Landscape -

Landscape was an English electronic band that released the 1977–78 jazz-rock EPs U2XME1X2MUCH and Worker’s Playtime, followed by the 1979–82 RCA albums Landscape, From the Tea-rooms of Mars… to the Hell-holes of Uranus, and Manhattan Boogie Woogie. Between their first two albums, they evolved from instrumental fusion to comedic electro–pop. From the Tea-rooms of Mars… spawned three hits: “Einstein a Go-Go,” “European Man,” and “Norman Bates.”

Landscape drummer–keyboardist Richard James Burgess (ex-Easy Street) gained further renown as a producer (Spandau Ballet) and co-developer of the Simmons drum synthesizer.

Members: Richard James Burgess (lead vocals, drums, programming, keyboards), Andy Pask (vocals, bass, keyboards), Christopher Heaton (keyboards, vocals), John L. Walters (Lyricon, saxophone, keyboards, programming, flute, vocals), Peter Thoms (trombone, vocals)

Background

Landscape formed in the mid-1970s as a jazz-rock quintet, comprised of drummer Richard James Burgess, bassist Andy Pask, keyboardist Christopher Heaton, reedist John Walters, and trombonist Peter Thoms.

Burgess was fresh off a two-album stint with pop-rockers Easy Street, which issued the acclaimed 1976–77 albums Easy Street and Under the Glass, the first featuring contributions from Thoms (“Shadows On the Wall”) and Heaton (“Easy Street”). Burgess also guested on 1977 albums by Charlie (No Second Chance) and Tony Visconti (Visconti’s Inventory). Earlier in his career, he played with New Zealand jazz-rockers Quincy Conserve.

Thoms, a sessionist, played on 1976–77 albums by funksters the J.A.L.N. Band and folksters The Sandpipers.

U2XME1X2MUCH

In November 1977, Landscape established Event Horizon Enterprises (EHE) and issued their first maxi-single, the 33 RMP 7″ U2XME1X2MUCH. It features three songs: “U2XME1X2MUCH,” “Don’t Gimme No Rebop,” and “Sixteen.” All three tracks were recorded live in London, July 1977, with no overdubs.

A. “U2XME1X2MUCH” (6:40) features bleating electronic sax–trombone across a brisk four-down beat, which eventually loosens with hi-hat slides and syncopation. Heaten plays a sputtering analogue synth solo in the middle.

B1. “Don’t Gimme No Rebop” (3:40) has interweaving electronic brass over a jumpy beat, inter-cut with rapidfire tom rolls.

B2. “Sixteen” (5:30) is a quieter number with in languid basslines and sparkly electric piano runs.

Stylistically, U2XME1X2MUCH crosses the refined, smoky ambience of late-period Soft Machine with echoes of the Canterbury school (The Muffins in particular). At times, the first two numbers exude a punkish feel with their fast, pounding tempos and unbridled energy, mirroring London club contemporaries Burlesque, who also mixed elements of punk and jazz on two 1977 albums.

On April 12, 1978, Landscape cut a session at Maida Vale Studio for BBC Radio One DJ John Peel, whose 4/19 broadcast aired rough-takes of one upcoming single side (“Workers’ Playtime”) and three future album tracks: “Kaptin Whorlix,” “Gotham City,” and “Lost In the Small Ads.”

Worker’s Playtime

In June 1978, Landscape released Worker’s Playtime, their second jazz-rock EP on Event Horizon. It features two songs by Peter Thoms and John Walters, who co-wrote the third (“Too Many Questions”) with Richard James Burgess.

A1. “Workers’ Playtime” (3:26)
A2. “Nearly Normal” (4:10)
B1. “Too Many Questions (Don’t Ask Me Why)” (5:55)

Landscape recorded “Workers’ Playtime” and “Nearly Normal” in single takes with the Event Horizon Mobile equipped with two coincident microphones “direct into a stereo machine.” They recorded “Too Many Questions” at Southern Studios.

Peel aired “Too Many Questions” on his June 29 show amid cuts by Advertising, The Boomtown Rats (“Living On an Island”), Wire (“Options R”), and Krypton phantom Klark Kent (an alter ego of Police drummer Stewart Copeland). The DJ included “Workers’ Playtime” in his July 25 playlist, which also featured 999, Bryan Ferry, The Clash, Culture, Gloria Mundi, Michael Mantler, The Rezillos, Siouxsie & The Banshees, and The Stranglers.

In late 1978, Burgess partook in Tax Loss, a pub-rock band formed by Easy Street associate Pete Zorn with his brother-in-law, London taxi driver Paul Phillips. Under the alias Driver 67, they scored a 1979 UK Top 10 hit with novelty song “Car 67.”

