Forever Young Deluxe Torrent

Download Alphaville - Forever Young (Super Deluxe) (Remaster) (2019) FLAC DJ torrent for free, HD Full Movie Streaming Also Available in Limetorrents.

Audiophiles are a strange breed: here are a bunch of folk who’ll happily fork out a week’s wages for power cables that provide “clean electricity” to their CD player, but refuse to part with a penny for any album they consider to be mastered in a sub-par way.We can’t help but see their point of view (about the albums, not the power cables): today’s pop music tends to be mastered to sound “loud” even when it’s being played at low volumes – a compressed dynamic range means that there’s not much difference in decibels between the quiet and loud parts of the music. Listening to these albums through high quality audio gear can be an horrific assault on the lugholes, which is why audiophiles seek out albums that have been mastered with a wider dynamic range.That doesn’t mean you have to resort to slapping some leather waistcoast-wearing, ponytail-sporting Austrian jazz fiddler’s latest opus onto your beloved turntable. Thankfully, a handful of today’s artists are still committed to well-mastered, exquisitely produced recordings and that, along with a plentiful supply of older albums that were either originally mastered well or have since been remastered, means there’s plenty of fantastic music to listen to.

And here are some of our favourites.Reviews by Stephen Graves, Marc McLaren, Tom Wiggins and Sam Kieldsen. Now over 20 years old, this seminal debut album from Edinburgh brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin still sounds gloriously skewed, fresh and future-facing – a piece of pioneering electronica that’s more interested in making you sit up and listen than making you stand up and shake your booty.Gleaming digital, crisp, crunchy out-of-step rhythms, lush synths and the odd, judicious vocal sample conjure up a textural, atmospheric audio-scape that demands to be listened to on capable equipment – please, anything but a smartphone speaker. David Bowie’s 25th and final studio album, released two days before his death, Blackstar feels like a knowing final nod to the world, a parting gift for fans – and Bowie at some of his inventive best. Most 69 year-old rock legends would have been content with releasing a suite of comfy, head-nodding numbers to end their career, but that wasn’t Bowie’s way: Blackstar is all spiky art-rock with whiffs of jazz and electronica, a galaxy away from easy listening. But with Bowie’s longtime producer Tony Visconti at the controls, it’s an impeccable joy for the ears.At a brisk 41 minutes in length and consisting of just seven tracks, this isn’t an album that outstays its welcome – just like its maker, it departs leaving you feeling like there could have been yet greater things to come.

Released in 2018 but recorded 45 years earlier, this exceptional album perfectly captures the atmosphere, warmth and raucous energy of Young’s live show with The Santa Monica Flyers – the inaugural gig at now-legendary LA nightclub The Roxy. Despite its critical success, the studio version of Tonight’s The Night is among Young’s thornier records, consisting mostly of loose, off-kilter one-take recordings and festering with end-of-the-hippie-dream cynicism; death, drugs and darkness abound.

Harvest it most certainly is not. But here, presented in the concert context with jokey stage banter intact, those same songs (and a couple of others) take on a livelier, more vibrant tone – this is a party, not a wake for departed friends.Make sure to listen to it in 24-bit/192kHz master quality (should your bandwidth be broad enough) at Young’s online archive, which currently features almost his entire catalogue, for free, in high resolution. Originally released in 1994 but now available remastered in a “definitive edition”, Nine Inch Nails’ second studio album is an alt-rock trailblazer, blending heavy metal, ambient, industrial rock and techno elements into a textural tour-de-force that’s left it regarded as one of the 1990s’ most important and influential records.A concept album based around a man’s psychological breakdown, The Downward Spiral is an aggressive and abrasive record that tackles all manner of transgressive subject matter – self-harm, drug addiction, alcoholism, suicide – while sounding appropriately discomforting. Produced and recorded by NIN frontman Trent Reznor and Flood in the house in which Sharon Tate was murdered by the Manson Family, there’s a dark power to its sonic perfectionism that conveyed best on a high-quality hi-fi setup. Kurt Vile’s former band are pretty much the definition of drivetime rock, with echoes of Springsteen, Straits and even a hint of Bryan Adams (it’s not a bad thing) to their widescreen epics (seriously, only three songs on this album clock in at under six minutes). But you can tell every single note on A Deeper Understanding has been recorded and re-recorded until it sounds exactly right, with slightly more focus on shimmering synths than their previous records. And while it’s hard to shake the feeling that this is a quintessential ‘white men whining about stuff’ album, when it sounds this good, you just have to let them get on with it.

