aaamusic | On 05, Oct 2010

It’s well known that 80s have a very bad reputation about music produced in that period, but it’s true that there weren’t only spangles and trash pop music, 80s have been a fundamental decade to the development of new music currents, we can remember hip hop and graffiti culture, post punk and new wave.
But electronic music reached the top of its genre thanks to the invention of synths and drum machines that intrigued musicians, so they started to use them massively blending new sounds with the most varied materials, from Saturday morning kids’ TV to movie soundtracks.
So DJ Mike Maguire have done a big operation to make up what was forgotten and sum up the best of this decade releasing an ongoing series chronicling the seismic development in electronic based music. Bustin’ Out 1983 is the third album of this series. Following the post-punk foragings of volume one, the microscope now falls on 1983, when the fallout from the previous year’s ‘Planet Rock’ spawned electro funk in tandem with the emerging hip hop and graffiti cultures, while electronic developments started infiltrating many more layers of new music, whether disco, punk or even mainstream.
The least common denominator is electronic used in all its facets and inserted in different genres, it’s interesting to point out that in the same album you can find New Order, Cocteau Twins and Anne Clarke, going from post-punk to dream pop to avantgarde.
In fact, the sound of that year is very particular because marks out the transition from electronic music made at the end of 70s, that was robotic, cold, rational, in reality the sound created by Kraftwerk that was in contrast with disco music and punk, to the electro of half 80s, that was sleeker and more appropriate for a catwalk, like Wang Chung.
So we can find something darker, like John Carpenter’s theme of “Assault on precint 13”, or something representative of New York’s clubs like Special Request’s Salsa Murf. But you can also hear in Chinese Disguise (by the very interesting project called Koto) an opener sound, nearer to the second half of the decade.
Detractors can say that music of that period was a fake, but it was a tricky period for music, especially electronic development, and what we listen to in this moment definitely come from that age, so it’s important to understand more than judge.
Well done DJ Mike!

Author: Roberta Capuano