Buggles: Adventures In Modern Recording

BUGGLES: ADVENTURES IN MODERN RECORDING (1981)

1) Adventures In Modern Recording; 2) Beatnik; 3) Vermillion Sands; 4) I Am A Camera; 5) On TV; 6) Inner City; 7) Lenny; 8) Rainbow Warrior; 9) Adventures In Modern Recording (reprise).

This one's okay, but it ain't Age Of Plastic. Yes, those nasty boys of prog rock, blew up The Buggles before they had a real chance to conquer the world, and sucked them inside the band to replace Jon Anderson — like I already said, if you listen to Age Of Plastic long enough, you will begin to see that this wasn't the most random-decided decision on earth, but fact of the matter is, Horn and Downes were no longer The Buggles, but hired gunmen to guide a bunch of old out-of-touch proggers into the new realities of a rapidly changing world (including hairstyles). And once it didn't work out... well, the biorhythms were broken, and they just couldn't really go back to being The Buggles like nothing happened. A broken family is a broken family.

In the end, Geoff Downes just defected away to Asia — trading the coolness, the irony, and the snarkiness of a Buggle for the stiffness, seriousness, and pomposity of an «Asian» — before the sessions for the new album had even started properly, leaving behind only some of his keyboard playing on some of the demos. So Trevor Horn cursed him all the way to adult contemporary hell and beyond, and set out to complete the record on his own, with a little help from such friends as Simon Darlow (keyboards), John Sinclair (drum programming and co-producing), and even a keyboard part from Anne Dudley on ʽBeatnikʼ (who then joined Horn for many of his projects, including The Art Of Noise).

The resulting album is understandably much more morose and depressed than Age Of Plastic, and this decreases its value — as long as the Buggles were happy, snappy, and punchy, the magic worked, but in this noticeably more pensive, melancholic, «downer» mood, quite a few songs tend to drag, if not suck. Case in point: ʽLennyʼ. It may or it may not refer to Lenny Bruce, and there's nothing wrong with either possibility — but its melody progresses from somewhat moro­nic to simply boring, just lots of poorly expressive synthesizers and a semi-decent vocal track which still has Horn in his «I am Jon Anderson» mode, trying to make us believe he is trying to make some sort of important point, but really just wasting three minutes of our time. And this is not the only misfire on this record.

Thankfully, some of that old snarkiness is still in action on about half of the record. ʽBeatnikʼ is a hilarious reinvention of the rockabilly genre for the technopop era — and graced with more Yes-style harmonies and lyrics ("all will be revealed before the next move!") on top of it all. The title track, in prime Buggles fashion, pokes fun at whatever the Buggles themselves are doing: "they're not playing, they're just having adventures in modern recording!", and it is light, sprightly, self-ironic, tends to change keys and tempos — basically, the kind of stuff that 10cc might have been doing in 1981, had they survived up to 1981 in a less crappy format than they did. And even the lengthy romantic epic ʽVermilion Sandsʼ ends in a bit of «Vegas» fun, also rearranged for the electronic age, proving that humor has not been abandoned.

Elsewhere, Horn tends to get too serious — apparently, even one year with Yes can rearrange your liver to such solid mental grace that the next thing you know, you're writing sci-fi mytholo­gical ballads with references to rainbow warriors or allusions to J. G. Ballard. Actually, both ʽVermilion Sandsʼ and ʽRainbow Warriorʼ seem like decent compositions, but this whole «art-synth-pop» business... I just don't know. Too simple and silly to really compete with the prog­gers — too complex and artistically pretentious to be plain kinky fun. There's no denying some creati­vity and intelligence here, but ʽJohnny On The Monorailʼ has all this stuff beat in a jiffy — that one just had plain old hooks, these ones seem to demand from you to acknowledge their depth, and I am not sure if they have any.

