Hard Corps - Lucky Charm 12”

Ahh yes, Wednesday midday and after a couple of days, I’m back in front of the keyboard. I just couldn’t stay away, even though I tried extremely hard. So, how does one kick off midweek posting?? Well, how about this for starters?

Hard Corps were not French; they were actually from Brixton, South London. Hugh Ashton, Robert Doran and Clive Pierce, were introduced to chanteuse Regine Fetet, who although having never sung before, had an enigmatic, fragile, human voice which brought alive the cold, pounding machined music the three British sound engineers were creating. Electronic pioneers that were way ahead of their time, their dirty-ice-cold-electro-sounds combined with the exotic voice of Regine Fetet created something so special, so unique, never to be found again by any other band. With influences as far and wide as Mozart and Kraftwerk working in unison with a heavily accentuated French vocal, the result was magnificent and unique. The band is noteworthy for Regine's provocative performances, which often involved her removing her top on stage.

Metal & Flesh

Today’s band is classic but tragically obscure minimal wave/synth pop act Hard Corps, who formed in 1983. The three original members, Hugh Ashton, Robert Doran and Clive Pierce had played together previously, but upon the addition of vocalist Regine Fetet, the band had found their calling. As electro music pioneers that were way ahead of their time, their dirty-ice-cold-electro-sounds combined with the exotic voice of Regine Fetet created something so special, so unique, never to be found again by any other band. The compilation "Metal & Flesh", released in 1990 was a testament to their amazing creative genius and should be a must in the collection of any fan of electronic music. The band released several singles throughout the 1980s, utilising aesthetically entrancing Kraftwerk-like electronic minimalism, produced by the legendary Martin Rushent and Daniel Miller. Nabbing a supporting slot on both the Cure’s Head on the Door tour and one leg of Depeche Mode’s expansive Music for the Masses tour vocalist Regine Fetet cut an enigmatic, but controversial figure by infamously disrobing. Tracks such as ‘Je Suis Passée’, ‘Dirty’ and the English language version ‘Porter Bonheur’ ("Lucky Charm") are favourite 80’s synthpop singles; with ‘Dirty’ as a rare, early example of then-emerging EBM bleeding into traditional synthpop which makes for something slightly more aggressive than the norm for the genre while ‘Porter Bonheur’ is just a classic and Hard Corps' most well-remembered single. What is great is that mostly everything else here is just as good as those songs and in a few cases, perhaps even better! Hard Corps' brand of synthpop is colder than most while also maintaining a lush flair, songs draped in gothic romanticism. The fact that their singer is French, with half the songs in fact sung in her native tongue, also lends them that ethereal feel. Clive Pierce, Hugh Ashton, Rob Doran and Regine Fetet were a candle that burned exceedingly brightly, but still left a small but none the less important legacy of synthetic music which could give their German counterparts a run for their money.