Depeche Mode's "Golden Age"

I've often assumed and been told that the formative years of your musical taste sticks with you. I crystalized my musical tastes in the mid to late 80s, at least with regards to pop music, and therefore the "Golden Years" to me of Depeche Mode were always the three albums that had a more or less consistent sound (more or less) and tone from that era. Violator, their first big hit (in 1990) didn't sound right, because it was 1) too short, and didn't have enough good tracks, 2) too hoaky and dirty, with a lot of fuzz and big hoaky steel guitar sounds, 3) just wasn't as polished, and certainly wasn't even the same sound or feel at all—on purpose. Songs of Faith and Devotion was an even further departure, and the Depeche Mode that made slick, stylish electronic pop music with a dark edge was replaced by this weird bluesy pseudo-industrial rock band that had only a vague resemblance, honestly, to Depeche Mode that came before. It was very much a product of its time rather than something that comes across as more timeless. Although, to be fair, maybe the mid-to late 80s timelessness is an artifact of the fact that that's when my musical tastes crystalized, and they crystalized around that sound, so I'll always like it and feel that it sounds good. It's hard to say; 80s pop culture is going through a bit of a renaissance lately with the kids, but that may be more a fad rather than a recognition that 80s music is really timeless. Especially Second British Invasion New Wave 80s Music, which is really my favorite 80s music. 

In any case, my ranking of Depeche Mode albums, based on purely personal subjective criteria for the most part has always been as follows—mostly always, I should say. I added Memento Mori a couple of years ago, and finally decided between Music for the Masses and Black Celebration, which both had valid claims of being the best of their repertoire. 

1. Music for the Masses
2. Black Celebration
3. Some Great Reward
4. Violator
5. Construction Time Again
6. A Broken Frame
7. Speak & Spell
8. Memento Mori
9. Playing the Angel
10. Ultra
11. Songs of Faith & Devotion
12. Sounds of the Universe
13. Delta Machine
14. Exciter
15. Spirit

I ended up going with Music over Black Celebration because it was produced almost entirely by Depeche Mode themselves. Dave Bascombe was the credited producer, but even he claims that his involvement was more like an engineer than a traditional producer, and that Alan Wilder really was the director of the sound of the band there. Black Celebration was the last that Daniel Miller still forcibly contributed to the sound, and the last of three that Gareth Jones was involved with. Ergo, Music is the most "pure" Depeche Mode of the Depeche Mode albums, especially of that trio of my top three albums from the "Golden Age", which I think is sufficient to get it the top spot over Black Celebration. 

I should point out that Violator is still a great album, in spite of my disappointment with it. "Personal Jesus" and "Policy of Truty" are good singles, "Halo", "Waiting for the Night" and "Blue Dress" are great album tracks, and "Enjoy the Silence" is possibly the best single Depeche Mode song of them all. "Dangerous" and "Sea of Sin" from the Violator era b-sides are also pretty great tracks, and equal to many of the album tracks. Getting shunted off to b-side was a bit ignominious for those two in particular. Instrumental b-sides like "Memphisto", "Sibeling" and "Kaleid" on the other hand, feel like that's an appropriate place for them, but they're really good.

Songs of Faith and Devotion, on the other hand, belongs to the bottom third of albums, and most of the rest that follow it feel like they're retreating that sound, only not as good. Don't get me wrong; there are good tracks from albums in the bottom third; "Wrong" in particular comes across as a top tier DM song, no matter what era it was released in, for instance, but Playing the Angel and Memento Mori are the only post-Songs albums that surpass it, which is sad, because those are part of the amorphous middle third of albums that are mostly quite different from each other, and which often shift positions in my esteem, because they're honestly all a bunch of albums that I like (or don't) equally to each other, albeit for different reasons, given how different they are to each other. 

This isn't to say that there aren't a lot of kind of cheesy moments in the top three albums of my Golden Age, of course. "Master and Servant" and "Blasphemous Rumours" feel like they're trying too hard to be transgressive, subversive and edgy, and therefore come across as immature and sophomoric rather than profound or meaningful, although as a teenager I was myself too immature and sophomoric to recognize that. I never liked "Dressed in Black" at all, and "New Dress" also comes across as pretty shallow. The band themselves never thought it appropriate to have "But Not Tonight" as part of the Black Celebration album, but being in the North American region, I never had a version of the album that lacked it; even the vinyl version included it. (Not that I had vinyl. I had the cassette tape and then replaced that with the CD, which I still have.) "I Want You Now" is the only album track on Masses that I didn't like, but at the time, I just noted that every Depeche Mode album had at least one track I didn't like, and it was usually a weird Martin Gore-sung ballad. Honestly, even with the tracks that I don't like, those three end up being good "listen through" albums where I can play the entire album beginning to end and enjoy it like a pop music symphony of sorts. Although I'm less pretentious about it than I used to be when I was more young and arrogant and said that I thought Depeche Mode albums were as good as a classic music symphony in terms of artistic and musical merit. 

