On this day 45 ago, JOY DIVISION performed at Effenaar, Eindhoven, The Netherlands
On January 18, 1980, one of the most legendary concerts in Eindhoven took place. For only 7.50 guilders (+/- 2 Euro), the iconic and legendary band from Manchester, JOY DIVISION, performed on the stage of the old Effenaar. Up to that date, the influential English quartet had only performed six times in the Netherlands. Exactly four months after the Effenaar performance, Ian Curtis committed suicide.
The support act that night was the Dutch band Minny Pops, which later shared the Factory record label with Joy Division.
The band's focused and sharp performance was professionally filmed and recorded that night, allowing you to witness it firsthand. Some songs were professionally filmed and recorded that night and would later, in 1982, be featured on the meanwhile by Factory Records legendary video release "Here Are The Young Men" (FACT 37v, IKON 2).
The following is the sixteen-song setlist from the performance at Effenaar on 18 January 1980, which are well documented and circulate on several popular bootlegs:
- Love Will Tear Us Apart
- Digital*
- New Dawn Fades*
- Colony*
- These Days
- Ice Age
- Dead Souls
- Disorder
- Day Of The Lords
- Auto-Suggestion*
- Shadowplay
- She's Lost Control
- Transmission
- Interzone
- Atmosphere
- Warsaw.
On this day, 45 ago, John Foxx released his first solo project album Metamatic!
On this day, 45 ago, John Foxx released his first solo project album Metamatic (Virgin, 18 January 1980), after leaving Ultravox the previous year. Opposite to Utravox' mix of rock and synth-pop, Metamatic became a pure electronic album. Although John Foxx performed ’Touch & Go’ and ’He’s a Liquid’ already with his former band Ultravox, the band was not credited on the Metametic album. Not surprisingly the remaining and continueing members of Ultravox didn’t credit Foxx when they adapted parts of ‘Touch and Go’ for their song ‘Mr.X’ (What’s in a name?) on their next album Vienna.
Foxx used a.o. a Minimoog, an ARP Odyssey synth, an Elka Rhapsody 610 “string machine” and a Roland CR-78 drum machine to produce the album. It was recorded on 8-track and engineered by Gareth Jones.
The album features one of John Foxx' greatest hits ‘Underpass’, which was previously released as the album’s announcing single.
'Metamatic' was named after a mechanical artwork (a painting machine) by Swiss sculptor and artist Jean Tinguely and became a must have album for (electronic) music lovers.
It spent seven weeks in the UK charts, peaking at #18. The album was generally well received by critics and is still cited as his most influential solo release.
The album was re-released on CD several times, amongst them some with bonus tracks (+ 6 in 1993 & + 7 in 2001) and even with a complete bonus CD featuring 15 extra tracks (2007).
In 2014 the original album finally got a vinyl re-released on Record Store Day with a gatefold sleeve featuring some new and rare artwork.
Metamatic (1980 - Original 12" tracklist)
- Plaza 3:52
- He's a Liquid 2:59
- Underpass 3:53
- Metal Beat 2:59
- No-One Driving 3:45
- A New Kind of Man 3:38
- Blurred Girl 4:16
- 030 3:15
- Tidal Wave 4:14
- Touch and Go 5:33
Today, 40 years ago, Alien Sex Fiend recorded their live album and VHS video Liquid Head in Tokyo (17/01/1985). Liquid Head In Tokyo was recorded at Tsubaki House, at the end of a sell-out Japanese tour. It consists of selected recordings of both shows the band played that same day.
The VHS video and LP have a different tracklist
A 1997 CD re-issue features 4 bonus tracks, though these are not live recordings but normal and 12" studio versions.
Liquid Head In Tokyo (VHS 1985)
1 RIP
2 Dead & Buried
3 Back To The Egg
4 E.S.T.
5 Crazy
6 Hee Haw
7 Ignore The Machine
8 In God We Trust
Liquid Head In Tokyo (LP 1985)
A1 R.I.P. (Blue Crumb Truck) 3:45
A2 E.S.T. (Trip To The Moon) 5:33
A3 Dead And Burried 5:00
A4 In God We Trust (In Cars You Rust?) 4:27
B1 Back To The Egg 4:47
B2 Attack!!!!!! # 2 5:22
B3 Lips Can't Go 5:19
B4 Wild Women 4:56
30 years Divine Rapture | Celebrating The Siouxsie and the Banshees 1995 and final album!
Today, 30 years ago Siouxsie and the Banshees released their eleventh and final studio album in the majestically divine “The Rapture”. This is a erotic-beast created over a year and a half with the Velvet Underground’s John Cale producing and mixing all but three tracks.
