style: electronic
music
pop
tagged: film & documentary
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SYNTH BRITANNIA, BRITISH SYNTH-POP DOCUMENTARY
Tue, September 29, 2009 
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The new season on BBC Four explores arts and culture through dramas, documentaries and dedicated seasons. Part of its music coverage is a new documentary about the British synth-pop explosion, Synth Britannia. In the late Seventies small pockets of electronic artists such as The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle were inspired by Kraftwerk and J G Ballard to dream of the sound of the future against the backdrop of bleak, high-rise Britain. Gary Numan's 1979 appearance on Top Of The Pops heralded the invention of synthpop, which would provide the soundtrack as Britain entered a new, ruthless era in the Eighties. Depeche Mode, four lads from Basildon, came to embody the new sound, while post-punk bands such as Ultravox, Soft Cell, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark and Yazoo took the synth from the pages of the NME and onto the front cover of Smash Hits. |
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By 1983 the Pet Shop Boys and New Order were pointing to where the future of electronic music lay – in dance.
Contributors to Synth Britannia include Philip Oakey (The Human League), Vince Clarke (Yazoo/Erasure), Martin Gore (Depeche Mode), Bernard Sumner (Joy Division/New Order), Gary Numan and Neil Tennant (Pet Shop Boys).