But that isn't to say that they don't have real artistic merit, however. I do find that more recently, instrumental, orchestral music is more what I'm in the mood to listen to. Not necessarily always "classical", although Classical certainly has more artistic merit than, say, music or video game soundtracks, or the unofficial soundtracks on YouTube that I listen to like Graham Plowman's Lovecraft unofficial soundtracks. 

Erasure

I've been content to occasionally talk about music on my "main" blog rather than using this blog for anything at all. I really shouldn't though. I was gearing up to make another post about Erasure, when I decided on a whim that I should do what I always meant to and talk about it here. Yay! I may get back to migrating music posts to this blog, although I doubt I'll be using it like I originally did, where I just highlight a specific song. That paradigm has been done for years and I can't believe it will come back. I'm just not interested in doing that anymore.

In any case, I haven't listened to Erasure much in a long time, but I threw my entire collection (from my phone, not my CDs, so it's not completely everything I own) on my queue and have been listening to it again lately. My history with Erasure is a bit complicated; I got turned on to them in about 1988 or so when "Chains of Love" and "A Little Respect" were on the radio. I got The Innocents fairly quickly, and within a year or so I also picked up Wonderland and The Circus. The latter two were among my early CDs when I made the jump from cassette tapes to CDs; The Innocents had to cassette for many years before buying a CD version of it finally. I was around as a fan to by Wild! when it was new, but for whatever reason I bought that on cassette first too (subsequently on CD) probably because I could listen to it in my Walkman without having to record it onto a blank tape first... which was a thing that I had to do with my CDs to play them outside of the house. We had no CD player in any of our cars for many years, and Discmans weren't a thing yet. And I was always a late adopter of new technology anyway. I don't think I had a discman until the mid-90s, and I can't remember how long it was before I had a car with a CD player in it. (Ironically, those are hard to find without an aftermarket stereo nowadays. Everyone just does their music on their phones now.)

At some point in the early 90s, some friends of mine and I who had similar tastes in music determined that Erasure "infamously" had really great albums every even album, while every odd numbered album was more disappointing and somewhat mediocre. Wonderland was wonderful, The Innocents was great, Chorus was pretty brilliant. Meanwhile, The Circus, Wild! and later I Say I Say I Say were all kind of disappointing. This pattern was broken by the eponymous album in 1995, which was even more disappointing than the previous I Say I Say I Say had been. Due in part to what was going on in my own life in the mid-90s, as well as what was going on in pop music and pop culture generally, I kind of lost the plot with Erasure after that. I didn't buy Cowboy or Loveboat or otherwise pay attention to what they were doing for quite some time, and only grabbed them much later. And I still don't know them very well. The 80s and the earliest 90s were my Erasure golden age. The same is true, of course, for other bands that were "big time" in the later 80s of a similar proto-synthpop style, although I didn't even know that label yet, and just called them synthesizer New Wave, or whatever we called them where I lived. I lost the plot in a similar degree with Depeche Mode, with the Pet Shop Boys, and even with relatively minor players like Cause and Effect , Camouflage or Red Flag. Although ironically, just a few years later I started getting pretty involved with bands like De/Vision or Mesh, because they were mining the same veins that those earlier bands had been mining when I was a bigger fan, and which they themselves had kinda sorta turned away from and weren't mining anymore quite as much. As the 90s evolved, and the pop music discontinuity associated with grunge became more pronounced, the prominence of that kind of synthpop sound became more and more edgy and out of the mainstream again. Which is part of what I always liked about them in the first place, to be honest with you, at least in the American market. This meant that some of the OG's were sounding tired rather than fresh, and I got more into newer bands. In the darker vein, De/Vision and Mesh and the new futurepop sound were where I went, and in the lighter side, bands like Cosmicity and others got my attention, as the 90s ended and the 00s started. Newer sounding stuff like Neuroactive or B! Machine were more interesting to me than Erasure or Pet Shop Boys. 

This probably isn't really very fair, though. Erasure were still doing good stuff. Even "mediocre" albums like Erasure or I Say I Say I Say had good tracks. "Fingers & Thumbs (Cold Summer's Day)", at least in the single mix without the weird "ambient bridge" that the album version had is a top tier song. Maybe not as classic as "Oh L'amour" or "A Little Respect" but easily as good as "Stop!" or "Chorus" or something like that. I've made similar complaints about Depeche Mode "losing their way" through the 90s, but I haven't really talked as much about Erasure or Pet Shop Boys (or others) losing their way. In a way, they didn't lose their way as dramatically, they just kept doing the same thing that they were doing, just a little more tired sounding, and it got less and less fresh and interesting over time. "Being Boring" by Pet Shop Boys from the 1990 Behaviour album was kind of a foreshadowing anthem of what I would think of my favorite bands in the late 80s when we were in the mid to late 90s. Not that that's what the song is about, I'm just riffing on the title. 