Kendrick Lamar’s one-man mission to change hip-hop was well underway by the time he released Damn. This year, with the kaleidoscopic To Pimp A Butterfly already pushing the genre to places it had never been before in 2015.

Is another concept album, with Kendrick’s confrontational poetry telling another story about being a young black man in America. More thoughtful than the shock and awe of ‘90s gangsta rap, it can actually be played in reverse order, flipping the narrative on its head. Perhaps most impressively, it features Bono on a song that’s not rubbish. Glasgow’s Mogwai might have left behind the quiet/loud song structures that helped them to put post-rock on the map back in the ‘90s, but their recent albums have been no less dynamic, building on the drama and intensity that made them famous and evolving it.Every Country’s Sun (named after a clanger dropped by a friend of the band) is often surprisingly upbeat, finding warmth where previous records have had a tendency to feel a little clinical and cold.

It’s also less reliant on their trademark guitars, but with songs such as the penultimate track Old Poisons, Mogwai show they haven’t forgotten where the volume dial is when it’s required. When Childish Gambino (aka Community’s/ Atlanta’s/ Solo: A Star Wars Story’s Donald Glover) released “Awaken, My Love!”, Questlove from The Roots woke D’Angelo up at 4am to make him listen to it because he was so blown away by its funk-inspired sound. When you have that effect on musicians as respected as those two, you must be doing something right, and the multi-talented star’s switch from straight-up hip-hop to a groovier, more multi-layered style of music couldn’t have gone much better.

Redbone is the standout track but as an album it’s still a remarkable funkadelic trip that only makes you wonder what Glover will do next. Radiohead’s OK Computer turned 20 years old in 2017 and the band’s seminal record has had a nip and tuck for its birthday. Completely remastered from the original analogue tapes, OKNOTOK also includes three unreleased tracks and eight B-sides from the period. For those unfamiliar with the album, it caught Radiohead right on the cusp of the experimentation that would spawn Kid A, and marries it with the kind of choruses that would have 90,000 fans singing every word back at the band from in front of Glastonbury's Pyramid stage that summer. A genuine all-time classic.

After a relatively short-lived hiatus, LCD Soundsystem returned in 2017 with their take on the American Dream. James Murphy’s encyclopedic knowledge of music from the past 50 years informs a more melancholy record than fans might’ve been expecting; a meticulously recorded tribute to his recently lost heroes rather than a triumphant celebration of the band’s return. The electro-punk that made the group famous in the early noughties isn’t entirely absent (which is just as well, because Call the Police and Tonite are probably the best two songs on the record) but for LCD Soundsystem 2017 isn’t much of a party. With a guest list that includes both Kenny Loggins (of Top Gun soundtrack fame) and Wiz Khalifa, you should press play on Drunk with your expectations left at the door.

Thundercat - a virtuoso bass player born Stephen Bruner - meows, farts and grooves his way through 23 tracks that give a brief insight into his unique musical mind. That might make it sound like an exercise in zany showboating, but on the whole Drunk isn’t as oddball as its ingredients would suggest. That doesn’t mean it’s ever predictable but there’s far more restraint here than you’d expect from a man who toured with Suicidal Tendencies and has a pet cat called Turbo Tron Over 9000 Baby Jesus Sally Hot Carl.

You’re going to want a weighty set-up for this one. When they perform Loveless live, MBV crank up the volume to such an extent that most fans don earplugs, and while we’re not suggesting you go that far, it’s an album that demands to be played loud.

Recorded over two years in 19 studios and with almost as many engineers, it’s dominated by Kevin Shields’ trademark tremolo-heavy guitar plus layer upon layer of samples: sampled guitars, sampled drums, sampled vocals, sampled samples. The net effect is a modern wall of sound, at once hypnotic and chaotic, dreamy and thunderous, urgent and woozy. At its best – the delicate intricacy of To Here Knows When, the relentless hookery of What You Want, the rhythmic assault of Soon – it’s crying out for a system with great separation and precision. With some songs of its songs sitting on Radiohead’s back burner for 20 years before being committed to tape it’s hardly surprising that A Moon Shaped Pool is a treat for the ears. Opener Burn The Witch dates back to the Kid A sessions, although it’s far less familiar to fans than long-time live favourite True Love Waits, which has its mournful piano bolstered by a bed of fluttering percussion.The lilting Present Tense and the record’s highlight Identikit have their roots in older albums too but Decks Dark and the urgent Ful Stop prove A Moon Shaped Pool is much more than just the sound of a band clearing out its drafts.

