Electronic
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I have mixed feelings on electronic.
I used to think they were shite (there are some awful moments), until i gave them a good listen at work one night. After about 6 hours, i found a strange likeness for their sounds.
if anything, electronic proove you can have many talented people together, and still produce crappy music.
getting away with is really good tho. i like that. there are some real good songs on that album. i think the more recent album is terrible though {and where was the peter saville sleave?}javascript: SelectSmiley('
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C
As I have already stated I made the trip to LA to see the first two shows which was an excellent perspective, especially as a majority of the tracks did not yet have vocals to complete them. What I did find quite funny was the number of 'musicians' onstage who were acting as though they were playing something but it was blindly obvious that what they were prentending to play was actually on tape.
This I could cope with but once they started performing back in the UK the comedy of the exercise turned to annoyance as suddenly a 'bass player' appeared and the whole experience turned into a ridiculous Karokee experience.
I must stress however that the first album IMO is an absolute classic.
DM
they weren't too live to start with and featured some notable manchester musicians (and managers, brothers etc) with them on earlier totp 'performances', they became more of a live thing later on when they had a proper band (and were less 'electronic')
I thought they were good. First album is the best. My fave song is idiot country.
Has to be said though, The Smiths and JD/NO are my two fave bands, but electronic are no where near as good as Monaco!
"Electronic are no where near as good as Monaco!"
I am frankly shocked to hear anyone say that. Stunned even.
DM
Originally posted by David Molyneux I must stress however that the first album IMO is an absolute classic.DM
Yes. Surely one of the most under-appreciated albums there is, it's a stone cold pop gem. Even the rapping sounds good. Well, better - better than on Republic..it's a bit looser, more fun.
I love the album to bits.
The other two, however, I can take or leave for the most part. I mean, not The Other Two, the other two Electronic albums...
Electronic, my second favourite band after NO? maybe! great music they made.
the first album was too synthetic for my taste, having a lot of nintendo-like sounds. but GAWI and GTMessage are a lot more sophisticated than the rest. i always wondered why... then good b-sides as Free Will (what a dance track!) Lucky Bag and Second to None let in the air the feeling that the best was about to come. and that was Disappointed. could there be more?
but then Raise The Pressure came, and besides it being a lot more sophiticated than the first one in terms of sound and production, it seemed to me too "light". i love Freefall, but then i get a little bored with the light poppy sound of the whole album. again, the best is on the B-sides: All that I need, It´s Alright, Imitation of Life, A New Religion, Turning Point. so for me the best of Electronic came with the power of their sound. where were Johnny´s guitars? where was the perfect combination of both geniouses?
i had the answer: the absolutely fantastic Twisted Tenderness. a couple of low points but a superb record globally. Make It Happen, Haze, Vivid, Flicker, Prodigal Son... that´s what i was talking about! the perfect combination between rock and electronics. the guitars being the main characters, right to the front, Marr at his best. Barney´s lyrics more deep and meaningful. and his voice doing things that he never done. and again the b-sides: Radiation (what a powerful track!), King for a Day and Warning Sign (just perfect) made the TT era their absolutely best IMHO. i think they found their sound there, i really do. besides i don´t think we could explain Get Ready without knowing the importance of Twisted Tenderness.
they splitted at their peak, which is good. but i´ll be wondering if their next album would have been even better... heaven knows!
.............this is all really interesting stuff cheers. even if i have just come from the pub (check the time). a lot of people i have met have the opinion that Electronic were never as good as the IDEA. I have my own rantings on this,and what a rant it is. It was unfair that they had so many expectations to live up to. If they had come from no-where, would people would have been less critical?.
Thankyou.
Monkeyroids.
cheers almanso, there was some confusion on the BLUE MONDAY thread where i thought you were calling me a bloke...! thanks for your views.
