ALL THE YOUNG DROIDS: JUNKSHOP SYNTH POP 1978-1985 - a new compilation that charts the underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music, compiled by Philip King (27 June / School Daze Records)

ALL THE YOUNG DROIDS: JUNKSHOP SYNTH POP 1978-1985

NIGHT SCHOOL / SCHOOL DAZE RECORDS & PHILIP KING ANNOUNCE DETAILS OF A NEW COMPILATION CHARTING THE UNDERBELLY OF THE EPOCH-DEFINING SOUND OF THE SYNTHESISER - OUT 27 JUNE ON DOUBLE VINYL AND 2CD

LISTEN TO IAN NORTH’S ‘WE’RE NOT LONELY’

“And then came the rise of synth pop : blokes with dodgy haircuts hunched over keyboard-operated machines stuffed with wires and do-it-yourself tone oscillators making sounds like a brood of geese passing gas in a wind tunnel. Whoopee! This is the way the ‘70s ended : not with a blood-curdling bang but with a cheap, synthesized, emasculating whimper.” - NICK KENT, NME

All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesiser in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip King (previously seen compiling All The Young Droogs, Glitterbest and Boobs - The Junkshop Glam Discotheque), the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with new, cheap synthesisers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthral to the new music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and Daniel Miller’s Mute Records. Featuring rare tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter chart flops and heralded, underground synth classics, School Daze Records paints a picture of beautiful failure.

Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never before seen imagery, all 24 tracks were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master tapes. The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesisers and the distribution networks plus indie labels that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk’s guitar-led revolution, it’s telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids was created in bedrooms, ramshackle studios and home-made set ups with often borrowed equipment. In the era of record labels jumping to capitalise on the success of the Sex Pistols and The Clash (both on major labels, of course) these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold-rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother of invention.

At the time, the synthesiser was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The Holograms it’s a pulsing, sardonic weapon… and the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16-year-old Andreas Dorau used the synthesiser to write and record (with his female classmates on vocals) a global smash in ‘Fred Vom Jupiter’ (later licensed to Mute Records). The hard-to-find English version (‘Fred From Jupiter’, natch) is included here. Many artists with already-storied careers caught the bug and recorded synthesiser-fuelled peons to space, computers, the future and, of course, love-interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never smashed ‘I’m On A Rocket’. Similarly, Ian North of Neo and American Power Pop stalwarts Milk ’n’ Cookies bought a Korg MS20 and used a tape machine to record ‘We’re Not Lonely’, an absolute lost-classic of minimal synth pop. ‘We’re Not Lonely’ also features on the Junkshop Synth Pop sampler 7” twinned with John Howard unreleased track ‘You Will See’, out on 12 April 2025.

There are plenty of compilation debuts in evidence. Sole Sister were a mysterious trio who were featured on the Scaling Triangles compilation of female-fronted, queer-adjacent post-punk / underground music that also featured The Petticoats. Selwin Image were from San Francisco and featured members of the recently defunct power pop/punk group The Pushups. Their stupidly catchy ‘The Unknown’ fizzes with New Wave energy - think XTC to Sparks but remains unreleased until now. Dream Unit’s ‘A Drop In The Ocean’ is an early synth wave cut, positively teaming with Joy Division instrumentation, previously only released on a long forgotten and super rare, self-released EP. Incandescent Luminaire’s ‘Famous Names’ belies an archetypal struggle of a small-town trying to make it in a cruel industry but is a thrilling New Romantic-Synth Wave cross over with a OMD gloominess that’s a joy to hear. Feminist Minimal Wave track ‘I Am A Time Bomb’ by performance artist Peta Lilly and Michael Chance is a revelation destined for new found cult status. It was released on 7” and lost until now.

The flipside to the subterranean, never-made-it synth pop mentioned above are the ambitious, even fruity attempts at success that have a perennial elegance to their confidence. New Jersey-ite Billy London (real name Ed Barth) tried to cash in on the synth boom with ‘Woman’, released by a major label, a lurching new wave track built on the ‘Louie Louie’ rhythm and a wonderfully camp Lou Reed-style sleazy vocal before exploding in the synthesised chorus. The song bombed but with a chorus like this, you have to wonder why? Ex-Glitter Band member John Springate’s ‘My Life’ is truly epic, with doomed chord progressions and massive sounding drums turning into at least three different songs in the course of the track. Before you wonder what’s going on the song resolves with a glorious return to the

main refrain.

The dry-ice-dressed dance floor is well catered for too. Design’s ‘Premonition’ and Vision’s ‘Lucifer’s Friend’ are stone-cold minimal synth bangers, well-loved but given a new lease of life here. The Warlord’s ‘The Ultimate Warlord’ was released in 1978, a homespun proto Hi NRG banger that was later re-recorded by The Immortals in Canada who had a club hit with it. One-man- band Disco Volante’s ‘No Motion’ was re-issued by Synth wave label Medical in 2012 but makes its first vinyl compilation appearance here. Close your eyes and you can imagine what Lawrence of Felt would have sounded like with some cheap Korgs a little earlier in his career. Gibraltar-based trio The Microbes imagined a computer programming people to dance - how prescient - and ended up with a propulsive, robo-funk track with splendid rubbery bass playing over a tectonic drum machine. Previously picked up by Belgian label Stroom TV, Dee Jay Bert & Eagle’s heavily Euro-accented ‘I Am Your Master’ demands the listener to “come to paradise!” in a frankly terrifying manner.

All The Young Droids is the first compilation to peel away from the narrative that dour, Minimal Synth and Cold Wave were the only musical children of the first rush of synth pop. Philip King and School Daze Records describe a much more complicated world: along with the austere, Brutalist children of Daniel Miller (who produced Alan Burnham’s Bowie-Low-influenced ‘Science Fiction’ here) was a plethora of desperate cash-ins, accidental mainstream hits, ambitious pop dramas and major label punts that went nowhere. Crucially, the compilation blurs the line between junk and treasure. What if the two things are interchangeable. What if it’s all science fiction?

All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978 -1985 is released 27 June on 2LP (500 copies on transparent pink, 500 copies on black vinyl) and 2xCD

All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 7” Sampler is released for Record Store Day 2025

YouTube playlist HERE

All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978 -1985 tracklisting (RVSN003)

1.  Design - Premonition
2.  Vision - Lucifer’s Friend
3.  Richard Bone - Alien Girl
4.  John Howard - I Tune Into You
5.  Ian North - We’re Not Lonely
6.  Selwin Image - The Unknown
7.  Harry Kakoulli - I’m On A Rocket
8.  Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone
9.  Billy London - Woman
10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction
11. The Microbes - Computer
12. The Goo-Q - I’m A Computer
13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms
14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord
15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter
16. Dee Jay Bert & Eagle - I Am Your Master
17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Time Bomb
18. Sole Sister - It’s Not What You Are But How
19. Alasdair Riddell - Do You Read Me?
20. Karel Fialka - Armband (The Mystery Song)
21. John Springate - My Life
22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names
23. Disco Volante - No Motion
24. Dream Unit - Drop In The Ocean

https://nightschoolrecords.com