Audio Journal: 01/11/2013 - MuteResponse

MuteResponse #1 - artwork by Espen J. Jörgensen

The idea for MuteResponse came to me more or less exactly twelve months ago.

I was sat in the Curzon Cinema in Chelsea on 24 October 2012 listening to a talk as part of David Byrne's How Music Works book tour. Byrne had selected a different musician each night to join the debate, which for London was curated by Sean O'Hagan. His fellow debater on the health of music and the 'music industry' as we might have once called it, was Matthew Herbert.

The talk was a mix of interview and discussion. Both Herbert and Byrne made entertaining speakers, each possessing an authoritative viewpoint on just how dire it is for musicians trying to earn a crust in today's digital era. In spite of each speaker's self-deprecating mannerisms and an honest raking through of their individual paths to becoming musicians, the evening was a sobering one, and if it wasn't for a call to arms at the very end, I would have left thinking that all was doomed.

In the concluding moments, Herbert emphatically stressed that the future success of music depended on allowing the smallest scenes to thrive and develop. It was delivered with such passion and gusto that it was difficult not to feel compelled to do something with that. But, as people began to file out of the cinema, I stayed back a few moments and wondered how to do my small bit to protect the art form I enjoy so much.

In about half an hour I was stood at Sloane Square Underground station mulling over what I could do. I was listening to, and reviewing, the album Mind The Gap by Metroland that day and had sent over my finished piece to Sven from the duo earlier. Metroland's album reminded me principally of the work by Mute Records stalwarts Komputer, and the confluence of making that connection and Herbert's insistent request for participation came together somewhere on the Tube between Sloane Square and South Kensington and the idea for MuteResponse was born.

My thought process was simple: I already am part of a small scene, though not a musician; that scene consists of a bunch of people who are fans of Mute Records, the independent record label established by Daniel Miller in 1978. I already support Mute's legacy through my website Documentary Evidence which I started a decade ago as a place to write reviews and interviews with Mute artists or those connected to the label; Documentary Evidence was never supposed to be anything other than a place to post my personal views and opinions on whatever Mute release I was listening to that day. I had no aspirations to become a fully-fledged music critic, and I didn't really care if anyone was even reading the poorly-scribed stuff I was sticking up online.

By 2013 I seemed to have accumulated a number of fellow Mute fans who were similarly smitten by the label, but something about what Herbert had said made me feel like I needed to do something more, or, more specifically, to provide a different sort of tribute to the legacy of Mute. So I decided, between those two Tube stations to put together a compilation of artists influenced by the label. The title MuteResponse came to me almost as soon as I came up with the idea for the album. Never let it be said that inspiration doesn't lurk in the dark tunnels under London.

Helpfully, what Documentary Evidence covers has meant that lots of like-minded people send me their music for review. It's a nice problem to have. That made the selection of tracks from some recent releases relatively straightforward, but I also wanted to secure some exclusive tracks, or things that I'd had the privilege of listening to that had for whatever reason never seen the light of day. So I set about a process of asking for permission to use tracks from releases I'd been sent, inviting artists to send over a track for consideration, or trying to persuade people who were sitting on unreleased tracks that were unlikely to ever get released to allow them to be used. That so many people wanted to see their tracks included was a pleasant surprise and consequently the album came together far easier than I ever expected to; so much so that it became evident that it would need to be a double compilation. The first track I received was 'Clues In The Rain' by Espen J. Jörgensen and Rupert Lally, and so, appropriately enough, it is the opening track on album one.

Securing an unreleased track from Vic Twenty was, on a personal level, one of the most pleasing events in the development of MuteResponse. Vic Twenty, originally a duo of Adrian Morris and Angela Penhaligon (Piney Gir) were the first group I ever wrote about on Documentary Evidence after the single 'Text Message' was released on Credible Sexy Units, a new label Mute founder Daniel Miller set up after his main concern was bought by EMI. Adrian sent me a CDr of unreleased Vic Twenty tracks while I was undertaking one of two interviews with him, and I always hoped that 'Christmas In Korea (New Year In Japan)' would see the light of day one day. Now it will, and just before Christmas too.

