rockclubbing

"The single was... mainly determined by what was left out... “we wanted to make it purely a tune and rhythm with no embellishments like harmonies or chords.” Mike Leander claimed that it was not black music, but in some sense, a rock’n’roll record. The r’n’r is “deep down”, but it seems to me to be mainly there by association, by lyrical suggestion. What there IS is a minimal dance-track, unprecedented except perhaps for James Brown’s spare disco breaks, and vocals that are mixed well back, with a fast, slight echo that makes them disembodied, all attack and no decay, all hard edges and hardly inflected. When the Human League covered it, it could have been a manifesto for vocals-and-synths-only, and the cover could only succeed in so far as it managed not to add anything" - Paul Oldfield, Monitor #4, October 1985

Between Fun House and Funtime - me on The Idiot-era Iggy Pop versus The Stooges