A L P H A V I L L E

1981:
Christmas: very first official appearance of the founding members Marian Gold and Bernhard Lloyd with the 7-headed Nelson Community, a collective of artists, from which a little later ALPHAVILLE will arise.


1982/83 :
Sylvester: under the new band name "Forever Young" and with the new line-up Gold/Lloyd/Mertens a second concert takes place (the last for the next ten years)


1984:
January: The debut-single Big In Japan is published, followed by Sounds Like A Melody and Forever Young. In October the album of the same name is released.

December: Frank Mertens leaves the band. The guitarist and keyboarder Ricky Echolette takes his place. ALPHAVILLE write the Soundtrack of the film "Der Bulle und das Mädchen" and take part at the charity project "Band für Afrika".


1985:
January: Release of the fourth single The Jet Set


1986:
April: Dance With Me is the pre-release of the second album Afternoons In Utopia, produced by Peter Walsh (Scott Walker / Simple Minds) and Steve Thompson (a-ha, Bowie). The CD includes a live-performing-concept, which however never will be realised, because the band decides against live-concerts in order to concentrate for the time being on studio-activities.

In June ALPHAVILLE publish Afternoons together with the single Universal Daddy, in December the single Jerusalem is released. At the same time the ALPHAVILLE-music-project "Soundtraxx for imaginary movies" gets started which triggers off the coming co-operation with Klaus Schulze.


1987:
May: start of the recordings for the third Album The Breathtaking Blue with Klaus Schulze.


1989:
March: The Breathtaking Blue is released. In order to avoid the aesthetics of common videoclips the idea is born to connect the music with a shortcut-film. Nine producers, among them Godrey Reggio ("Koyaanisqatsi"), make a film of the pieces of the album under the program-title "Songlines". The contribution of Christoph and Wolfgang Lauenstein wins the Oscar award in Hollywood.


1992:
June: in the band-owned Lunapark-studio the pre-works for the new, self-produced album Prostitute get started. Marian Gold publishes his first solo-album "So Long Celeste". At the same time the recordings of Prostitute get more and more extensive and time-consuming, so that the release date finally is deferred by more than one and a half years.


1993:
On the basis of an invitation the band decides spontaneously, after 10 years stage-abstinence, to give a concert in Beirut.


1994:
August: Release of the single Fools, followed by the long-expected album Prostitute. The CD is a caleidoscope-like extract of a huge quantity of songmaterial, which arose in the course of the over two years of production work.


1995:
The band betakes itself to South France for starting with the song-writing of SALVATION, the fifth ALPHAVILLE-Album.


1996:
Ricky Echolette leaves ALPHAVILLE. The ALPHAVILLE-tourband is constituted in London. There also the recordings for SALVATION with the producer Andy Richards (Art Of Noise / OMD) take place.


1997:
As a first herald of this co-operation the first single Wishful Thinking is released. In September the second single Flame and the album SALVATION will be released. At the moment the band is in the middle of the preparations of its Europe-tour in autumn.

S A L V A T I O N

The question was often asked, but obviously no-one has ever found real good answers yet: Do androids dream of electronic sheep? ...is live in an artificial intelligence fantasy? ...are feelings pouring through floods of data? ... or - to become more precise - can a computer build it, the sensitive mood, the sound which goes beyond electronic, cold, technoid hammering?

After all these moving, inspired moments, through which Marian Gold and Bernhard Lloyd went in the past month and years, the two heads of ALPHAVILLE have found an answer which is just as simple as extensive: Yes.

And not only that. With their new album SALVATION they hold the best proof in their hands that the medium steps in the background when the message is strong enough. The two adopted Berlin's compose and work all day long by computer, but they succeeded in the trick of producing a profound and intimate mood. SALVATION is more than a proof for that claim. It is the most personal CD, the most sensitive statement that ALPHAVILLE have delivered in the case of Pop up to today.

"The simple, great feelings for me are the central idea of this album", says Keyboarder and Computer- expert Bernd Lloyd. "The whole album has come into being in a for us intensive phase. One could say that the work on it was a sort of therapy. Anyhow, I feel considerably better now than before."

Searching for sense. Finding the self. Re-consciousness of the own origin. Of course a title like SALVATION awakes spontaneous religious associations. But it's not about the form of religion, with is found between dusty book covers. It's about human experiences through which you possibly can cast new views on the world.

When I was the sun and you, you were the moon And there were the stars that helped you to navigate our souls...

Inside Out is the opener of the album. Accompanied by spacious harmonies Marian Golds unmistakable voice invites to a walk on which one live to see stories, "whose leading actors are in search." With an ironical laugh the singer wipes aside, that ALPHAVILLE become entangled in any Awakening-ideas. No, the band still does, what it has established in Germany as a trademark, that is pop-music, and it fortunately finds a gambling way to deal with it - also with big feelings.

Bernd sees in Inside Out an apt example for that: "Marian told me of his problems with the text, what he had planned with it. It is about love and coded messages. About any periodic and astronomical relations. Even a comet occurred in it. Of course, he was in a jam, because he couldn't get all in his messages and asked me, what he should do now. I said: 'Just sing'".

The direct access to the music is what awards SALVATION. After having taken a new way with every previous album took, the band has now come back to its original method of working. No lengthy considerations stood at the start of SALVATION, but the desire of spontaneous experiments, as Marian illustrates: "At the end of 1995 we lent a house in South France and went there together with Ricky Echolette, our companion for many years and keyboarder - without a concrete idea of what would happen then. We built up our machines and knew that we would not leave this place until we had written a whole mountain of new songs."

