The nostalgia industry really is bollocks, particularly since the eighties slipped back into territory viable for excavation. Slap this one on the deck and you might envision yoots throwing shapes in pastel clothes whilst declaring Metal + Flesh to be the most eighties thing evah with all its gated snares and octopads; but it isn't because the eighties, if you take the trouble to look closely, was actually mostly Dire Straits and nobody breaking Matthew Wilder's stride, and David Christie saddling up, and Karel fucking Fialka. It was shite, which is why Hard Corps sounded so amazing.
Whilst bands incorporating three blokes with synths may not have been particularly thin on the ground at the time, Hard Corps distinguished themselves by doing it better than just about everyone else and carving out their own identity at least a year or two ahead of the curve. It also helped that they really did sound fucking hard, kind of like what Portion Control probably aspired to with a drum machine that kicks you in the head as much as it shoves you out onto the floor; but instead of pretending to play army on the back of that crushing rhythm, Hard Corps built up a darkly layered sensuality from sombre melodies and the late Regine Fetet's heavily accented voice; so there are all sorts of forces pulling against one another in this music - dark, sexy, clubby, sad, solitary, icy, and yet somehow euphoric.
They sounded like one of those best kept secrets when I first heard them. It felt like a privilege to come across the occasional twelve in some neglected corner of the record shop - must have got there by accident and now it's mine! This is my fucking music. No-one else in the universe could possibly understand how great this is. I took Je Suis Passée around to John's house and tried to recruit him, but he just didn't get it, and I later realised that the man was a bit of a tit. Sometimes I wonder if my possessive fervour reached such intensity as to be to blame for why Hard Corps never really made it big. They couldn't escape from my devotion, such as it was, and how great I felt when I stuck Hard Corps on and wacked the volume right up. Fuck the Smiths - this is what it felt like to be young in the eighties.
All these years later I discover that Regine is regrettably no longer with us, and that they weren't even French. Some wonder has gone from the world, but this music still sounds so good it makes you want to either punch someone or have sex.
Shit.
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