Speaker 1low energy unfocused foggy you might be dehydrated whether it's hot yoga over 100 degree weather or too much sun gator light with a specialized blend of five electrolytes was scientifically designed to help move fluids into the body faster for rapid rehydration shop now at retailers nationwide gator light hydrates faster than water is it in you symptoms noted are signs of mild to moderate dehydration consult a health care professional if symptoms persist tim let's move on to another category which kind of follows on in a
Speaker 2way from the field of production category which is synthetic poppers which is not a design a drug for people into sadomasochism but it is the name of a group of albums that are i suppose more about the technology we were talking about earlier but more about synthesizers rather than samplers so in this category we have a whole generation of chart beating acts chart beating acts some very big hitters in this category duran duran's rio now we talked about roxy and how their obsession with glamour sophistication decadence and of course the new romantic movement yeah a kind of movement that bands like duran duran and spandau ballet was sort of lumped in with is kind of reaching a peak and maybe this is the this is the lightning rod this album is the lightning rod around which the whole scene kind of coalesces rio i just remember those fantastically decadent videos yeah of them sort of lounging on yachts in the bahamas with scantily clad supermodels around them and the sound i mean i listened to the album again the sound i mean it hasn't dated as well as something like the dreaming obviously the dreaming sounds completely out of time this is now which very much is a part of the zeitgeist isn't it to me when i listen to around around around i hear a guitar player that wants to be in a heavy metal band a rhythm the section that want to be in chic and a sort of nerd that's obsessed with synthesizers and they kind of create this pop behemoth which goes on to completely conquer the charts don't they with rio i mean there was massive hit singles off this record yeah yeah how does the record stand up in in 2024 i think
Speaker 3you're right i think they come from quite raw ragged disparate influences but they had this huge success and what's interesting once more is that it's so far beyond punk it's actually beyond anything that's before it you know in terms of its aspiration that this is the bizarre thing that people turn their backs on that grubby performance in the hope and anchor and they want the stadium they want the yachts thatcherism again isn't it it is to an extent but it's beyond what punk had replaced it's almost like this is turbocharged version of the aspiration that existed before punk um but i like them i think you know again like adam and the ants they're one of those creative pop bands who managed to write great hit singles have character you know they had their cake and they ate it there's i love save a prayer as well as
Speaker 2you know beautiful there's something also quite naive about them and i mean that in a very good way in the way that there
Speaker 3was with adam and the ants as well which is i agree it's the positive
Speaker 2like you don't hear that naivety in avalon that's assured that's like we you know we've arrived we know exactly what we're doing we've got the confidence and assuredness to pull this off with rio it still feels there's a sort of naive charm to him he's not the greatest singer is it i mean i really like his yeah his vocals his pop sense but you know i think he's great he's you know he's definitely got those instincts for a great pop melody he's not the greatest singer he's a little bit of an underachiever and i speak as an underachiever as well as a singer myself he's a bit of an underachiever as a singer listening to the album the amount of sort of eventide harmonizer and roland dimension d that's added to his vocal to try and make it sound a bit stronger but it works it works there's a sense that they they they have got this sort of when you see them on top of the pops you can imagine them a couple of years earlier working on the on the factory line it doesn't feel like they've come from this thing with roxy you almost feel like they've come from this sort of glamorous world duran duran you kind of get the sense that they are working class lads that have made good roxy music
Speaker 3sound like they're born in a test tube don't they yeah there's something about there's something artificial um they sound posh they do though they're not you know ferry was not it was very working class background but they sound posh and i think that with duran what's interesting you talk about the fact that you can hear their roots in what they're doing there but also you can hear what's going to happen in that there are aspects of that sophista pop of roxy and japan which is going to happen in arcadia a little later and as you say there's a kind of a rock element that's going to be in power station a little later so you can almost hear where the band are going to go off in different directions but it's
