Hear Again: Tyranny (For You).

Twenty years ago the Iron Curtain had been pulled back in Europe, the Berlin Wall had come down, maps were being actively redrawn, the entire world appeared to be shifting, and history itself — it was brazenly declared — was coming to an end. Some even dared argue it had simply reached its natural conclusion; Western liberal democracy had finally vanquished all possible alternatives. How fitting then that a sombre note of sober skepticism should sound from Front 242, one of the bands that perhaps best captured the pervasive paranoid mindset of the last Cold War decade. Not only were they perfectly equipped for the task, having honed their skills in manipulating multimedia in a manner akin to much larger propaganda outfits, but being Belgian also perfectly placed — in a small European state cobbled together like a collage of historical necessity — at the major intersection of European affairs.

"What's the horse on the shore waiting for?", inquires lyricist and main vocalist Jean-Luc De Meyer in the languid album opener Sacrifice, seemingly drawing a parallel between the new order, the (as it turned out) brief period of rejoicing that followed the collapse of the old, with the infamous wooden stratagem the cunning Achaeans unleashed on the Trojans. De Meyer, assuming the guise of a blinded sybil, then laments the loss of the future's predictability. Two decades on, his opening lines on Front 242's fifth album, Tyranny (For You), appear almost prophetic, as our world has indeed changed from half a century of clearly defined lines, locking the world's largest powers in a seemingly static battle, to a place so unpredictable few of us even dare to entertain visions of the future.

Doctor Fukuyama may well have been right about the end of history: he merely faltered on whose specific history was ending and when. Front 242 seem to pitch their tent in the "cyclical" camp, as indicated by the album's centerpiece Gripped By Fear; bringing closure to the so called Atomic Age with the assertion that every tyranny, every regime, every reign sooner or later falls. More often than not defeated by its subjects simply outliving it. But even as Front 242 sounded an "Achtung!" — "beware!" — quite different from the boomer nostalgia peddled by contemporaries U2 later that same year, history appeared to not only have caught up with the unbridled celebrations of free-market liberalism's "victory", but stood ready to repeat itself. Mere days before the release of Tyranny… , the Gulf War — which saw Belgian participation in coalition with 31 other nations — began in earnest.

The brief conclusion of this, the first war to be practically broadcast live to a global television audience, soon had other thinking-persons' pop groups (the Pet Shop Boys among them) reflecting on the stage at which humanity had now arrived, but despite De Meyer's opening lament that his "gift is of no use", Front 242 had (perhaps unwittingly) preempted the coming doomsayers of the 1990s with their last album of the 1980s. Yet Tyranny… is not completely a work of pessimism, as Rhythm of Time, the album's second track and the third and final single to be lifted from it (and in a sense its true opener, if Sacrifice is interpreted as merely an overture), unabashedly declares an unyielding belief in the human spirit.

"We believe in the future of the human race!", sing De Meyer and second vocalist and drummer Richard Jonckheere, making the track simultaneously a response to Boomer apologism as well one of the most positive songs in the Front 242 catalogue. Rather than pointing a finger, seeking to apportion blame, Rhythm of Time provides its own answers ("What's above? New planets to conquer!"), alluding again to the cyclical nature of time, and hinting at environmental issues as potentially being one of the "Achaean surprises" waiting in that suspicious looking wooden horse. The album's second half opens with the first single taken from it, Tragedy (For You), a track that uses a souring romantic relationship as a metaphor for environmentalism.

Such sudden frankness on an issue, reinforced by the unconventional video for Tragedy… directed by Dutch shutterbug and videographer Anton Corbijn, certainly wasn't expected of a band that had previously carefully avoided being explicitly political. But environmentalism could never have been far from the consciousness of musicians who, as legend has it, had once rehearsed in the garage of future environment minister of the Brussels-Capital Region Évelyne Huytebroeck — who also encouraged her friend and band member Richard Jonckheere's foray into local politics for the francophone green party Ecolo in the mid-1990s, as well as his candidacy in the Belgian general elections in 2007. Fittingly, it's future green-politician Jonkcheere that plays the lead in the Tragedy… video, alongside actress Maja van den Broecke.

