Minimal Wave Records

The U.K. has the best and most minimal synth bands.

So here is the mystery.

Why are there no U.K. minimal synth collectors?

O.K., I know there are some, but there is no hardcore, crazy, guru person a la the collectors in the rest of europe. 

It seems like out of all the kids in the u.k. growing up with depeche mode, and the kids that we’re in the obscure diy bands during the early 80’s there would surface one person that has been collecting since 1980, and has more u.k. records than anybody. 

So why isn’t there a guru U.K. collector like that?

obscure

I don’t know about crazy Guru but I know at least one walking encyclopedia in the UK for Minimal Synth and who is a massive collector as well (not me).

There are others as well and I can think of another 3 who are close to this category.

I guess these guys don’t need to be out their as they started their collections in the 1970’s and probably collected the majority at the time it came out.

These are collectors in the broad sence of the word. There many collectors in the UK who concentrate on very specific areas, One or two bands only or a subset of the genre. I fall into this category. While I listen to a lot of different bands, I collect a group of little known and obscur record labels and only a couple of bands specifically.

MN

Re: The great minimal synth mystery

[quote author=“obscure”]The U.K. has the best and most minimal synth bands.
So here is the mystery.

It’s only a mystery if you look at it in a certain way and you want it to be a mystery.
A complete useless mind game if you ask me.

Ton

“I don’t know about crazy Guru but I know at least one walking encyclopedia in the UK for Minimal Synth and who is a massive collector as well (not me). “

Who?

obscure

[quote author=“obscure”]“I don’t know about crazy Guru but I know at least one walking encyclopedia in the UK for Minimal Synth and who is a massive collector as well (not me). “

Who?

obscure

Crazy Guru. Can’t you read ?
Who doesn’t know him ?
If you don’t know him you might be not fit enough to enter this forum.

Ton

Once again.

Who is the one u.k. collector that is a walking encyclopedia of minimal synth.

I want to know.

obscure

Wow your keen!!!

Sorry to disapoint but the people I know are semi-public figures who would not appreciate it if I broadcast their names.

However I believe the “Walking Encyclopedia” is very likely an infrequent member of this forum and may choose to respond to this thread, or he may not.

What is your interest in this/these person(s)?

MN

yes i’m baffled with the notion there seem to be no serious uk synth freaks around as well.

Perhaps the same reason why there are very few serious italo collectors from italy? they seem to see it more as a youth embaressment than a serious subculture.

Well I remember that back in good old 1993/94 when I was a student in London, the mood already was that anything that remotley sounded like the early 80s was considered hopelessly dated, so why still take an interest when you could get some fresh & fantastic Blur and Oasis?

Still, it’s rather surprising as Brits are world-famous for collecting the most obscu…wier….unusual stuff, so on principle somebody should take an interest.

My highly scientific stab in the dark here is that minimal stuff is considered completely uncool music in Blighty, and that for freak collectors it’s simply not freaky enough when you can e.g. focus on bathing costumes from the 19th century instead.

Anyways, who cares, more red-hot pumping plastic for the rest of us, eh?  :wink:

Well my theory would be that the youth of today in the UK are more interested in ‘now’ and ‘tomorrow’ and do not look back much. They only look back when they have kids of their own.

Statistically speaking, speaking the US has something like 400 million people and the UK has 63 million (approx’). On this basis alone it would make sense that there would be more collectors of Minimal in the US than the UK.

Please also remember that it wasn’t cool to be into Mininal Electronic even in the early 1980’s when Electro was popular. The UK music press crucified bands that didn’t have rock credentials. The large records companies didn’t really take it seriously until they were forced to. Then they largely hijacked the genre and turned it into ‘Pop’. The small labels filled the void in as did the home cassette makers. It wasn’t until the late 80’s early 90’s with the arrival of Acid House and Techno that youth culture became more accepting. However even then the establishment and press made this more about drug culture than music.

If you look at the situation another way though, there would be nothing to collect from the UK if these events hadn’t happened. It wouldn’t have been an underground thing and the rare and obscure would not be rare or obscure at all.

All the serious UK collectors I know were between 16 and 30 in 1980. Those that were involved in the genre at the time accept that they are better known in other countries than they are in the UK. There is a deffinate feeling amongst them that “They took the road less travelled” and they are happy to have been part of something revolutionary.

Having written all of the above, I also have to add that I think the situation is changing a bit. I was at the DAF gig at the O2 this year and I was surpised to find far more than 500 (maybe 1000) people attending. I would say that 50% of the audience were not born in 1979. For the first time I saw kids wearing tea shirts that I have only previously seen in mainland Europe. There are far more venues now in the UK specialising in Electo/Minimal/Industrial etc than there has been at any other time in the past.

