raising Hell peaked at No. 1 on Billboard's Top R&B Albums chart as the first hip-hop/rap album to do so, and at No. 3 on the Billboard 200.

Selling more than three million copies, Raising Hell is credited with heralding the golden age hip-hop as well as hip-hop's album era, helping the genre achieve an unprecedented level of recognition among critics and mainstream audience.

 

Raising Hell Track List:  

 

1. Peter Piper

2. It's Tricky

3. My Adidas

4. Walk This Way

5. Is It Live

6. Perfection

7. Hit It Run

8. Raising Hell

9. You Be Illin'

10. Dumb Girl

11. Son Of Byford

12. Proud To Be Black

New Music: Heart Has To Work So Hard

           

Sabrina Teitelbaum aka Blondshell is sharing her new single "Heart Has To Work So Hard."  A brooding, grunge-inspired song about a platonic relationship, she adds in a press release: This song is really about friendship and betrayal, getting stuck in a dynamic and letting things fester. It’s about pain and confusion — no one trains you for the ups and downs of a friendship between two women — but it’s also about a love so enduring that you find compassion no matter what,.

The Reissue: The Best & The Rest Of New Order

New Order's 1994 compilation The Best Of New Order will be combined with 1995 remix album The Rest Of New Order for a new limited edition 4CD set that adds unreleased and new-to-CD mixes.

The original "Best Of" compilation compiled seven-inch mixes of the band's hits from 1985 onwards, while adding four new '94 mixes. A year later the remix album was led by the Hardfloor Mix of "Blue Monday."

The audio for the new set has been remastered and while a 2CD edition is also available, most fans are going to be interested in the 4CD deluxe version with its unreleased mixes including the Hawtin Mix – Alternate Version 2 of "Blue Monday", a full length version of "1963 94" and the Eschreamer Mix of "True Faith 94". New to CD mixes include "World (Price of Dub)",  "True Faith (Sexy Disco Dub)" and "Regret (Sabres Low 'n' Slow)". The packaging looks to be the same as the Substance CD reissue.

As well as the 4CD and 2CD variants of what is now called The Best & The Rest Of New Order, the individual compilations are reissued on 2LP and 3LP sets respectively with remastered audio cut at Abbey Road.

All versions are released on 17 July 2026 via Warner Music.

 

The Best & The Rest Track List 4CD Deluxe 

 

CD 1

1. True Faith-94

2. Bizarre Love Triangle-94

3. 1963-94

4. Regret

5. Fine Time

6. The Perfect Kiss

7. Shell Shock

8. Thieves Like Us

9. Vanishing Point

10. Run 2

11. Round & Round-94

12. World (Price Of Love)

13. Ruined In A Day

14. Touched By The Hand Of God

15. Blue Monday-88

16. World In Motion

 

CD 2

1.World (Perfecto Mix)

2. Blue Monday (Hardfloor Mix)

3. True Faith (Shep Pettibone Remix)

4. Confusion (Pump Panel Reconstruction Mix)

5. Touched By The Hand Of God (Biff & Memphis Remix)

6. Bizarre Love Triangle (Armand Van Helden Mix)

7. Ruined In A Day (K-Klass Remix)

8. Regret (Fire Island Mix)

9. Age Of Consent (Howie B. Remix)

10. Spooky (Magimix)

 

CD 3

1. Let's Go (Nothing For Me)

2. Bizarre Love Triangle (Remix)

3. 1963-95

4. Everything's Gone Green (Dave Clarke Mix)

5. Temptation (CJ Bolland Mix)

6. Blue Monday-95 (Hawtin Mix)

7. True Faith-94 (Perfecto Mix)

8. 1963 (Lionrock M6 Sunday Morning Mix)

9. Confusion (Pump Panel Floatation Mix)

10. Everything's Gone Green – Electric Green

11. Spooky (Nightstripper Mix)

12. 1963-95 (Blackout Mix)

 

CD 4

1. 1963 '94 (Full Length)

2. Spooky (Sub Sub 12” Remix)

3. Blue Monday-95 (Hardfloor Dub)

4. 1963 (Joe T. Vanelli Light Mix)

5. True Faith-94 (Eschreamer Mix)

6. World (Price of Dub)

7. True Faith (Sexy Disco Dub)

8. Regret (Sabres Slow 'n' Low)

9. Blue Monday (Hawtin Mix – Alternate Version 2)

In Memoriam: Rap Star "Rob Base" Dies Aged 59

The legendary rap artist Rob Base, best known for the 1980s hip-hop classic "It Takes Two", has died after a bout of cancer aged 59. The musician, whose real name was Robert Ginyard, created the hit song with his musical partner DJ E-Z Rock, and it is credited with helping to take hip-hop to mainstream success in dance clubs and the pop charts.

 

Base died "surrounded by family after a private battle with cancer" on Friday, just days after his 59th birthday, according to a post on his official Instagram account. "Thank you for the music, the memories, and the moments that became the soundtrack to our lives," it said. "Rob's music, energy, and legacy helped shape a generation and brought joy to millions around the world. "Beyond the stage, he was a loving father, family man, friend, and creative force whose impact will never be forgotten."

 

A Harlem native, Base was part of a hip-hop duo with DJ E-Z Rock, a musical force that sprung to fame in 1988 with the release of It Takes Two. The song quickly climbed to number three on the Billboard Hot Dance/Club Songs chart and was later certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.

 

The track has been sampled by Snoop Dogg and the Black Eyed Peas, and appeared in films like the 2009 hit romantic comedy The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. It was also featured in the iconic video game series Grand Theft Auto in its San Andreas release in 2004. 

 

His partner; DJ E-Z Rock - whose real name was Rodney Bryce - died in April 2014 from diabetes related complications, aged 56. He and Base became friends in the fourth grade, according to Rolling Stone. They released their first single, DJ Interview, in 1986, before dropping their smash hit It Takes Two.

 

Base told Rolling Stone in a 2014 interview the song's creation was spontaneous and that he was shocked by its success. "With It Takes Two, we were at a friend's house and we were just going through a bunch of records," he said. "We had to go to the studio that night and we didn't have anything prepared, but we found and liked the Lyn Collins sample that night and went to the studio," Base continued. "We didn't think that it would cross over and be as big as it became.