FOTW Audio Productions

John Carpenter and Alan Howarth at work on Season of the Witch (scan courtesy of Mike Conway)

The growing interest in John Carpenter as a composer of electronic music, and not just a director of horror films, seems to be reaching a critical point at the moment: his music is celebrated in The Sound of Fear festival in London this weekend; the latest issue of Wire magazine features an interview with his composing partner, Alan Howarth (who will appear at the Sound of Fear festival); and French duo Zombie Zombie released an album late last year called “Zombie Zombie Play John Carpenter”.

A reknowned hardworker, John Carpenter may not be aware of just how much of an impact he has had on a successive number of generations of electronic musicians. Regarded in the same league as Giorgio Moroder and Vangelis, whose soundtracks for Midnight Express and Blade Runner, respectively, have had a life of their own, Carpenter is often cited as a major inspiration by many electronic musicians.

The real interest in John Carpenter’s music began with his soundtrack for his 1976 film Assault on Precinct-13. For its title theme, he used a simple electronic riff that he had pinched from a Led Zeppelin song, and a spare percussive line composed on a drum machine, giving the film an unusual texture, slightly cold and synthetic, and pre-dating the new-wave/industrial sound of bands like Throbbing Gristle and Coil.

Of course it was the Halloween theme (and the film) that put him on the map, acting as a kind of surrogate audio cue for anything spooky over the last couple of decades (along with the Twilight Zone theme and “Tubular Bells” from the Exorcist).

But Carpenter had also composed a number of other exceptional horror soundtracks – The Fog was amazing, and so was the score to the third “Halloween” film, Season of the Witch, even though it was unrelated to the original. With each successive film, he seemed to go deeper into the music, and his elongated sounds – drones, and wide bending bass notes – toyed with parts of the brain rarely used outside of sleep.

              Zombie Zombie’s version of the Halloween theme live in Glasgow

John Carpenter’s music first started being covered by European groups who wanted to recreate what they had heard in Assault on Precinct 13. German producer Ralf Hennings, as The Splash Band released his own 12″ of the “End Theme” in 1983, near the height of John Carpenter’s influence on the film world.

Strangely, in 2003 – twenty years later – a limited edition CDr came out, entitled The European Tribute to John Carpenter, using the same pumpkin orange colour that the Splash Band had used. It was a compilation of different electronic artists from around Europe, covering and composing tracks in his style, but with a decided dark wave bent. This was at the height of the electroclash movement, where an interest in the origins of modern electronic dance music, in new-wave, EBM, New York electro, and Euro-pop (like italo-disco) was underway. This interest also bought synthesizers back into the standard band line-up, something that hadn’t really been seen since the eighties.

A number of musicians like Holland’s Legowelt, Germany’s Anthony Rother and Booka Shade, and Australian band Midnight Juggernauts have acknowledged Carpenter’s influence on their music. Although Carpenter rarely composes music for films now – the workload is just too great – he has left behind a considerable body of music to be enjoyed.

Most of his music is still available. Besides the bigger Varese Sarabande releases, niche labels like Record Makers (home of Sebastian Tellier) released his Assault on Precinct 13 for the first time back in 2003, while La-La Land Records put out Big Trouble in Little China a couple of years back.

For more information about John Carpenter and his music you can visit the Official John Carpenter site.

Number 47 of 110 … Sleeve for European Tribute to John Carpenter

Before and After: French musician Bernard Fevre compares himself to an earlier version

Ray Russell, a former editor of Playboy in the 50/60s, was obsessed with the devil in all its guises, and wrote a short story called “I Am Returning.” It was a cosmic tale of how the devil travelling through time and space, finally crashlands on a planet, and watches as over the course of a million years, the plant life and animals grow up around him, slowly shaping into something we modern day people would recognise as our neolithic ancestors.

A strange parallel tale exists with the life of the French musician Bernard Fevre, a pioneer of electronic music, and the first to construct disco music of a dark and electronic nature.

His rare recordings from the late seventies were first mysteriously re-issued on Luke Vibert’s Rephlex label in 2004, while his music was simultaneously championed by New Yorker’s Morgan Geist and Darshan Jesrani. But it has been the English label Lo Recordings that have invested in him as one of their major artists, releasing three full-length album of his over the past five years.

