Hiroshima Mon Amour

I’ve been indulging in a little impulsive nostalgia this afternoon. Said occupation has involved listening initially to whatever Tubeway Army I could grab – the first 7″ I bought was Complex by Gary Numan. If the ‘a’ side proves a tad mawkish, the ‘b’ side, a live rendition of Bombers is remarkable for its stripped down music track and streamlined lyrics:

Bombers fight at zero…
In silent bars, in silent rooms, in silent cars
You hide where you can
And me I know just where you are
You see,
I’m a bomber man

The singer felt the full brunt of critical opprobrium though I could never understand why. He popularised electropop as well as a remarkably dystopian vision informed by Philip K. Dick, William Burroughs and J.G. Ballard. Replicas’ themes of loss, alienation and cloning confusion seem remarkably contemporary, as does his particular fusion of guitars and synthesizers. I stayed with Numan up until Telekon which I bought in Edinburgh while on summer holiday with my parents (complete with limited edition 7″ single). I had to wait until I got home, a week or so later, until I could hear it. Unfortunately it never quite lived up to expectation. Anyway, the afternoon’s thirst for Numan led on to John Foxx and a desire to listen again to Metamatic for the first time in years (my original vinyl copy continues to gather dust in a cupboard upstairs). Foxx’s brand of stripped-down electronica was significantly more prescient than Numan whom he evidently inspired. In Plaza and He’s A Liquid’s spare percussion tracks with their abrupt snaregates and rigid beats I hear a multiplying host of Mille Plateaux artists. Foxx was also lyrically more than a match on Metamatic for his more successful counterpart:

Well I used to remember
Now it’s all gone
World War something
We were somebody’s sons
Over all the bridges
Echoes in rows
Talking at the same time
Click click drone
Misty on the glass now
Rusty on the door
Here for years now

The shadow of apocalypse hangs as heavily as Bombers… (as it did over so much popular culture at that time, see my post on City of Sound here). But this was more an echo of a previous Foxx-penned anthem, the gorgeous Hiroshima Mon Amour whose two versions are some of my favourite pieces of music. There’s the sophisticated Roxy-ish sheen of the version that concluded Ultravox’s second album Ha!-Ha!-Ha! and the ‘b’ side of the Slow Motion double 7″ which was a gloriously mashed-up punk rock crash of a track. Lyrics:

Somehow we drifted off too far
Communicate like distant stars
Splintered voices down the ‘phone
The sunlit dust, the smell of roses drifts, oh no
Someone waits behind the door
Hiroshima mon amourRiding inter-city trains
Dressed in European grey
Riding out to echo beach
A million memories in the trees and sands, oh no
How can I ever let them go?
Hiroshima mon amour

Meet beneath the autumn lake
Where only echoes penetrate
Walk through polaroids of the past
Future’s fused like shattered glass, the sun’s so low
Turns our silhouettes to gold
Hiroshima mon amour

Foxx scavenged the title from the Resnais film, but the lyrical beauty is all his own. It’s an absolute favourite of mine, I know every moment of the song off by heart (including every note of the relatively lengthy outro saxophone solo). It quickly became ingrained into my 16 year old heart. This afternoon surfing the net via Acquisition and ssX I spotted a video of the group performing the track on Old Grey Whistle Test – made by heart miss a few beats… I’ve currently secured 36 precious seconds of the file and both my swipe apps are telling me the single source is no longer active (aaargh…) What’s particularly amazing/frustrating is that those 36 seconds reveal a different version again (aaargh x 2). Here’s Mr Dennis Leigh looking very Bowie c. New Career In A New Town: