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OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark): English Electric

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: BMG Records
Released: 2013.04.11
Time:
 43:05
Category: Synthpop
Producer(s): OMD
Rating:
Media type: CD
Web address: www.omd.uk.com
Appears with:
Purchase date: 2014
Price in €: 1,00





 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Please Remain Seated (A.McCluskey) - 0:44
[2] Metroland (A.McCluskey/P.Humphreys) - 7:33
[3] Night Café (A.McCluskey/P.Humphreys) - 3:46
[4] The Future Will Be Silent (A.McCluskey/P.Humphreys) - 2:41
[5] Helen of Troy (A.McCluskey/Bitzenis/Geranios) - 4:13
[6] Our System (McCluskey/P.Humphreys) - 4:33
[7] Kissing the Machine (A.McCluskey/K.Bartos) - 5:06
[8] Decimal (A.McCluskey) - 1:16
[9] Stay with Me (A.McCluskey/P.Humphreys/J.Watson) - 4:27
[10] Dresden (A.McCluskey) - 3:37
[11] Atomic Ranch (A.McCluskey) - 1:44
[12] Final Song (A.McCluskey/K.Weill/L.Hughes) - 3:25 *

* - "Final Song" contains samples from "Lonely House" as performed by Abbey Lincoln.

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Andy Mccluskey - Vocals, Bass Guitar, Keyboards
Paul Humphreys - Vocals, Keyboards, Mixing
Martin Cooper - Keyboards
Malcolm Holmes - Drums, Additional Programming on [6]

David Watson - Backing Vocals on [9]
Claudia Brücken - Machine Voice on [7]

Mirelle Davis - Management
Fotonovela - Additional Programming on [5]
Guy Katsav - Additional Production on [10]
Abbey Lincoln - Sample Performer on [12]
Innes Marlow - Photography
Charles Reeves - Chinese Recording on [1]
Peter Saville - Art Direction
Tom Skipp - Sleeve Design
Mike Spink - Additional Engineering on [2]
James Watson - Additional Programming on [9]

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


Recorded at the Motor Museum Studio (Liverpool), Bleepworks (London).



On Tuesday, British synth-pop legends Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark are releasing English Electric, their 12th studio album. "It's not bad going for a band that was only going to do one gig," frontman Andy McCluskey told Rolling Stone recently. "I'm still surprised that we had any career at all.

"The whole of our career is one huge accident," McCluskey continued. "We were writing songs together in the back room of Paul [Humphreys]'s mom's house and, quite frankly, our friends thought they were shit. It was only at the end of 1978 that we dared ourselves to play the songs live."

After that one gig, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, better known as OMD, began to explode on England's nascent New Wave scene, with their 1980 debut album hitting number 17 on the U.K. charts. Their third album, the critically acclaimed Architecture & Morality, yielded three chart-topping singles and threw the band into international stardom, save for in the United States.

"The strange situation we find ourselves in with American audiences is that they know 'If You Leave,' but are hard-pressed to think of another song," McCluskey said with a laugh. "They think of us as one-hit wonder! 'Enola Gay' sold five million records, but we couldn't get arrested in America. It was number one in France and Italy for three months!"

Despite what some Americans might think, OMD has had a wildly prolific career before the original lineup disbanded in 1986. That left McCluskey, operating more or less as solo act, to put out three records under the OMD name in the Nineties. English Electric is the second album to feature OMD's classic lineup – original members McCluskey, Humphreys, Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes – since 1986's The Pacific Age.

The band reunited only after they "had spent enough time part" and when a new generation of artists started to acknowledge the influence that OMD had on their own work. As McCluskey put it, "For a band that was past their sell-by date, a lot of young musicians were name-checking us. We had hung up our microphones like we were old football players who hung up their boots. And then when you're 46, they call you up and tell you to get your boots back on and play. We did a few gigs, playing tracks of Architecture & Morality and such, but we didn't want to be a tribute band to ourselves for the rest of our lives."

