Mike Batt

(First published in Issue 100 of Electronic Sound magazine, April 2023)

For their 100th issue, Electronic Sound asked their writers to compile tracks that had, in some way, attempted to anticipate the future. These were my contributions:

Ninette — Push A Little Button
(Pye, 1966)
“A gentle warning against accepting too much automation,” is how composer Tony Hatch described this charming folk-pop single, complete with deliciously clunky tape loops. It’s sung by his teenage sister, Ninette Hartley. “The world’s gone mad just pushing little buttons,” she sighs, bemoaning instant hot chocolate, machine-made tea and – seemingly – impending nuclear apocalypse. “One little man could push one little button and *whoosh* go you and me”.

Rolling Stones — 2000 Light Years From Home
(Decca, 1967)
A single night doing porridge, and Mick Jagger was already dreaming of interstellar travel. Reputedly written in Brixton prison following a famously short-lived drugs conviction, it’s a decidedly psychedelic trip to the cosmos. “See you on Aldebaran, safe on the green desert sand,” he croons. “You’re two thousand light years from home”. Check your spaceship’s mileometer, Mick! The star of Aldebaran is, in fact, only 65.2 light years from Earth.

Pink Floyd — Astronomy Domine
(EMI, 1967)
“Oberon, Miranda and Titania…” Say what you like about Syd Barrett, he was impressively au fait with the moons of Uranus. And this Farfisa-fuelled psych classic includes disarmingly accurate predictions of “icy waters underground”. It would be another 20 years before the findings of NASA’s Voyager 2 probe suggested all three of Barrett’s named moons did indeed boast liquid oceans beneath deceptively frozen surfaces. Syd knew, man.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience – 1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)
(Reprise, 1968)
Anticipating an incoming Soviet missile attack, Hendrix decided to escape “giant pencil and lipstick tube-shaped things” by… well, returning to the sea and living in a submerged Atlantis. “My darling and I make love in the sand, to salute the last moment ever on dry land,” he croons. In 1968, not even global thermonuclear conflict was enough to put a self-respecting rock star off a bit of How’s Your Father.

Zager & Evans – In The Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus)
(RCA, 1969)
Nebraskan college mates Denny Zager and Rick Evans tapped into the bleak, post-hippy mood of 1969 with this epic account of the next 7,626 years of human history. Their predictions? Thought pills, robotic limbs, genetically-modified babies and an 8510AD Judgement Day, instigated by a God who ponders whether to “tear it down, and start again”. So have we learned our lessons? Doubtful. We’re not even sure what “exordium” means yet.

Scott Walker — 30 Century Man
(Fontana, 1969)
Walker’s pragmatically-titled third album, Scott 3, finally left behind the supper clubs and wallowed in divine bedsit melancholy. This statement of acoustic intent sees our hero staving off a decision about his public image (“See the dwarfs and see the giants…”) for at least another century. “Play it cool, and Saran Wrap all you can / Be a 30 Century man”. For the benefit of our British readers, it’s clingfilm.

Marvin Gaye – Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)
(Tamla, 1971)
“Radiation underground and in the sky / Animals and birds who live nearby are dying”. It’s a jarring departure from ‘It Takes Two’, but Gaye had been deeply affected by letters sent home from Vietnam by his brother, Frankie. The resulting album, What’s Going On, was written from the perspective of a disaffected veteran, and this ecological classic remains one of the most touchingly resigned headshakes in popular music.

Klaatu — Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft
(Daffodil, 1976)
It’s the reformed Beatles operating under an assumed name! Erm… no. Klaatu were a delightful Canadian pop-prog trio in their own right, and this epic single begged “interstellar policemen” to establish First Contact and put the human race back on the path to righteousness. The galactic peace corps remain conspicuous by their absence, but this heartfelt plea did at least give The Carpenters a Top 10 hit in 1977.

