Sensation/No Sensation...

A Red Mecca Of Synth Sounds

Released on the Imaginating Music Label in 1981 from the band The Naughtiest Girl Was A Monitor. I think possibly named after a collection of Enid Blyton Books. The track is called 'Front' which you can catch at the youtube link.

Early 80's style new wave/post punk minimalist sounding synth pop, Sheffield certainly seemed to be the place that spawned many electronic music acts at the time, such as Cabaret Voltaire who released their electronic based album 'Red Mecca' in the same year as this single, have a listen to the slightly left-field and experimental sounding track 'Red Mask' taken from the album.

When Synth Sounds Ruled The Waves

Other Sheffield bands included acts such as the synth-pop based sound of The Human League, again releasing 'Dare' in the same year, an album which helped propel the band to the big time. Catch the track from the album 'Sound Of The Crowd' (I remember it well on Top Of The Pops at the time). Much like the Gary Numan/Tubeway Army single from several years earlier when I first saw and heard it I have to say it quite blew me away with just how 'different' to anything I had ever heard before it was, almost 'space-age' sounding.

The early part of the 80's was inundated with synth sounds, bands like 'Kraftwerk' paving the way for them all in the mid-seventies. It wasn't just a Sheffield thing the genre was all over the UK. Acts such as Gary Numan/Tubeway Army, John Foxx, O.M.D. and, not forgetting my local heroes Depeche Mode.

B Side & Track List