It’s been 40 years since the debut Tom Tom Club album brightened up the early 1980s, so we thought it would be a good time to chat with Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz about the making of this much-loved record and the circumstances that led to it.
They don't hold back – particularly when talking about their former Talking Heads bandmate David Byrne – and they've got some great tales to tell. Along the way, Chris reveals that the pair recently played a secret gig and are now getting ready to start work on some fresh Tom Tom Club material, their first for almost a decade. Get your dancing shoes ready.
As well as our glittering cover feature, we also talk to idiosyncratic instrumentalists Public Service Broadcasting and pop savants Saint Etienne on the release of their fine new albums. One of them is inspired by Berlin and the other one is a celebration of the 1990s. Jonny Trunk meanwhile discusses his oddball record label, Ride guitar hero Andy Bell plugs us into his electronic project GLOK, and Ultrasound explain some of the difficulties of technological advancement when you don’t have much technology at your disposal.
There is, of course, plenty more for you to enjoy inside this month’s magazine, including Stephen Mallinder,Matt Berry and Re-Phlex. Check it out y'all.
To accompany the magazine, we have a blue vinyl seven-inch featuring two truly stunning remixes of Tom Tom Club's classic 'Genius Of Love'. The A-side is a robo-funk monster buzzed with synthetic vocoder effects courtesy of Señor Coconut, aka German electronic producer Uwe Schmidt, who is feted for his tropical cover versions of Kraftwerk. Flip the disc over for something at the other end of the spectrum, as keyboard king and long-time Beastie Boys collaborator Money Mark deconstructs ‘Genius Of Love’ into a propulsive analogue collage of found sounds, elastic grooves and kinetic junk-shop clatter.
As with all of our seven-inch releases, this record is strictly limited and is only available to readers of Electronic Sound, so make sure you grab your copy right away.