Anyway, "Fingers & Thumbs" was especially on my mind, because I was surprised to discover that I was missing the mp3 ripped from my CD on my phone and had to go re-rip it and re-add it to my phone. It's also a great example of what I'm talking about; a good song from an era where I was otherwise kind of tired and relatively uninterested in Erasure. Even now that I've added more backcatalog from the period that I missed in the later 90s and 00s and 10s, I'd still say that my interest in even the better tracks is not that great. There's too much going on in the music world now, and both me and the world have moved on from the late 80s Erasure sound. It's a weird catch-22 for these kinds of bands. If they evolve too much, they don't sound like what found them their fans in the first place, so the fans are disappointed. If they don't evolve enough, they sound like a tired retread of what they've already done, and the fans slowly wander off anyway. I suppose it's just the nature of pop music that that's going to happen.

How to collect Real Life

I've usually built a post around featuring a song, and had a video or audio file link embedded in the post. I'm doing just a "normal" post today, though, because I've been listening to a lot of Real Life. I hadn't exactly forgotten about Real Life, of course, but I also hadn't thought about them in many months if not even a couple of years now until accidentally stumbling across a "Send Me An Angel" YouTube video. I've spent a fair bit of time reacquainting myself with them. Or him, I should say; for a number of years now, Real Life is just David Sterry, the vocalist, sometime guitar player, main songwriter and general front man for the group from the beginning. He's still on friendly terms with at least a couple former bandmates, at least to hear him talk about it, but he's the only one still doing it.

As I said in my last post, the original output of the band is somewhat limited. And sadly, much of what they've done over the years is now out of print and difficult, if not impossible, to still find. This was true even when I was attempting to run down their stuff in the late 80s. Depending on how you count it, Real Life have had six albums of original output, starting in 1983 and the most recent in 2020, which isn't a lot. But they've also had a number of other tracks released here and there as exclusives on various compilations of previously released material, and honestly, those compilations have been more readily available for a long time anyway.

The original Real Life release was Heart Land in 1983. It has ten tracks. It wasn't available for a long time, but you can now get it pretty easily as a streaming or mp3 album from Amazon, and you can listen to it on YouTube readily enough. I couldn't get it in 1988-90 or so when I was looking, but most of the tracks on it are available on the two compilations that were available at that time. Four tracks are not, three of which are definitely worth getting. Three other tracks are on the compilations, but not in the exact mix or version that you got on the Heart Land album. This was especially noticeable on the two songs that were hits; "Send Me an Angel" and "Catch Me I'm Falling". The latter was just a shorter album version than the compilation version which otherwise sounded very similar, but the "Send Me an Angel" version was more different. The 1983 version wasn't available for quite some time.

Flame was the next release. Although it never even got a CD release (at least in America) at all that I can see, it did, apparently, get an vinyl and cassette release. I never saw it, though. There's nothing on this album that isn't available on compilations, except for the song "Take My Breath Away" (no relation to the Berlin song of the same name) and I think the album version of "Let's Fall in Love" might be a bit different than the compilation version, but not substantially so. There are also ten tracks on this one.

Down Comes the Hammer was next, and while not exactly a compilation, it had a lot of pre-released material on it. Out of nine tracks, only three were new. I never saw this released anywhere either, and it never got a CD release or a digital release of any kind, but everything on it is now available somewhere else at least, although one or two tracks (like "Night After Night") will have to be bought on a used CD. Some of the versions on this are alternate versions; the "Send Me an Angel" track is the "Master Mix" EP version, for instance, a label exclusive remix EP. Since both Master Mix and Down Comes the Hammer aren't available easily, that's dicey, but in general, I find alternate versions less compelling than actual different songs.

When I was looking for Real Life stuff in the late 80s, it was the two compilations released in 1989 that I found available. Other than the 1983 version of "Send Me an Angel" (which could be found on various movie soundtracks, I'll note) and four other Heart Land songs and one Flame song, between the two compilations you could get everything on those first three albums already, sometimes in multiple versions (like for "Bleeding Babies") and the '89 version of "Send Me An Angel" was quite a bit better than the 1983 version anyway (in my opinion, of course.)

