Unsung Podcast

You might think you don't know Christophe Szpajdel's work. You almost certainly do. The Emperor logo. The Metallica Mankind clip. The Rihanna lettering that went a hundred feet high at the MTV VMAs. If you've spent any time near heavy music, his hand has been on things you've stared at without knowing his name.
This week we sit down with the man known as Lord of the Logos — Belgian-born, Devon-based, currently on shift at the Co-op — to talk about a career that has produced somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 logos, and counting. We get into his early years doodling in school notebooks in Liège, the Art Nouveau obsession that underpins everything, and how a chance encounter on the Tube ended with his work displayed at one of the biggest awards shows on the planet for £500 — a fee he only learned was for Rihanna after he'd already quoted it.
We cover the Emperor logo that defined his reputation, the Metallica commission that required him to draw at Heathrow five hours before a flight to Japan, and the Foo Fighters Christmas jumper that was a mutilation of his work, and what he did about it. We also discuss the readability question that divides the scene, the three-month creative block triggered by a South Korean band, his forestry degree and why nature sits at the centre of everything he makes, and the political stance on Ukraine that has cost him ten logos in one go.
The question running through all of it: how does someone this prolific stay original?
Highlights
00:00 Intro
01:00 Meet Christophe Szpajdel — Lord of the Logos
04:00 Logo Count and the Goal of 20,000 by 2030
06:00 The Process Explained
09:00 The Unsung Logo and Chris's Tattoo
10:00 Background: Belgium, Poland, Ukraine, Devon
11:00 The Co-op Day Job and Why It Works
13:00 Side Projects: Murals and the Polish Calendar
17:00 Musical Influences: Kiss, Motörhead, Celtic Frost
19:00 First Logos and Early Career
21:00 The Emperor Logo
25:00 Chilean Influence: Rick Zuniga
26:00 Nature, Art Nouveau, and the Forestry Degree
28:00 Best Work Comes from Anger or Obsession with Death
29:00 Symmetry, Creative Block, and the Client Problem
33:00 Live: Working Through the Drag Logo
38:00 The Readability Debate
43:00 The Rihanna Story
47:00 Metallica at Heathrow
53:00 The Foo Fighters Bootleg Response
54:00 The Mandy Soundtrack
57:00 AI and Market Saturation
59:00 Ukraine, Politics, and the Russian Flatmate
01:02:00 Losing Ten Logos Over a Political Stance
01:03:00 Black Metal, Church Burnings, and Forbidden Fruit
01:08:00 The Trump/Putin Artwork
01:09:00 The Books: Lord of the Logos, Archaic Modernism, Oracles in Black