Originally posted by monkeyroids cheers almanso, there was some confusion on the BLUE MONDAY thread where i thought you were calling me a bloke...! thanks for your views.
no problem, partner! ;)
hope it helped
Originally posted by Liam Core electronic are no where near as good as Monaco!
..... you taking the piss??!!
Originally posted by almanso > Originally posted by monkeyroids> cheers almanso, there was some confusion on the BLUE MONDAY thread where i thought you were calling me a bloke...! thanks for your views.
no problem, partner! ;)
hope it helped
yeah it did, well it will.
Electronic?
Fuckin brilliant first album, I am 100% with Dave that it is a classic. It was an album that my mates (who didn't like New Order) bought, and eventually led them into investigating New Order. I was never a Revenge fan, although looking back, they deserve a lot more credit than I gave them at the time. I only got to see Electronic the once, that was at Cities In The Park for Martin Hannett.
Fucking great day out that was, I went with my Uncle John and his mate Jonesy, I was a fresh faced 16 year old, and we travelled down in a car, with shit loads of beer, and enough Ganja to keep South London going for a fortnight
We spent most of the day at the bar, and mingling around - fucking loads of New Order T-shirts on view, as well as shitloads of Factory T-shirts. I can remember 808 state, cos I had been a fan for a year or two. Just before Electronic came on - we made a move for the front, but the crowds were that mad - we didnae get half as close as we usually do at a New Order concert. Electronic were on for about an hour I think (Happy Mondays were the headliners) it's been said before, but I thought they were terrible - the sound was erratic, just as Barney's singing. The one saving grace was Feel Every Beat, a truly brilliant performance of that song, so that made up for things a wee bit. The Mondays just like Elland Road a month or two before were absolutely magic.
I still haven't got any of Electronic's live gigs on bootleg - if anyone wants to send me them.....
Raise The Pressure was played to death, and I grew tired of the "Disco" feel to a lot of it, but songs like Forbidden City, Second Nature and Out Of My League soften the blow. Twisted Tenderness saw them get back to their best of the first album, I still play this quite a lot, and songs such as Prodigal Son, Vivid, Haze, Flicker really uplift the album.
It's just a pity the bastards didn't practice and do live gigs, to make up for there being no New Order concerts to look forward to.....still the albums filled a horrible gap without the Order doing anything. I doubt there will be another album from them though.
Electronic 10/10
RTP 7/10
Twisted Tenderness 9/10.
To be honest, I thought the idea of Electronic was a cynical con to start with, and I guess in my own peculiar way I blamed Johnny Marr for preventing New Order from gigging !
I didn't hear any of the tracks besides getting away with it until last year, believe it or not, when I finally bought the CD to see what half the people on here were going on about. I was impressed, though not sufficiently to warrant buying the other two Electronic CDs, which I have still to hear (apart from a few tracks I've stumbled across here and there).
For me, the most important discovery was the revelation from New Order's AppleMac that was won in a competition by Jonny Lucas, which revealed that half the tracks on the first Electronic album had been intended as New Order tracks, and were written at the time of Technique !
Kevin Cummings got it right: All the time you spend listening to Electronic you are just waiting for Hooky to come in. And then you realise – he isn't going to.
Getting Away With It was a great single though.
Originally posted by Richard Firth Kevin Cummings got it right: All the time you spend listening to Electronic you are just waiting for Hooky to come in. And then you realise – he isn't going to.
Utter nonsense.
DM
Seminal first album, but I simply can't listen to the next two. I've tried but they just don't work for me.
