Keeping it current with a former Man-Machine: An interview with Wolfgang Flür

I interviewed Wolfgang Flür for the latest edition of Electronic Sound magazine.

Flür’s new album Times features Boris Blank out of Yellow, Thomas Vangarde out of Daft Punk, Peter Hook out of New Order, Juan Atkins out of, er, Juan Atkins, and more besides.

We talked about German mythology, the passing of time, songwriting inspiration during his Kraftwerk days, and his partnership with the brilliant Peter Duggal, who joined us for the interview. I was chuffed that Peter was with us: it gave an interesting spin to the piece.

Wolfgang is, of course, most famous for being a member of Kraftwerk, a group I think are better than sliced bread AND bees knees. This is the first time I've interviewed someone inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A lot of pressure, I guess, although I'm not the type of person to be starstruck.

While researching for the interview, I saw a video of Wolfgang gently complaining about a previous Electronic Sound interview in which they led with him being a member of Kraftwerk. This is the most famous thing about him, but it got me wondering. Could you really get away with not mentioning the K word?

So I took a risk. He may not have noticed, but I deliberately didn't mention Kraftwerk for the entire interview. The name did not pass my lips. It felt like a dereliction of journalistic duty, disrespectful even, but my reasoning was calculated:

(a) The theme of the album is "times" and I wanted our conversation to be rooted in the here-and-now and his latest work.

(b) There is probably nothing more to say about his involvement with a band he departed nearly four decades ago.

(c) He was going to mention the K word anyway, which he did to beautiful effect as you can see in the article.

I salute you, Wolfgang and Peter. Times well spent. The article can be read in issue 124 of Electronic Sound available at all good retailers, or, via subscription, on the Electronic Sound website.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: J is for Juan Atkins (2010)

Further Fats: Breaking – Kraftwerk legend has important message about Electronic Sound (2010)

When monks dropped the hottest track of 1991

When Enigma' Sadeness (Part 1) topped the singles chart in early 1991, it was confusing and weird. Like ravioli, which are pillows you can eat.

The song was sexy and sinful, which left the religious 17-year-old Fats quaking in my cassock. Even more transgressively, they spelled 'sadness' wrong, which was enough to make my communion wafers crumble.

The devil did try to stop Enigma. A week before Sadeness topped the charts, Iron Maiden scored an unlikely number one with Bring Your Daughter... To The Slaughter. Lead singer Bruce Dickenson said he wrote the song to "scare the living daylights out of Cliff Richard". Sadeness knocked Slaughter off its perch, but it was then in turn knocked off the top spot by Queen's bombastic Innuendo, although whether Mercury's lot were on the side of God or the Devil remains a mystery.

It's tempting to write off Sadeness as a novelty song, like Mr Blobby, the Crazy Frog or anything by Phil Collins. It had Latin and sadism and foghorns and the Bible. One reviewer called it "easy listening sex music" – which sounds either brilliant or awful, I'm not quite sure which. But it far outstretched novelty songwriting, and the parent album MCMXC a.D. was a brilliant piece of experimental weirdness. 

The monks are, of course, the most memorable thing about the track. Listen to them, carping on about angels and heaven and stuff. At least, I think that was the subject matter– it was all in Latin. This is not as unique as you might think – even Little Mix have had a middle-eight in Latin.

Sadeness also sampled James Brown and Soul II Soul for its beats. Sampling was rife when Enigma charted at the tail end of 1990. Technology was super limited back then, so producing any kind of sample of note was an achievement. And they were monks so they probably didn't even have plug sockets.

The "Part One" of Sadeness has always intrigued me, as it suggested that a Part Two would follow. This didn't happen until 2016, when Enigma finally released Sadeness (Part II), based around Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and featured on their eighth studio album The Fall Of A Rebel Angel. At this rate, there will be a third part in 2049.

