pauline murray and the invisible girls
discography of martin hannett productions
dream sequences (one)/dream sequences (two) 7"/10" illusive (ive 1/ivex 1) 1980
mr x/two shots 7" illusive (ive 2) 1980 
pauline murray and the invisible girls lp illusive/rso (2934277) 1980
pauline murray and the invisible girls reissue cd polestar (pstrcd01) 1993
searching for heaven/animal crazy/(the visitor) 7"/10" illusive (ive 3/ivex 3) 1981
Pauline Picks Up The Pieces
Martin 'Zero' Hannett lifts his lurid pink socks off the maze of switches and buttons on the 24-track console and jumps up from his easy chair behind the mixing desk. A series of directions are bellowed to a percussionist in an adjacent studio.
"That's just crying out for a Bell flanger, Dave!"
Returning to his throne, Hannett waves a curt go-ahead to the percussionist, Dave Hassell, who proceeds to activate the spring-loaded slapsticks, two hinged blocks of wood which produce a sound remarkably similar to a firework being detonated at arm's length.
Pauline Murray grins patiently and awaits her turn in the same booth. More vocal overdubs. This is the night-shift at the Stockport rabbit warren that goes by the name of Strawberry Studios, and Hannett is a demanding taskmaster.
The song the collective are working on is an airy, insistent rocker, 'Shoot You Down', destined to emerge on the RSO-sponsored album by Pauline Murray And The Invisible Girls this autumn.
The pairing of the former Penetration chanteuse and her bassman sidekick Robert Blamire with sound sculptor extraordinaire Hannett and his Mancunian cronies Hassell, guitarist Vini 'Durutti Column' Reilly, drummer John Maher and organist Steve Hopkins, is one of the most inspired matches of the year.
Forget Yes and Buggles, Dury and Wilko, even The Clash and Mikey Dread. Murray and Hannett is a musical union to set anticipation at fever pitch.
Did not Penetration, in their more inventive moods, always hint at the sort of transcendental, spatial rock that Hannett's gothic rock sensibility thrives on? Pauline's haunting vocalising has always cried out for the sort of clarity and focus with which Zero has moulded the atmospheric ambiences of Joy Division, Magazine and U2.
And wasn't it about time that Hannett broke away from male rock bands and applied his superb sense of texture and balance to the relationship between the electric guitar and the female voice?
Both parties obviously thought so.
It was Pauline herself who first approached Hannett back in February with a view to recording a one-off single. The resultant 45, 'Dream Sequences', recently dented the Top 75. With that fillip, work began last month on a dozen new Pauline Murray songs from which the album will be culled.
Pauline had first been attracted to Hannett's dynamic touch at the controls by his early production credits - 'Spiral Scratch', the Jilted John EP and, of course, the first Joy Division album.
"I'm still more of a fan than anything else," explains the elfin Pauline. "I only knew Martin through what he'd produced. He just seemed to have the knack of putting things in the right setting.
"We decided to do that single and see how it went and he just put a whole new aspect on things. He works in a totally different way to any other producer we've recorded with. He doesn't even re-play songs on the tape very much. He has it all in his head.
"It was strange working with him at first, it took a while to come to terms with it. He's a weird bloke but we work really well with him. We work through the night and at first it seemed that we were getting nothing done by doing it that way. But then you look at what you've actually completed and it's hell of a lot.
"I had been stuck in a rut and I needed something like that to show me some sort of light. Martin was just the right person."
The messy demise of Penetration had set her against the constrictions imposed by a working band, blundering aimlessly from tour to album to tour under record company pressure. A somewhat looser set-up was called for, something that would give Murray and Blamire the chance to develop their talents without being tied down, something that would be more fun. All roads led to Stockport and The Invisible Girls.
Pausing only for a one-off duet with Only One Peter Perrett on his CBS country single 'Fools' in January, Pauline set about recruiting a strictly part-time assembly of musicians with the aid of the indefatigable Hannett, the resulting band comprising largely of John Cooper Clarke's touring squad.
With Virgin declining to take up their option, Murray started work on forming an independent label, Illusive Records, with Blamire and former Penetration manager John Arnesson.
"It's totally different to the way we've worked before. We won't necessarily do all our recording as Pauline Murray and The Invisible Girls. We want to have lots of different people. I don't want to have a permanent group again really. Up to now, I feel as if we've been hampered 'cause of that sort of situation."
Which brings us back to the cork-walled mixing complex of Strawberry Studios with the dawn rapidly approaching and a rough mix of the completed track on the album blaring out of a pair of massive speakers.
