Tony Mansfield - New Musik - The (techno)pop wizard

Prologue

The history of pop music is packed with names who had everything going for them to reach the long-desired success, and yet... Instead, the first meeting between Tony Mansfield and Clive Gates takes place in November 1972, in a pub in the outskirts of a London still glittering with the sequins of Ziggy and T-Rex, but still full of a progressive fascination trailing in the wake of the long cape worn by the Crimson King.

They're two kids, both a bit awkward, the first one infatuated with the rock trends of the moment and nursing frontman ambitions, the second shaped by a childhood marked out by strict classical piano lessons. Together they form Reeman Zeegus, a band destined to die within a few months, after just a handful of pub gigs. The two part ways for a while: Clive steps aside, while Tony becomes a rather good guitarist and, having dropped out of school at just fifteen, lands himself a job as a general dogsbody in Decca Records' art department, seizing every chance to sneak into the recording studios and even trying his hand as a session man. All the while, though, he never lets go of the idea of forming a band. Together with his old schoolmates, he puts together, without much of a plan, End Of The World, writes a handful of songs, and at the same time works as a roadie for Nick Straker, a young guy firmly set on escaping the mire of birthday parties and weddings around Europe where he keeps finding himself, performing a repertoire of soul-disco covers. We're around 1978, and thanks partly to Tony's suggestions, Nick comes up with an early version of "A Walk In The Park", which, after a not-quite-there version released in 1979, becomes a dance hit the following year.

It's right in '79 that Straker lands a solo record deal that leads him to say goodbye to everyone, heading toward a success that will nonetheless never develop into what could be called a major career. Truth be told, the decision to leave the group is mostly down to the fact that his roadie starts pushing his own ideas, and holds a strong sway over the band members, even in the recording studio, where, as always, somehow he manages to materialize. In short, he had become a sort of backseat driver who was gradually stealing the show. Straker would later say: "Even though he was a great guy, I couldn't stand working with him in the studio. Everything seemed so pretentious, and I was convinced he wouldn't get anywhere! Of course, over the years I realized I'd made quite a big miscalculation: Tony knew exactly what he was doing and had an exact feel for what was happening".

New Musik... is coming

Straker's orphans are drummer Phil Towner and bassist Tony Hibbert. Although Mansfield, ever the tinkerer that he is, was by now also getting on splendidly with synthesizers, the line-up is completed by the reappearance of virtuoso Clive Gates, who takes on the role of keyboardist, leaving the newly-minted leader free to take on vocals and guitars. It should be said, in fairness, that despite their rivalry, Nick Straker had willingly lent a hand as keyboardist in the band's very first sessions, while that slot waited to be filled. I almost forgot: also lurking in Straker's entourage is a certain Pete Hammond, who also dabbles on bass, but whom Mansfield pegs as a possible studio wizard, having seen him in action at the Tmc, the small London studio where all our protagonists used to hang out.

He won't be mistaken, since Hammond - after having been the sound engineer for New Musik throughout their brief career - would go on to work on the masters of an endless string of popstars from the 80s onward, including Paul Young, Rick Astley, Abc and Alison Moyet, becoming an established remixer and producer.

So begins the story of a band that holds a remarkable number of distinctions, united by the fact that neither the public nor the critics of the time - nor since - ever really seemed to notice their existence. And yet, on paper, the ingredients are all there. For starters, New Musik belong to the very first wave of British synth-pop bands, and they carry their own unmistakable signature sound just as much as the others - if not more so. So how is it that the likes of Abc, Soft Cell, The Human League, Tubeway Army, Omd and Depeche Mode enjoyed widespread popularity for varying lengths of time - in some cases everlasting - while New Musik are barely mentioned by scholars of the genre? Beyond a poor alignment of the planets - because otherwise the phenomenon simply can't be fully explained - much of the reason comes down to the controversial personality of Tony Mansfield, combined with his look, which - let's be honest - suits an afternoon of culture in the library far better than joining the heavily made-up army that, not long after, would invade the United States in the second British Invasion.

No way around it: Tony (and the others were no different) was simply not cut out for extravagant double-breasted photo shoots, the kind where everyone stares off into their own personal horizon in solemn poses, careful never to meet the gaze of their bandmates. Quiet, short, a bit stocky, with a funny look and rather clumsy stage movements, he wore a pair of prescription glasses with which he reluctantly played even the self-deprecation card - the one that a swaggering character like Elvis Costello knew how to pull off with supreme ease.

Not to mention his near-total unwillingness to talk about himself, let alone give interviews. If it had been up to him, music was something that was born and only had reason to exist inside a recording studio: "I used to listen to the Beatles' records and other records that had certain combinations of sounds that really intrigued me, and I liked that a lot, and I'm still very interested in the studio side of things, the effects side, and what you can do with sound in general."

The demos that came out of the Tmc Studio sessions were picked up by Gto Records, the label that had secured the UK rights to Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" catalogue. In hindsight, the choice of label wasn't exactly a lucky one either, since within less than a couple of years it would fold, and its roster would be absorbed by Cbs, which had no interest whatsoever in promoting its catalogue.

