E.Gold (feat. Alexis) - ‘Separate Our Hearts’ (Chris Flatline ‘Distance’ Mix)

This synthwave song was released on Angular last summer, and this mix of it is something special. Here’s what was said at the time:

“A classic dance single, influenced by early house music and cold synth sounds, this release goes some way to documenting a burgeoning new clubland ‘scene’.

Helmed by clubs such as Defunkt, Reeperbahn, ECC/Offset Circles and Endurance and defined by the sounds of Coldwave, Italo, EBM, and New Beat, East London’s streets are thrumming to a new sound and this E.P. is an artefact of our times. Each track is a different feeling, by turns euphoric, downbeat, nervy and dreamy, Separate Our Hearts envelopes you, holding your hand whilst you close your eyes.

This release features some impressive remixes too. Chris Flatline is the other half of Alexis Mary’s new group Plus Ultra and his reworking is like a hymn to classic synthesizer soundtracks, Jan Hammer’s ‘Crockett’s Theme’ from Miami Vice is one that springs to mind in particular. The Horrors remix recalls the glitchy post-no wave electronic experimentalism of New York’s Crash Course In Science, and the EP is rounded of by Ghosthunter’s blissed out post dubstep comedown.”

My favourite bit is the Madonna ‘Holiday’ reference at 3.55. Look out for that..!

Peter Van Garderen and Lidia The Rose in 1982 

Nine Circles - ‘Twinkling Stars’

The Stool Pigeon, Cold Waves review - “There’s a touching story behind ‘Twinkling Stars’ by Dutch group Nine Circles. When Angular Records boss Joe Daniel managed to track down the vocalist to seek permission to use the track on this compilation, she burst into tears. She now calls herself The Rose and runs a foster home in Amsterdam, but she was 14 at the time of the recording, which she had never heard before (it was made without the group’s knowledge). Asked for a photo to go on the record’s sleeve, she submitted a ‘Greetings From Amsterdam’ postcard from the early-eighties. And there she was on the front, eating an ice cream.”

 One of the most unusual stories on the compilation. Nine Circles never entered a recording studio and performed only once, at a Dutch radio station in 1982. Unbeknownst to them the engineer recorded the session and over the years it was bootlegged over and over becoming a Flexipop cult track. Lidia the Rose never found out about this until I rang her up last summer. It was a bizarre and emotional phone call. Imagine being told that the music you’d made as a teenager was not lost in the ether after all but in fact a minimal electronic classic of 28 years vintage. Pretty weird.

Here are some of Lidia The Rose’s recollections of her teenage tape loop group and her first love:

“Nine Circles was Peter and me and the time we were together. There is no one who can give me that same feeling with making music.

The song Twinkling Stars was made in a period that I was very much busy with space, wondering when a ufo will come and get me. It was also the time I was very much in love with Peter. I believe there is more out there, we are just a little part of it.

When our relationship ended Nine Circles was no more, we never met again until seven months ago on internet. I had the idea that people did not understand the music and lyrics back than. I only heard a couple of months ago that there was music on a cd and tape. I was very surprised, since than a lot has happened. I am working with Peter together he is sending me the rest of the songs of Nine Circles, and i can do with it what I want.

I think it’s very nice that the music is not forgotten. It was for me a very important and still it is the best I ever had and did. Bringing these memories back gives me a good feeling. What I dream about now is bringing Nine Circles back, there are so many nice songs left that nobody heard yet and maybe this is the time they understand it.”

You can hear Lidia The Rose talking about this and more on the Guardian Music Weekly Podcast from a few weeks ago.

This compilation has been in the making for about two years. I first heard Coldwave whilst making an album with my old band The Violets. Our producer Al O’Connell played us some obscure tracks that he’d been given by the French DJ and producer Ivan Smagghe who founded the industrial post-punk EBM group Black Strobe.
These songs had an immediate influence on our recordings, they hinted at groups like DAF that we were already into but there was a fragile and beautiful elegance about these songs that I became intrigued by. Primitive synths, Boss DR-55 drum machines and seductive French accents. Most of these bands released just one record, usually a single limited to a few hundred copies, before breaking up and fading into the deep backwater of discogs and ebay, survived only by an iconic black and white photo and three songs on a cassette tape.
I obsessed over these bands for months before it occurred to me that it might be possible to get them all together for a release that might grant them the recognition they never received the first time round. My favourite song to begin with was the track Polaroid/Roman/Photo by Ruth, an impossibly sexy soiree of horns, synths and a polaroid camera. I decided first to go to Paris and find Ruth in the hope that they would be the key to finding everyone else…

tbc…