The Dynamic Curve

 

Another Ed Ball post today to keep the thread going. The World Wide Web doesn't provide much information (anymore) if you want to find out something about “the Dynamic Curve” of Sand. Sand were another side project from Edward Ball, this time together with Creation Records colleague Richard “Dick” Green, who was also involved in various The Times albums.

I don't think many people know this album, at least you never read about it and when Edward Ball is mentioned, Sand is never mentioned and no track on it ever appears on Ed Ball compilations. At least I don't know anything about it.

One review claimed that it was "the album Mike Oldfield has wanted to make for years."

Well, I can't say, but it is indeed a great, chill instrumental album. The album was released in 1991, Ed Ball was in his highly productive phase with several The Times, Love Corporation, Teenage Filmstars albums in a relatively short period of time. For me at the time it was simply unbelievable how many different genres he was active in. And certainly not every one of his songs was a hit. But under the influence of ecstasy he came up with a very high number of fantastic and convincing tracks. “The Dynamic Curve” has aged well and especially the opening track “Felatio” is 10 minutes of pure happiness and I always enjoy playing it, even after “Star 6 & 7 8 9“ by the Orb or similar chillers. I envy everyone who is still able to discover this album.

„Sand was a duo comprised of British songwriter Ed Ball and the co-owner of Creation Records, Richard Green. Ed Ball’s background with post-punk and neo-psychedelic rock bands like Television Personalities, ‘O’ Level, and Teenage Filmstars is felt in the album’s atmosphere. “Felatio” is an epic opener, beginning with strumming guitars and launching into gorgeous synth melodies and rolling percussion. The song progresses with a triumphant spirit and sounds like the accompaniment to flying over snowy mountains and fantasy landscapes. “This Thinking Feeling Moment” follows with a more somber mood, an arpeggiated guitar melody repeating throughout while synths and sound effects swirl in and out of the soundscape. “Consent” and “Absolution” are more laid back and sunny, resembling Harmonia and 1980s era Tangerine Dream. The album is highly diverse and serene, invoking a consistently unique atmosphere. The Dynamic Curve is a thought-provoking listening experience able to sound both retro and ahead of its time, even influencing one of the best metal albums of the century, The Mantle by Agalloch. Sand were a short-lived project, but they made something special in their brief tenure that sounds both adventurous and blissful.“

-Benjamin Kuettel-

You can hear the full album here:

https://www.discogs.com/master/334109-Sand-The-Dynamic-Curve

Only for Lovers

„You made a few albums under The Love Corporation banner in the early 90’s. I really loved the ‘Tones’ album which I still regularly listen to. when did you first get into dance music? Do you think you’ll ever release anything else by The Love Corporation?

Thank you for saying that about ‘Tones’. Listening to it now, it sounds like a Quentin Tarantino film soundtrack – ’60s inspired themes interpreted by Kraftwerk on a ’70s porn film set, the whole sweetmeat produced by Giorgio Moroder. Not bad for 1989. The first of its kind on Creation. even though I’d dabbled with pop electronics on “Hello Europe” 1984, I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and say I was into dance music, more the pirate concept of sampling, half melodies, noise, the deconstruction and the excuse for another disguise.

Having to programme drum machines, grab the latest loops, blah de blah, was a bore and mostly got in the way of the really exciting stuff; stealing dialogue from films, lifting ‘grabbable’ voices and riffs from records . . . rather like bringing a graveyard back to life! Me and Dan could probably make a brilliant dance record. Maybe we will!!“

Reading this part of the Creation interview with Ed Ball, it seems surprising that it

albums like “Tones” & “Lovers” ever existed. Mister Ball was not only a musician, but also had to take on considerable tasks in the Creation Record offices. The production of the second My Bloody Valentine album continued to be postponed and cost enormous amounts of money.

To keep the label going and money into the U.K. coffers. Rinse, records were produced in record time, most reliably by, you guessed it, Edward Ball. Acid house and ecstasy conquered the island and also the Creation Records office, which had previously been noticed more by guitar-oriented rock / pop. And Edward Ball, the good soul, right hand man and tireless help to Alan McGee, delivered. Legend has it that “Tones”, the first album as Love Corporation, was created at the same time as The Times’ second album “E for Edward”. It is considered an acid house album, I never understood or heard it as an acid house album. At that time. It's definitely a pretty interesting & well-aged album though, with "Palatial", which was later remixed by Shoom co-founder Danny Rampling & being something of a hit on the album.

