Orchestral Manoeuvres.

Jakub over on the excellent ISO50 blog just posted about the music his mom would play when he was young and how it has stayed with him all these years later. It’s funny that I read it just a day after reading about the new OMD release coming out in September. OMD’s “Electricity” is one of the first songs I can remember hearing my dad play and liking when I was very young (it was released in May 1979 as Margaret Thatcher became prime minister of Britain and I was a 5-year-old living in the Southern California suburbs). Since he could see that I liked it, he made sure from then on that I was always up-to-date with OMD – even going so far as trying to convince me years afterward that their later work was also brilliant.

I’m not sure what about their music I latched onto specifically, but I did stay a faithful fan for longer than was probably justified. I actually liked (and still do, from a distance) “Dazzle Ships,” their famous career-destroying experiment. It’s always been clear, though, that after 1984’s “Junk Culture” (if you’re a fan of superb vinyl pressings, check out the original UK pressing with the super-glossy Saville-designed sleeve and the extra one-sided 7″) things changed. They continued to be great songwriters, but things felt a lot less interesting as they adopted a sound that was more commercially acceptable.

Now, in 2010, the “classic” lineup has reunited, recorded a new album, and re-teamed with Peter Saville . Their website has me intrigued and Saville looks in top-form with his updated “vintage” OMD look. I look forward to hearing the actual album, though it’s been a long, long time since I have actively listened to their music regularly. Good luck to them, regardless. I certainly got a lot out of their music in my early days.

Also, if you only click on one thing from this post, make it the video below, which includes a typically perfect interview with Factory Records (or, if you dare) founder Tony Wilson (the Wilson interview starts at about the 4:33 mark).