The move from .punk style has been a gradual process, still not quite completed. A timely reminder that it was Joy Division who started it all and would still, should they be together, hold on to their particular distant crown, comes with the retrospective release of Still.

They were the first electronics band, using synthesizers and pre-programmed computerized tapes to construct a mode nJ9re relevant to the age of the silicone chip. Within this they also molded a built-in sense of desolation, a frustration that had a more intellectual angle than simply kicking out at contemporary social collapse. The personal angst and cold outrage of Ian Curtiss view of the world was the vision of an existential dilemma turning round on itself against the bleak scenario of a post-nuclear skyline. As such, Joy Division for all its heartbeat-deadened drum and its melodious guitar chords, produced music that resembled classic architecture . Despite Curtis s involvement the result was impersonal simply because the icy grandeur of their sound overpowered any individual course of action. Like Mussollinis harsh neo-Roman construction for the Rome underground building Divisions music retains its power nearly two years after Curtiss death because its impact is so vast yet its effect so oddly inhuman. What has come out of Division, like a family tree of electronic music, is todays dance music, and the stylists, having first tried to emulate the original school, have finally turned to creating little more than contemporary computerized pop.

Its been an interesting path to follow and, perhaps not surprisingly, has resulted in the originally titled experimentalists having come in from the cold of the indies" chart full fathom five into the mainstream. Divisions effect on British music was split into two streams: a posturing of style over content like Spandau Ballet, who released the hairdressing and underground clothing trade into whole new arenas (the lop-sided hair cut and geometrical head architecture became de rigeur for a hundred bands with little else to oner).

They made one sub-Division hit single and then sunk. Along with them comes Human League, who didnt give up on the haircut, but started to divine a path which molded innocent pop lyrics against the by now familiar despairing" music structures. This has come to a head on their recent Dare album. What, after all, is so adventurous or different about lines like Everybody needs love and affection/ Everybody needs two or three friends"? Or a celebration of all things British" like ice cream and Norman Wisdom? The electric bop this produces gives their rather overblown music a feeling of transparency. On a par in the computer disco field lie Depeche Mode, a band from Basildon . whose fancy French name is a mere smoke screen for a group of musicians who use electronics not to give added atmospherics, nor to branch out away from songs to give them a different structure, but merely as a bouncing accompaniment to the vocal. The resulting sounds are inoffensive pop songs, not far removed from the naivite of early white rock n roll (which neither rocked nor rolled) but skiddering in a little of the feel of Chic without the bass line.

Running parallel yet apart are Ultravox and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark The latter band used to be a two-man line-up who early on gigged alongside Joy Division, reputedly exposing themselves in such exalted company to the sneer of little rich boys busy showing off their synthesizers bought on daddys money. These two bands come more obviously indebted to Divisions influence. While Depeche and Human League are the sounds of Europop disco; Ultravox and Orchestral took their starting point from Divisions atmosphereics and highly structured melody lines. Neither has ever managed to recreate the same sense of forboding and some would say that was a good thing. But as a result of carefully, and hence self-consciously, trying to create a world apart they have laid themselves open to a recent attack on the grounds of pretention. Both have shifted Divisions landscape visions to Third Man" territory, very elegant re-constructions of mid-European cities, the hint of things not seeming to be what they are. Echo chambers are much in evidence with both groups and love lost or dying a running theme. A ghostlike quality is what both rely on and within this they become spies, rich refugees, the dispossessed with gilt chairs to sit on.

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Of the two, Ultravox take the imagery to far more full-blown proportions (their Vienna is a triumph of nonsense which became a hit simply because of a clever melodic hook—the recipe for the past 20 years of popular mainstream music). Orchestral have now managed to harness much of their rampant ËœCsacredness," confining their rather unimportant lyrics between such well-thought-out melody lines that the result, on Souvenir, becomes very pretty popular music and proves that their lyrics are so easily overlooked that here they can casually dispense with them altogether.

In a recent NME review Paul Morley rages against the Ultravox/Orchestral syndrome in favor of the Depeche dance formula. His reasoning" is that one has pretentions to fool its audience into believing it stands for something; the other makes no such claims and aims straight at the feet. Personally I cant see why he bothers to get so hot under the collar. Anyone with an iota of sense can tell that none of these groups is particularly important, both are simply producing different kinds of electronic pop, and if its anything to go by I cant remember one number off either the Depeche or Human League albums whereas I do often hum Vienna" or Souvenir." This doesnt mean one is better than the other, simply that as usual, melodies always win out.

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All the electronic bands are enjoying chart success, all have been taken into the mainstream, all sell out on their concert appearances and all have very little to say about the current state of play. They are now part and parcel of music as a form of escape. To find anything to equal Divisions circle of righteous pain at humanitys individual lot, the nearest current example lies with the unexpected left-field view of Kevin Coyne.

Coyne has never cut his hair one side longer than the other. His vision of the world has never therefore (just as Curtis very short cropped head never got into his eyes) been misted up by his own sense of style. To Coyne, as to Randy Newman, style would be something to growl at. Unlike Newman (who in his eccentricity he most closely resembles), he doesnt put his tongue in his cheek. Instead Coynes personal journey follows much the same path as Curtis, a vainglorious attempt to make sense out of futility. Like Curtis, he fails. The difference lies not only in approach but in the result. Where Curtis saw the world as a doomed anthem, Coyne is still fearful bufraging. Of course a man has time to stop and think great thoughts about what the meaning of life might be. A woman by and large doesnt have that time. But as any shrink would tell Woody Allen, anger, at least, is positive. Even if its hard to dance to.