Author: Peter Podbrežnik
Artist: Buggles, The
Label: Island Records
Release: 1980
Length: 47:43
Rating: 4.5/5
British new wave outfit The Buggles etched themselves into music lovers’ hearts for all eternity mostly thanks to the mega-hit “Video Killed the Radio Star”, which in 1981 became the first music video ever aired on the then still brand-new MTV. Just how visionary this short-lived and often misunderstood band was, forever stuck in the shadow of that one hit, only became clear years later.
The idea for the cult band was born when producer, singer, bassist and songwriter Trevor Horn grew more and more frustrated, searching in vain for a band with songs good enough for his ambitious production ideas. So in 1977 he decided to start his own group with keyboardist Geoff Downes and guitarist Bruce Woolley. Horn and Downes already knew each other from before, as members of the backing band of British pop singer Tina Charles, even though they never played on any of her studio records. Their paths split for a while after that gig, but once The Buggles got going they quickly found common ground again. As a bit of trivia, there are two different stories about where the band’s name comes from. According to the first, Horn came up with it because it sounded like the most revolting thing he could think of. According to the second, it was a private joke between him and Downes and a parody of The Beatles.
Their first release, “The Age of Plastic”, was essentially a concept album. Its lyrics dealt mostly with human alienation and loneliness caused by the rapid rise of modern technology (the first personal computer hit the market around that time, among other things). The album title and the cover illustrate this nicely, with the charismatic producer and singer in ashtray-sized glasses looking strangely like an intelligent version of beloved leader Kim Jong Il. The cover is one of the first examples of computer-graphics design, a practice that would become hugely popular for band artwork throughout the entire eighties. So The Buggles weren’t pioneers only on the musical front; they also contributed other artistic ideas that left a major mark on the penultimate decade of the twentieth century.
The Buggles’ sound was shaped largely by the use of synthesizer technology. Downes had been known from the very start for a recognizable keyboard style, which he kept up through the rest of his career with Yes and Asia. Besides an outstanding feel for playing electric piano and crafting tasteful symphonic arrangements, he always had a knack for layering complex synth textures and coaxing out all sorts of interesting sounds. Horn, on the other hand, stood out with by far the most recognizable vocal tone, somewhere halfway between romantic and frenetic. Nobody with the same voice has turned up to this day, even though Horn briefly became a replacement for Jon Anderson (Yes), another singer with a similar, “angelic” vocal.
Anyone who thinks “Video Killed the Radio Star” is the only interesting track on the album would be badly mistaken. It isn’t even the best song on it, since every single composition here is something special. The opening “The Plastic Age”, with its synthetic pulse and aura of mystery, is a hugely appealing opener for this excellent album. The contrast between the playful central motif, thanks to a lively fusion of bouncy rhythm lines and cheeky synth sounds (they sound like they just came off an Atari or Commodore 64 screen), and the female backing vocals in the background could hardly be better. The central synth riff, mixed with robotic sounds, effectively ties Horn’s sarcastic vocal to the prophetic lyrics about the plastic age. Some of Downes’s synth ideas from this track are easy to find all over the eighties, in both synth pop rock and neo prog rock.
Next comes “Video Killed the Radio Star”, the album’s best-known moment. Horn’s lyrics were inspired by a short social satire about a mute boy who, in a world where all musical activity was strictly forbidden, secretly listened to his favorite performer and, out on a walk, ran into an opera singer hiding from repression in the sewers. According to Horn, the song is also a symbolic herald of the arrival of new sound technology and, with it, a new musical era. Atmospherically, it carries a distinct essence of nostalgia, calling to mind the early sixties, when radio still played a key role in building a musician’s career and, with it, their popularity. The vocoder is partly “to blame” for that, warping Horn’s voice to the point where it starts to recall the style of old-school radio hosts and the quality of an early-sixties radio signal.
The intro features an almost classical piano arrangement, after which Horn’s vocal draws the listener into a distinctly cheeky, building rhythm. The peak comes with the entrance of the female backing vocals, arranged by Debie Doss and Linda Jardim. Their help delivers the cult, almost danceable chorus, which radiates both youthful verve and nostalgia for a long-gone romantic era. This forever-classic, which Downes still plays as a member of Asia, announced, on both a symbolic and a practical level, the decline of radio and the triumph of the music video as the central medium for introducing a new artist to the masses.
