Search - I Start Counting :: My Translucent Hands

What a great time for music

Greg A. Scoggin | San Francisco, CA USA | 07/27/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I Start Counting were seminal for their time when making electronic music meant you wrote pop songs or experimentalism along the lines of industrialism. I start counting broke the mold along with contemporaries Depeche Mode in that they had the use of Rich Man Daniel Miller and his plethora of highly expensive synths such as the Synclavier, PPG Wave and Fairlight CMI, which at the time, were probably the most expensive yet formidable digital sampling machines around. Those of us struggling musicians at the time were lucky if we could delve into analong polyphonic synths ( I know I shelled out about 6 thousand US for an OB-8, DSX sequencer and DMX drum machine from now deunkt Oberheim electronics) and the aforementioned were simply out of my price range. along with the EMU emulator made by my home town heroes up in Santa Cruz, California.

Not withstanding, Danial Miller brought certain artists to the forefront as he and many others of his era, including producer Flood, Tonmeister Gareth Jones, Trevor Horn and a miniscule others, had the money, recording equipment and resources to produce cutting edge pop-dance electronica. I start counting were probably a band that sent in a demo to Danial Miller's label MUTE, or played live and was heard by one of their A&R people and brought in for studio production. Their first two releases were a sample maniac's bliss, chock full of 8 bit 22Khz sounds pumpled through great analog electronics to which I can only guess were Neve or Trident british analog reording consoles using big deep and bassy compressors and limiters by Focusrite,BSS, Drawmer, Klark Teknik and XTA. Dozens of top live sound engineers to this day regularly specify Amek, Midas or Soundcraft consoles. Nonetheless, it was a time in music, sound and audio when you had to write good music, whatever your format of instrument (in this case analog and very early digital samplers and synthesizers) in order to get a record deal. I Start Counting was just one of those bands.

Deep, melancholic, introspective and harmonic, they were akin to something of a Depeche Mode-esque pop sensibility coupled with a rich, Fleetwood Mac-like introspection. Their early recordings were unique, from the heart and part of an era that will never be again in a time where electronica has truly moved into the home studio due to largely decreased costs of synths, equipment and recording console emulates (IE. One can emulate the classic 100,000 pound NEVE console of yester-year today with a thousand pound firewire interface that 'copies' it's sonic characteristics) so the sound is good, but the incentive to write good music is not what it was because today, a producer, engineer or artist does not have to go through the record label middle man, so to speak, to put out their release. In the day of I Start Counting, this was not the case.

They were a 50/50 band, though. They could not figure out if they wanted to produce warm, melodically personal ditties that most of us could identify with, or abstract, cubist cut and paste electro-art along the lines of industrialist experimentation so in this they left most of us wondering if we were tracking a band that appealed to our hearts or whether we were blindly following two guys who pressed everything they though might have some kind of abstract significance. The problem with the latter is ISC did not test market their more experimental quarry to either their friends or Danial Miller (who, bless his heart, gave the artists of his label complete and unabashed freedom to release whatever they wanted without censor, once signed) and in turn, often put out complete, inane, repetitive slop. Had ISC's product not been so mercurial, they would have gained a strong and resolute following; but despite their meanderings, a few of their tracks were stellar and they will go down in infamy at a time when electronic pop was young and inspired. I still listen to 'Letters to a friend', 'Million Headed Monster' 'See how it cuts through the vein', 'Admans's Dream' and 'Still Smiling' as though it were yesterday. Not because it was good and cutting edge electronic pop for the time, but because to this day, it is still good, cutting edge electro-pop from an era whose innocence, production, inspiration, and songwriting were stellar. With or without synthesizers, ISC wrote some very deeply personal, heartfelt and beautiful songs, and on this, their merit stands to infamy."