On October 24, 1980 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released Organisation, their second album of the year. Featuring their recent single "Enola Gay", early version of the album also offered a seven inch single of live recordings from November '78 and invitations to join their fan club.
The song "Statues" is a tribute to Ian Curtis.
A review by Steven Grant of Trouser Press is less kind:
Orchestral Manoeuvres sounds like Freddy cannon doing the Ultravox songbook. The music is predictably ethereal, and wallows in the doomsaying that is the trademark of "serious" synthesizer artistes...the end result is bland music; Gary Numan sets houses on fire by comparison.
In September of 1980, the month they released their UK#8 hit "Enola Gay", Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys provided Smash Hits with their all time top ten list. Both musicians have room for two songs by Joy Division and both select "Atmosphere". They are also like minded about Kraftwerk and Brian Eno.
In May of 1980 Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released a newly recorded version of "Messages", a song that appeared on their debut album in February. This version was produced by Mike Howlett who in 1977 had formed the short-lived band Strontium-90, featuring himself and the three future members of The Police. In 1980 he produced many of our favorite singles and albums including Martha And The Muffins' "Echo Beach", the Fischer-Z album Going Deaf For a Living ( featuring the ridiculously catchy "So Long") and "Messages", a UK#13 hit .
On February 22, 1980, fresh off a tour supporting Gary Numan, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released their sparse self-titled debut album to mostly ecstatic reviews.
"How fine and different their melodies can be, how detailed and distinctive their song-structure," writes NME's Paul Morley. "There is a constant change in emphasis and dynamics. It's definitely dance music. Orch Man's debut LP is one of the best of the year." Melody Maker journalist Ian Birch called the record "Unpretentious, tuneful and unceasingly pleasant".
The album came in specially designed award-winning high tech sleeves, with each batch in different color combinations.
Inspired by Kraftwerk, singing bassist Andy McCluskey and keyboardist Paul Humphreys used what they had available to record songs like their latest single "Red Frame/White Light" "Electricity" and "Messages". There's a terrific interview with the duo in a recent episode of the podcast Sodajerker On Songwriting in which they complain about the analog synths .
A Fairlight CMI Series 1 cost at least 12-thousand pounds so only musicians in the same league as Peter Gabriel, Alan Parsons and Stevie Wonder could write songs on them. McCluskey and Humphreys settled for analog synths of a lesser quality.
"We used them in the old days when they went out of tune, you couldn't MIDI them up and they weighed a fricken' ton,"says Humphreys. " You had to have five or six of them onstage because each one had a different sound you were using."
At the time of the album's release, "Red Frame/White Light" was the new single. It's about a telephone booth.
"We insisted one writing songs that were not the average thing to sing about," says McCluskey. " We wanted to make something different. We kind of followed Kraftwerk's blueprint really because they hardly ever wrote songs about love. It was always about antennas and radios."
On May 21, 1979 Orchestral Manoeuvers In The Dark released their debut single, "Electricity". The band, made up of Manchester schoolboys Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys, bonded over their love of Kraftwerk and Brian Eno. On this song, they wear their influences on their sleeves. OMD begins the song with a plodding bit of sizzling electronica that sounds like something from Another Green World. Then, 10 seconds in, comes the happiest Kraftwerk-ish sounds ever heard!
Factory Records released the single twice but it never charted, despite DJ John Peel's enthusiasm for it. Still, the single landed OMD a record contract and a spot opening for Gary Numan on his tour. New Music Express called it "the best example of Factory Records to date – excellent, melodic, synthesiser pop" and David Hepworth of Sounds wrote "unlike most synthesiser specialists (no names, no pack drills), these two aren't afraid of a tune and a bit of fun and this bubbling electrobop could see them in the charts.
