Strange Attractor - New Album

[hajak]

Originally Posted by humanracer

Hi
Leaving side the symbolism, I think the reason SA has the band on the cover because this is a band album. To some AV is just a Marian Gold solo project now but SA was written and performed by the whole band. AV feels more like a band that it has done since the late 80s.

I Think totally different from you here,with Martin Lister in the band it seems like Marian and Martin created Everything together,Salvation and Crog a poppy side of Alphaville(love that).
After that we sadly lost Martin it seems like were back to a Rock style like Marians soloalbums
with a touch of TBB and Prostitute(dont like that).
So,to me now its more like were back to Marian runs the show almost by himself now and have a Liveband

[musicdb]

Originally Posted by rolandk

In the 2nd week the album is on #95 in the official german charts.

As comparison: CROG stayed for 12 weeks in the german charts, highest position was #9

oh thats bad....but for me Stange Attractor is much better than CROG....
Big marketing and TV-Show for CROG....and nothing for SA right!!!

[emo72]

"beyond the laughing sky" strongly reminds me of U2 around "achtung baby". "love is blindness" and "one" in particular.

[emilzone]

Originally Posted by musicdb

oh thats bad....but for me Stange Attractor is much better than CROG....
Big marketing and TV-Show for CROG....and nothing for SA right!!!

one-track single+music video may not be enough for sure.

[Gravitation]

I think that the studio did not invest $ on the band and did everything formally for the release of the disk - nothing special in the booklet - all the photos are frames from the moments of the clip recording ... There were no bets on the album, but I think that in vain.

Yes, the sound of the album is not commercial at all, but for me and other people, who from my environment heard it - consider one of the best albums of the group ... oh, the same PR as CROG ... it would be a furort .. it's a pity that this album Did not see ...

Sorry for my bad english

[nicole]

Personally, I feel Strange Attractor is one of Alphaville's best albums yet. I think this album has a different style that a lot of AV fans are not used to. I like this album a lot and even though there are a few songs I don't care for much on this album, I still think it's great and worth the wait. I'm hoping as time goes on maybe the album will do better in the charts. I'm just so excited AV is finally touring in the US.

[andrewbw]

I think it's definitely a "different" album, but only in so much that it's a significant departure from CROG. The loss of Martin Lister is self-evident, but I don't mean that as a criticism—I think it's the reality of a band reorganizing itself after the loss of a tremendous creative force who clearly represented a very specific sound.

The first few times I listened to SA, I thought, "boy, this is really slow and a little dark..." but then I went back and listened to Afternoons In Utopia after not doing so for a while. Set aside the poppy, bouncy tracks (Dance With Me, Universal Daddy, Jet Set, etc.) and listen to the title track, Carol Masters, 20th Century, etc. There's already hints of what would come 30 years later.

So really, I think the major difference with SA is instead of getting a handful of synth-pop tracks scattered around ones that are more melancholic or slow, the uptempo tracks borrow more from rock and even elements of disco. I think this contributes to the album feeling overall more like a group effort, even though I obviously don't know the band as well as some of you and don't know how collaborative Marian is in writing music.

It makes me interested to hear some of the tracks live, and how the full band will interpret production-heavy numbers like Mafia Island for performance.

[humanracer]

Originally Posted by andrewbw

I think it's definitely a "different" album, but only in so much that it's a significant departure from CROG. The loss of Martin Lister is self-evident, but I don't mean that as a criticism—I think it's the reality of a band reorganizing itself after the loss of a tremendous creative force who clearly represented a very specific sound.

The first few times I listened to SA, I thought, "boy, this is really slow and a little dark..." but then I went back and listened to Afternoons In Utopia after not doing so for a while. Set aside the poppy, bouncy tracks (Dance With Me, Universal Daddy, Jet Set, etc.) and listen to the title track, Carol Masters, 20th Century, etc. There's already hints of what would come 30 years later.

So really, I think the major difference with SA is instead of getting a handful of synth-pop tracks scattered around ones that are more melancholic or slow, the uptempo tracks borrow more from rock and even elements of disco. I think this contributes to the album feeling overall more like a group effort, even though I obviously don't know the band as well as some of you and don't know how collaborative Marian is in writing music.

It makes me interested to hear some of the tracks live, and how the full band will interpret production-heavy numbers like Mafia Island for performance.

Mafia Island has already been performed live a few times. I have an excellent recording of it. It works really well.

[MarianGoldfan123]

SA is like CROG... They experimented and I can say with 100% honesty that they did a great job with it. You know what would be absolutely awesome? If they could re-record Into The Dark and put it on the next album. no joke. I'm sure if they went back and modernized it with the synths they used in this album and used the same "phaser" effects that were used on his voice in the original demo? It'd be brilliant.

[jetset]

A nice interview of Marian about SA and more :




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBX4eU8LQss