Visage (album)

Visage
Studio album by Visage
Publication (s)	November 10, 1980
Label (s)	Polygram
Format (s)	CD, LP
Genre (s)	Rock , new wave , synth-pop
Title (number)	10
running time	38:27
occupation	Singing: Steve Strange Guitar / keyboard / backing vocals: Midge Ure Guitar, saxophone, backing vocals: John McGeoch Keyboard: Dave Formula Keyboard / violin: Billy Currie Drums, percussion / backing vocals: Rusty Egan
production	Visage and Midge Ure
Studio (s)	Recording: Genetic Sound, Reading Mixing: Mayfair Sound, London
chronology - Visage The Anvil (1982)
Single releases September 1979 Tar November 1980 Fade To Gray March 1981 Mind of a Toy June 1981 Visage

Visage is the debut album by the British pop band Visage of the same name . It was recorded at Genetic Sound Studios, Reading , mixed at Mayfair Studios , London, and released by Polygram on November 10, 1980. The album reached number 13 on the UK charts and received a silver record from the British Phonographic Industry in March 1981. In 1981 a gold record was registered with the Federal Association of the Phonographic Industry. The most famous track on the album is the hit single Fade to Gray . The single is considered the anthem of the early 1980s fashion wave New Romantic .

History of origin

Dissatisfied with the musical direction of Rich Kids , drummer Rusty Egan and guitarist and singer Midge Ure looked for ways to make electronic pop music influenced by Kraftwerk and David Bowie . Egan was a DJ at Billy’s club in London and hosted the club evening A Club for Heroes on Tuesdays (based on the David Bowie song: We could be heroes, just for one day ). Billy's doorman was Steve Strange , who was friends with the Rich Kids front man, Glen Matlock . The three founded the Steve Strange Project . Ure, who had already sung the number one hit Forever and Ever in the successful British band Slik , gave singing lessons to the musically inexperienced Strange as the front man and singer of the project. As a trio they initially recorded several demos with the unused studio time of the broken up Rich Kids; including a cover version of the title In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans , which was published on the compilation Fade to Gray - The Singles Collection 1983.

In the course of 1979 the band members Barry Adamson , John McGeoch and Dave Formula from the band Magazine joined them, as well as Billy Currie , keyboardist and violinist with Ultravox and tour keyboarder with Gary Numan . The sextet planned as a pure studio project due to the obligations of the members in other bands (Adamson was not considered a full member) gave itself the name Visage and signed a recording contract with Radar Records . According to Strange, the meaning of the name Visage (French for “face”) also stood for Visual Age (English for “age of visuality”) and thus underlined the roots in glam rock. This view is also concretized on the ninth track of the album, Visa-age . Strange saw himself in interviews as a follower of this Cult with no Name , which the press often referred to as Futurists or simply as Blitz Kids (children from the Blitz).

The band released their first single, Tar , a witty spoof on the tobacco industry, in September 1979. The music and base sequence for the second single, Fade to Gray , was performed by Billy Currie and Chris Payne during sound checks on Gary Numan's Pleasure Principle tour Written in summer 1979. Midge Ure contributed the text, Egan's Francophone friend Brigitte sang the «devenir gris» and the French lines of text. The album was released at the same time as the single Fade to Gray .

Egan's drum teacher, Richard James Burgess of the band Landscape, programmed sound samples for some of the songs on the debut album at Fairlight . Burgess, a pioneer in sampling music with the Fairlight alongside Peter Gabriel , also coined the term New Romantic and produced the first two studio albums by the New Romantic band Spandau Ballet .

Visage was recorded in Martin Rushent's Genetic Sound Studio in Reading (Berkshire), which is still under construction , and mixed by John Hudson in Mayfair Sound Studio in London. The single Fade to Gray became a worldwide club hit in 1981 and rose to the top of the charts in 21 countries (including seven weeks at number one in Germany) and received a gold record in Germany . Another hit followed in March 1981 with the single Mind of a Toy .

Track list

1. Visage - 3:53
2. Blocks on Blocks - 4:00
3. The Dancer (Ure, Egan) - 3:40
4. Tar - 3:32
5. Fade to Gray (Currie, Ure, Payne) - 4:00
6. Malpaso Man - 4:14
7. Mind of a Toy - 4:28
8. Moon Over Moscow - 4:00
9. Visa age - 4:18
10. The Steps - 3:14

Publications and chart successes

album

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1980	Visage	DE1 (34 weeks) DE	AT11 (10 weeks) AT	-	UK13 (29 weeks) UK	US178 (4 weeks) US	Gold in DE 1981, Silver in UK 1981

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

Singles

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US
1979	Tar / Frequency 7 Visage	-	-	-	-	-	Release: September 1979
1980	Fade to Gray / The Steps Visage	DE1 (30 weeks) DE	AT3 (16 weeks) AT	CH1 (12 weeks) CH	UK8 (15 weeks) UK	-	Release: November 1980 Gold in DE 1981, Silver in UK in March 1981
1981	Mind of a Toy / We Move Visage	DE10 (19 weeks) DE	-	-	UK13 (8 weeks) UK	-	Publication: March 1981
	Visage / Second Steps Visage	DE41 (6 weeks) DE	-	-	UK21 (7 weeks) UK	-	Release: June 1981

gray hatching : no chart data available for this year

All singles were also published as Maxisingles (12 "). The pieces of music were remixed and mostly extended. The Maxisingles named, for example, Dance Mix or Extended Version as a title addition .

