Peter Becker is one half of famous Eyeless in Gaza. In 1979/80 Peter Becker and Martyn Bates formed their own label called Ambivalent Scale Recordings in order to release their own music as well as projects of friends like Kevin Harrison or Bron Area. Peter released two Solo-Tapes called 'They Brought the Statosphere' (ASR04) and 'By Train to the Coast' (ASR10, which also found release on Ian Dobson's Flowmotion Label). Peter's recordings from those two Solo-Tapes contain a wide variety from athmospheric and melodic compositions in style of Eyeless in Gaza to more abstract and minimal-electro-tunes. [SOURCE: CLONE.NL]
One of the most prolific bands on Bristol, England's legendary indie pop label Sarah Records, The Orchids were also one of the label's most press-shy outfits. Formed in 1986 in Penilee, Scotland, a suburb of Glasgow, The Orchids took their initial inspiration from some of the city's better-known acts of the time, particularly Lloyd Cole and the Commotions (singer James Hackett sounded more than a little like Cole and was often unfairly derided in the U.K. press for that resemblance) and Primal Scream during that band's original '60s pop phase. Hackett, rhythm guitarist Matthew Drummond, lead guitarist John Scally, bassist James Moody, and drummer Chris Quinn fit neatly into the bowl haircut and anorak look of the British indie scene, and their songs, the sort of archetypal late-'80s U.K. guitar pop for which terms like "winsome," "jangly," and "twee" were invented, made them both new pop heroes for a certain audience and an easily dismissible target for others. Press reaction tended to be either laudatory or scathing, with very little in between.
The Orchids first hooked up with Sarah's Matt Haynes and Clare Wadd just as the label was getting underway in 1987, and so The Orchids' debut single, 1988's 'I've Got a Habit', was only the second Sarah release. A second single, 'Underneath the Window, Underneath the Sink', followed later in the year. The Orchids' early singles were successful enough that, simultaneous to the release of their third 7", 'What Will We Do Next' in September 1989, Sarah released the label's first-ever album, the 10" 'Lyceum', a lengthy eight-track EP that, consistent with Sarah's value-for-money ethic, contained no songs that had previously appeared on singles.
The Orchids' next single, 1990's 'Something for the Longing', is possibly the group's all-time high point, a gently yearning lost love song with a gorgeous chorus. Later that year, The Orchids released a one-off single on the short-lived Caff Corporation imprint, the moody 'An Ill Wind That Blows'. Around this time, Drummond and Moody started a sideline career playing guitar and bass for their Sarah labelmates and fellow Glaswegians The Wake, a situation that would remain in place until The Wake split in 1994.
For the first three years of their career, The Orchids concentrated almost exclusively on 7" singles, in keeping with the British indie scene's preference for immediacy and disposability. However, beginning with the 'Penetration EP' in February 1991, The Orchids released only EPs and LPs for the remainder of their career. Unlike The Chills and some other bands who finally began releasing full-length records after a long string of singles, The Orchids seemed to have amassed quite a stockpile of good songs during the time when they only released four to six tunes per year, because there's no drop-off in quality evident on 1991's 'Unholy Soul'. Even more importantly, The Orchids' sound remained neither boringly static nor succumbed to the sort of trend-hopping jumps into acid house or other fads that felled some of their Sarah labelmates. A more reflective, mature quality started creeping into the group's later records, and the guitar jangle became supplanted, though never entirely replaced, by '60s-style Farfisa organ textures, while various female friends of the band began adding harmonies to Hackett's previously unadorned vocals. The 1992 EP 'Thaumaturgy' introduced this shimmering new sound, but its January 1994 follow-up, 'Striving for the Lazy Perfection', outshines all of The Orchids' other albums. Whether the group decided not to follow up a career highlight or to bow out as Sarah was winding up its operations, The Orchids quietly disbanded after a final performance at the Sarah Records farewell party in 1995.
