Once again, I really don't know exactly when in 1983 Hyperborea came out, but since there is nothing else worth mentioning in January, let's place it there. This was the first truly decent album made by the West German trio in several years. I particularly liked the title track, embedded above, as well as the shorter Cinnamon Road. At this point, the group members were still Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke and Johannes Schmölling, who had replaced Peter Baumann after his departure.
It sounds like the group had finally acquired some genuine inspiration when composing. The other release we will discuss at the very end of 1983 seemed to confirm this at the time, but sadly, this new hope was to be relatively short-lived. Following this year, Tangerine Dream were to do some high quality film soundtrack work in 1984 and 1987, and we will definitely discuss those works when the time comes. Other than that, they were never to regain the magnificence of their seventies output.
On 18 February, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band released a new album called Somewhere in Afrika. The group had already been highly active during the seventies, and I had noticed their work, but although often quite good, it had never felt quite important enough to be mentioned here. Likewise, this new album was hardly groundbreaking: it was more like the group's output had already peaked and they were starting a slow descent towards mediocrity. It happens to everyone.
Yet there was one track on this album that I found really exciting, and it was one of my winter favorites. Brothers and Sisters of Azania, embedded above, successfully combines all the best elements of the album: its main theme, a nice eighties style synthesizer loop, and some African vocals that bring an enjoyably ethnic feel to the mix. It is a rather short song in just under three minutes, but very powerful and well made.
And then it was March, and a new talent in the progressive rock genre finally released their debut album. Marillion was already mentioned in the previous blog entry because of their interesting, 17-minute long single B side called Grendel. Now, they had completed Script for a Jester's Tear and introduced to the world this new thing called neo prog.
I'm not sure how to precisely define neo prog, but the song above should give you a general idea. It is like seventies symphonic prog but robbed of any real life, yet played so well and beautifully that you could not help liking it. Yet, while doing so, you always had the nagging feeling that Genesis and Yes did the same thing much better years ago. The soundscape is sterile in a way that couldn't even be technically achieved back then. And this is not to say that Script wasn't a good album: the title track was a masterpiece, I liked Chelsea Monday almost as much, and there were also other good tracks included.
Heavy metal singer Ronnie James Dio has already sung twice in tracks embedded in this blog as a member of the group Rainbow. By 1983, he had already left that group and formed his own, called simply Dio. Their debut album Holy Diver, out in May, was nothing spectacular except for one truly great track called Don't Talk to Strangers. It served as a good reminder of Dio's songwriting skills that were still intact, even though years had passed and Rainbow was no longer a force to be reckoned with.
Another milestone for me followed: I turned 20 on 21 May. Six days after that, on 27 May it was time for Mike Oldfield to release yet another good eighties album. Following the example of last year's Five Miles Out, this year's Crises also featured one vinyl side length track on side A, whereas side B was filled with shorter songs. As good as Taurus II had been, the title track Crises was even better and still remains the best thing that Oldfield released during this decade. Enjoy it below: it is the first track on the album.
Four days later, on 31 May, it was time for Talking Heads to release the follow-up to their 1980 masterpiece Remain in Light. The new album, called Speaking in Tongues, was a decent collection of songs but didn't come close to the earlier album in any respect. I suppose the best known track must be Girlfriend is Better but my absolute favorite has always been Pull Up the Roots - the only new song that was every bit as good as anything on Remain in Light.
June arrived. I had already begun my second consecutive summer in my best summer job ever around 9 May if I remember correctly, and the new releases are ones that I associate with that. The slightly eccentric German electronic music outfit Kraftwerk released probably their finest song of the decade called Tour de France as a single. I remember listening to it over and over again while working. Summer music at its best: simple, yet ingenious. Once heard, easy to remember and extremely difficult to forget.
Finally, let's close this particular blog entry with one more release whose exact date I have absolutely no idea of. There is not going to be anything worth mentioning in July; next time we will continue from August. Apollo by my old seventies favorite Brian Eno should serve well as a placeholder for July 1983: I cannot swear this but I think I remember listening to it some time in the summer period, while at work, so maybe it was a summer release.
Since Music for Films (1978), Eno had mostly concentrated on creating ambient soundscapes, both on his own and with collaborators such as American composer Harold Budd. This was kind of interesting, but for the most part left me cold. Apollo, created with Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno, also continued in the same vein but also contained some "easier" tracks. The best known of them closes the Academy Award winning feature film Traffic (2000) and was already my favorite on the album back in 1983: An Ending (Ascent).
