Systems of Romance
	Produced by Ultravox, Connie Plank, Dave Hutchins
	Released on September 1978
	no chart information
	Find it at GEMM
AN-7069 cover [high resolution scan]

T he Rolling Stone Guide could dismiss an entire career with one sentence. I always envied the awesome power of that. One line in particular stands out: For technocrats and energy brats. I forget who that was about, but I admired how it so neatly fenced in a very large number of us. Wasn’t every synthesizer band preaching technocracy? And these glammed-up kids who wore their Roxy Music and David Bowie affectations on their sleeves, sartorial and sullen, weren’t punks but poseurs. Gary Numan, Icehouse, OMD, Japan: technocrats and energy brats. Which didn’t preclude them from making some excellent, eye-opening music. What they did was take the intellectual and artistic advances of the German electronic movement (Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk) and apply it to the human condition. It was romantic youth rejecting a dispassionate world with even deeper dispassion. It was a parable for modernism that showed nature and furniture, self and other were equally valid reference points in a world where personal identity could be easily lost. But mostly it was music that spoke to a neu (and neutered) generation. Rock and roll rattled the status quo, but Ultravox rejected experience altogether. “Just For A Moment,” “Dislocation,” “Quiet Men” and “Maximum Acceleration” were a new breed of rock song that spoke not to the invincibility of youth but to the invisibility of youth. As a kid who wanted nothing more than to be invisible, Systems of Romance spoke to me in a way that few albums did. I think everybody should listen to this, if just for a moment.

AN-7069 back cover	AN-7069 lyric sleeve

TRACK LISTING

1. SLOW MOTION    3:21
2. I CAN'T STAY LONG    4:13
3. SOMEONE ELSES CLOTHES    4:19
4. BLUE LIGHT    3:04
5. SOME OF THEM    2:26
6. QUIET MEN    4:03
7. DISLOCATION    2:47
8. MAXIMUM ACCELERATION    3:49
9. WHEN YOU WALK THROUGH ME    4:10
10. JUST FOR A MOMENT    3:03
    
    CD reissue bonus tracks
    
11. CROSS FADE
12. QUIET MEN
    
    All songs written by Ultravox

CREDITS

WARREN CANN -- drums, rhythm machine, voice
CHRIS CROSS -- synthesizer, voice
BILLY CURRIE -- keyboards, violin
JOHN FOXX -- voice, sleeve concept
ROBIN SIMON -- guitar, voice
Connie Plank -- engineer
Dave Hutchins -- engineer
Adrian Boot -- group photography

return to ULTRAVOX discography

For more discographies visit...

© 2007 Connolly & Company. All rights reserved.