The six tracks that I heard - 'Shoot You Down', 'Mr X', 'Dream Sequences', 'Screaming In The Darkness', 'Drummer Boy' and 'Judgement Day' - were more than enough to indicate the wisdom of forsaking Penetration for The Invisible Girls.
The difference between the two bands is staggering. In surrounding herself with truly creative musicians in a conducive working environment in place of the honest if workmanlike riffing machine that Penetration had become by their second album, Pauline is allowing her vocal and songwriting talents to flower properly for the first time.
The songs themselves are harder and fuller than anything Penetration ever did, with the possible exception of a few highspots on their debut 'Moving Targets' LP. There is more melody, less rifferama. There is the startling piano of Steve Hopkins and even drummer John Maher, the man behind the often cluttered beat of The Buzzcocks, has been coerced into playing simply and effectively.
Robert Blamire, too, is extending his horizons, adding some guitar and even a smattering of horn to his elastic bass playing. As the beanpole of a bassman says himself, "As we're going on, the songs are becoming deeper musically and lyrically. The songs that Pauline was writing just after the split reflected what was happening then. The songs we've done more recently reflect what's happening now. They're very different."
Pauline herself is loath to discuss songwriting, finding it "pretentious and embarrassing" to talk about her lyrics in detail. Strictly take-it-or-leave-it.
"I don't think it's worth making a big deal about the lyrics. A lot of the songs are basically just pop songs. There's not a great deal you can say or read into them apart from that. Most of them are very straightforward really.
"The songs that I like the best are the ones that I just sit down and write in one go. Sometimes you find yourself pondering about it too much and those are usually the songs that you look back on and wish you'd done differently."
As Pauline points out, the Invisible Girls project is very much a fresh start and should be viewed as such. But what of the old Penetration audience with its sizeable hard-core punk contingent? Are the old fans going to be left floundering in the wake of the new departure?
"I think the single will have surprised a lot of people. I think some of the old Penetration fans won't like it, but I don't think you should play to your audience's expectations.
"I think that some of them will stay with us, but a lot of the new songs are not as riffy as the old stuff so we might lose a lot of the hard-core punks. I don't think you should ever rely on an audience. You should never expect them to like everything you do."
The hard-core Penetration fans - the die-hards of the Hounslow Mob who received dedications on album sleeves - should soon get a chance to see for themselves the changes that have taken place. In addition to the LP, the entire Invisible Girls assembly, Vini Reilly and Hannett included, are going out on the road in the autumn with Pauline and John Cooper Clarke as joint headliners. The tour will only take in six or seven dates, but should be well worth catching even if it means travelling. (For a live review, see review .)
Pauline Murray, when she put the first version of Penetration together at the start of 1977, helped start a line of bands, largely from the north of England, who took the spirit of punk and welded it to a vision and invention that was sorely lacking in many of their bigger-name London contemporaries.
The line has since stretched from Penetration, Buzzcocks and The Fall through the likes of The Human League, Gang Of Four and Magazine to Joy Division, Teardrop Explodes, Echo And The Bunnymen and beyond.
Pauline Murray is ready to muscle back in on that heritage.
Taken from an interview by Adrian Thrills
(Not) seeing is believing
When Penetration did more than that and disappeared completely, Murray and cohort Robert Blamire launched their own label, Illusive, for the furtherance of their/her career. Forsaking the traditional indie outlets of Spartan/Bonaparte/Rough Trade, they aimed for the big time; and got it. Now, via the distributive talents of rock's very own Rothschilds, the gargantuan RSO multinational corporation (as opposed to mere "record company"), comes Pauline's perky solo prototype.
And good it is, too, although the initial impression of great neue bop seems to hide something of a red shift; you get the strong impression that Murray's compositions are moving chartwards while the Girls are trying to inch/persuade her into a superior version of the modern dance.
The link between the two never snaps, though, but strains and produces a tension which keeps the album alive and 'up' throughout. This difference may be caused by Murray's forlorn maiden vocals. Plainly, she doesn't have the range or depth to invest her range of material with life - instead she applies a tangential sigh to the gripping support of the Girls.
The contributions of the Invisible Girls (defined here as Martin Hannett, Blamire, Steve Hopkins, John Maher, Dave Rowbotham, Dave Hassell and "guest" Vini Reilly) should not be underestimated. Hannett especially - We Name The Guilty Men! - appears to have had considerable influence over the final sound.
