Synthpop: Are Friends Electric?

[Miss Philicia]

I spent a lot of time in Escuelita and the wiki article can't even spell the name of the club.

*sigh*

That's because Marc Almond and David Bell spelled the club name incorrectly on the album sleeve.

[mecch]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRJ110ccR5Y
TGV - Partie 1

Propaganda - Dr. Mabuse 16:9 HQ-Video - Stereo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jspBeVa0sTs&feature=related

Howard Jones "What is Love"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE61Bz7IHKg

Getting Away With It - Electronic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_5AJWi-Fiw


Speaking of Trevor Horn
http://www.trevorhorn.com/discography/

[Basquo]

OMG I've been away for a few days from this topic but good on ya! to everyone! Simple Minds, Propaganda, Telex et al...anyone mentioned Yello?  love this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJFShE1VfEc  and this  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpbrhRTNKCw&feature=related

and my favorite "Angel No" I can't find a link to...

and we used to play a drinking game based on this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCMX24Ter8s

[GNYC09]

Getting Away With It - Electronic
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_5AJWi-Fiw

LOVE LOVE LOVE this one!! brings back memories...

I think Dead or Alive's 2003 "You spin me round" might count as synth pop?

[Miss Philicia]

LOVE LOVE LOVE this one!! brings back memories...

I think Dead or Alive's 2003 "You spin me round" might count as synth pop?

2003?  no comment

[komnaes]

I think Dead or Alive's 2003 "You spin me round" might count as synth pop?

From a purist perspective probably not.. cos if you do almost all Stock Aitken & Waterman's count too. I mean since the 90s not even the Pet Shop Boys have been consistently "synth", and definitely not Depeche Mode.

The dead hard synthpop bands that were active in the 90s and up to now is probably just Erasure, IMO. And among the new bands of the last decade only The Postal Service can claim to be strictly synthpop, though they only released one album, which by the way IMO is a masterpiece!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEILFf2XSrM

[Bucko]

It's really difficult to label much of what was released after the late-ish 80s as Synthpop, because it fades off into Techno.

New Order, who was one of the groups most responsible for this transition, produced True Faith as late as 1987, and it's still recognizably Synthpop.

Here's a great live/studio version of Perfect Kiss, though I think the ultimate NO songs (for me) are still Vanishing Point (even later: 1989) and Temptation (1985).

Les Georges Leningrad was a band from Montreal that has been labeled everything from Post-Industrial Toxic to Lo-Fi Noise to 21st Century Dada: I think that Georges Five was their finest moment.

[mecch]

What about so 90's Stereolab?

[Bucko]

What about so 90's Stereolab?

1990s music is not my strong suit: I'll freely admit that. I moved to Paris in 1990 and absorbed as much of that culture as I possibly could in the two years I lived there. When my French lover died, I returned to Boston but in such a black pit of despair that I really wasn't interested in expanding any horizons. I stayed in that state until I finally met someone in 1995 who helped lift me up and out. But he was not an indie-music fan; he was a die-hard classic rock, pick-up-driving construction worker, and his tolerance for "Brentmusic" as he referred to my musical tastes was very small, indeed.

We rarely went out, and around the house we'd play mainstream Adult Contemporary (ugh!). By the time we finally broke up in 2004, I was a very middle-aged 44. It took me years (and much exposure to the internet) to catch up on what I missed and recapture my naturally anarchist perspective on everything, not just music.

I'd never heard of Stereolab before your post, so I first did a YouTube search, found Wow & Flutter and tried hard to be impressed, to no avail. Like so much of that era, it was droning, limp and flavorless. It may have contained some synthy sound, but it sure wasn't danceable (not a pre-requisite but certainly a key part of the sound). It's aural Heroin, not X or Cocaine.

This strikes me as more Synthpoppy, though it's missing that self-conscious irony I associate with the sound.

//Edited to add: inclusion of Ace of Base in this thread also reiterates how Synth blended into Techno, especially Techno-Pop.

[Basquo]

I love the video of Perfect Kiss; it shows the band in normal light as if in a rehearsal.  But it was impossible to play in clubs (the video) because it's rather boring when you're jacked up on the dance floor. Always got better responses with this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r5MBBRRn1Y
and of course I always started it at 1:30 unless it was really late and the diehards wanted do a little opera with their late drugs...

[Bucko]

Nina <3

[GNYC09]

It's really difficult to label much of what was released after the late-ish 80s as Synthpop, because it fades off into Techno.

New Order, who was one of the groups most responsible for this transition, produced True Faith as late as 1987, and it's still recognizably Synthpop.

Here's a great live/studio version of Perfect Kiss, though I think the ultimate NO songs (for me) are still Vanishing Point (even later: 1989) and Temptation (1985).

Les Georges Leningrad was a band from Montreal that has been labeled everything from Post-Industrial Toxic to Lo-Fi Noise to 21st Century Dada: I think that Georges Five was their finest moment.

I knew I was pushing it but there was a little piece of my heart that was hopeful that D or A's 2003 song might be considered synth pop because I love them so much.  Oh well.   

[joemutt]

Sparks and Giorgio Moroder 1979.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbikVZgimqk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjKTxrtitgc&a=ooAEFlEkajs&playnext_from=ML

[decayingsinner]

I love "The Faint".

Glass Danse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qU_9zTD9B98

Agenda Suicide (probably my favorite of theirs)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3rzUVAHVd4&feature=fvw

[mecch]

Perfect Kiss was a perfect song for the walkman and long distance training