AMBITION, DREAMS AND POSSIBILITY (Not Crushed by the Wheels of Industry)

Studio Electrophonique: The Sheffield space age from The Human League to Pulp, Jamie Taylor (Manchester University Press)

Jamie Taylor’s entertaining and informative book about Sheffield hangs on his initial research into the small home studio of Ken Patten, where bands or previous incarnations of groups such as The Human League, Clock DVA, Heaven 17, Pulp and ABC, made their first recordings, but the book also meanders through industrial decline, Brutalist architecture, class and sociology as well as the history of dozens of bands, many unheard of both back then and now, but others who would become ‘alternative music’ cult favourites or pop chart regulars.

Patten was an eccentric recording expert, adept at creating sounds and effects from lo-fi electronic and analogue components. In 1961 he won a tape-recording competition ‘by creating the sound of a rocket launch using a pencil and a bicycle clip’, which seemed to give him the reassurance to continue his own sonic explorations, build a recording studio in his house, and eventually offer his recording, engineering and production services to the city’s youth.

Taylor is keen to contrast the 1960s’ promises of the colonisation of space along with futuristic gadgets, robots and architecture, with the realities of Sheffield city life. Rather than the promised jetpacks, electric cars and robot assistance, the population inhabited run down housing estates and went to work, if they did, in the declining remnants of industrial factories, as 20th Century life overtook them.

The book suggests that the real space age was happening elsewhere and that this, along with the formation of Meatwhistle Arts Centre (a kind of community youth centre), is what kickstarted what would later blossom in the 80s. The sounds, production values and TV performances of bands like Roxy Music, Bowie and the Beach Boys, not to mention films such as Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with individual explorations of contemporary classical, musique concrète and experimental jazz, fed into the mix as bands formed, broke up (sometimes on the same night), jammed and improvised at Meatwhistle.

Whilst some took this as merely fun, some coherent bands started evolving and stuck together. Word got round about Patten’s affordable recording facilities, and soon bands were returning home clutching a reel of tape and a cassette copy of their work. Some, like Clock DVA, would duplicate and distribute them, others use them for promotional material to get radio play, Peel sessions or record contracts; elsewhere, similar DIY experiments were also happening: after bedroom experiments with noise and collage, Cabaret Voltaire took over a disused factory for their own purposes, rehearsing, recording and hanging out.

Soon, there were (often low-key) gigs, in the city or a drive away. Zines got published and bands started thinking about their image, their presentation, how to get singles out, to promote and sell them and get radio play. For some this involved outrageous costumes, worn full time, for others confrontational exercises to attract attention: rhythmic sounds, distortion and noise, feedback and attitude designed to provoke a response. Surrealism and Dada were cited as influences (especially after the event), fuelled by the arrival of cheap synthesizers and 4-track recorders in the wake of punk.

It’s a story that happened everywhere at some point between 1975 and 1985, but Taylor brings an insider’s knowledge to the Sheffield scene. Patten slowly disappears from the book, but he is there in the background as Vice Versa split and ABC emerges, and as The Future become the original (and more experimental) The Human League before mutating into a massively successful electric pop band with their new dancing schoolgirl members, in competition with their ex-members’ new band Heaven 17.

Meanwhile bands such as I’m So Hollow, Chakk, Hula and others had indie record contracts and some critical success for a while, and even Clock DVA flirted with pop for a Polydor album, having wowed A & R men with the outstanding single ‘4 Hours’ from their second album Thirst. Cabaret Voltaire had albums on numerous indies, embraced video technology, then cleaned their music up for some funky Some Bizarre/Virgin albums before drifting into ambient and dance music.

The Human League and Heaven 17 had some monster hits and continue to make music and touring (as indeed do Clock DVA), but it was perhaps Jarvis Cocker and Pulp who were able to go into the pop stratosphere and stay there. Partly, no doubt, because the young Cocker had seen what could go wrong as he watched the older Sheffield musicians burn out, fail or give up. Cocker seems to have mostly kept a down-to-earth approach and some kind of grip on reality as he navigated the music business and the trappings of fame.

Studio Electrophonique is a highly readable study of ambition, dreams and possibility. It is a book about a fight for artistic survival in a grim and squalid environment, of defeating poverty and routine, boredom and lethargy by sheer will and musical ingenuity. It is a focussed exploration of one city’s decline and artistic resurrection, its down-to-earth success story in the face of negativity and poverty. It is an uplifting and inspiring volume about possibility and why music matters.

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Rupert Loydell

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