Speaker 2interesting because if you didn't have the guitar player that wanted to be in the heavy rock band this the band would have sounded completely different yeah if you didn't have the rhythm section that actually wanted to be in chic the band would have sounded completely different so again it is you know it's i mean it's it's just it's all luck isn't it when when things just like gel sometimes and timing of course is very important at this point people just felt like they were ready for something they were ready for a band that would be pinups again
Speaker 3well here's another thing linking it to 72 because we said this kind of 10 year that's coming around the cycle the one thing that comes back with a vengeance in 82 is as we said at the beginning uh the first episode glamour fashion style in the way that glamour glam pop we're talking glam rock in 72 completely went against the kind of ramshackle hippie imagery you could argue that you know the whole blitz club imagery of the early 80s completely goes against the punk style ragged imagery and joran joran didn't look like brick layers made up they look the part that's true that's true yeah
Speaker 2here's an interesting analogy for you so i'm going to draw an analogy here coldplay to radiohead duran duran to japan yeah i can see that in the sense that in a way just like coldplay kind of took the radiohead blueprint but removed a lot of the sort of angles experimentation and i'm not saying this in a negative way at all i think what coldplay did is no i love them i love coldplay but do you know what i'm talking
Speaker 3about yeah in a sense i've seen it i've seen it written i've seen you lift something up
Speaker 2saying i hate coldplay i did don't listen to him folks go and read the instagram post to get the true story there i like coldplay but there is a sense that coldplay took an element of what radiohead were doing of course chiseled off all the angles all the experimentation and packaged it in a way to in a way that just took it to a whole nother level commercially yeah duran duran in a way i feel like if you look at what sylvia and japan were doing gentlemen take polaroids mm-hmm strong they've looked at that and they've said you know we like this we can take it to a massive mainstream audience and that's exactly what they did we can be pinups in a way that japan always felt slightly arched slightly removed they didn't want to play those those commercial pop games duran duran were very happy to take that as a blueprint say okay we're going to play all the pop games we want to be on top of the pops we want to be the pinup in smash hits yeah there's
Speaker 3there's a blatant ambition which you're like and earlier by the way i wasn't criticizing bricklayers obviously i've got to make that slagging them out of it i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know
Speaker 2was that you were slagging them off i wasn't some of my best friends bricklayers were they actually bricklayers duran duran i don't think they were no i don't think they were but there's a sense that when you see them you can see a couple years earlier that it just been like you know the other kids hanging out down the nightclub and suddenly they're duran duran and i believe we have a review of rio so hopefully the listener here can give us a bit more insight into this record and what makes it such a special record from 82 let's
Speaker 4have a listen the album i choose for the year 1982 is rio from duran duran for me it's the best album of the new wave era with the voice of simon lebon the keyboards of nick rhodes and the bass of john taylor still to this day it's one of the most innovative album of this era creative album and lyrics too like save a prayer rio from duran duran is my choice thank you for
Speaker 2that review i'm not sure i don't necessarily agree with in most innovative i mean i love i think it's great i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not sure i'm not so sure maybe innovative in its own scene yeah i think for a purely pop album
Speaker 3it was again ambitious i mean in an era when lots of albums were yeah very ambitious but yeah to take that music to the top of the charts as i think i said to you earlier it reminded me of adam and the ants in that and fun boy three in that they were top of the pops pop band making extraordinary music and i think people do forget sometimes that duran duran
Speaker 2are a great band absolutely they were let's look at some of the other other synth poppers of the year some of our favorite records here tim thomas dolby the golden age of wireless yeah a definite
Speaker 3contender for favorite come the end um what i love about this it's one of a couple of albums around this period where it humanizes electro pop so you're listening to duran duran duran duran are coming out of that kind of stylish controlled affectation of ferry bowie japan and et cetera, this, there's almost an american even though he's got a very english voice i almost kind of think of him as the richard sinclair of the electro pop scene as he's got that very almost artless but beautiful english voice there's also kind of an americanism you can hear there's a looseness a kind of steely dan-ness in some of this album a toddiness as well toddiness yeah
Speaker 2just made up a new word there
Speaker 3a toddiness that's todd rungren for those who don't know a toddiness and a dan essence yeah if i might say um and it's also profoundly emotional in a way that a lot of synth pop wasn't savor prayer is a beautiful song cloudburst on shingle street yes i was gonna say it's a heartbreaker the payoff on