There's also a remake of ʽI Am A Cameraʼ (formerly ʽInto The Lensʼ) here, done Buggles-style rather than Yes-style, but I've never been a big fan of that song in the first place, so let's not get any ideas. Actually, one point is clear — both Downes and Horn underwent a «maturation» pro­cess while they were in Yes, so that Downes eventually got serious enough for Asia (!) and Horn got serious enough for turning Buggles into BuggYes. If this latter idea intrigues and fascinates you, go for this album at once — if you are a big fan of Drama, it is impossible that you will not find something here to please your synth-prog lover's heart. If, however, it sounds unattractive in theory, I do not believe you will find it any different in practice. Nevertheless, I do appreciate the «quirky» songs and I respect the craft of the «serious» songs, so the overall rating is still a thumbs up — them Buggles don't have more than two albums out anyway, so they might just as well get an extra pointer for that (including an advance for not releasing a Buggles album any­where near 1986, which would probably have been fatal). Also, Trevor Horn is just a good guy with a strong artistic vision, and even some of his relative failures are still interesting.

Buggles: The Age Of Plastic

BUGGLES: THE AGE OF PLASTIC (1980)

1) Living In The Plastic Age; 2) Video Killed The Radio Star; 3) Kid Dynamo; 4) I Love You (Miss Robot); 5) Clean, Clean; 6) Elstree; 7) Astroboy (And The Proles On Parade); 8) Johnny On The Monorail.

The very name «Buggles» should probably indicate that you are getting into something quirky at best, and stupidly irritating at worst. «The Bugs», as Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes originally wanted to call themselves, is bad enough, but Buggles? Wouldn't that kinda sorta suggest a gene­ral trajectory where pop music begins with the Beatles and ends, that is, reaches its triumphant culmination with ʽVideo Killed The Radio Starʼ?

Well, in a way, it does. The Buggles were arguably the first successful pop band that achieved its success by refusing to be a band, and preferring to be a techno-mechanical unit instead. Trevor Horn, who took on the responsibilities of producing the album, took his major inspiration from Kraftwerk: total de-personalisation of the proceedings, a «robotic» attitude in all respects, begin­ning with instrumentation and ending with the lyrics and the personal image, but at the same time, with a far more poppy sound than Kraftwerk ­­­— the melodies here are inspired by ska, disco, Foreigner, and ABBA rather than stern Teutonic minimalism.

To say that The Age Of Plastic is «kitschy» or «gimmicky» does not even begin to do justice to these songs, which anyone with a mouth trashier than mine would most likely describe with the infamous appellation «faggy». They are so absurdly over the top, so reckless with their hooks and so arrogant with their production that Lady Gaga these days has nothing on these guys (well, at least if you adjust the comparison basis for the standards of 1980). Reviews of the album, both contemporary and retrospective, were about as split as the press used to be on Black Sabbath — some loved them openly, some hated them in public but stashed copies away in the basement anyway, until the time came when not loving Sabbath became poor taste. Yes, The Age Of Plas­tic leads you indeed into double temptation — on an intellectual level, it is tempting to trash it as an exercise in flashy stupidity, but on that damn gut level, it is just as tempting to put it on again... and again... and again...

Okay, the facts are simple: the eight songs that constitute this album represent some of the de­cade's catchiest pop music — all of them, not a single exception. Upon first listen, you're hooked even if you are disgusted. Upon second listen, you are entranced by the choruses. Third listen, and you pretty much got all these songs by heart. This does not mean that Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes are natural-born geniuses: the tunes were slowly and meticulously crafted over a period of several years, and never again would these guys approach this level of pop craft — neither in Yes, nor on their second album, nor in their subsequent projects (like Art of Noise or Asia). But then again, the ideology of the Buggles supposes that there are no «Trevor Horn» or «Geoff Downes»: there's only the music, and whoever is standing behind it is totally insignificant.