Curiously, the first of those compilations, "Send Me an Angel '89" has gone out of print, and then been re-released again as Send Me an Angel: Best Of. In doing so, nine of the ten tracks (and the track order) is completely unchanged, but "Night After Night" has been replaced with a radio version of "Let's Fall in Love." This makes "Night After Night" unavailable in any digital format, and "Let's Fall in Love" available in two versions. While this was probably a smarter move for an actual Best Of compilation, it's a little unfortunate because now one song isn't available, and the other is available in two similar (although obviously not identical) versions. Given that both of the compilation CDs are only ten tracks each, they probably should have gone with a longer tracklist that has some bonus tracks or alternate versions or something. From the entirety of the 80s, there are only six tracks that aren't available on one of these two ten track compilations. We've got two versions each of "Send Me An Angel" and "Let's Fall in Love." It wouldn't have killed them to bump the track count up to 15 on each of those, given us a the original album versions of "Send Me an Angel," "Let's Fall in Love" and "Catch Me I'm Falling" as well as the other six missing songs, and maybe a single-release b-side or remix to round it out.

Both of these compilations are still readily available, at least in the re-released state for the first one, on Amazon as CDs or as mp3s/streaming. They're both available on YouTube, and I believe also on Spotify and iTunes.

Lifetime was released in 1990. Also ten tracks. It has the minor dance hits "God Tonight" and "Kiss the Ground" as well as some non-hit excellent tracks (in my opinion.) It's also mostly been readily available and in print since its release, at least in digital/streaming if not CD form.

Happy was released in 1997. It has ten tracks, but every release of it that I've ever seen includes two bonus alternate version tracks. It has been out of print for some time and is difficult to find; luckily for me I've had a CD version of it since sometime in the late 90s. It's a more grungy, 90s sounding album, so it's not my favorite, but it does have a few standout tracks.

Imperfection was released in 2003 on the American great synthpop indie-label A Different Drum. That label is now defunct, and the album is, as near as I can tell, completely unavailable. You can't even find bootleg YouTube uploads of most of the tracks on it. It's just completely AWOL. I didn't pick this one up, more's the pity, because now I don't know how I even could if I wanted to. While the album itself had 11 tracks, it had a bonus disc 2 with 11 additional remixes and alternate versions. Mostly of tracks from the actual Imperfection album itself, but there was also a remix of "God Tonight."

In 2009 Real Life released 80s Synth Essentials which is difficult to find on CD, but you can buy as mp3 or hear streaming easily enough. It's mostly an album of cover songs, done solely by Dave Sterry (his band was down to just him at the time) and released on Cleopatra Records. Apparently, when Cleopatra proposed it to him, which they sought him out to do so, the only thing that they asked was that he pick songs that weren't too obscure, and that he not do something so radical with them that they weren't recognizable. In general, I'd suggest that the covers have a bit of a light touch. Sterry said that there were a few other tracks that he'd liked to have done, but couldn't make versions of them that sounded good, either because the vocal range was too wonky, or something else, including (unidentifed) tracks by Alphaville, The Cars, and Iggy Pop. This CD has 15 tracks, but only 12 of them are covers. There's a new version of "Send Me an Angel", although it's not remarkably different than the '89 version, as well as two 1983 versions; the 1983 album version and 12" version, tacked on as extras for the fans.

Finally, in 2020 Real Life released Sirens, the most recent release. It only has six tracks, but one track is really five songs in one, so it follows the very traditional ten-song format that most of the Real Life albums have done. I just got it recently, so I'm not yet ready to comment on it other than so far I found only one song to be kind of a dud. Not a bad ratio. I'm going to break up the long track into it's constituent songs and have them as mp3s on my phone in that format rather than all jammed together. My Amazon mp3 download has one title for the entire track, but discogs gives subtitles for each of the constituent songs: "Sirens (Sirens - Siren's Song - Hole in My Sole - Out in the Solar System - Melt)"

The complete and total unavailability of anything from Happy or Imperfections is of course disappointing, as is the somewhat difficult availability of a few tracks from the 80s. Then again, sometimes the post-80s output of a band that's pretty iconic to the 80s is often not seen as nearly as essential. I got Happy fairly early, and while there's nothing wrong with it, I often feel kinda "meh" about it. So much so, that I didn't buy Imperfections when I had the chance to get it easily, which I now kind of wish that I had. But with only one or two exceptions, all of their 80s output is now pretty readily available, and I include Lifetime in that even though it was released in 1990, because culturally it's still very much an 80s album. If you really want to track down "Night After Night" pretty much the only one to track down that might be a little difficult.