Electronic, IMO, pissed all over Republic. It was the album New Order should've brought out..
i agree with most of the voices here. i first heard Getting Away With It on the local "Lite Rock/Oldies" station and it was months before the album came out. I tracked down the cassette single and played GAWI to death, both sides over and over again. Then i finally bought the full album (again on cassette). I listened to it non stop for ages. Tighten Up was my favorite instantly. I would rewind the tape while it was playing to listen for the break before the song and then listen to it over again. The electronics mixed with JMarr's gorgeous guitar on that track really summed up the ELECTRONIC sound to me. Better than Republic by a mile. It seemed like decades passed before Raise the Pressure came out. In fact, i had put my tapes in storage, bought my favorites on CD and could now preview discs at the local record store before i bought them. I bet that option lost Electronic a lot of sales that year because when i put Raise the Pressure on to preview i got sick. What a load of boring, cheesy dance garbage that album was. I put it back and gave up on Electronic and New Order. I figured NO were done and Bernard Sumner and Johnny Marr were so lost in their world of Cocaine and Ecstasy that they couldn't possibly make a song worth listening to ever again. Sadly for Johnny Marr, this proved to be true. Fast Forward to 2002. I got the promo single for Make It Happen at a college record fair, rushed to the car to pop it in and heard obnoxious guitar nonsense mixed with ridiculous lyrics and never played the disc again. John Squire and Johnny Marr had now both lost the plot severely. Cocaine was again to blame (i thought). Squire thought he was in Zepplin and Marr thought we wanted to hear him play with the distortion pedals. Well Mr. Marr, you were dead wrong. My two favorite guitar heroes let me down big time. What happened to the guy who wrote Draize Train and Oscillate Wildly? A lifetime of drug addiction will make you think you're something you're not. Anyway, Nancy Reagan rant aside, i finally invested in Twisted Tenderness after hearing folks here praise it (Almanso, Shug) and my friend here in town told me it was a great album. I found the Japanese version used so with change from my tenner in my pocket, i began to listen with an open mind. Turns out that TT is a fantastic album even with the shady Steve Winwood cover version. I can listen to this album straight through and only cringe once or twice and for a project that involves the lyrical disaster that is Bernard Sumner, that's saying something. Overall the debut is my favorite but they did produce another worthy LP with Twisted Tenderness. Raise the Pressure sounds even worse today than it did when it got released. What the fuck were they thinking...or were they thinking at all. i've honestly heard better Pet Shop Boy's B-Sides.
Electronic 9/10 Raise The Pressure 1/10 (one point for free) Twisted Tenderness 8/10
overall, 18/30...a D average but with the b-sides and some remixes, i'd give Electronic a C+ if i were grading them.
Monaco have two good songs. The only reason they're any good is because they had hooky and the one song where Potts tries to be Sumner.
Always thought the first album had a ton of potential, but never quite got there - but I was really wanting a New Order record. However, it definitely stands on its own and sounds as good today as it did when it was released 13 years ago. There probably could have been one or two more singles off of this one. I rate it a 9/10.
I never warmed up to the second album. Just too monotonous and over produced. Where was JM? I hardly ever listen to it. I rate it a 5/10.
I have thoroughly enjoyed the third album and still listen to it quite often. I liked the change in direction that brought more of JM's guitar into the mix. There are some classic tunes on this one. The deluxe 2CD re-release by Koch is a must have. I rate it a 9/10.
I think the perfect ELECTRONIC album would be Barney & Johnny having Hooky as guest bassist and Stevie playing the occasional (real) drums:D.....
My appreciation of Electronic is limited to listening. Never saw them live.
However, I love their stuff, especially the first album. One of the few albums I can remember that I loved every track on first listen. When I got it in 1991, on cassette, Getting Away With It wasn't on it. First time I discovered that song was approx 1993/4, on an obscure video show on a possibly even more obscure channel. Went on a serious crusade to find that song and next thing you know, I have it on 3 CDs; 2 compilations and finally on "Electronic" re-issued CD.
The next 2 albums were good but took a few listens to get into. The standout tracks would be: Forbidden City, Dark Angel, If You've Got Love, Time Can Tell, Vivid, Twisted Tenderness and Flicker.
Never be New Order but if I heard that Electronic were gonna release a new album, I'd be well chuffed! 
My favorite comment about Electronic was that people were hoping it would combine the synths of New Order and the guitars of the Smiths, but instead it brought us the opposite.
