The Normal

The Normal were born in 1978 when Daniel Miller, inspired by the attitude of punk, and the music of people like Can, Neu, Kraftwerk etc. bought a KORG700S and a four-track recorder. Recording in his bedroom the songs T.V.O.D. and Warm Leatherette, which investigated the erotic possibilities of a car crash based on JG Ballard’s book Crash, he created Mute Records and released a single.

The single was picked up by Rough Trade and sold at least 15,000 copies.

Punk was happening, and the whole DIY, release your own records thing was in bloom. Punk rock was great in some senses: it cleared away a lot of shit, but musically I found it quite conservative. A lot of people quickly moved on to other things. So it was a combination of timing in terms of punk, the DIY movement and relatively cheap synthesizers on the market. I felt it was my time — I was driven to make some electronic music.

I bought a second-hand synthesizer — a Korg 700S. I was working as an assistant film editor at ATV at the time. I came up with a couple of tunes, literally in my bedroom. People think of bedroom recordings as a modern, laptop invention. It wasn’t. There were loads of people recording in their bedroom in the mid-70s. I read about how to put out a single; it was an article by a group called The Desperate Bicycles who pressed their own single and distributed it by bicycle. I knew I’d have to make 500 copies, but I didn’t think I’d sell any. Yael Chiara, Medium, September 2016

Before punk, it would have been inconceivable for someone of Miller’s self-confessed musical and technological limitations to release such a record. Over fifty years later the first release on Mute Records is still as original and groundbreaking as ever.

In 1980 Grace Jones, the Jamaican singer and songwriter, named her 4th album Warm Leatherette and covered The Normal’s song.

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