To avoid that trap, the band set about trying to recapture their self-professed "dysfunctional" approach to songwriting – McCluskey can't read or write music and plays everything largely by ear – which resulted in hits including "Electricity" and "Enola Gay" back in the Eighties. "What we tried to do on this album is unlearn 30 years of musicianship," McCluskey explained. "On our first four albums we weren't following anyone's scripts. We just went into writing songs in our own weird dysfunctional way and we did what we wanted to do. And it sold. It sold millions! Then on our fourth album [Dazzle Ships], we went too far off the edge, and then we dialed ourselves back in and became craftsmen and started writing very conservatively. This time we tried to unlearn that conservative songwriting."

After returning to their roots, the group crafted a new album filled with songs that are unmistakably OMD. It's something that McCluskey claims was wholly intentional. "We were fortunate enough to have a distinctive sound. People recognize our sound. We would be foolish enough to abandon that for novelty. There's no use in doing a shadowy pastiche of yourself for some trip down Memory Lane."

For McCluskey and his bandmates, that meant diving back into the New Wave sound that they had helped create back in the early Eighties, while also striving to remain true to their status as musical innovators.

"It's a dilemma for the old men in their 50s who were the sound of the future in their 20s," said McCluskey. "What do the modernists do in the post-modern era? On this album we were true to our own sound and our own ethos, which is to question and try to find new ways of doing things. The hardest thing is to come up with new ideas." Luckily for fans of the band, OMD seem to have no problem.

Melissa Locker - April 5, 2013
RollingStone.com



2013 release, the 12th studio album from the British synthpop act and the second since the reformation of the original band (Andy McCluskey, Paul Humphreys, Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes). The album features a guest appearance from former Propaganda/Act vocalist Claudio Brucken. Artwork is by Peter Saville. Features 'Metroland' and 'Atomic Ranch'.

Amazon.com



Even veteran players can benefit from a dress rehearsal.

That is the lesson one can take from History of Modern, the 2010 comeback album from OMD. That album was the first in 20 years to feature both OMD co-founders, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, with original auxiliary members Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes in tow as well. History of Modern was presented as a return to the band’s early ‘80 creative peak. While it did feature glimpses of classic OMD sounds filtered through a 21st century lens, it also was mired in the less substantial radio-pop of the last couple “solo” OMD albums McCluskey released in the ‘90s. In other words, the mark was an honorable one, but History of Modern missed as often as hit.

English Electric fares much better. It is more focused and concise, and like the best OMD albums it maintains a consistent theme and feel, though the individual songs take on a variety of moods and approaches. The theme, as McCluskey and Humphreys have expressed it, is how 20th century utopian ideals of progress and technology have broken down and ultimately led to disappointment, disillusion, and the need for consolation. Heady ideas, sure, but ones that should be familiar to anyone who has spent time with any of OMD’s first five albums.

In particular, Architecture and Morality (1981) and Dazzle Ships (1983) seem to be the primary touchstones here. Fitting targets, as the former represented the band’s worldwide commercial peak and the latter has in recent years been re-valued as a bold, ahead-of-its-time combination of popcraft and technology. English Electric is something less than these monumental achievements, but it is also something more.

At long last, the band has re-discovered that their synthesizers and electronics are most effective in the context of guitars, bass, and drums. To this end, McCluskey breaks out his bass on “Night Café” and “Dresden”, two of English Electric‘s most purely pop tracks. And when Holmes’ martial drums break out into the coda of “Our System”, they’re almost as thrilling as they were on “Joan of Arc (Maid of Orleans)” all those years ago. Yet, English Electric still sounds too clean, too clinical, antiseptic at times. No matter how many organic instruments and vintage synth sounds are employed, you never quite lose the feeling there is a laptop lurking just outside the frame. A big part of the genius of those early albums is the way they made cutting-edge technology sound timeworn and dusty. You could almost say they were proto-Steampunk that way. English Electric doesn’t really recapture that feeling.

