Classic interviews with synth pioneers in new eBook
Historical interviews with the most famous electro musicians in the world have appeared in a new eBook.
The Electro Legend Interviews features interviews conducted over the past 20 years and taken from the archives of Computer Music and Future Music magazine.
Revealing their music-making techniques and inspirations are: Aphex Twin, Gary Numan, The Prodigy’s Liam Howlett, Vince Clarke, Kraftwerk’s Wolfgang Flür, Moby, Hot Chip, Alec Empire and Ultravox’s Midge Ure.
Available for just £2.99, the book sheds light on The Prodigy’s place in the early rave scene, with Liam Howlett explaining in a 1993 interview that”When rave dies there are always going to be people who will still want to dance, so as long as we keep coming out with original songs we’ll still be around…”
Meanwhile, Gary Numan discusses his classic Replicas album. Addressing the cover art, he says: “The character on the cover is called a Machman – he’s looking out on the world, looking out at the park. Outside of the park, there’s a man in a grey coat and a grey hat, which was a ghost I saw when I was much younger…”
Elsewhere reclusive genius Aphex Twin gives one of his only ever interviews. “If you plan to be good at anything, it has to happen using your own ideas. It’s inevitable. It’s exactly like natural selection,” he muses.
Speaking exclusively about the early days of Kraftwerk, WolfgangFlür comments: “We were young, shy and childish! We loved to construct things and we never thought we would get famous from that.”
The book also features Vince Clarke revealing his computer music-making secrets. “Once you’ve got the hang of the computer and the software,” he says, “then you’ve still got to write the songs…”
And discussing the history of Ultravox, Midge Ure reveals that: “In those early days, a lot of musicians saw synths as electronic guitars. We just started going bang-bang-bang. Suddenly, you got this blast of unearthly noise and it changed the musical landscape.”
Ultravox 2012 Tour – Soundcheck chat
Exclusive soundcheck footage and a brief backstage chat with Billy Currie and Chris Cross during the Ultravox 2012 Brilliant tour. Billy and Chris talk about their use of VSM, Oddity, Minimonsta and impOSCar2 to recreate the keyboard sounds from both their classic and more recent tracks in the live shows.
www.ultravox.org.uk
Gary Numan speaks on his influences like Ultravox
In the first of a series of five films featuring headliners playing at BLOC, Gary Numan sits down to chat Ultravox.
Bloc sat down with a selection of headliners from the 2012 festival to talk about who – or what – has influenced them in becoming the artist they are today.
First in the five part series is synth pop pioneer Gary Numan.
He joins Orbital, Snoop Dogg, Richie Hawtin and Steve Reich on a festival programme like no other..
We’ll see you on the 6 July 2012.
Ultravox, ‘Brilliant’ — first new track from reunited ’80s-era lineup in 28 years
The ’80s-era lineup of Ultravox — Midge Ure, Billy Currie, Chris Cross and Warren Cann — last month announced plans to release Brilliant, their first new studio album together in 28 years, and today debuted the first music from that project, lead single and title track “Brilliant,” on British radio. You can stream the track below. The album itself — the first from Ultravox since 1994′s Ingenuity, and the first from the band’s most commercially successful lineup since 1984′s Lament — is due out May 28 in the U.K.
Well it clearly sounds like Ultravox, but am I impressed – aughhh noooot really, especially not with the vocals, sorry guys
Listen to it here:
Ultravox – Making Of ‘Brilliant’
Short clip from the making of Ultravox’s brand new studio album ‘Brilliant’, out May 28th.
EMI announce the return of Ultravox with their first studio album in 28 years. Following on from the sold-out “Return To Eden” reformation shows in 2009, the classic Ultravox line-up has recorded a 12-track collection of brand new songs, “Brilliant”, which will be released on May 28th ahead of a full UK tour in September and October.
Ultravox is the quartet Midge Ure, Billy Currie, Chris Cross and Warren Cann.
The tracklisting for “Brilliant” is as follows:
- Live Again
- Flow
- Brilliant
- The Change
- Rise
- Remembering
- Hello
- This One
- Fall
- Let It Lie
- Satellite
- Contact
New album with Ultravox in the making – Brillant
EMI announce the return of Ultravox with their first studio album in 28 years. Following on from the sold-out “Return To Eden” reformation shows in 2009, the classic Ultravox line-up has recorded a 12-track collection of brand new songs, “Brilliant”, which will be released on May 28th ahead of a full UK tour in September and October.
Emerging from the new wave and electro scenes of the late 70’s, Ultravox fashioned a form of electronic rock music that was uniquely powerful and delivered massive hits through the 1980’s such as “Hymn”, “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”, “The Voice”, “Reap The Wild Wind”, “Love’s Great Adventure”, “We Came To Dance” and of course the timeless and atmospheric “Vienna”. Full details of the album will be revealed soon along with the thirteen-date tour they will be embarking on later this year.
Ultravox is the quartet Midge Ure, Billy Currie, Chris Cross and Warren Cann.