Straight lines... from A to B

Just enough time for Tony to shut himself in the studio with his trusty alter ego Hammond for the necessary mixing, and on August 10, 1979 the debut single "Straight Lines" was released. It's an uptempo track with clear radio appeal, one that could easily be compared in mood and sound to "Video Killed The Radio Star" by the Buggles, which, a month later, would shape the destiny of pop music to come. Except that, compared to that track, it lacks the stamp of a manifesto, and the cunning Trevor Horn showed in handing the - admittedly more effective - refrain to female voices. Speaking of which, Trevor Horn - the deus ex machina of the Buggles - could have given Mansfield a run for his money in terms of weak appeal as a teen idol, and it's probably no coincidence that both of them, rather than rallying crowds on stage, soon ended up behind the scenes instead, shaping the course of the 80s in the far more fitting role of producers. A triumph of predictive physiognomy?

Although the B-side featured a precious gem like the synth-ballad "On Islands", the single stalled at number 53 on the UK charts. "On Island" would nonetheless enjoy a good run of success in France in May 1980, when it was released as the A-side of the same single, reissued with the sides swapped, and would later be covered by the German band Camouflage.

No matter, because there was plenty more in store, and in November came "Living By Numbers", which revealed to the public the true signature of the New Musik sound: metronomic pacing, catchy melody, a doubled and carefully treated vocal, cascading keyboard counterpoints, airy twelve-string guitar arpeggios, and lyrics steeped in disenchanted cynicism ("They don't want your name, just your number"). Indeed, one of their defining traits lies precisely in the contrast between light, even joyful melodies and lyrics dense with pessimism, loneliness, and disillusionment with life. This time the charts smiled on the London quartet, with a flattering thirteenth place, and the track - besides getting excellent airplay - also became the musical soundtrack to a commercial for the Japanese multinational Casio.

While sister label Epic released a US-only EP featuring the four tracks from the two singles (though no one over there took any notice), April 1980 saw the release of the 7" "This World Of Water" and the debut LP From A to B.

Mansfield has always regarded the debut more as a collection of songs than as a fully realized album, and it's hard to argue with him, especially since four of the ten tracks had already, in fact, been released and conceived for the 7" single format. From A to B confirms the strong pull toward radio format that Tony has often mentioned in his rare interviews, but it also reveals a sound that is entirely self-contained, and indeed, in hindsight, surprisingly fresher and more durable than many rival releases of the time, thanks to a tendency not to get carried away by its own, admittedly distinctive, synthetic experiments, leaving room for traditional harmonic structures and plenty of space for acoustic guitar.

At a moment of great rebirth for the song form in Britain, driven by new technology, the album can be seen as the electronic counterpart to the Beatles' "Please Please Me" - and the reference to the Beatles is no accident. To get a sense of it, try listening above all to "Sanctuary" (the fourth and final 7", released that summer) and tell me it couldn't have come from the mind of a melodist like Paul McCartney. Unlike many of their genre peers, the lyrics don't deal with science fiction, or troubled existentialism steeped in decadence, but with a deep alienation from the present, a fear of the surrounding world, in a register that - if it weren't so sharply at odds with the melancholic playfulness of the songs - comes close to the one with which Ian Curtis left his mark on the music of Joy Division.

The long-player didn't repeat the success of "Living By Numbers" and settled at number 35 on the charts, roughly in line with the remaining related singles, yet this didn't discourage the band, who set off in May on a tour of their homeland. Technically, it was no easy task to translate a sound entirely conceived and crafted in a recording studio into a live setting, but the musicians' great skill, combined with the providential presence of backing tapes, guaranteed excellent results live as well, bolstered by a decent turnout of fans.

Some bands tell you how wonderful life is. What is there to be happy about?

In the summer of 1980, New Musik went into the studio to record Anywhere: "'From A To B' - which I'm obviously proud of, it meant a lot to me - was a collection of separate sessions, it wasn't recorded as an album. I think I ended up doing three songs to round out the album. The first proper album was 'Anywhere'." It was released on March 6, 1981.

A record that seems to play just beneath the surface of clear water, dappled by moonbeams. The primal purity of a far-off future, in which the world has only recently risen again from disaster, wearing the new guise of a technological prehistory. In Anywhere there isn't a single sound or atmosphere that isn't traceable exclusively to Anywhere itself — sceneries found nowhere else, which is exactly the point, yet here they're everywhere. There's none of the glacial chill of Kraftwerk or of Foxx's metamatic phase, none of Gary Numan's austerity, and not even the analogue retro-futurism of either the romantic OMD or the sometimes jagged early Human League.

Here everything floats, suspended, as in a pop "REM phase", that deep sleep in which surrender and bodily paralysis channel energy toward a parallel world, where the dream presents the typical incongruities of dreaming, where magnificent landscapes meet unsettled circumstances, and vice versa. Where shards of real life are sucked into places and spaces that don't exist. How many times have you dreamed of running, wildly, with no destination and no reason? Look at them too, running, they've lost their minds and are trying to reach the top of the hill, in vain. "They All Run After The Carving Knife" — that's the starting gun. But before the tightly packed run that follows — marked out by metronomic call-and-response and cascades of twelve-string guitar — comes an endless minute of electronic tinkering that seems to tell you: "Hey, look where I'm dragging you without your knowing it: it could be 'anywhere', and in fact it's only in your head". From the very incipit there's a sense of methodical compression of sound, of care, of a density that, though present on the debut, stayed under the radar there — a dizzying melancholy that now finds its organic dimension.

The intro to "Areas" is a Roland CR78 floating ecstatically over the nocturnal chirping of crickets, a calm disturbed by troubled thoughts: "…people are moving to music, dance ends and the music will fade, fade into an area…". Sonic textures we'd hear again years later on Air's "Premiers Symptômes", albeit with a friendly sun warming their minds. "Churches" is a Beatles-esque little march in four-four time, with a vocoder that glues you to a hook rounded off by an enviable bassline masterfully put together by Tony Hibbert. Despite its sprightly bearing, the lyrics — needless to say — conjure literally apocalyptic scenarios: “Con l’ombra dell’agnello negli occhi di ogni uomo/ 666 si avvicina veloce, e deve accadere sicuramente/ Quattro cavalieri giungono a cavallo, stelle che si scontrano, la terra si fonde con il cielo”.

"This World Of Walter" ironically reworks the title of the debut album's aquatic single (and indeed, in some reissues as well as on Spotify, it too will mistakenly become "This World Of Water"), and is a ballad for acoustic guitar and synth in which, however, the irony fades away in the title.

Walter, in fact, "sees only what he wants to see, he's alone in his own world, Walter knows what he wants to know, because Walter is alone". "Luxury" is the album's first single, released two months earlier without making any dent in the charts — which is rather strange, given how catchy the tune is and how light the lyrics are, resting on a refined swing cut around a vocoder that, together with the unmistakable "sonar effect", is the signature trait of the whole record.

"Peace" and "Traps" reaffirm the great skill of the Mansfield-Hammond duo in stitching pure inlays of evocative, nocturnal pop around ambient motifs. "Changing Minds" is a mechanical dance that built up a certain following in the clubs of the time and which, rather inexplicably, never made it onto a 45 (the second and last single from the album would be the still-fine "While You Wait" in spring '81, aside from two singles released for the German and French markets, "They All Run After The Carving Knife" and "Churches" respectively) — and it's a real shame, because it represents a fine synthesis of the record, pushing to its peak the concept of repetition so dear to Kraftwerk, who are also referenced via an epic vocal choir recalling the glories of the Orchestron used by the Germans on "Radio-Activity". "Changing Minds" retains an admirable melodic development, circular and sinuous, within a masterpiece of audio engineering.

There's always a refuge, a place where one feels at least reassured, and inevitably one returns to the maternal womb, or at least to the places of childhood: "Take me back to room one", Tony sings in the final act of "Back To Room One" amid a cascade of reversed vocal echoes, in a musical onomatopoeia that, at the end of the track and of the album too, points straight to a tape rewinding. "All I want is the same room where I waited before/ take me back to my old room it's not there anymore" — so let's go back to our childhood, or at least go back and listen to Anywhere again from the start, a masterpiece, a landmark of synth-pop, a far-too-well-kept "desert island album" that electronic pop lovers at least should raise as a banner among the immortals and the untouchables. Fans of electronic retro-gear should know that this record celebrates the triumph of the Prophet 5, the first fully programmable polyphonic analogue synthesizer, designed in 1977 — a machine with no MIDI, but one that allows programmed sounds to be stored without having to tweak presets and oscillators every single time. A synth that yields an incredibly deep, atmospheric sound, found for example in Grace Jones's "Private Life", or in Phil Collins's chart-topping "In The Air Tonight", as well as in several John Carpenter soundtracks.

Anywhere makes its appearance at number 68 on the British charts, essentially going unnoticed, crushed under the weight of a record label that couldn't care less about them and a promotional tour that, due to a nervous breakdown suffered by drummer Phil Towner, only managed to cover the month of March 1981.

The cassette version of the album contains two extra tracks, one per side: "And" and "Under Attack", later resurfacing as bonus tracks, for the first and only time, on the reissue of the debut album(!), and only in the 2001 Japanese edition at that. To add insult to injury, Anywhere wasn't even pressed in the United States, since CBS delegated to its subsidiary Epic a compilation gathering a slapdash "best of" the first two albums titled Sanctuary, which was of course left to its fate.

Distorted sensations

Discouragement set in, but the only one who seems not to care about the debacle is the indomitable Tony, who can hardly believe he gets to go back into the studio to record the third album. Given how badly things had gone, New Musik lose their entire rhythm section in one fell swoop, as both Towner and Hibbert bail on the project. Standing by Tony's side remains his bespectacled, lifelong-nerd friend Clive, along with trusty Pete at the console. The duo is joined by yet another strange character, one Cliff Verner, a Black drummer with a brief stint in the little-known British jazz band (!) the Stinky Winkles. What exactly the new recruit was doing in a band like New Musik is anyone's guess, if only because classic drumming is almost entirely absent from the new lineup's sound, and what little there is lies light years away from the odd time signatures that are second nature to good old Cliff.

Despite the band's well-documented commercial misfortunes, Mansfield's name travels fast among colleagues and industry insiders, and so it is that, amid a handful of minor productions, he ends up collaborating on "Neuromantic", the splendid art-electro album by Yukihiro Takahashi, drummer and singer of Yellow Magic Orchestra, which boasts a star-studded cast including, among others, Sakamoto, Steve Nye, as well as Phil Manzanera and Andy Mackay of Roxy Music. The Japanese experience leads Tony to push the band's sound toward an even more synthetic edge: new electronic weaponry falls into his hands, including the famous Fairlight CMI.

In September 1981, the jarring "The Planet Doesn't Mind" comes out on 7", telling in three and a half minutes the story of a thoroughly fascinating commercial suicide: cryptic lyrics, a syncopated, monotone rhythm from start to finish, the usual elusive keyboards, and a structure so precariously balanced between clever experimentation and the appearance of accessibility that it ends up unintelligible to any listening audience. The four-to-the-floor 12" version delivers an electric, dazed dancefloor cut, and indeed it does work in the rotation of wave club nights, but, however perfect within that context, it unfortunately never breaks out of it.

Meanwhile Tony takes on production duties for the Damned's EP "Friday 13th": a genuinely curious circumstance, given the band's sound, which sticks to the stylistic hallmarks of psychedelic post-punk. The credit reads Tony "Broozer" Mansfield, and the story behind it is quite revealing of his personality, since "broozer" — the boxer — is the nickname Captain Sensible pins on him to poke fun at the exaggeratedly mild-mannered traits of his character.

The second single from the reborn New Musik (February 1982) does a complete about-turn, dipping into the most classic of British pop traditions: it is, in fact, nothing less than an electro-flavoured cover of "All You Need Is Love", courtesy of the celebrated firm of Lennon/McCartney.

With today's perception of the Beatles, one might think this was a cynical ploy to pander to the crowd: it wasn't, since in the early '80s the Fab Four were seen as the glorious group of a distant past, one that only John Lennon's assassination and the success of his "Double Fantasy" – which rode the wave of emotion stirred by the tragic event – had brought somewhat back into vogue. It is therefore yet another countercurrent choice, one that isn't and can't be material capable of shaking up the heavily made-up fashion crowds of 1982. And indeed, it doesn't.

Tony's stubborn indifference to the outcomes of his artistic choices goes hand in hand with that of Epic, the label that acquired his contract from Gto. Paradoxically, this grants him enormous freedom, giving him room to push to the extreme a sound that would undoubtedly feel up to date in some hypothetical parallel 1982, but which in the real one is perceived as the divertissement of a band of aliens caught fiddling around with pop music.

March 5, 1982 brings Warp, the parabolic epilogue — an album that, from whatever angle you look at it, contains sonorities incomparable to anything else of its time, and indeed some flashes of brilliance that project it well beyond its own era. In patches, even while stumbling here and there into exploratory excess, the London outfit anticipates the dense, physical dynamics of 90s techno ("Green And Red"), the synth-romantic pop of Air ("A Train On Twisted Tracks"), and the lopsided repetitions of Daft Punk ("I Repeat", "Warp"), in an endless quest for that improbable balance between daring experimentation and orthodox jukebox appeal.

There's an unappreciated mastery in the way they twist Chic's funk into the (literally) watery beats of "Here Come The People", and likewise in the way they take the Beatles' sheet music for "All You Need Is Love" and rewrite a brand new song over it and... call it what? "All You Need Is Love", of course.

Warp is an incongruous album, brushstrokes thrown onto a palette by someone who knows exactly what he's doing, and precisely because he knows, he enjoys leaving you puzzled, then as now. A minor mystery, the hard-to-classify or the differently enjoyable that, as such, can't interest anyone — like a vinyl record when the market was asking for CDs, or a CD in the age of streaming. It's interesting to note that, in a season when the industry was rapidly heading towards the big productions that would define the years to come, New Musik worked by subtraction, limiting overdubs (the album version of "The Planet Doesn't Mind" is telling in this sense, truly pared down to the bone) while paying obsessive attention to the sounds themselves and how they came across, enhanced by one of the very first cases of digital mixing in the history of recorded music worldwide. Needless to say, there would be no tour to accompany the release, promotion would be virtually nonexistent, and the band would break up for good amid general indifference.

Some are born producers, and he, modestly...

Tony Mansfield, however, is already looking ahead to his role as producer, which, before long and for years to come, will pay him back with interest for everything he failed to achieve as singer, songwriter and leader of his own band. His first truly substantial project is offered to him once again by Captain Sensible, guitarist and bassist of the Damned, who fully intends to establish himself as a pop solo artist. The bizarre pairing linking the brash punkster to the shy producer next door comes about thanks to the former's girlfriend, who used to play From A To B in the car, albeit to Sensible's initial annoyance. An annoyance that, over time, turns first into curiosity and then into fascination, until the latter not only opens the doors of the Damned universe to him, but also enlists him for his debut as an aspiring popstar, "Women And Captains First".

The album, which features an unexpected appearance by Robyn Hitchcock, doesn't go beyond a respectable success back home, but it rolls out as singles "Happy Talk" – a cover of an old American tune – which reaches number one in the UK, and above all "Wot", the white proto-rap that becomes a worldwide hit. In the instrumental part of "Wot" it's not hard to trace all the funk that Mansfield had already poured into New Musik's little-known B-side "Chik Musik", where the nods to the Rodgers-Edwards duo are entirely deliberate. And it's with this brilliant performance that our man establishes himself in one stroke as a名producer, and as a sought-after alchemist of the Fairlight CMI, of which he becomes one of the finest connoisseurs around.

The ability to leave his mark on a sound without distorting the musicians he's working with becomes a trademark that will run throughout the entire decade. Aside from a half-hearted attempt to get a project of his own off the ground again (Planet Ha Ha with the single "Home" in November '82, initially intended for the soundtrack of the film "E.T.", with his brother Lee and with Rob Fisher, later a member of Naked Eyes and Climie Fisher), and despite sporadic earlier instances dating back to his beginnings, from here on Tony strings together a long series of works for other artists: we'll cover the most significant, or curious, of them below.

Albums

Captain Sensible – “Women And Captains First” (1982) e “The Power Of Love” (1983)

We've already told you about the amusing circumstances that made this collaboration possible, and about the two hit singles that preceded "Women And Captains First". It's a real shame that the two albums that followed, completing the partnership, weren't received as they deserved, perhaps paying the price for the protagonist's brash image, reinforced by the playful tone of the many radio and video appearances.

A real shame indeed, since we're looking at two high-calibre works, perhaps a touch too eclectic to grasp at first listen, but full of gems ranging from the psychedelic pop shared by the Damned and the Stranglers, to synth-pop jewels like "Brenda", from the first album, which sounds like the synthetic transition to "Prendila così" of Battisti fame, thanks to an endless, magical instrumental passage. This track, like several others on the second album too, features the already-mentioned Robyn Hitchcock, joined on "The Power Of Love" by Mansfield himself. Two thoroughly contemporary-sounding productions, with content absolutely worth rediscovering.

Naked Eyes – "Burning Bridges" (1983) and "Fuel For Fire" (1984)

Let's cut through the preamble and get straight to the point: "Burning Bridges", along with Anywhere, belongs to that handful of fifteen or twenty records that should be loaded onto a spacecraft and sent into space to explain synth-pop to Martians. The duo of Pete Byrne (vocals) and Rob Fisher (keyboards) emerged from a split within Neon (not to be confused with the equally glorious, same-named Florentine electrowave band), which also included Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal.

They all seemed destined for great things, but while the latter two would achieve it under the name Tears For Fears, Naked Eyes – despite their promising start – ran aground after barely two seasons. Their first single was a poignant reworking of Burt Bacharach's "Always Something There To Remind Me", released at the tail end of 1982, just in time to catch the wave of the Second British Invasion of the American market, kicked off that same summer by Human League's "Don't You Want Me" and then spreading wide the following year. It climbed to number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and, after a second single that was delightful but too sophisticated for an English band abroad ("Voices In My Head"), struck again with an extremely funky edit version of "Promises Promises" that reached number eleven (a remix, shelved for a long time, features a cameo from Madonna), suggesting that the path to glory was just one step away.

And instead absolutely nothing happens: the long-player, which in the United States comes out revised and trimmed down under the band's name alone (though landing a promising number thirty-two) is completely ignored back home, despite containing a textbook collection of melodic electropop songs, crafted at Abbey Road studios under the masterful guidance of Mansfield, who leaves a memorable imprint with a well-calibrated use of effects and the Fairlight. With the duo now effectively split up - Byrne in California working as a sessionman, and Fisher likewise at Abbey Road Studios in London - 1984 sees the release of "Fuel For Fire", which however can't count on an equally excellent level of songwriting, has a production that foreshadows the plasticky late-80s era, and, as if that weren't enough, ultimately receives poor promotion.

The album sinks, as does the project itself, leaving only a brief seasonal mark on dancefloors with the still-enjoyable single "What In The Name Of Love". Good old Fisher would find commercial redemption paired with Climie in the second half of the decade, as well as working as a writer and session musician for Rod Stewart, Aretha Franklin and George Michael, but he would be taken by an incurable illness at just 43 in 1999, right while he and Pete were working on a third Naked Eyes album, which the latter eventually finished - due out in 2020 (talk about taking your time).

Mari Wilson and The Wilsations – “Showpeople” (1983)

If you go back and watch an old video of Soft Cell's 1982 super-hit "What", you'll find her striking sultry poses on the sofa next to the valiant Marc, her sixties diva look drawing comparisons to Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson, the iconic voices of The B-52s. Tony steps into the production of this album with a light touch, setting aside the temptation to pelt the talented Mari's tracks with digital artillery, and in doing so helps deliver a gorgeous, timeless pop soul album that ranges from glittering fragments of a suitably reimagined Motown to new cool ideas that walk alongside the newly formed, contemporary Style Council, and partly anticipate by a few years the glossy, retro atmospheres of Swing Out Sister (listen to "This Time Tomorrow" and you'll believe it). The single "Just What I Always Wanted" - flavored with a Motown twist - climbs to number eight in Britain and stays on the chart for ten weeks, while the album stalls at number twenty-four, though it still spends a good two months on the charts. Another point on the scoreboard for master Tony.

Philip Jap - "Philip Jap" (1983)

He makes his appearance on the talent show "The David Essex Showcase", but he's no mere flash in the pan. The record is in fact written and arranged entirely by Philip, and it's a minor gem in the ocean of new wave thanks to its oblique blend of vintage glam, Talking Heads, Adam Ant and assorted new romantic flourishes. Its distinguishing feature, we'd even say its uniqueness, lies in the production by three genuine champions who split the tracklist between them: alongside our Tony, we also find Trevor Horn and the late Colin Thurston who, after his stints as assistant to Bowie and Iggy during their Berlin years, produced the first two Human League albums, the first two by Duran Duran and the debut records of Talk Talk and Howard Jones, as well as, like the other two, dozens of other eighties productions. A trio of absolute aces for an LP that deserves both the mention and fresh listens. Philip Jap then vanished without a trace.

The Rescue – “Messages” (Ep, 1984)

Clear proof that the United States was undergoing a musical invasion comes from the EP by this New York quintet, which faithfully picks up the British gospel and develops a new wave blueprint that's a bit romantic (with sax prominently on display), and a bit pop-leaning Cure. What remains of them is this more-than-pleasant five-track compendium, and an opening act slot on Duran Duran's Sing Blue Silver Tour in America in 1984. Then, inexplicably, nothing else: maybe they didn't stand out as absolute champions of the new wave movement, but they were certainly more capable than others who weren't just one-hit wonders. For Tony, meanwhile, it was a playground in which to run wild with every electronic weapon at his disposal.

A-ha - "Hunting High And Low" (1985)

Despite a thousand troubles tied to the record's complicated gestation - which saw the exclusion of his version of "Take On Me" and his non-involvement in the other single "The Sun Always Shines On Tv", as well as a full remix of the entire album by the Norwegian band's manager John Ratcliff - with its ten million copies sold worldwide, "Hunting High And Low" represents the ultimate jackpot for Tony Mansfield, who, besides providing the coordinates for the band's sound, brought his mastery of the ever-present Fairlight, which serenely permeates the whole record. A small but great classic of 80s pop.

Vicious Pink - "Vicious Pink" (1986)

The Anglo-French duo made up of Brian Moss (keyboards) and Josephine Warden (vocals) promised fireworks, with their playful and perverse posturing somewhere between Soft Cell (whom they had in fact collaborated with) and Dead Or Alive. The flagship single "CCCan't You See..." comes out in '84 and, with mischievous Josephine's artificial vocal delivery, becomes a floor-filler in underground clubs: but that's where it stays trapped, never finding its way onto the charts. Not even subsequent single attempts manage to break into the mainstream consciousness (the programmatic "Fetish" and "Take Me Now"), and so the project is stillborn the very moment the album is belatedly released, in 1986, only for the Canadian market. The experience must surely have helped Mansfield run wild with sequencers and synthesizers, with the same relish Eddie Van Halen would get if someone asked him to reel off endless guitar solos.

The B-52’s – “Bouncing Off The Satellites” (1986)

Tony goes to New York, and he does so as an established producer, with a few medals already pinned to his chest and above all with the great prestige he enjoys among musicians and record executives thanks to his versatility and, despite his reserved character, for his innate ability to hold his own in the studio. The B-52's are already a very popular act, indeed the ultimate party band of the American scene, who after a three-year absence try to keep up with the times, bending their familiar party-ready clichés to the madly fashionable sound of the moment. Which, it should be said, wasn't a great trend at all, given it called for bloated, homogenized sounds, slyly fed by new digital gadgets that were easy to get carried away with and that few managed to resist. "Bouncing Off The Satellites" is no exception and, despite its producer's skill, stumbles here and there into overproduction, further marred by the death from AIDS of guitarist Ricky Wilson, right during its recording sessions.

The hard blow means the album goes unpromoted and turns into a commercial flop, isn't taken on tour and is also rather roughly handled by critics. And yet, song for song, it contains more than one episode not far from the band's usual standards ("Girl From Ipanema Goes To Greenland", "Juicy Jungle"), unprecedented sophisti-pop moments close to Fleetwood Mac, who a few months later would release "Tango In The Night" ("Ain't It A Shame"), as well as some choice nods to New Musik, filtered through a college radio sensibility ("She Brakes For Rainbows"). It's certainly no masterpiece, but it's not the disaster many make it out to be either.

Miguel Bosé - "XXX" (1987)

Listening to "XXX" doesn't shake the feeling that this is a classic work-for-hire job. Not that there's anything wrong with that in itself, but here Tony rounds up his lifelong friends, starting with Martin Ansell, who wrote one of the two singles ("The Eighth Wonder"), which wasn't even new material, having already come out quietly as a single under his own name two years earlier, continuing with New Musik keyboardist Clive Gates and Naked Eyes' Rob Fisher. It's the classic big production so fashionable at the time, when the majors (here Wea) spared no expense and threw every possible resource behind the horse they were backing.

Miguel Bosé, already a very popular name in Spain and Italy, with his lean physique and poses reminiscent of a new Ferry that free him from the role of teen idol, seems ready for a shot at international stardom. What we get instead is a modest collection of adult pop in which Miguel plays the none-too-convincing role of a decadent crooner, within songs that are rather thin and bear all the hallmarks of 1987-style production, the kind of overwrought material that collapses into a sugary, inescapable sludge. A style presumptively modern, one that only proved to be so for a couple of unfortunate musical seasons at the tail end of the 80s, a record all too much a product of its time and, as such, perhaps best forgotten. A minor commercial flop that nonetheless must have made our beloved producer's accountant very happy.

Singles

Steve Kent – "Twelfth House" (1981)

Little, in fact no information is available about Steve Kent, except that before this single he had released another one whose traces have been lost: were it not for that fact, one might suspect that the mysterious Steve was actually Tony himself, who did in fact write this song. It's certainly a great track, arranged here in a warm, nocturnal electro-minimal edition. That its author believed in it is confirmed by the fact that the track turns up, in a more uptempo version, as the B-side of Warp's second single, "All You Need Is Love", but above all, somehow, on the eponymous album "II" by Delegation, a British black trio active between the 70s and 80s who tried to follow in the footsteps of Earth Wind And Fire, not without some chart success. And it's here that it reveals its unexpected but crystalline soul side.

President President – “All Good Men” (1982) e Martin Ansell – “I’ll Be In The Jungle” (1983)

Martin Ansell is a skilled session guitarist who found his calling in synthesizers. Before crossing paths with Mansfield, he had already made a name for himself in 1981 with a blistering track titled "Mechanical" under the moniker The Quarks, halfway between space disco and synth-pop. It's baffling why a track like this didn't sell millions of copies, especially given the period it came out in.

The record label decides it's a good idea to impose a name change on him, and so President President is born, and Martin tries again, entrusting himself to our man's care. "All Good Men" is a slick, robotic mantra that, in mood and sound, could easily sit on a modern-day chillout playlist, yet its fate doesn't differ from that of its predecessor. The following year Ansell takes the radio-friendly route, attempting his own version of Aztec Camera-style pop: "I'll Be In The Jungle" is a little gem masterfully steered from the mixing desk, but even this doesn't work. One last, forgettable attempt is made by the affable Martin in 1986 with the album "The Englishman Abroad", relying on other hands but still without any notable results.

Search Party – "Urban Foxes" (1982) and John Dark – "Silhouette" (1983)

Young people today would call it minimal synth, or minimal wave, terms coined relatively recently to classify that particular sound which, more out of necessity than artistic choice, relied on rudimentary drum machines and often analog synths to drive short tracks, frequently danceable and/or gothic-tinged. Search Party are Alan Rear and Lee Jacob and they appear as backing vocals on "Living By Numbers", New Musik's most popular track, which here echoes in a sparser, more glacial version. The following year Search Party try again with "All Around The World", this time produced by their friend Pete Hammond, which pleasantly recalls Human League's "Dare".

Don't ask about John Dark, because nobody knows anything about him, but suffice it to say that his "Silhouette" would be a smash hit at any dance night with a gothic-mechanical flavor you might want to throw. Search Party and John Dark are essential in the record collection of any devoted fan of the New Musik sound.

Aztec Camera – "Walk Out To Winter" (1983)

Yes indeed, as much as it went unnoticed, there was a time when even Roddy Frame's cult Scottish pop band made use of our man's services. And it did so in an attempt to make the album version of one of the most iconic tracks in its repertoire more appealing, this "Walk Out To Winter", which shines alongside other jangly gems on that masterpiece that is "High Land, Hard Rain".

The intent is understandable and the brief clear: emphasize the keyboards and work on the sounds to bring them as close as possible to the synth mood of the moment. Not that the result is a disaster, and ultimately the song isn't overhauled, but — let's be honest — the album arrangement sounds decidedly better, in keeping with the pristine innocence of an album that, precisely for this reason, still shows no signs of age today. As a coda, the 7-inch also fails to make an impression on the charts, peaking at a disappointing number 64.

Wendy Wu – “Let Me Go” (1983) e Nat King Cool and the Cool Runners – “Checking Out” (1984)

Tony's passion for soul music is no secret at all, and this pair of productions confirms it. Wendy is the former singer of Photos, with whom she enjoyed a brief taste of glory in 1980, when the band's first and only album reached number 4 on the British charts thanks to a power pop sound that nods to Buzzcocks and Blondie. The story ends fairly quickly, so the lovely Wendy redoes her makeup with a trio of synth-pop singles, of which "Let Me Go" is the final chapter: it doesn't work, but this electrified soft soul number that winks at Sister Sledge (Chic again... them once more!?) would have deserved better luck. Perhaps the timing just wasn't right.

Just as it wasn't for Cool Runners, behind whom moved, among others, that prankster Nick Straker, who had in the meantime changed his mind about the virtues of his former roadie Tony, to the point of bringing him on board for this production. We're in post-disco territory here, which, if we think of the popularity of a band like Shakatak, had quite an audience in the UK. We rather like to think that the 1984 reissue of this "Checking Out", which involves our man (since the track had come out in a different version two years earlier), was the unlucky, commercially speaking, answer to Shakatak's classic "Down On The Street". Certainly, like that track, it's a must-have for lovers of disco music and the like.

What could have been and wasn't.

Alongside many other productions — from Maggie Britton, a star of sixties Australian pop, to fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier in the unexpected guise of a techno-house musician — and records produced but left unreleased — R.P.M., a strange creature made up of Search Party plus Alan Moore (the late drummer of... Judas Priest!) and After The Fire, a prog outfit later converted to power pop who in '83 brought Falco's "Der Kommissar" to success in the US — it's also worth remembering a few projects that fell through by a hair's breadth.

Take, for instance, the time when Tom Watkins, manager of the Pet Shop Boys, also considered him for his brand-new band, though Tony turned it down as he was busy with other projects. It seems that later on, during the recording of “Actually”, Neil Tennant was still very keen to work with the former New Musik man, though nothing ever came of it.

His name has also been linked to Kajagoogoo, but above all to Holly Johnson, the former Frankie Goes To Hollywood frontman who in 1989 scored his revenge against ZTT, the label he'd been locked in litigation with, hitting number one in the UK with “Blast”. A shame nothing ever materialized, since he would have fit right in alongside Stephen Hague, Dan Hartman, Andy Richards and Steve Lovell, the true top players at the console of 1980s British pop.

New Musik scattered… “anywhere”

Despite their modest success, New Musik's hushed, intimate sound has become a genuine underground stream running through the geology of techno-pop, resurfacing now and then over the years in various shapes and guises. It must already have struck them as bitterly ironic that Karl Hyde and Rick Smith's Freur – future Underworld – enjoyed solid success in 1983 with the ambient-pop single “Doot Doot”, which picked up a baton made of sonar pings and synthetic cicadas, only to be remembered in many countries (including ours) far more fondly than any potential hit by the London quartet.

In more recent years, the marriage of digital intimacy and acoustic touches has resurfaced forcefully in Germany courtesy of the Morr label, whose catalogue frequently evokes the nocturnal moods of Anywhere and the uptempo feel of From A To B – look no further than the first two Lali Puna albums, “Tridecoder” and “Scary World Theory”.

Still in Germany, it's curious to note that in 2003 both the die-hard synth-pop act Camouflage (remember their cover of “On Islands” back in 1989, on “Methods Of Silence”?) and the ambient intellectual Ulrich Schnauss of “A Strange Isolated Places” released material with a distinctly Mansfieldian flavour: just listen to the digital ballad “Blink” by the former and several of the latter's instrumental watercolours to be convinced.

A telling case is that of Sweden's NASA, a duo fairly well known back home who in 1999 drew heavily not only on their sound but didn't shy away from the titles either, given that one of the tracks on their programmatically titled “Remembering The Future” openly quotes “Back To Room One”, simply swapping “room” for “square”.

But the more or less conscious tributes, however lush, have come from across the ocean: in 2003 Postal Service's “Give Up” picked up on the poppier side of the duo and turned it into a string of excellent songs that went on to sell a staggering number of copies in the US; and, along the same, let's say sun-drenched lines, fellow American Owl City – albeit with lesser, at times cloying, results – landed one of 2009's biggest-selling singles with “Fireflies”, with the accompanying album “Ocean Eyes” shifting over a million copies at home.

Switching continents, though not exactly in terms of success (quite the opposite), how can one fail to spot traces of New Musik in the nostalgic yearning given off by the bouncing synths and processed falsettos of Australia's Empire Of The Sun?

We've already mentioned the echoes of Warp that we would later find in Daft Punk, but it's with Canada's Junior Boys on “Last Exit” (2004) that they find their most natural home, warmly welcomed by soft textures and Jeremy Greenspan's slender voice: “Teach Me How To Fight”, in particular, is a masterpiece that breaks free of Warp to settle into the liquid half-light of Anywhere.

Further proof that the New Musik brand is still very much alive among musicians of all stripes: in 2020, New York r'n'b rapper Theophilus London, on his track “Revenge”, featuring Ariel Pink (!), lifts “They All Run After The Carving Knife” almost wholesale and places it at the close of his album “Bebey”, in an operation that, if anything, is even more slavish than the one with which Kanye West pays tribute, on “Coldest Winter”, to Tears For Fears's “Memories Fade”.

A separate mention, finally, is owed to Chris Braide, the accomplished British pop maker based in Los Angeles who, in the new millennium, has worked with the likes of Beyoncé, Britney Spears, Kylie Minogue and Lana Del Rey, as well as having been Marc Almond's trusted right-hand man for several years now. A chameleonic, all-round musician blessed with enviable vocal chops, in the 1990s he seemed on the verge of becoming a global pop star thanks to a couple of solo albums that, however, never found the fortune they deserved, despite being helmed by the likes of Mick Hucknall, Thomas Dolby and Dave Stewart. Then, in 2012, he decided to give shape, in perfect anonymity, to his long-cherished dream of emulating, while updating, the production work of his favourite studio heroes: Trevor Horn but, above all, Tony Mansfield. He did so under the moniker Hello Leo; “Human Feel” is the album's title (released only on limited-edition vinyl), and it's about as devoted a homage as one could imagine to the sounds we've discussed at length. The circle closes neatly given that Braide has for years also been involved in a delightful prog-pop project called Downes Braide Association, in which Downes is none other than Geoff, Trevor's partner in Buggles. Circles closing, dreams coming true, and more records still for you to seek out.

Rumours of a fourth New Musik album have periodically surfaced over the years and, at least up until 2000, were perhaps fuelled by Mansfield himself via his far more talkative brother Lee, who has at times spoken of a mysterious “e-Musik” project, supposedly even featuring Tony's daughter on vocals. For a while, a copy of a 1990s promo CD titled “Advance Music” and credited to the band even surfaced online, though sadly we were never able to track it down. The truth is that for several years now there has been no news of him, nor does it appear that he has given any further interviews, which fits all too well with the character of a man who was, to put it mildly, reserved and thoroughly disinclined towards the spotlight he would nonetheless have deserved — this wizard of pop, perhaps not even fully convinced he was one.

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