People have asked how I managed to get producer Gareth Jones on board with an exclusive track, 'Summer Solstice 2013'. I first spoke to Gareth (and also Olivia Louvel, and Paul 'PK' Kendall) about the project in the bar after a Simon Fisher Turner and Factory Floor concert at the ICA in March. I've spoken to Gareth a few times over the past ten years but even so, asking him if he was interested in participating was a nerve-racking experience. Nevertheless, he seemed genuinely enthused by being involved. His track was a real surprise - a carefully constructed, many-layered audio collage of London atmospheres - and it is indeed a real coup to be featuring a piece by someone who's name has been attached to many of my favourite records.

It occurred to me early on that one relatively straightforward way of offering a tribute to Mute would be by asking for cover versions of songs by Mute artists. In the end it seemed like the most obvious way to approach it, and therefore the least appealing way to do it; after all, if the whole point of this was to show Mute's influence, it needed to illustrate how Mute's early aesthetic had crept out to infiltrate how people made electronic music; just putting out covers seemed to undermine that somehow. There was just one exception to that rule - an instrumental cover of Depeche Mode's See You' by Dave Fleet. Fleet first sent me a demo of this about two years ago and I was pleased to have been able to encourage him to finish it. We both tried to find a vocalist for the track but finally decided it was beautiful as it was, being a mixture of sensitive orchestrations and whirring electronics. Fleet proved to be one of the most important creative consultants for the project, giving me his opinion on tracks I wasn't sure about, sourcing tracks from Jay Mass / Andy Clark and Simplicity Is Beauty and securing the services of Chris Sharp to master the overall project. In fact, without Dave's support and guidance MuteResponse would have been just another idea that never went anywhere.

Another pivotal figure in the genesis of MuteResponse was Procedure, whose 'Isbjörn' is one of my favourite pieces from the entire project. One day he emailed me asking if I had ever tried contacting Simone Grant, who designed the first sleeves for Mute and whose creative insight informed the distinctive imagery of releases by The Normal, Silicon Teens, Fad Gadget and others. Within 48 hours I'd made contact with Simone and she'd agreed to design alternative sleeves for the project. Other alternative sleeve designs came from Espen J. Jörgensen, p6 from Security, Olivia Louvel and Dylan Fleet.

Let us return to the original reason for doing this in the first place. The idea was to further encourage the development of a small scene, namely artists influenced in whatever bleak way by Mute Records. That was its original stated purpose and I believe it does that effectively, albeit as a very narrow snapshot. However, for me it also highlights more clearly that while the music industry might be broken beyond repair, originality exists in greater abundance than ever before. There are amazing artists out there producing many, many great tracks that deserve far greater exposure than they get, but don't because they're not on a label with a huge marketing budget. It was that realisation that there was music out there that I'd never heard of that made Mute so appealing to me in the first place.

I hope above all that MuteResponse contributes in some small way to raising the profile of the very talented artists who contributed to this project, and whose music deserves far wider appreciation.

MuteResponse is released via Bandcamp on 4 November 2013.

Track lists, artist biographies and the alternative artwork can be found at www.muteresponse.com

- MJAS, Woburn Sands, UK, November 2013

Audio Journal : 24/02/2011

Depeche Mode are a band that I first heard around the time of Violator; a girl in my class at school, Sarah, had plastered pictures of the band all over her English folder and I assumed they were some sort of New Kids On The Block boyband, though their music didn't exactly sound like 'The Right Stuff'. At the time, 1990, the songs off Violator that graced the charts were annoying to me, 'Personal Jesus' in particular.

