Clock DVA
Encyclopedia
Clock DVA are an industrial music
, post-punk
and EBM
group from Sheffield
, England
. The group was formed in 1978, with two members, Adolphus "Adi" Newton and Steven "Judd" Turner. Along with contemporaries Heaven 17
, Clock DVA's name was inspired by the Russia
n-influenced Nadsat
of Anthony Burgess
' A Clockwork Orange
; "dva" is the Russian word for "two". Adi had previously worked with members of Cabaret Voltaire
in a collective called The Studs and with Ian Craig Marsh
and Martyn Ware
in a band called The Future. Ian and Martyn went on to found The Human League
.
electronic music involving treated tape loops and synthesisers. Clock DVA became associated with industrial music
with the 1980 release of their cassette
album
White Souls in Black Suits on Throbbing Gristle
's Industrial Records
. The album Thirst, released on Fetish Records, followed in 1981 to a favourable critical reaction, knocking Adam and the Ants
' Dirk Wears White Sox
from the top of the NME
Indie Charts, by which time the band had combined musique concrète
techniques with standard rock instrumentation. "4 Hours", the single from "Thirst" was later covered by former Bauhaus
bassist David J
on his 1985 solo e.p. "Blue moods turning tail".
The band split up in 1981, with the non original members of the band going on to form The Box.
In 1983, Newton formed a new version of the band. First releasing the single "High Holy Disco Mass" on the major label Polydor Records
under the name DVA, the band then released the album Advantage (with several singles) under the name Clock DVA. After a European tour, however, the band split acrimoniously.
After the 1983 breakup of Clock DVA, Adi Newton formed The Anti-Group
or T.A.G.C. They released several albums continuing in a similar vein to the early Clock DVA, yet more experimental.
In 1987, Adi Newton reactivated DVA and invited Dean Dennis and Paul Browse back into the fold to aid Newton's use of computer aided sampling techniques which he had been developing in the Anti Group. The album Buried Dreams, an electronic album which received critical acclaim as a pioneering work. Browse left the group in 1989 and was replaced by R E Baker. The album Man-Amplified was the next album to be released, an exploration of cybernetics
. Digital Soundtracks, an instrumental album, was the next release. Following Dennis's departure, Newton and Baker produced the album Sign.
Adi Newton reactivated Clock DVA along with his creative partner Jane Radion Newton in 2008. Clock DVA is scheduled to perform live at Wave-Gotik-Treffen festival in Germany in June 2011, for the first time since 1994.
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
, post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
and EBM
Electronic body music
Electronic body music or industrial dance is a music genre that combines elements of industrial music and electronic dance music...
group from Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. The group was formed in 1978, with two members, Adolphus "Adi" Newton and Steven "Judd" Turner. Along with contemporaries Heaven 17
Heaven 17
Heaven 17 are an English synthpop band originating from Sheffield in the early 1980s. The trio comprises Martyn Ware , Ian Craig Marsh and Glenn Gregory...
, Clock DVA's name was inspired by the Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n-influenced Nadsat
Nadsat
Nadsat is a fictional register or argot used by the teenagers in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange. In addition to being a novelist, Burgess was also a linguist and he used this background to depict his characters as speaking a form of Russian-influenced English...
of Anthony Burgess
Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson – who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess – was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic. The dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange is Burgess's most famous novel, though he dismissed it as one of his lesser works...
' A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian novella by Anthony Burgess. The novel contains an experiment in language: the characters often use an argot called "Nadsat", derived from Russian....
