The bands that "never were"

[~steviln]

In these days most of the decent bands end up being signed, but there hasn`t always been that way! There are a couple of bands that I think could have been real classics, that never even got to release a proper album.

The first of these bands are Hard Corps. The released a couple of singles in the mid eighties, but only released a compilation album, which unfortunantly mostly featured newer and inferior songs. Their sound was a mixture of Propaganda and Kraftwerk, and their two first singles were amongst the best music I have ever heard! The also recorded several unreleased songs in the same style, and it was all fabulous. Unfortunantly they never got a proper record deal, and the whole project just dissapeared into oblivion.

The second of these band were a british band named Technoquake, that released a single and a 12" in Sweden in the late eighties. The sound was a wonderful dark, flowing and melodic harder synthpopsound, not totally different from early Mesh. Unfortunantly, the band memebers squabled, and the band split before they could make an album. The singer later released a dissapointing album under the name "Devoid".

The third band was actually a workforce side project called Doppler Effect. The only released a single 12" to my knowledge, but it was absolutely great! It was a kind of early eighties inspired analogue synthpopsound, at a time when almost no bands produced that kind of music! It sounded like a harder edged version of Ganymede. But unfortunantly both this project and Workforce vanished without a trace.

[~jetjaguar15]

Heads-Up Display and Joy Machine were early projects of the current members of Brand New Idol that had some really awesome songs. Through the existance of mp3.com, you can hear songs from both projects (I think).

[~skylla]

Originally posted by steviln
In these days most of the decent bands end up being signed, but there hasn`t always been that way!

really?... isn't it more so that it's just become much simpler to press and distribute an album yourself, so that most artists gets released by themselves on their own label?

[~steviln]

Originally posted by skylla


really?... isn't it more so that it's just become much simpler to press and distribute an album yourself, so that most artists gets released by themselves on their own label?

Of course that helps, but earlier it really were much harder to get signed. In the ninenties some german labels have signed virtually anyone, but in the eighties there really weren`t that many synth labels around. And the communications were much poorer, so that it was extremly rare that a band got signed to a foregin label. The only synthlabels around back then either specialised in hard EBM(the belgian labels), so softer bands had to get signed to either mayor labels, or labels that small that they often couldn`t afford to release an album at all.