Watching You Tonight (partially found Absolute album; 1986-1987)
Status: Partially found
Absolute was a synth-pop/electronic music band formed between 1982 and 1983 by John Thomas, Colin Taaffe (Taf) and Paul Johnson, being known for being signees of the infamous "Reset Records" label owned by Vince Clarke (Depeche Mode, Yazoo and Erasure) and his partner in crime and producer Eric Radcliffe, from late 1984 to 1987, releasing two singles "T.V. Glare" in 1985 and "Can't You See" in 1987.
Early Days
Absolute was formed in Brighton between late-1982 and mid-1983, all members were still in high school, in the beginning the band consisted of Depeche Mode cover versions, using Paul’s synthesizer and John’s Technics organ. Taf and Paul left school in 1984 and got jobs while John stayed on at school. By this time the band John had purchased a Yamaha DX7 synthesizer and a Korg KPR-77 drum machine. Paul had a Korg Poly-61 and a Korg Micro-Preset they had started writing songs and were triggering the arpeggiator for bass lines on the Poly-61 via the KPR-77 and wanted to record a demo. They went into a local studio and recorded a track called “Face up” which was the first thing they ever wrote together.
T.V. Glare
One of the members got in contact with Eric Radcliffe in mid-1984 to record some demos at Splendid Studios, and Radcliffe got interested by they sound and how Taf resembled to Dave Gahan's voice from Depeche Mode and signed them on the infamous Reset Records label on late-1984.
Reset Records at that point had an amount of unsuccessful releases with Robert Marlow, releasing three singles and an album that got shelved at that time. They had lost their contract with RCA Records and was held by Sonet Publishing and Vogue Distribution in France.
In November 1984 the band recorded two more demos with John Fryer at the controls. Absolute met Vince who was one of their hero’s and Vince suggested that “T.V. Glare” would make a good single and that we should meet after Christmas to do the pre-programming at his house in London, however the production started later on mid 1985 along with the track "The Merry Go-Round", which was featured in the "Electronic Soundmaker" magazine on June 1985
T.V. Glare was recorded in a week at Splendid Studios and released on August 1985, was not the hit that Vince or Eric had expected and in spite of extensive radio play, T.V., and even a bit of national press. the single got played on BBC Radio 1, 3 times a day when released as Sonet Publishing paid Neil Ferris to plug it.
Can't You See
By 1986, Vince Clarke left Reset Records, leaving Eric Radcliffe in charge of the label, but before that he told that the song "Can't You See" was going to be Absolute's next single after listening to a demo. and on May 1986 Eric Radcliffe started the recording of the single along with their album, everything produced by John Fryer, however John Thomas left in early 1986, but he was going to be featured on the album's credits and photoshoots made for it.
By that time relations were very strained with Vince and Eric, especially as Vince had confided to the band during a lift to Kings Cross that Erasure had not been an instant success and he was worried.
Nobody was happy with the finished version of Can’t You See which sounded like it had come off Erasure’s Wonderland LP.
John Fryer was given the job of re-recording "Can’t You See" along with completing Absolute’s album during winter 1986, featuring vocals of Karen Dobie, an amateur singer at the time.
"Can't You See" was released on April 1987 only as a 7-inch single, it was a total flop with no promotion from Sonet or Reset and withdrawn from many stores weeks later. This caused confusion on late-90's if it was released or not, but on 1998 was confirmed that the single was relased but had no promotion thanks to a CD-R bootleg release of a Reser Records compilation