changing, designing, adapting our mentalities, improving our abilities for a better way of life!

84.

dazzle ships
orchestral manoeuvres in the dark [telegraph, 1983]

from the Paleolithic Age to the digital age, from chipped flint to microchips, technology and history have been inextricably linked, bound together in mutual causality. in simplified terms, social, political, and economic developments lead to new technologies lead to social, political, and economic developments; it's the mechanism that fuels the grand historical narrative of "progress." released near the whimpering conclusion of the Cold War, Dazzle Ships explores the utopian promises and the dystopian realities offered by the perpetual love affair between history and technology. it's a remarkably forward-thinking record, peppered with snippets of "found sound" - robotic toys, automated telephone messages, newscasters reporting atrocities in an impassive deadpan - that predict not only the experimental moments of major twenty-first century recording artists but also the inexplicable loneliness of hyper-connected techno-post-modern society. it's a rather dour affair; the tracks alternate between downtrodden, shimmering synth-pop ballads like the sighing "silent running," and more abstracted musique concrète sound collages. the few uptempo songs, like the effervescent, Brave New World-evoking "genetic engineering," are laced with gloom or smirking irony. in the face of a technologically overwhelmed future, a strong half-sentimental, half-mocking nostalgia for the archaic and the arcane permeates through the album, from its title and other World War II allusions to the metaphorical references to dead or dying forms of technology - radio and the telegraph. it may not be as accessible as OMD's other material, but Dazzle Ships is a complex, innovative record illuminating the tension between the past and future, technological progress and social stagnation, man and machine.


techno-kitsch moment: though this album was panned by critics and shunned by the record-buying public when it was first released - it's considered one of the most notorious "flops" in British pop - a recent reissue has led to critical re-evaluation. Pitchfork's Tom Ewing, one of their best writers, wrote that Dazzle Ships is a more pleasurable album now than in 1983 because the then bizarre, "futuristic" use of electronic voices and instruments has become kitsch and comforting, like playing a game on the NES. i don't agree necessarily, but it's an interesting theory.