Speaker 2that as well when i was young i was in love with everything now there's only you what a way to end one of my favorite moments
Speaker 3in pop to yeah me too very second me too yeah i adore that and i think it's a great album flying north he managed to have this neck like flying north it's a brilliant pop song and yet it is edge of your seat's emotion there's something where you do want to cry listening to a lot of dolby i think it's as emotional as any singer songwriter it's interesting it's because he's
Speaker 2been around for a while he's been in various bands hasn't he he's been the keyboard player in various bands and so he's in a sense he's kind of paid his dues jews being in these other i forget who he's worked with he
Speaker 3worked with bruce woolley didn't he in the camera club was it i don't know this camera club but he worked with bruce woolley for sure and bruce woolley worked with trevor horn of course with um buggles but he's also playing keyboards on another album
Speaker 2on this list i was reading
Speaker 3up well one story i do know is that he begged xtc to let him join yeah barry andrews had gone well andy partridge
Speaker 2is on this album isn't he he's on europa and the pirates if i remember right playing heart playing harmonica i think uh if i'm not there's another album on the list later on that thomas dolby is guessing so in this sense he's been around he's kind of he's been a session musician he's been in bands he's been like a you know like a background in the background in a lot of other bands and in a sense it feels like when he's finally come to make his solo record he understands the process yeah there's no sense of naivety here is there at all and we talk about the durand around having slightly naive sound which we really like and a lot of the other albums on this list have got this sort of first album naivety to them we'll come on to talk about china crisis in a minute for example it definitely has that this album doesn't have it it sounds right out the gate incredibly assured beautifully produced beautifully i mean songs like airwaves
Speaker 3yeah yeah weightless it's what i'm saying well weightless is amazing yeah yeah airwaves and flying north they're hit singles but with the emotional punch of johnny mitchell's blue
Speaker 2yes and of course he worked with yeah johnny a couple years later producing although it didn't work out so well it's a real depth yeah yeah yeah an incredible musician and in a sense there's a little bit of citizen kane syndrome going on here where the first album for me is the masterpiece i love the flat earth the second album and some of the later music but it's so fully formed and so perfect this debut album that i that i think in a sense he almost struggled to to to keep that momentum going
Speaker 3well there's two things here one i i agree with you because i listened to it on the way as well there's an intimacy and an urgency that maybe none of the other albums have i love the flat earth it's it's an equal artistically but this has the edge just sonically and emotionally even though you know screen kiss and budapest by blimp which is a much later track might be my favorite thomas albee tracks this is an album but there are two versions of it the same with the associates this year with affectionate punch um they do a second version of that in 82 and sulk
Speaker 2i think too was remixed for the american market
Speaker 3wasn't it yeah so this is an interesting phenomenon around this time where you've got the uk version of golden age of wireless which starts with flying north which is more intimate overall and then the american international version which starts with she blinded me with science which was the big hit which
Speaker 2isn't even on the album in the uk which isn't on the uk yeah
Speaker 3it's it's rejigged yeah and i prefer the original uk version i think that she blinded
Speaker 2me with science has just got a little bit of novelty here i love it but yeah yeah yeah
Speaker 3somehow loses the charm and the quality of the original version of golden so when we're talking about golden age of wireless being an album of 82 i'm talking about the uk version similarly with um sulk of course it has the single added to i think the 18 carat love affair probably it has very different versions of some pieces like it's better this way yeah the rhythm section is much more yeah yeah and i prefer the original uk version but then i do prefer the remake of the affectionate punch which came out in 82 so sorry that's just kind of this deviation it was a fascinating thing that you'd have two quite different versions of the same album calling itself the golden age of wireless or sulk or the affectionate punch that were around but we
Speaker 2absolutely love this album i mean he he's kind of a boffin isn't he he's uh i mean his whole image was kind of uh playing off that in a way the sort of man you know the wacky professor um boffin making this exquisite synthesized pop music let's talk about associate sulk we've talked about associates before i'm sure we must have done didn't we talk about the you know the fourth drawdown collection on yeah yeah sulk is their i think i think we can say that without fear of contradiction um party fears too one of the strangest songs again we talked about superman being one of the strangest songs to ever reach the top two party fears to one of the strangest songs to ever reach the top 20 again i listened