My track Sophie's Faves, recorded with Fritz von Runte and featured on the Sleeve Notes album, includes Enigma as one of its various musical flavours. Its inclusion is very deliberate: I'm no longer religious, but those monks still make my halo wibble.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: Q is for Queen (2010)

Further Fats: Dance music: it's all so wrong (2019)

Ultimate 90s Number One: Livin' the ABBA Dream

Here is a new edition of everyone's 4,980,337th favourite blog series, Ultimate 1990s Number One. I am trawling through every UK number one single of the 1990s and deciding which is the bleepiest banger, the king of the beats, the bossest of the boss drums.

Here are 11 more hopefuls.

The contenders

Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds: Three Lions | Bombalurina: Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini | Boyz II Men: End of the Road | Erasure: Abba-esque (EP) | Gary Barlow: Forever Love | Jamiroquai: Deeper Underground | Lenny Kravitz: Fly Away | Livin' Joy: Dreamer | Partners in Kryme: Turtle Power | Westlife: Swear It Again | Wet Wet Wet: Goodnight Girl

Turtles versus Timmy

Who's better? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Timmy Mallet? The Turtles are named after Italian renaissance painters, while Timmy is pretty nifty with a paintbrush. The Turtles love wielding nunchucks, while Timmy has a huge mallet. They all dress like an explosion in a Dulux factory.

The answer is neither. The heroic half-shelled Partners In Kryme and Mr Mallet's Bombalurina outfit both produced terrible songs, so they can be eliminated immediately. Incidentally, check out Timmy's cycling adventures online – they're lovely.

No, no, no

I have a whole bunch of songs I want to dismiss next. I shall try to be polite, even though the following songs make me want to rip my ears off.

I've checked the lyrics, and apparently Boyz II Men's End Of The Road isn't about roadworks. They're still going, apparently, doing reality television and performing the national anthem at sporty sport games. It's anyone's guess whether they ever completed their transition from boyz to men.

Cheshire's cheesiest pop cat Gary Barlow scored ten number one singles in the 1990s, either solo or as part of Take That. Despite his obvious songwriting prowess, I wouldn't recognise a single note of Forever Love even if you whispered it into my lughole while pantomime horsing together.

"I wish that I could fly," said Orville the du-- er, I mean, Lenny Kravitz on his 26th single Fly Away. Flying was a common theme for 1990s number one singles, with flying-themed chart toppers from R Kelly, Westlife and U2. Even Offspring reckoned they were pretty fly. Fly Away is perhaps the most asinine of the lot of them.

Here is a list of things I would rather do than listen to Westlife's Swear It Again. Chew razor blades. Snort spiders. Wear a cheese grater as underpants. Have a gong bath with Ann Widdecombe. Listen to Swear It Again twice.

Oh and Wet Wet Wet? No no no.

Eyeballs and guns  

I remember watching the Euro '96 match in which Gareth Southgate fudged a crucial penalty. I remember because, until a couple of years ago, it was the only football match I have watched all the way through. I'm not a footie lad. However, I do love The Lightning Seeds and standup comedy, so Three Lions was alright by me. The song is remarkable in that it has spent three weeks at number one in three totally separate weeks across 22 years.

I suppose, objectively speaking, Deeper Underground is a banger of a tune. However, on this blog in 2008, I wrote "There is no excuse for Jamiroquai: he makes me want to smash in my eyeballs with guns." Crikey, so much body horror on this blog. My ire has dissipated over the years, but his blend of furry-hatted squeaky cheese still misses the mark with me. Deeper Underground is from the Godzilla (1998) soundtrack, which has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 20%. Enough said.

Showing some love

Which leaves us with two electronic music contenders (pictured above). Will either of them get through to the final, or will I do my usual thing of being sniffy about both of them?

Dreamer was Paolo and Gianni Visnadi's attempt to emulate Robin S's Show Me Love. Fact: it was voiced by Snap!'s live vocalist Janice Robinson. Between Dreamer's first foray into the top 20 in 1994 and its eventual number one spot eight months later in 1995, the duo also had a smash hit as Alex Party (Don't Give Me Your Life). Livin' Joy are the real deal, and they go through to the next round.

