Image above provided by http://www.recordproduction.com/
Who is Trevor Horn?…
| This is Trevor Horn… |  |
| He’s the guy who produced and performed “Video Killed The Radio Star” world-wide smash-hit track. And he’s collecting millions of dollars of royalties from it. |  |
| Who else is seen in that video (Killed The Radio Star) is no other than Hanz Zimmer. |  |
| Hans is Academy Award winner and one of Hollywood’s best soundtrack composers for movies such as: Rain Main, Lion King, Bee Movie, Black Rain, Da Vinci Code, and the list goes on an on IMDB.com credentials. The fucker has an amazing personal studio. |  |
Let’s forget about Hans! I just wanted to show you the connection between him and Trevor Horn. Why is Trevor more special?
After The Buggles, Trevor Horn became to be one of the world’s best and most successful music producers of all time:
- Dollar
- ABC
- Malcolm McLaren (Duch Rock album, “Two Buffalo Girls”, etc)
- YES (Owner Of The Lonely Heart)
- Africa Bambaataa
- Grace Jones
- Pet Shop Boys
- Simple Minds
- Paul McCartney
- Seal
- Lomax
- Mike Oldfield
- Tom Jones
- Art Of Noise
- Genesis
- Lisa Stansfield
- and more
What made Trevor Horn’s productions stand out was his unique and genius production techniques and the heavy use of state-of-the-art pro-audio gear, which made him become the torch-bearer for the kind of technology-led pop music which was hip and incredibly disciplined. Horn was influenced by Giorgio Moroder (for his distinctive sound) and Kraftwerk (The Man Machine album, for its non-use of traditional instruments). Horn rented the same modular synth which Giorgio used on all his records but found it very difficult to use.
Around 1980, along with Peter Gabriel, Trevor bought the very first digital sampler/workstation which was revolutionary at the time: Fairlight CMi. The Fairlight machine took over Horn’s life and rewarded him with the creation of a sound that had never been heard before. “There were landmark moments – like making the otherworldly backing vocals on Give Me Back My Heart by the Art of Noise out of a sample – that were mind-blowing. It was the birth of digital recording.”
Sampling laws had not yet been invented, and Horn stuck a skull and crossbones flag over the Fairlight to promote the image of being a pirate, stealing existing recordings and turning them into something new. He also pioneered the use of the Linn drum machine, which sounded the death knell for live drummers.
Fairlight III CMi sampler, music workstation.
However, Trevor was one of the originators of the dynamic 12-inch remixes which were the best at the time … and still are the best. Most 12-inch remixes back then were either just extended verions of original songs and/or default disco/DJ arrangments which were too boring to listen to in and of themselves.
Trevor Horn’s 12-inch remixes were uniquely long (anywhere from 8 to 13 minutes in duration) and told stories which took the listeners through long instrumental journeys at the begenning of tracks until the climax is reached (around the 5/6 or 7 minute mark). After the climax, the original or alternate full vocal version of the track takes over from that point on to the end, lasting additional 3.5 to 5 minutes in length. Like a novel, each of Horn’s remixes starts off with the long RISE to hit the CLIMAX at the top. Once climax is reached, the track would SUSTAIN the music with the original/alternate vocal version until it DECAYS and fades out in the end. Mostly importantly, it was the rolling basslines which DRIVE the listener (in the passenger seat) from begenning to end.
trevor horn's 12-inch remix graph
Most 12-inch or “remixed” tracks today are nothing more than extended DJ-friendly versions based on or bootlegged from the original sources. They are nowhere nearly produced as good and heavy as Trevor Horn’s past remixes, because they do not tell stories or go through carefully-arranged story-like journeys. They’re just dispensable and expendable pieces of garbage to my ears.
Homework:
Listen to Frankie Goes To Hollywood dynamic 12-inch remixes…
I want you to listen to these tracks carefully all the way through … in front of big, beefy stereo speakers:
Rage Hard (12 Inch)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Rage Hard (12 Inch) (mp3)
Two Tribes (Annihilation Mix)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Two Tribes (Annihilation Mix) (mp3)
Two Tribes (Surrender Mix)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Two Tribes (Surrender Mix) (mp3)
Relax (12 Inch Sex Mix)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Relax (12 Inch Sex Mix) (mp3)
Welcome To The Pleasure Dome (Original 12 Inch Pleasure Fix Mix)
Frankie Goes To Hollywood – Welcome To The Pleasure Dome (Original 12 Inch Pleasure Fix Mix) (mp3)
Read Part-2 of this article …
I Love You Miss Robot :: Trevor Horn – Part 2
While the norm for most tracks go anywhere between 3:30 to 6:00 minutes in length, I prefer 15:00 minutes or longer, like the four seasons. Give me 4 long tracks to fill the hour, and I’ll be one very happy Iraqi. I love tracks that take me on long journeys through various movements. One of my all-time favorite synth-pop groups is PROPAGANDA from germany … who sound like twisted ABBA + Industrial + TechnoPop + Darkness. My favorite Proganda track is P:Machinery. I’ve taken two 12-inch vinyl versions of that track and conjoined them together as one … the way I want to listen to P:Machinery by:
Propaganda
Although he produced only a handful of tracks of renown and disappeared into obscurity almost as quickly as he had emerged from it, Manny ( Man ) Parrish is nonetheless one of the most important and influential figures in American electronic dance music. Helping to lay the foundation of electro, hip-hop, freestyle, and techno, as well as the dozens of subgenres to splinter off from those, Parrish introduced the aesthetic of European electronic pop to the American club scene by combining the plugged-in disco-funk of Giorgio Moroder and the man-machine music of Kraftwerk with the beefed-up rhythms and cut’n'mix approach of nascent hip-hop. As a result, tracks like “Hip-Hop Be Bop (Don’t Stop)” and “Boogie Down Bronx” were period-defining works that provided the basic genetic material for everyone from Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys to Autechre and Andrea Parker — and they remain undisputed classics of early hip-hop and electro to this day.