The breakup wasn't destined to last, however. About a decade later, The Orchids reunited, wrote some new songs, and released their fourth full-length album, 2007's 'Good to Be a Stranger'. The reunion went so well that the group decided to stay together, releasing their next album, 'The Lost Star', in the autumn of 2010. The album was mixed by Ian Carmichael, who had produced most of their earlier work. Working at roughly the same rate of speed, and in the same manner, the band released their third post-reunion album in 2014. 'Beatitude #9' was issued by Spain's Acuarela label. Over the next few years, the band played the occasional show or festival and began working on a career-spanning compilation. 'Who Needs Tomorrow' featured one disc of songs from singles and albums, while the other side was all demos and unreleased tracks. The band also recorded a new version of their early song "Underneath the Window, Underneath the Sink" for inclusion. The set was issued by Cherry Red Records in September of 2017. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Nord is a Japanese noise project, originally form in 1979 by Satoshi Katayama and Hiroshi Oikawa. This lineup released a self-titled LP on Pinakotheca in 1980. The duo split in 1983 and both members continued to use the name Nord. Oikawa put out several releases on L∴S∴D∴ Records, but didn't play live. He ceased activities in the late 80s. Katayama continued as a duo with new member Makoto Ito. Ito left in 2003 and was replaced by Hiroshi Hasegawa (Astro). Hasegawa left in 2006 and Nord became Katayama's solo project. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
Mauthausen Orchestra is a musical group founded by Pierpaolo Zoppo, Italian noise musician of the early industrial and power electronics school from the 1980s. Along with Maurizio Bianchi he was one of the pioneers of Italian noise.
Zoppo's work explored morbid subjects, usually extreme sex, perversion, nazism, tortures and disease. The sound was a brutal collage of noise, electronics distortions and very high pitched vocals. The original Mauthausen Orchestra albums were published on Zoppo's own label, Aquilifer Sodality. The original phase of Mauthausen Orchestra ended in 1986, but reformed in 1997 to release new material. Between 1986 - 1997, there was also a Mauthausen Orchestra track called "Kill The P.A.S.T." from 'Power To Destroy', an early 90s comp on a label owned by The Grey Wolves. This was credited to simply "Mauthausen". Following a brief return to music in 2008 to work on Ambient music, on June 16, 2012 Pierpalo died. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
Little Nemo is a French rock band formed in 1983 and originating from the region of Paris (Vallée de Chevreuse). The name of the band was directly inspired by the comic "Little Nemo in Slumberland". They and fellow coldwave bands Mary Goes Round and Asylum Party were part of the "Touching Pop" movement.
The band was originally composed of Olivier Champeau (vocals, keyboards) and Vincent Le Gallo (vocals, guitar, bass). Their first releases were two cassettes, 'La Cassette Froide' (1986) and 'Past and Future' (1987). Before the recording of their first EP, 1988's 'Private Life', the pair added Nicolas Dufaure, also known as "Bill" (bass, guitar, vocals). On stage (and in the studio, starting in 1990), the group expanded to include Yves Charreire (drums), Ronan Le Sergent (keyboards, piano, organ) and Georges Remiet (guitar).
Little Nemo disbanded in 1992 but reformed in 2008 with a lineup of Le Gallo, Dufaure, Charreire and Le Sergent, releasing the 'Out of the Blue' comeback album on 21 September 2013. Former member Champeau has released several techno-oriented albums under the alias Doctorolive. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
Kosmonautentraum published mostly on cassettes and on the ZickZack label, with changing accompanying musicians until the mid-1980s. Ziggy XY also published a volume of poetry titled "Der Deutsche" and published together with E.K.T. the fanzine "Heute", which contained mostly collages and fictitious concert reviews and record reviews. [SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA]
One of the most shadowy, mysterious figures of the early-'80s experimental music underground, John Bender released three LPs and several cassettes of cold, sparse, abstract synth pop songs that later became the holy grail for aficionados of "minimal synth" or "minimal wave" music. Born in 1950 in Nuremberg, Germany, Bender relocated frequently as a child, eventually settling in Cincinnati. Inspired by experimental rock luminaries such as The Velvet Underground and the Motorik rhythms of Krautrock groups like Can, but with a limited supply of electronic instruments on hand, Bender began recording experimental synth pop songs during the mid-'70s. He issued his debut LP, 'I Don't Remember Now / I Don't Want to Talk About It' (which featured a cover of Faust's "It's a Rainy Day Sunshine Girl"), on his own Record Sluts label in 1980. 