Victrola‘s “Maritime Tatami” is an absolute minimal wave classic, and I remember hearing it for the first time in some basement London clubs in the late 2000s when all things “minimal wave” were well in the middle of sprouting in the underground at the time, showcasing artists both previously forgotten from the past and new artists taking up the reigns in the style and moulding their own interpretations of that particular genre.
The punchiness of the Roland TR606 drum machine on that track and some of the tasteful and memorable drum fills of that track still get me going even to this day. Another aspect of Victrola that worked well is how the guitars intertwined well with the synthesizers: chiming chords blending in with synth pads and muted guitar work interweaving into one cohesive unit with tighter, arpeggiated synth work.
But at the time it seemed that was the only release the band had came out with, their Maritime Tatami 12″ which featured the titular track as well as an equally masterful, yet notable more solemn B-side entitled “Game Of Despair” in which the drum programming had pre-echoes of electro and perhaps even the 90s genre “IDM” (Intelligent Dance Music — whatever that means).
Like most tracks from the past that bubble to the surface again and again start to turn heads, the Maritime Tatami 12″ got a re-issue in 2014 on the popular San Francisco-based darkwave/synth label Dark Entries. But only five years later, the same label released a further record of material from the band entitled Born From The Water (Demos 1983-1985) which not only included demo versions of the two tracks from Maritime Tatami, but also a collection of further recordings which I believe were never released before.
One of these additional tracks, “Tenderface”, I’ve heard numerous times at clubs and festivals but hadn’t really clued in who it was until some friends abroad brought me “up to speed” as to what it was. Perhaps my attention was pulled to this track due to a growing interest in “hollow” sounding square wave bass lines, which this track features quite prominently, along with tight integration of muted guitars with percolating arpeggiated synth sequences.
This “hollow” square wave sound was something I sort of avoided dabbling with in the early days of Soft Riot, as I was going for a more psychedelic-influenced sound that pulled influence from sounds that were more “saw wave” in nature, and more layered in analogue feedback/delay dissonance. Plus, perhaps my arsenal of synths at the time I felt didn’t really produce a satisfying square wave sound — rather sounding like some cheezy digital clarinet. Overall at that time I was just starting out and still had so much to discover. In recent years I’ve acquired a Dave Smith Prophet Rev2 8, which was carefully selected as a studio addition due to a list of features and sounds I was looking for, including the ability to create really good “hollow” square wave sounds, which I was more getting into as I’m always looking to try new things and don’t like treading water in the same stylistic place for too long.
As an interesting aside, a good friend of mine in Glasgow with exceptional, almost encyclopedic knowledge of a wide range of underground music across many genres spanning decades had said to me that members of Victrola were in another Milan-based group (they were originally from southern Italy but re-located north) called Jeunesse D’Ivoire which I was then introduced to their track “A Gift Of Tears”. There’s definitely similarities between the two groups, with perhaps Jeunesse D’Ivoire having a more “indie” slant and with a female singer. I wasn’t able to find any documentation online confirming the connection between the two groups, but it was overall just nice to make a new discovery of a somewhat lost underground gem.