propaganda

dominic

Beast of Burden
any fans of this late 80s/early 90s synth pop band?

recently picked up a couple of their records

(1) "your wild life" -- top balearic house track -- came out in 1990 -- have always loved this track but never knew who it was til now -- absolutely gorgeous -- i like the wet-and-wild mix best -- david morales was involved on this one

(2) "frozen faces" -- this is the b-side of the "machinery" single -- sublime synth pop -- very cold -- the back sleeve of the record has a long quote from j.g. ballard concerning baader-meinhof and middle-class revolt
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I've got some twelve inch I bought a few years ago (don't know which I'm afraid), listened to once, didn't especially enjoy and hid at the back of the pile. Maybe I should give it another go.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Yeah I loved "Dr Mabuse" and the long one with the rain on it on the first LP. And lots of the others ones as well. That Duel/Jewel thing was a great idea.

I worry that it won't sound too great in retrospect tho - that horrid "shiny" over produced 80s sound.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
Yeah, that shiny 80s production would be courtesy one Trevor Horn - you know, producer of Art of Noise, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, 'Slave to the Rhythm' era Grace Jones, the epic Pet Shop Boy's single 'Left to My Own Devices'? Won a Brit award for production on some Marc Almond solo album, I think? Or maybe it was for Rod's cover of 'Downtown Train'? Also did the first few Seal albums.

I listened to Propaganda in that light, when I was on a track-the-producers train-spotter binge (I had to have some focus when mercilessly plundering the local library, which had free CD lending for those 18 and under).

Anyway, I didn't think much of it, but I don't think I've heard either track you mention, dominic.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
And he was in Buggles right? I guess I find it hard to get past that production too but I think I would have made more effort if I'd liked the tunes. Didn't Propaganda cover a Velvet Underground track?
 

dominic

Beast of Burden
i'm not a trevor horn fan, either -- he gets a mixing credit for the "machinery/frozen faces" single -- but the producer is one s.j. lipson, horn's right-hand man on many of his most famous productions

as for "your wild life," the producers are ian stanley and chris hughes -- a tandem best known for their production work for tears for fears -- and then the remixes are by david morales at the peak of his powers

anyway, i'm not suggesting that everything propaganda put out is good -- the point of the post, rather, was, first, to say that i came across two gorgeous tracks by the band and, second, to see if anyone else knew of any such gems
 

john eden

male pale and stale
IdleRich said:
Didn't Propaganda cover a Velvet Underground track?

Femme Fatale.

I think it was on the ZTT v/a comp which also featured Paul Morley (who was married to one of Propaganda) talking about the Art of Noise.
 

polystyle

Well-known member
'Selling your soul '... 'Never look back' ...

Seconding John's notes - Mabuse /Duel Jewel had some nice things happening for it's day.
Yea, we used to follow Propaganda and each new release was something pretty good for it's day,
have to admit I lost the thread by the time the later stuff came out tho'.
One of the Die Krupps guys was in Propaganda as well
 
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Ness Rowlah

Norwegian Wood
I've got a couple of 12"s and their album -
"Dr Mabuse" was my fav ZTT record (and still is).

So I am happy to be "one of the HACKS on the board" and be
counted as a fan of Propaganda.

What set Propaganda apart was Claudia Brucken's euro-cool voice
(and Dietrich-accent).

She did a decent album with Thomas Leer as ACT, a super-glitzy
12" with Glenn Gregory and a solo album almost nobody bought
and she is now working with Paul Humpreys of OMD as OneTwo
(anyone heard this outfit?).
 
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Leo

Well-known member
good opinion piece RE: Russia and the west.

The message of much of Kremlin propaganda is not to showcase Russia as a beacon of progress, but to prove that Western politics is just as rotten as President Vladimir Putin’s. We may have corruption, the argument goes, but so does the West; our democracy is rigged, but so is theirs.

The latest scandal surrounding President Trump and his dealings with Ukraine is, for this reason, a godsend for the Kremlin: The son of an American presidential candidate is suspected of using his father’s reputation to get himself a $50,000-a-month job at a Ukrainian gas company; the president of the United States is accused of acting like a geopolitical gangster, extorting kompromat about a political rival. American politics have become enmeshed in Russian and Ukrainian corruption, and much about the Trump administration seems pulled from the playbook of a post-Soviet kleptocracy. The Kremlin couldn’t have put together a better script.

As I follow the news coming from America at my home in Britain, the political culture and language in the thing once known as “the West” reminds me of my years in Moscow, where I lived in the first decade of the 21st century. Perhaps in nothing more so than in its relationship to the truth.

The media manipulation of the early Putin years didn’t try to convince you of a fabricated version of “truth.” Instead, it worked by seeding doubt and confusion, evoking a world so full of endlessly intricate conspiracies that you, the little guy, had no chance to work out or change. Instead of conspiracy theories being used to merely buttress an ideology as under Communist rule, a conspiratorial worldview replaced ideology as a way to explain the world, encouraging the public to trust nothing and yearn for a strong leader to guide it through the murk — a tactic that’s as common in Washington these days as in Moscow.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/05/...l?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
 

Leo

Well-known member
HA! didn't even bother to read the thread, just searched for the word in the thread title and posted, LOL!

as you were.
 

sufi

lala
Blissblogger posted "duel" in an 80s thread a few weeks ago, still works OK, imho

I wonder whether it's improved since 2006
 
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