Fast-forward a years: by 1991 I'd settled upon Erasure as my favourite band. Finding a brochure from the record label called Documentary Evidence in the 12" single of that band's hit 'Chorus', I discovered that Vince Clarke from Erasure had started his musical career in Depeche Mode, before moving on to found Yazoo, The Assembly and finally Erasure. All of a sudden I didn't know what to think – I almost felt obligated to revise my opinion of Depeche Mode and so began tentatively running through their back catalogue. Knowing that Vince had only been with the band for their first album, 1981's Speak & Spell, I figured I'd only want to listen to that. Instead I borrowed their first singles collection from my local library in Stratford-upon-Avon and promptly fell in love not just with the Vince-era singles ('Dreaming Of Me', 'New Life' and 'Just Can't Get Enough'), but the whole lot.

This blog is supposed to be a personal record of what I have been listening to and, accordingly, I don't make any apology for the occasional emotional content or degree of recollection of the text below. It doesn't have the word journal in the title for nothing. However, I surprised myself at just how important these songs – which were compiled for Mrs S as an introduction to the band many years ago – are in my personal history. Those looking for less of an autobiographical post should tune in next week for a return to business as usual.

Nodisco (Speak & Spell, 1981)



I bought a CD copy of Speak & Spell in 1992 and found its distinctive, pure analogue electronic sound highly captivating. Many years before I'd been exposed to 1981's contemporaneous Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret by Soft Cell and Human League's Dare. Speak & Spell sounded utterly different to those other records. Aside from the singles mentioned above, the track that I liked best was 'Nodisco', an arch and vaguely sleazy track whose percussion noises sounded just like Erasure's version of ABBA's 'Lay All Your Love On Me'.

I spent that summer in love with a girl who roundly spurned me.

My Secret Garden (A Broken Frame, 1982)
Pipeline (Construction Time Again, 1983)



I got both of these albums on cassette for my sixteenth birthday. It was something of a Depeche Mode-dominated birthday that year; I got a black Violator t-shirt (long since lost and finally replaced when I went to see them at the O2 Arena in 2009) as well, and possibly a poster. Oh, and I also got a Phillishave electric razor.

'My Secret Garden' remains my favourite track on the mostly fey A Broken Frame, recorded hastily after Vince's swift exit from the band. The track is ethereal and mysterious, developing out of an extended, laconic instrumental section before breaking out into a serene, wry take on synth-pop.

By 1983's Construction Time Again, things had begun to darken in the Mode camp. Martin Gore had developed a new, more complex writing style and new boy Alan Wilder added a new inventiveness to the band's sonic palette. The key track was 'Pipeline', a six-minute track sung by Gore which roundly dumped the confines of electropop in favour of sampled industrial sounds culled from a visit to an East London railway yard; the lyrical theme was the anguish of hard labour, an effective counterpoint to the album's huge single 'Everything Counts' with its cynical Eighties Yuppie greed Gecko-isms. Engineer Gareth Jones, who began working with the band on this album, told me it was an absolute pleasure recording this. You can read more comments from Jones in my Documentary Evidence review of Construction Time Again.

Lie To Me
Somebody (Some Great Reward, 1984)



Sticking with my sixteenth birthday, I bought this the Saturday after, from a record shop in Stratford-upon-Avon called Music Junction, a place sadly no longer in existence where I bought a lot of music during my teenage years. I was on a date with a girlfriend; she didn't like Depeche Mode. No-one I knew did. She dumped me within a fortnight.

'Lie To Me', Some Great Reward's opener was a stand-out song for me from the moment I listened to it. It is one of Gore's most darkly humorous songs in my opinion, Dave Gahan singing about putting someone's leather dress on. That wasn't the reason I liked it, mind. Don't get any ideas. It just felt weirdly nihilistic and savagely dark and I loved it.

'Somebody' is the most perfect ballad Martin Gore has ever recorded; a plaintive love song sung by himself with Alan Wilder on piano, whose lyrics detailed a wish list of all the emotional qualities that he wanted in a partner. I first heard this song on The Singles 1981 - 1985 and loved it immensely. I would wait another eight years to find someone for whom the opening lines applied to: 'I want somebody to share / Share the rest of my life'.

