Visage – Visage

With apologies to Spandau Ballet, Ultravox, and even Duran Duran, this is the music that best represents the short-lived but always underrated new Romantic Movement. That's fitting, because Visage's frontman, Steve Strange, was the colourfully painted face of the movement, just as this album was its sound. Warming up Kraftwerk's icy Teutonic electronics with a Bowie-esque flair for fashion, Strange and the new romantics created a club land oasis far removed from the drabness of England's early-'80s reality -- and the brutality of the punk response to it. And no one conjured up that Eurodisco fantasyland better than Visage, whose "Fade to Grey" became the anthem of the outlandishly decked-out Blitz Kids congregated at Strange's club nights. With its evocative French female vocals, distant sirens and pulsing layers of synthesizers, "Fade to Grey" is genuinely haunting, the definite high point for Visage and their followers. But the band's self-titled debut is a consistently fine creation, alternating between tunes that share the eerie ambience of "Fade to Grey" ("Mind of a Toy," "Blocks on Blocks") and others that show off a more muscular brand of dance-rock (the title track, filled with thundering electronic tom-tom fills, and the sax-packed instrumental "The Dancer"). Strange and drummer/nightclub partner Rusty Egan had wisely surrounded themselves with top-level talent, primarily drawn from the bands Ultravox and Magazine, and the excellent playing of contributors like guitarists Midge Ure and John McGeoch, bassist Barry Adamson, synthesist Dave Formula, and, especially, electric violinist Billy Currie, all of whom give the album a depth unmatched by most contemporaneous techno-pop. And despite the group's frequently dramatic pose, Strange and his bandmates were hardly humourless; the first single, "Tar," is a witty anti-smoking advertisement, while the Eastwood homage "Malpaso Man" adds some incongruous cowboy twang to the dance beats. Only the closing track, the instrumental "The Steps," is inconsequential -- the rest of Visage proves the new romantics left a legacy that transcends their costumes and makeup. [Note to collectors: The 1997 One Way reissue of the album adds a bonus track, the longer (and far superior) dance mix of "Fade to Grey." Opening with the tune's arresting synth-bass riff, and featuring a extended fade marked by exploding backbeats, it heightens the song's moody atmosphere, and is the way this club classic was meant to be heard].

Visage – 12” Singles

I’m not going to waffle on here about two banging Visage 12” singles as the debut album is coming to the blog in the next month or so (I haven’t decided yet, this is kinda like a trial to gauge interest). If there was ever a band that made hit after hit of electronic music, it has to be Visage. Members coming from the emerging New Romantic movement based around the BLITZ Club in London’s Soho district, with Midge Ure and Rusty Egan who were working with ex-Pistol Glen Matlock in The Rich Kids, Billy Currie on keyboards from Ultravox  and three members of Magazine, John McGeoch (guitar), Dave Formula (keyboards) and Barry Adamson (bass). Stir this talent with Steve Strange fronting the band and knob twiddler extraordinaire Martin Rushant in the studio, the results can only be brilliant. Er, no! Debut single “Tar” was released on Radar Records in September 1979, no one was interested. David Bowie however popped along to BLITZ Club in mid-1980 to ask if Steven and a couple of other regulars would appear in his video for Ashes To Ashes, which helped to propel the New Romantic movement into the mainstream. November 1980 and Visage’s second single “Fade To Grey” was released finally breaking into the UK top twenty early in 1981.