Ghost in the Machine

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Ghost in the Machine
The Police's studio album

Publication
(s)

2nd October 1981

admission

January – September 1981

Label (s) A&M Records

Genre (s)

New wave , pop-rock , reggae rock, fusion jazz

Title (number)

11

running time

41:03

occupation

production

The Police, Hugh Padgham

Studio (s)

AIR Studios, Montserrat , Le Studio, Québec , Canada

chronology
Zenyattà Mondatta
(1980) 		Ghost in the Machine Synchronicity
(1984)

Ghost in the Machine is The Police's fourth studio album . It was released on A&M Records in October 1981 . It went triple platinum in the US . Rolling Stone magazine put it at number 322 on its list of the 500 best albums of all time.

Origin and style

Ghost in the Machine , the band's first album with an English-language title, is based on the book of the same name by Arthur Koestler . It was recorded in Montserrat and Québec during 1981 . For the first time, keyboards and wind instruments were increasingly used. For example, Spirits in the Material World has a rhythmic string synthesizer section. Jean Roussel played the piano on Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic . In 1994 , Andy Summers told Guitar Player magazine that he was dissatisfied with the musical direction of the album, which had come at the expense of creativity and dynamism.

“I have to say I was disappointed with the musical direction during the Ghost in the Machine era . With the addition of brass and synthesizer the fantastic raw trio feeling got lost - all that really creative and dynamic stuff. We became the background singers for his pop songs. "

- Andy Summers

reception

Greg Prato wrote on the Allmusic.com website that the album may not be a pop masterpiece, but an important milestone between the more direct early work and the more ambitious musical direction on Synchronicity . He awarded three and a half stars out of five.

Track list

Side one
  1. Spirits in the Material World - 2:59
  2. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic - 4:22
  3. Invisible Sun - 3:44
  4. Hungry for You (J'aurais Toujours Faim de Toi) - 2:52
  5. Demolition Man - 5:57
Side two
  1. Too Much Information - 3:43
  2. Rehumanize Yourself (Sting, Stewart Copeland ) - 3:10
  3. One World (Not Three) - 4:47
  4. Ωmegaman ( Andy Summers ) - 2:48 (Omegaman on some editions)
  5. Secret Journey - 3:34
  6. Darkness (Stewart Copeland) - 3:14

Three more pieces were recorded as B-sides:

  1. Shambelle (Summers) - 5:00
  2. Flexible Strategies (Sting, Copeland, Summers) - 3:43
  3. Low Life - 3:45

All pieces were written by Sting unless otherwise noted.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Guitar Player , January 1994, cit. to www.thepolice.com ( Memento from November 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ www.allmusic.com: Synchronicity review by Greg Prato