Last week I received an email from commenter Richard Anvil who managed to strike gold in his internet travels. We share many music obsessions and the great Technopop band Landscape was among them. He ran across a current Landscape website and on it was news of a BSOG that is forthcoming from the band. I spent the last quarter of the holy year of 1981 listening obsessively to “From The Tearooms of Mars…To The Hellholes Of Uranus.”
Landscape seemingly came from nowhere to be exactly the band I needed to be obsessing over in late 1981! Solid players [Jazz players, really] who were drenched in technology and using it to take their exceptionally witty music and ideas to their ultimate expression. Let’s put it this way: no other British band aiming at a Kraftwerkian target had a horn section. And this band had electric trombones and Lyricons!
And now word comes from the horse’s mouth that Landscape, in conjunction with Cooking Vinyl, have signed to produce a Landscape BSOG [5xCDs] this year called “Landscape-A-Go-Go” [what else] and it will contain all three of the band’s albums, in addition to single mixes, remixes, and live tracks and unreleased materials totaling 84 tracks. The crucial album “From The Tearooms of Mars…To The Hell-Holes Of Uranus” will also get a new LP pressing.
Landscape: Landscape – UK – LP [1980]
- Japan
- Lost In The Small Ads
- The Mechanical Bride
- Neddy Sindrum
- Kaptin Whorlix
- Sonja Henie
- Many’s The Time
- Highly Suspicious
- Gotham City
- Wandsworth Plain
Landscape: From the Tearooms Of Mars…To The Hell-Holes Of Uranus – US – LP [1981]
- European Man
- Shake The West Awake
- Computer Person
- Alpine Tragedy; Sisters
- Face Of The 80’s
- New Religion
- Einstein A Go-Go
- Norman Bates
- The Doll’s House
- From The Tea-Rooms Of Mars…To The Hell-Holes Of Uranus
Landscape: Manhattan Boogie-Woogie – US – LP [1982]
- One Rule For The Rich
- Bad Times
- When You Leave Your Lover
- The Long Way Home
- It’s Not My Real Name
- Colour Code [Tell Me Something New]
- Manhattan Boogie-Woogie
- Eastern Girls
As we can see, the three albums contain just 28 tracks, so this will be one of those very thorough projects with 84 tracks in all. I’m certain even the Landscape III singles will manifest here. It’s all a bit early for the gritty details, but fans can dream at this point, or they can sign up to the Landscape mailing list to get informed when the rubber is ready to hit the road. As I only have a handful of Landscape singles and 12″ers, I am absolutely ready for this one. Truth be told, I would buy it simply to hear the 12″ remix of “European Man” on CD! An extended remix I’ve been waiting to hear since 1981 and only came to know of in the 21st century, thanks to Discogs.
-30-
Post-Punk Monk 
Thanks PPM, never expected to hear this!
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drivel – That makes two of us!
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The first Landscape album and the two singles that proceeded it were awesome. Used to see them at London pub venues back in the day. Not so keen on the synthpop though.
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Rupert – I only have the “Sonja Henie” 7” and the B-Sides like “Japan” from the “Einstein A-Go-Go” 12” and while interesting, I still have an flaming torch for the “Tearooms” album. Such a vivid album incorporating so many directions tied together with a winning sense of humor.
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we’ll agree to differ and wait for the big box!
im hoping they will put that first cassette only release on it.
Japan and Sonjia are actually from that first album of course.
>
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rupertl – I’m sure it’ll all be there!
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Apparently they are looking into digitizing the 1975 cassette album https://landscape.band/discography/thursday-the-12th
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I was going to post up on YouTube, just for you, the Extended 12″ version of European Man but then found I didn’t have to, as the wonderful Mr ‘Rubellan Remasters’ has already done it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86vMF5ts1YA .
And for your information I found out from John Walters many years ago when I messaged him that the 12″ version of European Man was actually specially recorded in the studio, not remixed or re-edited from the single/album version!!
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Richard Anvil – So “European Man” was yet another Colin Thurston production where the 12” mix was a new arrangement/re-recording? I think it’s too our benefit that Thurston couldn’t wrap his head around the concept of a remix! It made for more interesting 12” mixes as with Duran Duran!
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All three versions of ‘European Man’, 12-inch, 7-inch and album version, will be on the box set. They are all remastered original mixes that were taken from one long multitrack version, synchronised to an MC-8 code, recorded at Red Bus late 79/ early 80, just before we stopped playing live. (And thank you for the kind words!)
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John L. Walters – Welcome to the comments! I had no idea that the LP and 7” mixes of “European Man” differed! So is it fair to say that the Roland Microcomposer 8 was almost like a hardware version of MIDI code programming in advance of the MIDI standard? Providing a way to sequence relatively vast amounts of musical notation with ADSR information. Was the MC-8 patched out to control another synth or was it restricted to the voices in its hardware? The bleeding edge of technology was an exciting place to be in that era. I will never forget the revolution in graphic design as the Macintosh was introduced in 1984; an analogous situation surely. Thanks for dropping by. I can’t wait to hear that box!
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Thanks for the reply. The MC-8 had no sound of its own: it was a computer that you could program with CV (Control Voltage) and pulse information to run music on several synth modules and synth drums. We used System 100M modules and a ProMars (anything 12V / octave) plus the prototype, circuit board SDSV that Richard Burgess had just co-invented with Dave Simmons.
We started each song by recording an MC-8 sync track (a square wave) to which every computer-driven part could be synced, along with a click track for live playing, and built everything up from there. (MIDI was a distant dream of the future, Apple Macs even more so.) JLW
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John L. Walters – Wow! So you used the MC-8 as a sequencer for live gigs then? I hope it was reliable in advance of the analog synth hardware it was controlling. Which were notorious for de-tuning under stage conditions. Being digital, I would imagine that controlling the synths with the MC-8 was a huge leap forward, albeit restrictive for live performance. The tone quality of the System 100 was legendary. It’s no wonder “Tearooms” sounded so fantastic with that hardware backing up the band, but of course it all stood or fell on the caliber of the songs themselves. Landscape made the leap from instrumental to vocal group with an excess of wit and panache. 42 years later, I still stand by that assessment.
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No, we never used it on live gigs, only in the studio! JLW
PS Link to MC-8 leaflet below, https://landscape.band/archive/roland-mc-8-leaflet
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John L. Waters – I see, you meant live in the studio playing. That pamphlet was definitely gold, though! I’m amazed by what ephemera you still have on hand to populate the website with.
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This is great news, as others have said, never expected that!
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Heard rumours of reissues via Cooking Vinyl over a year ago. Absolutely thrilled to hear this confirmed! Love ‘From The Tea Rooms Of Mars…’ and (to a lesser extent) the other 2 albums. Excited to see what will be included.
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In the immortal words of Etta James:
“At LAST!”
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Landscape a Go-Go: The Story of Landscape 1977-83 5CD Boxset now available to pre-order: https://landscape.tmstor.es/product/111519
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drivel – We are talking about in tomorrow’s post.
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