O.M.D.

I'm feeling some nostalgia and love today for the early sounds of the electronic/New Romantic (in my mind) group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Despite their few pop chart successes, I will always think of them as an experimental sound band.

"Messages" is from their self-titled 1980 debut release. I bought this when it came out.

Their second album "Organisation" never had a proper release here in the United States, so when the first album was later released after this one, it included this incredibly atmospheric, beautiful song "Stanlow" named after an oil refinery in England, and the measured, melancholy "Statues."

From 1981, "Souvenirs" and "Maid of Orleans" is from their third album "Architecture and Morality" which is listed in the book 1001 ALBUMS YOU MUST HEAR BEFORE YOU DIE.

One of their most experimental records was the amazing, dystopian 1983 release "Dazzle Ships," with its musique concrète sound collages, the use of shortwave radio recordings to explore Cold War and Eastern Bloc themes thus conjuring up images of life among Brutalist architecture, and references to a frightening type of post World War II technology including genetic engineering. The title itself is a reference to a way of painting war ships in a way that disorients the viewer. The album opened with the sound collage "Radio Prague." Highlights are "Genetic Engineering," "Time Zones" (recordings of the time in French, German, Japanese, and American English, all players in the second World War), "The Romance of the Telescope," the unsettling "ABC Auto-Industry," and "Of All The Things We've Made."

See these arms that were broken
How they held you so
Never once did they fail you
They won't let you go

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

Over decades, now this romance
Has sustained us all
Never questioned, only giving
What it made us for

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

Of all the things we've said
The times it's worked before today

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

Of all the things we've said
They always worked before today

As of 2020, OMD are still active and creating amazing electronic music!

http://www.omd.uk.com/