1.
Single (music)
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In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a song recording of fewer tracks than an LP record, an album or an EP record. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats, in most cases, a single is a song that is released separately from an album, although it usually also appears on an album. Typically, these are the songs from albums that are released separately for promotional uses such as digital download or commercial radio airplay and are expected to be the most popular, in other cases a recording released as a single may not appear on an album. As digital downloading and audio streaming have become prevalent, it is often possible for every track on an album to also be available separately. Nevertheless, the concept of a single for an album has been retained as an identification of a heavily promoted or more popular song within an album collection. Despite being referred to as a single, singles can include up to as many as three tracks on them. The biggest digital music distributor, iTunes, accepts as many as three tracks less than ten minutes each as a single, as well as popular music player Spotify also following in this trend. Any more than three tracks on a release or longer than thirty minutes in total running time is either an Extended Play or if over six tracks long. The basic specifications of the single were made in the late 19th century. Gramophone discs were manufactured with a range of speeds and in several sizes. By about 1910, however, the 10-inch,78 rpm shellac disc had become the most commonly used format, the inherent technical limitations of the gramophone disc defined the standard format for commercial recordings in the early 20th century.26 rpm. With these factors applied to the 10-inch format, songwriters and performers increasingly tailored their output to fit the new medium, the breakthrough came with Bob Dylans Like a Rolling Stone. Singles have been issued in various formats, including 7-inch, 10-inch, other, less common, formats include singles on digital compact cassette, DVD, and LD, as well as many non-standard sizes of vinyl disc. Some artist release singles on records, a more common in musical subcultures. The most common form of the single is the 45 or 7-inch. The names are derived from its speed,45 rpm. The 7-inch 45 rpm record was released 31 March 1949 by RCA Victor as a smaller, more durable, the first 45 rpm records were monaural, with recordings on both sides of the disc. As stereo recordings became popular in the 1960s, almost all 45 rpm records were produced in stereo by the early 1970s
2.
Depeche Mode
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Depeche Mode /dᵻˌpɛʃˈmoʊd/ are an English electronic band that formed in 1980 in Basildon, Essex. The group consists of founders Dave Gahan, Martin Gore, Depeche Mode released their debut album Speak & Spell in 1981, bringing the band onto the British new wave scene. Original band member Vince Clarke, left the band after the release of the album, leaving the band as a trio to record A Broken Frame, released the following year. Gore took over the songwriting duties and, later in 1982, Alan Wilder officially joined the band to fill Clarkes spot. Depeche Mode have been a trio again since 1995, when Wilder left, the bands last albums of the 1980s, Black Celebration and Music for the Masses, established them as a dominant force on the mainstream electronic music scene. A highlight of this era was the concert at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. In the new decade, Depeche Mode released Violator, a mainstream success, now a trio once again, the band released Ultra in 1997, recorded at the height of Gahans near-fatal drug abuse, Gores alcoholism and seizures, and Fletchers depression. Depeche Mode have had 50 songs in the UK Singles Chart and thirteen top 10 albums in the UK chart, Q included the band in the list of the 50 Bands That Changed the World. Depeche Mode also rank number 98 on VH1s 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, Depeche Modes origins date to 1977, when schoolmates Vince Clarke and Andy Fletcher formed a Cure-influenced band called No Romance In China, with Clarke on vocals and guitar and Fletcher on bass. Fletcher would later recall, Why am I in the band and it was accidental right from the beginning. I was actually forced to be in the band, I played the guitar and I had a bass, it was a question of them roping me in. In 1979, Clarke played guitar in an Ultravox rip-off band, in 1978–79, Martin Gore played guitar in an acoustic duo, Norman and the Worms, with school friend Phil Burdett on vocals. In 1979, Marlow, Gore and friend Paul Redmond formed a band called the French Look, with Marlow on vocals/keyboards, Gore on guitar and Redmond on keyboards. In March 1980, Clarke, Gore and Fletcher formed a band called Composition of Sound, with Clarke on vocals/guitar, Gore on keyboards and Fletcher on bass. Soon after the formation of Composition of Sound, Clarke heard Wirral band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, along with OMD, other early influences included the Human League, Daniel Miller and Fad Gadget. Clarke and Fletcher switched to synthesisers, working odd jobs in order to buy or borrow the instruments from friends. Dave Gahan joined the band in 1980 after Clarke heard him perform at a scout hut jam session, singing a rendition of David Bowies Heroes. When explaining the choice for the new name taken from a French fashion magazine, Dépêche mode, Gore said, I like the sound of that
3.