Speaker 3to it and you're thinking how how did this become a hit was this successful yeah i mean i'm really glad it was
Speaker 2successful well i think it's the keyboard hook yeah yeah which was used if
Speaker 3you remember i think the bbc used to use it as linking music it's very coming next the generation game it's very hooky
Speaker 2and it's interesting it's one of those songs a bit like omd souvenir where the keyboard sort of melody is the not the vocal it's the keyboard melody which becomes the hook and i think this is an example of that flying
Speaker 3north i'd say as well going back to thomas dolby i think that's got the keyboard as the hook bruce hornby hornby bruce
Speaker 2hornby or whatever it's bruce hornby who invented the toy train yeah bruce hornby okay right that's the way it is or whatever it's called that's piano hook but sulk is obviously a lot more than that isn't it because you know it's we've talked about this so many times tim and i know and i don't want to repeat myself but there's a point at which bands are between being their previous experimental guys and they're kind of completely sold out we're now pop stars guys yeah and this captures the associates or associates i don't think the definite article is supposed to be part of their i think it became it this captures associates exactly that point they're not the band that were making this kind of weird kind of post-punk music a fourth drawdown or affectionate punch but they haven't yet become the sort of glossy and slightly shallower version of themselves that they were to become certainly once alan rankin leaves the band this captures them at a perfect point between those two things isn't it songs like club country um party fears is it party fears too yeah that's the name of the track isn't it um the lyrics are bizarre aren't they they're kind of impenetrable
Speaker 3they are i mean i think this is otherworldly i think this i link with the dreaming in that it's emotionally and vocally unfettered it's wild and it's a beautiful wildness i think on this album there's a luscious chaos if that makes any sense um so i think there's still a strong connection more so than simple minds perhaps with their earlier albums there's still a strong connection with the affectionate punch and the singles collection fourth drawdown because it is wild it is untethered his voice is extraordinary and it does things again like dolby it humanizes electropop you know this isn't a voice that's affected in any way it's just extraordinary in all ways is it not
Speaker 2affected i mean it's it's very odd but i think you're right i think that just is his natural voice isn't it that's semi opera i mean i think he is the greatest singer of this whole generation of that all of these groups he although hollis i think is amazing too will come on to that but i think billy mckenzie just in terms of natural talent has got the most unbelievably strange beautiful instrument in his voice and when you put him together with this guy that rank was incredible
Speaker 3he is a great musician one of the other things about this album which deviates from punk there's still a post-punk energy and urgency in it but rankin is a consummate musician he's a great musician and they can go from ethereal torch song to mutant funk in a second and make it sound their own the other thing about this album is as much as the gabriel and bush albums of this year their use of synths pads sounds really unique
Speaker 2i still i still hear quite a lot of influence from the sort of bowie berlin trilogy there's a couple
Speaker 3you can hear well you can hear some roots because a couple of the instrumentals arrogance gave him up being one of them but i think he's a great musician and i think he's a great musician and i think he's a great musician and i think he's a great musician and i think he's a great musician yeah is pure david bowie low and the drum sound is quite david low but they go off at quite for sure that bowie and the only reason i
Speaker 2mention it is because that has disappeared quite a lot from a lot of the other music we're talking about whereas a couple years earlier i think everything references yeah um you know bowie's low and heroes but here it's still present whereas disappeared from a lot of the other records we're talking about it's it's um it still sounds unique this record doesn't it yeah um it's a shame in a way that the band imploded after this and billy mckenzie never really found another foil did he um to kind of complement his vocal abilities and is there a sense that he was just too mad for this to he was too mad to be a pop star he didn't have that kind of careerism that say someone like bono definitely
Speaker 3didn't i mean i had a chat with him once on the phone because a friend of mine was going to interview him
Speaker 2we met him once didn't we i think