While Erasure's tribute to Abba seemed frivolous, with the pair dragging up for the promo video, the Abba-esque EP is a chunky bit of electronic music. An unashamed analogue bleepfest. Their version of SOS is one of the best headphone listens of the 1990s. Novelty be damned, this easily goes through to the next round.

Thank goodness. A happy result.

See more Ultimate 90s number ones 

Come to snazzy: Wear Aphex Twin, scare your friends, regret nothing

If you've ever wanted to wear Aphex Twin all over your body, you could be in luck.

The New York clothing company Supreme has launched an Aphex clothing line. It includes GoreTex jackets, football jerseys, shorts and thermals, and something called a Mantis coin knife. Hey, an insect needs to defend itself.

The hoodie they showed off on Instagram is exquisitely ridiculous, with Aphex's grinning face glaring at you in 360 degrees of grin. It retails for over £500, which is one pound for every time someone is going to crap themselves when they see you wearing it.

There's a mohair sweatshirt with a low-res Aphex photo in grubby pink. There's a pair of thermal shorts, already sold out, dotted with his iconic logo. And there's a dayglo orange formal shirt with "Come To Daddy" written where your appendix scar is meant to be.

When I think of Aphex Twin's musical output, I don't really think of clothing. I suppose there's a track on Richard D. James Album called Fingerbib, which sounds a bit like a partial glove. And on his 2015 EP Computer Controlled Acoustic Instruments pt2, there are five tracks with the word "hat" in their titles. There are probably more, but halfway through researching this, I had to have a serious word with myself about how I spent my spare time.

The Supreme clothing line is a refreshing take on Aphex Twin merchandise which, in nightclubs up and down the country, has become as ubiquitous as beanie hats and Turkey teeth. I hope next season brings Leftfield loafers and Chemical Brothers cummerbunds.

Further Fats: Chosen Words: D is for Design (2010)

Further Fats: It's got a cow as a logo (2022)

Ultimate 90s number one: It's like that (and that's the way it wiggle wiggles)

Here is another episode of Ultimate 1990s Number One. In each edition of this long-running blog series, I pick a bunch of number one singles from the 1990s UK singles chart. I pit them against each other, guided by two unclear and slightly unhelpful criteria, namely:

1. Is this song a banger?

2. Is this song bleepy, i.e. an electronic music track.

Once have have gone through all of the 1990s number ones, there will be a grand final. Probably.

The contenders

Aqua: Doctor Jones | The Bluebells: Young at Heart | Fugees: Ready or Not | Hale and Pace and the Stonkers: The Stonk | The Outhere Brothers: Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) | Queen: Innuendo | R. Kelly: I Believe I Can Fly | Robson & Jerome: I Believe / Up on the Roof | Robson & Jerome: What Becomes of the Brokenhearted / Saturday Night at the Movies / You'll Never Walk Alone | Run-DMC vs. Jason Nevins: It's Like That | Take That: How Deep Is Your Love

Let's not stonk

As with previous listings, I am more than happy to discard some contenders immediately.

Young At Heart by The Bluebells is a beige-dotted line painted down the middle of a road to nowhere. Its 1993 chart-topping rerelease was for a Volkswagen Golf advert, which is about right. A mid song for a mid car. Bananarama's Northern Soul-inspired original is way better.

"Let's stonk to the rhythm of the honky tonk," sang Hale & Pace. "Stick a red nose on your conk and let's stonk." No. I don't want to stick anything on my conk, or on my donk, or my badonkadonk. Thanks anyway Gareth and Bertrand, or whatever your names were.

I don't know if it's because I walked under a ladder or I saw 13 black cats pretending to be a magpie, but for some reason this latest random selection of hit singles has given me two Robson & Jerome singles. I reject your weedy krap-aoke.

I'm also discarding R Kelly into a pit of fire that is on a spaceship that is crashing into the heart of the sun while the universe explodes and all of time and space vortexes in on itself causing every shred of reality to cease to exist until all we are left with is an eternal silence unto infinity in which we can hear precisely zero R Kelly songs.

