Word: albums
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Gary Numan and Mi Sex derive most of their ideas from the third Ultravox album, Systems of Romance, recorded in Germany with Conny Plank, a legendary producer of German electronic bands. On Systems of Romance, Ultravox abruptly departed from its first-record flirtations with Eno and the tempestuous attempts at punk mentality on the second release, Ha! Ha! Ha! The band took the Great Leap Forward, both in terms of control and content, shifting from mondo-meltdown rockers to cool and cerebral nouveau disco. The main interest moved to, the machines themselves. Push a button and watch the lights blink...
With the flotsam out of the way, one can concentrate on the Metamatic's real successes. The single drawn from the album, "Underpass," has steadily climbed the British charts, and it's easy to see why. Five steady synthesized beats enter over a shifting electronic hum, and then all hell breaks loose. A six-note phrase is repeated on two different scales at breakneck pace. Echoes and imitations emerge from behind the phrase's hidden contours. Amidst this turmoil, Foxx delivers the verses, in mechanized fashion with metallic overtones, and screams the chorus from a world away. "Underpass" beats recent...
When he wrote for Ultravox, Foxx tended toward the oblique and metaphorical. His compositions, like "Lonely Hunter" from the first album or "The Man Who Dies Every Day" from Ha! Ha! Ha!, often became obscure and laughably existential. On Metamatic, none of the images insult the intelligence, with the exception of "He's a Liquid." The words on this album are fragments pieced together from a collective past. A line like "Some time ago a figure strolled along the esplanade" from "A Blurred Girl" evokes a certain misty, mushy image in each of us, and linked together, these recollections form...
...period of years," says a songwriter who has worked closely with him, "Phil developed certain characteristics -reclusiveness, craziness in the studio -and after a while he let them take over." Adds a young record producer who spent a long and disenchanting night watching Spector thrash around with the Dion album: "His records were great, but he's a mean mother." Spector himself admits to a certain amount of struggling during this time. "Working with Leonard Cohen was more of a writing experience," he told TIME'S Robert Goldstein. "He's not a Lennon or McCartney...
...Century collaboration brought out the best in band and producer. "You can't expect Phil Spector to go into the studio with Leonard Cohen or Cher and make a great album," says Joey Ramone. "You know, it's ridiculous. But the music we play is kind of like back in the early '60s with the Ronettes." Spector, for his part, was looking for "a marriage that could last. Most of mine don't." Spector challenged the Ramones immediately-"Do you want to make a great album or a good album?" -then spent six months working...