Heart of a Punk Soul of a Rasta

Howard Devoto - The Shadowy Years
Part 1 (Episode 2)

The Bernard & Howard Show

In May '83 Howard Devoto returned after a two year absence teaming up with Bernard Szajner the French ambient composer best known in this country for his much vaunted 1980 LP "Some Deaths Take Forever".

A couple of weeks prior to a LIVE performance at the Lyric Hammersmith Bernard Szajner appeared on UK TV demonstrating his new invention - The Laser Harp. As unlikely as it sounds he ably demonstrated The Laser Harp on Tomorrow's World - for those of you too young to be really interested Tomorrow's World was The Gadget Show of 1983, and for what seemed like decades before & after. TW was broadcast by the Beeb on a Thursday evening just before Top of the Pops. If you'd have tuned in early on this particular night you would have seen Bernard Szajner doing his demo, and could have thought, momentarily, that TOTPS had suddenly gone all Old Grey Whistle Test on ya. Anyway after much rummaging in my attic here it is the only surviving recording of Bernard Szajner on the Laser Harp from Tomorrow's World 1983 (except of course for all the other recording on youtube).

A week after the Tomorrow's World transmission Bernard Szajner's "BRUTE REASON" LP was released. On it Howard Devoto provides words and vocals for three of the tracks "Without Leaving" that opens the album, "Deal of the Century" that opens side two, and finally "The Convention". It may have seemed an unlikely even incongruous pairing, matching Howard's cold clinical and clipped conversations with Bernard Szajner's electronic brand of ambient soundscapes, but the alliance works.

In 1983 there were synth mongers aplenty. Numan & the new Ultravox & John Foxx & Kraftwerk were all still happily banging away with the electronic thing as were the likes of New Order & OMD & Depeche Mode & Soft Cell et al. But on Brute Reason Szajner & Devoto never come close to sounding quite like anyone else. "Brute Reason" is distinctly different, and definitely its own master. Also unlike Howard's collaboration on "This Mortal Coil" album (see later) "Brute Reason" is not just strong where Devoto is involved, it's an extremely strong well devised and produced album though out.

Howard's part in the LP is as a three cornered turn starting with the first track "Without Leaving" - he sings "For too long I've been absent without leaving" - quite a line for Devoto to come up with on his return from a two year hiatus. Or perhaps the line just came to him from out of the ether. Either way the plodding restless nature of the music gives Devoto free reign. He takes full advantage and serves up a bizarre theatrical melodrama of a vocal. Has Devoto ever been more theatrical than this? Possibly not - it works.

Devoto also opens side two with the brooding "Deal of the Century" and again he takes on the freedom the music allows and ably fills it. He talks, he rants, he sings in a falsetto. Finally there's "The Convention" which again plods strangely along with Howard applying wry and asinine observations - it conjures up images of a drab weekend convention in Saarbruken or Telford "All those broken hours I'm going to mend all the broken hours I can recall".

The musical setting on "Brute Reason" is harder and starker than on Howard's "Jerky Versions", it's closer to Luxuria in style and it fits Devoto well, like a fingerless glove.

Other than Mr Devoto's work on "Brute Reason" it's "Snowprints" that for me stands out - haunting & beautifully simple in equal measure, the words spoken rather than sung while Szajner's keyboards chill you to the bone. Also listening to Snowprints now it sounds like it could have come straight off "A Secret Wish" by Propaganda those friends of the mancunian scribbler Paul Morley. Devoto, Morley & Manchester. I feel history shifting again, onward to The Lyric.

PS: An instrumental version of S-N-O-W-P-R-I-N-T-S can be found on the CD release of "Some Deaths Take Forever".