'Plaster Falling' followed in 1981, and the aptly titled 'Pop Surgery' appeared in 1983. Bender also participated in a performance project called Johnny Vortex along with artists Jason Tannen and Kate Gallion; they released a tape in 1986. His recordings subsequently gained a cult following among record collectors and college radio DJs. His LPs have been bootlegged, and original copies have fetched extravagant sums on the secondhand market. German label Vinyl-on-Demand finally granted Bender's music an official reissue in 2012 with the release of the seven-LP box set 'Memories of Mindless Mechanical Monologues: 1976-1985'. In 2016, Superior Viaduct released standalone reissues of 'I Don't Remember Now / I Don't Want to Talk About It' and 'Plaster Falling'. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Insekt was formed in 1989 by Mario Vaerewijck and Eric Van Wonterghem, respective members from the eighties legendary Belgian EBM bands Vomito Negro and Klinik. With their unique and compelling mixture of powerful rhythmic flare, nasty virulent synth strings, colliding sample collages, harsh angry vocals and characteristic freezing melodic lines, Insekt immediately caught the attention of the electronic crowds with their debut album 'We Can't Trust The Insect'. [SOURCE: SPUTNIK MUSIC]
A scatterbrained and perhaps drunken recording entity based on the collective talents of guitarist Joachim Pimento aka Adrian Borland (The Sound, Second Layer, Witch Trials), fuzz guitarist / keyboardist Zoe Zettner, fuzz guitarist / vocalist Lord Sulaco (aka Pete Williams), fuzz guitarist / percussionist Daiquiri J. Wright (aka Graham Pearson), fuzz guitarist Franklin Silverheels, and bassist Smoky Alvaro (yes, they apparently liked the sound of a fuzz guitar), the Honolulu Mountain Daffodils gathered occasionally throughout the late '80s and early '90s to patch together records that threw almost anything imaginable into a blender (from Kraftwerk to Tom Waits to the Ramones to Black Sabbath to Neu! and all points between). The ill-rehearsed results were always uneven, but a fun time was guaranteed each time they gathered into a studio. The only true ambition of the Daffodils was to have their records exist in obscurity until developing a cult of fans via a steady slew of dollar bin discoveries. In fact, as legend has it, the artwork for the 1987 album 'Guitars of the Oceanic Overgrowth' was designed to look as if it had spent at least two decades gathering dust in a record shop's sunshine-prone window display. 'Guitars' was their first album and was followed the next year by 'Tequila Dementia', and then the trilogy was completed three years later by 'Aloha Sayonara' (the 'Psychic Hit-List Victims' EP was released in 1991). Apparently the band split up soon thereafter; lord (or Lord Sulaco) knows why. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Affectionate parodies of pop music and occasional humorous cultural commentary gave the Dutch new wave band Gruppo Sportivo a cult following in the early 1980s, although much of their material was available only through import sources. Signed to the British division of Epic, the group debuted in 1978 with '10 Mistakes', an album that featured a lineup of vocalist / guitarist / songwriter Hans Vandenburg, keyboardist Peter Calicher, bassist Eric Wehrmeyer, drummer Max "Climax" Mollinger, and additional vocalists The Grupettes: Josee Van Iersel and Meike Touw. '10 Mistakes' and its follow-up, 'Back to '78', were produced by R.J. Stips, soon to join venerable fellow Dutch popsters The Nits. Gruppo Sportivo were introduced to American listeners through the 1979 'Mistakes' compilation, which gathered highlights from those first two albums. 1980's lyric-oriented 'Copy Copy' introduced new bassist Martin Bakker and added a three-piece horn section called The Skamasters, which included tenor saxophonist Laurens de Jonge, baritone saxophonist Jan de Ligt, and trumpeter Edwin Theuerzeit. 1981's 'Pop! Goes the Brain' found Vandenburg adopting an English accent in place of the familiar Dutch; by 1982's 'Design Moderne', Dick Schulte Nordholt had taken over the bass spot, and The Grupettes had become more of a free-floating addition, with Van Iersel joined by Lies Schilp on this particular outing. Another bassist, Michiel Eilbracht, was employed for 1984's 'Sombrero Times', and the original Grupettes duo had been restored.
However, it would be the last Gruppo Sportivo album widely available overseas; subsequent releases found the nucleus of the band gradually dwindling down to Vandenburg plus an aggregation of studio musicians and whatever past members were available to record. A steady stream of albums like 'Sucker of the Century', 'Young and Out' (1992), the live 'Sing Sing' (1995, released two years later in America as 'Second Life'), and 'Shake Hands With Vandenburg' (1996) followed, mostly recorded for Dutch labels, where Gruppo Sportivo's main audience now resides. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
