The League Unlimited Orchestra – Love And Dancing, 1982
KOTS Introduction
As I am first, I am going off at 12:30 my time :)
I had 3 LPs to choose from in the end, so listened to all 3 like it was the first time I was hearing them or at least tried to. Love and Dancing won by a country mile in the end and felt like the one
I am not sure what you’ll make of the individual tracks on their own? I think it’s probably best listened to as presented, a non-stop 30+ minute mix from start to finish.
The techniques used by the Producer. Martin Rushent, in Love and Dancing have now been eclipsed by modern sampling and mixing on computers, but nevertheless there’s a real sublimeness to the production, yet there's a naivety to some of the sound quality. To think it’s all been created by 1000’s of tape edits using a razor-blade to patch pieces of melody and vocals together and then all held together with glue, and it’s mind-blowing really.
To call Love and Dancing a masterpiece is perhaps to do it, and Martin Rushent, a disservice. I say Rushent as it's pretty much his record, as the band wanted nothing to do with producing it. It's basically his dance remixes and dubs of Dare tracks.
Stand out track: Things That Dreams Are Made Of - absolutely bloody mental sonics, like a Patrick Adams x Mad Professor x Martin Hannett track, all that reverb, it's dubbed out to #$%& and 100% danceable, 10/10
"New York, ice-cream, TV, travel, good times, Norman Norman Norman Wisdom Wisdom Wisdom..."
These are the things that dreams are made of.. KOTS, April 28th 2022, 12:30 hrs JST
Hats off to Martin Rushent and RIP
The Human League's third album, Dare (1981), produced by Martin Rushent, reached number one in the UK album charts and has retrospectively been considered one of the era's defining albums. Dare also found success in the United States, partly because of New York-based black radio stations airing music from the album. The record’s synth bass and Linn drum machine beats worked well with the electro funk music scene which had gained popularity both on the radio stations like Kiss as well as at clubs like Danceteria. A scene which would also take the concept of the 12” remix to the next level, with largely dub reggae influenced techniques like over dubbing, looping, echoing and what New York producer Francois Kevorkian would describe as “creating space between the music.”
Rushent was already aware of the potential of remixing, having embedded a sublime spaciousness into Human League tracks, whilst taking a group who a few years previously had put out records like Being Boiled, and whose records now dared the listener to dance like nobody was watching.
Rushent had been listening to Hip Hop DJ Grand Master Flash and played his DJ tapes to Phil Oakey, who also enjoyed it, especially the DIY element. After seeing Flash deejaying live in New York, Rushent felt he could perhaps recreate the cutting and scratching effects using studio tape. He created a “dub remix” version of Love Action with a view to making it a b-side, but continued to make instrumental remixes of 4 other tracks from Dare. With 5 tracks under his belt he suggested to Virgin and the band that they release a remix album, both hated the idea. Rushent had to fight their opposition in order to create the album. Oakey remained unsure about the project and left Rushent to make the release on his own, hence the slightly different name of the band and a nod from Rushent to Barry White.
iI took thousands of man-hours of intensive sonic surgery for Rushent to create Love and Dancing. The producer spent about ten days making the album, remixing the material on a mixing board with the individual multitrack of Dare fed into the desk. He also operated numerous FX boxes across the send channels. "I'd do a section and if I liked it I'd make a tape cut and splice it into the mix.* He also created complex vocal effects by hand, cutting up small portions of tape and gluing them together until he achieved the stuttering vocal effect.
By the end of the remixing process, the master tape of Love and Dancing had 2,200 main edits and some 400 further, smaller mini edits for the stuttering repetition effects. This amount of splicing was so excessive, amounting to an edit every half a second, that the master tape came very close to disintegrating. Rushent recalled: "You couldn't fast-forward the master or fast-rewind it, so the first thing I did was copy the album on to another tape, before the original master fell apart in my hands."
Upon the completion of Love and Dancing, the band decided to sell it at a relatively cheap price (pay no more than 2.99), believing the release to be "unfair to the fans," and still unsure about the concept. The LP was one of the first remix albums to be commercially released, beaten by 20 days by Soft Cell’s - Non Stop Erotic Cabaret. It managed no#3 in the UK charts and went platinum in it's first year. Not bad for a largely instrumental album of songs all released the year before.
Rushent, and eventually Oakey, both considered Love and Dancing to be a better LP than Dare, the Rushent believing it to break the mould and ignite "the whole of the modern dance scene," commenting: "There isn't one effect or trick that you hear in any gene of modern dance music that you won't find on Love and Dancing. Like the stuttering vocals. That's the first record you'll find it on. He cited creating Love and Dancing as the most creative experience he had ever had.