Landscape

Landscape released their self-titled debut album in late 1979 on RCA Victor (UK, Oceania). It features ten instrumentals, including “Kaptin Whorlix,” “Highly Suspicious,” “Lost in the Small Ads,” and both sides of their third and fifth singles: “Japan,” “Gotham City,” “Sonja Henie,” and “Neddy Sindrum.”

Musically, Landscape combines jazz-funk with proto-synthpop. Each song is group-credited with special attribution on select numbers to bassist Andy Pask (“Whorlix”), trombonist Peter Thoms (“Many’s the Time”), and saxophonist John Walters (“The Mechanical Bride,” “Wandsworth Plain”).

In addition to standard Pearl drums, Richard James Burgess plays the Moog drum and the analogue SDS 3 drum synthesizer, released the prior year by Dave Simmons of Musicaid, distributors of the Lyricon, an electric wind instrument popularized by Michal Urbaniak and played here by Walters. Christopher Heaton uses the Roland Chorus Echo and three keyboards: Yamaha CS80 polyphonic synthesizer, Fender Rhodes electric piano, and the Steinway Grand piano.

1. “Japan” (3:22)
2. “Lost in the Small Ads” (4:16)
3. “The Mechanical Bride” (3:24)
4. “Neddy Sindrum” (3:42)
5. “Kaptin Whorlix” (3:50)

6. “Sonja Henie” (3:31)
7. “Many’s the Time” (3:23)
8. “Highly Suspicious” (3:38)
9. “Gotham City” (3:38)
10. “Wandsworth Plain” (2:59)

Sessions took place in mid-1979 in West London at Audio International Studios with producer/engineer Greg Walsh, a soundman on 1978/79 albums by the Bliss Band, Amii Stewart, Dollar, Lucio Battisti, and onetime Herd bassist Andy Bown.

Additional sessions occurred at Richard Branson’s Oxfordshire mansion, the Manor, where Richard Manwaring co-engineered Landscape in sequence with titles by Martha + the Muffins, The Mekons, Mike Oldfield, and Zones.

Landscape features graphics by future Freur member John Warwicker. The back cover displays Warhol-style images of each member. The album included a 12×12 insert with postcard-style illustrations for each song.

RCA Victor paired “Japan” and “Gotham City” as Landscape’s first standard single. In July 1980, “Sonja Henie” and “Neddy Sindrum” reappeared on their third RCA single, released after a post-Landscape a-side.

“European Man”

On March 14, 1980, Landscape released “European Man,” an upbeat electro-pop track backed with “The Mechanical Bride,” a deep cut from their first album.

A. “European Man” (3:35)

In the “European Man” video, the blue-suited Incompetent Manager (Heaton) sits at a boardroom table next to his sexy blond secretary, Miss Jones (Barbie Wilde). In walks the Incoherent Scientist (Walters) and the Shop Steward (Thoms), who both pester the manager.

Meanwhile, the European Man (Pask, the Worker) saws a board and sings. Elsewhere, the Man In the White Suit (Burgess) enters a bar a reads a newspaper (headline: “MACHINES REPLACE MEN!”), then flirts with a blue-haired girl in fishnets and lace gloves (also Wilde). Back at the boardroom, the manager flirts with Miss Jones while the scientist and steward fumble over Rubik’s Cubes and card games. As the worker skives, Miss Jones flirts with the scientist, who the manager attacks with a spray can as the boardroom devolves to chaos.

Barbie Wilde also appears in the Ultravox video “Passing Strangers,” a noir clip inspired by the 1949 expressionist thriller The Third Man.

Landscape co-produced the single with Colin Thurston, a member of the famed Bewlay Bros. sound-team behind the late-1977 albums by David Bowie (“Heroes”) and Iggy Pop (Lust for Life). Thurston worked on “European Man” amid 1979/80 sessions with the Human League, Interview, Magazine, and the Only Ones.

Between the first and second album, Richard James Burgess worked with Dave Simmons on a followup to the SDS 3: the SDS 5, an electronic drum kit with preset buttons and hexagonal pads. They manufactured the prototype at Musicaid in Hatfield.

In 1981, Simmons released the SDS 5 to the general public. Early adapters included Phil Collins (Genesis), Warren Cann (Ultravox), Akira Jimbo (Casiopea), Lee Harris (Talk Talk), Steve Negus (Saga), Ali Score (A Flock of Seagulls), Roger Andrew Taylor (Duran Duran), Yukihiro Takahashi (YMO), Bill Bruford (King Crimson), and Thomas Dolby.

As Landscape embraced electro-pop, they adopted a razor-sharp space age look in line with the Blitz scene, whose house band, Spandau Ballet, hired Burgess as their producer. Burgess dubbed the scene ‘New Romantic’ in reference to its post-punk repurposing of Romantic-era finery. He produced Spandau’s October 1980 first single, “To Cut a Long Story Short,” a suave slice of rhythmic synthpop that presaged their 1981 debut album, Journeys to Glory.