This however was not the dark-gothic masterpiece which people thought would close the career of those who forged that very path, instead it contains some of the more lighter elements in The Banshees work.
A natural progression is heard from their acclaimed 1991 offering “Superstition”.
It continues with the same flowing themes, Siouxsie Sioux as the confident, scorned femme-fatale, a chanteuse and not just a punk revolutionary, Sioux moved forward along with the sound built behind her.
From the start and throughout the twelve-track song cycle there is an experimentation, the title track itself is an eleven-minute journey that twists and turns through a haunting atmosphere like a wounded animal.
Along with “The Rapture” another gem to behold is the magnificent and melodic “Stargazer”, a very unnerving though accessible sound breaks through. The pleasures of “Sick Child” and the sublime “The Double Life” make up for any lack of dark joy an often criticism of “The Rapture”.
The last studio hurrah from Siouxsie And The Banshees is definitely worth a revisit, granted it is not cut from the same menacing cloth as “Juju” or “Peepshow”, nonetheless it is a staggeringly beautiful piece of work which shows great passion and depth, displaying Siouxsie Sioux as a singer and not just a screamer.
The Rapture, verse
“Wondering if I dare to say your name
Wondrous thoughts embalmed avow you came
By the crescent disc rising amethyst
How can love remain the same unchanged?
Moonlight plays upon this sunken brow
Midnight ink bleeds wet mercurial clouds
By the crescent disc rising amethyst
Somnambulist unharnessed storms the plow
By the crescent disc rising amethyst
How can love remain the same unchained?”.
The Rapture (Original 1995 Track List)
01. “O Baby”
02. “Tearing Apart”
03. “Stargazer”
04. “Fall from Grace”
05. “Not Forgotten”
06. “Sick Child”
07. “The Lonely One”
08. “Falling Down”
09. “Forever*”
10. “The Rapture”
11. “The Double Life”
12. “Love Out Me”
[Kevin Burke]
The 24th of February, which will gives you 24.2 of course , but this year it's on a Monday, that's why BodyBeats choose February 22. Meanwhile it will be almost a month ago when legend Front 242 pulled the plug on their live shows. However, their legacy will always remain, if only because they helped give the name, some even claim they were the inventors of Electronic Body Music. The fact that this genre, from the virtuous conception at the beginning of the 80s on, is still very much alive is proven by the now annually recurring 'International Ebm Day' in the De Casino in Sint-Niklaas.
On Saturday February 22 you can go 'stomping' to the music of Skren, Deleritas, Tyske Ludder, Armageddon Dildos and Portion Control.
Skren is a relative newcomer from Germany who is allowed to kick off, and does so with EBM that winks at the old dark electro in a post-industrial dance sauce, Just stir it! The duo from Düsseldorf was founded in 2012 but now seems to have kicked-off its second youth.
Deleritas is Belgian, with their cradle is in Liège they combines an EBM backbone with techno and aggrotech to create true dance floor killers. Deleritas recently released their second album “Culturae Doctrina” via the Steampunk Alien label. Get to know this album on the ‘international EBM day 2025!’.
Tyske Ludder is a name you should actually know because this formation bombed the dance floor in 1994 with the album “Bombt Die Mörder”, after which they also became very successful in our country with the album “Dalmarnock” on which the hit “Monotonie” made many legs move on the dance floor several times in the 90s. The years have flown by in the meantime but Tyske Ludder is still there, for example they released the single “Silvester” on New Year's Eve. Musically a mix of EBM and typical Teutonic dark electro. Their new album “Weltbühne” will be released at the end of January this year and will probably also be their soundtrack for the ‘international EBM day”. Here you go!
Armageddon Dildos is another project with a name and fame that put their ‘heads’ together in 1989 and for this ‘International Ebm Day” they used their joker, namely a real vintage Armageddon Dildos set. Or electro from the 90s, strongly influenced by the EBM and the darker electro exploits typical of the German electro wave of the 90s but also carrier of an American electro crossover fever. From east to west with this “Homicidal Maniacs”.
As headliner, the still living legend Portion Control was chosen. A band that made the electro industrial scene unsafe from the early 80s, when silence in the 90s, only to resurface again in 2004, to never leave again. Between electro with a sense for experiment and occasionally there's even room for poppy escapade. But always 'to the point' and since the 80s to the present still Cult with a capital C. As you can see, Electronic Body Music can be quite versatile, so come and convince yourself on February 22 at the wonderful De Casino in Sint-Niklaas.
An organization of Bodybeats Production of course, so surf to their website for all practical and information!
http://www.bodybeats.be/en/international-ebm-day/
Click this link for your tickets!
https://decasino.be/concert/ebm-day-2025/
Check-in on the Facebook eventi
https://www.facebook.com/events/897008528917224