Speaker 3yeah well you and ben met him on the phone yeah with his whippets yeah because he liked the no man demo swagger and he met up with you and ben with me it was uh my friend chris wilde if you remember him was going to interview billy for a student magazine and i was assigned to phone him up just to make the arrangement and so we had this utterly crazy 20 minute conversation about how he believed breakfast made a man and we arranged to meet him and then at the assigned time he wasn't there right but it was interesting he was definitely a character he was definitely a character he was definitely a character
Speaker 2he was a true english sorry scottish a true scottish accent my schoolboy era a true scottish eccentric i mean he's barking mad yeah he
Speaker 3was he was a driven eccentric you know this yeah and i think you know rankin was such a wonderful foil for him and they never recovered and so i gotta give a shout out to the affectionate punch because i love the debut but it was re-recorded quite a in 1982 in the wake of sulk i think so it's almost like sulk 2.0 so i love it this this i think the band didn't like it as much i think fans always consider the original raw version great but i love this version because it's all of those very odd wonky slightly dissonant synths mad marimbas they've really enriched the sound of the affectionate punch for the 1982 version so when i first bought it i was blown away by sulk so i wanted more of the same and the new version of the affectionate punch gave me more of the same so that was always my go-to affectionate punch and the irony is that years later that was the one you couldn't find you could only find the original right so uh you know they both went in and out of what you could find but that's you know one of my first exposures to the associates was sulk the uk version and then the re-recorded version of the affectionate punch and just astonishing records and both of them released in 1982
Speaker 2yeah yes i mean amazing just 12 month period after which they pretty much burned out billy mckenzie never really found another foil i mean the second then the record after this took three years to come out perhaps and it's like to me it's like a more kind of polished less engaging remake of sulk it's got
Speaker 3a few classics on it you know breakfast as you mentioned exactly his
Speaker 2obsession with breakfast indeed we talked a lot about porridge as you can imagine um but maybe there was a lot of major label politics trying to push him into being a public because he had the voice you know he had the voice he had this voice that could that could you know
Speaker 3level anyone i think the thing is that with sulk and to me the re-recorded and fourth fourth drawdown and the affectionate punch this was a band as i said untethered they could have gone anywhere and they did when you listen to anything that rankin did afterwards or mckenzie did afterwards it sounds constrained it's almost like they never had this freedom ever again or they never expressed it it's almost like they were egging each other on
Speaker 2yeah yeah like yeah that's that you know somebody would suggest something crazy yeah that's crazy let's do it well do you know whereas you would second guess yourself if you didn't have that person encouraging you yeah totally i think
Speaker 3they were a genius duo both dead of course which incredibly sad right yeah and for me one of the weirder comparisons is porn hearts the porn hearts van der graaf that's a band where they are everywhere all at once and it's utterly insane at times and i feel that sense of freedom on sulk and on the re-recorded affectionate punch so i just mentioned a
Speaker 2few moments ago we're talking about billy mckenzie having the most extraordinary voice of his generation and i also and also mentioned that mark hollis was probably the other one i would i would perhaps you know consider to be up there with him except the album from this year talk talk's debut album is the opposite in a way of the thomas dolby syndrome it's a very tentative first step into into making music isn't it it's clearly not what he wanted to do there might be an element here of careerism in the sense that this is what's going on this is the zeitgeist we need to make a difference in the sense that this is what's going on this is what's going on this is what's going on it sounds like well it's set to be blunt it sounds like a less good duran duran in in many places and it you know it had a couple of big hits on it so it did kind of achieve what it was supposed to achieve it got them a foothold in the industry and of course then they were able to go off and make these incredible records that we we know and love it's my life color of spring and of course spirit of eden and laughing stock party's over is i mean one thing i love about talk talk is every album is different isn't it this is completely a kind of synth pop record it's a little bit of a b-list synth pop record isn't it it's not as good as some of the other certainly not as good as the golden age of wireless it's not as good as rio but it's not bad is it and his voice is always going to be something you can listen to even on this record isn't it
Speaker 3yeah and his voice if you like does that humanizing thing in that he's not got the stereotypical affected synth pop voice of the era but i agree it is very tentative you know because i've got this academy of the underrated where if a band stopped on their debut album we'll be still be talking about them and i'm not 100 sure with talk no i'd agree with
