NEW SOUNDS FOR THE EUROPEAN CANON 1977-1981

Description

At the turn of the 1980s, the impact of David Bowie’s revolutionary Berlin recordings — the synths, the alienation, the starkly futuristic production — was being felt across music throughout Europe. Moreover, the records made reflected and influenced Bowie’s own work — 1979’s Lodger and 1980’s Scary Monsters owed a debt to the currents of German kosmische (Holger Czukay), new electronic music (Patrick Cowley, Harald Grosskopf) and the latest works by old friends and rivals such as Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel and Scott Walker, all reinvigorated by the fizz of 1977. Compiled by Bob Stanley of Saint Etienne and Jason Wood of the BFI, Fantastic Voyage is the companion album to their successful Café Exil collection, which imagined the soundtrack to David Bowie and Iggy Pop’s trans-European train journeys from the middle of the year to the end of the seventies. Fantastic Voyage is what happened next. Bowie’s influences and Bowie’s own influence reverberated through the late 70s and early 80s, notably in the emerging synthpop and new romantic scenes as well as through the music of enigmatic groups like the Associates and post-punk pioneers like Cabaret Voltaire. Like Low and Heroes, some tracks on Fantastic Voyage are full of tension (“Eisbär” by Grauzone) while others share those albums’ sense of journey (“Theme for Great Cities” by Simple Minds, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Riot in Lagos”) and others find common ground with the dark, subtle humour of Lodger (“Tight as a Drum” by Thomas Leer, Fripp’s “Exposure”). It is the exciting and adventurous sound of European music before the decisive moment when Bowie would abandon art-pop for America and the emerging world of MTV with Let’s Dance in 1983. Fantastic Voyage provides the soundtrack to the few brief years when Bowie’s echo chamber, his inspirations and his followers created exciting, borderless music, ready to challenge Anglo-American influences.