A Question Of Lust (Black Celebration, 1986)

Each successive Depeche Mode became that little bit darker, and by Black Celebration it was hard to see anything at all. Yet in amongst this was another stand-out Martin Gore-sung track, the tender 'A Question Of Lust', a counterpoint to the urgent, harrowing 'A Question Of Time'. Gore really has a handle on writing emotional ballads, and 'A Question Of Lust' is another perfect example. The drums and percussion sound like something Phil Spector may have fashioned from his wall of sound; big, reveberating sounds, dramatic tension and all those sorts of words and phrases.

One day at work many years later I was talking to a guy called John in the lift lobby of our office building. To date, he's only the second similarly ardent Depeche Mode fan I've ever met. I thought I was a pretty solid fan at that point, and in a second John roundly shattered that illusion. 'Life in the so-called space age,' he said. 'What's that from?' I racked my brain trying to find that lyric somewhere in a Depeche song, and seeing my blank expression he decided to put me out of my misery.

'Black Celebration, back cover, right at the very bottom.' He's right of course, and I realised in that moment where he described the placement of the nondescript white text on the rear of that sleeve that obsessive fans can be a bit, well, nerdy, can't they?

The Things You Said (Music For The Masses, 1987)

The year was 1994. It was summer. A girl had just dumped me earlier that day. (There's possibly a theme emerging here.) I listened to this on repeat all afternoon until it got dark. It seemed to suit my mood of disappointment, detailed perfectly a sense of betrayal at learning you'd been led a merry old dance and been made a complete fool of by someone you thought you were in love with. Sixteen years on and it's still what I think of whenever I hear this song, though I have naturally stopped caring about that day and that girl.

Enjoy The Silence (Violator, 1990)

Buying Violator, knowing that I'd detested 'Personal Jesus', almost felt fraudulent somehow. I bought this album on a trip to Coventry with the girl who I was seeing at the time of my sixteenth birthday. Admitting to myself that the sleek, polished sounds of the album were appealing was an uncomfortable move, but I'm glad I did. Violator has now become probably my favourite Depeche Mode album and it's the one I listen to the most overall. I played it to my then-girlfriend who just found it boring.

Violator was a progression again from Music For The Masses. Where Music For The Masses used occasional guitars, Violator sprayed them over the songs liberally. 'Personal Jesus' remains the biggest surprise, what with its overtly religious leanings and ominous blues riffs. Johnny Cash would later record the song with assistance from Depeche fan John Frusciante (ex-RHCP and future Dave Gahan collaborator) on guitar. For me my favourite track here remains 'Enjoy The Silence', a shimmering, upbeat track with a strange and captivating chorus. It is a towering moment in the band's catalogue.

I Feel You (Songs Of Faith And Devotion, 1993)

By 1993's Songs Of Faith And Devotion, I was a Depeche Mode fan proper. I had all their albums and had started collecting their singles back catalogue. When Radio 1 announced a 'Depeche Mode Day' and the premiering of their new single 'I Feel You', I woke up early to make sure I could hear the song before I went to school. I was dumbfounded when I heard the song. There was not a trace of anything the band had done previously at all; no electronics and no reference points to their back catalogue. It was almost like Dave Gahan fronting another band, a band who played heavy rock. It was a million miles (yet only twelve years) from Speak & Spell. I learned to love the song, loved the album and saw them live for the first time during that tour, a tour which saw the culmination of Gahan's drug taking, Andy Fletcher leaving the band temporarily with stress, Alan Wilder almost losing his life when an RAF jet crashed near his car and Gore drinking way too much.

'I Feel You' is a song I always equate with tragedy; the single was released a few days after we learned of the death of a school friend, initially thought to be a suicide bid after getting dumped by a girl but later found to be because of an unknown heart defect; consequently it's hard to separate the song from that event. In complete contrast, the orchestral 'One Caress', a beautiful if black ballad, reminds me of Stephen King's It, which I was reading at the time. That book terrified me and this song still raises the hairs on my arms.