Speak & Spell (album)
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Speak & Spell is the debut studio album by the English electronic band Depeche Mode, released on 5 October 1981 by Mute Records. The album peaked at number 10 in the UK Albums Chart and this is the bands only album with Vince Clarke and as a result, was much lighter in tone than future Depeche Mode albums. This was the only Depeche Mode album with Vince Clarke as a member of the band, Clarke wrote most of the songs for the band, before departing to form Yazoo and later Erasure. The album is significantly lighter in tone and melody than their later work, after he left, Martin Gore took over songwriting duties, writing almost all of the bands material. Later albums written by him would explore darker subjects and melodies, the album title alludes to the then-popular Speak & Spell electronic toy. When interviewed by Simon Amstell for Channel 4s Popworld programme in 2005, Gore, melody Maker praised the album, saying the singles New Life and Just Cant Get Enough sound as fresh and unflagging as every new number of their time. In a five-star review, Record Mirror noted that the album is composed by eight sparkling songs and one instrumental, much to admire and little to disappoint. In a less enthusiastic review for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau called the album catchy, one-dimensional nonsense that crosses Meco, Gary Numan, and Kraftwerk. He did however favorably compare New Life to Brian Eno, the album was re-released on 3 April 2006 as part of Mutes extensive Depeche Mode reissue schedule. This special edition release was a double disc set that included a Hybrid SACD/CD and this format included the album in 5 formats - multi-channel SACD, stereo SACD, PCM stereo CD, DTS5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. In the United States, the album was not re-released until 2 June 2006, the US version was only a CD rather than a SACD/CD Hybrid, though it still included the DVD which was identical to the European one. The re-release somewhat preserves the album as it was originally intended, as such, while it is mostly the same as the British version, North America got a completely new version with some songs that have never been released there. For example, New Life was the version, not a remix. However, Dreaming of Me, the very first single which was not on the original album, was put at the end. The four bonus tracks on the original CD release in the UK, were omitted from the re-issued CD, also included was a 28-minute documentary about the making of the album entitled Depeche Mode, 1980–1981 featuring interviews with the group and other relevant personnel such as Daniel Miller. There is various footage of the appearances on Top of the Pops including their very first appearance from 1981 performing New Life. There is also vintage BBC footage of the Speak & Spell Tour from the same year, the remastered album was released on deluxe vinyl in March 2007. For all versions, all songs were written by Vince Clarke, Tora. and Big Muff written by Martin Gore
4.
