Reading '81

aus der „Stereotrilogie“ von Zelda Adjaye

Other than you may think when watching one of the many nostalgic pop documentaries about those years, the 80s were not really fun for the most artists of any profession. Moving towards and during the beginning decade, money for cultural facilities was short. The intellectual elite was struggling with a deep feeling of desperation. Nuclear overkill, dying forests and the end of all resources had turned from abstract to realistic options. And a B-movie actor in the White House! Community spirit and sanity, even the purpose of mankind was in doubt – „no future“ here, „greed is good“ there. Sounds pretty like 2020s, don’t you think?

An authentic documentary about the early 80s from the geopolitical centre of the cold war – „German Angst“, unfortunately in German only:

However, with diffuse worldviews but for their own sake, the creative minds of so many young artists were set free. Today, I am looking reventially back to the cornucopia of music genres invented during these years: Punk, Electronic, Rap/ Hip-Hop and so many unscrupulous crossovers, also with Disco and Rock-Genres.

My pick for a representative recording from this era – and the inspiration for this set of Aural Sculptures – is „Dare!“ by The Human League. Cool and strict in sound, amateurish in vocals and arrangements, the album is a dilettante but brilliant piece of art and an unerring divination of future music production. The tracks balance perfectly the nihilism, the ostentatious vanity and yet the cry for salvation that the young artists and their audiences would share excessively over the next years. Moreover the album yielded five video productions for the new-born MTV, demonstrating the stunning progress in this aspect of music presentation. Also – by the way – of some fashion that many of us would rather repudiate today…

Zelda