Deeply affected by his brother’s experiences returning from the Vietnam War and what he viewed as rampant, widespread injustice in America, Marvin Gaye shrugged off his soul loverman image and recorded a concept album about the state of the world.All nine of its songs flow into one another and it ends with a reprise of its opening theme, all the better to tell the story of a Vietnam veteran who has come home from war to see his country in a new light. Gaye tackles poverty, drug addiction and even environmental issues not through angry political rants but from the point of a dismayed man who believes love – not more hatred and violence – is the answer.As a recording the album exhibits a rare spaciousness, with each element able to be picked out clearly. Combining blues, jazz and soul elements, it’s a hugely influential album and over 40 years after its release, still highly relevant and relatable. MTV may be a dirty word these days, but the TV network’s Unplugged series served up several excellent albums in the 90s, most of them recorded with a “hey, I could be in the audience” fidelity. And this is one of them.It would be Nirvana’s last album recorded before Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and hindsight adds extra weight to songs like Pennyroyal Tea, Something In The Way and the soul-wrenching closer Where Did You Sleep Last Night. That song is one of several covers performed by a band who appear to have consciously avoid picking their biggest hits for the acoustic treatment. But the reworkings of Cobain’s own songs, stripped of their grunge trappings, highlight just how much of a talent he was when it came to melody and lyricism – a talent that would be lost forever five months later.

Recorded in eight tracks rather than the four of previous Beatles albums, Abbey Road was the first of the Fab Four’s records to be originally released in stereo. In 2009, along with most Beatles albums, it was, and this version is considered the best in terms of audio quality.

At the time of its release, some critics claimed the band’s use of the Moog synthesizer was “inauthentic”, but in retrospect most of them – and the wider world – consider Abbey Road to be among The Beatles’ best LPs, and certainly their most painstakingly produced. Trading the intimate “folk music pity party in a log cabin” feel of debut album For Emma, Forever Ago in favour of a more expansive, ambitious sound, Justin Vernon’s second album as Bon Iver flirts with R&B-style crooning, country hoedowns and, at one point, Bruce Hornsby and the Range-esque MOR (well, that’s what it takes to win a Grammy as an indie artist these days). But there’s beauty throughout: Vernon’s multi-tracked voice and his band’s rich instrumentation evoke the icy northern reaches of America just as deftly as For Emma did – but in a far grander way. There are landscapes conjured by this record, and they are vast. Were no strangers to chart success by the time they released Automatic for the People, but this was the album that cemented the Athens, Georgia natives as the mainstream’s favourite alternative rock band. And you can’t say they got there by continuing down the jangly, upbeat pop furrow they’d ploughed with earlier songs like Shiny Happy People: Automatic features only three tracks that move above mid-tempo (two of which became singles) and for the most part, it’s a sombre, ballad-dominated affair. It might be a dark journey, but it’s also musically irresistible thanks to the lush arrangements, in which organs and strings feature prominently.

In an attempt to boost her musical credibility, British swinging sixties icon Dusty Springfield decided to make an album of soul songs – and record it in a city forever associated with the origins of soul and blues. The result was Dusty In Memphis, a record that didn’t make many waves when it was released but has since been recognised as one of the best releases of the 1960s – or any decade. The tracks are arranged and recorded with a rare perfectionism (Springfield ended up re-recording all her vocals in New York because she was unhappy with the Memphis takes) and the songs hit a sweet spot between soul and pop that suggests Dusty was way ahead of her time. Believe it or not there was a time when dubstep wasn’t the sound of adverts for energy drinks. These days Burial’s Untrue is barely recognisable as dubstep: there’s no pumped-up euphoric drops and it barely hints at the wriggling ‘wub wub’ bass that was to come. Play Etched Headplate in most clubs and the only way you’d empty the dancefloor quicker would be to release a wolf onto it.

