Word: ultravox
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...Ultravox was a band which never enjoyed much commercial success but always had plenty of local influence. In the last year, two bands, Gary Numan's Tubeway Army and Mi Sex, have been foisted upon an unknowing and unwilling public in an attempt to sell Ultravox's sound. Both bands at least acknowledge their huge debt to the lesser-known Ultravox, but unfortunately, they borrowed the style and left the substance behind. They wear someone else's clothes but they have no idea how to put them...
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...
...sythesized percussion track whose tone ascended and fell in a circular manner. The music formed itself around this very rhythmic motive, creating the impression that the metallic noise produced the song. The band performed throughout like a well-oiled generator. The whirrs, pops, and clicks all worked toward redefining Ultravox around a Kraftwerkian philosophy...
...Ultravox lost its contrast with Island Records, and after a final U.S. tour, the band exorcised vocalist John Foxx amidst ruffled feathers and misunderstandings. The word than spread that Foxx was working on a totally electronic record, and that he would produce it for his new independent label. By that point, however, Gary Numan had the near world eating out of his metal palm; it was all too easy to imagine Foxx copying his own imposter, and slapping together a buch of machine mumbo-jumbo with titles like "Submarining with the Aliens" and "The Aliens Meet the Happy Hollisters...
...Ultravox--The Paradise...