Talk to anyone who was the right age in the early '80s for both pop radio and the dawn of MTV, and "She Blinded Me with Science" will inevitably come up. The most famous song from the reissued version of the album, it's a defiantly quirky, strange number that mixes its pop hooks with unusual keyboard melodies pitched very low and a recurrent spoken word interjection ("Science!") from guest vocalist/video star Magnus Pike. To Thomas Dolby's credit, the rest of the album isn't simply that song over and over again, making The Golden Age of Wireless an intriguing and often very entertaining curio from the glory days of synth pop. Part of the album's overall appeal is the range of participating musicians, no doubt thanks in part to Dolby's own considerable range of musical work elsewhere. "She Blinded Me with Science" itself features Kevin Armstrong on guitar, Matthew Seligman on bass, mega-producer Robert "Mutt" Lange on backing vocals, and co-production with Tim Friese-Greene. Elsewhere, Andy Partridge contributes harmonica, Mute Records founding genius Daniel Miller adds keyboards, and Lene Lovich adds some vocals of her own. The overall result is still first and foremost Dolby's, with echoes of David Bowie's and Bryan Ferry's elegantly wasted late-'70s personas setting the stage. If anything, The Golden Age of Wireless is the friendlier, peppier flip side of fellow Bowie obsessive Gary Numan's work, where the melancholy is gentle instead of harrowing. Dolby's melodies are sprightly without being annoyingly perky, his singing warm, and his overall performance a pleasant gem. Especially fine numbers include the amusing romp "Europa and the Pirate Twins" and the nostalgia-touched, just mysterious enough "One of Our Submarines.
One of the more prolific bands in the second wave to appear on the seminal U.K. indie pop label Sarah Records, the Sugargliders were two brothers (Josh and Joel Meadows) who hailed from Australia and blanketed the shops with an impressive run of singles. Filled with witty and heartfelt lyrics, catchy minor-key melodies, and Josh’s achingly pure vocals, the duo’s songs fit in perfectly with the Sarah esthetic but also added twists like the occasionally danceable beat and a sometimes very forceful and direct lyrical/vocal delivery. This collection gathers up songs from the six singles they released for Sarah between 1992 and 1994, and adds a few from the singles done for Australian label Summershine in 1990-1991 and the U.K. label Marineville in 1991. While completists may have wished for a double-disc collection that had everything the band put out during this time span, the 20 tracks selected do a fine job of summing up the thoughtful, heart-rending pop charms the duo unfailingly displayed throughout their short career.
Disappeared is the sound of drum'n'bass dissected, blended with a spy movie score, and given the acidic, demonic twist of a carnival sideshow. It's also Spring Heel Jack's best album. It's no surprise that the album draws comparisons to John Barry film scores, as Spring Heel Jack seems to consist of card-carrying members of a 007 fan club, but they pull out all the stops here, producing muscular spy movie music that seems extracted from Hades itself. Devastating, bleak, and intensely powerful melodies wail and storm, jazzy fuzz-box jungle notes twist in the air, and trumpets seem to assert that the forces of darkness have been let loose. Ambient noodlings and screeches cause tension and chills. "Mit Wut" is ominous and fierce big-band electronica. Sci-fi alarms ring out on "Galina." One wonders if the music is meant to be industrial-dance-jazz or meant to conjure a techno-spy-stompfest. Unlike the music of spy aficionado Squarepusher, there's little whimsy in these 11 songs. While big beat leanings occasionally crop up, as on "I Undid Myself," the tone of the album remains relentlessly, compellingly bleak. There are moments when the duo seems to strive for chill-out vibes and when evocative violins inject grace and beauty, but the album never gives up the tinkered madness at its base. "Wolfing" concludes the album perfectly, raging aggressively like a massive steam train headed toward oblivion. Noisy, stark, and brimming with inventive, confused electronics, Disappeared is Spring Heel Jack's masterwork.
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As a debut album, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain), is a kaleidoscopic assemble of emotional nuances, cathartic clear-outs and encriptive scriptures of the soul. As an album, it is hermetically hallucinogenic, which day-trips into a lucid dream, whilst alternating between different realms of consciousness. As a front man, Bramah, epitomises all things mysterious, modest and emotionally driven and through his many incarnations has maintained a compelling mystique. From the unadulterated punk delivery, to the melancholic musings, to the chimerical crooning, Brannah has a voice which resonates and streams a whole spectrum of emotions. A diverse guitarist and accomplished songwriter, it is through his collaborations with Baines that The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) is emotionally enriched and unconventionally pitched. A free-spirit and forward thinking artist, Baines is a keyboard whizz, whose swirls, whirls and neon trails add so much magic and ethereal beauty to this delightfully dark piece of art.
What could be a cosmic cousin of The Monochrome Set, The Stranglers, The Velvet Underground, Television and The Stooges, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) is criminally underrated, but somehow belongs in an esoteric cult or should be kept in a vault with all things sacred or secretly influential. It’s an album which sees the reunion of Bramah and Bains ignite a rebirth, and whose combatant spirit is strengthened through the creative collective of Blue Orchids. It is also an album which resides in its own age of enlightenment, amongst the pagan poets, misfits and new-wave nomads. Where 1982 was a year of defined Indie records, The Greatest Hit (Money Mountain) was of no fixed abode and whose fluidity of post-punk, neo-psychedelia, garage art-rock, Proto-Punk, ethereal new wave and token industrial rock, created an incandescent, emotionally raw album which was ahead of its time
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