That’s because Untrue isn’t a record for dancefloors; it’s a record about the lonely, 3am bus ride home, or the feeling of unease you get when walking alone late at night. While Untrue is not an album with any daylight in it, it's a long way from The Dark Side of the Moon. You don’t listen to it to appreciate the stereo image of your expensive hi-fi, you listen to it for its heavily textured yet spacious tunes, and samples that sound like coins or bullet casings falling to the cold pavement.

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Subwoofers at the ready – it’s a Flaming Lips album Although actually, The Soft Bulletin isn’t just a Flaming Lips album, it’s THE Flaming Lips album, the high-point of a career now spanning 31 years and 14 albums. It’s also the finest moment in the career of producer Dave Fridmann, a man regarded as the indie-rock Phil Spector (but without the murder) and whose CV also takes in such classics as Weezer’s Pinkerton and Mogwai’s Come On Die Young. Fridmann ramps up the percussion on The Soft Bulletin, turning drums and cymbals into weapons of mass destruction. But if the sound’s big, the songs are bigger still – from string-drenched opener Race For The Prize to the searingly honest Feeling Yourself Disintegrate, it’s a work of musical and lyrical genius. In 2009 four young, perpetually black-clad Londoners released an album blessed with a rare feeling of what one could call 'sonic unity': every track just fits. There’s something incredibly clean about the xx's self-titled debut, as though the band are performing in an hermetically sealed room devoid of furniture, fittings, dust, microbes and, well, anything that isn’t their instruments.

Sparse drum machine beats, taut bass, a guitar tone polished to a mirror sheen and understated vocals from Oliver Sim and Romy Madley Croft make up a record of immense restraint. It’s almost the opposite of Phil Spector’s “wall of sound”: there’s an evidence of sonic space here that makes the xx’s gloomy brand of pop a joy to listen to. Thanks to bands like Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and Papa Roach, the fusion of hip-hop and hard rock would later become a byword for “horrific men saying horrifically dumb things”, but it all started in much better place: Rage Against The Machine’s eponymous debut album. While those other bands might have been angry at their parents, Rage were angry about the Western world, the military-industrial complex, the entire capitalist system.

Zack de la Rocha’s politically-charged lyrics and Tom Morello’s squealing guitar make for an incendiary mix, but Bob Ludwig’s mastering keeps everything from boiling over. We have no hesitation in saying that this is one of the cleanest, most audiophile-friendly hard rock albums ever made. Marxist political theory rarely sounded so funky. When Baltimore psyche-pop oddballs Animal Collective turned to samplers and synths as the dominant instruments for their eighth studio album, few could have guessed that it would turn out to be their most successful on both the commercial and critical fronts (although it’s far from a mainstream pop record, and less open-minded listeners might find its unconventional song structure baffling).The members of the band are older and have settled down, but their youthful joie de vivre hasn’t melted away in Merriweather Post Pavilion – it’s just shifted focus. There are songs about Avey Tare and Panda Bear’s families on here but not a trace of sentimentality, just soaring, luscious electronic soundscapes and harmony-heavy vocals that bring to mind a post-rave culture Beach Boys. Rumours’ meta-story is almost as compelling as the album itself: recorded against the backdrop of two intra-band breakups and rampant cocaine consumption, it signalled a new mainstream rock direction for the British bluesy throwbacks – one that propelled the group into new realms of popularity. Spurred by the songcraft of new American recruits Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, Fleetwood Mac produced an LP without a skippable song (well, maybe “Oh Daddy” if you’re feeling particularly mean), and the production and mastering are every bit as noteworthy as the hooks.

In all honesty, if we had the space we could put all of Steely Dan’s studio albums on this list. New York jazz-rockers Donald Fagen and Walter Becker are nothing short of slaves to perfection when it comes to recording and mastering, and consequently each LP is an audiophile’s dream.

But if we have to pick a single one, we’ll say 1977’s Aja, which features something like 40 session musicians and some of the band’s most seamless production yet. Jazz-rock may conjure up nightmares of Kenny G soullessly noodling his sax, but their songs’ cynical, acerbic lyrics have always elevated “the Dan” to something more than the sum of their parts.