I'll note that for whatever reason the album version of "Catch Me I'm Falling" on the version of Heart Land that's available now is not actually quite the same version as available on the original album, which seems (I believe) to be identical to the original 7" version of the song. If extremely similar alternate versions are your thing, you'll have to track down the out of print original album release, or the original single. And by original, I mean the Wheately label single released in Australia; everyone else got the 4 minute version instead of the 3 and a half minute version, for some reason. But the original American release had the three and a half minute version; the current version, however, does not. The original original version, if you can find it, is a fair bit different and worth checking out. You'll probably have to get an Aussie import, though, or play a bootleg YouTube copy or something.

EDIT: I see, actually, that Imperfections is available on bandcamp. I'll pick it up later today, and then see what else is kicking around on that account. Looks like a double album version of Happy is there too, with loads of remixes, from what was once the bonus disc 2 remix album Happier.

Catch Me I'm Falling by Real Life

I've actually posted this song before, but it was a long time ago, and I notice that the YouTube link I used is now dead. Kind of by accident I stumbled across Real Life online again just a day or two ago. Of course, it's not like I didn't already know Real Life; I've been a big fan for a long time. I've often said that they're my favorite Aussie band, and a truly under-rated band of the 80s overall. But are they really that under-rated? Maybe that's not entirely fair.

Real Life have sometimes (and not unfairly) been characterized as a one-hit wonder, referring of course to "Send Me an Angel" which is their most memorable song, the one that seems to always get referred to, and the one that they continue to tinker with, re-release and include on compilations. And this is the sense in which I wonder if Real Life is truly under-rated, or if maybe they're... well, appropriately rated. The reality is that Real Life's output hasn't been all that much, and at some point in the early to mid-90s, David Sterry, the vocalist, ditched what was left of his band anyway, and went semi-solo, with a new guy and friend doing keyboards for him. This was probably a mistake in most respects. Their output was never all that high to begin with, and by far the most memorable tracks of the 80s were all on the first album, Heartland (1983). Real Life formed when Sterry answered an ad in a music magazine by Richard Zatorski. Sterry was a part time vocalist, guitar player and song-writer, and Zatorski was a keyboardist who wanted someone who help him put tracks together. After a short time playing a few gigs with a drum machine, they recruited a couple more band members; a regular drum player and bass player, and that was the line-up for Heartland. See; Heartland has most of the best tracks Real Life would do during the entirety of the 80s. Their follow-up in 1985, Flame isn't a bad piece of work, but few of the tracks on it would be considered memorable, or made any impact for that matter. 

Which is admittedly too bad, because tracks like "Let's Fall in Love" or "Face to Face" or even "One Blind Love," "Cathedral" or "The Longest Day" or "The Legend" all have something to recommend them. But they aren't anywhere near the same level of notability as "Send Me An Angel" or "Catch Me I'm Falling."

After that, Real Life lost Zatorski, who apparently left the band due to management pressure, went to law school and now is a practicing attorney in Melbourne. The band picked up a new keyboard player, but release three compilation albums in a row attempting to find an audience again, with a new song or two thrown in, like "Babies" written by outsiders (actually, the same songwriting duo who wrote "Obsession" and who recorded it before Animotion did, curiously. Just a small trivia moment. 

"Send Me An Angel" had been picked up for use in a few movie soundtracks, and started getting more attention. It was re-released in 1988 as a single, and actually charted better (in America, I mean) than it had in 1983. This remix/remake was repackaged with a different name in two slightly different versions on 1989's Send Me an Angel '89. This was widely available in the late 80s when I was actually in a position to pick it up, so I did. Loved it. Of course, it starts off with their three best tracks, "Send Me An Angel", "Catch Me I'm Falling" and "Face to Face." The second side starts out with an extended intro version of the "Send Me an Angel '89" version, and then gives us... well, a number of less memorable tracks. They're not bad, but its clear that the album leans heavily on its best work right away. 

I had this on cassette, but I noticed that there was also another fix-up compilation of theirs readily available, called Let's Fall in Love which leads off with... "Let's Fall in Love." It has an alternate version of "Babies" or "Bleeding Babies" compared to the other compilation, but otherwise, contains much of the rest of the 80s output of the band that the first compilation didn't. There's some good songs on it, but it's obviously not quite as memorable as the first readily available fix-up.

Then at the very end of the decade, 1990, they released a club thumper "God Tonight" and the first actual new album in years, Lifetime. I really quite like Lifetime as a New Wave dance music album, but it's hard to argue that it was obviously written to be a bit more club friendly and less mainstream commercially accessible than Heartland had been. After Lifetime, Sterry ditched the rest of his band (or they left), teamed up with George Pappas to give us the more late 90s time capsule industrialized synthpop album Happy. Which I also like in many ways, but it's even less commercially accessible. Then again; what are you gonna do when the 90s was deliberately nasty for my good old synthesizer New Wave bands, and most of them, if they chugged along at all, did so with depleted line-ups, and often on indie labels, because mainstream wasn't having it anymore. Most of them experimented with a grungier, more industrial sound too during this era, although by 1997 when Happy came out, regular synthpop sounds were starting to become more mainstream again if "Believe" by Cher or Ray of Light by Madonna is any indication.

