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Vince Clarke
Vincent John Martin (born 3 July 1960), known professionally as Vince Clarke, is an English synth-pop musician and songwriter. Clarke has been the main composer and musician of the band Erasure since its inception in 1985, and was previously the main songwriter for several groups, including Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and the Assembly. In Erasure, he is known for his deadpan and low-key onstage demeanour, often remaining motionless over his keyboard, in sharp contrast to lead vocalist Andy Bell's animated and hyperactive frontman antics. Erasure have recorded over 200 songs and have sold over 28 million albums worldwide. Clarke was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 as a member of Depeche Mode. Early life and influences Vincent John Martin was born on 3 July 1960 in South Woodford, Essex; he later moved to Basildon, Essex. He initially studied the violin and then the piano. Clarke's early musical influences included Sparks, Paul Simon, and Orchestral Manoeuv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erasure (duo)
Erasure ( ) are an English synth-pop duo formed in London in 1985, consisting of lead vocalist and songwriter Andy Bell (singer), Andy Bell and songwriter, producer and keyboardist Vince Clarke, previously co-founder of the band Depeche Mode and a member of synth-pop duo Yazoo (band), Yazoo. From their fourth single, "Sometimes (Erasure song), Sometimes" (1986), Erasure established themselves on the UK Singles Chart, becoming one of the most successful acts of the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s. From 1986 to 2007, the pair achieved 24 consecutive top-40 entries in the UK singles chart. By 2009, 34 of their 37 chart-eligible singles and EPs had made the UK top 40, including 17 climbing into the top 10. At the 9th Brit Awards, 1989 Brit Awards, Erasure won the Brit Awards, Brit Award for Brit Award for British Group, Best British Group. Erasure made their debut with the studio album ''Wonderland (Erasure album), Wonderland'' in 1986, although it did not perform well chart-wise. With ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andy Bell (singer)
Andrew Ivan Bell (born 25 April 1964) is an English singer and songwriter. He is best known as the lead vocalist of the synth-pop duo Erasure. The band achieved mainstream success (receiving a Brit Award for Best British Group) and are popular within the LGBT community, for whom he has become an icon. His solo career includes the studio albums '' Electric Blue'' (2005), '' Non-Stop'' (2010), ''iPop'' (2014), and ''Ten Crowns'' (2025). Early life Bell grew up in the Dogsthorpe area of Peterborough. His family still resides in the city and surrounding areas such as Market Deeping. Bell was educated at the King's School in the city. Career In 1985, during a period in which he worked selling women's shoes and was performing in a band called the Void, he responded to a newspaper advertisement for a singer. Vince Clarke had been Bell's "hero"; Bell was successful in his audition and together they formed the group Erasure. Bell sang the role of Montresor in the opera '' The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Marlow
Robert Marlow (born Robert Allen, 21 October 1961 – 22 September 2022) was an English synth-pop singer, songwriter and musician. Biography Robert Marlow grew up in Basildon with future Depeche Mode members Vince Clarke, Martin Gore and Andy Fletcher (who died the same year as Marlow, and at the same age). He was also tied to Alison Moyet, with whom he had played in a band, the Vandals. He knew Fletcher and Clarke from the Basildon chapter of the Boys' Brigade. He and Clarke would occasionally get together to play music. Clarke on guitar, and Marlow on the church's piano. Like Clarke, he played in many local bands, and ended up playing in a band, with Clarke, called the Plan, and later French Look, with Gore and Paul Redmond. After the release of "Calling All Destroyers", Marlow shifted between acting and bands. Career "The Face of Dorian Gray" (1981–1985) Marlow recorded the studio album ''The Peter Pan Effect'' with his best friend Vince Clarke during 1982–1984. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ultravox
Ultravox (earlier styled as Ultravox!) were a British new wave band, formed in London in April 1974 as Tiger Lily. Between 1980 and 1986, they scored seven Top Ten albums and seventeen Top 40 singles in the UK, the most successful of which was their 1981 hit "Vienna". From 1974 until 1979, singer John Foxx was frontman and the main driving force behind Ultravox. Foxx left the band in March 1979 to embark on a solo career. Midge Ure took over as lead singer, guitarist and frontman after he and keyboardist Billy Currie worked on the studio project Visage. Ure revitalised the band and steered it to commercial chart success lasting until 1987, at which time the group disbanded. A new line-up, led by Currie, was formed in 1992, but achieved limited success with two albums failing to chart and one solitary single reaching 90 in the UK Singles Chart. The band's best-known line-up of Currie, Ure, bassist Chris Cross and drummer Warren Cann re-formed in 2008 and performed a serie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andy Fletcher (musician)
Andrew John Fletcher (8 July 1961 – 26 May 2022), also known as Fletch, was an English keyboard player and founding member of the electronic band Depeche Mode. In 2020, he and the band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Early life Fletcher was the eldest of four siblings born to Joy and John Fletcher. The family moved to Basildon from Nottingham when he was two years old, when his father, an engineer, was offered a job at a cigarette factory. He was active in the local Boys' Brigade from an early age, primarily to play football. He attended Nicholas Comprehensive where he was in the same sixth form class as Martin Gore and Alison Moyet. After leaving school he worked as an insurance clerk. Career Depeche Mode Fletcher, and acquaintances Vince Clarke and Martin Gore, were in their mid-teens when punk rock arrived on the music scene. Fletcher said this was "obviously the perfect age to experience it", noting that "we were very lucky in life". Fletcher and Clar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fad Gadget