Elsewhere, Heaton played auxiliary keyboards for Icelandic rockers Þú Og Ég and UK anarcho punks the Poison Girls.

From the Tea-rooms of Mars… to the Hell-holes of Uranus

Landscape released their second album, From the Tea-rooms of Mars… to the Hell-holes of Uranus, in February 1981 on RCA. The two-part title denotes the LP sides.

Tea-rooms contains “European Man” and the just-released followup single “Einstein A Go-Go,” their breakthrough hit. Landscape group-wrote the material with select attribution to Peter Thoms (“Computer Person”) and John Walters, whose comedic lurch “Norman Bates” charted as the third single.

Musically, Tea-rooms ranges from electro-pop (“Shake the West Awake,” “Face of the 80’s”) to instrumental suites, namely “Alpine Tragedy”/”Sisters” and the three-part title track.

Richard James Burgess unveils the SDS-V electronic drum pads on Tea-rooms and splits multiple instruments (Roland MC8 microcomposer, System 100 modular, programmed computer) with Walters, who plays the Lyricon 1 and Computone wind synth-driver and shares the ProMars synthesizer with Andy Pask.

Pask plays the Giffin bass (fretted/fretless) and shares the Yamaha CS80 polyphonic synthesizer with Christopher Heaton, whose arsenal includes the Fender Rhodes piano (with ring modulator), the Casiotone 201 digital keyboard, and Roland vocoders. Peter Thoms plays assorted trombone (electronic, standard, King 3B) with multiple effects, including pitch adjusters, chorus echo, and fuzz (the MXR Blue Box pedal).

From the Tea-rooms of Mars…

A1. “European Man” (4:22)
A2. “Shake the West Awake” (3:24)
A3. “Computer Person” (2:59)
A4. “Alpine Tragedy”/”Sisters” (4:44)
A5. “Face of the 80’s” (3:26)
A6. “New Religion” (3:13)

…. to the Hell-holes of Uranus

B1. “Einstein a Go-Go” (2:59)
B2. “Norman Bates” (5:36)
B3. “The Doll’s House” (5:23)
B4. “From the Tea-rooms of Mars …. to the Hell-holes of Uranus” (7:34)
i. “Beguine” (2:43)
ii. “Mambo”(2:22)
iii. “Tango” (2:29)

Landscape recorded and self-produced the album through 1980 at ten studios with fourteen different engineers, including John Hudson, a decorated Seventies soundman (Leaf Hound, Pete Brown & Piblokto!) who handled Tea-rooms at Mayfair Sound in sequence with Visage, the first of two albums by the New Romantic supergroup headed by Blitz impresario Steve Strange with members of Ultravox and Magazine.

XTC soundman Hugh Padgham engineered parts at Town House Studios amid work on Peter Gabriel‘s third solo album (“melt”) and the Yes/Buggles merger Drama. Blockheads soundman Rik Walton did his part at Workhouse in succession with titles by Gang of Four, This Heat, and Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Meanwhile, “melt” participant Kate Bush employed Walters and Burgess for programming of the newly released Fairlight CMI sampling synth on her 1980 album, Never for Ever.

“Einstein A Go-Go” appeared in late January as the second advance single (b/w “New Religion”). It reached No. 5 on the UK Singles Chart,

In the video, Burgess emerges from a London phone booth sporting a two-tone quiff and Edwardian suit (gray double-breasted jacket, ruffle shirt). He shifts to a lab inside a haunted mansion and readies an experiment on Thoms’ disembodied head, assisted by Pask and Heaton. Meanwhile, Walters (red caped) spies through the window. Midway, Landscape (clad in arm-padded vinyl suits) perform inside a wall-painted studio as three women writhe before Richard’s painted-head drum kit. Walters leads a charge into the lab where Pask and Heaton (as different characters?) whisk away the mad scientist Burgess.

In late May, “Norman Bates” became the second single, backed with “Tango,” the extracted third part of the Hell-Holes title suite. Brian Grant directed the songs video in sequence with clips for Spandau Ballet, Sparks, The Stranglers, Kim Wilde, and Olivia Newton-John.

The “Norman Bates” video takes liberty with different elements in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror film Psycho. In the original movie, secretary Marion (Janet Leigh) steals $40,000 for her debt-ridden boyfriend. She stops overnight at the Bates Motel, where proprietor Norman plays host but then murders her in a moment of split-personality disorder. Marion’s boyfriend (Sam) and sister (Lila) investigate the motel. Lila discovers the mummified corpse of Norman’s mother in a cellar, where Sam thwarts an attack from Norman (whose mother has overtaken his body).

