Sunday, March 13, 2011

Song of the day

"The Great X-1", by The Informatics.

(Click to play. Right click to download.) (Somebody please let me know if this works. I am experimenting with something.)

With synth wave, cold wave, minimal wave or whatever wave being one of the flavours of 2010/11, it is worth remembering that Australia had a very strong synth-band contingent back around the start of the 80s.

Imagine: the small bar at an inner-city pub. The band: a shocking sight. No drums. No guitars. A couple of people on synths and a programmed drum machine. Guys in the band: extremely thin with severely fringed haircuts. Girls: black skirts and stockings, maybe with a horizontally striped t-shirt. Black and red perhaps. Quite possibly somebody up the front wiggling around and bashing a Syndrum (tm) to the second and fourth beats. As Phil Oakey sang, these are the things that dreams are made of.

This song is a good example of what this country was capable of. In fleeting moments it gets a bit proto-Kids In The Kitchen, but those moments soon pass. I think they were from Melbourne but I might be wrong. Biographical information is hard to come by.

You can also listen here, while looking at a typical early-80s post-industrial-type picture: