104. M|A|R|R|S - Pump Up The Volume (4AD)

Six weeks at number one from 19th September 1987

It’s a summer evening in 1987 and I’m stood on the doorstep to my parent’s garden. I'm gazing towards the fir trees at the rear, taking in the sun’s last rays and idly listening to Radio One burbling away. My Mum’s kitchen radio was a cheap and nasty thing, all treble and top-end, seemingly designed to emphasise the hiss and static of poorly tuned radio frequencies over and above any bass whatsover.

Not the best bit of kit on which to hear “Pump Up The Volume” for the first time, then, which chose that moment to leak out of an evening Radio One Dance programme. Every so often I heard the half-hearted, buried, almost robotic declaration “Pump up the volume”, followed by a series of disjointed slow wooshes, interjecting samples, and the noise of what sounded like electric guitars being scraped face-down along gravel. It’s not that I didn’t like the track, it’s just it sounded like a strange, half-hearted dub. I shrugged and played with the dog for a bit, no longer really paying much attention to the single. No point in getting too invested in something which was number 47 in the Record Mirror club play chart (or wherever). These records, these weirdly credited white labels – they came, they went. There was no reason to suppose this one would be any different.

The next time I heard the track it was through some proper speakers, and then I got it – by God, I got it. It felt breathtaking. Had I been old enough to be a clubber, I might have had some sense of where “Pump Up The Volume” came from, and why it had to happen, but I was thirteen years old and many years away from such delights. As such, the depth, the bass, the vast, almost overwhelming space to the single felt strange. The way sounds panned from the extreme right to the left hand side of the stereo, as if almost to place you as an insignificant, microscopic speck among the enormousness of the tune, felt like a new universe opening up; no wonder the promo video director made outer space the central theme.

The structure of “Pump Up The Volume” also felt interesting and novel at the time. The track’s main hook is the prowling bassline and rattling drum beats which underpin it, and that is a constant presence, along with that doomy, dramatic, reverberating piano note. It therefore feels as if you’re being driven along a brightly lit motorway, riding along the spine of that groove, but every so often, for whatever reason, the driver takes a slip road off to some strange town with different noises. You can still hear the thunder of the motorway close by, or feel its vibration, but in the meantime you’re stuck in tiny, tinpot towns along its verge, hearing weird interjections from the natives, before your driver corrects his course and lands back on the motorway again.

Samples are a huge part of the record, but they’re treated as brief visitors, strange interruptions to the transmission rather than equal partners. Ofra Haza visits, as do The Criminal Element Orchestra, James Brown (of course), Coldcut and Trouble Funk. None of these samples feels essential to the record, and none of them “sold it” as such; at first you felt you could potentially cut fast and loose and create your own version of “Pump Up The Volume” with different elements. The more you listened to it, though, and the more you absorbed, the more baked in it all became, each interruption feeling essential to the whole, an important landmark in the overall journey. Listening now, I wouldn’t want to lose any of these people, anymore than I’d want to get rid of the iron bridge across the river near my house. And despite the fact they’re nudges and strange interjections, its odd how fluid and natural they seem – even James Brown feels as if he’s always been nothing but a bit-part player in the magic.

The single finally ends on someone scratch-mixing over (what I’ve always assumed is) a record of someone whistling, like audio graffiti scribbled around someone’s strolling expression of idle happiness. The record is almost jazzy by that point, riffing on so many different grooves and elements that it feels busier than ever, but never quite losing its vastness. It’s truly fucking amazing and I never tire of listening to it.

90. New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle (Factory)

One week at number one - 29th November 1986

“Bizarre Love Triangle” is an unusual phrase for New Order to use. In the eighties in particular, the tabloid press used it quite freely, being obsessed with the idea of “love rats” in their “secret love nests” who were having adulterous affairs with a priest/ biscuit factory magnate/ headmaster. Hopefully also, these affairs would involve a significant age gap and/or some form of sexual deviancy.

A big reason these stories are so enduring is partly judgement – people seem to love being shown the failings of their fellow humans so they can feel better about themselves. Another, I think, is that extra-marital affairs, and especially “bizarre” ones, are not something we encounter as often as the tabloid press lead us to believe; in my own social circle, I can only think of a couple of examples over the last few decades. Even if their marriages are failing, people tend to not want the added stress and burden of the double-bluffing, fake diary appointments and secrecy affairs seem to involve. They’re usually too busy dealing with their kids and demanding spouse, and scrolling through their phone contacts wondering whether they should start speaking to a solicitor now or give marriage counselling yet another crack. I’ve encountered more frail marriages where a spouse has been wrongfully suspected of having an affair than those where one has actually been taking place.

This is true for those of us who have average jobs and ordinary lives. For successful musicians or actors, however, temptation is a constant risk. If you’re continually away from home, living in a bubble and constantly being flattered in an over-familiar way by people who not only find you attractive but have idealised notions about you – that’s a problem. Bernard Sumner probably knew that. Ian Curtis definitely did, as is well documented. And while most of us will never be idolised in that strange way, there’s still a chance that at some point in our lives, we might briefly be thrown into dangerously prolonged proximity to someone who finds us as alluring as we find them.

“Bizarre Love Triangle” is lyrically slight, but seems to exist in that dim reverie, that fluttering queasiness which comes from a magnetic pull that is never allowed to resolve itself. You can hear it in the arrangement, which is excited and buoyant but never quite lets go, the unreleased tension of the idea of adultery never letting it rip out of its shell. The chorus is elated, but it doesn’t feel like proper joy – those twinkling keyboards and soaring strings are pure fantasy, total idealism. In a proper love song, such effects would seem tacky, almost Disneyesque in their overreach, but because Sumner is singing about a possible affair, we accept the fairy lights and the pink backdrop. It’s a dreamworld. “I’m waiting for the final moment/ you say the words that I can’t say” he sings, but you get the impression that what he wants is never going to happen. Stasis is going to be the only result.

Elsewhere in the song he circles round the idea, gibbers a bit about the elation (“I feel fine, I feel good/ I feel like I never should”) then about the regret (“Why can’t we be ourselves/ like we were yesterday?”). He also has a moment of rare, direct honesty and borderline profundity when he sings “I do admit to myself/ that if I hurt someone else/ then I’ll never see/ just what we’re meant to be”. There’s the rub. Love triangles rarely result in anything positive. They’re bound up in chaos, guilt, and at least one person (and very often two) feeling betrayed and cheated. They’re not a great springboard for a successful new relationship – they involve messiness and an external judgement few would willingly entertain.

Nonetheless, New Order create a cocktail of confusion, guilt and airy fantasy which is intoxicating to the listener – just like the tabloid press stories, these experiences are always more enticing when they’re being communicated to us, one step removed. The strings hold a continual tension, the rhythms propel, seemingly egging Sumner on, the synth hits bark out their warnings, and it sounds like a massive hit single. The group were always prone to ruining their chances with over-long tracks, flat vocals or coldness in the past, but everything holds in place so well on this that you would clearly have it pegged as a serious commercial contender.