Annie Hogan

Amnesia ’81

Genre: INDUSTRIAL / WAVE / ELECTRO, INDIE / ALTERNATIVE

2 x Cassette Box

Boomkat Product Review:

New Wave hyper-connector Annie Hogan (Soft Cell, Deux Filles, Yello, Downwards) doubles down on her blink ’n miss ‘Batcave ’83’ edition, with an inch-perfect new double tape featuring a 3hr redux of her first ever DJ residency, at Leeds’ Amnesia in 1981 - chock with hi-grade bullets played just how she used to. Like the first tape, all label profits go to charity.

Swan-diving into a hugely inspirational era whose influence on successive waves of pop and dance, from Detroit techno to European club music and even hyperpop can’t be overstated; Annie Hogan reprises her earliest DJ role, at Leeds’ Amnesia in 1981, with a flawless run of cuts played at her first club residency. Start to finish it’s an utter joy for anyone who’s lived in the era’s long shadow, giving context to legendary tunes and highlighting lesser known bullets in a blow-for-blow account of what made, and still makes, that period so enduring some 40 years later.

While Annie is highly regarded by those in the know for her work with everyone from Simon Fisher Turner on the original, apocryphal Deux Filles project, to myriad Marc Almond projects, collabs with Regis and even as touring band member for the Style Council or on records by Nick Cave, Barry Adamson and Yello, her role as a DJ is only recently getting overdue shine. As a student in Leeds in 1980, she began booking and promoting shows by the likes of Depeche Mode, ACR and Soft Cell (evidence on YouTube!), where she also put her enviable record collection to use as the club DJ.

‘Amnesia ’81’ racks up too many nuggets to mention, pulling from NYC no wave, new romantic glam, Northern UK post-industrial funk, icy original synth-pop, proto-gothic post-punk, Teutonic machine music and sultry disco, she spotlights that period when rock ’n roll’s thrust became warped, modernised and puckered into new forms that set the stage for a whole other generation.

2 x Cassette Box (0)