Pete Shelley🖤- Homosapien [1981] [magnums extended mix] + Homosapien (Elongated Dancepartydubmix)

Pete Shelley - Homosapien (Elongated Dancepartydubmix)


English singer, songwriter and guitarist, born 17 April 1955 in Leigh, Lancashire. Died from a heart attack 6 December 2018 in Tallinn, Estonia, where he lived. Lead singer of the seminal punk band Buzzcocks, Pete Shelley embarked on a solo career in the early 80s. Working with producers Martin Rushent and Stephen Hague he crafted dance floor friendly synth pop.

Label: Island Records – 12WIP 6720, Genetic Records (2) – 12 WIP 6720
Format: Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM, Single, Stereo
Country: UK
Released: 1981
Genre: Electronic
Style: New Wave, Synth-pop
















Pete Shelley’s Homosapien Revisited

Much has been written in the days since Pete Shelley's passing about his deft touch when it came to human sexuality. Yet his most honest statement should feature predominantly in his legacy…

https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/reissue-of-the-week/pete-shelley-the-buzzcocks-homosapien-review/



Little about Pete Shelley’s solo career was conventional. Sky Yen, was technically his first solo album, in that it was an album and that the record’s sky blue, graph paper sleeve came emblazoned with his name, but it was actually recorded in March of 1974, a year before Shelley and Howard Devoto even decided to form a band. The record consists of two pieces, each twenty-minutes and forty-five seconds in length. It was performed on a purpose-built oscillator, the objective being to create a soundtrack for one of Devoto’s student films. Shelley reportedly used his own sweat to manipulate the circuitry.



Sky Yen owes a little to Shelley’s much proclaimed love of Can. There’s a bit of early-Kraftwerk in there alongside shades of John Cage. He said it was influenced by the Cluster and Tangerine Dream, groups he’d heard played by John Peel. It’s amateurish stuff, really. Few would have ever heard it if Shelley hadn’t decided to release it on his own, short lived Groovy Records in 1980. It was one of just a handful of releases that included the soundtrack LP Hangahar by Sally Timms and Lindsay Lee – on which Shelley makes a guest appearance – and an album called Free Agents by Eric Random, Francis Cookson and Barry Adamson. Sky Yen sold out of its original pressing of 1,000 but god knows what Buzzcocks fans thought of it.

In reality, 1981’s Homosapien was Shelley’s first solo album proper, in that it was an album and that the record’s modernist sleeve (the musician sat amongst a statue of the Egyptian god Anubis, a Commodore PET computer, a red telephone, an erect telescope) came emblazoned not only with his name, but contained actual songs! Still, it’s most likely that Buzzcocks fans, drawn to the Bolton born band by their almost peerless run of perfect rapid-fire punk between 1977 and 1979, were again more confused – this time by ping pong drum machines and lusty electro pop – than they were enthralled by Shelley publicly exploring his growing interest in electronic music.

Again, the majority of Homosapien’s songs predate the Buzzcocks. Shelley had planned to mould the core of his band’s fourth album – the follow up to 1979’s uneven A Different Kind Of Tension – from this handful of songs that had been kicking around since his late teens. The band even rehearsed them and tried to lay them down with producer Martin Rushent in Manchester’s Pluto Studios. Yet this was a beleaguered Buzzcocks who had recorded and released three albums of exceptional quality within two years but were worn down by what they perceived as a lack of financial support from their label EMI. Concerned that the sessions were proving unproductive, Rushent called time and suggested to Shelley he retreat to his newly built Genetic Sound studio at his home in Streatley, Berkshire. The songs created here would ultimately become a solo album. The Buzzcocks wouldn’t release another record for fourteen-years.



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