Listening to the Music the Machines Make - Inventing Electronic Pop 1978 to 1983: Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983

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SL: You jokingly said about yourself that you live in constant fear that people will ask you about your favourite record. For us, lovers of electric music, the book by Richard Evans, published on 17 th November, would be the perfect read. You’re right to say she was probably among the first journalists to talk to DEPECHE MODE, certainly one of the first to talk to SPANDAU BALLET, to SOFT CELL and JAPAN… she was very vocal and very reasoned.Record covers were similarly embracing the DIY ethos with letrasets and freehand drawn record covers being de rigeur. So he came up with this idea to do the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ and reached out to 12 bands; his hit rate was so great, he had DEPECHE MODE, SOFT CELL and BLANCMANGE on there, the three of them alone were enough to shape the new generation. Until this specific generation of people started messing around with keyboards without any musical knowledge, adopting that punk rock attitude with this new instrument, it wasn’t until that point that I felt that this story really started.

Vince Clarke and Andy Bell of course but also people like Martyn Ware, Neil Arthur, Rusty Egan and Daniel Miller. One of the things that irked Branson in particular was how OMD were the biggest selling act in the Virgin group in 1980 via the Dinsdisc subsidiary.

I discovered many new delights, even though I lived through this musical era and thought I had heard most of its influential tracks. If what you seek is a light and entertaining history of Electronic music, Listening to the Music the Machines Make: Inventing Electronic Pop 1978-1983 is the book for you. Listening to the Music the Machines Make is the revolutionary story of electronic pop from 1978 to 1983, a true golden age of British music.

There are two reasons for it; one is this period started 45 years ago, you’re not going to remember these details. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. I think that electronic pop in this period is so crucial in the development of music, and it was just time for someone to tell the story. Two, these stories have been told so many times that they lose their resonance and the facts just change a little bit to make everything look better or to fit with someone else’s narrative. For me, I would say YELLO; they were making really challenging and innovative records, they were visually interesting, they had all the bases covered.Music is always evolving from one thing into another, and it’s a very interesting process to read about. The book concludes with a section entitled REACTION which goes on to complete the synthpop story, where bands have been clearly documented as being influenced by the likes of Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan etc. Listening to the music the machines make’ is actually a line from an Ultravox song, ‘Just For A Moment’, which appeared on their Systems Of Romance album. Where I was fortunate was in having access to a number of those people who were available to answer questions, join the dots and provide extra clarification when I needed it.