Music and Fantasy

I replaced most of the Depeche Mode that I've had on my mp3 player for the last month or two with some late 80s rather blatant Depeche Mode imitators. Specifically I put the first CD's of Camouflage, Cause & Effect, Red Flag and Seven Red Seven. For Cause & Effect, I even have the older, indie-release original version, not the repackaged and rereleased version that is more common. Woot! Bought that years and years ago at a used CD store in my old college town.

I also left DM's Music for the Masses on my mp3 player, because its interesting to hear it interspersed with the obvious imitators. None of them are as good, which isn't terribly surprising, but they all have their strengths and charms. Camouflage in particular needed some help with their enunciation and English translations, but I like the kinda of slower, wistful dream-like melancholy of the album as a whole (even with dance hit "The Great Commandment" this overall mood isn't broken.) Cause & Effect had a similar mood, although slightly less pervasive. In retrospect, they strike me as the least polished of the bunch. Red Flag cares less for mood and concentrates more on making straight-up club tracks, although they do have a couple of strikingly beautiful piano tracks, including one piano only instrumental. Seven Red Seven phases in some techno influences and has more overt samples.

Once I get past this run, I'll probably pick up my long-deferred De/Vision and Mesh retrospectives, listening to their entire collections. Mesh and De/Vision are interesting in relation to the earlier Depeche Mode imitators as they formed (or at least broke into the industry) just a little bit too late to actually achieve any significant mainstream commercial success with their work, but went on to become long-running stars of the 90s and beyond indie-synthpop movement. Qualitatively, other than their timing, there's not much to distinguish early Mesh and De/Vision from early Red Flag, Cause & Effect, Seven Red Seven or Camouflage; all six groups were more or less successful by imitating the "classic" Depeche Mode sound, with a twist or two of their own.

Now; fantasy. Recently (maybe because of seeing 10,000 B.C.) I've become interested in Sword & Sandal epics and some Greek historical documentaries (including Michael Wood's Trojan War and Alexander the Great themed programmes) and that naturally leads me to Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age. I really like the idea of there being a "lost" age in the prehistory of the world; Howard actually posited two: the Hyborian Age of Conan and the earlier Thurian Age of Kull. Of course, it becomes much more difficult to explain how any such lost age could exist within the parameters of today's science, but you've got to remember that when Howard wrote, the theory of Plate Tectonics was still thirty years or so from being formulated, and Howard blithely speaking of antediluvian ages and cataclysmic re-arranging of the earth's surface. Sadly, in order to do so now, you have to pretend you don't know anything about actual science and utilize some pseudo-science ideas, like Graham Hancock's theories of ice age high civilization, a 12,500 year old sphinx at Giza, and creationist ideas like catastrophic plate tectonics, which are apologia intended to reconcile science with Genesis.

Not that I have any problem with doing so, if I ever want to create such a setting, and honestly, I'm really feeling the attraction of it. Although 10,000 B.C. was otherwise a pretty mediocre movie, I've gotta give it credit for bringing out the desire for some very classic sword & sorcery in me.