Not that this «whoever» is totally dehumanized — yet. Like Kraftwerk, Horn and Downes are fascinated with the conflict between technology and human spirit, and much, if not most, of the album relates to this idea one way or another. This is one of these self-ironic recordings where the musicians use the latest and trendiest technologies to complain about the relentless onslaught of technology: "Could this be the plastic age?", Horn asks us in desperation on the title track while at the same time ensuring, with his production, that this verily and truly be the plastic age. But where Ralf and Florian spooked people away by almost literally turning into robots, the Buggles still retain their human side — and thus give the layman a better chance to identify with their is­sues, seducing him with their hooks and ensuring a good source of revenue in the process.

And the hooks are unbeatable. Let's face it, we don't care that much about the saga of merciless human progress — we just love those happy-sad female vocals chanting "video killed the radio star, video killed the radio star" to that tight-as-heck bass-drum pattern that could just as well have been lifted off a Ramones song and adapted to the new realities of the synth-pop era. And does anyone realize that in between ʽEchoesʼ and Phantom Of The Opera there was ʽKid Dy­namoʼ, which uses the same descending-ascending pattern to create an atmosphere of tension and paranoia? Or that ʽI Love You (Miss Robot)ʼ already writes the book on a large part of what would later constitute the bulk of the Art of Noise legend — the techno-funk sound, the treated vocals, the multi-tracked vocal harmonies, the «cloudy» synthesizers?

However, in my opinion, the album does not properly begin to hit its stride until the second side, when the satirical and even snappy side of the Buggles starts to show up. ʽClean Cleanʼ, rocking out like a technofied version of Elton John's ʽSaturday Night's Alrightʼ, is actually a serious anti-violence statement, and the synthesizers on it sound as alive, angry, and punkish as any aggres­sive guitar part on any contemporary punk (even hardcore punk) record. ʽElstreeʼ, using the idea of starring in B movies as an allegory for an originally meaningless life made even more mea­ning­less, is the album's saddest track — Ray Davies in the robot age. ʽAstroboy (And The Proles On Parade)ʼ is hard to decode, but seems fairly misanthropic to me — I would imagine that some people might want to slap Horn in the face for his sneering intonation on the "let them be lonely and say you don't care" line, and who exactly are "the proles on the parade", I wonder? Even so, the intonation change from "romantic" to "sneery" on that bridge is priceless.

The best is saved for last: if you thought you knew everything about the Buggles after watching the ʽVideo Killed The Radio Starʼ video, think again after hearing ʽJohnny On The Monorailʼ, a song that combines nervous tension with a fast pulse, a slight touch of country-western, some melancholic romanticism, and a general feel of being pulled somewhere from where there is no return, as Tina Charles plays the part of «the siren of doom» with her haunting background vocals and the song stubbornly defies a straightforward explanation, all for the better. Amazingly, you begin to understand that by the end of the album, the Buggles have broken out of the «kitsch» mode and put a more serious face on their collective robot — then again, maybe Side A was the robot in his childhood, but even plastic matures with age, and sometimes becomes aware of the dark side on its own, without outside help.

Ultimately, repeated listens to The Age Of Plastic do not make its material seem any more catchy than first time around — but they might help one understand that the integration of Horn and Downes into Yes, which took place right after they released this, was not such a thoroughly absurd move as one could think of it just by being exposed to ʽVideo Killed The Radio Starʼ. Of course, the idea was that Horn and Downes could help the failing band regain commercial suc­cess, but they weren't hired just because they were catchy pop hitmakers — behind the flashy imagery and the production gimmicks there is a complete and largely original artistic vision, and plenty of intelligence and feeling. As of today, some of the gimmicks have become dated — in particular, Horn's passion for silly-sounding vocal overdubs (like the who-oh-oh's on ʽElstreeʼ or the chip­munkish uh-ohs on ʽVideoʼ that you usually get these days on messenger software) — but who knows, maybe I'm the only one to worry about that in the first place. In any case, a big thumbs up and a request: do not miss the perfectly human soul in this album. When I say «catchy hooks», I mean real catchy hooks here, big emotional ones. It's easy to misinterpret them or fail to grasp their meaning, but it's there alright.