My Other Voice

Confession: I love The Sparks in theory only!

I adore their style and image, the humour, the irony, their fantastic album covers (esp. "Propaganda" and "Indiscreet") and the influence they had on everything that was good in pop-music during the last (almost) 40 years!
But with the exception of a few songs I can´t really bring myself to listen to them. It bugs me, because I really want to like them, not only because of their hilarious, epic song-titles ("Rock n Roll people in a Disco world", "I thought I told you to wait in the car", "Angst in my pants", "Lighten up Morrissey) but the fact that they are most likely the coolest, most perfect R/Pop band ever!


But then there is "No. 1 in Heaven", the album that fused pop, rock and electronic disco like nothing that was ever done before. An epic in only six songs that explodes with the last song, the title track. My favourite song on the album, and probably my favourite Sparks song is the morbid and experimental "My other voice". This strange, slow and delirious song is placed between the hectic "Beat the clock" and "The No. 1 song in Heaven". It could be considered a bit of a downer and it is probably the strangest song on an already strange album.


I always saw "My other voice" as a sort of Overture for "The No 1 song in heaven". If the latter was the one you´d hear all over in paradise, "My other voice" was the sound you´d hear while dying on the dancefloor, going through a quick purgatory and presto: angel choirs!

Now listen to My Other Voice


There is a backwards hi-hat sequence running throughout the whole song, it dazzles the mind and plays with the listeners perception of time. Elements are added one after another: A clumsy bassline, fluttering, slowed down disco percussion, ethereal voices that grow into an otherworldly crescendo that aims to go higher and higher. Shortly before the voices evaporate into thin air there is something like a demented surf guitar which soon turns out to be a vocoderized voice "humming" a half-conscious melody.


At this point in this experimental flow of ascending sounds and descending melodies the humming voice, as if coming from far away instructs us to "Listen to my other voice". Only then does the relative darkness of the track open up to Russel Maels most angelic voice. But his sweet, yearning voice says words that are more of a threat than a consolation: "You´re so independent but that´s gonna change real soon. With my other voice I can destroy this room. I´ll wrap my voice around you and I drag you everywhere. My other voice."


He then yanks the vocoder back on and gets even more sinister and demonic: You think you´re romantic. Well, I´ll whisper in your ear. I´ll be all you hear for years and years and years. You may be deaf to everything, you wont be deaf to me: My other voice..
The last syllables are pitched so high that the voice drifts off into the atmosphere. Slowly, all instruments fade away until only the backwards hi-hat is all that is left.

I can only imagine the effect this must have had on a crowd of drugged up dancers in Studio 54...

Automatic Everything

In 2009 everything is coming up robots, but is there still anything romantic about the man-machine?

"Terminator: Salvation" and "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" will both have giant robots smashing things up this year. The former will also have it´s own roller-coaster: "Terminator Salvation: The Coaster" will open at Six Flags Magic Mountain in California. But -strange marketing ahoy- it will be a wooden coaster. So robotic!


Then there is the news that the re-make of "Tron" will have a soundtrack provided by Daft Punk. On a smaller level, Röyksopp´s next single -a duet with Robyn- will be called "The Girl and the Robot" and most recently every politician is eager to have a photo taken on which they generously reach out their hand to shake the mechanical extremities of some robot. Say hello to our new overlords.


Robots and art are always a good combination and now someone wrote the first robo-drama for humans and robots. The machines were supplied by Mitsubishi and judging from this still-shot, the whole thing looks very serious.


All this robo-love brings a few metallic words to my head: "I am your automatic lover. beep." Let´s have a few looks and listen to Dee D. Jacksons notorious, cheesy but groovy eurobo-hit "Automatic Lover". Any song that opens with the words "Love in space in time, there´s no more feeling" and goes on with immortal lines such as "He´s programmed to receive automatic satisfaction" is a classic in my book.



Dee D is/was a clever British girl who used to produce sci-fi short films and comissioned the fabled Giorgio Moroder and members of his Munich Machine to do some soundtrack work. From there she took the idea to produce a record which turned out to be the brilliantly titled "Cosmic Curves". "Automatic Lover" and the follow-up "Meteor Man", produced with Gary Unwin and Keith Forsey in Munich became world wide mega hits.


Today, Dee D Jackson lives in Italy and runs her own record label where she reportedly releases hip-hop and trance records. I was secretly hoping that she became a robotics scientist, but running a record label in sunny Turin is certainly not a bad career choice. It goes without saying that she has a superbly awful website, complete with badly scanned photos. Must visit!

It Came from Behind the Iron Curtain

Science-Fiction was always a common vehicle to transport political and social utopia (or dystopia), despite of the political system in which it was produced.


The movies loved Sci-Fi as a great way to sell fear, paranoia or subversive concepts with the use of exciting visuals.
Sci-Fi from the Eastern Block is either hailed as great art (Tarkovsky) or it is basically forgotten like these:

"Через тернии к звездам" - (aka. Per Aspera ad Astra or Humanoid Woman / To the Stars by Hard Ways) is a 1981 sci-fi film, directed by Richard Viktorov in the Soviet Union.

Here is a short scene set to a piece of the soundtrack by Alexey Rybnikov. I love the dominant moog bass, the eerie synths in the background and the anachronistic harpsichord on top of it. Together with the strange and dreary mood of the pictures it creates a very Chernobyl-esque atmosphere. I found the last images of people standing in submerged ruins especially impressive. Since gas-masks freak me out I will probably have nightmares tonight.



Enough of doom and gloom!


You have to watch the next clip! It´s bizarre, beautiful, funny and very relaxing (thanks to the wonderful Russian language). "Moscow-Kassiopea" was a sci-fi movie for children. Directed in 1972 by the same directer as the above, it directly rips off "2001" in a hilariously fantastic way - you know: for kids! Check the colourized landscapes and the monolith, which looks like a wooden door. The aliens look like the Pet Shop Boys, ca. 1993 and towards the 7 minute mark you won´t trust your eyes when a space ship corridor turns into a trippy night-club.



Speaking of DISCO:
Here is more of "Moskwa-Kassiopeja" set to great 70s communist disco music from East Germany. I can´t say enough how utterly amazing this is! Daft Punk had nothing on this!

See kosmonaut-twinks floating weightlessly through their space-ship to the totally tripped out Moroder-esque "In den Kosmos" (into space) by Stern Combo Meißen. This was recorded in 1978, one year after "I feel love"!


Hoch im All (up there in space) is so future-positive that you´d like to travel back in time to enlist for the Russian space program.