Audio Journal: 18/08/2013

There are many reasons to look forward to Fridays, but in the past six months I've found another reason: Jonny Trunk's 50p Friday emails.

Jonny runs the archival Trunk label, which remasters and reissues albums that their original labels don't feel there's a demand for any longer. Often issued as beautiful vinyl repressings, Trunk has become the place to go for unusual obscurities, forgotten soundtracks and much more. Back in February, Trunk reissued a single by The BBC Radiophonic Workshop as a download for a mere 20p and since then Jonny has been hand-picking an album from the label's back catalogue and offering it up as a download for a mere 50p. Over the past six months he's offered Louis and Bebe Barron's early electronic soundtrack to Forbidden Planet, albums from Peter Cooke, the Herbie Mann record I wrote about recently, cool bossa nova from Charlie Rouse, wonky jazz from Raymond Scott and primitive computer music - it's mindbendingly diverse stuff.

Sadly Jonny's taken a holiday this week and so there was nothing on offer on Friday, but if you want a means of comprehensively expanding your knowledge of music in these austere times, Trunk is the place to head. Navigate to the 50p Friday menu link on Trunk's website to fill your ears with great tunes you'd never think to listen to for less than the price of packet of crisps.

The past week I was tipped off about an album of covers of predominantly Eighties pop tracks by an Australian unit called Parralox. Recovery tackles classics from Erasure, Madonna, Pet Shop Boys, The Cure, Front 242, Depeche Mode and many others. My full review can be found over on Documentary Evidence here, but suffice to say it's probably the best electronic pop album I've heard for a long time.

Dave Fleet, who works under the alias Laica and who I wrote about ages ago (click here for that post) has a number of new projects in the can. Not content with lining up the Environs project for Alrealon, he's contributed to my upcoming MuteResponse project, is realising tracks inspired by my short story The Engineer and today let me know about another project, this time an EP for the Phatic Musk label. A short teaser for his latest dystopian soundtrack hit YouTube today – check it out below or hit here if you're reading on email.

Finally, I was recently sent a new track from Iggy & The German Kids which is presently doing great things on German radio. The mastermind behind this great, towering pop electronic moment is Ignacio, who I also wrote about way back in the early days of this blog. The Lynchian suburban nightmare video for 'So Hard' can be reached below, or for those reading this on email, click here to watch over at YouTube.

Audio Journal by MJA Smith : 15/02/2010

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

While tidying up the office, I came across a single by a band called Nemo from 2003 entitled 'Piccadilly In Sepia'. Nemo, which does sadly rank (in a post-Disney sense) as among the worst band names of all time, developed out of another band (Spectacle), some of whose members Mrs S went to school with. The lead track is a precise slice of authentic electronic pop that could have been released anytime between now and 1984, its chorus of 'Piccadilly in sepia / We are naked on the underground' containing the sort of Nitzschean attempts at seriousness that littered a number of classic 80s tracks, although the idea of us all being starkers on the Tube is somewhat disturbing. For all its lyrical faults, 'Piccadilly In Sepia' is a brilliant, brilliant and sadly overlooked synth pop gem.

I caught the DLR into the City at the weekend. The driver-less trains always remind me of the track by Komputer 'Looking Down On London'. Komputer, a duo of Simon Leonard and David Baker were formed out of the anarchic electronica act Fortran 5, ditching the amusing Orb-esque samples in favour of Kraftwerk synth purity. In doing so they headed back to their roots as synth duo I Start Counting, whose two albums (Fused and My Translucent Hands) were underground classics. If you sign up to Komputer's mailing list, you get a free mini-LP to download (Intercom), containing five tracks of icy, retro electronica.



If Komputer, in adopting Kraftwerk's electronic template, are retro in their aspirations, Raymond Scott's music could be described as pre-retro and authentically pioneering. Scott, who was variously a classical and jazz musician, moved into electronic composition and synth module development with his Manhattan Research, Inc. enterprise in 1946. In the process he developed new instruments which would go on to inspire the likes of Bob Moog to develop their own, genre-defining synth kits.

Arriving at a time when electronic composition was primarily the domain of scientist egg-heads and Hollywood sound effects departments, Scott's diverse synthetic palette found an ideal home as the backdrop for futuristic TV and radio spots in the 1950s and 60s; a compilation of some of these commercials and other Scott pieces was released as Manhattan Research, Inc. by Basta in 2000. Scrape your way past any kitsch connotations from the use of spoken sales pitches for bygone products and visions of a wonky future from the likes of the Bendix Corporation, and what you're left with is sixty-nine tracks of elaborate electronica that directly prefaces today's pop flirtation with synthetic sounds.