Be-Bop Deluxe — Life In The Air Age
(Harvest, 1976)
Bill Nelson’s art-pop fourpiece found commercial success with their third album, Sunburst Finish. And this crisp rocker sees Nelson as a forlorn time-traveller, marooned in a steampunk future. “My world is not like yours, I come from somewhere long ago,” he mourns. “I’d dearly love to go back to my own time”. Only Nelson’s own beautifully mellifluous guitars provide respite from a fate “grim enough to make a robot cry”.

Cerrone – Supernature
(Atlantic 1977)
What was French disco producer Marc Cerrone expecting when he asked an unknown London funk singer to provide a handful of English lyrics? Possibly not a stark warning about intensive agricultural practices awakening swarms of mutated underground beasties determined to exact “sweet revenge” on mankind. Such was Lene Lovich’s uncredited contribution to this worldwide smash, as “science opened up the door” to one of the bleakest dancefloor-fillers of the decade.

The Alan Parsons Project — I Robot
(Arista, 1977)
With Isaac Asimoff’s blessing, Parsons and his assembled progsters crafted a full-album homage to the US writer’s 1940s short stories. And the English Chorale choir provide alarming, wordless vocals to this synth-propelled opener, the gateway to an album decidedly uncertain about the merits of Artificial Intelligence. As the sleeve notes warn: “His brief dominance of this planet will probably end, because man tried to create robot in his own image.”

Dee D Jackson — Automatic Lover
(Mercury, 1978)
Dystopian disco! “He’s programmed to receive automatic satisfaction / After love is done, where’s the true reaction?” Oxford-born Jackson dressed up in blue lurex and cavorted with a low-budget C-3PO on Top Of The Pops, but this unlikely Top 5 hit was a genuinely dark rumination on futuristic, depersonalised sex and the soullessness of machine-assisted orgasms. Vibrators have feelings too, you know.

Kate Bush – Breathing
(EMI, 1980)
“After the blast, chips of plutonium are twinkling in every lung…” With the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan re-igniting the dormant Cold War, Bush was at the vanguard of a slew of 1980s nuclear-powered pop hits. But only one of them took the viewpoint of an unborn foetus contemplating the effect of post-apocalyptic radioactive fall-out being absorbed through its own mother’s womb. No 16 in the charts, everyone.

Mike Batt — Love Makes You Crazy
(Epic, 1982)
Boldly setting aside all things Womble, Batt went full-on Orwellian synth-pop in 1982. Parent album Zero Zero is an electronic rock opera set in a dystopian near-future where human emotion is considered a disease. This standout single says it all: “I was reading in a history book, before the seventh war / They used to have a thing that they called love / That we don’t have any more…”

Thomas Dolby — Airwaves
(EMI, 1982)
It’s entirely appropriate that a man named after noise reduction techniques should be so troubled by incessant, multi-media babble. “Do we only feed the airwaves?” ponders Dolby, seemingly anticipating the rise of Twitter 30 years early. Even in 1982, information overload was giving him psychosomatic symptoms. “I itch all over / Let me sleep,” he complains. Although there’s arguably still no cure for “the dampness of the wind”.

Neil Young — Computer Age
(Geffen, 1983)
Young’s album Trans is perhaps the greatest-ever mass pissing-off of bearded men in plaid shirts. But these bold synthpop anthems were inspired by the futuristic technology employed to communicate with Young’s disabled son, and this pivotal track has heartbreak and hope beneath its glacial surface. “I need you to let me know that there’s a heartbeat / Let it pound and pound and I’ll be flying like a free bird…”

Pulp – Disco 2000
(Island, 1995)
Jarvis and the gang hit the dancefloor with a glorious homage to a year that, even in 1995, seemed impossibly futuristic. “Won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown?” he muses, turning real-life adolescent longing into singalong disco chorus with effortless aplomb. As Cocker himself later revealed, “the only bit that isn’t true is the woodchip wallpaper”.