Joni Mitchell’s masterpiece, Blue is a spare, sparse record showcasing the Canadian’s pure stripped-down songwriting: most songs feature little instrumentation beyond Mitchell’s acoustic guitar or piano. It’s recorded to be highly revealing (with headphones, you can hear the piano pedals moving in the title track) which is entirely appropriate given the confessional nature of the songs, in which Mitchell details her life, loves and struggles with depression with unflinching transparency. Mitchell herself later said of the album, “There's hardly a dishonest note in the vocals.

At that period of my life, I had no personal defences. I felt like a cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes.” It’s all there, clear as a bell, in the recording.

Less an album than a love letter to disco, Random Access Memories will never be the most beloved of Daft Punk records – Get Lucky aside (check it out if you get the chance, it's the sound of the summer), there’s nothing here that gets its hooks into you like Around The World or One More Time. But thanks to the use of original instruments and some of the most talented session musicians (almost every sound on the album comes from a “real” instrument) and collaborators in the game, it’s an exquisite body of work. And it sounds amazing: rarely has deep sub bass every sounded, well, so bassy, so real and so gigantic as it does on RAM. There’s a wide dynamic range here, so this is one big recent release that hasn’t fallen victim to what horrified audiophiles refer to as the 'loudness wars'. Probably the most famous jazz album of all time – and almost certainly the best-selling, Kind of Blue represented a new direction for Miles Davis, as he discarded the complex chord progressions of hard bop for something different: improvisations based on scales, or “modal” jazz. The result is an album of gentle, evocative numbers that influenced not only the jazz scene but other genres like rock and classical.

Ever the innovator, Davis later abandoned Kind of Blue’s laid-back style, regarding it as a product of its time that no longer moved him. Before Iceland’s Sigur Ros became the go-to band to soundtrack every Attenborough documentary they sat awkwardly on the edge of post-rock – but it was a genre that never seemed to fit them. There are elements of Agaetis Byrjun that qualify it for such categorisation – it sounds epic in the true meaning of the word, not what you say when you’ve just eaten a really nice biscuit – but if anything it’s more post-folk, like Mogwai with flutes, horns and an orchestra rather than delay pedals and a volume dial.

It creaks, moans and soars with the sounds of the band’s near-Arctic home, and, without wanting to make it sound too much like some sort of hipster Enya record, there’s even a hint of whale song to Jonsi’s vocals. This double album is made up of castoffs from three aborted records, but Prince being Prince, a collection of odds and sods turned out to be a masterpiece and one of the 80s’ greatest LPs. As usual, Prince not only sings but plays many of the instruments, including programming the drum machines and samplers that play such a huge role in the record’s sound.

On CD, it’s not widely regarded as the best-mastered of Prince’s records, but audiophiles should do their best to seek out the superb Japanese SHM-CD version (or the vinyl). Few producers have been so innovative and influential as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, and The Congos’ 1977 debut is without doubt his most consistently brilliant piece of work. Recorded at Perry’s Black Ark studio in Kingston, Jamaica, it’s a mind-altering blend of reverb-heavy rhythms laid down by the studio’s house band The Upsetters plus the perfectly matched harmonies of its three vocalists: tenor ‘Ashanti’ Roy Johnson, falsetto Cedric Myton and baritone Watty Burnett. Somehow, Perry recorded it on an ageing four-track, but you’d never know it from the lush Fisherman or Open Up The Gate, with the producer using found sounds and a battery of tricks to create the effect he was after. Roots reggae at its finest. Pink Floyd is probably regarded as the archetypal band for audiophiles: prog rock giants serving up complex and immaculately produced albums full of lengthy songs. And never more so than on Wish You Were Here, an album that features only five tracks but runs well over 40 minutes.

The whole album is essentially a tribute to Floyd’s founding member and creative tinderbox Syd Barrett, whose heavy use of psychedelic drugs had led to him stepping away from the band and society in general. Even if noodly prog isn’t your thing, it’s an album that will give your speakers or headphones a full body workout. Thriller’s cultural and commercial significance is well documented, but Michael Jackson’s masterpiece is also one of the best-recorded and most immaculately produced albums of the 1980s. Producer Quincy Jones and Jackson enjoyed (or perhaps endured) a strained relationship during the making of Thriller, and every track was painstakingly remixed (a week was spent on each song) because neither was happy with the initial recordings. The hard work resulted in a record that blended disco, soul, rock and R&B and a template that would inform pop music for the next 20-plus years.