On “Kid Dynamo” The Buggles show their more aggressive side, thanks to a fast tempo and an energetic mix of sharpened guitar phrases and dramatic harmonies. Horn’s vocal is once again pushed through the vocoder, while Downes conjures up plenty of space-tinged electronic sounds from his synth palette in the background. The lyrics of “I Love You (Miss Robot)” once again reflect the complete alienation of modern man surrounded by modern technology. Keep in mind that the album came out thirty years ago, when there was none of today’s information overload, which makes such messages seem all the more ahead of their time. Here too there’s no shortage of vocoder experiments with robotic sounds coming through. Horn’s voice sounds deliberately ice-cold this time, almost as if he were locked inside a fridge, while the harmonies in the background again tie the central melody together. You could easily say this track is practically the prototype of the synth pop rock typical of the eighties, but with the unique Buggles charm.
“Clean, Clean” is a straightforward pop creation with an easily infectious melody, a hypnotic chorus and plenty of synth pads in the background that lift the atmosphere second by second. The tempo even sounds slightly punky, while Horn’s vocal could hardly be more romantic-nostalgic. The middle section brings a kind of military march, “veiled” by Downes’s Korg and ARP synthesizers. Horn loved singing about synthetic cleanliness, and the aforementioned North Korean beloved leader was always obsessed with it too, which is why practically everyone has to shake his hand wearing gloves.
Thanks to its infectious chorus and refined layering of classical arrangements, “Elstree” is one of the most interesting pieces on the album. The central melody is distinctly melancholic, though Trevor once again couldn’t resist the vocoder, which once more creates an atmosphere of triumphant modern technology. The phenomenal “Astroboy (And the Proles on Parade)” can easily be called the album’s finest creation. In terms of structure and atmosphere you could even talk about progressive rock here, meaning this excellent track wouldn’t have sounded out of place on the Horn/Downes Yes-era album “Drama” (1980). The almost space-rock vibe is built on an outstanding harmony between the romantic chorus, crowned with ethereal harmonies, and hypnotic mellotron pads. Downes also makes use of pentatonic scales here, especially in the closing section, bringing a slight oriental charm to the composition, while the interplay of a dramatic electric piano arrangement and a spirited guitar riff adds a breath of drama.
The closing “Johnny on the Monorail”, the longest track on the album, likewise showcases the band’s many experimental ambitions to great effect. The chorus is once again marked by female harmonies, while the central arrangement comes off best, with Downes weaving in the best of his keyboard treasure chest. The middle section brings an unexpected twist and a slow build-up of atmosphere, led by the female backing vocals, toward the song’s exit.
“The Age of Plastic” is a downright revolutionary album that left a major mark on new wave and synth-pop in the years that followed, while also catapulting the music and production careers of two exceptional talents into orbit, both of whom would go on to play a very important role in popular music over the coming decades. The success of “Video Killed the Radio Star” was so huge that many people still wrongly talk about The Buggles as some kind of one-hit wonders, even though “The Age of Plastic” as an album climbed all the way to number twenty-seven on the UK chart when it came out. The tracks “Living In The Plastic Age”, “Clean Clean” and “Elstree” also did nicely as singles. Horn’s and Downes’s paths split after a brief adventure with Yes. While the legendary keyboardist gave himself over to the supergroup Asia, Horn tried to revive the band that had brought him his biggest success with the album “Adventures in Modern Recording” (1981). It was a solid follow-up to the debut, but it couldn’t repeat its commercial success, so Horn turned instead to production work, where he racked up plenty of high-profile results.
Line-up
Trevor Horn – vocals, bass guitar, guitar
Geoff Downes – keyboards, drums, percussion
Richard James Burgess – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Debi Doss – backing vocals on “Video Killed the Radio Star”
Linda Jardim – backing vocals on “Video Killed the Radio Star”
Bruce Woolley – guitar on “Living in the Plastic Age” and “Video Killed the Radio Star”
Production
The Buggles
Track list
1. The Plastic Age
2. Video Killed the Radio Star
3. Kid Dynamo
4. I Love You (Miss Robot)
5. Clean Clean
6. Elstree
7. Astroboy (And the Proles on Parade)
8. Johnny on the Monorail
