Friday 30 October 2015

Back 3: The End (For Now)

and for out final chapter, we visit similar synthy territory once again. It should come as no surprise by now that the 80's were a goldmine for those of us electronically inclined, with things like Vangelis' score for Blade Runner taking center stage. As I finish up this week's selections we take a walk on the more experimental side of things, taking a look at my other genre love, Ambient, The out and out synthetics of Kraftwerk, and a selction from an obscure New Age record.

Syd Mead - L.A Skyline West (1988)

Tangerine Dream were yet another case of me thinking I should definitely start listening to something, but being completely clueless as to where to start. Thankfully I found my way in eventually and I am so happy that I did. Their music is among the few that can take me back to being a bright eyed kid completely in awe at the sounds coming from a cassette. It ticks all my electronic boxes in the most sublime way.



Breaking the rules a little bit here, technically this one is from '79 but it was released as a single and eventually went to #1 in the charts in '82, and that's where I heard it first in that same tape collection. Out of all the song so far I have compared to electroclash, this one is probably the closest, from a lyrical standpoint it could easily have been from Felix Da Housecat's Kittenz & Thee Glitz and was even the base sample for Ladytron's He Took Her To A Movie.



And finally, a little something from a band called Software. I already gave the album the once over here, it's been in my library for some time now. Has my opinion changed on it? A little, some parts of it are pretty generic, (my older post pretty much is the best selections from it) but what 'New Age' music of the era wasn't? Still it's recent influence is apparent with Vaporwave, and Oneohtrix Point Never's label is called Software and I think might even use the same font as the cover.



There is plenty more I wanted to put in these posts, but it turns out I didn't have a lot of the things I wanted to post to hand, or in cases like the Blade Runner soundtrack were actually released later than the 80's. Still I see it as a plus should I come back to this again which is highly likely given the treasures on offer.

-Claude Van Foxbat

No comments: