Adventures in Modern Recording

Adventures in Modern Recording is the second and final studio album by English new wave group The Buggles, released on 11 November 1981 by Carrere Records. Although the Buggles began as a duo of Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, Adventures in Modern Recording ended up as mostly a Trevor Horn solo effort, as Geoffrey Downes left to join Asia on the day recording was originally scheduled to begin. It contains nine tracks, including a version of a track from the Buggles' collaborative album with Yes, Drama (1980); it was originally named "Into the Lens", but the Buggles rendition is titled "I Am a Camera". A stylistically and sonically varied progressive electronic album, Adventures in Modern Recording depicts Horn perfecting his skill as producer and is described by journalists as a document for how he would produce his later works. It was one of the earliest albums to use the Fairlight CMI, one of the first digital sampling synthesizers.

Upon its release, Adventures in Modern Recording faced mixed reviews and commercially performed poorly in the United Kingdom, failing to make it on the UK Album Charts and its singles only minor hits. It did well in other territories, however, such as in North America and mainland Europe; it reached number 161 on the United States Billboard 200 chart and "Lenny" was a top-20 hit in the Netherlands. Retrospective reviews praised how its sound stacked up to music released in later years. Both "We Can Fly from Here" and "Riding a Tide" (appearing as demos on the 2010 reissue) were re-recorded by Yes (with Horn as producer and Downes on keyboards) for their 2011 studio album Fly from Here.

Background

Geoff Downes in 2014. Although not involved in recording, he has writing, production and keyboard credits on four of Adventures in Modern Recording's tracks (not counting bonus tracks on re-issues).

Anne Dudley in 2014. She played keyboards on "Beatnik" and later would collaborate with Horn for The Art of Noise.

"I Am a Camera" began life as a Buggles demo that turned into a "slightly more overblown" track for their Yes collaboration album Drama (1980); although Buggles bassist and vocalist Trevor Horn appreciated the Yes version's "unadulterated" melody and complex arrangement, he liked the Buggles recording more.^[5]

Horn and keyboardist Geoff Downes started working on demos for a second Buggles album in January 1981; later that year, following various rehearsals, Downes got the opportunity to be in a band with Steve Howe, John Wetton, and Carl Palmer,^[6] and on the day Adventures was to begin recording, Downes left to form that band, which was named Asia. Although Island Records' publisher renegotiated with Downes, Downes' departure gave the publisher a false impression that Horn's career ended, resulting in Island dropping the Buggles; this in turn led to Horn's other industry acquaintances having a similar viewpoint, Horn recalled: "I was astounded and – you know what? – I was fucking angry as well! I hadn’t even got started yet..."^[5] Shortly afterwards, Horn's wife Jill Sinclair made a deal with French label Carrere Records to fund, promote, and release the album.^[5]

While Adventures in Modern Recording was mostly a Trevor Horn solo project, Downes was still involved in the writing and production of "Vermillion Sands", "I Am a Camera" and "Lenny" (where he also handled the drum programming) and played keyboards on "Beatnik". Australian producer Julian Mendelsohn and Gary Langan, who also handled the mixing and recording for The Buggles first album The Age of Plastic (1980), were engineers on Adventures in Modern Recording. Langan, Horn, and Anne Dudley, who is credited as keyboardist on "Beatnik", would later form The Art of Noise. Other note-worthy contributors including Horn's long-time collaborator Luis Jardim (percussion on "Beatnik") and Yes bassist Chris Squire ("sound effects" for the title track).^[5]

Concept and sound

A more left-field record than The Age of Plastic as Horn planned it to be,^[5] Adventures in Modern Recording is a progressive electronic album^[2][4][3] containing both dance cuts and "epic ballads."^[4] It is stylistically and sonically diverse,^[7][3][2] going from "pompous sampled dramatics to wonderfully impish mock-jazz sections," wrote Chris Roberts.^[8] The variety is prevalent on some of the songs themselves, such as "Vermillion Sands" "which makes Bohemian Rhapsody resemble T.V. Eye," summarized Roberts.^[8] Mojo's David Buckley analyzed the track being filled with "electro-pop, harmony vocals, key signature changes, incongruous blasts of synthetic trumpet and boogie woogie piano and swing."^[3] As Joe Stannard of The Quietus described the title track, it "loads synthetic and acoustic instrumentation upon a skullcracking rhythm, creating a mood which is simultaneously dreamlike and hyper-alert."^[9]

The Buggles line-up for Adventures in Modern Recording: Trevor Horn (third to the left) in a tuxedo surrounded by similarly-dressed, Auton-esque dummies.

During the production of Adventures in Modern Recording, Horn also produced for the pop act Dollar; this influenced how he produced his solo album and in turn his works for Dollar. He envisioned the duo as a "technopop orchestra" playing at the Vermillion Sands hotel (the subject of one of the album's tracks). This not only gave Horn the idea of songwriting and production concepts for Adventures, but also how the Buggles' visual aesthetic would change; the group went from, in Ian Peel's words, "two guys in silver suits, one with mullet, the other with funny glasses," to a four-piece led by Horn and backed by three male dummies a la the Autons and members of Kraftwerk, a take on the house band on "Vermillion Sands."^[5]

Horn described producing Adventures in Modern Recording as an training of his production craft, with a process of "just messing around with gear" and "having a silly idea,"^[5] and retrospective pieces have labeled it a document of how he would produce his later works.^{[10][9][11][8]} It was one of the first commercially available albums to feature sounds from the Fairlight CMI, one of the first digital sampling synthesizers,^[12] and also marks one of Horn's earliest times working with sampling techniques he'd later incorporate into records such as Slave To The Rhythm by Grace Jones, Art of Noise's The Seduction of Claude Debussy and Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Welcome to the Pleasuredome.^[5]

Release and promotion

Album and singles

Initially, Carerre only planned three single releases of Adventures in Modern Recording tracks: "I Am a Camera" with a B-side of "Fade Away" in October 1981, the title track with "Blue Nylon" as its B-side in January 1982, and "On TV" with a longer version of "Blue Nylon" later that year.^[5] However, the album's success in continental Europe led to the label releasing "Lenny" and "Beatnik" as singles in 1982.^[5] "On TV" and "Fade Away" garnered an exclusive flexidisc release via Trouser Press magazine, and the title track ran on the seventh issue of SFX Cassette Magazine, where guest critic Richard Skinner applauded Horn's singing and compared it to the works of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.^[5]

Adventures in Modern Recording was first released by Carrere in most European territories on 11 November 1981,^[13] and in the United States on 16 February 1982 by CBS Records.^[14][15] It received two CD re-issues in Japan in the 1990s,^[7] in 1993 by Jimco Records^[16] and on December 15, 1998 by Flavour of Sound with three bonus tracks ("Fade Away," "Blue Nylon," and the 12" version of "I Am a Camera").^[17] On 8 February 2010, Adventures in Modern Recording was re-released by Salvo on CD with the three bonus tracks plus liner notes, rare photos, single cover arts, and previously-unreleased demos, including "Videotheque" which would later be recorded by Dollar, and two parts of "We Can Fly From Here" written for Yes that was performed on the tour for Drama.^[3][18] In 2011, professionally-recorded versions of "We Can Fly From Here" and "Riding a Tide" were done by Yes and released as part of their album Fly From Here (2011).^[19][20]

Commercial reception

Horn with ABC lip-syncing "Lenny" on the Netherlands television show TopPop, the last publicized performance of the Buggles project.^[5]

Horn admitted to being disinterested in Adventures in Modern Recording near the end of production "because I didn’t think there was a single there," and, in his home country, the album's economic performance confirmed that doubt, failing to make an impact.^[5][21] it was unable to enter the UK Albums Chart, and singles of the title track and "On TV" were only minor hits on the singles and airplay charts of UK magazine Record Business.^[22][23][24] However, the album fared better in North America and continental Europe, particularly France, the Netherlands,^[5] and the United States where it was the Buggles' only entry on the country's official Billboard 200 chart, peaking at number 161.^[25] "On TV" was certified gold in Canada for sales of 5,000 units,^[26] and "Lenny" was a top-20 hit in the Netherlands,^[27] particularly reaching number-nine in Holland.^[5]

This led to Horn lip-syncing on the country's TopPop series (with ABC as the backing band)^[5] on a episode aired 10 April 1982.^[28] The performance signaled the end of the Buggles project; as Horn recalled the interview after the performance:

I'll never forget it because the guy said to me, 'well, things are not looking so good for you', and I said 'how do you mean?' And he said 'well, you know, your first record was a big hit now this record is number eleven, so your career is going downhill'. And I said 'well you know what? You see these guys, this is a band called ABC and I’m a producer now I don't really care about this stuff, I'm just doing it to promote the record. And I may be on the skids as an artist but things are looking up in other areas. End of interview. Fuck off.^[5]

Reviews

Yes in 1974. Some reviews unfavorably compared Adventures in Modern Recording to the progressive rock group.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[29]
Record Collector	[10]
Smash Hits	5.5/10[30]

Reviews upon release were mixed.^[31] Smash Hits praised Horn's production and the first five tracks for having "enough strong tunes, witty ideas and funky noises," but generally found the album "much less than the sum of the parts, and Side Two deteriorates into tedious Yes-style pomposity."^[30] A more positive review from The Morning Call also made an unfavorable Yes comparison towards some of the songs, like "Beatnik": "guitarist Horn and keyboardist Downes recapture some of the melancholic frenzy that made 'Video Killed The Radio Star' a good buy. But they've also fallen into the Yes trap of writing pretentious, meaningless lyrics to fit the soaring, grandiose harmonics."^[32] Opined Mike Gardner in Record Mirror, "Instead of an invigorating glimpse into their world of hi-sci techno wizardry, we get a weedy piece of whimsy."^[33]

Pieces on its singles weren't much brighter,^[34] with a Record Mirror review of the title track negatively comparing it to the "yukky strain of studiedly bouncy, vacuous pop" of "Video Killed the Radio Star": "The less said about the coy, conceited rubbish that constitutes their Product, the better."^[35] Smash Hits' review for "On TV," however, noted its ahead-of-the-curve production: "It boasts the biggest snare drum sound known to mankind and is crisp and crystal clear."^[36]

Retrospective reviews were far more enthusiastic, noting how Adventures in Modern Recording's sound has stacked up to music released in later years.^[37][9] AllMusic's Jeri Montesan opined it and The Age of Plastic sounded far better than the "unimaginative" pop of the 1990s,^[29] while an Amazon.com editorial review described Adventures in Modern Recording as "something of a lost classic, with great vocals by Trevor Horn and a sparkling electronic sound that is completely in-step with the prevailing electro mood of the pop charts in 2010."^[38] Roberts claimed that while "it sounds paltry and tinny in places, [Horn's] experiments now dated," "his courage remains audible and impressive" in others.^[8] The Bolton News writer Martin Hutchinson wrote, "The title track and 'Beatnik' are strong openers for the album, and nowhere is Horn's vocals better than on 'On TV' and 'Lenny'."^[39] Stannard called its songwriting "vastly more sophisticated and satisfying" than The Age of Plastic, writing that "the tunes here are smart and memorable enough to kindle the desire for a third Buggles effort."^[9]

Track listing

Personnel

Taken from the liner notes of the 2010 re-issue of Adventures in Modern Recording.^[41]

Charts and certifications

References