WELCOME TO
ELECTRONIC
SOUND 04
Welcome to issue 4 of Electronic Sound. We’re leading with the second part of
our interview with Gary Numan, bringing us bang up to date with his career, and
giving us insights into the making of his new album and his relocation to America.
It’s really good to see ’Splinter’ exciting the mainstream music outlets in a way that
hasn’t really happened since Numan first cracked the music scene wide open back
in 1978.
It seems odd that bands that use guitars and bands that use synthesisers are often
somehow seen as being at odds. OK, most of the artists in Electronic Sound use
synths, but it’s perhaps worth remembering that Numan started out with a Gibson
guitar around his neck before he discovered synthesisers and chucked the axe,
only to pick it up again and fuse it into his electronic vision. You’d be hard pressed
to define the music he makes now as either rock or electronic music. It has Robert
Moog’s circuit boards at its heart and Les Paul’s pick-ups buzzing away there too.
It’s a powerful combination, one that Japan’s Boom Boom Satellites understand and
have used to great effect, and with their new album getting a proper UK release, it
seemed only polite to pop over to Tokyo and interview them. So we did.
Another of our big features this issue is John Foxx, whose Ultravox
project was designed with guitars, only for the band to then dispense
with them after Foxx had left. And Foxx, of course, did much the same
himself with his first solo album. More than 30 years later, Foxx is
putting out more material than ever before, and his career has seen him
use pretty much any instrumentation that suited his needs. What these
people have in common is less the devices they use to make music –
although they’re all very interested in those – and more their approach
to creating music, and their willingness to explore and experiment.
We suppose that’s how we define Electronic Sound – and that’s why
we’ve chatted to artists as diverse as Polly Scattergood, Alex Paterson,
Boris Blank, Front Line Assembly, Clara Hill, Terry Farley, Fini Tribe,
Ultramarine, Schnauss & Peters, Irmin Schmidt and Sin Cos Tan this
issue. Sonic adventurers every one, and we’re looking forward to
covering more like them in the magazine, some of whom we all know
and love already, and others who haven’t yet made their first album.
Electronically yours,
Push and Mark