But another big part of OMD’s early genius is how their music evoked a harrowing, dystopian future and yet simultaneously comforted you about it. And this is a tricky balance English Electric succeeds in striking. Lead track and single “Metroland” is inspired by the alienation produced by its namesake London suburban areas, which were constructed circa the 1920s. As classic, Kraftwerk-inspired synth arpeggios intertwine, the simple yet gorgeous synth melody surges over the rhythm like a sunrise cutting through dank English fog. The overbearing kick drum is grossly misplaced, but “Metroland” still sounds like a eulogy that ultimately leads to hope. Its seven-minute running time isn’t a second too long. “Helen of Troy” joins Joan of Arc as an unlikely subject for a sympathetic pop song. Despite the obvious nod to the past, it still piques your interest while hitting a melodic sweet spot. And the trio of sound-collage vignettes, while they are sequels of sorts to similar pieces on Dazzle Ships, are updated to encompass modern socially-networked, mobile society.

English Electric goes beyond a rehash of the glory days, though, in a couple ways. For one, it recognizes that the fact OMD’s mid-‘80s and early-‘90s albums were more commercially oriented did not mean they were necessarily bad. So, while “Night Café” may sound corny at first, its infectiousness and lack of guile eventually strike you as fresh and fun. As with much of English Electric, McCluskey’s impassioned performance and undiminished voice play a big part, making up for any clumsiness in the lyrics. And for the first time in a quarter century, Humphreys sings on an OMD album as well. His “Stay With Me” is more “(Forever) Live and Die” than “Souvenir”, but that means it is still a sincere, catchy, warmly atmospheric love song. And, just at the end of the album, OMD include a twist like something they have never done before. “Final Song” uses a vintage electronic organ bossanova in the manner of the band’s early material, but then adds eerie synths; breathy, almost erotic samples; and an operatic, haunting, female-sung section. Amazing.

How good is English Electric? Well, not to sound trite, but, while it is not the best OMD album, it is the best OMD album in at least 29 years. “What does the future sound like?” a voice whispers on “The Future Will Be Silent”. Three decades into an accomplished career, OMD still venture to ask that question, and their quest at answering it still yields singularly evocative results.

John Bergstrom 8 April 2013
PopMatters Associate Music Editor



From the late 1970s onward, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark were as much reacting to the sonic possibilities made available by technology as they were translating them, first as increasingly popular hit-makers at home and Europe, then with a clutch of memorable American singles. English Electric, the British new wave band's second full length since the reformation of the classic 1980s lineup in 2006, neither escapes from the quartet's past nor fully aims to. Afterall, they had Peter Saville do their cover art, just has he did for their debut 33 years ago.

In that regard, much of English Electric inititally seems like a recapitulation. The first full song on the album, “Metroland”, starts out aping the opening melody and sonics of Kraftwerk’s “Europe Endless”, then goes as far as to include a riff on the wordless chorale vocals, too. But the punching beat of the song feels more post-industrial, suggesting the relentless pulse underlying later groups like VNV Nation or Apoptygma Berzerk. That, and frontman Andy McCluskey's immediately recognizable singing, above all else, provides the melodic focus as well as the elegant, yearning tone, here and throughout.

As the album title indicates clearly enough, it's a reflective English futurism, perhaps, in the same way that a group like Pink Floyd often provided a certain rainy day psychedelia that could have only derived from Great Britain and nowhere else. That English Electric itself was the name of a noted UK train and aerospace manufacturing firm from the 20th Century further underscores that sense of a specifically grounded and gone past, no less so than Kraftwerk had its own earlier obsessions with a German and Middle European technology already confronting an obsolescence.

Yet for all the backward glancing, there's a tension between the past and a possible way forward. “Kissing the Machine”, perhaps one of the clearest moments of a returned past, is a reworking of a song McCluskey did with Kraftwerk veteran Karl Bartos two decades back for the latter’s Elektric Music project. Meanwhile, McCluskey has noted in a recent interview that “Decimal” is meant to capture a feeling from Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach, while the song “Helen of Troy” in its stately passion, sweet hookiness, and the title itself, captures the feeling of “Joan of Arc” and “Maid of Orleans”.