Doctor who?

The next few tunes are all bangers in their own right, but not bleepy enough to progress in this competition.

If I want medical drama, I'll watch Casualty or House. In fact, Aqua's Doctor Jones barely had any medical content. A bog standard love song, dressed up as a pretty decent pop tune. Very 90s, very bouncy, and the first clue we had that Aqua were going to be more than a plastic-coated one-hit wonder.

The BeeGees' version of How Deep Is Your Love failed to top the charts: it was eclipsed by the tartan juggernaut that was Mull Of Kintyre. Take That's somewhat supine version did achieve number one status, and it was their final swansong before their 90s split. It's what I would describe as a proper pop tune, like a Volvo is a proper car or cheddar is proper cheese.

 

Hi Freddie, can you please give us a single that is somewhere between Bohemian Rhapsody, Faith No More, prog rock and Spanish flamenco? Queen's final chart-topper before Mercury's death was a banger and then some. Although you wouldn't think it, the song contains a notable use of a Korg M1 synthesiser. What it's named after a motorway, I have no idea.

Pass the toilet paper

At this point in my Ultimate 90s write-ups, I'm left with a handful of bleepy tunes. Tracks with electronic music credentials. I'm not convinced that these final three tracks fit the bleepy bill. Let's see,

It sampled Enya. It made Lauren Hill cry. It was Barack Obama's favourite song. Ready Or Not is a classic that humanised hip hop music, and felt like a much deeper dive than the Fugees' other number one Killing Me Softly. Its chorus also makes the childhood game of hide and seek sound as sinister as heck. "Ready or not, here I come." "Aaaaaaargh!" 

In contrast, The Outhere Brothers' Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) is silly. Super silly. As silly as a silly string portrait of Mr Silly on holiday in the Isle of Scilly. The two Outhere singles released before this are titled Pass The Toilet Paper and F*k U In The Ass. Grubby stuff.

And finally, we have those chain-dangling trilby-topped rappers Run-DMC. It's Like That is an old hit of theirs rereleased by house Jason Nevins for boomboxin' breakdancin' cool kids. It's perhaps most notable to stopping the Spice Girls' chart dominance by stopping Stop from clogging up the top spot.

In conclusion? Nothing from this track selection is bleepy / banging enough to go through to the next round of this competition. Yet again, an Ultimate 90s blog post has amounted to nothing. I would be disappointed, if I were you, reader. I'd demand your money back. What a swizz.

The series continues. Not long until the grand final! See more Ultimate 90s number ones 

Sleeve Notes: making a noise for Record Store Day

There's a new album called Sleeve Notes, and I'm happy and delighted and cloud-nined to say that I am on it.

Sleeve Notes is a collaborative album between writers and musicians. A bunch of writers have written short fictional fluffy things, and then a load of talented musicians have set it into music. The full list of participants is listed below.

It's a response to Record Store Day, the annual indie record shop celebration which sees collectable vinyl being released. It's often something unusual, like The Proclaimers duetting with Extreme Noise Terror, or Radiohead featuring the Go Compare man, or an album of ballads by Elon Musk with backing vocals by the Genghis Khan.

The theme of Sleeve Notes is, naturally, records and record collecting. Which is good because I've heard of records, and I've even played them. My story is about record shopping, and it's called 'Sophie's Faves'. My musical collab bloke is the super-talented Fritz von Runte, and you can see his remixes, projects and tram tunes here.

We're going to launch the album on Record Store Day itself, which is on Saturday 12th April. The gig is taking place at the Burgess Foundation in Manchester. It will almost certainly sell out very soon, so snaffle your tickets now.

Have a listen to Sleeve Notes. It's available on Bandcamp (embed below), and for the cool kids, it will also be released as a limited-edition cassette. Our track is snuggled between The March Violets and the Hartley brothers, which is a nice place to be.

