Minimal Synth / Minimal Wave / Synth Pop

Francis John "Frank" Tovey, known also by his stage name Fad Gadget (8 September 1956 – 3 April 2002), was a British avant-garde electronic musician and vocalist. He was a proponent of both New Wave and early industrial music.
As Fad Gadget, his music was characterized by a use of synthesizers in conjunction with sounds of found objects, including drills and electric razors. His bleak, sarcastic, and darkly humorous lyrics, often layered in meaning and discussing subjects such as machinery, building construction, human sexuality, and physical violence, were sung in a droning, often expressionless voice.

1976: Maurizio and Christina form the duo CHRISMA (the monicker is no less than the contraction of their two names; in the following years the "Ch" will be replaced by the "K").

The two move from Milan to London and record "U" and "Amore" with the help of Nico Papathanassiou and his brother Vangelis.

1977/1978: the profitable collaboration with Nico and Vangelis continues.
What was happening in London also shake waters in the house Arcieri: the duo marries the punk cause adopting its look and records "Chinese Restaurant", whose mood, rather than follow Pistols & Co. path seems a lot similar to certain works of the Velvet Underground (to which they will be compared by the illustrious New Musical Express).
The 45 drawn by the full-length "Lola" enters the Top 10.

During the promotional Chinese Restaurant Tour Maurizio experiments the notorious "finger-job" (a finger is cut on stage with a razor).
National uproar and bold titles on the newspapers, that come to write of an hypothetical loss of the finger in matter.
The accident resolves in anticipated end of the tour.

1979: Maurizio and Christina record their second album, "Hibernation", which gets a good success also at international level. They are definitively established in London.
Other "scandal" because of the video drawn by the single "Aurora B." in which Christina and Maurizio simulate suicide and sexual actions in a subway station. The clip is one of the first of Italian history.
The duo is now ready for a change of name and music direction: Krisma shift to electrowave.

In 1980 there was band called "Genetic Factor". It consisted of 3 boys. Then each of the boys found a girlfriend and "Genetic Factor" split up. The boys started to make music together with the girls, so now there were 3 bands in one house with 3 floors.
One of the boys, Richard Zeilstra, had a job at the radio VPRO. The program was called "Spleen" and he gave New Wave bands a chance and told the bands to send tapes to him. The best bands had the opportunity to play live at the radio and had a chance to come on the LP "Radio Nome".

So Peter van Garderen and I (Lidia Fiala) who were very much in love at that time sent our tape to him and then it happend; we were the onlyones from this house to be on the radio. Richard said our music was special, but we did not realize it. We just started to make music together and our live was at that moment making love, get out of bed to make music and get back into bed again.

I started to write my lyrics when I was 15 years. It was a way to deal with the situation I was in since I was born. So there was the music and there where the lyrics and Nine Circles was born. In about 2 years we made around 60 songs.

We never had a live show on stage, only one concert live at the radio and we came on the LP.

After two years we split up and Nine Circles disappeared

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPK_%28band%29 wrote:SPK was formed in 1978 in Sydney when New Zealand-born Graeme Revell (aka "EMS AKS", "Operator", "Oblivion") met Neil Hill (aka "Ne/H/il"). Revell was working as a nurse on a psychiatric ward at Callan Park Hospital where Hill was also working. Hill and Revell shared a house and an interest in the manifesto of the German radical Marxist group known as the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (SPK).^[1] The duo were influenced by Kraftwerk, Can, Neu!, Faust, and John Cage – they started playing their own variety of industrial music as SPK.^[1] According to rock music historian, Ian McFarlane the acronym SPK is variously given as "SoliPsiK, SepPuKu, Surgical Penis Klinik, System Planning Korporation and Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv"

http://www.systemsofromance.com/blog/2008/05/guerre-froide-untitled-12archives-cassette/ wrote:Guerre Froide began in 1980 as a collective of electronic/organic musicians, releasing several underground cassettes and a 12” single. They only lasted three years, with several lineup shifts throughout, but the band resumed activity in 2006, with most of the original lineup intact. They have since issued a full-length record in 2007, entitled Angoisses & Divertissement and are touring to this day.

http://minimalwave.com/releases/release/synthesize/ wrote:
Autumn was the legendary project of Peter Bonne and Geert Coppens, two Belgian teenagers who started experimenting with the potentials of analog synthesizers during the late 70s and formed a band together soon after in 1980, quickly becoming one of the most truly visionary groups to emerge from the synth scene in Europe.