His come-back has also been enmeshed with a plethora of other artists working in a similar vein of music: a dark, slightly horror-influenced, nu-disco sound.

What is incredible about his original music though was that he was creating it at least half a decade before the advent of MIDI (a special synthesizer language that allows for the accurate synching up of electronic instruments); and that the music itself was just simply so unlike anything else of its time. This unique sound has had a delayed reaction, spanning across the decades, and now having a special relevance to the retrofuturist sound of many new and younger artists.

– Which just goes to show that the Devil is a survivor.

The latest Black Devil Disco Club album “Circus” is out now on Lo Recordings. Check out the Black Devil Disco Club website for more info.

SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY:

The Strange World of Bernard Fevre (1975) L’Illustration Musicale

Disco Club – Black Devil (1978) RCA / Re-issued by Rephlex in 2004

28 After – Black Devil Disco Club (2006) Lo Recordings

Eight Oh Eight – Black Devil Disco Club (2008) Lo Recordings

REMIXES:

Black Sunshine EP – In Flagranti, Quiet Village, Elitechnique (2007) LoEB

[To see the dark-lord of the absinthe fairy in action, watch this great clip recorded for Last.FM a few years back ]

A student draws the Prophet-5 synthesizer at the Powerhouse Museum

If you live in Sydney, the Powerhouse Museum currently has an exhibition ‘The Eighties are Back’ dedicated to life in the 1980s.

Though sometimes people think of this decade with a groan, lots of great things came out of it, especially in the music department.

Primarily aimed at kids and nostalgic parents, with table top arcade versions of Pacman and Ghouls and Ghosts, and Masters of the Universe and Strawberry Shortcake figurines, the exhibition also contains a great wealth of Australian music history, with flyers, records and posters for metal and punk bands like Mortal Sin and I Spit on Your Gravy, the graf and electro scene, not to mention memorabilia for the whole RAT/pre-rave acid house parties put on at the Hordern Pavillion.

It also looks at how the latest generation of Australian indie-dance acts, groups like Cut/Copy, The Presets, and Empire of the Sun, have borrowed some of their look and sound from this often and unfairly maligned decade.

The exhibition finishes end of March 2011.

For more information, visit the exhibition micro-site:

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/the80sareback/

Pretty in Pink: Emil Schult’s design for the Gropiusstadt EP (Aube009)

Electronic musician, Roland Sebastian Faber, although based in London, has always been strongly connected with the Düsseldorf label, Aube, since its inception in 2007. He worked as their audio engineer for their first release ‘Hold Me’ by Jupiter Black and Fred Ventura.

Although known under the pseudonym Kinky Roland (as well as a gamut of other aliases) he has worked on everything electronic from speed-garage to dark-wave synth-pop, and has a massive number of remixes under his belt.

However, some of his most highly regarded releases have been under his birth name, Roland Sebastian Faber, where he has gone back to his musical roots of melodic synthesizer music, found in the work of Klaus Schulze and the Berlin School of Electronic Music, and French composer Jean-Michel Jarre.

His first 12″ on the Aube label, Hommage An Die Jugend Europas (Homage to Europe’s Youth) in 2007 got great reviews, and ranked very highly in the Cybernetic Broadcasting System’s annual polling. He followed this up a year later with another 12″ on Aube, Wettkampf Der Moleküle (Race of the Molecule).

Faber uses original analogue synthesizers to create his sound, and they’ve long been a part of his life: he received his first synthesizer as a present from his parents when he was 15; and he’s gone on to master their use on both a technical and musical level. Some of the best elements of his music are his key changes; the subtle use of little ‘sound effects’ to enhance the atmosphere; and his ability to keep the listener engaged in a progressive musical experience — the trademark of his idol Klaus Schulze.

His new EP ‘Gropiusstadt’ takes its name from a housing estate district within Berlin, designed by the late German architect, Walter Gropius, who was the founder of the Bauhaus school.

The first two tracks of the EP have a strong Pink Floyd influence: Löffelkinder is an ultra-smooth track, slightly funky, with delayed guitar riffs, and heavily-reverbed female vocals. It’s a perfect blend of electronica and traditional instrumentation, and has a great sophistication in how it all fits together.