Under his aegis, the Girls wax furiously strung-out funky (the disco-ish 'Sympathy'), frenetic Chinnichap (the toppy harmonies and stomping rhythm of 'Time Slipping' and 'Screaming In The Darkness'), alien nightclub soundtrack (the sultry/Batley 'Drummer Boy') meta-commercial (the yearning, intelligent pop of 'Thundertunes'), mutant Joybeat (the charming 'When Will We Learn', which aspires to the disturbing swing of JD, or 'Mr X', which has very Curtis-style vocal passages) or Euro-moderne (such as 'European Eyes', which outros with a tongue-in-cheek Holger Czukay bass-hop). The Girls constantly astound and surprise with their innovative and category-defying performance, production and (I presume) arrangement.
The best comparison these ears can offer Murray, I'm afraid, is an English version of Amon Duul's 'Renate Knaupe-Krotenschwanz'. The breathy strainings towards a semblance of soul are uncannily similar.
But any such misgivings are forgotten in the vibrant electric rush of the album. Murray's writer/producer collaboration with the Girls has produced an album of strong lyricism, technique and locomotion. I only hope that her benefactors at RSO aren't planning to make her the Yvonne Elliman of the Joy Division era.
Album review by John Gill
Not Nice At All
The newish Pauline and the Invisible Girls' album shows how wrong those mistakes of the past were. Contrary to many reviews, there is nothing remotely nice about the record. It's not even very good, but happens to tail off at the end in an inspired rush which bodes more than well for the future.
The last two tracks, 'Mr X' and 'Judgement Day', are superb swirling portraits of feminine fear and anguish. And it's a very feminine album. Those last two tracks give sense and shape to what goes before them, a series of ostenibly jolly-hopping hyper pop songs which in reality, and aided by the Adam Adamant of Post-Modernism Martin Hannett, are a disturbed, almost mocking, twisting round of the pure pop format.
The album in its low-lying evocation of confusion and disturbance wrapped up in a cruel confection that could not rot the teeth, reminds me of Family's 'Music In A Doll's House' or perhaps some Laura Nyro. It's a strange album and not easy to listen to once you've cracked open the surface. Decidedly Not Nice at all.
Pauline: "People make a big deal out of us being nice. People don't want to see that we can be angry or nasty. They've got this preconceived idea of what I'm like and they don't see that I have a lot of different moods."
Which the current album openly indulges in. I find it better than anything Penetration ever did simply because it reveals this opening out of Pauline Murray. The modern Pauline is no longer clouded in the mists and myths of that band. Now the communication is less woolly and more direct.
I mention Martin Hannett's amazing whirlpool of a production on the current album.
Pauline: "Isn't it weird? 'Judgement Day' is manic!"
Robert: "I thought 'Judgement Day' needed re-mixing when I first heard it, but I didn't like to ask!"
Again, Hannett's work is suitably unstable on the new album ("He really shook us up and got rid of the Penetration in our systems"), but he is somewhat overused, somehow too predictable by now, so maybe a change could even more further the music next time all round.
The music itself, by the way, is seemingly taking the course of those two great last tracks, moving away from the psychotic pop of much of the current album, the songs that apparently Pauline wrote in the daze following the Virgin break.
How or why those songs are so absurdly commercial she can't now work out. Which makes them even more insane in my mind.
Taken from an interview by Dave McCullough
The Return of the Invisible Girl
We talk about her recent single, "This Thing Called Love." She says it isn't representative of the LP. "It's a bit more poppy than the Invisible Girls. It's sort of what we do now. It's a bit Penetration, a bit Invisible Girls and not exactly either." I remark to her that I like the single's country twang. My only criticism is that the drum sound is sloppy compared to the revolutionary drum production of the Invisible Girls. "It was recorded in Southern Studios, which is more geared to drum machines," Pauline explains. "So we had to record the drums somewhere else. It's a big drum sound we've gone for, more of a band feel than the Invisible Girls. The drum sound on that album was all put together by Martin Hannett; he had a lot to do with the whole project. Live, we couldn't inject the same excitement and edge into it. It was very musical, almost too perfect. Maybe ahead of it's time."
Part of an interview by Warren Hopper
Pauline Murray's Search For Heaven
The last album, "Pauline Murray And The Invisible Girls", was easily her most accomplished and satisfying to date, establishing a breathy style, full of light and space, which would be subsequently copied by The Passions for their hit "I'm In Love With A German Film Star".