Before the album proper is over, De Meyer's lyrics also identify spiritual, personal matters as another area of concern, with various systems of belief pouring in to fill the void left by "discredited" ideologies. (Though they may also be personal reflections on De Meyer's own exhaustion with and within the band.) Spiritualism as well as the murkier side of human mentality are identified as further "Achaeans" haunting the future's shores in the album's closer Soul Manager — perhaps more so in The Untold, one of the most distressing and menacing tracks recorded by Front 242 despite (or, perhaps, precisely because of) its unhurried pace and sparse arrangement. Both tracks reveal a band increasingly confident with the process of producing and mixing complex arrangements, the use of samples more subtle in their sourcing yet more deliberate in application.

Across the whole album the band's music moves away from being mainly driven by synthesisers to being dominated by samplers and digital effects processors in particular, attaining a vast, almost cavernous soundscape with percussive elements often far from their "traditional" positions in the mix. Indicating the direction the band would pursue in the future, Front 242 achieve an immersive listening experience on Tyranny… , highly conducive to being enjoyed via headphones but unfortunately not one that plays well on low-end systems with poor stereo separation. Tyranny… is also a culmination, a bookend of sorts, incorporating nearly all the themes, tropes, and methods Front 242 developed and utilised over the preceding decade.

Among these the most obvious are the image of a distorted, twisted visage on the sleeve (in this instance that of keyboardist Patrick Codenys immersed in in a plexiglass tank), echoing practically every original sleeve previously conceived by the band, and the collusion of sports with politics — tracing the Ur-Fascist urge to celebrate physical activity as more "noble" and "pure" than the "abstract", suspect sphere of intellectual endeavours — as well as the correlation between athleticism and dance. But Front 242 merely toy with loaded imagery and themes on Tyranny…, devising a series of pictograms (representing "Man", "Globe", "Struggle", "Time", "Target", and "Speed") to rival their well-established logo, even engaging in every tyrant's favourite tool of confusion by naming a track Moldavia for no other reason than to lend it a title wholly unconnected with its contents — and thereby draw attention to the very process of nomenclature.

Although the band had forsaken their "urban warrior" wardrobe for smart sports gear in the accompanying promotional material (having band members active in handball, road cycling, and squash, undoubtedly helpful) — created with long-time collaborator photographer Alain Verbaert — they maintained their "in-house" approach, manipulating the sleeve artwork on Commodore AMIGA computers (no doubt to the delight of the then flourishing AMIGA demo community). Creating every aspect of their art themselves, from music to visuals, with only the odd collaborator brought in from "outside" not only allowed the band complete control of their vision but also strengthened the impression of Front 242 as multimedia "terrorist cell", engaging in public consciousness manipulation similar to some of the era's much more powerful political, mass-media, and promotional entities.

The continuous emphasis on energy and movement, the athleticism inherent in dance and club music also hinted at where the band were heading next — at least musically. As with most of their previous albums, on Tyranny… Front 242 once again included different interpretations of the same piece of music, with Moldavia and Neurobashing essentially being two versions of the same track. Though this time the possibilities digital music production offered to deconstruct and reconstruct a track in perpetuity, echoing the constant reworking, "remixing", and turntablism which had began to permeate every dance club at the time of the album's release, seemed to preoccupy the band far more than before.

Not satisfied with the two variations included on the album, Front 242 also released a "suite" of four further permutations of Moldavia on the accompanying Mixed by Fear EP, under the title Dance Soundtrack Music: This World Must Be Destroyed (with a further two "work in progress", Beta-versions appearing on the North American Gripped By Fear promo CD). Similarly, Tragedy… was remixed into Neurodancer (a title, as most correctly assumed, inspired by William Gibson's Neuromancer) and Punish Your Machine — the latter version, assuming a life of its own, becoming an audience favourite in performance. A further experiment in seemingly endless dilution is the album track Trigger 2 (Anatomy of a Shot), which appeared ahead of the album on the Tragedy… single in an alternative version dubbed Trigger 3, and as one of two "hidden" bonus tracks on the CD editions of Tyranny… (a version generally assumed to be Trigger 1).