My theory on this is that kids have sort of come full circle. Something like 75 percent of the UK has access to a computer these days and the internet. Technology has made it possible for kids to make music at a fraction of the cost. I know 16 year olds (not interested in music history) who walk around with laptops. In their breaks they use cheap software to create new music that they like and then play to their friends and then upload to the internet. The sometimes play live (if it can be played live) and of course there are virtual gigs in Second Life for example. The availability of software synths, free midi-sequencers and very powerful software studios for recording provides the tools we never had or coundn’t afford. It may not be Analogue, Minimal and uses a lot of samples but it really does seem to be driving a new rise in interest in Electronic Music and home recording. Like the punk days, there is no need to know how to play instruments, you only need to know how to point, drag and click and to be able to know what sounds good.

Ask yourself this. Why Synth Britannia now? It is more than musik history TV. It is an attempt to place current trends into a historical context. Unfortunately as TV is a visual medium and little or no footage exists for the rare, obscure but undoublty influencial, they will never make it into this type of TV program and they will most likely never receive recognition. Being successful also helps.

MN

Answer to original question - There is no Mystery. Serious collectors do exist in the UK.

The role of the press is a really good point here. I guess you wouldn’t find many influential UK journalists that don’t subscribe to the point of view that a song needs to have (at least one) guitar in it in order to be proper music.

This attitude is then often combined with the view that for successful bands raw minimal synth was just a phase en route to something better, like let’s say the horse & cart stage inbetween the invention of the wheel and the latest Formula 1 racing car.

Now how lucky are we that we know better and that we can fully grasp and cherish this art form which is the true Formula 1 racing car.  :wink:

Yes, Influencial is the keyword. There were more than a few voices in the wilderness. A casual flick through NME, MM or Sounds from that period reveal some of them. Where are they now, I wonder?

The only influentail media person I can think of who I believe treated all as equal and dealt with artists without bias or pre-conception was John Peel. He gave space to the small labels and independants and wasn’t a slave to the Top 40 or corporate record companies. He gave national exposure to many and possibly, very possibly, was responsible for many indie bands (Electo and non Electro) getting the breaks they needed. A nice man and sadly missed.

MN

Added - It occurs to me that John Peel was probably the ulltimate Walking Encylopedia for this period. A real loss the the world.

Well yeah, what would the 80s and music history been like without John Peel? The world lost a big man there….

But back to the topic, I just thought of another point, namely the strange phenomenen of UK artists being publicly ashamed of their early work themselves, like e.g. ABC of their Vice Versa incarnation.

I think this is something special to the UK which you don’t get in other countries to the same extent. Never mind colonial history, but that’s really really bad what you did with that Korg in 1980.  8)

Obviously some potential collectors get turned off there and don’t want to hunt for stuff from what the artist tenderly refers to as their “rubbish period”.

But at least some went back to their glory roots like Mr. Tovey and that guy who did “Cars”.....

[quote author=“falck”]
Obviously some potential collectors get turned off there and don’t want to hunt for stuff from what the artist tenderly refers to as their “rubbish period”.

I’m interested. Do you have some quotes on that from “collectable” UK artists ?
And: From what I’ve seen from collectors is that they also collect rubbish if it is rare enough, preferably leaving the cellophane still intact.
And also: A collector from the UK doesn’t collect only UK stuff so I don’t see the connection there.

Ton

Hummm, well, yes, I understand your observation. I can only speak for my own understanding here but I wouldn’t neccessarilly agree that the majority of UK artists feel ashamed of their early work.  Artists make something and put it out there to be judged. If it doesn’t succeed then it is judged by default as a failure and the artist moves onto the next thing and forgets about the failures.

Quality is the other issue. Most artists produced work to the highest standard they could at the time. Technology has moved on so much that the average PC at home can have more tracks on a recording that the most expensive studio in 1980 and produce a recording equall to or better then the best studios around at the time. I know many collectors say the quality doesn’t matter and that the blips, sqeaks etc are part of what make the recording special. Many artists differ on this point and I can understand why. Once something is out there there is no going back. That annoying bum note, slightly flat vocal, fret buzz haunts you for eternity. All the artist ever hears is the mistakes they made and would have rectified if they had the time or money to do so. Based on this it shouldn’t be a surprise that many are perfectionists and higly sensitive to criticsm and therefore don’t like to put themselves in that position.

We must also allow for the individual to grow as well. Revisitng the past can seem like a step backwards in personal development.

MN

I wouldn’t neccessarilly agree that the majority of UK artists feel ashamed of their early work.

from my experience this is fully right. from the dozens of bands i was/am in contact with there was only one american (now inactive) guy that didn’t want to deal with his musical past, and….

We must also allow for the individual to grow as well. Revisitng the past can seem like a step backwards in personal development.

... one UK artist (still active) that feels “not happy with these teenage (yes, I was that age) records I did ... for me it’s too much like re-issuing angst ridden diary moments of my youth”.