Tell me about the song you have on the compilation, what were the ideas behind it?
Danilo Carnevale (guitar, electronics): As far as I’m concerned, it was all quite spontaneous, we were very young (late teens, early twenties), and instinct played a major role on what we were doing at the time. Still, what we were after was a pristine, minimal and spacious sound where all the elements could have room to breathe. We were aiming at moving people at different levels - emotional, aural and intellectual - without being overwhelming. Then, I guess we were making the most out of what were our possibilties, technique was far from being our interest: this was were our punk/new wave roots were showing. In a way it was a development of that scene and we were trying to stretch it as far as possible.
How do you feel about this music coming to prominence once again, 25 plus years after the event?
DC: Mixed feelings, really. At first a great sense of being deprived of something. Regrets for a missed chance. I remember that at some point (around 1983?) our bass player replied to an advertisement he’d seen in NME and sent one of our early demotapes to this man, some Daniel Miller, who’d just started his small label. He replied saying the songs were interesting and if we’d like to send some more developed material. Little did we know that label was Mute records, and what would have become in the next few years! We thought we couldn’t trust some unknown person from a foreign country pretending to be a manager of an even more obscure little label. We were that stupid.
Patrizia Tranchina (vocals): I’m not surprised this happened. I’ve always believed in Jeunesse d’Ivoire’s potential, and this is a little revenge for the recognition we weren’t allowed at the time.
Jeunesse d’Ivoire’s track ‘A Gift Of Tears’ will appear on ‘Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics’, released 22nd Feb on Angular Records.
Eleven Pond - 'Portugal'
Eleven Pond’s ‘Watching Trees’ provide one of the poppiest moments on ‘Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics’. Their 1986 self released LP ‘Bas Relief’ was recorded in an abandoned swimming pool in Rochester, NY called the Hamster Cage.
This is the original video they made for their track ‘Portugal’, and recalls other mid-80’s synthy post punk such as Fad Gadget, Depeche Mode and Echo and The Bunnymen. The album Dark Entries Records re-released the LP in 2009.
In the first of a series of interviews with ‘Cold Waves…’ artists, I emailed some questions to Jeff Gallea from the band. Enjoy!
Hello, how are you and what have you been doing? This is Jeff from Eleven Pond. I’m making lo-fi minimal wave music, designing leather accessories and painting watercolors with my mom. James owns an electronics company. Jack is a baker. Dan lives in the woods.
Tell me about the song you have on the compilation, what were the ideas behind it? Watching Trees was originally an instrumental song I wrote that had a dark and raining electro feel. James came up with lyrics on the fly while I recorded it to a 4-track cassette player. The song is about voyeurism, being lonely because you know too much and feeling lost in the industrial world. We re-recorded it to 8-track in an abandoned swimming pool/recording studio called The Hamster Cage. It’s vocals on top of pure analog cv controlled arpeggiation with melodica and vocoder. Then at the half way point I come in with a driving chorus-drenched bass riff. It was a solid dance song then. It still is. Funny thing, I was the only one in the band who actually liked the song!
Where did the inspiration for this music come from? I was inspired by Joy Division, New Order, the film Taxi Driver and the film Two Lane Blacktop. James was inspired by anything from the 4AD record label and poetry. Dan was inspired by sculpture.
What was your working process like in those days? Downtown Rochester was full of abandoned warehouses so we had a great big rehearsal space. I wrote music to drum beats and suggested parts for the other band members. James consulted his book of poems and a secret diary. We would marry them together in rehearsals.
Was there anyone in another group that you would have like to have worked with from that time? Musicians? Not really. But I would have loved it if the band had been signed. We gave up too soon. Rochester was out of the loop. It still is. We had no options.
What impact do you think you’ve had on the music “scene” at the time, and indeed since? We had no impact on the music scene of the 80’s. I opened a night club called Club Zero so I had to quit the band. The music sat on shelves for years. Somehow the song Watching Trees has been brought back to life and has become “The Free Bird of the current new wave scene” (quoting Peter from Wierd)
How important do you think it is to do an array of creative things? do they all feed into music or is it symbiotic? Yes to it all. Creativity in all form defines who we are as humans.
What do you dream about? What’s the best dream you’ve had? Sex and flying. All my dreams are the best. Even the scary ones.
How do you feel about this music coming to prominence once again, 25 plus years after the event? We didn’t cheat. We worked hard to create all those sounds. No loops. Nothing digital. People can hear that analog purity. And song writing was influenced by a great post punk scene. That’s why it’s relevant today.
What do you do in your spare time? Avoid computers if I can. Make things. Explore.
What contemporary music are you listening to? Xeno And Oaklander Experimental Products Femka Project Arvid Tuba Minimal Form Absolute Body Control
THIS IS COLDWAVE
This was announced today on our website. A pre order link will be available soon.
Angular are proud to announce the forthcoming release of ‘Cold Waves & Minimal Electronics Volume 1’ - a new 17 track compilation put together by New York’s Wierd Records founder Pieter Schoolwerth and Angular’s Joe Daniel.
The album chronicles the secret underground cult genres of cold wave and minimal wave, which mostly originated from continental Europe between the years 1981-1985.
