The Future - We Are The Future (1977)

There's a bit of a theme running through these last two posts, as both bands formed in Sheffield in the late 70's, and both played predominantly electronic instrumental music, but there the similarities end, as The Future went for a clean, dance-based sound while Cabaret Voltaire made their music as challenging and uncompromising as possible. As I mentioned in the Human League post, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh formed The Future in 1977 with their friend Adi Newton, who brought his Roland System-100 synthesizer with him to supplement Ware and Marsh's Korg 700s, and they started writing and recording music in their own rehearsal facility in a disused cutlery workshop in the centre of Sheffield. Newton left after a short stint with the band to form Clock DVA, another highly influential Sheffield outfit, and the other two members then recruited Phil Oakey as a vocalist, to try to give them a more commercial sound. Some of these tracks have recently surfaced on a joint archive CD together with songs by The Human League, so I've extracted them and added in a number of other tracks which weren't on the CD to make up a 40 minute album. These include 'Dancevision', which appeared on the double 7" version of the Human League single 'Holiday '80', and was actually credited to The Future on the labels, as well as a radically different version of 'Almost Medieval', which was the opening track on their debut album as The Human League. Most of these tracks were ditched along the way, and so it's great that these recordings have been kept safe for the past 40 years, so that we can hear the fledgling sound of a band who would go on to define electronic music in the 1980's. 

Track listing

01 Blank Clocks 
02 Looking For The Black Haired Girls
03 Cairo
04 Dancevision
05 Titled UN
06 C'est Grave
07 Future Religion
08 Almost Medieval
09 Dada Dada Duchamp Vortex 
10 Daz  
11 Pulse Lovers

The Human League - Electronically Yours (1977)

Before adopting the name the Human League, the band consisted of Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, who had met at youth arts project Meatwhistle, and were both working as computer operators. Their musical collaboration combined pop with avant-garde electronic music, and with their newly-affordable Korg 700S synthesizer, their musical reputation soon spread and they were invited to play at a friend's 21st birthday party. After a few more low-key, private performances, Ware and Marsh decided to officially form a band, and after recruiting their friend Adi Newton they formed The Future. The association with Newton was short-lived, and he left to form the highly-respected industrial/indie band Clock DVA, and at this point Ware decided that The Future needed a singer rather than another keyboard player, as he felt that this would enable them to produce more marketable songs. Their first choice, Glenn Gregory, was unavailable, so they invited their old school friend, Philip Oakey, to join the band. Oakey was working as a hospital porter at the time and was known on the Sheffield social scene for his eclectic style of dress, and although he had no musical experience, Ware thought he would be ideal as lead singer for The Future as he already looked like a pop star. 
With a new line-up, sound, and vocalist, Ware decided that the band needed a new name, and so The Human League was chosen, taken from 'Starforce: Alpha Centauri', a science-fiction wargame. Using material written for The Future , the Human League released a demo tape to record companies under their new name, which found its way to Bob Last's Edinburgh-based independent label Fast Product, and he signed the band. They released their first single, 'Being Boiled', in June 1978, (I still have my 7" copy of it), and from then on I followed the band, via their 'Dignity Of Labour' 12" single, and through to the first two albums, but lost interest when they recruited the two girl singers and became a pop band, and so these early recordings are a revelation. Although they were never signed and did not release any material commercially at the time, a collection of demos has recently appeared, and is the basis of this post. The CD from which these tracks are taken consisted of recording by both the Future and The Human League, but mixed them together, and also missed off a number of The Future tracks which they could have included, so I've split them into two albums, with the Human League tracks on the first one and The Future tracks on the second. We'll start with the better known version of the outfit, and I must say that I was very impressed with both the musical and the sound quality of these early demos. The only slight tweak that I've made is that I felt that 'Overkill Disaster Crash (v.1)' was a bit too short and ended rather abruptly, so I've extended it a bit and faded it down, now becoming (v.2). 

Track listing 

01 Dance Like A Star 
02 4JG  
03 Dominion Advertisement 
04 Disco Disaster  
05 Interface   
06 The Circus Of Dr. Lao  
07 Reach Out (I'll Be There)  
08 New Pink Floyd 
09 Overkill Disaster Crash (v.2) 
10 Once Upon A Time In The West  
11 Year Of The Jet Packs 
12 King Of Kings   
13 Last Man On Earth