On this day, 37 years ago, Frank Tovey released his last studio album under his alter ego Fad Gadget. This album was called Gag and was released on 1 February 1984 by Mute Records. It features one of Fad Gadget's best-known songs and biggest club hits ‘Collapsing New People’ which was also released as a single and supposedly features German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten.

Almost sure is the fact the song was Frank Tovey’s tribute to his Mute label mates.

Blixa Bargeld, head and voice of Einstürzende Neubauten, once mentioned this collaboration in an interview which was recorded in the 2005 Einsturzende Neubauten out of print book ‘No Beauty Without Danger’.

“ We got together through a chain of coincidences. Fad Gadget did a record with Gareth at Hansa Studio and the lead singer Frank Tovey wrote the song “Collapsing New People” with the line: “Sat awake all night / But never see the stars / And sleep all day / On a chain-link bed of nails.” That was a direct reference to the Neubauten. Now Tovey had the clever idea to ask the Neubauten whether we’d play on it so that the whole thing wouldn’t be misinterpreted as criticism. That’s when we did our first recordings with Gareth. At the same time, those were also the first recordings that the Neubauten did at Hansa Studio. After all, in this session, Gareth was confronted with our instruments for the first time. That had sweeping consequences because directly afterwards he recorded Depeche Mode, also at Hansa, and used our overdubs from the Fad Gadget reels for “People Are People.” He later told me about that.”

At the time of the album's release, Frank Tovey made the decision to retire his Fad Gadget persona for good and released all future recordings under his own name.

Gag - Track listing

1. "Ideal World" - 5:39
2. "Collapsing New People" - 4:22
3. "Sleep" - 3:25
4. "Stand Up" - 3:30
5. "Speak to Me" - 3:23
6. "One Man's Meat" - 4:06
7. "Ring" - 3:53
8. "Jump" - 4:09
9. "Ad Nauseam" - 6:32

DISCOGS

Electronic artist VEXILLARY has unveiled their innovative new music video for the track, "The Geneticist."

"The Geneticist" appears on VEXILLARY's latest EP, SurViolence.

Video Credits:

Original art: Luqmn Ashaari

Animation and editing: Nikolay Yunkevich

Produced and directed by: Reza Seirafi

The opulent darkwave closing song from VEXILLARY’s latest EP, SurViolence has now received the music video treatment it deserves. Both the song and the video explore the link between science and spirituality and how they influence one another. The dark supernatural theme is embodied by the menacing lyrics of the song :“Chimera awaits at the tip of his hands, a snap of his fingers and the beast is in your land."

The video echoes the same theme visually. It presents us with a sci-fi dream sequence that plays like techno hypnotism.

www.facebook.com/Vexillarymusic

Black Dahlia is a Sydney based electronic music project fusing elements of new beat, EBM & industrial. Along with live and DJ performances in her native Sydney she has also released on labels such as Up North Records (Au), Deep Scan (Au), Insane Industry (Italy), Idlestates (Scotland) and soon to be Motorik Records (Au), as well as this first release on Berlin based X-IMG.
Her upcoming EP “Animasochist” on X-IMG is an explosion of sex, fetishism and empowerment; samples from vintage sexploitation and pornographic films, interviews about fetishism and 80s cinema milieu, paired with the sounds of New Beat and EBM which has become Black Dahlia's signature sound. Digital release February 5th with tapes to ship shortly after.

The first single by The Sisterhood, “Giving Ground,” was released on 20 January 1986, on Andrew Eldritch’s Merciful Release label, which was distributed by WEA. The details of this release are dramatic in the extreme, producing enough lasting angst and antagonism to fuel every goth club on the continent for a decade.

The success of the first album, First and Last and Always, released 11 March 1985, had catapulted The Sisters of Mercy out of Leeds to stardom. Success demanded its pound of flesh, however, resulting in increased strain on the band. Over the summer, founding guitarist Gary Marx left mid-tour, citing “personal reasons.” The band finished the tour and took a short break, then reconvened to write and rehearse for the next album that fall. Bassist Craig Adams walked out, ostensibly over the bassline for “Torch.” Guitarist Wayne Hussey left the next day. Accounts differ regarding the details and reasons for these departures, but Hussey and Adams quickly formed a band, with Red Lorry Yellow Lorry drummer Mick Brown, that would eventually become The Mission. WEA dangled a £25,000 advance, originally promised to the Sisters, to whichever group made an album first.

The Sisters had been disintegrating for some time before these departures, and the new uncertainty about the contractual advance raised the stakes yet again with regard to the future of both bands. Before the final London show of the original lineup, later released as Wake, Eldritch had given interviews about plans to form a supergroup with Patricia Morrison, ex-Gun Club, and Allen Vega from Suicide. In their frustration with Eldritch, Hussey and Adams decided to call their new group The Sisterhood, which was not coincidentally the name of the Sisters’ fan club. They booked a London debut for 20 January 1986. Eldritch threatened legal action over the name, but these threats came to nothing. He decided to beat his former bandmates to the punch. A single, “Giving Ground,” was released by a different Sisterhood on the same day that the Adams-Hussey band had scheduled their first gig.

This Sisterhood was eventually composed of Eldritch, Morrison, Vega, James Ray, and Lucas Fox. Fox, who played drums for the original Motörhead lineup (when the band was named Bastards), helped with production, and Morrison played bass, as she later would on the Sisters’ Floodland (1987). Vega did vocal tracks on the later Sisterhood Gift album. But for the initial single, recorded primarily to block former bandmates from using the name, time was of the essence. Due to contractual obligations, Eldritch could not sing on the new single, so he enlisted James Ray to do the vocals. The single was recorded in five days. It included two mixes of “Giving Ground,” the “RSV” on Side A and the “AV” on Side AA. The cryptic mix names alluded to translations of the Bible in English, the Revised Standard Version and Eldritch’s beloved Authorized (or King James) Version. The RSV was a twentieth century “update” of the 1611 AV translation for readers ill-equipped to comprehend its Elizabethan English. Given Eldritch’s professed admiration of the older version, it may not be a stretch to speculate that he considered the instrumental track the “original” and any version with vocals added a necessary evil.

Musically, the single seemed hastily put together, which in fact it was. Lyrically, however, the song articulates a refusal to compromise with others, and an anticipation of moving onward that, given the circumstances of its composition is difficult not to read as autobiographical. The AV track was instrumental, notable for featuring the drum machine Doktor Avalanche. The insentience of the machine allowed “him” to circumvent the contract with WEA that prevented Eldritch from appearing by name on his own track. The RSV version, which featured Ray’s vocals, shot quickly up the charts on strength of association with the Sisters, but sank quickly as well.

But the release of the single had nevertheless done the business. Hussey and Adams were forced to come up with a new name, and in March 1986 they became The Mission. Eldritch meanwhile recorded the remainder of the Sisterhood album, Gift, which appeared later that year with yet another version of “Giving Ground.” The later full album became noteworthy for its influence on later electronic music. At the time of the single, however, its crucial achievement was ironically enough gaining ground. That £25,000 check won The Sisters of Mercy time to regroup, time to experiment in the studio with early versions of “This Corrosion,” and ultimately time to begin recording their next album, Floodland, a breakthrough in songwriting, production, and global ambition for the band.


Giving Ground 7"(SIS 010)

Giving Ground (Lyrics)

In the place to which we wander
Reason turned around
And every fool
Will see his madness crowned
And every truth is swallowed up
By gently giving ground

What you have lost can never be found
Words are just dust in deserts of sound
Everything is lost and your trust lies broken
And the truth is drowned

I watch
Surrender
Because I know
...
Now I know you will not see
The madness we have seen
And now I know you cannot be
All that your (fright/flight) has been

What you have lost can never be found
Words are just dust in deserts of sound
Everything is lost and your trust lies broken
And the truth is drowned

Words are just dust

I stood but you just could not wait
Behind
Because I know you cannot be
All that your (fright/flight) has been

What you have lost can never be found
Words are just dust in deserts of sound
Everything is lost and the truth is drowned
Everything is lost in the giving ground

Everything is lost
Everything is lost in the giving ground

Turned around
Reason turned around
In the giving ground
In the giving ground
Everything is lost
In the giving ground

DISCOGS

[Christopher Vilmar]

On the 30th of January 1984 The Cure performed at the Munich Alabama Halle, Germany.
The show was captured and later broadcast by German TV on several occasions.
Enjoy!

Set list
Munich Alabamahalle 30/01/84
M (not on either of both videos)
Shake Dog Shake
Primary
Piggy In The Middle
100 Years
Banana Fishbones
Wailing Wall
10:15 Saturday Night
Play For Today
A Forest
The Top (2nd YouTube video only)

Encores:
Pornography (2nd YouTube video only)
Forever (not on either of both videos)