Ultravox ushers in The New Romantic sound with Vienna

Ultravox : New Europeans

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On July 11, 1980 Ultravox released its best known album, Vienna, ushering in a new Eurosynth sound that would be called New Romantic. For Vienna, the new line-up of Ultravox returned to Germany to record with Systems Of Romance producer Conny Plank. The album cover would be shot by Dutchman Anton Corbijn.  Now featuring Kraftwerk fanatic Midge Ure as its new singer, the band made its artistic statement on the song "New Europeans": 

On a crowded beach washed by the sun, he puts his headphones on. 

His modern world revolves around the synthesizer's song. 

Full of future thoughts and thrills, his senses slip away. 

He's a European legacy, a culture for today 

By looking to Germany for inspiration, as Bowie had done earlier, Ultravox tapped into a vein. With the music of Gary Numan, Bowie, Ultravox frontman turned solo artist John Foxx, Human League, up and comers Spandau Ballet and Visage (another band Ure and Ultravox's Billie Currie were members of), a new scene developed where androgyny, a spoiled kind of artistocracy and loads of synthesizers all intersected. These were the Blitz Kids, named for a London music venue where electropop bands performed. 

This was filmed in November, 1980. Steve Strange appears 5:00 in. Spandau Ballet at 7:00.

The music had nothing to do with American-based blues and it worked on almost every level.

The instrumental opener "Astradyne" sounds like the birth of the movement that would eventually give us Duran Duran. Chrysalis Records, however moved the song to the end of the A side for the US release , preferring to start things off the first single from the album, "Sleepwalk". 

The next track is "New Europeans", the first song to really pop off the album for me. 

The album's most famous song is its title track, described in this way by Rip It Up And Start Again author Simon Reynolds:

Ultravox...plunged into full-blown Teutonica with the quasi-classical "Vienna". Wreathed in the sonic equivalent of dry ice, this ludicrously portentous ballad --inspired by a vague notion of a past-its-prime Hapsburg Empire sliding into decadence--reached number two in the U.K. charts in the first weeks of  1981 and hovered there for what seemed like an eternity.

Fun fact: the song that held "Vienna" from the top spot was "Shaddup Your Face" by Joe Dolce.

From Robert Christgau a grade of C:

First they wanted to be machines, now they want to have roots--it's new, it's different. "A European legacy, a culture for today," sings former Rich Kid Midge Ure through a signifying synthesizer, and he's not being ironic--new Europeans may be jaded, but they avoid irony except in totally frivolous contexts. So they buy electronic instruments, rendezvous in Köln with Conny Plank, and manufacture dance music for the locked pelvis. One strange thing, though--sounds like "Western Promise" should be called "Algiers."

From Smash Hits:

On both "Mr. X" and the apocalyptic "All Stood Still", the synths run the show. I was still playing the latter on my college radio show when "Dancing With Tears In My Eyes" was climbing the charts in the U.K.

Heavy Metal, Trick or Treat

Roxy Music : Trash

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On February 25, 1979 Roxy Music returned to the U.K. charts for the first time in three years with "Trash", the first single from the forthcoming reunion album Manifesto. The new 'zine Smash Hits reviewer wrote the new single "doesn't match the brilliance of the best of their old stuff. The competition has improved dramatically since they've been away". 

Entering the charts at U.K. #43, it would only peak at #40. By Roxy standards that would be a flop but The Guardian's Tom de Lisle suggested the song greatly inspired the young men in make up who frequented the London club Blitz and called themselves New Romantics:

The scene produced Ultravox, Visage and Spandau ballet, who all doffed a beret to Roxy.

Michael Lindsay-Hogg, best known for helming The Beatles Let It Be documentary and Rolling Stones videos dating back to "She's A Rainbow" directed the video, which featured a few mannequins, a leather jacketed Bryan Ferry catching a tossed microphone with two hands, and what Lindsay-Hogg seems to do best, catch a band having a good time performing their new song.

On the B side was another, slower version of "Trash", that has kind of an Avalon feel to it.

With Juvenile Intentions

Japan : Adolescent Sex

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On April 8, 1978 Japan released its debut album, Adolescent Sex.  The band may have looked like an 80's hair band but, like Ultravox, they drew their inspiration from harder rocking David Bowie and Roxy Music.  If you're a fan of the bands's sophisticated, Eastern-influenced later works, Tin Drum and Gentlemen Take Polaroids, this may come as quite the surprise.  Here is the birth of the New Romantic sound. that would be dominated by Duran Duran, Visage and Spandau Ballet.

Ripe for rediscovery, Adolescent Sex has received rave reviews from some of the band's biggest fans and was recently discussed in a Quietus article in which Chris Roberts tried to get singer/songwriter  David Sylvain to discuss an album the band would eventually dismiss.

I was interviewing David Sylvian for a career overview in 2004 and suggested we work though album by album, beginning with Adolescent Sex and Obscure Alternatives. “You can,” he shrugged politely. “I mean, I haven’t heard them since 1982 or whatever. I have no interest.” He wasn’t being rude or affected. He genuinely doesn’t see what he perceives as juvenilia being relevant to his body of work. On another occasion I asked him if he hated them as much as is generally made out. Can he not even hear them as youthful, buoyant “fun”? “I don’t cringe as much as I laugh,” he said, smiling. “I don’t take it so seriously as to worry about it. I understand the train of thought. It doesn’t bother me.”

Check out "Television" and "Suburban Love" for some of the more oustanding moments on the album.

The follow-up, Obscure Alternatives, is just six months away. The band's recording career would only last four short years.