Department of Records
The Onion A.V. Club this week provided an unexpected little tribute to Dazzle Ships, the 1983 LP by Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark. Aaah, OMD. I bought this album back in ‘85 or ‘86, on vinyl. I was a fan of the group’s Junk Culture and Crush and was curious about their earlier work. The LP had a neat fold-out cover with holes punched in the striking green/grey design; the import even had a little insert advertising various Virgin products I’d never heard of (back then even the U.K. seemed exotic as any other far-off place). The music inside proved to be both scary and gorgeous, although now the only tunes I can remember were “Genetic Engineering” and the one with cleverly overlapping time code announcements. To a sheltered teen with no prior knowledge of edgier artists like Kraftwerk or Joy Division, it was pretty heady stuff.