If there's something key, though, it's that all of this doesn't truly feel like their past redone in exactly the same way-- polished and punchier, not quite as nervously trebly, able to suggest the aggressiveness of EBM on the arrangement of something like “Our System” but not replicating it. In that regard the airport PA-styled announcement of “The future that you anticipated has been cancelled” from the opening “Please Remain Seated” turns out to be more apt than might be guessed -- it’s neither the tentative beginnings nor the top 40 pomp, but something else again.

This balancing of tensions may be the secret of English Electric’s overall appeal. If a band like Radiohead transformed the technological perceptions and considered unease of OMD’s still astonishing early 80s masterpiece Dazzle Ships into their own fractured electronic nightmares, OMD are secure enough in their own sound and vision to create a “Fitter Happier” kissing cousin in the glitch-tinged and robotic-voiced “Atomic Ranch” without sounding a mere borrowing back. “The Future Will Be Silent" crackles with suggestions of bass drops and intrusive noise, fractures and slows and weaves among a cascade of sound. “The future was not supposed to be like this,” a treated voice repeats at several points, but OMD continue to stake out their retrofuturism on their terms, a roots jam for a generation raised on wires.

© 2015 Pitchfork Media Inc.



English Electric is the twelfth studio album by English synthpop group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), and their second since the 2006 reformation of the band. Preceded by lead single "Metroland" on 25 March 2013, it was released on 5 April 2013 by 100% Records and peaked at #12 in the United Kingdom, becoming the group's highest-charting record in their home country since 1991's Sugar Tax; the album topped the UK Indie Chart. As with comeback release History of Modern (2010), English Electric was a Top 10 hit in Germany, reaching #10. It also made #8 on the Dance/Electronic Albums Billboard chart in the United States.

On 14 January 2013, the band announced details of the album release date, track listing, and a teaser video featuring the short Dazzle Ships-esque track "Decimal". The album will be released on CD, deluxe CD+DVD, heavyweight vinyl LP, a collector's tin boxset, and also digitally.

The track "Kissing the Machine" was originally featured on the 1993 album Esperanto by Elektric Music, a project by Karl Bartos after he left Kraftwerk. The track, co-written with Andy McCluskey, was completely reworked by Paul Humphreys for English Electric, and features Claudia Brücken as the voice of the machine. The track "Stay With Me" features Humphreys on vocals for the first time since 1986.

The video for "Atomic Ranch" premiered on Pitchfork Media on 4 February 2013. The video is the second of three animations by Henning M. Lederer which will be available on the bonus DVD of English Electric.

The lead single "Metroland" premiered on the BBC Radio 6 Music radio show Radcliffe & Maconie on 11 February 2013. The B-side to "Metroland" is a non-album track titled "The Great White Silence".

The full album was made available to stream on Pitchfork Media on 2 April 2013.

For Record Store Day 2013, on 20 April, a 500-copy limited edition 10-inch picture disc EP of "The Future Will Be Silent" was made available, which includes an exclusive non-album track titled "Time Burns".

"Dresden" was released as the second single from the album on 17 May 2013. The promo video was premiered on the New York Times website a week earlier on 10 May 2013. The single bundle features a remix by John Foxx And The Maths who also supported OMD on the UK part of their English Electric Tour.

English Electric has received generally favourable reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 76, based on 15 reviews. The Daily Express commented, "That synthpop of theirs is still thumping and penetrating, catchy and crazy and brilliantly familiar. It's fresh and it's pretty wow." Thomas H. Green of The Arts Desk noted, "...History of Modern, tipped its hat to all OMD's musical incarnations and was a mixed bag, if occasionally pleasing. Their new one, however, returns to their pristine synth-pop roots and is a corker."

Wikipedia.org
 

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