Cherry Red is putting out a 4CD 80 track set that celebrates the independent side of the UK’s post punk synthpop boom that took place between 1978 and 1984. The collection is called Electrical Language and it also comes with a booklet featuring the sleeve notes from many of the recordings and words from the artists themselves. The collection includes several household names such as OMD, The Normal , Human League, Thomas Dolby and Fad Gadget in addition to underground artists from the era.
This collection also contains some hidden gems from Mute Records, Rough Trade, 4AD, Survival Records and of course, Cherry Red. Cherry Red Records say this about the collection,
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. The uptempo would-be hits with suburban nightclub aspirations, the science and technology enthralled proto-techno workouts and the otherworldy experiments are all here, sitting comfortably amongst each other in some cases, jostling for position in others. This was a post-punk revolution of another kind, played out on a stage free of the traditional boundaries and limitations, entirely alien to anybody over twenty-five and enthralled by the new and the exotic. For the first time in a while, the future looked bright, albeit illuminated with electric light.
The Fat Angel Sings 