Todd Rundgren — Future
(Sanctuary, 2004)
“I’m supposed to drive a flying car / I’m supposed to have a house on Mars,” grumbles Rundgren on this standout track from his 2004 album, Liars. But if Rundgren was nostalgic for the utopian optimism of his 1960s youth, the music was decidedly forward-thinking. He remains surely the only veteran songsmith to have sung wistfully about the 1964 World’s Fair while accompanied by crisply contemporary drum and bass beats.

Gorillaz — Fire Coming Out Of The Monkey’s Head
(EMI, 2005)
The Happyfolk live at the foot of a mountain called Monkey, appeasing it as a god with rare jewels. The corporate bastards that are the Strangefolk come along to mine said jewels, triggering a volcanic explosion from Monkey that destroys the bloody lot of them. Add mystical narration from Dennis Hopper, supremely world-weary vocals from Damon Albarn and you’ve got one of the most inventive ecological warnings of the millennium.

The Limousines – Very Busy People
(Orchard City Books And Noise, 2009)
“We’ll stay up late making mixtapes and Photoshopping pictures of ourselves / As we masturbate to those pixelated videos of strangers fucking themselves”. Well, everybody needs a hobby. Californian duo Eric Victorino and Giovanni Giusti bemoan the addictive, time-sapping ubiquity of The Bloody Internet on this millennial synthpop anthem. With bonus points for mentions of both Donnie Darko and, erm, wanksocks.

YACHT — I Thought The Future Would Be Cooler
(Downtown, 2015)
Talk about lowered expectations… while 1960s teenager Todd Rundgren felt cheated out of a luxury home on Mars, these shiny Portland synthpoppers merely seek salvation from “death by remote control and unrestricted sidearms”. “Got my broken heart / I got it sold right back to me by an algorithmic social entity” sighs frontwoman Claire L Evans. In the future, even heartache comes packaged in Promoted Tweets.

The Radiophonic Workshop — Some Hope Of Land
(Room 13, 2017)
The Official British Sound of the Future for 60 years and counting! In 2017, who had money on the Radiophonic Workshop re-assembling for a sprawling album of ambient improvisations inspired by Francis Bacon’s unfinished 1626 novel, New Atlantis? This 25-minute epic is the lynchpin of the excellent Burials In Several Earths album, and a glimmering reflection of Bacon’s enlightened future utopia of “dignity and splendour, piety and public spirit”.

Hannah Peel — The Planet Of Passed Souls
(My Own Pleasure, 2017)
Peel’s 2017 album Mary Casio: Journey To Cassiopeia combined elegiac synths with stirring brass arrangements to depict the journey of an octogenarian Barnsley stargazer to the outer reaches of the universe. Pitched halfway between Kubrick’s 2001 and the abandoned pithead of Grimethorpe colliery, this supremely touching conclusion adds the angelic vocals of Peel’s own grandfather, captured as a choirboy in 1928. It’s an extraordinary experience, both religious and cosmic.

Ladytron — The Island
(Ladytron Music, 2018)
“We are sirens of the apocalypse,” sings frontwoman Helen Marnie on this dark but uptempo single from Ladytron’s self-titled comeback album. “We are savages giving you poison lips…” Safe to say Marnie’s vision of the future is not altogether happy. And ‘The Island’ itself? Apparently a bleak vision of her adopted home, an increasingly marginalised Scotland. “Seeking out our departure / Seeking out our heavenly future…”

Peter Gabriel — Panopticom
(Real World, 2023)
The Panopticom? An “infinitely expandable accessible data globe” intended to log climate catastrophes and human rights transgressions. As Gabriel himself states, “the dark, the mal-intentioned and the dangerous”. He’s keen to put the plan into real-life action, with this strident new single a virtual blueprint. “We got witness on the ground / Taking in the evidence,” he sings, wagging a virtual finger at the encroaching darkness of the 21st century.