Melodically adventurous, it was packed with memorable songs and proved that she had safely distanced herself from the early days with Penetration. Although it eventually shipped something like 30,000 it appeared at the time to be sorely under-promoted. This, apparently, was all part of the plan.
"I didn't want the last album to be pushed too hard. I didn't want full-page adverts with a comeback message. I wanted it kept quiet and low-key. I'm me own worst enemy at times, me, because I just see what other people get up to and become determined not to do that myself."
The invisible Girls were basically Steve Hopkins on keyboards and Martin Hannett on the control board. Hannett's production had its characteristic depth, but the presence of famous names - Vini Reilly made a very small contribution for a rather large credit - has its drawbacks.
Pauline: "A lot of people tried to take the credit away from us. They don't realise that Martin hasn't got the magic touch to make a bad band sound good. You've got to give him something substantial to work with in the first place though. In the end it was as if it was his album, not mine, the way people were talking about it."
Taken from an interview by Ian Pye
Pauline Murray and the Invisible Girls
Pauline Murray was a short-lived punk with the widely-respected Penetration until 1979, when she and guitarist Robert Blamire went new wave and formed The Invisible Girls. Smartly enlisting the late Martin Hannett to produce their first and only album - here reissued with extra tracks - signified a shift away from shouty rants to sparse, alienated, mournful pop with a dayglo disco heart.
This is the sort of record tearful nostalgics would like to imagine an embryonic Factory were releasing 14 years ago, but actually the Manchester pioneers were grooving to skeletal Belgian funk while Murray's band arrived on the Bee Gees' RSO label. Not that this stopped her drafting in Factory bigwigs Hannett, Vini Reilly and Bernard Sumner to polish various corners of her shiny pop dream. So it comes as no surprise when tracks like 'Thundertunes' and 'Mr X' predate the militaristic electro-stomp of early New Order, or post-album singles 'Animal Crazy' and 'Searching For Heaven' anticipate their later conversion to sad-hearted disco. Murray is shrill and windswept, always dignified despite a limited range, dripping understated sarcasm on the majestic 'Sympathy' or yearning for oblivion in gorgeous, crashing sci-fi epic 'Dream Sequence'. She might sound uncomfortably like Theatre Of Hate at times, but thankfully never becomes Hazel O'Connor.
This charmingly imperfect retrospective commemorates a spooky era when the fleeting Utopia of teenage nihilism was succumbing to collective fantasies of consumerism. Look no further for the missing link between Joy Division and Altered Images.
Stephen Dalton
Mr X - Dream Topping Single of the Week
Penetration never really clicked for me, but these Girls do and Pauline sounds more at home than ever. The Magazine-inspired sexy throb of the bass and drums suit the dreamy, reflective Murray vocals from head to toe, and they're as distinctive as the Hannett mode of production. Entrancing, romantic psychedelia: soft and warm but dark too.
Betty Page
Searching For Heaven
Was God an astronaut? Does Willie Whitelaw have a brain? Why hasn't Pauline Murray had an enormous hit? Number three in a continuing series of Great Mysteries Of Our Time. "Searching For Heaven" has that ingredient which is always present in the best pop music, namely an illusive, ethereal magic which defies detailed description or definition. Much of the credit should go to producer Martin Hannett, who's passed everything through a filter to produce a shimmering kaleidoscope of aural shades. It should be this spring's summer hit, but probably won't be.
Lynden Barber
the cd reissue of pauline's eponymous album inexplicably leaves off "dream sequences 2", the special martin hannett remix of that relatively popular song from the b-side of the single. it's especially inexplicable considering the cd clocks in at under 60 minutes, with plenty of room for all the bsides and maybe an unreleased track or two if they could have bothered. which they didn't.
the invisible girls were joined on the "searching for heaven" single by none other than wayne hussey! vini reilly is also credited as a collaborator on the self-titled album, though as with his work with quando quango, i certainly can't recognize which songs they are.
rumour has it that cathy la creme and the cro-tones is none other than pauline murray and martin hannett making fun of their dear friend john cooper clarke. who knows. we do know that the invisible girls did a few gigs supporting both pauline and john cooper clarke, though i don't believe simultaneously.
of course, by way of background, pauline murray fronted the extremely well-respected post-punk band penetration before leaving to join hannett. as soon as i find a good penetration link, we'll include one on this page.
contemporary review
NME, 16 August 1980
Sounds 11 October 80
Sounds, 8 November 1980
Lime Lizard September 1989
Melody Maker 25 April 1981
(7)
NME 21 August 1993
Sounds 25 October 1980
Melody Maker 25 April 1981
further information
