Electrical Language: Independent British Synth Pop (4CD)

2019 four CD set that explores the independent side of the UK's post-punk synth-pop boom. From household names and scene legends to underground outsiders and bedroom experimenters. Hardback book format includes over 12,000 words of sleevenotes (including artist-written pieces), introductory essay by Dave Henderson and period imagery. Key tracks and hidden gems from Mute Records, Rough Trade, 4AD, Survival Records, Cherry Red and a host of essential independent players. The year - 1978. The mood - revolution. The latest addition to the musician's sound palette - the synthesizer. And so a new sound was born, and one which would free pop music from it's guitar dominated tradition into something with a bright new future which would write itself. Almost overnight, via a handful of key single releases, the big bang of punk produced something the kids called 'synth-pop'. The clue was very much in the name. A broad church from the outset, this synth-pop movement wasted no time in embracing players from all corners of the musical dressing up box. From guitar groups drafting in a keyboard playing friend and the progressive rockers using their expensive banks of electronics in new ways to the modernists and the Thatcherists, full of unabashed aspiration, and the punks - arguably the purest punks of them all - who discarded the guitar and the drum kit overnight in their pursuit of something fresh that their generation could truly call their own. All were welcome, and all contributed to the many different directions synth-pop would mutate in over the coming five or six years. Electrical Language captures this time and place in microscopic detail.