While European editions of the album were released through Play It Again Sam subsidiary Red Rhino Europe (and their various intermediaries: Globus in Czechoslovakia, Nuevos Medios in Spain, Polydor in France, SPV in the rest of Europe), the Japanese editions on Alfa, the North and South American editions were released by Sony subsidiary Epic. The American major's gamble, signing the Belgians in the wake of their 1988 "breakthrough" hit Headhunter, paid off for label and band alike: within a month of its release Tyranny… sold in excess of 135,000 copies in the USA alone. It became Front 242's highest charting album in North America, despite it and its accompanying singles receiving very little airplay, charting at #95 and remaining on the billboard for 13 weeks. Both Tragedy… and Rhythm of Time reached #11 on the dance singles chart (higher than Headhunter, which only reached #13), with the latter even being included in the film Single White Female the following year. The moderate commercial success combined with the backing of a major label more importantly allowed the band the stage their most elaborate and extensive tour to date, with 76 concerts performed over seven months in Europe and North America.

Though formally known as the Tyranny Tour, it was quickly dubbed "la tournée de la pyramid à hélice" — "the tour of the propeller pyramid" — for the most prominent feature of the stage set designed by Jean-Luc De Meyer's younger brother Marc. An established artist in his own right, De Meyer the younger had devised a flexible set of 52 wood panels mounted on an aluminum framework, whose various podiums and structures could be adapted to the suit numerous stages differently. Decorated by Marc in oil, polyurethane, and latex to resemble surfaces of antique bronze and oxidized copper, the set was dominated by the infamous "exhaust-fan" structure that wouldn't have been out of place in the finale of Blade Runner. It was the largest investment Front 242 had made in lighting and scenography until then, and perhaps the clearest evidence of the band's ability to finally approach promotors of their own accord rather simply being "invited over" or to "open up" for other acts.

Having established their tyranny not only over their machines (as suggested by the aforementioned Punish Your Machine), but also over their domain, their particular method of producing music, Front 242 consolidated their strengths on Tyranny (For You). With four of the six main songs on the album being constructed around similar long accent leitmotifs embellished by various ostinait and numerous percussive elements, it's easy to suggest that the band really wasn't breaking much new ground and that in some ways the album was Front 242's swan song. As purveyors of multimedia collages, picking through the massmedia detritus collecting at the crossroads they inhabited, Front 242 were at one point a quintessential Cold War pop group. Capturing the zeitgeist with some of the same tools and methods employed by the era's prevalent powers, skillfully manipulating sounds and images, exploiting the fears and anxieties of their audience.

With the old divisions gone, the besieged mentality seemingly outdated, and the whole continent (if not the entire world) suddenly turning into one massive love-parade techno-party, the "imperial phase" of Front 242 appeared to be over. Even the band themselves admitted at the time that Tyranny…, collating and compounding a decade's worth of Front 242 endeavours, was a tad "nombrilique" — "navel-gazing" — at times. Yet it presents the techniques honed by Front 242 during the 1980s at their peak. As the "annual reports" of Throbbing Gristle, the progenitors of industrial music and an influence on Front 242 (and whose Peter Christopherson (1955 - 2010) directed the Rhythm of Time video), Tyranny… is a conclusive report on a decade that saw the end of certain types of hegemonies, and hints of others waiting to rise — just as the sneaky Achaeans patiently did inside their wooden horse.

Hear Again: Happiness.

The Beloved's commercial breakthrough album, released twenty years ago, opens with a massive shout-out that ostensibly doubles as the band's manifesto. In his pleasant, relaxed tenor, vocalist and main composer Jonathan Marsh namechecks some of his influences, contrasting them with somewhat dubious characters according to a loosely defined classification of "saints and sinners" — starting from the top with saints Peter and Paul.

There's the average, acceptable face of British comedy, duo Tommy Cannon and Bobby Ball, contrasted with the far more extravagant Barry Humphries — best known for his alter ego Dame Edna Everage. (Despite their differences both acts could be described as contrarian conservatives, and perhaps therefore beloved of Middle England in particular.) There's television characters ranging from Rainbow's Zippy and Bungle, Fred Flintstone, Peanuts' Charlie Brown, to Mork & Mindy, Billy Corkhill (Marsh's favourite on Brookside), and comedian Leslie Crowther — best known for hosting the British version of The Price Is Right (hence Marsh's invitation to "come on down!").