A-side and B-side
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The terms A-side and B-side refer to the two sides of 78,45, and 33 1/3 rpm phonograph records, whether singles, extended plays, or long-playing records. Creedence Clearwater Revival had hits with both A-side and B-side releases, others took the opposite approach, producer Phil Spector was in the habit of filling B-sides with on-the-spot instrumentals that no one would confuse with the A-side. With this practice, Spector was assured that airplay was focused on the side he wanted to be the hit side, the earliest 10-inch,78 rpm, shellac records were single sided. Double-sided recordings, with one song on side, were introduced in Europe by Columbia Records. There were no record charts until the 1930s, and radio stations did not play recorded music until the 1950s, in this time, A-sides and B-sides existed, but neither side was considered more important, the side did not convey anything about the content of the record. The term single came into use with the advent of vinyl records in the early 1950s. At first, most record labels would randomly assign which song would be an A-side, under this random system, many artists had so-called double-sided hits, where both songs on a record made one of the national sales charts, or would be featured on jukeboxes in public places. As time wore on, however, the convention for assigning songs to sides of the record changed. By the early sixties, the song on the A-side was the song that the company wanted radio stations to play. It was not until 1968, for instance, that the production of albums on a unit basis finally surpassed that of singles in the United Kingdom. In the late 1960s stereo versions of pop and rock songs began to appear on 45s. The majority of the 45s were played on AM radio stations, by the early 1970s, double-sided hits had become rare. Album sales had increased, and B-sides had become the side of the record where non-album, non-radio-friendly, with the advent of cassette and compact disc singles in the late 1980s, the A-side/B-side differentiation became much less meaningful. With the decline of cassette singles in the 1990s, the A-side/B-side dichotomy became virtually extinct, as the dominant medium. However, the term B-side is still used to refer to the tracks or coupling tracks on a CD single. With the advent of downloading music via the Internet, sales of CD singles and other media have declined. B-side songs may be released on the record as a single to provide extra value for money. There are several types of material released in this way, including a different version, or, in a concept record
5.
Phonograph record
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The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
6.
Compact disc
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Compact disc is a digital optical disc data storage format released in 1982 and co-developed by Philips and Sony. The format was developed to store and play only sound recordings but was later adapted for storage of data. The first commercially available Audio CD player, the Sony CDP-101, was released October 1982 in Japan, standard CDs have a diameter of 120 millimetres and can hold up to about 80 minutes of uncompressed audio or about 700 MiB of data. The Mini CD has various diameters ranging from 60 to 80 millimetres, they are used for CD singles, storing up to 24 minutes of audio. At the time of the introduction in 1982, a CD could store much more data than a personal computer hard drive. By 2010, hard drives commonly offered as much space as a thousand CDs. In 2004, worldwide sales of audio CDs, CD-ROMs and CD-Rs reached about 30 billion discs, by 2007,200 billion CDs had been sold worldwide. In 2014, revenues from digital music services matched those from physical format sales for the first time. American inventor James T. Russell has been credited with inventing the first system to record information on an optical transparent foil that is lit from behind by a high-power halogen lamp. Russells patent application was first filed in 1966, and he was granted a patent in 1970, following litigation, Sony and Philips licensed Russells patents in the 1980s. The compact disc is an evolution of LaserDisc technology, where a laser beam is used that enables the high information density required for high-quality digital audio signals. Prototypes were developed by Philips and Sony independently in the late 1970s, although originally dismissed by Philips Research management as a trivial pursuit, the CD became the primary focus for Philips as the LaserDisc format struggled. In 1979, Sony and Philips set up a joint task force of engineers to design a new audio disc. After a year of experimentation and discussion, the Red Book CD-DA standard was published in 1980, after their commercial release in 1982, compact discs and their players were extremely popular. Despite costing up to $1,000, over 400,000 CD players were sold in the United States between 1983 and 1984, by 1988 CD sales in the United States surpassed those of vinyl LPs, and by 1992 CD sales surpassed those of prerecorded music cassette tapes. The success of the disc has been credited to the cooperation between Philips and Sony, who came together to agree upon and develop compatible hardware. The unified design of the disc allowed consumers to purchase any disc or player from any company. In 1974, L. However, due to the performance of the analog format
7.
