The Human League - 4JG - JG BALLARD

"JG Ballard: The music he inspiredNo other writer has had as much influence on pop music as JG Ballard. His dystopian vision and sense of fear have held artists entranced and inspired bands across the decades.
When the sad news arrived yesterday that JG Ballard had died, it wasn't just literature that lost one of its most singular voices. For as anyone with even a passing interest in post-punk or new rave will know, Ballard was a huge inspiration to musicians. In fact, when critics described Klaxons' debut album as "Ballardian" – an epithet now recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary – most of us had an idea of how it might sound.
There were other influential modern writers before him – William Burroughs, for example – and there have been more since (the entire cyber-punk genre that Ballard spawned), but no one has so consistently pursued a vision through a life's work and been so influential to musicians. While Burroughs effectively spoofed science fiction, Ballard reinvented it by giving it a soul and a conscience, and in doing so provided a cornerstone between music, fashion, literature and emerging philosophical constructs such as psychogeography.
Ballard's vision was a dystopian that entranced a host of young musicians. Consider the cold clinical sounds created in the late 70s by those who filtered punk's nihilistic worldview through synthesisers and tape loops, chief among them Cabaret Voltaire and This Heat, whose music had the same transporting effect as Ballard's prose, or Warm Leatherette by the Normal, a song that almost single-handedly invented minimalist electro.
It is only a few steps from Ballard's fetishisation of automobiles and terminal velocity in Crash to Warm Leatherette and then on to Gary Numan's Cars.
Ballard's lexicon extends to inspiring song titles and bands too: from the Joy Division track Atrocity Exhibition through to Empire of the Sun (the latest band formed by former Sleepy Jackson frontman Luke Steele) via many more as previously discussed.
John Foxx B-Movie (Ballardian Video Neuronica) (2014)
Joy Division Closer (1980)
Thom Yorke The Eraser (2006)
Thom Yorke is a fan of JGB
The Comsat Angels -The band is named after a famous short story in Ballard's "Low-Flying Aircraft and Other Stories" (1976).
Palo Alto -Slowing Apocalypse: A Tribute To J.G. Ballard (2010)
Palo Alto featuring Laurent Pernice
Dan Melchior's Broke Revue
Bitterness, Spite, Rage, & Scorn (2002) -Features the song "Me and JG Ballard"
Empire of the Sun - Walking on a Dream (2008)
The Human League / The Future
The Golden Hour of the Future: Recordings by The Future and The Human League (2002)
The Jesus and Mary Chain -Head On / Terminal Beach (1989) [Single]
Buggles - The Age of Plastic (1980)
The Normal -T.V.O.D. / Warm Leatherette (1978) [Single]
Broadcast -Tender Buttons (2005)
UNKLE -Psyence Fiction (1998)
Vermilion Sands - Water Blue (1987)