Positive Noise - Give Me Passion & Positive Negative 12” Singles

Thanks to a wee comment by Leedshippriest on the Positive Noise album Heart Of Darkness post, I remembered that I had a couple of early singles from the band that I always meant to post about 4 years ago…so finally, and at long last, here are two of them. Give Me Passion and Positive Negative were both released in 1981 (along with Charm which I don’t have) as stand-alone singles. Give Me Passion was their debut single from around March 1981 and is worth the price of admission alone. The single bounces along with vocals shouted rather than sung, a drummer who’s having a breakdown and period keyboards that today feel a little too high in the mix. Yes there are guitar and bass but they’re a little drowned in sound. The second track Ghosts made its way onto the debut album and rightly so. No doubt better debut singles exist but this is definitely there or there about for a Scottish band during 1981.
The Positive Negative single is much more synth-pop with an eye on the dance floor. New vocalist Russell Blackstock takes the band in a far poppier direction than the shouted vocals of Ross Middleton. Trumpets break out in the extended 12” version, which had been a small feature on the debut album used to great effect, but here they sound dated and rushed. The New Wave officianardos amongst you will be wetting yourselves waiting for this download to open…others will be like “Bleh!” So a big thank you to the hip priest of Leeds for reminding me.

Heart Of Darkness

Brave New Scotland. That was the name given to the host of bands that emerged in the wake of the punk explosion of the late seventies, bands such as Skids, Altered Images, The Fire Engines, Scars or perhaps most famously, those on the roster of the Post Card label, Aztec Camera, Orange Juice, and Josef K. The Scottish bands, perhaps more than any others, seemed more accessible to the potential of punk, and most willing to abuse it, to turn it inside out and, well, start again.

Positive Noise are the forgotten sons of this legendary host of Scottish groups looking to reimagine pop music in the early eighties. Led by Ross Middleton (vocals/guitar) with brothers Fraser Middleton (bass) and Graham Middleton (keyboards) and Les Gaff (drums), they came out of the same fertile Glasgow music scene that gave the world Post Card Records. But where Orange Juice wedded jangly, Byrds-inspired pop with grooves borrowed from Chic, Positive Noise seemed closer in spirit to some of the Manchester bands on the Factory Records label, with stentorian vocals declaimed over splintered guitars and thunderous drums. This was heavy music, which had it been more dubby might have sounded rather like Joy Division, or if more funky, like A Certain Ratio. But, in truth, Positive Noise were more squarely in the pop meld than either of their Mancunian counterparts, with strong bass lines and memorable choruses. Ross Middleton chants rather than sings, intoning his words with a manic passion, and the album as a whole seems to heave itself from song to song as if it were Sisyphus pushing a great rock up the side of a mountain. It just never gives up. Keith Levene of PIL guests on the opening track, and Gary Barnacle, the celebrated horn player who played with just about every act of note in the eighties, adds some terrific brass touches to two tracks.

Ross Middleton left Positive Noise following the release of Heart Of Darkness, joining up with Gary Barnacle and scoring some dance hits as Leisure Process. Positive Noise soldiered on, with Russell Blackstock taking on the vocal duties for the radio-friendly follow up, Change Of Heart, a respectable entry in the white boy funk canon, but one that pales in comparison to the sheer vitality of Heart of Darkness. No more blood and soil!