Speaker 2you yeah it's all right i think i think the album is good because you approach it as being part of this canon yeah uh that they created and you think you know it's it's not bad it's obviously you know not as good as the later records but i think you're right it doesn't necessarily stand up outside the canon yeah um it's an okay synth pop record his voice is the best thing about it i think yes but i'm sure at the time he would have been very very you know unhappy and disappointed and felt like this this was not what he wanted to do and you can hear the progress between this and it's my life is just huge well
Speaker 3i think what it is the opposite you know whereas sulk is where this band are free to do anything and then they and then mackenzie and rankin sound constrained afterwards in their respective solo careers this is constrained this sounds constrained and it does sound like a slug it's a slightly less accomplished duran duran meets japan
Speaker 2yeah very much very much yeah paul webb's bass playing is obviously a little bit a little bit of a nod to mick khan isn't it i mean not the only one a lot of bass players i think were listening well a lot of musicians generally were listening to japan i think and taking you know taking and
Speaker 3i'm not sure you could have seen the greatness that would come from the band you really could from this and it's interesting again one of the things they did in 82 and apparently it didn't go down too well but um and it relates to gabriel four that we were discussing earlier that gabriel lost a lot of money on the first womad so genesis reformed for the sixth i was there content were you
Speaker 2milton keen's bowl it poured with rain all day i had the most hateful day i was miserable i wanted
Speaker 3to guys desperate to go i
Speaker 2was absolutely miserable it rained all day i was absolutely miserable all day by the time i mean i wasn't the biggest i went my friends who were big okay wasn't the biggest genesis fan anyway although they were actually really good i've got to say but talk talk were the first on and they got and then john martin wasn't it so i took this is it so you were there no it was nine i think it was talk talk nine no paul jones what was the name of the paul jones it was talk talk paul j it was a bizarre bill what you mean the band had the hit with toast no paul jones the go from man to earth band was he as a solo the blues band he was in the blues band wasn't he i think it was i think it was talk talk the blues band with paul jones john martin and then six of the best as they were called they weren't allowed to
Speaker 3call themselves genesis because at the time i'm thinking you know because i i love john martin and i love genesis so for me it's like the idea of those on the bill but my friends who did go who went from warrington to morton keynes they said that talk talk were booed off john martin went down really badly that people were just getting more and more irritated by the rain
Speaker 2it was a miserable day and it was a miserable day
Speaker 3but genesis were you know i can imagine if
Speaker 2you were a big genesis fan and you never thought you'd seen that that must have been euphoric yeah i was a 13 year old kid that had been dragged along by my friends i'd been rained on all day i was i remember wearing my parka which was soaked through to the skin i mean literally to the skin i was miserable i couldn't wait to go home anyway but
Speaker 3you couldn't believe the odd about that music is you think of the six of the best music and what's on gabriel four they could be different centuries let alone
Speaker 2decades anyway let's move on because we've talked about talk talk and we talked about albums we love much more than parties over china crisis I love China Crisis. I absolutely love them. They're perpetually the kind of underachievers of the whole scene in a way. They did have some big hits in the UK. Black Man Ray, King in a Catholic Style, Christian. African and White. African and White, thank you. This is their first album, China Crisis, with the perfectly pretentious and so 1982 title. Difficult shapes and passive rhythms. People think it's fun to entertain. Classically pretentious 1982 title. China Crisis, they had, and I say this with the utmost respect because I love it and I adore their sound. They had this incredibly weedy sound. It's this weedy little synth pop sound, which, funnily enough, I'm listening to some other records on the way here today. And the record that I compared, that I felt the most, that I had the most in common with was the, I've forgotten his name, the guy from Steely Dan that made the Solar record this year. Oh, yeah, Donald Fagan. Donald Fagan. It's got quite a lot in common. And interestingly enough, China Crisis later on were produced by Walter Becker. By Walter Becker, yeah. Not this record, but you can tell they've listened to Steely Dan. But whereas the Donald Fagan record is a very slick, a very American session player sort of feeling to it, this still has got that bedroom quality to it. But it's got that sort of wannabe sophisticates aspect to it too. Do you know what I mean by that?