In our previous episode, we went deep into the history of Cabaret Voltaire and their importance to UK industrial and, latterly, dance music. Now, we follow the trail we laid therein by taking a journey through the band's extensive discography, really fleshing out how they went from a Sheffield attic in 1973 to a Patagonian field site recording lizards for David Attenborough. Along the way, we take in televangelists, voodoo, Charles Manson samples, Velvet Underground covers, a near-miss with Todd Terry, and a Taylor Swift pressing-plant mix-up that turned a forgotten ambient track into a viral curiosity decades later.
Phil Eaglesham (aka P6 - ex-Stretchheads and De Salvo, current OMO frontman) returns to bestow upon us his encyclopaedic knowledge of the band and British industrial music. We start in 1974 with the lo-fi bedroom experiments of Cabaret Voltaire 1974–76, work through the rough-edged early Rough Trade EPs, the spring-reverb wilderness of Three Mantras and Voice of America, the cult monument that is Red Mecca, and the band's stylistic pivots through Hai!, 2x45, The Crackdown, Micro-Phonies, The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord, Code, and beyond. We also pick at the more controversial late chapters, including the major-label years, the slightly-too-late acid house pivot, and Richard H. Kirk's solo reactivation of the name.
Along the way, we explore the band as a video production company that happened to make music; their roles as curators and tastemakers via Double Vision; the Burroughs-and-televangelism worldview that made them frighteningly prescient about Reagan-era Christian nationalism; and their unsung debt to Black American music and dub. Chris also offers a wider reflection on what it means to lose the egoless purity of your earliest creative work as ambition and industry pressures take hold.
We get deep in the weeds talking about the producers they worked with (Flood, Adrian Sherwood, John Robie, Marshall Jefferson); the labels (Rough Trade, Some Bizzare, Virgin, EMI, Mute); their collaborators and contemporaries (DAF, Wire, Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA, Soft Cell, New Order, The Shamen); and the bands that lifted from them wholesale (Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, The Rapture, White Zombie, and a generation of Glasgow acts you've heard but can't quite place).
It all culminates in us taking a closer look at Eight Crepuscule Tracks, a record that Phil thinks is their best and a very pure statement of what the band can and did achieve. We also settle upon what is perhaps the most important lesson to be gleaned from the Cabs' music: the importance of never compromising on your vision. By entering the belly of the beast and somehow remaining intact, they became one of the rare bands in this corner of music history whom nobody has a bad word for.
Highlights
00:00 Intro
01:18 Welcome Back, Phil
02:46 1974–76: Egoless Experimentation
04:51 Bedroom Records
06:30 Extended Play and DAF
07:37 The Velvet Underground Cover
08:26 Nag Nag Nag
10:20 Van With a PA
11:38 Three Mantras
12:24 Mix-Up
14:50 William Burroughs
16:48 Voice of America
19:35 Peter Care and Double Vision
21:41 Red Mecca
24:25 Encyclopaedia Bands
27:36 Hai!
29:36 2x45 in New York
32:07 Sheffield's Family Tree
32:55 Chris Watson Leaves
36:16 The Crackdown
42:23 Micro-Phonies
46:38 Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord
49:48 Drinking Gasoline
51:45 Code
54:58 Listen Up and Reissues
57:12 Groovy, Laidback and Nasty
1:00:15 Body and Soul
1:03:56 Shadow of Fear
1:04:51 The Taylor Swift Accident
1:08:27 Richard Kirk's Death
1:14:50 Bus Shelter Bashes
1:19:58 Sincerity vs Seriousness
1:25:00 Debt to Black Music
1:29:00 Eight Crepuscule Tracks
1:51:00 Why Everyone Loves Cab Vol
1:58:36 Coming Soon: Coil?!

Cabaret Voltaire are no one thing. Depending on which corner of the internet you found us from, you might know them as the caustic Sheffield noise act who preceded post-punk, the sinister electro-industrial outfit with a penchant for evangelical samples and anti-fascist agitprop, or the dancefloor-adjacent act who fetched up on Factory's Belgian satellite label and made something close to club music. You're all correct.
This week, we have a guide. Phil Eaglesham — P6, former front person of Stretchheads and De Salvo, current singer in OMO, musical walking tour operator, man of broad and alarming musical learnings — is here to help us navigate one of the most complex and wilfully uncommercial bands to come out of the UK, via their transitional compilation Eight Crepuscule Tracks.
We trace the band's origins in a Sheffield attic in 1973, chart their debts to dub, Black American music, and the sci-fi soundscapes that shaped a generation of working-class ears, and make the case that Cabaret Voltaire — despite their apparent difficulty — were one of the most industrious and fundamentally political bands of their era. We also get into their time at Western Works Studio, which functioned less like a recording facility and more like the gravitational centre of an entire Sheffield scene; their complicated relationship with Rough Trade; and their connections to Joy Division, Lydia Lunch, Clock DVA, and the bands that would become the Human League and ABC.
Along the way, Phil brings original artefacts including a signed 1979 TG/Cab Vol/Rema Rema poster from Tottenham Court Road, and the original 12-inches the album is built from. We also ask what would have happened to Cabaret Voltaire without punk — and conclude they'd likely have ended up an academic footnote rather than a foundational text. Highlights: 00:00 Intro
03:56 Meet Phil Eaglesham
07:47 P6 — The Name and the Character
09:29 Queer Identity in the Industrial Scene
12:55 Pseudonyms and Rockism
17:44 Cabaret Voltaire: The Basics
22:32 Sheffield, Western Works, and the Scene
25:18 Rough Trade, The Fall, and Being Prolific
29:10 Working-Class Roots and Industrial Culture
32:33 Sci-Fi Soundscapes and Electronic Prehistory
35:11 Musique Concrète to Cab Vol: How Close Were They?
36:13 Dadaism, Situationism, and Confrontational Art
38:40 Punk's Effect on Audiences (Not Just Music)
40:11 The Counterfactual: Cab Vol Without Punk
41:43 Black Music, Funk, and the DNA Nobody Talks About
43:39 New Wave, No Wave, and New York Connections
46:29 Factory Records, Crépuscule, and the Belgian Connection
47:49 Original Artefacts: Posters, 12-Inches, and History
50:31 Why Eight Crepuscule Tracks?
52:54 Looking Towards Next Week and Outro

