Minimal Wave Records

hello everyone, just thought i’d post the question as to why there’s no mention to a couple of artists on here.

First of all Vice Versa who released an EP in the UK with a couple of great minimal tracks.  There’s also a group called The Vets and I’ve heard a couple of killer tunes by them.  sure there’s many more but it’s over to you in the blue corner…...

I think some people here (let’s call them Homo Collectus instead of Homo Sapiens), could list here pages and pages of unknown incredible minimal synth artists. :wink:

Regard the list of artist on MW as a starting point for where your search for minimal can begin. Even Discogs.com isn’t complete when I check my reasonably large collection against their vast list, but every I visit, I am amazed by the sheer number of new and old minimal artists and releases that are/have been released that I was totally unaware of. A very humbling experience, but one can not know everything. Whether a band is undeservedly forgotten or not is very personal.

Vice Versa is right there actually, http://www.minimal-wave.org/site/modules.php?name=topMusic&op=artist&idartist=112

In the next version of the site, we’ll have the ability to add admins for the music section, so anyone who’d like to add band / album info may do so. Should be more interesting that way.

Agreed Aircrash, but of course the lack of biographic info on Vice Versa is a GIANT hole in the Artist Listing on this page!

So why not start by posting the biography from “1980: The First Fifteen Minutes”? Directly from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.

“
VICE VERSA: A chainsaw pop group, more related to Northern Soul than rock n’ roll. Individually Mark White, Stephen Singleton, Martin Fry, collaborators making use of and bringing to your attention new techniques, synthesiser, tape montage and subliminal sound. Discarded natural sound source in favour of synthetic instrumentation because of its convenience, mobility and vast source of, as yet, untapped potential. We will provide the soundtrack for the second industrial revolution: 45 and 33 1/3 r.p.m.
The use of prepared tapes and pre-sound in performance has meant we can begin to exploit kinetics fully and transmit electronic dance beat music.
VICE VERSA have no time for the popularised public image generated by the majority of people operating in the electronics field. We remain anti-cyberman, anti-digitalsterile, anti-docile mannequin, we want to usurp twee ‘moderne’ mannerisms. Two-tonic or teutonic we want to meet you.
We adapt clarity and distortion, melody and dissonance, adrenalin, dance and momentum. We exploit the switch exemplified in our name and view change as stability, change as strength, ours is a doctrine of perpetual development, always forward, now as neo.
We are seeking your co-operation.
“

I thought that was pretty good, personally! Cue NME, who in July 1978 described Vice Versa as “...a bizarro trio who show occasional flashes of promise, but whose pretentiousness becomes quite tiresome.” (This last bit according to discogs.com)

Oh, we like a discography… does anyone have anything besides the “music 4” ep, the “stilyagi” single,
the “8 aspects of” cassette,
the v/a ep “1980: The first Fifteen Minutes” and
the live video on the Made in Sheffield DVD?

That live video is just wicked. To think they were playing hardcore minimal electronics in their pajama’s the one year, and playing in golden suits on top of the pops the next is simply mindbaffling, yet so wonderfully consistent with their ideology.

Didn’t the “from Vice versa to ABC” story go like: after a gig in Rotterdam they went to a studio to fool around a bit and got Martin Fry to sing which surprisingly he did very well… It was then that they realised they could actually try to earn some money making pop music instead of fooling around and being pretentious arty farty lads with synths.  :?

money makes the world go round…  :cry:  :cry:  :cry:

I really like the Vice Versa stuff, but there must be something in the fridge and if they decided to do music to make a living from that…
what could we do…
The sound of ABC isn’t that bad, it’s just simple and sometimes cheesy funk-pop like so many others did at that time.

Did anybody have an old interview with them about the time as vice versa… This would be really interesting

They are also featured in the fantastic “made in sheffield” docu….

http://www.sheffieldvision.com/aboutmis.html

I saw them play live as Vice Versa and remember buying the 1980 first 15 minutes e.p. when it came out.

I knew a girl who befriended them and I remember her telling my friends and I that they had decided to change their name to ABC.  We all went to see them at Leeds Warehouse (not sure if it was their first gig as ABC, but it must have been one of their first) and I was so disapointed that instead of synths they had guitars and a sax etc and didn’t play any Vice Versa songs.

The rumoured Vice Versa collection that was supposed to happen a couple of years ago hasn’t happened either and never will?

@ aircrash: I suppose you’re right there, unless of course someone took the responsibility and did it on the band’s behalf…

But if you pardon me for skipping the subject, I’ve been thinking about the start of this thread: Namely, the omission of a lot of superb artists from this site. I’m sure we could write dozens of biogs and discogs for the Artist Listing section, am I the only one in here who’d like to see that list grow?

“I’m sure we could write dozens of biogs and discogs for the Artist Listing section, am I the only one in here who’d like to see that list grow?”

Like a minimal WIKI? That should be fun and interesting. So much but also very scattered knowledge out (t)here. That is one of the things about minimal wave as a genre that makes it so interesting and maybe we like it better that way.