Joe Daniel: “About two years ago my good friend Al O’Connell (aka Alalal) played me some minimal synth tracks that had an immediate and considerable effect on me. They contained analogue synths that sounded sharp and icy instead of the warm squelchy noises that a lot of people use them for; Junos instead of MS20s, backed by the most primitive drum machines and oblique otherworldly vocals. Most of this music came from early-80s Europe, and most of the groups only recorded a few songs, released a 7″ and then split up before anyone noticed what they were doing. I like the impossible romance you can have with a band when all you’ve got is a tape with three songs on it (all in French) and a single black and white photograph.
Ever since I heard this music I’ve been trawling high and low to unearth the greatest gems of this synth sound in order to make a retrospective artefact of the lost genre of music known as coldwave. With the considerable collaborative help of Pieter Schoolwerth from New York’s Wierd Records, I think we may have done it.”
This release will be available as a double LP gatefold, CD, and digital download on February 22nd.
On one of my coldwave excursions to Paris to research our compilation I had to leave the apartment I’d found on gumtree two days early. I had lunch with Laura who’d once booked my band, and her boyfriend Apollo. They had matching tattoos of bats and Apollo was a model in a band in Paris, he was into comic books. ‘Tales From Greenfuzz’ was great, about a sandwich trying to rescue his girlfriend from an evil gang of Kebabs. Apollo also loved coldwave and minimal and told me about his friend from school whose mum had been in one of those bands, Tokow Boys.
A French new wave pop band, Tokow Boys were signed to Virgin and released this, their debut single in 1980. In the post punk pop vein of Lene Lovich or Altered Images, this track appears on last years amazing French post punk coldwave electro no wave (‘78-‘83) compilation ‘Des Jeunes Gens Modernes’.
Coldreams - ‘Morning Rain’
Another very rare track. More coldwave than electronic, you can literally hear the phased sounds of crashing waves over a dolefully detached French girl singing about the weather.
Couldn’t find out anything about this group other than that they were French and released this one 7” single in 1986 on Rock Hardi Records. This is the A-side, ‘Morning Rain’.
This track from 1981 was in consideration for the compilation but in the end deemed a little too raucous for a dancefloor oriented collection. UV Pop (Ultra Violent Pop) were a one man project based in Sheffield, UK. ‘Sleep Don’t Talk’ recalls loads of bands from that era and since. In that hardline synth you can hear Kas Product, Grauzone or Adult, and the distorted deranged vocal takes you straight back to No New York and the likes of DNA. It’s great.
'Regnbågen' - Jocke & Elliot
This is an incredible Swedish synth-wave song that was sent to me by Piers Martin of Cocadisco, London’s premier Italo Disco night. Jocke and Elliot are Luke Eargoggle and his friend’s 13 son Elliot, a teenage chess champion in Sweden. This is the first post on this blog to feature a newish track, Regnbågen was recorded in 2008.
Italo is a relative of cold and minimal wave, it was around at the same time, and beats with a similar pulse. The aforementioned Luke Eargoggle can be heard at the next Cocadisco night in London on the 28th November, see the flyer below for details…
This track was a million selling hit in France in the 80’s and made 18 year old Lio a bona fide popstar. A kind of commercial pop resolution of the underground synthwave that came before, but also with reference to Blondie, Kraftwerk and Motown.
Lio went on to work with wayward French producer/performer/songwriter Jacno, who produced ‘Mathematiques Modernes’, and his own ‘Elli et Jacno’. Jacno was a prominent figure in 80’s French pop, and also died recently. Lio can now be seen as a panelist on French X-Factor show, ‘Nouvelle Star!’
If I’m not mistaken I think this is the rarest and most obscure thing posted here yet. A google search of this band came up with nothing other than the fact that they seem to be named after a 1976 German film about two friends who swim the Atlantic.
According to discogs the band released a self-titled cassette in 1983 and an LP on Zickzack Records in 1985, which this song ‘der Tunnel’ appears on. It’s less dancefloor oriented than the tracks on our compilation, but has the familiar New Order guitar sound and a melancholy downbeat vocal which reminds me of Scars somewhat. Enjoy…
Minimal Wave Records
This label is the flipside to Wierd Records Coldwave coin in New York. I happened upon their great website (with a very comprehensive artist directory), Minimal Wave early on in my search for good cold sounds. They have reissued many minimal classics since beginning in 2005, as well as a fantastic compilation called ‘The Lost Tapes’ that offers a perfect snapshot of the minimal genre.
The site and label are run by Veronica Vasicka who has a radio show on NYC’s East Village Radio. Specializing in obscure electronic gems, she loves old new wave, italo and house music. Go take a listen and match your heartbeat to the pulse of an analog synthesizer…
This is a blog about a compilation that is being released on Angular Records in early 2010. It is called 'Cold Waves and Minimal Electronics Vol.1'.
Two years in the making, this compilation is a definitive artefact of the lost genres of Coldwave, Synthwave and Minimal Wave. It has been compiled by Pieter Schoolwerth (Wierd) and Joe Daniel (Angular).