Speaker 3Yeah, I mean, I really, I mean, I love it. I absolutely love it. I bought the single as the African White. And I've still got the 7-inch. I love that. And that was kind of played in a lot of the clubs in the Northwest, along with OMD Electricity before they were sort of big. I remember that single being played. And I remember African White being played. And it was one of those really nagging, infectious melodies. And I loved it. And it still might be my favourite China Crisis track of all time. And I really like the album. And I know what you mean. That it's, although there are elements where you can see that they love Eno as well as Steely Dan. There's a couple of moments of that in it. There's something about this album that I tie in in a totally different way with Eyeless in Gaza. It's got that made for your own entertainment. Bedroom. Yeah. They're big music fans and they love quite a variety. Yeah. And they've got big ideas. And lest we forget, they're really young. I think they're late teens on this. Oh, really? So they're younger than Kate Bush.
Speaker 2Yeah. It's got a real bedroom sort of quality to it. I'm sure they must have recorded on Porter Studios, I think, had just come onto the market. Yeah, I love that Porter Studios sound. I imagine they sort of started up these tracks on their Porter Studios in their bedroom. And then they got the record do with Virgin and kind of, you know, remade some of the tracks. But it's still got that bedroom quality to it. And the voice is. It's very, it's very natural. It doesn't, it doesn't, it hasn't got the Martin Bates of Eyeless in Gaza sense of like being the sort of voice that would really be a Marmite voice that would kind of put you off. I can't imagine his voice putting anyone off, but it just feels, it still feels like some kids hanging out in their bedroom listening to Steely Dan and like you say, Brian Eno and coming up with this quite, I mean. With the cheap synth technology of the day. Quite cheap and quite, all the sounds. The sounds are very nice. There's sort of little chintzy little keyboard sounds and chintzy little guitar sounds.
Speaker 3I love it though. I love all the China Crisis records. This is my favourite. And the other thing I'd say as well, it's, I was talking about people humanising electropop. What this has got in electropop, which very little electropop has, it's quite fragile.
Speaker 2Yes. Maybe that's what I mean by it sounds quite weak. It's, it's not, none of the sounds are macho in any way. Like we were talking about Rio. I mean, the guitar is very macho in Rio, isn't it? The rhythm section is very, you know, it's kind of a little bit in your face. China Crisis, it's not. It's all very understated. It's quite effeminate. Maybe that's what I'm hearing.
Speaker 3And Christian's lovely as well. Gorgeous song. Gorgeous. The whole album is. The other band that remind me of, who kind of emerged slightly later, but got a similar kind of gentle, fragile sound. Lotus Eaters had that as well. I don't know them. Last Picture of You, you'll know. Or maybe if I heard it. First Picture of You. It's one of the two. Okay. That's great. It's a huge hit in, I think, 83.
Speaker 2Right. So we love China Crisis here. Some other albums that we love from this year. Gary Newman's Eye Assassin. It's, it's, it's hard to, it's hard to hear this record now without thinking of Alan Partridge miming to Music for Chameleons in an episode of I'm Alan Partridge. But it's a brilliant bass line. Pino Palladino, of course, the, the, the session bass player of choice. During this era, and he's all over this record, isn't he?
Speaker 3This was when it was seen as him embracing the funk. Although I think Dan's the album before this, where he gets Mick Kahn, which is as close as he comes to Japan on that album. Great album, Gary Newman Dance. But I like this. I mean, again, it's where electropop is expanding and he's got his sound. He's got his identity and he's not afraid to take it into new places. And in some ways you can't get more opposed. Than the icy synth pop of early Tubeway, well, late Tubeway Armies, it turns out, and early Gary Newman and sweaty dance floor funk. But he combines it really nicely.
Speaker 2I mean, he's in, he's in a way, along with John Fox, he's responsible for this whole era of synth pop, isn't he, in a way? Yeah. I mean, certainly in terms of bringing it to, you know, our friends Electric, of course, famously being referred to as the first ever number one, you know, synth. And I think that's what's so special about this song.