The second track, Gropiusstadt, is very reminiscent of Shine On You Crazy Diamond with it’s combination of shimmering synth pads, and solo guitar; but it’s well blended, and has enough of Faber’s trademark synth arpeggios to keep it original. It’s also got some great filmic moments too, with string sounds supporting the melody.

The third track, Morgengrau, is more low-key than the previous two, and has a dark electro feel, like the early work of Anthony Rother; but unfortunately, it does not stand out the same way the first two tracks do.

But it doesn’t really matter: this is still a great release.

Some of his traditional synthesizer sound also comes through in his work with Keen K — an old school friend from Germany — as the duo Starcluster. Their output so far hasn’t been prolific, but almost everything they have touched has turned to gold.

They started out by remixing Jupiter Black’s dynamic and humorous tribute to Giorgio Moroder, We Like Moroder in 2007, but their first major release wasn’t until 2008, when Aube released the self-titled Starcluster EP. It featured Smoke and Mirrors with vocals by Soft Cell‘s Marc Almond; but the stand-out track was Winter of Ice, a stand-alone song with a verse and chorus structure, and an instant addition to the canon of dark-wave music, in the spirit of bands like Laibach and Death In June.

As a live act, Starcluster also are high-achievers: they have a clear, tight sound, which is always a difficult thing for electronic artists to achieve, given the multi-layered and heavily sequenced nature of electronic music.

The good news is that there is a new EP from Starcluster to be released later this year by Aube, as well as another 12” from Roland Sebastian Faber  — possible even a full album which his music deserves.

BEHIND THE LABEL

The Aube label is run by Michael Künzer, a Düsseldorf native, who has also been active in the music scene for a number of years. He is better known as Michael Black, one half of Jupiter Black, and one half of Unit 4, who released Bodydub back in 2003.

Michael describes aspects of Aube’s sound as “future-retro”, warm electronic music created with analogue instruments — a move away from purely using 1s and 0s, finding an accord with the pre-digital age of Jean Michel-Jarre, Alan Parsons, and Mike Oldfield.

On the Aube books are a diverse and international range of artists: the already mentioned Roland Sebastian Faber and Starcluster, but also the Dutch duo Elitechnique, who create New York-style disco, The Fascination Movement, a Seattle based synth-pop outfit making music in the vein of early eighties new-wave/new romantic artists; as well the vocal talents of the British singer Marc Almond and the Italian singer/producer, Fred Ventura.

From L-R: Artist Emil Schult, Marc Almond of Soft Cell, and artist Marc Brandenburg

But it’s not only musicians that Aube is harnessing; visual art plays a big part in the label and Michael works in close association with two German artists: Emil Schult, who designed album covers for Kraftwerk through the seventies, and the Berlin-based artist, Marc Brandenburg, who creates photo-realistic pencil drawings. He has also used the work of the British based commercial airbrush artist, Syd Brak, for the Jupiter Black releases.

There are many new releases on the horizon for Aube in 2010: Michael has almost finished a new Jupiter Black release with Fred Ventura; he has also teamed up with Roland Sebastian Faber to put out a release as Alba; as already mentioned, the new ones from Starcluster and Roland Sebastian Faber, as well as a full album for The Fascination Movement. — And if we’re lucky, there will also be a ‘Best of Aube’ somewhere in there.

Gropiusstadt is due to be released in February 2010.

Listen to the audio version of this article with music from the new EP:

Download podcast version here

LINKS:

Roland Sebastian Faber:
http://www.myspace.com/rolandsebastianfaber

Aube Label:
http://www.aube-prod.com

The West Coast Sound of Holland was a name given to a collection of Dutch electronic musicians making music influenced by early eighties italo-disco, New York electro, techno, and a variety of other musical strands, like movie soundtracks. Although the name was coined in the earlier part of this decade, many of the artists are still very active, and have been joined by new artists, inspired by this sound.

In 2004 there was a documentary made about them called “When I Sold My Soul to the Machine” featuring interviews with proponents of the sound, like Alden Tyrell, Guy Tavares, I-F and Legowelt, with footage of parties, and the infamous Viewlexx Tower, home of the (now defunct) Cybernetic Broadcasting System. Originally released as a DVD, this documentary is available as a free download from the ISTFH Foundation, a non-profit organisation for the audio-visual arts based in the Hague.