LANDSCAPE
Cult favourites, Landscape originally formed in the mid-Seventies
as an instrumental group with leanings toward jazz and funk but
changed tack dramatically at the start of the Eighties to a computer-generated
synthesised sound.
Their record company RCA stuck with them and their first new-styled
single, "European Man" became a club favourite very
narrowly missing the charts. The title of that track was to prove
prophetic as Landscape went on to score their European wide hit
in 1981 with "Einstein A Go Go", an anti war song with
a simple and addictive melody line, which reached number 5 in
the UK charts.
Fame for the band, which included Richard James Burgess (vocals
/ computers / drums), Andy Pask (bass), Christopher Heaton (keyboards),
Peter Thomas (trombone/synthesiser) and John Walters (computer
/ synthesiser) was to be short lived. Their follow-up single "Norman
Bates" (a tribute to Hitchcock's classic film, Psycho), was
their last chart entry just scraping into the Top 40.
The group went on to record a third album, Manhattan Boogie Woogie
in 1982, they changed their name to Landscape 3 (after reducing
in size!) and finally disbanded in 1984. Interestingly, Burgess
flourished for a while as a record producer both during and after
his Landscape membership and produced several tracks for Spandau
Ballet including to Cut A Long Story Short") and mid-Eighties
disco pop group Living In A Box.