There's also fellow musicians and musical idols: Little Richard, Charlie Parker (one of Beloved guitarist Steven Waddington's musical heroes), The Supremes ("Mary Wilson, Di, and Flo"), André Previn and the London Symphonic Orchestra, Inner City's Paris Grey, as well as Kym Mazelle — who also provides a quite unusual backing vocal cameo. There's renowned writers Salman Rushdie and Jean-Paul Sartre, contrasted with wannabe writer (and friend of the aforementioned Barry Humphries) Jeffrey Archer.

Fictional characters too: Private Eye's mythical MP Sir Bufton Tufton, Dicken's Little Nell, Dahl's Willy Wonka, and William Tell (the last two brought together as chocolate invariably evoked Switzerland in Marsh's mind). There's LBC Radio's phone-in host Brian Hayes (whom Marsh once called on air), Desmond Tutu, and Vince Hilaire, one of the first established black footballers in Britian, whom Marsh idolised during his tenure with Crystal Palace FC. There's also props to friends of the band ("Little Neepsie, Chris, and Do"), and Marsh's bandmate Waddington and his girlfriend ("Steve and Claire") — the latter providing a suitable rhyme for the inclusion of Fred Astaire.

Hello also contains musical references to some of The Beloved's influences, most evidently The Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil, with flippant sounds thrown in à la George Martin's antics with The Beatles (and prior to them, The Goon Show), including an alleged sample of Marsh breaking wind. Clearly, this lighthearted breakdown of "good and bad" — without actually clarifying which the band considers which — wasn't intended to be taken more seriously than a regular "Cheers, mate! We're The Beloved."

Originally a trio named The Journey Through, consisting of drummer and synth popper Jon Marsh on guitar, bassist Tim Havard, and drummer Guy Gausden, The Beloved became a quartet when Cambridge math grad and guitarist Steve Waddington joined in the fall of 1984, allowing Marsh to step up as lead vocalist. Legendary DJ John Peel was sufficiently taken with their demos to record two sessions with the band (broadcast on January 8 and October 13, 1985) but even such illustrious endorsement didn't guarantee immediate success.

One of two bands signed to independent label Flim Flam in their home borough Camberwell, The Beloved supported New Order (a band whom they were highly influenced by) and released a string of singles to moderate success in the UK alternative chart, all of which failed to dent its mainstream equivalent. From these recordings, (largely) compiled on the band's first album, Where It Is, released in October 1987, Forever Dancing brought The Beloved further notoriety by being included on the soundtrack to director Stephen Frears' (of My Beautiful Launderette fame) social realist drama Sammy and Rosie Get Laid — for which the band received the princely sum of £30.

Despite sounding as if forever unfinished, the sparse Forever Dancing caught on in US clubs, prompting Marsh to visit New York City in search of a major label deal. While failing to secure the dreamt-of contract, he was exposed to the burgeoning house music scene, and arrived back in the UK just in time to experience the Second Summer of Love in its cradle. By the time The Beloved emerged from the psychedelics infused parties (particularly Jenni and Danny Rampling's Shoom) in the fall of 1988, they were a duo — with Havard and Gausden basically replaced by machines.

Another two unsuccessful singles followed, Loving Feeling in October 1988, and Your Love Takes Me Higher in January 1989 — the latter barely scraping into the UK top 100. Essentially the first single from Happiness (the band's second album to be released, though their third to be recorded), Your Love Takes Me Higher fared better upon reissue, breaking into the UK top 40 in March 1990, while a considerably reworked and extended version (the almost eleven minutes long "Calyx of Isis Mix", likely deriving its name from a Pat Califia story) reached #9 in the US dance chart.

But it was the husky, trippy, ambient house-inflected The Sun Rising, released in October 1989, landing in the UK top 30 (the first of several dance recordings utilising a sample of Gothic Voices's performing Hildegard of Bingen's O Euchari), followed by Hello in January 1990, reaching #19 in the UK and #4 in the US dance charts, that finally brought The Beloved mainstream success — propelling Happiness to #14 into the UK album chart (#154 in the US), selling some 100,000 copies in the first four weeks of release.