; "dva" is the Russian word for "two". Adi had previously worked with members of Cabaret Voltaire
Cabaret Voltaire (band)
Cabaret Voltaire were a British music group from Sheffield, England.Initially composed of Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk and Chris Watson, the group was named after the Cabaret Voltaire, a nightclub in Zürich, Switzerland that was a centre for the early Dada movement.Their earliest performances...
in a collective called The Studs and with Ian Craig Marsh
Ian Craig Marsh
Ian Craig Marsh is a former English musician. He was a founding member of the electronic band The Human League, writing and playing on their first two albums and several singles, until leaving in 1980 to form B.E.F...
and Martyn Ware
Martyn Ware
Martyn "Teddy Bear" Ware is a British musician and music producer. He is the chairman of a local football team: PPA. As a founder member of both The Human League and Heaven 17, he was partly responsible for hit records such as "Being Boiled" and "Temptation"...
in a band called The Future. Ian and Martyn went on to found The Human League
The Human League
The Human League are an English electronic New Wave band formed in Sheffield in 1977. They achieved popularity after a key change in line-up in the early 1980s and have continued recording and performing with moderate commercial success throughout the 1980s up to the present day.The only constant...
.
History
The group was originally known for making a form of experimentalExperimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
electronic music involving treated tape loops and synthesisers. Clock DVA became associated with industrial music
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
with the 1980 release of their cassette
Compact Cassette
The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. It was designed originally for dictation, but improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant the Stereo 8-track cartridge and reel-to-reel...
album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
White Souls in Black Suits on Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle were an English industrial, avant-garde music and visual arts group that evolved from the performance art group COUM Transmissions...
's Industrial Records
Industrial Records
Industrial Records was a record label established in 1976 by art/music group Throbbing Gristle. The group, fronted by Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, and Peter Christopherson, were to release their experiments in non-entertainment sound and multimedia through the label; in...
. The album Thirst, released on Fetish Records, followed in 1981 to a favourable critical reaction, knocking Adam and the Ants
Adam and the Ants
Adam and the Ants were a British rock band active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The original group, which existed from 1977 to 1980, became notable as a cult band marking the transition from the late-1970s punk rock era to the post-punk and New Wave era...
' Dirk Wears White Sox
Dirk Wears White Sox
Dirk Wears White Sox is Adam and the Ants' first album, released on Do It Records in 1979, before Adam went on to fame with "Kings of the Wild Frontier." Dirk Wears White Sox features a much more eclectic, sometimes brooding sound than Ant's later work...
from the top of the NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
Indie Charts, by which time the band had combined musique concrète
Musique concrète
Musique concrète is a form of electroacoustic music that utilises acousmatic sound as a compositional resource. The compositional material is not restricted to the inclusion of sounds derived from musical instruments or voices, nor to elements traditionally thought of as "musical"...
techniques with standard rock instrumentation. "4 Hours", the single from "Thirst" was later covered by former Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
bassist David J
David J
David John Haskins , better known as David J, is a British alternative rock musician. He was the bassist for the gothic rock band Bauhaus and Love and Rockets....
on his 1985 solo e.p. "Blue moods turning tail".
The band split up in 1981, with the non original members of the band going on to form The Box.
In 1983, Newton formed a new version of the band. First releasing the single "High Holy Disco Mass" on the major label Polydor Records
Polydor Records
Polydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
under the name DVA, the band then released the album Advantage (with several singles) under the name Clock DVA. After a European tour, however, the band split acrimoniously.
After the 1983 breakup of Clock DVA, Adi Newton formed The Anti-Group
The Anti-Group
The Anti-Group Communications, or T.A.G.C. are a side project of Clock DVA.Formed in the early 1980s by Adi Newton , T.A.G.C...
or T.A.G.C. They released several albums continuing in a similar vein to the early Clock DVA, yet more experimental.
In 1987, Adi Newton reactivated DVA and invited Dean Dennis and Paul Browse back into the fold to aid Newton's use of computer aided sampling techniques which he had been developing in the Anti Group. The album Buried Dreams, an electronic album which received critical acclaim as a pioneering work. Browse left the group in 1989 and was replaced by R E Baker. The album Man-Amplified was the next album to be released, an exploration of cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
. Digital Soundtracks, an instrumental album, was the next release. Following Dennis's departure, Newton and Baker produced the album Sign.
Adi Newton reactivated Clock DVA along with his creative partner Jane Radion Newton in 2008. Clock DVA is scheduled to perform live at Wave-Gotik-Treffen festival in Germany in June 2011, for the first time since 1994.
