S/D: Ultravox

"Rage in Eden" is the best one pretty easily -- no black metal band could ever hope to so accurately capture the sound of fascism as does the song "The Voice." What to speak of "Your Name Has Slipped My Mind Again," which I want played at my funeral. On repeat.

if you don't know it go and download 'plaza' this instant

Destroy: pretty much everything else.

"DANCIIING! With TEEEEEEEEEEEEARS in my EYES!"

Yay the singles collection and the Lament album, which is a weird, restrained album in many ways. And yay early Ultravox and especially "Hiroshima Mon Amour." Destroy -- some of those photo shoots in the early eighties and anything any member aside from Foxx did after 1985.

My favourite U! song is Just For a Moment though. Its heartbreakingly beautiful. Like Ray, I saw them on the SoR tour (Dunfermline Kinema, supported by a pretty amazing Doll by Doll). It was third-eye scrapingly, doors of perception destroyingly intense show.

Destroy? Erm, none of them, really. And nobody better touch Billy Currie -- I keep hearing that he's such a sweetie.

Listened to the first Ultravox LP with John Foxx yesterday and upon hearing "I want to be a Machine" was thinking that this is what Radiohead would have sounded like if they cut a record in '77.

Well obviously it would not sound like THAT, they all probably would have been 8-9 years old at the time, but you probably get what I am saying.

I mean it is an incredible song yeah. And by the next album they were even better!

It is however longer than the longest Radiohead studio recording - Yorke and co never let themselves jam it out to that extent (to their detriment imo)

hey, all i have is vienna and i think it's swell. i seem to recall checking out systems of romance on a crappy listening station in an overly loud shop some years ago and thinking it was kind of boring. but this could be a false memory or something. where should i go next?

you should get that one, definitely, imo. Not quite as hooky as Vienna but Conrad Plank’s production is sublime

vinyl copies used to be cheap and not rare but who knows these days

cool! didn't know conny plank was involved, that's rad! just scooped a $5 copy on discogs.

Plank also produced Vienna and Rage in Eden

so i got systems of romance and i was a bit taken aback at how much more of a rock band they sound like on it. lots of flange and fast chords, very new wave. it's not as immediately tuneful as vienna, but it's clearly a completely different vibe. i think i need to sit with it a few more listens.

They were never great in toto, but I like the schlock of SOR a lot.