Though brimming with the prerequisite electronic piano chords, and the various Roland gadgets (the TR-808 and TR-909 Rhythm Composers, the TB-303 Bass Line) that lent house its unmistakable sound, The Beloved hadn't completely abandoned their indie rock roots on Happiness. Its closing track, Found, wouldn't have been entirely out of place on albums by contemporaries like Happy Mondays, Primal Scream, The Stone Roses, or even Flowered Up, successfully combining rock with dance culture, while Don't You Worry and the particularly buoyant I Love You More could quite easily fit in the New Order or Pet Shop Boys catalogues. (The particularly persistent comparison to New Order furthered by that band's manager, Rob Gretton, being mentioned in Happiness' sleeve credits.)

Though reconstituted as a studio-based duo, The Beloved nevertheless relied on the contributions of several seasoned session musicians to complete the album: strings by Gavyn Wright (who appeared on the The's Mind Bomb the previous year) and former Electric Light Orchestra member Wilfred Gibson (who'd go on to perform with, among others, Hothouse Flowers, Oasis, and Goldfrapp); percussion by former Haircut One Hundred drummer (and The Beloved's A&R man at the time) Marc Fox; backing vocal by among others Dee Lewis, and former Amazulu guitarist Margo Sagov. With the exception of a couple of tracks, Happiness was the first album produced by Martyn Phillips, who'd later produce recordings by — among others — Erasure and Cause & Effect.

Despite striving to straddle the divide between working class dance culture and the more esoteric alternative rock of middle class college kids, The Beloved's intellectual bent shone through in their lyrics. Few working class ballads lament the inability to "unfathom" a beloved (as does Time After Time), and while none of the album's tracks matches the band's 1986 anti-tory single This Means War, there's still allusions to being "strong collectively" (in Don't You Worry) as well as hints at the rigid nature of reactionaries in the seemingly flippant Hello ("Blue is blue / and always will be").

Ironically, for an album that more than lives up to it's title, Happiness represented the end of Marsh's and Waddington's creative partnership. By the time the non-album single It's Alright Now languished in the UK top 50 during November 1990, the two had all but gone their separate ways; Waddington recording sessions with Steve Hillage's System 7, Marsh adding his particular brand of joy to remixes for Boy George's E-Zee Possee, Depeche Mode, and Erasure. Yet, It's Alright Now also hinted at The Beloved's future trademark sound, once Marsh had convinced his wife Helena to join, and the band truly became a duo of the beloved.

The album's surprisingly dull outer sleeve contains an inner that can barely contain its explosion of colours — both designed by the inimitable graphic artist Bob Linney, who'd provide The Beloved with a visual identity far removed from the inauspicious sleeves of their previous album and singles. However, despite the dismal first impression one may garner from the sleeve, Happiness is an album bursting with joy, love, hope, and bliss; an unbridled record of how exactly The Beloved felt at the time.

Hear Again: Quiet Life.

The undulating arpeggiated synth hook counterpointing the organ, the rolling snare crescendo leading into a thunderous kick, introducing spare percussion; the roving bass motif accentuated by muted than fully sounding guitar of the opening track on Japan's third album, combine to announce an almost complete metamorphosis. As adolescents attempting to prove they could competently compose and perform their own music — a singular blend of funk, progressive and glam rock — their first two albums were straightforward, no-nonsense affairs as far as production was concerned. On Quiet Life, released thirty years ago, the band suddenly sounded like adults who'd just discovered their own, true voice.

It was to be Japan's last album for Hansa (who released the band's recordings through their collaboration with Ariola in North America and the UK). The German label — though owners of the prominent studio in West Berlin where David Bowie partially recorded his "Berlin Trilogy" — was primarily concerned with releasing schlager and disco recordings by the likes of Amii Stewart, Boney M, and Giorgio Moroder. Hansa had signed Japan as part of their 1977 venture into the UK market, and struggled with marketing the band since. Despite Japan seemingly on the cusp of becoming marginally fashionable in Europe, dismal sales of Quiet Life everywhere except Japan (the island nation) were all the incentive Hansa needed for cutting their losses. (In the nation for which the band was whimsically named, they were quite successful and remained with JVC's Victor label throughout their career.)

Critical reception was mostly negative, likely contributing to the album barely scraping into the UK top 80, dismissing Japan as a garden-variety Roxy Music. Curiously though, that band's next album, Flesh + Blood, released some six months after Quiet Life, sounded surprisingly derivative of Japan. If anything, Japan could be accused of having created the amalgam of dandy debonair rock, funk, and electronic pop that Roxy, Bowie, T. Rex et al had inspired — and which later was copied by bands with much more mainstream success.