Speaker 3I mean, it's a really well oriented number one single. It was special. And I still think it's special. And that was one of those where it really was a case of people hearing it. And the next day in the school playground, everyone was talking about it. What the hell was that? Yeah. In a positive way. And I still think it's a brilliant, brilliant single. And yeah, you're right. Metamatic and the early John Fox singles carried this on as well. There were a few Newman and Fox albums from that period that had this definitive ice. Yeah. Icey electropop blueprint.
Speaker 2Yeah. And this is kind of the last album in what you might call the Gary Newman imperial. I mean, he's been on a roll. He's made about four or five albums in the space of two, three years. It's his imperial phase, isn't it? His commercial star is waning. But that doesn't affect the quality of the music. It's still right up there, I think, with the best of the records he made during this period. I love this record.
Speaker 3Well, the next one was produced by Bill Nelson.
Speaker 2Wasn't it? Which is a tough. That's a tougher one to talk about. Warriors. He tried to do something different there. Didn't quite come off anyway. But I think I assassin is right up there with his with his classic work. A few other records from this year. Depeche Mode's Broken Frame, Ultravox Quartet, which was famously produced by George Martin, which I think the band kind of conceded later on was probably not the best choice.
Speaker 3It's a funny thing. I've never understood the hater towards the album because I think it's. I don't like it as much. I don't think it's hated. I think it's one of those albums that
Speaker 2just is considered to be the weak, the weakest in a row of great records. I can see that. But I think it's a really good album. It is a great. It's a really good record. Yeah. Ice House. Primitive Man. Great single on that. Strange little girl. I've still got the seven inch of that. Yeah. Which again, you can kind of hear how they've taken Japan and Japan and Ferry and made it.
Speaker 3Yeah. The filter through the Australian sensibilities.
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. sensibility an album that neither of us i think we're familiar with and i had to listen to it because um i was looking i was researching 1982 and this album kept coming up as one of the best albums of 1982 harumi hosono from yellow magic orchestra his album from this year phil harmony
Speaker 3did you listen to this tim i did and it's funny because you mentioned it to me and you mentioned it to me two days after matt hammers who does the no man fan site right mentioned it to me said you've got to listen to it yeah and then when the two of you had mentioned it i had to listen to it it's good it's good it's good isn't it it's
Speaker 2good is that what you're going to say about it well i mean i've only listened to half of it once i've listened to all of it okay you've listened to all
Speaker 3of this you're probably more qualified to talk about it oh god i'm an expert on it it's good it's good no what what is it's interesting so half of it if i'd heard it at the time it probably would have blown yeah yeah yeah yeah i think that's the point yeah half of it is in that japan japan tin drum universe which to be fair
Speaker 2japan took a lot of that from yellow magic orchestra yeah but i'm gonna hear richard's voice in it oh
Speaker 3yeah yeah but i i hear that there's a barbieri influence in this for sure and it's great so i love that side of it these kind of atonal propulsive bells and really unique synth sound so half of it is quite serious and i really like it half of it is a lot more playful pop and i'm going to make a comparison here which you may or may not agree with and it just suddenly came to me so i'm thinking i'm hearing okay this is in the kind of league of japan the half i like liking this is great then the other half he's doing some really eccentric pop songs with often stupid subject matter as well you know sportsmen sportsmen they might play with balls or something like that right and you know it reminded me of the sound and then
Speaker 2his voice over
Speaker 3it yeah mid 90s and onwards momus i thought
Speaker 2you've listened to
Speaker 3this yeah there's definitely a big
Speaker 2influence a yellow magical because there was something
Speaker 3about it where it's got that kind of arcade game jauntiness
Speaker 2yes but surely that comes from craftwork originally doesn't it we are the robots and to an computer game i play with my pocket calculator yeah but i
Speaker 3can't it's got that though hasn't it i can't hear momus in craftwork i can hear momus in this i don't know why or you
Speaker 2can hear this in moments yeah
Speaker 3this is yeah i can't hear craftwork in moments right i can't hear you know but i can hear this in moments and it just suddenly clicked where i thought you've listened you know and also holger shukai it reminded me of some of the stuff he was doing yes at the time
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