In the noir video, Burgess accompanies a woman — a Marion lookalike (Pamela Stephenson) whose plot resembles Lila’s — to a spooky mansion, where they enter and part ways. As Richard’s character (initially Sam-like) grows evasive and Norman-like, Pamela’s character roams room-to-room with increased leeriness. One by one, she encounters different Landscape members at their instruments, each in a state of psychosis (Heaton, Walters) or cryptic mood (Pask, Thoms). She walks into the cellar, where Burgess (now full-on Norman) enters slowly from behind as she turns and freezes in mock comic horror.

Landscape mimed “Norman Bates” on Top of the Pops for the BBC music program’s June 11 broadcast, which also featured in-studio numbers by Hazel O’Connor (“Will You?”), Randy Crawford (“You Might Need Somebody”), and Ultravox (“All Stood Still”). “Norman Bates” reached No. 40 on the UK Singles Chart and received light rotation months later on the US cable network MTV.

In October 1981, Landscape re-released “European Man” (b/w “The Mechanical Bride”).

Manhattan Boogie-Woogie

Landscape released their third album, Manhattan Boogie-Woogie, in 1982 on RCA. It contains eight group-written tracks, including “Bad Times,” “When You Leave Your Lover,” “One Rule for the Rich,” and the singles “It’s Not My Real Name” and “Eastern Girls.”

Christopher Heaton plays synthesizers, piano, and Minimoog on Manhattan Boogie-Woogie, which features Andy Pask on regular and fretless bass. The album features electric and acoustic instrumentation by trombonist Peter Thoms and drummer Richard James Burgess, who splits computer programming with soprano saxist John Walters, who retains his trademark Lyricon.

1. “One Rule for the Rich” (4:15)
2. “Manhattan Boogie-Woogie” (4:32)
3. “Colour Code (Tell Me Something New)” (3:48)
4. “The Long Way Home” (4:48)

5. “It’s Not My Real Name” (5:21)
6. “Bad Times” (4:12)
7. “Eastern Girls” (3:16)
8. “When You Leave Your Lover” (3:40)

Landscape self-produced Manhattan Boogie-Woogie at Utopia and Alvic studios, where Burgess engineered the album in sequence with Spandau Ballet’s sophomore effort (Diamond) and titles by actress/comedian Pamela Stephenson and the NuRo theatrical troupe Shock.

Boogie-Woogie was co-engineered by Pink Floyd soundman Andy Jackson, UB40 associate Neil Black, and Utopia staffer Pete Smith. The last two also worked on recent titles by the Light of the World spinoff Beggar & Co. and the Mr. Big offshoot Broken Home.

Manhattan Boogie-Woogie sports geometric cover graphics by designer Ian Wright and a Landscape freeze frame (warped and tinted) by photographer Brian Aris, whose images grace 1982 sleeves for Chris Rea, Cliff Richard, Judie Tzuke, Naked Eyes, Sheena Easton, and Blondie frontwoman Debbie Harry.

In February 1982, “It’s Not My Real Name” appeared as the lead single backed with “(A Case of) Mistaken Identity,” a non-album group original.

B. “(A Case of) Mistaken Identity” (3:46)

In May, “Eastern Girls” became the second Boogie-Woogie single, backed with “Back On Your Heads,” another non-album exclusive. The 12″ contains an extended “Eastern Girls” (6:36).

B. “Back On Your Heads” (5:50)

Landscape III

Lanscape splintered with the 1982 departures of Christopher Heaton and Peter Thoms. Heaton assisted Brit-funksters Second Image while Thoms guested on 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, the fourth album (and Northern Hemisphere debut) by Aussie rockers Midnight Oil.

Richard James Burgess co-produced and performed on Strip, the second solo album by Adam Ant. Meanwhile, Burgess continued with Andy Pask and John Walters under the revised moniker Landscape III, which cut two singles on RCA, all credited to the collective acronym BPW (Burgess, Pask, Walters).

In February 1983, Landscape III released their first single in 7″ and 12″ formats.

A. “So Good, So Pure, So Kind” (3:33 / 4:21)
B. “The Fabulous Neutrinos” (5:34)

In April, Landscape III issued their second and final single, again in standard 7″ and extended 12″ variants.

A. “You Know How To Hurt Me” (3:38 / 6:52)
B. “Feel So Right” (2:47 / 4:56)

Both singles feature Nagel-esque sleeve illustrations by De Gamma, the design firm behind contemporary sleeves for Central Line, Endgames, Fiat Lux, Freur, The Glove, and Kiki Dee. The back-sleeves display stylish group pics by rock photojournalist Jill Furmanovsky (Buzzcocks, The Fixx, Henry Badowski, Orange Juice).