Landscape is best known for the 1981 hits ‘Einstein a Go-Go’ and ‘Norman Bates’, which were made into memorable and influential videos. Formed in London, the band toured the UK constantly during the mid-to-late-1970s, playing jazz, punk and rock venues and releasing instrumental EPs on its indie label Event Horizon. The group used electronic processing, synthesizers, electric drums and music computers, and from the late 1970s focused on making records in the emerging genre of synthpop.
Landscape comprises Richard James Burgess (drums, programming, synths, vocals), Christopher Heaton (keyboard synthesizers, piano, vocals), Andy Pask (basses, vocals), Peter Thoms (trombone, electric trombone, vocals), and John L. Walters (lyricon, soprano sax, flutes, programming, synths, vocals). The band built a live following and released two instrumental EPs, U2XME1X2MUCH (1977) and Workers’ Playtime (1978). After signing to RCA they released the all-instrumental album Landscape in 1979, and appeared on BBC TV’s Tomorrow’s World. Their first release with vocals, ‘European Man’ (1980), was catalogued EDM 1, the first citation of ‘Electronic Dance Music’. The second album, From the Tea-Rooms of Mars … to the Hell-Holes of Uranus (1981), which included the Top 5 UK hit ‘Einstein a Go-Go’, went silver. Landscape’s third and final album was Manhattan Boogie-Woogie (1982).