„Creation's headlong plunge into the world of acid house in reality took some time to work its way into the release schedule, with the first offering in the new genre only coming out in January 1990 despite the influence of the ecstasy culture having gripped the label for some months. Ironically, the first album to take the plunge was another release from Ed Ball, recorded at the other side of the studio while he was making The Times' E For Edward album. Acid house had first appeared in the nation at the end of 1987 when clubs began to open up that attempted to reproduce the ecstasy-fuelled Summer highs of Ibiza, and the grip it soon gained over the nation was startling, mirroring the impact of the punk revolution of the late 1970s. To the indie kids who had supported the label from the early days, Creation's change of tack flew in the face of everything in which they believed. A six-track mini-album lasting 33 minutes, a third of this was taken up by the last track 'Palatial' that was remixed for a single release by Danny Rampling, founder of one of the original acid house clubs, Shoom. This has a relaxtion tape narrative played over plenty of 'dap-dap-dapping' and seems to last for ever.“

If you listen to the second album “Lovers” from 1991, the differences to “Tones” are obvious.

It's a completely different, deeper soundscape, just through the basslines (listen to "Crystals"), the sound is more humorous and happy. “Lovers” is definitely the sound of the summer and probably the reason why it’s closer to me than “Tones.” Afterwards, it makes sense to play “Madstock” by Candy Flip or the Beloved. In any case, Ed Ball appeared for me with the two Love Corporation where I didn't expect it, even if the three The Times albums from the years 89 - 91 showed certain signs.

„Following Hypnotone's initial offering, Ed Ball returns with the second album from Love Corporation, this time a full-blooded, 37-minute offering. The differences between the two releases are immediately apparent. Ball's work is less seriously focused with his sense of humour often encroaching into the tracks which themselves are so stuffed with samples you feel they might explode. They also go on a bit. The opener 'Love' is six minutes of a cackling rhythm over piano with a nice organ solo in the middle, and 'Warm' has a hymn-like opening with barking dogs, oriental chanting and a female vocal ……“

( & recovered as beautiful guitar „Ballad of Georgie Best“ on „Alternative Commercial Crossover“ by the Times in 1993) 

„….'Crystal' is full of Captain Scarlet samples with dancing keyboards and a bubbling back beat, whilst 'Sun' opens with David Bowie's 'Diamond Dogs'“ 

(& could have been left over from “Tones”. - I think)

„Three shorter tracks end the album, with 'Lovers' again dense and heavy going and 'Smile' being all the better for being more of a straightforward dance tune leaving you with some room to breathe.“

Interview passages from creation record site

Review passages in Apostrophe from -isolationrecords-

Pure & Et dieu cre la femme

 

I recently read Alan McGee’s autobiography. A book that is easy to read.

Of course, the question arises as to how many of the many stories and anecdotes that McGee tells actually happened. After all, alcohol and many, many drugs were always involved. Of course I would have liked to read a lot more about Ed Ball, who was an important man for McGee and Creation records. And also more about the creation of the albums themselves. Fact is, Creation was an important label for me at least from 1989 to, say, 1995. Everything that came out there was super interesting and had to be checked first. A lot of it wasn't really my cup of tea, but there was a lot to discover and celebrate besides Ed Ball (My Bloody Valentine,Hypnotone, Primal Scream, Momus, Pete Astor, Pie Finger, Sheer Taft, Lilac Time, Dreadzone). I already wrote that Ed Ball was hyperactive and creative during this time. In addition to his house and yard project the Times, he had many other projects going on (Sand, Teenage Film Stars). Love Corporation was certainly his most famous side project.

Between The Times albums “Et dieu cre la Femme” and “Pure” there were 21 catalog numbers,

In between there were other Ed Ball records. “Pure” was my introduction to the Ed Ball cosmos. I discovered the previous two albums retrospectively, so to speak.

I already wrote about “E for Edward”. Not all of the songs on the 3 albums take me away, but here too there are wonderful Ed Ball gems, from the fantastic Blue Monday cover “Lundi Bleu”, the great “Ours is a Wonderlove World”, the almost kitschy “Pour Kylie” ( the second Kylie anthem after KLF's "Kylie said it Jason"). Other pretty good tracks include “A Girl called Mersey”, “Confiance” and the very electronic “Aurore Boreale”.

Together with his side projects, there's enough material for a pretty varied 90 minute tape and summer car rides.

„Given that the dust has really settled on Creation now, what are your favourite releases on the label now?

Of my own? Probably ‘Pure’ The Times 1991 for being so anarchic and disrespectful. Recorded on a £600 budget, it sounds like a mental breakdown waiting to happen. Not surprising given the amounts of LSD I was ingesting . . . far beyond ReCreational doses. (Alan maintains that in hindsight, I’d suffered a minor breakdown around this time). Also ‘Star’ Teenage Filmstars 1992 which appeared only months after “Loveless” for achieving that intangible vagueness. As for everybody else who made records on the label, I’ve adopted Joe’s view that they were all brilliant.

