Island Records | UK | 7" | 1981 | WIP 6721
Down To Earth: Interference UK 7″ [1981]
- Interference
- Fear Is The Thing
This is the kind of record that I live for. It’s not even a great record, on the great scheme of things, but what makes me dig through the bins in a dusty record store are tarnished gems like this one. It’s the type of record that I would pick up and examine just on seeing its cover. When I did that a decade ago, I was greeted by the news that this was not just an obscure synthesizer/New Wave production from 1981. That alone is reason to buy. No.
This record was even more rarified by the fact that it was produced by Martin Rushent in that golden year where he could do no wrong. He produced gold synthpop records like they were going out of style. Even for a song that was effectively banned from UK airplay, like Pete Shelley’s “Homosapien,” it was a well known benchmark amongst the cognoscenti and a high water mark of that high water year. Which makes this record all the more mysterious and intriguing, because as someone who was reasonably well connected with the zeitgeist of 1981 and especially aware of Martin Rushent’s event horizon of the Roland Microcomposer and Linn Drum, it’s flabbergasting to me that 21 years later, I happened across a copy of this record for the first time ever.
The hi-tech leather mac trio on the cover are completely unknown to me. They have no recognizable names and as far as I can tell, this is their only shot at the brass ring. The A-side sounds a little more live in the studio than the rest of the Rushent Class of ’81. There are real guitars squeezed in there and I’m not a betting man, but from the sound of things, the drums are acoustic, since they were augmented with white noise pads or perhaps even keyboard percussion. In other words, this record sounds like the late 70s and not the early 80s. The distinctive Roland Microcomposer is definitely there so my guess is that Rushent produced this before he had the Linn in hand. This would place it in earlier in the Rushent ’81 timeline than his productions for Shelley, The Human League and Altered Images. He may have even committed this to tape in 1980.
Vocally, the lead singer brings to mind Richard Strange from Doctors of Madness. He favors Cockney overstatement such that “radio” comes out like “rai-dee-oooow.” “Interference” is a zippy little number whose greatest novelty lies in the fact that you are probably not tired of hearing it for 30+ years, unlike anything else you may have in your collection produced by Rushent and released in 1981.
Ironically, the B-side, in spite of its title, is a dub version of the A-side! In this way, the record most strongly reflects the Rushent ’81 mindset as he had a great interest in dub mixes that eventually culminated in “Love + Dancing” the following calendar year. The presence of vocoded vocals make it stand out from the typical Rushent dub mix and although the band’s cumulative output in fact amounts to a single song, the dub mix is different enough to be good listening.
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Post-Punk Monk 
Interesting – I don’t know this one at all. But hundreds of records came out in the UK in 1981; if it wasn’t being wirtten about in the Smash Hits / NME of the day, the release sheets from the exporter never said who produced, alas…
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ronkanefiles – Yes, this one reminds me of records like the Philip Jap singles. Journeyman work by obscure artists working with super high profile producers at the peak of their influence… and yet we still never heard of, much less heard records like this.
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I definitely should investigate the early years of your blog, Monk! I’magine strongly surprised to find this entry – I thought I’m the only one who knows about this single! :o)
Can’t say what prompted me to buy this one some years ago – maybe Rushent’s connection, like in your case… Anyway, it took time to sink in, but now I’m hearing this song with big pleasure and yes, I’m not in the least tired of it – such one-off works have a strange staying power to them (remember we discussed The News’ “Audio Video”? That’s another catchy one that doesn’t overstay its welcome).
Strange that this song didn’t get anywhere near the charts, given the “name” producer, a fashionable sound during the technopop explosion of 1981 – and even some media exposure. They WERE in fact written about in the “Smash Hits” (the singles review): “Fast, frantic, facile. The group can’t seem to decide whether to pose as Kraftwerk, Ultravox or three clones of Brian Ferry. As a result the music has no identity, nothing original to offer and will probably be a top ten hit”. Alas, it wasn’t to be.
By the way, the “Smash Hits” issue was from July 23 – so it may be that Rushent worked with them roughly at the same time as with the League. But the sound is of the rock band that tries (not being wholly successful, but getting admirably close) to be “futurists”. There are real drums and even real bass, and guitar too, of course – but augmented by electronics of all kinds, and nowadays I find “mergers” of this kind to be preferable to the wholly synthetic productions – maybe I’m just (temporarily?) tired of those and need to hear some “traditional” stuff.
The early dub mixes are much more interesting to me than even those of mid 80s, too. So this one is a not great, but very-very good single in my book. And thanks for reminding me of it :o)
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Vlad – You cut to the core of what sounds work the strongest for me thirty five years later. Wholly synthetic stuff sounds more dated to me. Bands that mixed conventional instrumentation and synthetics, preferably in perverse ways, go a lot further with my ears today. Best of all were perhaps bands that used treated conventional instrumentation that tried to sound synthetic! Think of how magnificent the Visconti-treated drums were on Bowie’s “Low!” I want creative thinking like that now!
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