Disclaimer: this post was written in December 2023, and scheduled for future posting. Its contents may no longer be accurate or appropriate.
I'm not sure that Ultravox get remembered kindly enough. The received wisdom is that they were a serious synth outfit until John Foxx left and was replaced by Midge Ure, who took them in a more commercial, and implicitly less serious, direction.
Well, if that is correct, and it's a big 'if', then Vienna was the pivot around which everything swung. I'm not talking about the brilliant bombast of the single (Joe Dolce though, eh?) but the album of the same name, every second of which is a nailed-on, stone-cold synth classic.
My big sister's best friend had the album, which is how I came by a very hissy taped copy in 1980. This, Astradyne, was track one, side one, and it knocked me sideways.
Still sounds bloody great, I reckon.
I don't think I've ever heard that before, and if you'd told me beforehand that it was a 7 and a half minute instrumental (for a while I thought the vocals started around the four and half minute mark, but I think they were just synths made to sound like a wailing voice?), I probably wouldn't have listened to it.
ReplyDeleteHowever, having given it a spin, I can see the appeal. It's very atmospheric in the way the best Blade Runner-evoking synth music can be. 80s music gets a lot of bad press. Keep flying the flag.
As for Joe Dolce - shaddapa your face!
There's a lot of "synths as voice, voice as synths" right across the album.
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ReplyDeleteoops...didn't mean to hit the publish button so prematurely! It's an excellent album, overshadowed by the title-track - a great mix of synth-pop tunes and more 'arty' chin-stroking efforts such as you've written about.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know until a very short time ago, when I read a tribute from Khayem over at his Dubhead blog, that Chris Cross passed away at the tail end of March. This acts as a very fine tribute to his talents.
I didn't know that either. Sad news.
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