A Full On Guide to Full On: Usura's Open Your Mind

I'm deconstructing the Deconstruction house music compilation album Full On – Edition One. Let's start with the first track on the album: Usura's Open Your Mind.

This was a pumping hippy house number that went top ten all over Europe. Have a listen.

The lyrics are pretty easy to get to grips with:

Open your mind (oh)

Open your mind (oh)

Open your mind (oh)

Like a lot of dance tracks at the time, it was heavily based on samples, with the "oh" exclamation taken from the very beginning of Ashford & Simpson's 1984 single Solid. The "open your mind" hook is taken from the bit in Total Recall when Arnie meets a grotesque belly baby. No, really.

The main chord sequence is such a heavy sample of Simple Minds' New Gold Dream, it's essentially a cover version. I didn't like Simple Minds when Open Your Mind came out, but I hadn't twigged the connection. They were secretly feeding me Jim Kerr's rock sludge, like sneaking vegetables into a child's dinner.

The choice of Open Your Mind as the opening track on Full On – Edition One was an obvious choice. The bloke from Usura ran Time Records in Italy, a label that played an important part in pushing Italo disco and euro-house. I presume Decon had a deal to release Time tracks in the rest of Europe and beyond.

I bought Usura's album, also called Open Your Mind. It contained their follow-up single Sweat which sounded so much like Open Your Mind, I felt pretty ripped off. You're not allowed to release soundalike tracks in an attempt to replicate past successes. Little did I know this was exactly how pop music worked.

There you go. Track one on Full On – Edition One. Only 15 more tracks to go. Oh. Only 15 more tracks to go. Oh. Only 15 more tracks to go. Oh. *cue belly baby sample*

Read the Full On series in, er full.

Read the Full On introduction explaining what the heck this is all about.

Chosen Words: K is for Kling Klang

a.k.a. World Cup Distraction Exercise: Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

Kling Klang ("ringing sound") was the name of the recording studio set up by Kraftwerk in Düsseldorf in 1970.

The band retained creative independence by converting a workshop over several years into a fully-functioning studio, complete with home-made instruments. Famously, they would not accept visitors and wouldn't even answer the phone.

It took a lot of effort in those days to experiment: the tape manipulation methods of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, for example. These days, studioheads double-click a big purple button marked 'experimental'.

Kraftwerk's influence extends beyond the likes of New Order, Afrika Bambaataa and OMD: the Peatbog Faeries released an album called Croftwork, Senor Coconut is an (excellent) Latin American Kraftwerk tribute guy, while Simple Minds love playing Neon Lights live. I wish that last fact was a joke, but it's not.

Kraftwerk's producer Conny Plank went on to be in Cluster and Moebius And Plank, both significant pre-runners to modern electronica. And he's called Plank. Seriously. Coolest producer ever. He was Marlene Dietrich's soundman for crap's sake.

Plank rocks. He engineered Brian Eno. That's like God begatting God. Yeah, screw Kraftwerk. Plank is where it's at. I can't even believe I started writing about Kraftwerk. Jeez.

Top five bands that you wouldn't expect to record Kraftwerk covers but they did, honestly they did:

- Simple Minds
- Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine
- Terrorvision
- Ride
- The Cardigans

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.