Oh, and it's comfortably the best-selling album of all time. Trip hop pioneers Massive Attack had already established themselves as Britain’s best-known proponents of what the Americans call “electronica” when they dropped Mezzanine, initially as a legal MP3 download on their website (they were among the first major acts to embrace digital distribution) and later as a physical release. Despite the Bristol trio apparently hating each other’s guts during the making of the album it’s a prime example of a record which uses ambient sounds to create rich texture, depth and atmosphere. The trade-off is perhaps a lack the hookier songs that loomed large on previous Massive Attack albums, but when a new direction results in songs like Teardrop, we’re definitely on board.

An LP you should play loud on headphones on dark, moody nights. If you’ve still got Underworld pegged as that laddish ‘lager, lager’ band from Trainspotting, it’s time to acquaint yourself with their classic fourth album. Far from being packed with banging techno anthems, it seamlessly blends various flavours of downbeat electronica with Karl Hyde’s meditative poetry. The result is brilliantly paced masterpiece that has aged even better than Ewan ‘Peter Pan’ McGregor.Fans of the original will appreciate the remastered version’s cleaner sound and bolstered bass, along with the inclusion of dozens of remixes from the same fertile period.

But though these rarities show Underworld to be more than capable of a big single, it’s Second Toughest that showed that rave music could be just as comfortable being atmospheric and reflective. There are people who will tell you that Phil Collins’ music is without merit. That he’s a miserable bugger who ruined Genesis after Peter Gabriel left. That any love for his music is a sign of psychosis - after all, Patrick Bateman was a huge fan.

These people are all wrong.Hello, I Must Be Going is a flawless pop record, full of tracks with sparkling, rhythmic exteriors that contain deep, sometimes dark lyrical stories. The remastered version cleans everything up further, polishing what was already pretty much pop perfection. Or maybe we're just psychotic. On the face of it Love’s Forever Changes sounds like just another pleasantly psychedelic folk record from the late ‘60s. But listen closely to Arthur Lee’s lyrics and there’s an undercurrent of menace, like the musical equivalent of a David Lynch movie.Whether it’s the bad trip of A House Is Not a Motel, the squealing guitar on Live and Let Live, or the hints at indiscriminate incarceration and slaughter on The Red Telephone, Forever Changes is a subversive, surreal record.

The Morricone-esque blast of brass midway through Alone Again Or is almost worth the admission price alone. Tinkering with an album that’s loved partly for its raw, live sound can be a dangerous game, but My Morning Jacket get the balance right on this remixed version of their fan favourite. Sure, the the guitars are crunchier and the reverby vocals more prominent, but it still feels like you’re in a sweat-drenched bar listening to classic rockers on top form.Fittingly for an album that celebrates the no frills approach, the reissue also has original acoustic demos that sound like they were recorded in the band’s kitchen. Even if you’re not a big enough MMJ fan to appreciate those, it’s still worth treating your new hi-fi or headphones to one of the noughties’ best records.

Panopticon is a record that sounds like it was unearthed rather than recorded, forged between two tectonic plates or found pressed into the fossilised remains of a Supersaurus. Wherever it came from the album was remastered in 2014 (10 years after its original release and four years after the band split up) and it’s never been more earth-shudderingly heavy.Everything on it sounds massive, with Aaron Turner’s vocals buried somewhere deep in the middle, like he’s bellowing from the bottom of a collapsing sinkhole.

Forever Young is the debut album released by German synthpop group Alphaville on September 27, 1984, by Warner Music Group. It charted well, hitting the Top 20 in six European countries and reaching number 1 in Norway and Sweden. Alphaville followed up with their second album in 1986 with the release of Afternoons in Utopia.

Bank soalan sains tahun 4 sjkt. The album was re-released in a 'super deluxe' edition in March 2019.