Blackwing Studios
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Blackwing Studios was an English recording studio, most notable for early Depeche Mode and Yazoo recordings in the early 1980s. The Blackwing Studios complex was housed inside a church in South-East London. All Hallows church was destroyed during The Blitz in 1941. After the war Southwark Cathedral retained the north aisle and carried on using it as a temporary church, the destroyed south aisle was later turned into gardens and maintained by local residents from 1968. Blackwing was started by Eric Radcliffe, who worked on most of the early Mute Records recordings alongside Daniel Miller, Daniel Miller had discovered Blackwing when recording the Silicon Teens album. He required a studio with a big room where he could set up all his synthesisers. At the rear of the building was a bell tower that was used for storing master tapes. Daniel Miller carried on using Blackwing to record other new Mute Records artists, the first Depeche Mode album, Speak and Spell, was recorded at Blackwing using a TEAC eight track recorder. The album was engineered by John Fryer, Yazoo named one of their albums after the studio, Upstairs at Erics due to the main Blackwing studio being above Splendid Studios located downstairs. When Clarke initially came to Blackwing to record with Yazoo he found that the studio was fully booked and he had the choice of recording at 4am during studio downtime, or building another studio. This is how Splendid Studios came about and it was a private studio below the commercial Blackwing studios upstairs. After the split of the band Yazoo, Vince Clarke decided he wanted to remain in the music industry and his initial enterprise after Yazoo was the formation of his own record label called Reset Records. The enterprise was a joint effort with Eric Radcliffe, the idea being to sign and produce new acts from their independent Splendid Studios, the recordings were then licensed to RCA Records for release. Blackwing Studios closed down in September 2001 and the building has been empty ever since, however, this may soon not be the case as Southwark Council have been submitting plans since 2005 to redevelop the site with a four-storey development of private flats. When Eric Radcliffe opened Blackwing he initially used an eight track TEAC for recording artists, a second recorder was acquired and locked together with the initial machine giving Blackwing 32 tracks of recording. This system was used for early recordings by Yazoo and Depeche Mode. The system was eventually rationalised when two 24 track machines were purchased, one for Blackwing and one for Splendid Studios, downstairs, Blackwing used an Amek 2500 mixing desk which was modified to work with electronic instruments. All the equipment at Blackwing and Splendid Studios was designed to be patchable through patch bays, Vince Clarke installed a Fairlight CMI into Blackwing, which he had bought before the Yazoo tour, and used it on tracks like Never Never by The Assembly
8.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
9.
Synthpop
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Synth-pop is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s by the use of synthesizers in progressive rock, electronic, art rock, disco, and particularly the Krautrock of bands like Kraftwerk. It arose as a genre in Japan and the United Kingdom in the post-punk era as part of the new wave movement of the late-1970s to the mid-1980s. In Japan, Yellow Magic Orchestras success opened the way for bands such as P-Model, Plastics. The development of polyphonic synthesizers, the definition of MIDI. This, its adoption by the acts from the New Romantic movement, together with the rise of MTV. Synth-pop is sometimes deployed interchangeably with electropop, but electropop may also denote a variant of synth-pop that places emphasis on a harder. In the late 1980s duos such as Erasure and Pet Shop Boys adopted a style that was successful on the US dance-charts. Some artists and bands were criticised for gender bending, Synth-pop was defined by its primary use of synthesizers, drum machines and sequencers, sometimes using them to replace all other instruments. Borthwick and Moy have described the genre as diverse but, many synth-pop musicians had limited musical skills, relying on the technology to produce or reproduce the music. The result was often minimalist, with grooves that were woven together from simple repeated riffs often with no harmonic progression to speak of. Early synth-pop has been described as eerie, sterile, and vaguely menacing, using droning electronics with little change in inflection, common lyrical themes of synth-pop songs were isolation, urban anomie, and feelings of being emotionally cold and hollow. Synthesizers were increasingly used to imitate the conventional and clichéd sound of orchestras, thin, treble-dominant, synthesized melodies and simple drum programmes gave way to thick, and compressed production, and a more conventional drum sound. Lyrics were generally optimistic, dealing with more traditional subject matter for pop music such as romance, escapism. According to music writer Simon Reynolds, the hallmark of 1980s synth-pop was its emotional, at times operatic singers such as Marc Almond, Alison Moyet and Annie Lennox. Because synthesizers removed the need for groups of musicians, these singers were often part of a duo where their partner played all the instrumentation. Later synth-pop saw a shift to a style influenced by other genres. Electronic musical synthesizers that could be used practically in a recording studio became available in the mid-1960s, the portable Minimoog, which allowed much easier use, particularly in live performance was widely adopted by progressive rock musicians such as Richard Wright of Pink Floyd and Rick Wakeman of Yes