It was at this point that I kind of lost Real Life. I've never listened to Imperfection even though it was released by A Different Drum (I actually wasn't all that interested when they trotted out some older 80s icon to release something new, and preferred their own independent artists during much of the late 90s and early 00s.) More recently, Real Life has self-released a new album called Sirens which I also haven't heard, but you can buy it as an mp3 from Amazon, or listen to it on Spotify. They call it "progtronica" or something like that, and it starts off with a nearly 17-minute concept/story track like the old 70s prog rock guys like Styx used to sometimes do.

Somewhere in there I replaced by old Send Me An Angel '89 cassette with the CD The Best of Real Life. This is sometimes billed as the same album re-released, but that's not exactly true. It has a wildly different cover art and trade dress, even though it's the same label, and one of the second side tracks is swapped out for a radio version of "Let's Fall in Love." In general, I'd suggest that that's a decent move, since "Let's Fall in Love" was a better track than "Night After Night"—except that I already have "Let's Fall In Love" on another compilation, and that one's still available. They really kind of sank any reason to pick Let's Fall in Love the compilation up except for completion's sake, since most of the tracks on it are the more forgettable half of what was released on Heartland and Flame while the Best Of, (which isn't really, because it only has the 80s stuff, not anything from Lifetime) has the more memorable half.

Finally, in 2009 Real Life re-released "Send Me An Angel" again with a new version. This is a pretty good version, but it's not really so significantly different from the '89 version that it's worth picking up for just that. I actually think it's a slightly better version, by a very slim margin, but given all of the nostalgia I had for the '89 version, I'm still more likely to turn to it. It was packaged with a cover album, though, of a bunch of 80s New Wave songs, and this is actually a really fun album that I do not hesitate to recommend at all. So, you'll get the 2009 version of "Send Me an Angel" along for the ride, which is fine because it's a great version of the track.

Anyway, enough I guess. Go check them out on YouTube or Spotify if you haven't. You can't get all of their work there; some of it is just plain hard to find and has been since I started looking in 1987 or so, but what is available is probably most of their best work anyway.

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. 

Our Future by Aponaut

Aponaut is a nice little duo that has, unfortunately, limited numbers of releases, but what they do have is very good.  They are very much a part of the third wave style hard trance; a blend of influences from lots of other genres, including often hardstyle, acid, hardcore, and others, mostly lush, layered synths rather than Spartan minimalist sounds, lots of "fuzziness", etc.

Amplifer by Schattenmann

I don't like how Discogs and others give us Schattenmann, but actually show it under Dave Joy because Dave Joy presents Schattenmann is how it's released.  Schattenmann is the group name.  Now, in this case, Dave Joy is a member of Schattenmann.  And no doubt they were hoping to capitalize on the success Dave Joy had had with "First Impression."  But "Amplifier" is not a Dave Joy song, it's a Schattenmann song.

I don't know how successful this song was, although I do know that another Dave Joy trio, Basic Dawn, certainly had a pretty decent hit with "Pure Thrust."  Dave Joy wasn't a super prolific artist, sadly, because I tend to like most of what he did, both on his own and with the various groups he worked with; both with original tracks and with remixes.

Of course, Dave Joy was his stage name; his real name is Marc Hunziker, and he was a Swiss DJ.  Most of the groups he worked with both as remixer, as a member, or other collaborator of some kind or another, were also all Swiss too—a nationality that doesn't seem to have completely forgotten how to put its own people first.

Mammatus by Daniel Doering

Funny how randomization works.  This is literally one of the very last tracks added to my list, but it's what comes up today.

Daniel Doering, also known as Danny V seems to be an ethnic German (based on his last name) left over in the Danzig corridor, since all reports claim that he is Polish.  Sadly, he died in a car accident last year, but he left us with a decent body of great hard dance work before he went.

The Silent You [The Mystery Remix] by Unmark

It's debatable to what degree this trance record is actually hardtrance; it kind of straddles the line.  Unmark is one of a few solo projects of Marco Guardia, also known as Reverb,  Guardia is a Swiss DJ most famous as one half of both S.H.O.K.K. and of Flutlicht.  It's not hard to see him as the more productive and musical genius half of both, but maybe that's not really fair—S.H.O.K.K. has done plenty of good things since he left, for instance (although usually partnered with DJ Space Raven, or other team-ups and they've become, if anything, more... I dunno, they kind of blend into the landscape of modern hardtrance much more than they did before.)  It also seems that the solo projects of Guardia tend to lose their hardness and revert back to "normal" trance, so maybe he needed the influence of his partners, even if he was actually the real musical genius behind both of those outfits.