"For our means it went dramatically fast," resumes Bernd Lloyd. "When I let the whole previous production pass in review, then the difference of the new CD to the previous is, that we actually came back to spontaneity, impulsivety and the instinct which has awarded ALPHAVILLE originally."

Once I was so sure, once I was so blind wonder what you said if you read my mind...

"These are all things out of my diary. The first line of each page," explains Marian to the surrealistic scenarios of Monkey in the Moon: shreds of memory, inexact chains of association. Between dreaming and being awake maybe you see an angel sitting in a car or the devil hanging at a cross. With tired eyes and unsteady hands you write down things that are not understandable for the time being. But the longer you carry them around, the more importance they get." The music also describes such a transformation.

With its calm intro Monkey in the Moon seems to take the thread of Inside Out. But the starting beat has a nervous energy, tends to the foreground and mediates variation. With a perfect contrast to that fragile, falsetto-like song-lines float over it. Nightguard cleaves the poles asunder more distant. The bass-drum beats 'four to the floor' while the keyboard-staccati wipe over it pricky and fast, the opposite pole is again Marians, this time nearly pathetic voice.

...I am so full of fear, may you read a book to me and when the shadows grow, won't you stay with me...

"This wisecracker claimes, Nightguard goes about a dog which he had once. Who shall believe that? Since when dogs are able to read?" This sarcastic comment comes from producer Andy Richards, the arranger and keyboarder of the team of Trevor Horns. While the second production phase of SALVATION in London he has assumed the role of the third man, after Ricky decided at the end of the songwriting to stay with his family in South France. "Andy was more than just a producer. He could apart from his enthusiasm and devotion keep the necessary critical distance to the songs, that we couldn't keep. The work with him always was terrific inspiring", revels a still impressed Marian Gold.

While the pre-production in South France it proved to be a lucky chance, that the result of these sessions in form of demo versions were recorded. These rough outlines really radiate something special, a flair which is carried over to other persons: "They played the demo to me and a couple of weeks later the finished production. I requested them: 'Let me mix the demo.'" The man who says that is Steve Fitzmaurice and the tone-engineer of SALVATION. And the track about that he says that carries the title Control. Marians voice at the start of the songs sounds nearly like a Presley-Clone, who got lost in the widths of digital nets. Keyboard-cascades open up their way crashing through electronic interfaces, for again bounce again stamping bass-drums: YOU GOT TO GET OUT OF CONTROL AGAIN! Bernhard: "It is not about control, it is about losing control."

Wishful Thinking is the first release of the album - pop as pop can be. Fitted out with all quality signs that constitute a typical ALPHAVILLE-single: uptempo beats, keyboardwalls, a melody bristling with barbed hooks and a strange controversy text. Marian to that: "Some maybe will take it to be cynical. For us it is a lovesong, nothing more." One may build his own judgement, how lines like this are to be unterdstood:

... thought I was dying when I realised there's just one chance to survive sometimes I wish that you were dead...

Flame in any case definitely is a lovesong and at the same time one of the essential parts of SALVATION. A pure, romantic balled that connects the tradition of Forever Young. Marian: "I had finished the whole text apart from the start of the refrain. The boys were waiting next door that I finally come and sing the piece. I racked my brain because of this refrain, but nothing fitting came to my mind. In an edge of the room stood such a gas-oven with a little window at the front, and behind it flickered this tiny blue flame..."

Dangerous Places, a oppressive feeling of menace. Supervision-paranoia, created by impenetrable structures of power. Conspiracy whispered catchwords that crawl through cold computer-sounds and marsh-like rhythms. The song spreads a mood that also would have arisen if George Orwell has written a version about the Faust/Mephisto-topic:

I'm gonna make you a deal, you know, I'm your friend I'm gonna make me yours before I make you mine...

Marian finds a lead-over to Soul Messiah: "There always appear the people again, who claim that they know how it's going. It may be that they really know it, but it doesn't have an aim to run after them. God is somewhere there outside and Jesus deep in your soul. But, well, between that rages life." Soul Messiah was the first result of the sessions in France. One can observe the freshness, the energy in the song, which exist since these days in the band. Song-lines overlay each other, increase in mutual competition that runs through the whole song until it breaks off with a question: IS IT MY SOUL?

"soul" surely was one of the most important ingredients for New Horizons, in which Marian plays with double meanings that sound like an encoded résumé - of SALVATION, but also of the time before it.

Once we were running, we knew where we came from we were the music, we heard the call, we were giants after the fall once we were children, once we were so small...

Relations to the past? Pretty sure the text of this ballad is transferable to that what happened to the band after the detonation of 1984. The past has to be mastered, especially, when it gets such dimensions as the early years of ALPHAVILLE. Bernd: "I think, this mastering of the past, for us has longed some years. What resulted, was that we gradually got to be concious of our uniqueness in the German music-scene and because of that developed a self-confidence with whom we stand behind past and present."

Pandora's Lullaby is the end song of SALVATION. It says good-bye to the audience with a dark, orchestral mood, and Marians clear, touching voice tells of being awake and dreams, end and beginning, of worlds, in which androids dream of sheep and suicidal bees keep the darkside of the moon in busy.

... and when the subway brakes to preserve some suicidal bee I stop to breathe for a while - maybe it was me....

"Pandora is one of these pieces that you don't write so often," Marian yet says, "Sometimes half of your life doesn't last for that, sometimes half a night..."