Released
January 2010 / February 2010
- Way back before Google and Facebook, a horde of faceless bedroom synth-ghouls, spread across northern Europe, built up a loose cultural network based on home-recording, handmade artwork and tape trading. When synths and drum machines first became commercially available—and affordable—electronic music production spread to the lonely suburbs and industrial neighborhoods outside big cities, and the dissemination of the resulting spectral, aggressive and ethereal tunes was able to allow lonely souls a bit of solace in a shared mixtape.
Since then, most of this material has remained hard-to-find and fairly anonymous, and as any cratedigger will tell you, that's all part of the appeal. Says Angular Records' Joe Daniels, "I like the impossible romance you can have with a band when all you've got is a tape with three songs on it all in French, and a single black and white photograph." Thanks to serious heads like Minimal Wave's Veronica Vasicka and Wierd's founder Pieter Schoolwerth, as well as dedicated labels like Stones Throw and Angular, many of these finds appear digitally for the first time on two new compilations entitled The Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 1 and Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics.
The cold/minimal wave world plays out as a kind of a sinister subterranean counterpart to the shiny surface realm of '80s synth-pop, full of dark tunnels populated by Depeche Mode and The Human League's evil twins. They share a sci-fi attitude towards identity, romance and history, a dystopic vision lit by flashing strobes that pierce the smoke and gloom. Their rhythms are gleaned from the churning repetitions of krautrock and disco, their sounds cobbled together from the rough, unpredictable palettes of early UK industrial. The often hand-triggered riffs, oddball singing and lurching rhythms imbue the music with a raw and wobbly soul. It's this sort of living touch that inspires Schoolwerth's particularly polemic vision of the cold wave scene, something he calls "a true movement of humanistic resistance against the vacuous contemporary excesses of modern laptop pop."
So: How to tell these two comps apart. In one corner you've got Minimal Wave, born of Vasicka's East Village Radio show. Portents and omens of technological life cast long shadows here. Oppenheimer Analysis' "Radiance," Minimal Wave's first vinyl release, takes the famous Sanskrit citation by the nuclear scientist, "I have become death, destroyer of worlds" as the basis for their catchy Numanesque electro-shuffle. "Way Out of Living" has an uncharacteristic disco groove that suggests Chic played by rusty robots, who show up again on "Flying Turns" to wail in a future-primitive caveman stomp. Then "Game and Performance" takes the potentially inspiring lyric "you can be someone if you grow with me" and sings it over a particularly eerie chord change, suggesting that you might be better off being no one at all.
In the other corner, you've got Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics, a diverse offering of tracks ranging from poppy to sinister. It certainly opens with a bang: Absolute Body Control's "Figures" is a right underground classic that welds a glammy V-IV-I chord change to crunching metal beats and drill- sergeant lyrics like "people always die alone, nothing left to do!" Perfect for a Friday night in a Total Recall-style wastoid den with androids, clones and other sci-fi outsiders. Ruth's "Roman Photo" shows that for all their merciless machine sounds, the purveyors of cold/minimal wave weren't above a spicy horn section. The sax carries over to "Somewhere in the Night," which fittingly oozes a vampiric glamour; a fair contender for the opening credits should they ever remake The Hunger.
While Cold Waves takes a slight edge in terms of dance floor readiness, Minimal Wave orbits a bit further out-there—chalk it up, perhaps, to Schoolwerth being primarily a party promoter and Vasicka a radio DJ. Both comps offer up strong collections of deep-dug and unique tunes, and bear the marks of the passion needed to uncover lost transmissions and cryptic signals. It's an underground that never had much use for the daylight world, so you'll have to follow Vasicka and Schoolwerth and go below. Don't worry: There's plenty to see down there, once your eyes adjust to the dark.
TracklistThe Minimal Wave Tapes Vol. 1
01. Linear Movement - Way Out of Living
02. Crash Course In Science - Flying Turns
03. Oppenheimer Analysis - Radiance
04. Mark Lane - Who's Really Listening
05. Tara Cross - Tempusfugit
06. Turquoise Days - Blurred
07. Bene Gesserit - Mickey, Please...
08. Esplendor Geometrico - Moscú Está Helado
09. Das Ding - Reassurance Ritual
10. Martin Dupont - Just Because
11. Deux - Game & Performance
12. Somnambulist - Things I Was Due to Forget
13. Ohama - My Time
14. Das Kabinette - The Cabinet
Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics Vol. 1
01. Absolute Body Control - Figures
02. Nine Circles - Twinkling Stars
03. Linear Movement - Night in June
04. Opera Multi Steel - Ills S'eloigent
05. Bal Paré - Palais d'Amour
06. Eleven Pond - Watching Trees
07. The Vyllies - Babylon
08. End of Data - Dans Votre Monde
09. The Actor - Lights
10. Ausgang Verboten - Consumer
11. Jeunesse d'Ivoire - A Gift of Tears
12. OTO - Anyway
13. Ruth - Polaroïd/Roman/Photo
14. Stereo - Somewhere in the Night
15. The Neon Judgement - The Fashion Party
16. Land of Giants - Cannibal Dolls
17. Days of Sorrow - Travel