Useless (Ultra, 1997)

Post-heroin, post-near-death, post-Alan Wilder, Depeche Mode returned in 1997 with a much more Violator-esque album – much more electronic and less out-of-character than Songs Of Faith And Devotion.

By 1997 I was at university and it wasn't a great year overall. This song soundtracked my personal disenchantment at not being able to save a certain person from themselves and their troubled thoughts, and the line containing 'All my useless advice' has a definite poignancy. Elsewhere that year Nick Cave And The Bads Seeds' 'Into My Arms' soundtracked the rare moments of optimism. On the positive, the girl that I'm referring to didn't dump me, but two years later we would mutually call it quits. 'Useless' could well be an apt description for three pointless, uniformly wasted years, come to think of it.

Dream On (Exciter, 2001)



'Dream On' was the first single from 2001's Exciter. Arriving on waves of almost Latin guitars and a conspiratorially-delivered vocal from Gahan, it was an unusual song which would later be overshadowed by the much more upbeat, dance-floor friendly 'I Feel Loved' which received a sterling remix from Armand van Helden.

I promised there would be no more heavily autobiographical episodes after this post, so here are my final words: I chiefly remember listening to this singer whilst preparing for my wedding to Mrs S. It's not my favourite track from Exciter, but I find it hard to separate the song from those positive days.

She hasn't dumped me. Yet.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 21/12/2009

Go to: My Other Blog / twitter.com/mjasmith

I have two other music-related projects aside from this here blog, one of which – my Nominal Musics label – sits in a state of permanent hiatus. The other, Documentary Evidence, my unofficial Mute Records tribute site just sit there, waiting for me to get around to turning some much-needed attention toward it.

This post will, eventually be about the Depeche Mode concert I attended at the O2 Arena this Wednesday; but before we get there I'm going to spend a bit of time telling you about Documentary Evidence.



Documentary Evidence grew out of a simple passion, that passion being for collecting records; specifically, those releases on a label called Mute Records. Following a particular artist, or genre, is fairly commonplace; following an entire record label's output is the exclusive reserve of a particular niche of train-spotting record collectors, yours truly included.

Mute Records was started by Daniel Miller in the late 1970s, quickly establishing itself in the post-punk anti-corporate, independent musical landscape as the place to go to get your fix of leftfield electronic pop and more challenging, noisy music. Miller himself released several records in the early days of Mute, including the very first release as electro-punks The Normal with the JG Ballard-referencing 7” single of 'Warm Leatherette' and 'T.V.O.D' (see my review here); he also hinted at one of his ambitions by recording quirky synth pop as Silicon Teens, a fake group consisting of Miller and an array of analogue synths covering Fifties rock n' roll numbers.



Mute's future was assured when Miller signed Depeche Mode to the nascent label, securing Miller's first hits with their second and third singles, 'New Life' and 'Just Can't Get Enough'. No sooner had Mute established itself than Depeche Mode's core songwriter, Vince Clarke, quit the band just as they were gearing up for a lucrative US tour. Just as things looked to turn sour for Miller, Clarke formed Yazoo with Alison Moyet and, after a few abortive side projects, Erasure with Andy Bell, while Depeche Mode continued to develop a dedicated fan base in the UK and abroad, and Mute went from strength to strength.

The success of bands like Depeche Mode and Erasure allowed Miller to recycle the label's profits into developing artists from other, more esoteric areas, such as Nick Cave – a cult figure who has only comparatively recently has gained more universal recognition – or Laibach, or Nitzer Ebb and countless other examples of bands operating just underneath the collective consciousness of the charts (see here for a less-than-complete list). The label reached a new level of success with Moby, whose Play was arguably the biggest success the label had scored (with the exception of Depeche Mode's albums), quickly leading to Miller's label getting snapped up by EMI and ending that particular stage of one of the UK's longest-running indie labels.



