Posts Tagged ‘grey’
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YTF2WA3Q Synth Britannia (English).avi 711.5 MB ;
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=CK19EIVP Synth Britannia (English).srt 112.49 KB ;
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=74FBBN4E Synth Britannia (Spanish).srt 102.97 KB ; Documentary following a generation of post-punk musicians who took the synthesiser from the experimental fringes to the centre of the pop stage.
In the late 1970s, small pockets of electronic artists including the Human League, Daniel Miller and Cabaret Volatire were inspired by Kraftwerk and JG Ballard and dreamt of the sound of the future against the backdrop of bleak, high-rise Britain.
The crossover moment came in 1979 when Gary Numan’s appearance on Top of the Pops with Tubeway Army’s Are Friends Electric heralded the arrival of synthpop. Four lads from Basildon known as Depeche Mode would come to own the new sound whilst post-punk bands like Ultravox, Soft Cell, OMD and Yazoo took the synth out of the pages of the NME and onto the front page of Smash Hits.
By 1983, acts like Pet Shop Boys and New Order were showing that the future of electronic music would lie in dance music.
Contributors include Philip Oakey, Vince Clarke, Martin Gore, Bernard Sumner, Gary Numan and Neil Tennant.
Director: Ben Whalley
Producer: Ben Whalley
Executive Producer: Mark Cooper
MUSIC PLAYED:
————————-
Gary Numan — Are Friends Electric?
#
Gary Numan — Cars
#
Visage — Fade to Grey
#
The Flying Lizards — Money
#
Depeche Mode — New Life
#
Depeche Mode — Just Can’t Get Enough
#
The Human League — Don’t You Want Me
#
Heaven 17 — Penthouse & Pavement
#
Cabaret Voltaire — Landslide
#
Soft Cell — Tainted Love
#
Yazoo — Only You
#
Yazoo — Don’t Go
#
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark — Maid of Orleans
#
Eurythmics — Sweet Dreams
#
Ultravox — Vienna
#
Kraftwerk — The Model
#
Depeche Mode — Everything Counts
#
Depeche Mode — Master and Servant
#
Pet Shop Boys — West End Girls
#
New Order — Ceremony
#
New Order — Blue Monday
#
Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder — Together in Electric Dreams
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcmusic/2009/10/synth_britannia_jg_ballard.html
Synth Britannia & JG Ballard (by Laura Kaye)
—————————————————————-
Early on when we were discussing themes and motifs to explore in Synth Britannia the topic of JG Ballard came up in conversation. It was immediately clear that there were parallels between Ballard and the work of the earliest synth pioneers. The world Ballard described in books like Crash and Concrete Island felt like a dystopian vision of the future and yet it was actually the present day rendered alien – a world of motorways, concrete underpasses, airports, subways lit with fluorescent lights, spaghetti junctions and giant concrete tower blocks. In short, this was 70s Britain – old Victorian slums and city centres eviscerated and concreted over.
This link between the environment and the music became very apparent on our travels around Britain to meet the pioneers of synthesizer music. All of the early synth artists found themselves making music in urban areas from the run down, empty streets of East London to industrial Sheffield under the shadow of the massive concrete Park Hill Estate. By a fortuitous coincidence just at the moment that the world started looking like this, the affordable synthesizer arrived on the market and musicians looking for a way to express their feelings of alienation in this new concrete jungle found just the thing in its strange, eerie, inhuman sounds. The cityscapes of the 70s posed a challenge to artists to write something that would fit there. Songs like John Foxx’s Underpass and The Normal’s Warm Leatherette are straight from the pages of Ballard and every artist we asked about their influences confessed to being a fan.
However when the 70s gave way to the 80s, synth’s potential to be a shiny soundtrack to a shiny new world was noticed. Gone were long overcoats and concrete highrises and in were a besuited, pony-tailed Heaven 17 making a deal in front of a glass skyscraper. Martyn Ware seemed oddly shocked that Heaven 17 was taken up by the yuppie crowd – “Let’s all make a bomb was supposed to be ironic!” he moaned. The synthesizer became a way of producing the sounds of a whole band or orchestra, and you could make something like electronic soul.
Inevitably it all got watered down and ubiquitous. And there was something cheesy about the polyphonic synths that replaced their earlier monophonic cousins… but it is interesting that today, just at the moment that Synth Britannia is being shown, that current artists like La Roux and Little Boots are turning to the early synth pioneers for those rawer synth sounds that are still fantastically futuristic even today.
Duration : 1:27:52