Lost by Camouflage

While I actually have all of the Camouflage albums (and a fair number of the singles and remixes) kicking around somewhere, I don't even have a vinyl player anymore, and I don't have them "at hand" where I can locate them without a substantive effort to figure out where they are. You don't need to anymore, of course, because you can play pretty much their entire body of work on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcc7ZHFTKUW4lbGP_f24bNQ

I'm in the middle of a playthrough of their entire body of "main" studio albums, with a handful of singles and remixes thrown in, although not the focus, in order, starting with their first album, Voices & Images and ending with their most recent (although now no longer so recent) Greyscale. They really are a good band. In fact, although I've never had the same emotional attachment to them that I had to Depeche Mode, or in some regards, even to De/Vision, most of their work is better than anything Depeche Mode has done in at least twenty years, and at least as good, if not better, than most of De/Visions. Although I've got to give De/Vision credit for having enough sheer volume that their number of good tracks is probably higher. Camouflage have had eight studio albums, and two Greatest Hits compilations, spread out from the late 80s until now. So, in other words, more than thirty years. 

Part of the reason that I don't have as much of an emotional attachment is that while I really liked Voices & Images, it did struggle in some ways because of the execrable English to make me take it quite as seriously as I'd have liked to. Later, their Methods of Silence album was somewhat more mediocre, without any tracks that stood out as prominently as "The Great Commandment" did ("Love Is a Shield" I know for sure I had on 12" vinyl, and probably still do in a box in my basement, but it simply wasn't as good of a song, and the remixes didn't grab me either.) Meanwhile was even worse, with really only one song that I (admittedly) really love a lot: "Heaven (I Want You)" and a bunch of other completely forgettable tracks. The next two albums either came out while I was out of the country not really listening to music, or they didn't have US releases and I didn't hear them until long after the fact. 2003's Sensor brought me back into the fold. It didn't have a US release either, but getting import CDs in 2003 was quite a bit easier than it had been in the 80s and 90s. Sensor is, in fact, such a great album that I think it might have a shot at being among the very best synthpop albums I've heard since 2000, even now (although I admit the scene has become large, indie and fragmented enough that I hardly hear everything that comes out anymore.) It's gloriously dark and sensual, in much the same way that Depeche Mode's work was at their peak, although a bit more "fuzzy" and grimy sounding. Track #6, "Lost" is one of my personal favorite songs from anyone ever, actually—highly recommended.

I haven't posted anything on this blog in a long time, and when I last did I was really diving into early hardstyle and hard trance. I still like those genres quite a bit, of course, but my older, more pure and deep love of darker synthpop has kind of taken over more again. It's time I posted an homage to the kinds of songs that I started this blog to talk about in the first place. 

Meanwhile (no pun intended) I'm struggling to get through my chronological listen-through right now, in the latter half of Meanwhile. It's not exactly painful, but it is certainly forgettable.