The Normal
Warm Leatherette / T.V.O.D.

"Alien folk song"
Anonymous, Bologna circa 1980

The story is by now known even to the stones: in 1978, armed with an analog Korg synth, a makeshift four-track recorder, and a small mixer, Daniel Miller composed this two-track single in his living room, initially printed in about 2000 copies (initially, it was supposed to be only 500), for a fictitious label called "Mute Records," behind which, needless to say, was no one other than our Daniel.

In short time, the single found a certain success in the "indie" circles, enough to prompt several new bands to knock on Daniel Miller's door to propose demos, convinced they were dealing with a real record label.
Today, each of us has at home (should have) at least a handful of titles from the Mute catalog.
This for the record and for the twenty-five readers who still didn't know Daniel Miller aka "The Normal"

At the peak of all stages of profound renewal, not only in the artistic field, a character, an event, or a trend comes onto the scene serving as a catalyst, managing to condense everything that had been up to that point, opening new paths for everything that will come after.
Something similar happened with this now-historic single: it is certainly easy to trace the influences that shaped the vinyl in question, but this does not make the work derivative or unoriginal:
The "doors of the cosmos up in Germany" opened to the young Daniel Miller, who performed a sort of profanation of such solemnity, arriving there aboard the "Trans Europe Express", with the urgency and the rashness that the smoldering ruins of punk transmitted to his overheated loins.
KrautRock, of course, the electronic and less psychedelic part of Kosmische Musik, however, revisited in the light of the reflection of Kraftwerk, and the backwash of Giorgio Moroder, and treated with the revitalizing care of punk: short tracks, nonexistent arrangements.

And the lyrics to be put to such music? Well, those were strange times, the disastrous decade of the 80's loomed, with its sinister load of self-destructive cynicism, superfluous technology, and creeping totalitarianism.
And so lyrics with an almost "industrial" flavor, with vocals reduced to a monotone recitative amid electronic trills and pulsating rhythms: the vile marriage between man and machine, the incestuous relationship with the cathodic crevice, generating mutant realities, and still, unsatisfied, the fatal attraction for the collision of flesh and steel, down down to the extreme consequences? (1)

Ultimately, a record born autonomous,  adult, without any concession to the plethora of fashions and trends that in a few years would stifle the creativity and immediacy of the rock scene, but which at the same time was a reference point for generations of musicians and enthusiasts.

(1) The text of T.V.O.D. tells of a sort of symbiosis between a television and a man (the movie Videodrome will come out 4 years later), while that of "Warm Leatherette" refers to the famous novel "Crash" by J.G. Ballard.