Alright synth pop fans! We've covered popular songs and compilation albums so far on Synth Pop Saturdays or as one commenter put it:
Stupid bargain collections of the same old dime-a-dozen tracks we already bought two, three, four or more times before.
We feel you. On today's edition, we're digging a little deeper, expanding our horizons. (And maybe yours as well) by covering the three Cherry Red Records compilations known as MUSIK MUSIC MUSIQUE. Each volume covers a single year in the early Eighties with more than 50 tracks across three compact discs. The packaging for each volume is a slipcase with three paper sleeves labeled Disc One, Disc Two, etc. A pretty decent booklet can also be found in the slipcase featuring detailed liner notes, images of the original record sleeves & labels, and pictures of the artists. For those collectors who enjoy a dose of knowledge, a peak behind the studio curtain, or just something pretty to look at while they listen to their new CDs of old music, this set has you covered. These tracks sound pretty dang good for their age and, in some cases, the primitive conditions they were recorded but I think that to be as definitive as possible some compromises were made in song selection and sound quality. The series gets its name from a vocoder-heavy Zeus B. Held track found in the first collection, focusing on 1980.
Covering 1980 with half a dozen tracks from 1979 and an outlier from January 1981, the first volume of Musik Music Musique is subtitled The Dawn Of Synth Pop and features 58 songs. (The cover art above was provided by Cherry Red Records on their website - the actual cover art as released in 2020 can be viewed HERE.) The label site says the set features:
A TREASURE TROVE OF HOUSEHOLD NAMES... AND UNDERGROUND FIGUREHEADS... ALONGSIDE FORGOTTEN GEMS AND LESSER-KNOWN CURIOS.
And to add an air of authenticity and perhaps authority, they're quick to let you know you're in good hands because the set is:
BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE TEAM BEHIND THE CRITICAL AND COMMERCIAL HITS ‘CLOSE TO THE NOISE FLOOR’ AND ‘ELECTRICAL LANGUAGE’!
A quick glance at the tracklisting let me know I knew (much) less than half of the artists featured and I didn't recognize most of the track titles from those (few) familiar names. Rather than listen to Musik Music Musique all in one sitting, I listened to one 75+ minute disc every other day using the day in between to cleanse my pallet and be as fresh and receptive as possible for the next disc.
According to my notes (now an essential part of my critical listening as fleeting thoughts and critical or complimentary comments are lost to the ether otherwise), there were three tracks I did not recognize by title but once I heard them, my familiarity with them was evident. Good job, brain! Some of these songs sound like bold and revelatory envelope-pushing compositions while others have more of a primitive or abstract experimental quality to them as if the artist was merely exploring what their new instruments could do. A handful of tracks sound like bad novelty songs I need never hear again. Of the three discs, Disc Two was my favorite with a lower-end ⭐⭐⭐ while Discs One and Three get a total of ⭐⭐⭐ between them. We deal in a six-star rating system here at The Hideaway so overall, we're giving Musik Music Musique ⭐⭐½ just based solely on the music within. If we were ones to judge packaging and presentation in addition to audio, we'd bump it up to a full ⭐⭐⭐ and, if polled, we'd prefer a neon blue color to the sickening green that was used.
Listen to some of the tracks
from Musik Music Musique
Released in 2021, Musik Music Musique 2.0 gets the tag 1981 | The Rise of Synth Pop for its 51 songs. This time around, the label uses less hyperbole ("PACKED WITH FAMILIAR CLASSICS AND LESSER KNOWN GEMS.") In short, everything that was good about the first volume in the series is a little better this time around. Same smart packaging but a better signature color for this listener's tastes. Many artists carry over but this time they're represented by tracks I'm actually familiar with and, more importantly, actually enjoy.
Employing the same one-day-on, one-day-off listening technique as last time I enjoyed the three discs in MMM 2.0 by a fraction above their counterparts in the previous collection. There are fewer songs overall so the discs were slightly less of an assignment or chore with a greater number of both exemplary and experimental tracks along with fewer songs that need never be heard again. An interesting development was after making it through the three discs, I spent between an hour and an hour and a half looking up some of the songs I liked from my notes to find their original format (album tracks? singles? b-sides?) and then listened again to some of the songs in their original context. Another thing my brain did this time was try to figure out who was missing or who would have been in the mix if I ruled the world. I narrowed it down to New Order and Simple Minds both of which I kinda sorta referenced in the previous sentence. Oh and bigtime Human League after they split with the Heaven 17 boys and had one of the biggest albums ever. Don't you dare forget The Human League! Disc One of MMM 2.0 gets a strong ⭐⭐⭐. Disc Two comes in with ⭐⭐ and Disc Three squeaks out ⭐⭐½. The whole shebang gets ⭐⭐¾. The MVP of the first two collections is New Musik. Will they go three for three?
Listen to some of the tracks
from Musik Music Musique 2.0
in this YouTube playlist.
The third collection focuses on tracks from our favorite year in music, 1982. Released in 2023, Musik Music Musique 3.0 is subtitled Synth Pop On The Air. By now the label is calling the whole series HUGELY SUCCESSFUL but we don't know what criteria they're using. There are 56 tracks from
"...COUNTLESS...ELECTRONIC LUMINARIES..."
(Not to brag but I did count all the way to 100 just the other day with the grandkids as we counted how many colors there were in their new watercolors set) including a few of our all-time favorites from Tears For Fears (kinda), New Order, and Heaven 17. And don't forget the R-rated delights worthy of being wrapped in brown paper sleeves from Soft Cell and Berlin. (Apologies to Those French Girls.)
My new listening regimen is gonna work out fine though if crunched for time I might do a disc in the morning and a disc in the evening listen using the afternoon to get distracted and reset. I'll save us all some time and toil (too late?) and share that each disc scored ⭐⭐⭐ so Musik Music Musique 3.0 gets the best rating yet with a ⭐⭐⭐. Did I say "yet"? Yup, Cherry Red Records says there are discs already in the pipeline for 1983 and 1984. No New Musik on MMM 3.0. Maybe they reached too far by covering The Beatles on their 1982 release, Warp. The MVP Award will stay on the shelf this time, but you know which band name stood out to me purely for 2024 reasons? Yup, Ukraine. They released four songs total over two singles. One single in 1981 and another in 1982. They're on YouTube but the guy who made the playlist below neglected to include them. Here you go!
Listen to some of the tracks
from Musik Music Musique 3.0
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