If only New Order could have held out to record _Electronic_ as a foursome, without that nettlesome Marr fellow. Actually, that one's a classic, easily 8/10, 9/10 some days, though I haven't played it in a while. Tighten Up probably could have slid in with Vanishing Point and Dream Attack and maintained the high standard of quality which the Order had kept.
Raise The Pressure...much less than the sum of its parts. That one should have been titled 'Lower The Boom'. Between that and "Nothing For Me", Sumner wasn't exactly making a positive impact at that period. At least Hooky was out playing with Vini Reilly...
I think this one re-jumpstarted Ralf n' Florian's career...when they heard what a mess Bartos had made on it, they figured their legacy was safe. Is there anything besides Forbidden City that's worth two shakes? 3/10.
I much prefer Revenge/Monaco/The Other Two to Electronic...and by the third album, I barely could be bothered to care. I do own both the Japanese edition and the Koch 2CD, and I think I've heard each of them exactly once. Just didn't do much for me, but maybe I should give it another spin someday. 5/10. I'm still trying to decide if the Winwood cover was a high point on that album. If New Order call it a day, will Barney decide to front the Healers? *shudder*
Smiths reunion in 2005.
UPDATE: After I wrote this, I decided to give TT another spin...and maybe...I'll give it a 6/10 for Haze, the title track, and Prodigal Son...but it really doesn't move me...
--Sam
Dunno if anyone else here agrees with me but, first album apart (meaning the original orange background version - even though it's still not in the same league as some NO artwork), ALL of Electronic's record sleeve art was utter shit!
I'm sure they thought karl bartos would bring some great electronics to the party, only to find out he was bored of that and wanted a change!
Originally posted by Fitter, Flabbier Dunno if anyone else here agrees with me but, first album apart (meaning the original orange background version - even though it's still not in the same league as some NO artwork), ALL of Electronic's record sleeve art was utter shit!
gotta agree with you there mark,raise the pressure sleeve,wtf ? some sort of gay connotation? child in a meadow smelling flowers etc! back to the topic; really enjoyed the first album----------- 9/10 rtp- absolute tat-------------------------3/10 twisted-----------------------------------9.5/10 enjoyed twisted tenderness,liked the "rocky" tracks,especially like no other/late at night/prodigal son. why they did'nt "properly" release late at night is beyond me. it's the best track on the album!
I have only heard acouple of Electronic songs - Get The Message and their first single that featured the Pet Shop Boys (Getting away with it). I wasn't too impressed to go out and buy their albums.
Originally posted by Fitter, Flabbier Dunno if anyone else here agrees with me but, first album apart (meaning the original orange background version - even though it's still not in the same league as some NO artwork), ALL of Electronic's record sleeve art was utter shit!
For the most part I will agree with you, but the artwork for the VIVID single I think was fantastic! Especially with the Die-cut artwork
TT's artwork was pretty cool too...but other than that, I can't think of much. Tequilla still affecting me so:(
Originally posted by DreamsAlwaysEnd I have only heard acouple of Electronic songs - Get The Message and their first single that featured the Pet Shop Boys (Getting away with it). I wasn't too impressed to go out and buy their albums.
For the most part, you may be right. It is an aquired taste to be sure. But TT is a pretty fab album once you give it chance to grow on you. I didn't like it much at first, but it really did grow on me.
Used to watch a pair of drunks singalong to Forbiden City in the Bulls Head , Walkden. One of 'em is dead now and its no longer on the Jukebox,the other one still sings the chorus to himself now and again and people who knew his mate nod and sometimes smile. That said, he is a tuneless fucker so most people ask him if he fancies a pint, that usualy snaps him out of it.
some of the tunes on RTP were leftover tracks written by Bartos for the Esperanto album, just having barney & marr stuck on and re-produced.
Originally posted by The Happy One Smiths reunion in 2005.--Sam
Did you know Morrissey is coming back with his first solo album in seven years this spring?