I had a resolutely pop music upbringing; the first band I really, really liked was Erasure. I've said it before, and I'll say it again that I still think the duo of Vince and Andy are still the best synth pop duo there has ever been, knocking spots off those irksome Pet Shop Boys, but I'm biased. Less logically, I also have Erasure entirely to thank for getting me into the wider Mute roster, and sub-pop music generally.

I bought my first 12” single, 'Chorus' by Erasure in the summer of 1991, from Woolworth's in Stratford-upon-Avon. As I took the black vinyl disc from its sleeve, a square pamphlet fell out. That pamphlet was titled 'Documentary Evidence' and something about it fascinated me; it was basically a brief biography of Mute Records by The Wire's Chris Bohn (writing as Biba Kopf) with a full list of all the releases that the label had put out up to that point. With the exception of Depeche Mode, who up to then I didn't really like, and Renegade Soundwave I hadn't heard of any of the bands listed in the booklet; I had no idea at all that music was made that didn't appear in the charts; I thought I must have just missed them or not taken any notice.



So from that point on I began avidly collecting releases from Mute, both new and old, and I'd say conservatively that 75% of my entire record collection is made up of bands and artists connected to the label. It got me into punk (both US and UK), noise, techno and rock and has cost me an absolute fortune over the years. So it was in 2003 that I decided to set up a website specifically as a tribute to the label, and I decided to call it Documentary Evidence.

Documentary Evidence contains biographies of Mute's artists, reviews of releases and live performances and occasional interviews with artists or people connected to the label, including Barry Adamson, ex Human League / Heaven 17 member and Vince Clarke collaborator Martyn Ware and Wire / Githead front man Colin Newman. I've barely touched it in the last eighteen months, but that will change in 2010 with a new interview and plenty of new reviews and biographies.



To kick things off I've added a review of the Depeche Mode concert at the O2 Arena last Wednesday, which if I remember correctly was what I said the point of this blog post actually was. You can find it here. Feel free to look around the rest of the Documentary Evidence site.

Next week's blog will be written by my good friend Neil Cullimore. Audio Journal by Neil Cullimore will feature a review of Ned's Atomic Dustbin's gig at the O2 in Shepherd's Bush as well as an interview with Jonn from the band. I'll return with more musical ramblings in 2010, as well as news of a new and totally gratis Nominal Musics release.

Audio Journal : 27/04/2009

I've spent a great deal of this week listening to Sounds Of The Universe, the new album from dark electropop survivors Depeche Mode. SOTU follows a grand tradition of naff album names by the Mode but nevertheless shows, as they approach their thirtieth year of trading, that the trio (or duo, depending on how useful you think Andy Fletcher is these days) are as sonically inventive as ever. Expect a detailed review on www.documentaryevidence.co.uk when I get a chance. Current favourite tracks include 'Corrupt' and 'Perfect'.

After much searching I came across the tracklisting for Bovine Life's Social Electrics II, a collaborative electronic music project from 2000 / 2001. I'd lost the songnames and for once the usually-reliable Google proved itself lacking. The album was available online as a free download and features collaborations with Kohn, Nine Mile Burn and Future Pilot AKA. It's esoteric electronica for the open-minded listener only.

I'm pretty excited at the prospect of the new Sonic Youth album, The Eternal which is out in June. Their website includes a free download of the first track from the album ('Sacred Trixter'), which shows the New Yorkers to be every bit as inventive as ever. Speaking of Sonic Youth, I found myself listening to 'Be Safe', the collaboration between The Cribs and Lee Ranaldo which appears on the album Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever. It's a spoken word, stream-of-consciousness affair as you'd expect from Ranaldo over dystopian guitars and the occasional harmonic chorus from the band.

Finally, after several years of fruitless searching, I came across Kid Koala's version of 'Moon River' (from Breakfast At Tiffany's). I'd seen KK perform this live at All Tomorrow's Parties in 2004 and was suitably awe-struck by his manipulation of the Henry Mancini song using only turntables and a mixer. Well worth a listen, if you can find it.