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Information Society: “Growing up with Shiva”
From the album Apocryphon: Electro Roots 1982-1985
My introduction to Information Society constitutes one of my very earliest musical memories. In the early 90s, my family acquired an ill-fated Sega-CD add-on to the Genesis console. The unit was a horrible flop, but I will always remember the cutting-edge CD+G disc included with the system, which contained two songs by Information Society: “Walking Away” and “Pure Energy”—not coincidentally, two of their biggest hits. The futuristic synthetic sounds of these tracks opened my imagination to new dimensions of musical possibility. (The band’s allure for me was heightened by the fact, later discovered, that they hailed from the ancestral land of my conception, the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul.)
And to think, we abandoned this look for jeans and flannel.
The compilation album Apocryphon is a remarkable document of the band’s early years in the first half of the 80s. It features re-releases of their albums The INSOC EP (1983) and Creatures of Influence (1985), plus a disc of early miscellany entitled, none too humbly, Prophets without Honor.
“Growing up with Shiva,” featured here, is a driving anti-nuke statement created in the shadow of the near-apocalypse of 1983. (Note the quasi-rap vocal delivery in the breakdown section. Not too shabby for some white Minnesotans!) “Get up (Away from That Thing)” is an awesomely unabashed disco groove with an anti-TV lyrical message, while the more polished and sequencer-driven sound of “Running” anticipates the band’s aforementioned radio hits of the end of the decade, as well as manifestations of freestyle such as Stevie B.’s 1988 classic “Spring Love.”
Connoisseurs of the genre should check out the previously featured Units, a less successful but more experimental early American synth-pop outfit from San Francisco.
Played 50 time(s).
August 28, 2011, 9:05pm