Fade to Gray was launched in 1993 to promote sales of the 1983 compilation Fade to Gray - The Singles Collection (on vinyl), which was re-released as Fade to Gray - The Best of Visage (on CD ) in the original version and six remix versions (including Bassheads 12 " Dub ) re-released and reached number 39 in the UK.

reception

The contemporary magazine TrouserPress attested the debut "always danceable and gripping songs". In the retrospective, too, TrouserPress rated the album's “solid musicality” paired with “plenty of humor and musical puns”.

Dan LeRoy from Allmusic sees this album as the starting shot for the musical ambitions of the New Romantics, otherwise known as a fashion movement, which were previously dubbed in the press as Blitz-Kids or Cult With no Name . LeRoy sees the album as a mixture of the "ghostly mood of fade to gray " and "energetic and danceable rock".

Simon Reynolds calls the scene around the lightning "the spearhead of a general trend within pop culture back to fantasy and everyday escape". He sees something subdued in the music on the album, at times almost depressed, and ascribes Strange's singing "a supernatural sadness".

The commercial success of the album in the spring of 1981 took place almost at the same time as the commercial success of the Ultravox album Vienna . Ure had replaced the front man John Foxx, who had left Ultravox, as singer and guitarist through the contact with Currie at Visage . It is striking and possibly not by chance that both album titles have the same length with six letters and begin with "VI". The lettering for the respective band names is also similar.

literature

• Christian Graf: Rock Music Lexicon . Europe / Vol. 2, L – Z. Taurus Press, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-922542-22-0 , p. 435-866 .
• Christian Graf and Burghard Rausch: Rock Music Lexicon . Europe / Vol. 2, Lake Zombies. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag , Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-596-12388-7 , pp. 751-1515 .
• Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up And Start Again . Hannibal Verlag, Höfen 2007, ISBN 978-3-85445-270-6 , Chapter 17 Electric Dreams: Synthiepop .
• Lothar Berndorff and Tobias Friedrich: 1000 ultimate chart hits . Moewig, Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-86803-272-7 , pp. 370-371 .
• Steve Strange: Blitzed !: The Autobiography of Steve Strange . Orion, London 2002, ISBN 978-0-7528-4720-7 .
• Robin Eggar: Midge Ure, If I Was… The Autobiography . Virgin Books, 2005, ISBN 0-7535-1077-4 (British English, 288 pages).

Web links

• Visage at Allmusic (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Robin Eggar, Midge Ure, If I Was… The Autobiography, p.
2. ↑ Visage UK Discography 1978–1993. In: Discog.info. August 15, 2009, accessed December 13, 2009 . 
3. ↑ Steve Strange talking about the New Romantic movement on Nationwide, March 1981. In: bbc.co.uk. July 10, 2009, accessed October 22, 2010 . 
4. ↑ Lothar Berndorff and Tobias Friedrich: 1000 Ultimative Charthits , p. 370
5. ^ Adventures in synth. In: www.guardian.co.uk. Retrieved December 17, 2009 . 
6. ^ Sarah Callard: FASHION / The British supermarket of style. In: www.independent.co.uk. Retrieved December 16, 2009 . 
7. ↑ Chart tracking Visage Singles. (No longer available online.) In: musicline.de. Archived from the original on September 27, 2012 ; Retrieved October 20, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
8. ↑ Gold / platinum database. In: musikindustrie.de. Retrieved October 20, 2010 . 
9. ↑ Chart sources album:
   • Visage (album) in the German album charts on OfficialCharts.de
   • Visage (album) in the Austrian charts on AustrianCharts.at
   • Visage (album) in the Swiss charts on Hitparade.ch
   • Visage (Album) in the Official UK Charts (English)
   • Visage (album) on the US Billboard 200
10. ^ Gold / platinum database of audio albums for 1981. In: musikindustrie.de. Retrieved October 22, 2010 . 
11. ↑ ^{a b} Certified Awards Search. In: bpi.co.uk. Retrieved September 14, 2014 . 
12. ↑ Chart sources singles:
    • Visage in the German single charts on OfficialCharts.de
    • Visage in the Austrian hit parade on AustrianCharts.at
    • Visage in the Swiss charts on Hitparade.ch
    • Visage in the Official UK Charts (English)
13. ↑ Visage gold / platinum database. In: musikindustrie.de. Retrieved July 30, 2011 . 
14. ^ Christian Graf and Burghard Rausch: Rockmusiklexikon , p. 790
15. ↑ trouserpress - Visage. In: trouserpress.com. Retrieved October 20, 2010 . 
16. ^ Dan LeRoy: Allmusic - Review by Visage . In: Allmusic . Retrieved October 20, 2010 . 
17. ↑ Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up And Start Again , p. 339
18. ↑ Simon Reynolds: Rip It Up And Start Again , p. 340