However, the comparison wasn't entirely unfair, given that Quiet Life was produced by John Punter, co-producer of one and engineer of two Roxy Music albums, as well as that band's vocalist and principal composer Bryan Ferry's first two solo efforts. Hansa had attempted to pair Japan up with their hot producer du jour, Girogio Moroder, but the resulting single (Life in Tokyo) merely convinced everyone involved of the poor fit. The comparison could've been even more unfavourable, had Japan got their wish and engaged Chris Thomas — who'd worked with Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, and subsequently helped unleash the Sex Pistols on an unsuspecting audience. But Thomas pointed to Punter instead. With Punter unavailable at the time, the band set about recording on their own in the meantime, producing a version of Lou Reed's All Tomorrow's Parties — included on Quiet Life in an alternative version, remixed by Punter.

Eventually free from commitments, Punter brought a sophistication to Japan's increasingly eclectic soundscape, expertly shaping its complex layers, processing David Sylvian's vocals to much greater extent than before. Combined with the remarkable growth in the band members' proficiencies, as well as their confidence, the resulting album is one dominated by synthesisers and saxophones, with Mick Karn's fretless bass emerging as a lead instrument — particularly on In Vogue — and Rob Dean's masterly guitar firmly relegated to a backing role, providing slick fills, EBow drones and recurring solos. Most startling is the change of Sylvian's vocal style, from a whiny rock howl to an affected croon — which, frankly, is the only aspect of Quiet Life that occasionally sounds contrived.

In yet another parallel to Roxy Music the orchestral arrangements were provided by Ann Odell, who also scored three of Bryan Ferry's solo albums. Closely following Karn's fluid, languidly uncoiling bass lines, the strings — performed by the Martyn Ford Orchestra — and Karn's elegant woodwind arrangements considerably expanded Japan's compositional style, with Fall In Love With Me practically the sole reminder of their previous, more coarse fusion of rock and funk. A contrasting example is Halloween, the track that rips open the album's second side. Another inimitable, smart bass line vies for the melody with the sax, over a backing of slow guitar strums with quick fills, and soaring — practically roaring — synths. With this track, Japan established a template for the next wave of "new romantic" pop and rock that would dominate the popular charts during the following years.

Why the band's management and label didn't consider Halloween - or even the slightly more angular yet measured Alien - for a single is difficult to grasp in hindsight. But mainstream labels (and managers) are frequently reticent to take chances on pioneering musical efforts, and much more comfortable encouraging relentless re-recordings of proven hits. Hence in Europe, the album was promoted by a competent yet unengaged cover of Al Cleveland's and Smokey Robinson's I Second That Emotion, a million-selling hit for The Miracles in 1967.

That said, the slick version of All Tomorrow's Parties, ultimately points toward the band's true sources of inspiration. Despite the superficial, Eurocentric dandyism with which Japan came to be associated, the band was far more inspired by the alternative New York scene of the late sixties and early seventies than anyone suspected at the time — something perfectly evident to anyone perceptive enough to discern David Sylvian's attempts to emulate the look of Andy Warhol.

Japan's version of All Tomorrow's Parties is also notable for containing the only appearance of Mick Karn's violin in the band's back catalogue. Despite the similarity of a violin's neck to that of a fretless bass (of which Karn is an undisputed master) he'd spent two years of elementary school vainly trying to master the instrument, before moving on to the bassoon. The harsh scratches heard on Quiet Life perhaps a tad more cathartic than anyone suspected.

A touch of Europe had previously been present in Sylvian's lyrics, but only began to seep into Japan's music on their second album, 1978's Obscure Alternatives — particularly in that album's closer, The Tenant. An instrumental inspired by Roman Polański's 1976 film Le locataire, it revolved around a minimal motif somewhat reminiscent of modernist Érik Satie. This seeming fascination with Satie developed a step further on Quiet Life with Despair, a largely instrumental track also indebted to the wistful compositions of Ryūichi Sakamoto. Its brief French lyric — more English than French in its description of affected "artistes" — likely another nod toward Roxy Music, who "legitimised" British working class lads striking out of their monolingual culture in favour of a pan-European, cosmopolitan identity with their 1973 recording A Song for Europe.