I’m not sure that’s true though, about the dust settling. Creation was the brainchild of a man who had 20 ideas a day, some of which changed thousands upon thousands of people’s lives. Some are timebombs still waiting to go off. The mid-period of the label is currently in vogue and there’s alot of fascinating music and madness to discover therein. The last quarter of Creations music history is largely overshadowed by Oasis’s staggering success and the change in the company’s working mechanism, but it was still mostly Alan’s idiosyncratic vision. That period wasn’t always about trying to occupy all 40 positions in the charts every week . . .“

Interview Passages from Creation Records.

E for Edward

 

In 1988, after a short break, Ed Ball (TV Personalities, The Boo Radleys) restarted his project - the Times - essentially as a solo project on Creation Records. Until then he had released a handful of mod pop/rock records every year since 1982. Ed Ball's band had recently broken up, Creation boss Alan McGee arranged for his own band Biff Pang Pow! as a backing band to record “Beat Torture”. Ed Ball returned the favor by participating in their fourth album “Love is forever”. But big changes were coming: acid house and the second summer of love came to England and had a huge influence on his work. E for Edward, released in 1989, was his 2nd album for Creation.

„From here, it was just a short magic bus ride to ‘E for Edward’ 1989 Times album, by which time I’d been working at Creation for about a year and was in the froth and thrall of it’s Ecstasy culture.“

If you look at his activities in the following years, the man couldn't have slept more than 2 or 3 hours a day. His output was so enormous that he could no longer and would not put his ideas on the Times albums alone. And so we got wonderful albums as Love Corporation and Sand (a project that hardly anyone knows about anymore), which I will also write about. However, dance beats were no reason for him to put down the guitar. His album as Teenage Filmstars, “Lift off/Stars…” sounded to me like a melodic version of My Bloody Valentine and “Loveless”. However, I ignored his activities as Conspiracy of Noise (a violent rock collaboration with the singer of Extreme Noise Terror) (similar to KLF vs. ENT).

„If there’s any period that has a particular resonance with me, then its ’90 to ’93. There was an unspoken “licence” that existed at Creation by Alan’s decree. Any artist could make as many records as they liked, the prerequisites being you recorded inexpensively, quickly and could guarantee 5000+ sales. It benefited the label by filling the release schedules resulting in turnover. This privilege had briefly been in the hands of two or three other notable writers. I applied for the “licence” and had it for a year on probation. It prompted one weekly music paper to describe me as “the only artist in music today who uses and abuses his label” – for the next forty-odd months I made 12 albums, variously as The Times, Teenage Filmstars and . . .“

Looking back, you can say that his Creation Records years, where he also worked under Alan McGee, were the years that were the most interesting for me personally, but when “E for Edward” came out in 1989 I didn't know anything about any of that. The Berlin Wall fell at the end of the year and there were thousands of records, books, films and other things to discover. Money was tight, the Internet had not yet been invented and people had to rely on newspapers and magazines. Sometimes it led nowhere, sometimes it was a direct hit. I can't remember exactly, but I think I discovered "E for Edward" after "Pure" (1991). So there can be no question of chronology. The album has its big hit with “Manchester” and further wonderful moments with “French Film Bleurred”, “No Love On Haight Street” & “Snow”.

„In keeping with the album’s drug-oriented title, the record closes with “Acid Angel of Ecstasy,” a character study hissed over oscillating tremolo guitar. From there, it was only a drop, trip and a thump to the Love Corporation, a nom-de-dance under which Ball released a 1990 acid-house EP.“

• Ira Robbins -

And, and so on….and….that Ed Ball is a big New Order fan should have been clear at least since the Blue Monday cover version “Lundi bleu” with its many versions. The previously unreleased “Truth Faith” appeared a few years ago on a compilation that included my 3 favorite “the Times” albums “E for Edward” (1989) “Et Dieu Créa La Femme” (1990) & “Pure” ( 1991) were re-released on CD with further additional tracks. For me, “Manchester” is basically a New Order anthem without Hooky’s bass.

„So we're sitting in the snug bar waiting for Jase the Ace 

Hooky's by the jukebox doing his splendid to entertain

Look at Tony Wilson live on Channel 4…“

And then there's the matter of the back cover.

“Technique” was New Order's Ibiza album, the last for Tony Wilson's Factory and was released one year earlier. “E for Edward” is more than a clear reference.

 Interview Passages taken from creation records. Part2 will follow. 

File under: Pop / Dance