The Sleeve Notes artists
Nicholas Royle x John Foxx (formerly of Ultravox)
Vik Shirley x Billy Fuller of Beak>
Joe Stretch x Joe Cross of the Courteeners
Adrian Slatcher x Distant Listening (Andy Hodson of Warm Digits)
Rosie Garland x March Violets
Fat Roland x Fritz von Runte
Lauren Sarah Anne McLean x Tombed Visions
David Hartley x Rickerly
Sarah-Clare Conlon x Jez Dolan
David Gaffney x Minimums

Ultimate 90s number one: Everybody's Free (To Read This Blog Post And Wear Sunscreen But Mainly The Blog Post Thing)

Welcome to another edition of Ultimate 1990s Number One. In this long, long series, I trawl through every UK number one single of the 1990s and decide which is the best. There are over 200 number one singles of that decade, so I'm taking about ten at a time and choosing (possibly) one to go through to a final.

My judging criteria? The single has to be a banger. And the single has to be bleepy, i.e. it has to tickle my electronic music tentacles. I'm a strict judge, and my hammer is ready.

Let's have a look at another bunch of randomly-picked '90s number ones.

The contenders

Baz Luhrmann: Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) | Elton John: Candle in the Wind 1997 / Something About the Way You Look Tonight | Madonna: Vogue | Martine McCutcheon: Perfect Moment | Michael Jackson: Blood on the Dance Floor | Sinéad O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U | Various artists: Perfect Day | Vic Reeves and The Wonder Stuff: Dizzy | Wamdue Project: King of My Castle | Westlife: I Have a Dream / Seasons in the Sun

A load of old wind

When Elton John did away with Diana in 1997 in order to get to number one-- oh, wait, hold on, that's just a rumour I read on the internet. Let's start again. Elton's cathartic Princess Di tribute Candle In The Wind is the second bestselling single in history, behind Bing Crosby's equally morose Santa tribute White Christmas. It sold two-thirds of a million units in its first week of sales.

That is only impressive thing about Candle In The Wind '97. I see it as a sister track to Cliff Richard's Millennium Prayer or Wings' Mull Of Kintyre. A stately anthem with little artistic merit, with as much credibility as a retired Tory councillor taking part in a rap battle. Let's move on.

Of Michael Jackson's numerous number one singles, Blood On The Dance Floor is the one I remember least. Was it as Sophie Ellis-Bextor cover? Was it inspired by a night out at Jilly's Rockworld? It was a reject from his Dangerous from several years earlier, and sounds several degrees worse than any tracks from that album.

Not so perfect

I might have my figures slightly wrong. but Westlife had five billion number one singles. Their double a-side Have a Dream / Seasons in the Sun was a Christmas number one, and came while the band was at their at the peak of their powers. Their other powers were (a) being bland and (b) having no place in an Ultimate 90s series. Harrumph. 

What's better? Martine McCutcheon's Perfect Moment or Various Artists' Perfect Day? It's a tough question. Both songs claim to be perfect, but for varying lengths of time. 

Perfect Day is clearly the superior song. The Lou Reed version soundtracked the heroin antics of Danny Boyle's Trainspotting film. Duran Duran and Kirsty MacColl have done their own versions. The 1990s chart-topping version is probably the most iconic take on the song, starring Bono, Bowie, Boyzone and some people beginning with other letters.

Perfect Moment was by an Eastenders actress. McCutcheon's character Tiffany has been cheated on, has disowned her own mother, has been gaslit, has been betrayed by her friends, has planned blackmail, and has been splatted by a car. "This is my moment," sings Tiffany as another flaming meteorite lands on her head.

The truth is, I'm not bothered by either song, and the last couple of paragraphs have been a waste of time.

And now we come to some genuine bangers. Let's allow the fresh breeze of good songwriting waft into the guff of this blog series.

A haddock that looks like Norway

A traffic cone on top of submarine! A walrus wearing a cravat! Erm... A ghost made of toenails? Yes, I'm being surreal, just like Vic Reeves' classic comedy series Big Night Out. Aside from this groundbreaking and brilliant show, Reeves was a musician and artist, so his bid for pop success with The Wonderstuff with Dizzy was no surprise. And it's great.