The album's lyrics generally point to Roxy's Bryan Ferry as an influence, with their brief remarks on weather dispersed among various allusions to impending withdrawal into obscurity — a possibility which, despite Japan's success in Japan (the island nation), loomed large on the band's horizon practically throughout their entire career together. In fact, the overarching theme on Quiet Life seems to be one of slipping back into ordinary life, merely being "one of the boys again", its "Trans-European" refugees drifting across a backdrop of urban (Amsterdam, Berlin, New York) as well as distant, desolate destinations (Siberia, Texas) rather than locales traditionally considered tropic, exotic, and romantic.

Though allegedly conceived as a travelogue, Quiet Life is more a record of migration than tourism, the lyrics mostly concerned with David Sylvian's personal development and change of heart. Having already secured complete official authorship of the band's collective output (a move greatly encouraged by the band's management), despite the fact that his basic compositions relied heavily on arrangements created by the band — on Quiet Life particularly Richard Barbieri's imaginative use of synthesisers, and the rhythm tracks laid down by Mick Karn with drummer Steve Jansen — Sylvian's emergence as Japan's focal point was made crystal clear on the album's sleeve.

“... you're one of the boys again,

but is that all you want to be?

Now that you feel the weather,

was it all in vain?

Now that we're together,

we seem so alien.”

Fin Costello's portraits of the band, shot through a pane of clear glass as though outside looking in, not only strengthen the notion of dispossessed outsiders, languishing behind an invisible barrier, but also seem to suggest a crackling in the band's previously unified line-up. Having appeared alongside each other on their two previous albums, Sylvian has the front of Quiet Life to himself while Mick Karn, his former close friend and co-founder of the band, is relegated to the back. The original gatefold sleeve placed the remaining trio in the middle, almost symbolically between the increasingly antagonistic antipodes. (Later single sleeve re-issues of the album dispensed with the image of Barbieri, Dean, and Jansen altogether.)

With the exception of All Tomorrow's Parties, the album was recorded at legendary producer and Beatles éminence grise George Martin's and his partner John Burgess' AIR studios, which at the time still occupied their central London location on Oxford Circus. There, Japan rubbed shoulders with the likes of Michael Jackson, Elton John, Kate Bush, and Paul McCartney - the latter two of whom eavesdropped at the door to find out what the south London quintet was up to.

Among the tracks recorded at the time, that didn't make it onto the final version of the album, European Son (related to the Velvet Underground track in title only) and the instrumental A Foreign Place are particularly worth tracking down. The former, composed in 1978 and apparently inspired by the band's first visit to North America, at one point supposedly considered as a title track for the album (it's lyric containing the first mention of a "quiet life"). The latter a precursor of the fascination with "Oriental" sounds that would soon flourish not only among the recordings of Japan's followers and imitators, but also some of the artists who inspired the band — like Roxy Music and David Bowie.

Once Japan had become the toast of the town, Hansa likely recognised their mistake in letting the band go and attempted to recuperate their losses be re-releasing a string of singles (and a compilation, Assemblage) with which the band appeared to have little involvement. A re-issued Quiet Life became Japan's first UK top 20 single, reaching #19 in October 1981; an alternative version of European Son reached #31 in January 1982; I Second That Emotion reached #9 in July 1982; while yet another alternative version of All Tomorrow's Parties was issued as Japan's last single, reaching #38 in March 1983 — some three months after the band had officially performed together for the last time. The Quiet Life album itself was eventually certified "Gold" in March 1984, having sold in excess of 100,000 copies in the UK alone.

Mostly influenced by David Bowie, the Velvet Underground, and the New York Dolls, Japan had been hopelessly at odds with the fads raging in Britain. Quiet Life positioned them ahead of the curve, serving as a major influence on the emerging pop bands of the time. Duran Duran in particular, having unsuccessfully lobbied for a member of Japan to produce their 1981 debut, interpolated large chunks of Quiet Life on their 1982 album Rio — most notably on that album's title track. Though the running order of Quiet Life may at one point have been quite different, the eight tracks ultimately included, bookended by the title track and the resplendent orchestral ballad The Other Side of Life, provides a measured, dynamic experience — regardless of novelty — given what could've been a very quiet and languid album indeed.

With additional research by Mathias Luthi.