Gary Numan
Although David Bowie is well-known as the artist who changed his image time and time again, Gary Numan has also been a pop chameleon: from alien-chic to Mad Max pastiche; from white-faced/blue haired mannequin to white-suit with red bow-tie gent; and from blonde cyberpunk to current industrial Goth. Numan was born in 1958, London, his father a baggage handler at Heathrow airport, a psycho-geographic space that would have enormous influence for him. From an early age, Newman possessed an enviable ability to know exactly what he wanted from life; he knew that music and planes were central to his plans. (more…)
Filed under: Interviews, Old Friends Electric by Flexmaster Nylon
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Visage – Rusty Egan
In the recent popular sci-fi/cop drama ‘Ashes to Ashes’, a group of detectives go under cover at a London nightclub. Since the narrative is set in 1981, the venue is frequented by (what became termed that same year) ‘New Romantics’. It’s a scene that’s a homage to the Blitz club, a London location where, back in 1981, Steve Strange and Rusty Egan ran a new kind of night club that stridently moved away from the spitting and brawling of the entropic punk scene. The music and fashions were sophisticated, cool and danceable. This wasn’t a clientele in clothes appropriated from bin liners and toilet chains. Such a grouping celebrated the flamboyant, the narcisstic, and the eccentric as exemplified by the dandified Regency designs by Vivienne Westwood which were seen later with the likes of Adam Ant. The bands under this journalistic label – Spandau Ballet, Visage, Ultravox, Japan, Culture Club, Duran Duran – offered up a new style of synth-pop that was as bombastic as a box set of Sky albums and as pretentious as Tara Palmer-Tomkinson’s Swiss apartment in Klosters. (more…)
Filed under: Interviews, Old Friends Electric by Flexmaster Nylon
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Claudia Brücken
Adam Locks meets Claudia Brücken in London to discuss Propaganda and her projects since (more…)
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OMD
When it comes to polling the most influential British electro pop bands of the late 70s/early 80s, the results invariably follow a repeated pattern in under-valuing one of the best bands of that period: the bombastically named Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, more commonly referred to as OMD. (more…)
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Billy Currie
In our new regular transcription interview series about heroes of electro-pop, sung and unsung, Adam Locks hooks up with Billy Currie
When it comes to reminiscing about early ‘80s British electro-pop, more often than not, it’s The Human League and Depeche Mode who get first mention. However, it was the two incarnations of Ultravox – first with John Foxx and later with Midge Ure – that produced some of the most significant and experimental albums of the ‘70s and early ‘80s. (more…)
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Beatmag Q&A with John Foxx
John Foxx was the original lead singer of Ultravox and is widely perceived as a key influence on the development of British electro-pop. He continues to release albums both as a solo artist and in collaboration with other musicians. Aside from music, Foxx lectures in digital culture and art, and is currently working on a series of ‘cut up’ digital movies. During his tenure in Ultravox, Foxx’s charismatic vocal delivery and the experimental sounds made by keyboardist Billie Currie (via an ARP Odyssey), made the band distinctive, yet unpopular with a British press who found them too artsy during punk’s heyday. (more…)
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