Second Chase [Extended Mix] by Dave Joy

Dave Joy was a reasonably big name in Swiss hardtrance, but he didn't really release a lot of tracks.  What he does seem to have done is release the same track over and over again in multiple remixes.  I think I have no fewer than fifteen of his first (and most well known) release, "First Impression", and surprisingly, most of them are really quite good.  With "Second Chase" he did it again, although I get the impression that this wasn't as big a hit, and it had fewer remixes over time (the number declined rapidly over time; by the time we get to "Fourth Joyride" not only had the titles become a bit silly because he couldn't figure out how to make the numerical thing work while still coming up with something as iconic as "First Impression" but there are also only two remixes of this available at all.

That said, Dave Joy also released some stuff under other aliases, and as team-ups with various other people (usually reserving a "band name" in that case, such as Schattenmann and Basic Dawn) and he also did a lot of remixes.  Notably, he really seemed to work to develop a specifically Swiss hardtrance scene, which I can certainly respect him for, even though I'm not Swiss at all.

"Second Chase [Extended Mix]" is a pretty good sampling of his general style, especially near the beginning of his career, but honestly, some of the remixes are more exciting, including ones by Alphazone and Kaylab vs Reeloop. (Yes, I know that Kaylab and Reeloop are actually two different aliases for the same guy.)

Living Harmony [Alternate Mix] by Mental Miracle

Mental Miracle is actually a two-person north Italian duo who used tons of alternate names and aliases, although most of them are definitely in the hard dance styles and sit kinda on the line between hard trance and early Italian hardstyle.  (They do have a few more housey variations too, though.)  They'll pop up over time over and over and over again, often under different names like Skam, Schwarzende, DJ Kubrik, Omega Nine, Aikon, Darksucker, Tronik and more.  Much more, actually, although I think those names have the most tracks that are likely to come up.

It's curious that the north Italians are the ones who were most likely to straddle the line between hard trance and early hardstyle.  If you read the history of hardstyle on some place like Wikipedia, for instance, you don't get the impression that hard trance was a major influence; you get the distinct impression, in fact, that it came out of the gabber or Dutch hardcore scene.  There really is a lot of variation in various regions: hard trance in the UK came out of the acid scene and has a hybrid hard house sound to it, quite often.  Hard trance in Germany and the Netherlands and the rest of the Germanic countries seems intersect very little with hardstyle, and if it intersects with anything at all (which it often doesn't) crossing into hardstyle is usually a late occurring phenomena (although it does happen late, especially after hardstyle was quite well established.)  In the Italian early hardstyle scene is where it is almost indistinguishable from hard trance, quite often.

And more recently that's true too; if you look at newer hard trance artists, like Costa Pantazis, NG Rezonance, Noizy Boy, DJ W, etc. they describe themselves as hard dance artists on discogs, and their styles tend to be primarily hard trance, but heavily influenced and hybridized with hardstyle, hard house, hard techno, acid, tech trance, etc.  But the Italians were the first to make hard trance and hardstyle merge in a fuzzy spectrum.

Third Pleasure [Re-Mix] by Dave Joy

From the anniversary remix (which doesn't label the remixes the same as the original release does, so I used the title of the post with the original release remix title) here's another Dave Joy.  Kinda funny that randomization gave me a Dave Joy track right after a Basic Dawn track, where Dave Joy was the leading member of the group.

I have a lot of tracks by Dave Joy and his associated joint projects, but to be fair, it's not as many unique songs; there are a lot of remixes and versions of most of the really popular songs (especially "First Impression" and "Pure Thrust.")  I mean, I have 13 of the former and 12 of the latter, although those are clearly the ones with the most versions.  He's also got some great remixes here and there; especially DJ Dean's "Music Is My Life."

Pure Thrust [Substate Remix] by Basic Dawn

Basic Dawn is another project of Michael Hunziker (Dave Joy) with a few other friends, famous mostly for this one song, which has a load of versions of remixes.  This is one of the best ones, so it was nice to have it come up randomized.

Stay by Alphazone

Alphazone is a trance artist, mostly—at least the approach that they bring is very trancey, as opposed to "hard dance".  Much of what I listen to is the opposite; it is on the border between hard trance and hardstyle, while most of Alphazone seems to be on the border of trance and hard trance.  While they do certainly make hard trance, I'd say that in general their style is more about basslines rather than exaggerated kicks.

Of course, that isn't quite as obvious from this track, which is their first big hit.  And Alphazone also did some absolutely great remixes of a number of tracks by a number of artists (the remix of Dave Joy's "Second Chase" is a big one.)