Francis John Tovey (8 September 1956 – 3 April 2002), known also by his stage name Fad Gadget, was a British avant-garde electronic musician and vocalist. He was a proponent of both new wave and early industrial music, fusing pop-structured songs with mechanised experimentation. As Fad Gadget, his music was characterised by the use of synthesizers in conjunction with sounds of found objects, including drills and electric razors. His bleak, sarcastic and darkly humorous lyrics were filled with biting social commentary toward subjects such as machinery, industrialisation, consumerism, human sexuality, mass media, religion, domestic violence and dehumanization, often sung in a deadpan voice. Early years As a child, Frank Tovey lived in Bow. His father, Frank Tovey, Sr. was a porter in Billingsgate Fish Market. At school, Francis tried to learn many different musical instruments. He realised he did not have the co-ordination to be able to play any of them really well. To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Miller (music Producer)
Daniel Otto Joachim Miller (born 14 February 1951) is a British music producer and founder of Mute Records. Biography Miller is the son of two Austrian-Jewish refugees from Nazism, Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert-Miller, born into a family of actors. Miller studied film and television at the Guildford School of Art (now University for the Creative Arts) from 1969–1972, where he became interested in synthesizer music. By the end of the 1960s, he became frustrated with rock music's lack of experimentation and became interested in the sound of German bands like Can, Faust, Neu! and Kraftwerk.Pages 14–16 Depeche Mode Biography by Steve Malins Miller worked as a DJ in Switzerland before returning to England at the height of punk, which he enjoyed due to the energy and do-it-yourself attitude of the music. He later became interested in the electronic music scene, with bands such as Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, which inspired Miller to create his own music. Using ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Human League
The Human League are an English synth-pop band formed in Sheffield in 1977. Initially an experimental electronic music, electronic outfit, the group signed to Virgin Records in 1979 and later attained widespread commercial success with their third album ''Dare (album), Dare'' in 1981 after restructuring their lineup. The album contained four hit singles, including the UK/US number one hit "Don't You Want Me". The band received the Brit Award for Best British Breakthrough Act in 1982. Further hits followed throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, including "Mirror Man (The Human League song), Mirror Man", "(Keep Feeling) Fascination", "The Lebanon (song), The Lebanon", "Human (The Human League song), Human" (a second US No. 1) and "Tell Me When". The only constant band member since 1977 has been lead singer and songwriter Philip Oakey. Keyboard players Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh both left the band in 1980 to form Heaven 17, leaving Oakey and Philip Adrian WAdrian Wrigh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omnibus Press
Omnibus Press is a publisher of music-related books. It publishes around 30 new titles a year to add to a backlist of over 300 titles currently in print. History Omnibus Press was launched in 1972 as a general non-fiction publisher to complement the sheet music published and distributed by its parent company Music Sales Group. Music Sales had launched a separate company called Book Sales Ltd and the earliest Book Sales catalogue, issued in the early 70s, included compilations of underground comic strips, art and photography titles and one of the earliest books on the then newly discovered art of video. After former ''Melody Maker'' music journalist Chris Charlesworth joined as Omnibus editor in 1983, it was decided to concentrate exclusively on music books, and among its earliest acquisitions was Rock Family Trees by music archivist Pete Frame which remains in print and have been the basis of two BBC TV series. Over the succeeding decades Omnibus has published many biogra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electronic Music
Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromechanical means (electroacoustic music). Pure electronic instruments depend entirely on circuitry-based sound generation, for instance using devices such as an electronic oscillator, theremin, or synthesizer: no acoustic waves need to be previously generated by mechanical means and then converted into electrical signals. On the other hand, electromechanical instruments have mechanical parts such as strings or hammers that generate the sound waves, together with electric elements including pickup (music technology), magnetic pickups, power amplifiers and loudspeakers that convert the acoustic waves into electrical signals, process them and convert them back into sound waves. Such electromechanical devices in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) are an English electronic music, electronic band formed in Meols, Merseyside in 1978 by Andy McCluskey (vocals, bass guitar) and Paul Humphreys (keyboards, vocals). Regarded as pioneers of electronic music, OMD combined an Experimental music, experimental, Minimal music, minimalist ethos with pop sensibilities, becoming key figures in the emergence of synth-pop; McCluskey and Humphreys also introduced the "synth duo" format to British popular music. In the United States, the band were an early presence in the MTV-driven Second British Invasion. McCluskey and Humphreys led The Id (band), the Id, a precursor group, from 1977 to 1978 and re-recorded their track "Electricity (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark song), Electricity" as OMD's debut single in 1979. Weathering an "uncool" image and a degree of hostility from music critics, the band achieved popularity throughout Europe with the 1980 List of anti-war songs, anti-war song "Enola Gay (s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Simon
Paul Frederic Simon (born October 13, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter known for his solo work and his collaborations with Art Garfunkel. He and Garfunkel, whom he met in elementary school in 1953, came to prominence in the 1960s as Simon & Garfunkel. Their blend of folk and rock, including hits such as "The Sound of Silence" (1965), "Mrs. Robinson" (1968), "America (Simon & Garfunkel song), America" (1968), and "The Boxer" (1969), served as a soundtrack to the Counterculture of the 1960s, 1960s counterculture. Their final album, ''Bridge over Troubled Water'' (1970), is among List of best-selling albums, the best-selling of all time. As a solo artist, Simon has explored genres including gospel music, gospel, reggae, and soul music, soul. His albums ''Paul Simon (album), Paul Simon'' (1972), ''There Goes Rhymin' Simon'' (1973), and ''Still Crazy After All These Years'' (1975) kept him in the public eye and drew acclaim, producing the hits "Mother and Child Reunion" (1972 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