We don't often cover classical or neoclassical music, as it’s a wee bit out of our wheelhouse. But that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy it—often, our entry into that world is via film soundtracks. Jóhann Jóhannsson is a perfect example, having scored some of the most iconic films of the last 20 years.
However, that’s only part of the story. Jóhannsson also released a series of acclaimed solo records; this week, we’re focusing almost exclusively on that solo output, while also providing an account of his life, his key cinematic works, and his tragic passing in 2018.
We chart his path from early days in indie bands to the cross-genre think tank Kitchen Motors, and his meteoric rise as a composer for films like Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, and The Theory of Everything (for which he won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination). From there, we take a closer look at his solo discography, including IBM 1401: A User’s Manual (built from his father’s vintage computer recordings), Fordlandia, and the short-film soundtrack And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, as well as posthumous releases like Gold Dust.
We cap things off with a discussion regarding his death and the question of whether the pressures of Hollywood played a role in his demise, before focusing exclusively on his 2016 masterpiece, Orphée.
00:00 Intro
03:56 Meet Jóhann Jóhannsson
07:47 Early Life And Indie Bands
09:29 Labels And Influences
12:55 Chris' Hildur Guðnadóttir Facebook Scam Story
17:44 Solo Albums Breakdown
22:32 IBM 1401 Masterpiece
25:18 Fordlandia And Later Works
29:10 Film Breakthrough And Awards
32:33 Blade Runner Score Rejected
35:11 Blade Runner Score Shakeup
36:13 Zimmer Versus Vangelis
38:40 Jóhann Interview Clues
40:11 Who Made The Call
41:43 mother! And The Scrapped Soundtrack
43:39 Experimental Sound Design
46:29 Final Projects And Legacy
47:49 Last And First Men
50:31 Posthumous Releases
52:54 Death And Tributes
55:39 Did Hollywood Kill Him
58:48 Orphée Album Deep Dive
01:08:32 Why His Music Matters

This week, we're talking about two things we think are quite interesting. First off, we chat about the early mathcore/metalcore band Drowningman and reflect on why they never quite reached the heights of their peers, such as Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan—bands they often found themselves touring with in the late 90s and early 00s.
While that story is compelling in itself, Drowningman can also count themselves among the artists who tried to sabotage a contractual obligation to a record label. As the story goes, they hit the studio with Kurt Ballou (Converge, God City Studios) to record a very weird album, tentatively titled Best Album Ever. The record was never officially released; it was allegedly created with the sole intention of being purposefully bad in order to satisfy, and terminate, their two-album contract with Revelation Records. In the end it never saw the light of day.
This got us thinking about other artists who have tried to escape their contractual obligations. We use this lens to take a wee sojourn into the annals of music history, unearthing stories of several big-name artists who tried, and sometimes succeeded, in doing something similar.
We hope you enjoy! Highlights:
00:00 Intro
01:27 Skipping the Discourse
01:56 Viral Bands Debate
02:59 Patreon Pitch
05:37 Awkward Party Exits
06:17 Meet Drowningman
08:19 Origins and Scene
12:00 Early Releases Breakdown
16:07 Rock and Roll Killing Machine Era
21:07 Later Records and Fadeout
24:47 Did They Deserve Bigger
27:05 Contractual Obligation Albums
35:38 Ozzy Contract Loophole
36:25 Speak of the Devil Drama
38:05 Ozzy Album Aftermath
38:57 Neil Young vs Geffen
39:49 Beach Boys Owed Album
40:55 More Contract Escapes
42:40 Sisters of Mercy SSV
45:46 More Obligation Oddities
47:43 Rolling Stones Provocation
50:31 Zappa Lather Bootleg
51:25 Prince vs Warner Saga
57:42 Drowning Man Review
59:32 Track Highlights Breakdown
01:02:56 Final Verdict and Wrap
01:06:21 Outro and Thanks