That said, a similar vibe can be said to relate to a few other artists as well that are notable hard trance artists, but who's focus is more on the trance than the hard.  Ralph Novell (and many of his various aliases) for example, or K90 spring immediately to mind.

Semiramide [MST Remix] by Tankis & Savietto

It is perhaps a little unfortunate that one of the first songs that comes up via randomization by Tankis & Savietto is not one of their best songs.  Still—even when they're mediocre (for them) they're pretty darn good, and this is a great song.  When you get to hear "Andromeda" or the Lost in Case (who are actually the same two guys as Tankis & Savietto) remix of "Octopus" you'll really see them at the top of their game.

Acid Rock [Simon Qudos & Lukes RMX] by Alex Mac & Zeebra Kid vs Andy James & Trix

That title and artist name combination is quite the mouthful.  What a collaboration!  Six people in all.  Anyway, this is arguably not really hard trance, but instead maybe acid hard house or something, but it's still a pretty fun track.  The Aponaut remix is even better!  And available for free at lololyrics, provided by Aponaut themselves.

Sweet Lullaby [Bruno Power Remix] by Andromeda

I'm often a bit annoyed by how things are credited as "presented" by such and such an artist.  If that artist isn't the artist on the disk, I don't care that he's "presenting" another artist.  And if the artists are using a stage name, but presenting their stage name as if it's something other than themselves, that's pretty silly too.

Andromeda was originally a four-man team, and while Julian DJ and Davide Sonar were indeed two of the four, I don't see it as credited to Julia DJ and Davide Sonar, so in my own labeling and cataloging of tracks, I ignore that and call this a song by Andromeda.  As you'd expect, it straddles the line (depending on the specific remix you're listening to) between hard trance and early hardstyle, but honestly; that's some of my favorite hardtrance anyway; the pseudo-hardstyle hardtrance.

Angelius [Nish Remix] by Spaceshokkers

Claudio Pettanice has rather jealously held on to the S.H.O.K.K. name, even though he was only ever half of the classic line-up.  Arguably, Marco Guardia (also known as Reverb) was the more important half, or more influential behind it, at least.  Reverb was also a big part of the driving force behind Flutlicht, his other duo, with DJ Natron.  Pettanice remixed most of the Flutlicht songs (as either DJ Giotto or DJ Emergency), but they're never the best remixes, and both of those names seemed to lack traction, it seems.

After Guardia's retirement and disappearance from the scene, Pettanice revived the S.H.O.K.K. name and did quite a bit with it, and... well, he's got some great remixes out there, and even some great original tracks, but they tend to have more of a DJ Space Raven sound to them relative to older S.H.O.K.K. titles.  This isn't unusual, as DJ Space Raven partnered with Pettanice to become the second iteration of S.H.O.K.K., which tends to require a partner to really put out great stuff, it seems.  Despite this, both of them want to hold on to whatever value they believe their stage names have, so Pettanice sometimes refers to S.H.O.K.K. as he and Space Raven working together, and sometimes as himself, and Nicholas Perrottey usually wants to keep his DJ Space Raven brand out there too; neither wants to be seen as merely one member of a group, it appears.  The DJ Emergency and DJ Giotto stage names have been quietly forgotten.

In any case, in spite of the fact that they'd been working together as S.H.O.K.K. specifically for a number of years by the time they put this out, Spaceshokkers refers specifically to the concept of the two of them being separate artists but collaborating, rather than the more integrated type of collaboration they do when they both work together under the S.H.O.K.K. name.  And the naming convention was interesting; Pettanice did something similar when working with Marcel Scheffers (stage name Marcel Woods) and they called that collaboration Woodschokkers.

Here's Freddy [Uberdruck Mix] by Uberdruck

Just when you thought A*S*Y*S's "Acid Nightmare" was the iconic hard trance song based on the themesong from A Nightmare on Elm Street, well, you have to consider this as an alternative.

Uberdruck was famous for their extremely dark, almost "evil" sounding sound, and it's the perfect match, obviously, for this subject matter.

Life on Mars [Extended Mix] by Pulsedriver & Rocco

I really, really love this song.  More recent than you might think, it's a throwback to the heyday of hardtrance, Wave II style, by two Wave II artists.

Granted, the Rave Mix is slightly better, I think.  But both versions are just great tracks.  One of the reasons I love it, I think, is that it goes a bit against the grain.  I really love the menacing, dark sounds that most hardtrance songs have, because it fits the genre so well, and because it's just my nature to like dark, menacing music (that's why back in the 80s, I always preferred Depeche Mode to Erasure and the Pet Shop Boys.)  But because most of it fits that vein anyway, the ones that don't and still manage to be very well done tracks tend to be among my very favorites precisely because they're different.