Discography
- Lomticks of Time (1978) Cassette
- 2nd (1978) Cassette DVATION 01
- Deep Floor (1979) Cassette DVATION 02
- Fragment (1979) Cassette DVATION 03
- White Souls In Black Suits (1980) Cassette Industrial RecordsIndustrial RecordsIndustrial Records was a record label established in 1976 by art/music group Throbbing Gristle. The group, fronted by Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Chris Carter, and Peter Christopherson, were to release their experiments in non-entertainment sound and multimedia through the label; in...
IRC31 - ThirstThirst (Clock DVA album)Thirst is the second full-length album by Sheffield-based post-punk/industrial group Clock DVA, released in 1981. The album was the group's more experimental efforts, showcasing a mix of post-punk, jazz, musique concrète and avant-garde industrial experimentation, and was released to critical...
(1980) LP Fetish Records FR2002 (UK IndieUK Indie ChartThe UK Independent Chart or Indie Chart is a chart of the best-selling independent record releases in the UK.- History :In the wake of punk, small record labels began to spring up, as an outlet for artists that were unwilling to sign contracts with major record companies, or were not considered...
#7) - Passions Still Aflame (1982) EP Polydor RecordsPolydor RecordsPolydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
POSPX 437 - High Holy Disco Mass (1982) 12" Polydor RecordsPolydor RecordsPolydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
POSPX 499 - Advantage (1982) LP Polydor RecordsPolydor RecordsPolydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
POLS 1082 - White Souls in Black Suits (re-released 1982) LP Italian Records EX24
- Resistance (1983) 12" Polydor RecordsPolydor RecordsPolydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
POSPX 578 - Breakdown (1983) 12" Polydor RecordsPolydor RecordsPolydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
POSPX 627 - The Hacker (1988) CDEP Interfisch IF-SETH 001 C
- The Act (1988) CDEP Interfisch IF-SETH 008 C
- Advantage (re-released 1989) CD Interfisch 01706-10
- Buried Dreams (1989) CD Interfisch 01717-26; CD Wax Trax! WAXCD 7094; CD Contempo CONTEDISC 193
- Sound Mirror (1989) CDEP Interfisch IF-SETH 013 C
- White Souls In Black Suits (re-released 1990) LP Italian Records EX24
- Transitional Voices (live; 1990) CD Interfisch Records 01718-26; CD Contempo CONTEDISC 194
- Bit Mapping (live bootleg; 1990) CD Dunedin Records 025
- Final Program (1991) CDEP Contempo Tempodisc 173
- Man-Amplified (1991) CD Contempo CONTEDISC 182
- Bitstream (1991) CDEP Contempo Tempodisc 183
- White Souls In Black Suits (re-released 1992) CD Contempo CONTEDISC 157
- Advantage (re-released 1992) CD Contempo CONTEDISC 191
- ThirstThirst (Clock DVA album)Thirst is the second full-length album by Sheffield-based post-punk/industrial group Clock DVA, released in 1981. The album was the group's more experimental efforts, showcasing a mix of post-punk, jazz, musique concrète and avant-garde industrial experimentation, and was released to critical...
(re-released 1992) CD Contempo CONTEDISC 192 - Digital Soundtracks (1992) CD Contempo CONTE 217
- Tour 1992 (live bootleg; 1992) CD Smurf SMURFCD92-01
- Voice Recognition Test CDEP Contempo Tempo 224CDS
- Sign (album) (1993) CD Contempo CONTE 225CD
- Eternity CDEP Contempo Tempo 226CDS
- Collective (anthology; 1994) CD Cleopatra CLEO94822; CD Sub/Mission CDWHIP003-166700003-2; CD Hypnobeat/SPV 04632
- Collective (anthology; 1994) 3 CD Hyperium/Sub-Mission 391010629
- Buried Dreams (re-released 1998) CD NexteraNexteraNextera is a pioneering independent Czech record label, founded in Prague in 1989, notable for discovering some of the most enduring artists in dance, ambient and electronic music. It was founded by Kristian Kotarac.- Artists :* Clock DVA* The Hafler Trio...
ERA 9815-2