Various Artists [It's Electric]
Here's a disc i bought from a second hand shop in London in the mid Nineties, it's featured fairly heavy rotation in my disc player, it is in fact the original first 'Electronic' hits compilation album i bought, and this spawned interest / acquiring a whole load of others, every one of these hits is a classic, not a dud in sight, it's the near perfect Electric anthology, and everytime i play it i'm wowed by the sheer invention of the music, those were the years [late Seventies to the mid Eighties] when the Pop charts had really decent music, this disc is in my all time top 100 discs, i played this over the park as i watched the world go by.
The tracks that really hit me were 2, 12-13 15 & 19, i'm 'shocked' at the genius of layers in a lot of these tracks, so multifaceted, here's a synopsis of each of these tracks,
2 Kraftwerk - The Model, lovely electronics, i think all the instruments on this track are electronic, even though there's drum machines hit with sticks, only the voice is human, a very simple song, sung in the German accented English, and i just love those simple lyrics, almost silly robotic words, but they fit the music perfectly, Kraftwerk are a quartet, and it sounds like four computers, rather like Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass sounding, and the different layers are superb, i like the way the vocalist has to fit maa-gazine to the music! [2:52], and the final outro synth is really satisfying [3:21+].
12 Talk Talk - It's My Life, the intro sounds like jungle synth sounds over a chugging beat, the vocals are quite lazy sounding, the chorus is fantastic, the synths go into the treble, and the voice rises up an angry level, right at the end the chorus is repeated twice, and it really develops an intensity.
13 Tears For Fears - Mad World, this time the intro is less than inspired, but the chorus is the best thing, it has a nice intensity to it, right at the very end there's this tambourine outro [3:26-3:31], strange yet enjoyable.
