CRC Retro Mix #36

1. The Chase - Propaganda
2. Follow the Rainbow (Razormaid! Mix) - Joe Machine
3. X-Rated (Moonitor Version) - Psyche
4. 19 (Destruction Mix) - Paul Hardcastle
5. Humatic (Razormaid! Mix) - League of Gentlemen
6. World in my Eyes (Oil Tank Mix) - Depeche Mode
7. Situations (Razormaid! Mix) - Cetu Javu
8. Thinking of You - Seven Red Seven
9. Handsome (Psycho-Ray Mix) - Camouflage
10. Komputer Pop - Komputer
11. Heaven (Extended Version) - Until December
12. Spooky (Magimix) - New Order
13. Render - Lassigue Bendthaus
14. W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G. - Front 242
15. One World - Ajax
 
Notes and other random things:
Update as of (02-01-12):  God golly ... is it already February?!?!
Just realized I forgot to do my notes and random things for this podcast, which was already over a month ago! Jeez. Well, it's on the way, plus a new podcast once I find time to record. New job, new family member, new year and a cross-country move on the horizon are taking up all my time at the moment. Did you notice all the "newness" in that last sentence? Yet here I am dishing out what Bryan Ferry would call "The Same Old Scene" when it comes to reasons why I can't seem to get podcasts up in a reasonable amount of time anymore. Or, like ABC's Martin Frye crooned, "Excuses have their uses, but they're all used up." Seriously, though, I can't recall being any busier in my entire life and I beg your indulgence with my slow updates of late.
Update as of (02-04-12): Let's look at a few of the bands in this particular episode (finally, right!?) I want to start with League of Gentlemen. Funny I want to start with a band I know almost nothing about, but it's really the concept of this song that intrigues me so much. Back in the 80s, there were a lot of industrial-sounding bands that were fascinated with the synthesis between man and machine and what it might entail for the survival of the human race. Mysterious Art, for instance, if you recall from an eariler episode, touched on the theme with Men of Glass. There were plenty of others. This excellent number from 1987 does the same.
On a side note, I have always been fascinated how Eastern Bloc industrial artists could always seem to write cool songs even though they barely knew English. Somehow they take sentence fragments and comma splices, add the letter "z" wherever there is supposed to be an "s", pluralize words like "informationz" and still manage to give me chills. That's talent! Of course, this band only had enough talent to do one song because I haven't, to date, found anything else by these guys ... at least in this incarnation. As we have learned with producers like Morton, Sherman and Belucci they can "seed" an entire genre by doing hundreds of one-off bands to create a scene as those guys did with the Belgian New Beat dance scene years ago. So, maybe the guys in LOG reformed under another moniker. I'll have to look into it sometime.
But there's more to this "Humatic" phenomenon than meets the eye. As with other electronic groups who explored man's servitude to the rise of machines there is an inherent lack of logic there that makes me chuckle. I've played it out for you below, though names have been changed to protect the innocent. (Note: this is a completely fictional account)
Klaus: Hi, Gert.
Gert: Howdy, Klaus.
Klaus: Say, Gert, how would you like to be in a band with me?
Gert: Sounds great, Klaus. But is this another one of your band concepts that requires I wear lederhosen on stage while dumping a stein full of Krautspatzle over my head?
Klaus: No, Gert. This one is much better. I want to explore the relationship between man and machine and how eventually, due to elementary chaos theory, all machines will morph and rise up against their masters and enslave them, breed with them and create a hybrid race of automatons that will exterminate all humanity.
Gert: Count me in!
Klaus: Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go get the drum machines, sequencing keyb(continued)