The tracklisting for “Brilliant” is as follows:
- Live Again
- Flow
- Brilliant
- The Change
- Rise
- Remembering
- Hello
- This One
- Fall
- Let It Lie
- Satellite
- Contact
Enjoy
Midge Ure interview on the Ultravox reunion and audio music production
Midge Ure became famous with Ultravox (“Vienna”, “Dancing With Tears In My Eyes”) and as a solo singer (“If I Was”), but he has also worked as a producer and songwriter for artists such as Thin Lizzy, Visage and of course Band Aid. In this video, he talks about the reunion of Ultravox, their first album in 26 years, and the use of the Melodyne software in his work.
Stereoklang in an exclusive talk with synth pioneer John Foxx
Anyone with the slightest interest in electronic music has come across the works of John Foxx. John more or less on his own reshaped the electronic landscape with albums like Metamatic and The Garden. Starting off in the 1970’s forming the band Tiger Lily, that later morphed into the legendary act Ultravox. However, John left the band in 1979 to pursue a solo career and over the years, since then, John has been extremely productive – to say the least. John did withdraw from the music scene for a while to pursue other areas, but reappeared in the 90’s via Nation12 and then later on actively started to pursue his music career often in collaboration with others like Louis Gordon, Harold Budd and most recently with Benge (ben Edwards). Currently we are all set for a real treat with the new album called Interplay, featuring John Foxx & the Maths. Without further a due, and introductions, we dive deep into the mind of Mr. John Foxx
The Metamatic album has lots of pop format songs with raw and distorted synths, a sound that still feels fresh. But no-one picked up on that combination until much later, e.g EBM and Futurepop movement in the 90s and even more so by the Skweee movement of the 00s. Not even yourself continued in that direction with those raw synth sounds until your more recent work. – Why didn’t you pursue that direction? Was it going against the time too much?
There were many other things to pursue. For instance, reclaiming some of my own ground from ‘Systems of Romance’ on ‘The Garden’ album. I also wanted to make ‘Cathedral Oceans’ and other kinds of quiet music.
Then there was the preoccupation with Psychedelia, and its link to German electronic music. This wasn’t at all recognized in England at the time. At one point, I was also afraid that perhaps Metamatic was too raw and minimal and cold. This seems odd, because it seems quite warm now – but it certainly didn’t compared to other records being made at the time. A few years later, when I had the perspective to be able to appraise things from a safe distance, I realized there might be something special about Metamatic after all.
You’ve once said that new instruments like the electric guitar, synthesizers and drum machines changes the shape of the music. That you write to accommodate to the machines – Do you perceive that the DAW/laptop studio made the same impact?
Oh yes, every technological introduction changes the music – there are musicians who would not exist in other environments – The form of many new musicians’ work is enabled by intelligent use of new technologies – Autechre for instance, require a portable digital ecology in order to exist in their present form. Theirs is an intelligent, visceral response to new digital environments.
XXX require flexible digital recording technology to review and refine their music. It is clearly not based on any purely acoustic hierarchy of sound.
Just as Frank Sinatra changed both singing and recording by using a microphone and an amplifier – enabling him to sing quietly in front of a big band, so DAWs and laptops have created methods of working and kinds of music that were not possible before.
New album from Ultravox
Following Ultravox’s return to the live arena in 2009/10 with their “Return to Eden” tour and their signing with Universal Records, the band now announces new material. The band has been working on an album since Autumn 2010. Here’s some explanation from the band.
“We’ve had such a great time performing our old songs over the last two years that we just didn’t want it to end! There’s an immense satisfaction in looking across the stage and seeing those familiar faces playing the songs that we wrote as a unit. When we sat down to attempt to write some new songs we found that the ideas just kept coming and so a new album became not just inevitable, but something we really wanted to do together. Once again the whole has proved to be greater than the sum of the parts.”
And that’s not all because Ultravox will also be releasing a live EP, “Moments from Eden”, due to be released by Eden Recording Ltd on February 21st. The 4 track CD is also being released as a Limited Edition 10″ vinyl disc and features “New Europeans”, “White China”, “Love’s Great Adventure” and “Herr X”. The last song is a special version of “Mr X”, with Warren Cann vocalising in German.
Short background:
Ultravox is a British New Wave rock band. They were one of the primary exponents of the British electronic pop music movement of the early 1980s. The band was particularly associated with the New Romantic and New Wave movements.
Until 1979, the frontman of Ultravox was John Foxx who left the band to embark on a solo career. Following Foxx’s departure, Midge Ure took over as lead singer, guitarist and frontman, and he helped to steer the band to commercial success.
Ure left the band in 1987 after establishing a solo career and the group disbanded for a while. A new line-up, led by sole original bandmember Billy Currie, was formed in 1992, but without success.
The band’s most well known line-up of Currie, Cross, Cann and Ure reformed in 2008 and have toured together since then.
Via SL
Forever young? Grow up…
After the “Forever Young” tour in Sweden featuring everything from Alpha Ville to Ultravox I am not sure we really need a new album from these guys
The radio in Germany has started airing the newest Alphaville single “I’ll die for you today”. The single, produced by Sebastian Komor (Komor Kommando, Zombiegirl, Icon Of Coil, …) during a 3 months stay in Berlin, was already played live back in 2004 under the name “The outsider”.
The actual single and new album releases can be expected to be released somewhere in October 2010, although this has not been confirmed by Universal nor the band. Side-Line heard a few tracks and we can reassure critics that that Komor’s production skills did quite a good work on the material.
DATAMASKIN
