From sm Sent Wed, Dec 31st 1997, 03:44
From sm Sent Wed, Dec 31st 1997, 03:44
>I'm curious about just how influential LFO's "Frequencies" and their early >singles were. I've read a few interviews where the artists talked about how >"Frequencies" changed their lives, but I'm wondering whether some of the >elements in LFO's music had long been around or not. really should write a book about 'how i fought in the acid house wars', cos the pure energy & the cultural mind bombs of those times will NEVER be seen or experienced on the same scale again i wouldn't say LFO were that influential per se, to put it in context, .. most important thing about lfo was that along with 808 State [yes it's hard to believe but they used to be good once] they were one of the first UK *pure* techno acts to truly cross over into both the charts & get press in the indie inkies [ NME and MM, you have to bear in mind these were the times when the UK techno underground was still in it's formative stages ,finding it's feet and was trying to find a voice, only a handful of people had heard Black Dog,B12, Aphex Twin, most people thought ART was something you drew and Black Dog was something you took for a walk], to me LFO's sound was a synthesis of the cold mechanics of Detroit / Kraftwerk with the simplistic hedonism of Chicago and i'd say the artists they admired had much more influence [kraftwerk, phuture, mr fingers, derrick may, yellow magic orchestra]..they could also cut it live unlike 99% of the mime artists at the time..saw them live a handful of times around 90/91 but it's a bit blurry now..one thing that sticks out from that time is hearing sasha playing octave one and whitney Houston in the same set.. before them the only dance music the indie rags and radio stations would sully themselves with was the guitar - dance hybrid merchants like the mondays, flowered up or the roses who were more readily clasped to the bosom of the indie press around this time NME put LFO on the front cover smashing guitars and proclaiming guitar music as dead...'LFO' [the single] was helped by RadioOne daytime DJ Steve Wright playing it on his afternoon show and proclaiming it as the worst record he'd ever heard fangs for the memories stuart