Fad Gadget

Fad Gadget was the project of Frank Tovey, who started putting out records in London toward the end of the 1970s. The sound was a kind of wiry, uneasy post-punk with mechanical rhythms and Tovey's flat, detached vocal delivery. Songs like 'Collapsing New People' and 'Coitus Interruptus' had titles that hinted at the uncomfortable themes he liked to poke at, sex, alienation, the oddness of modern life.

They released a handful of albums in the early '80s, including 'Fireside Favourites' in 1980 and 'Under the Flag' in 1982. The latter featured some work with Throbbing Gristle, which fit the increasingly electronic and industrial feel of the music. Tovey worked with a small group of players, including guitarist Peter Ashworth and bassist Graham Lewis, but the vision was clearly his.

What sticks now isn't a grand legacy statement, but the particular mood of those records: clanking, cynical, and strangely catchy. A track like 'The Box' or 'King of the Flies' doesn't sound like much else from its moment, it's all tense machinery and muttered observations, holding up better than a lot of the more polished stuff that followed.