Heaven 17 —
Being Boiled 2010
( ∆ ) Magna Live Performance featuring a (then) state of the art 3 panel LED Screen.
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( about the project — )
HEAVEN 17 – “Penthouse and Pavement” 30th Anniversary Tour (2010/2011) featured the synth-pop band performing their seminal 1981 debut album in its entirety. The tour, included iconic tracks like “Fascist Groove Thang,” and “Let Me Go,”. The concerts featured a “live digital visual on-stage LED screen show” with 30 artists & designers including Chris Bird, Malcolm Garrett & Tim Head contributing animations to go along with Penthouse and Pavement. Jonathan Waring (AllThings®Unlimited) was invited to work on the closing track “Being Boiled” (originally Human League’s debut 7”) which continues to be a highlight of Heaven 17 live shows.
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( background — )
The song “Being Boiled” was influenced by Kraftwerk, German krautrock such as Can and Neu!, American funk bands Funkadelic and Parliament and the attitudes of punk placed in a different context. It has a strong bassline, compared to Bootsy Collins. The lyrics, described as “bizarre” and “confused”, combine a protest against silk farming with vague mention of oriental religion — (“Listen to the voice of Buddha/saying stop your sericulture”). In Japan, the sound of bells are referred to as “the voice of Buddha”. The song’s music pre-dates Philip Oakey’s joining the band. The Future, a band comprising Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, had just parted company with singer Adi Newton, later of Clock DVA. Needing a new singer, they contacted former schoolmate Philip Oakey, giving him the music to listen to. Two days later he was back, having written the lyrics. “That was the first thing I heard Phil do,” Marsh recalled, “and I immediately thought, ‘You’ve definitely got the job.’ The original version was recorded on a domestic tape recorder, in mono, in an abandoned factory, at a cost of £2.50.
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( V ) Full length Version
Hand crafted Flash animation. No filters. No effects.
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( rationale — )
Working closely with the original lighting designer Pip Rhodes, AllThings®Unlimited created something that would compliment the live performance. The verse & chorus sections are composed of imposing, primitive shapes and hypnotic wave forms with the animation style reflecting analogue synthesis, heavy industry and the rolling Sheffield landscape. The whole things wreaks of ‘Vectrex green’ and ‘Amstrad orange’ the spectrum Pip used to light the original Human League performances back in the 1980’s.
I wanted to convey the original intent in the lyrics and the raw power Martyn Ware’s three-bar analogue synth arrangement. The references are subtle and the overall visual effect bold, brazen & simplistic. The inspiration harks back to the time & place of its conception, Sheffield — 1978. The cruel voice of authority, the crushing machine of industry and ignorance of consumerism.
Academics were mystified and intrigued by Phil Oakey’s bizarre lyrics about silkworm torture and Phil admitted that it was all down to religious confusion on his part as he explains here — ‘...I’d got some religions mixed up and I thought that like Buddhism was the same as Hinduism, and it was sort of a plea for vegetarianism really against killing the silkworms to make socks or something? I got really confused about it.’
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( Snippets — )
( ∆ ) Silkworm cocoons are typically dropped into boiling water (or exposed to steam) during the silk production process.
( ∆ ) Turbulence / Boiling Water / Silk Strands / Waveforms / Rolling Landscape
( ∆ ) Code / Weaving / Humanoids
( ∆ ) Pyramids of Power
( ∆ ) “Listen to the voice of Buddha”
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©2010 Jonathan Waring / AllThings®Unlimited