The shape-throwing fashionista anthem Vogue knocked Snap!'s The Power off the number one spot, so I'm conflicted about Madonna. But it's undoubtedly a banger. "Greta Garbo and Monroe, Dietrich and Fat Roland." Such great lyrics. She was knocked off number one by Adamski, which feels like Snap! karma.

The brilliant and missed Sinéad O'Connor deserved more than one paltry top ten single. On Nothing Compares 2 U, she stares into the camera like you've done something wrong. The song is double-tracked, so she's actually singing it twice at the same time, which is twice the work.

Dizzy, Vogue and Nothing are all bangers. But they are not bleepy enough for this competition, so they can all bog off. Sorry.

Bazzin'

The 1990s became known for leftfield chart-toppers. The leftest of the leftfields came when an essay called 'Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young' became the basis of a number one single by film director Baz Luhrmann. Which reminds me, if Martin Scorsese wants to have an electronica hit with my essay 'How to squeeze the last bit out of a toothpaste tube', then get in touch.

You would think that King Of My Castle would be a more straightforward hit, but even this one was based on Freudian theory. Something to do with the ego or the id or that kind of gubbins. Incidentally, Wamdue Project's song was nominated for a 'Best British single' Brit award, but then was immediately dropped because Wamdue Project is, as it turns out, American.

The Wamdue jam is bouncy, and a real banger. But I'm going to allow Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) through to the Ultimate 90s final. Congratulations, Bazzer, It's a perfect distillation of quirky 1990s electronic music. It's wistful, amusing, and I really like the part when he says "dance". Go on, listen to it. "Dance." There. I like that bit.

Is there more to come in this series? Oh yes. This never ends. It's a moebius strip but made of words.

See more Ultimate 90s number ones 

How I unlocked a withering memory of Wuthering Heights

There's an old phrase which goes like this: "The past is a something-or-other, they thingummy differently there." I can't quite remember the quote. Which is ironic considering the topic of this blog post.

I have grown up with a particular memory of watching something on television. Something that deeply impacted the child Fat Roland because of its stark, haunting style. I recall a shimmering ghost of a woman singing in darkness. Echoes of her image rippling around her like a hall of mirrors. I have never been able to pinpoint what the video was, but it stayed with me.

The title of this blog post is a spoiler. The video was a promo for the UK release of Kate Bush's 1978 single Wuthering Heights. In it, she dances like an apparition amid a haze of filters and fog. I was a wee bairn, and I would have been staring hypnotised at the moving images, with little concept of who Kate Bush was, nor indeed what pop music was. And since then, I think I've only seen a different promo video, produced for the US market, with Bush in a red dress fannying about in a field.

It was perhaps the first pop video I ever paid attention to, despite its details eluding me until now. For years, I had misremembered it as a video by Mary Wilson from the Supremes. I'm sure she sang in spangly costumes in dramatic stage lighting, a similar effect for a child's mind – but it never felt quite right.

It was 808 State's Graham Massey talking at a book launch that helped unlock the memory. He also was impacted by the song, and it was while he was describing the images that the memory of the video finally properly resurfaced. We won't be the only people awed by the video: it spent four weeks at number one, after all. The single was replaced at the top of the charts by Matchstalk Men And Matchstalk Cats And Dogs, a song which ruffles the same nascent memory feathers as Bush.

So there you go. This is a blog post about nothing much. I remembered something. Big deal. But it goes to show the power of the pop video, and there's a bigger thinkpiece to be written about the loss of that culture in a world of streaming. But no-one comes to this blog to do thinking. That would be silly.

Now if I could only recall where I put my house keys and/or remember to use WeTransfer links before they expire and/or call to mind my purpose in life, then I'd be sorted.

Further Fats: The 7 best moments in Ryan Wyer's video for Aphex Twin's CIRKLON3 [ Колхозная mix ] (2016)

Further Fats: Eight tracks that deserve a Running Up That Hill revival (2022)