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November 11, 2008

Ripping Vinyl, part 7

After many years of musical obsession completely removed from a record player, my pile of vinyl now grows incrementally, aided by the quality LP sellers of New York City. Baubles from the treasure chest will be posted here whenever it seems appropriate...

Anyone who's been in my personal radius over the past month or so has had Dazzle Ships, the lost masterpiece by occasional 80s hitmakers OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark if yr nasty), thrust into their consciousness. While I can practically guarantee that all members of the blog reading rabble would know the band's chart apex "If You Leave" (thanks John Hughes!) even the most astute and obscure among my circle of nerds was caught unaware. The likely reason was that upon its 1983 release, the record was cut to ribbons by critics calling the record's experiments with found sound and music concrete flatly unlistenable. But while those are indeed melancholy colors in Dazzle Ships' muted rainbow, the quality of the sad pop laments on this record cannot be overstated. Pitchfork's Tom Ewing, writing in March about a 25th anniversary reissue that went otherwise critically ignored and remained invisible on the shelves of even the most pretentious New York City shops all year, posited that:

"Dazzle Ships seems a lot less radical than it did on release: The Kraftwerk records and musique concrète it obviously borrowed from have been more fully absorbed into pop music. You'll have heard uglier noises than the title track's mechanical grindings and foghorn blurts, and stranger constructions than the layered robot voices on "ABC Auto-Industry". Those songs won't sound like clumsy shock-tactics to a new listener, just more parts in the album's sad, effective synth-pop collage."

But it's weird to me that the songs themselves weren't enough to ensure a stay of excommunication from the zeitgeist, that continues to the present. Parsing the Pazz & Jop poll from 1983 doesn't reveal a lot of enduring classics to supercede it. Sure, New Order's Power, Corruption, and Lies is like the more outgoing cousin DS secretly resents, Murmur is still definitive for some, and there's no arguing against Thriller at this point even if you wanted to, but hardly anything else that I'm familiar with there has as many tracks at such a consistently high level. It embarrasses Bowie's Let's Dance, I'm certain. That slick Peter Saville album cover shouldn't have hurt either. I don't get it.

But it found it's way from eBay to me, in spite of it all. Now, for your pleasure, here's just three of the standouts...

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - "The Romance of the Telescope"

"The Romance of the Telescope" is just a great name for a song, first of all. I wish I was a famous astronomer just so I could title my autobiography that. Maybe I'll get started on that career path, actually, for that express purpose. But removed from the delusions of grandeur it inspires, the song stands as a pristine statement of longing. It pines for understanding, and serves as an elegy of sorts for science as faith. It's as lonely as you might expect. The crisp, echoed drum machine aches like a solitary heartbeat in a metal lab. The warped synth sound that follows seems obsolete and maybe slightly damaged, as if dust was cleared from their keys minutes before recording. Singer Andy McCluskey keeps his lyric sheet as graceful, spartan, and evocative as its backing track.

"We're just waiting, looking skyward
As the days come down
Someone promised there'd be answers
If we stayed around"

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - "Radio Waves"

"Radio Waves" starts as a Teutonic experiment, marrying a juggernaut rhythm to blurts of squealing blip, and ends as a lo-fi Kiwi pop track, voices warbling ecstatic while jockeying for space alongside cheap party organs. Where the rest of the record can sometimes be chilly and disconnected, this ode to the synthetic comes sparking with current.

"Radio waves have life! Radio waves have life!
Machines are living too, they're working for me and you!"

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark - "Of All the Things We've Made"

Dazzle Ships' last song is a gorgeous Eno ballad, whose oddly tuned guitar strokes fail to jostle the pristine glide of its piano notes. That melody, combined with some solemn, if slightly adenoidal, choir boy singing from McCluskey and accomplice Peter Humphries successfully obscures the track's otherwise rough elements. The drumbeat never evolves from a caveman thwack, and the aforementioned strokes never congeal into a melodic component. But it swoons onwards, regardless.

"To want this.
Of everything we've made.
The times it's worked before.

Of all the things we've said.
Times that worked before today."

Previously:

- the Raincoats, live @ the BBC

- Linear Movement play "the Game"

- A hole where the Romeo should be

- Pete Shelley, also a homosapien

- Not nearly the only Stereolab tour-only 7"

- Monochrome Set transcend the singles scene circa '82

Posted by Jeff Klingman at November 11, 2008 06:08 PM

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