Man Parrish
Trevor Horn is the guy who produced and performed “
The Buggles
[...] Dynamic 12-Inch :: Trevor Horn – Part 1 Installed By The Machine :: Propaganda :: P-Machinery [...]
Hey, nice to see you like my photo of Trevor Horn so much that you’ve posted it BUT not with a credit or link. Please give the photo credit – thanks!
please provide me your credit & link info so that i willy include gladly them in the blog.
Hi Mikey,
I’ve updated the blog with credit to Record Prodution (http://www.recordproduction.com). If there’s any additional credit-information you’d like me to add, by all means I will do so.
The Relax Sex Mix is actually the US Mix.
Trevor Horn is a legend. I still miss the demise of the great, expansive, 80s 12″ mix – works of art in their own right.
Hi, Trevor Horn never produced Africa Bambaataa. His record label did release one single by him called Don’t Stop Planet Rock, but that’s the only relation.
Two Tribes Annihilation mix is incomplete it seems. It stops just after 8 mins.
I am looking into and will give you status update shortly. BTW, thank you for pointing out
I checked the mp3 file itself. It sounds fine on my end. Track does not stop at all. Phew! It’s not a corrupt audio file.
Lots of incorrect info here. Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman never played on The I am a Camera hit.
Just wanted to say.. GREAT SITE and subject Trevor Horn.
But…
The Propaganda edit you made does NOT sound better then the original.
Bitterly dissapointing really… Sorry.
Typical Pro-Tools in the box sound, undefined and lacking depth and richness.
Tested it on 4 types of monitors, Pro-Ac, Klein & Hummel, Auratone and Sony High End speakers.
Problem was the most obvious on the Auratones.
Thanks for this great collection, really appreciate it!
No words good enough to express my gratitude for this website in general. I basically agree with most of the Vinyl Jukebox and discovered quite a number of tracks I had never heard back in the 80′s. My music sensibility is extremely varied but I spent much of my adolescent years listening and re-listening to all FGTH and Art of Noise 12-inches and my brain pretty much evolved like a succession of Fairlight upgrades. I spend long hours trying to find some of the lost and unreleased versions of ‘Two Tribes’ and ‘Relax’, notably the 16-minute so-called ‘Sex Mix’ only available on hard-to-find ‘Cassingles’. I also unsuccessfully looked for super-rare intrumental versions of several ‘Pleasuredome’ tracks, previously hosted on a semi-official FGTH site, but not to be found anywhere now that this site has disappeared.
I landed accidentally, but happily on this website. If I may bother everyone with my oldschool culture, one of the first vinyl records I ever bought back as a kid in 79 was the Buggles’ Age of Plastic. When listening to it occasionally more than 30 years later, I still discover some recording details I hadn’t noticed before, especially when trying to imagine what machines Trevor had used for which track, and how he recorded those sounds and patched them into the stereo landcape to make the whole thing sound ‘like that’, so perfect like on every single production he made for other artists as well. This has always been a mistery and source of questioning to me. For me, Trevor’s work as a music producer is paramount in 20th century music, at equal importance with that of George Martin with the Beatles, or some of the avant-garde Pink Floyd and Kraftwerk technological experiments.
Particularly, I have always been amazed by the incredible precision in the usage of sound volume in these long mixes by Trevor. Take the ‘Two Tribes’ Annihilation Mix, for example. Listen until you arrive to the “-3.31″ moment, when the song really starts to explode. After those four bass guitar slides, there is that heavy crash cymbal paired with the probable ‘Orch5′ orchestra hit sample, all at ‘climax’ volume. However, the micrometric and surgical adjustment of both the harmonic content and the volume of that soundburst renders the listening dramatic, though not aggressive to the ears, while the track continues at a high tempo, giving the listener enough time to ‘adapt’ to the tension expressed by the song after that point. That’s what I call the absolute perfect volume, which no producer other than Trevor Horn would push to such an extreme detail, and it still gives me the same thrill after one million listenings. I’m sure Trevor spent days alone in the studio, only adjusting that soundburst in the ‘Annihilation’ mix until he was satisfied with it. For me, without exaggeration, this particular second in that particular track is just one the most absolute perfect achievements in music recording of all times. Of course, listening to the CD in good headphones or the recommended buffy speakers would make it sound more obvious than from a compressed MP3. You guys can invest in all the CDs listed on this page, they are all worth it.
Cheers!