Background[edit]

The band released the single 'Big in Japan' before the album had finished recording, and its success surprised the band and label. Said the band, '[Big in Japan]' beamed us up into showbiz heaven, half of the album was still be to written. So, while we were in the middle of composing and arranging the residual songs, we were sort of overtaken by our future selves. … Once we wore tattered jeans and sweaty leather jacks … now we were homeless millionaires living in hotel suites and airports.'^[2] Their sudden and unexpected success affected the rest of the album. In 1986, Gold recalled that he 'bought an album of an unknown British band named Big in Japan. As you know, there's a considerable musical market in Japan. If you wanted to become famous, what you should do was to form a hard rock group and then release an album over there; it would definitely sell well.. so the story went .. The statement fitted well to my storyline about a couple of drug addicted lovers and moreover provided the title for the prospective song.'^[3]

The first three tracks the band recorded were 'Big in Japan', 'Seeds', which was released as the b-side to 'Big in Japan', and 'Forever Young', which was originally recorded as an up-tempo track. The band wasn't happy with the fast version of 'Forever Young', and recording of the track had come to a halt while the band figured out what to do with the song. It was producer Budde who suggested turning the track into a ballad, which is how the song was released.^[2]

The band had planned to release 'Forever Young' as their second single, to follow the success of 'Big in Japan'. However, record studio executives requested that the band release an additional song between the two singles, and as a result 'Sounds Like a Melody' was written and arranged in just two days. Of the experience, singer Marian Gold said 'the whole affair felt like an insult to our naive hippie instincts. Writing music exclusively for the sake of commercial success seemed like the sell-out of our virtual beliefs. On the other hand, did this not open up possibilities for wonderful games to play in the brave new world of pop music?'^[3] This corporate pressure caused Gold to dislike the song and he refused to play it live for over 15 years.^[3]

Some songs they wrote for the album were sung in German ('Blauer Engel', 'Traumtanzer', and 'Leben Ohne Ende'), but none of the songs ended up making it on the actual release, instead being released as b-sides or on later retrospective albums. Colin Pearson, who co-produced the album, said that Marian Gold would occasionally have problems with lyrics, and then he would remember that Gold was writing in a foreign language.^[2]

Band member Bernhard Lloyd said the album was recorded using equipment such as Roland TR-808 and Linn LM-1 drum machines, a Roland System-100M, an ARP String Ensemble and a Roland SDE 200 Digital Delay machine. The album was recorded on Tascam 8-track tapes, and they used a Friendchip SRC machine to synchronize all the tracks.^[2]

Songs[edit]

The song 'Summer in Berlin' contains references to the East German uprising of 1953, which occurred on 17 June 1953. When the compilation album Alphaville Amiga Compilation was assembled for released in East Germany in 1988, the song 'Summer in Berlin' was submitted for inclusion, but rejected 'for political reasons.'^[4]

'Fallen Angel' was written after 'Big in Japan' was released, and the band said 'everything changes when you're Number One. The world becomes a big shopping mall where all is for free, people, objects, what-ever. There is something vulgar about all this.'^[2]

In 1988, Gold said that 'In The Mood' is very likely about us, about how we felt in 1984, though we did'nt realize that when we wrote it. The rocket-like success of 'Big In Japan' was mind-blowing and irritating at the same time and we were scandalized by a horror of losing our artistic innocence ever since we had signed that record-deal.”^[2]

On the song 'The Jet Set', Gold said of the song, 'We didn't intend to write a proper song; it was supposed to be some kind of jingle that advertises things money can't buy: anarchy, freedom, love, fun and a piece of the end of the world.'^[5]

Chart performance[edit]

Reviews were generally positive, with one reviewer calling it 'a classic synth pop album' and 'a wonderfully fun ride from start to finish.'^[6] The album fared well in parts of Europe, but it failed to make an impact on the UK charts or in the US, faring no better than number 180.

The single 'Big in Japan' made a surprise entry onto the US Billboard Hot 100 at number 66, where it stayed on the chart for several weeks.

Although the title track 'Forever Young' was re-released several times as a single by the band's label in the hope of it becoming a hit in the United States, it did not reach any higher than number 65 on the Hot 100. Although it reached one position higher than 'Big in Japan', it quickly fell into obscurity and 'Big in Japan' remains their biggest-selling single in the US. 'Big in Japan' also managed to peak at number 8 on the UK Singles Chart, while 'Forever Young' was also considered a commercial failure there, reaching number 98.

Re-release[edit]

On March 15, 2019, the album is remastered for the first time for their 35th anniversary. The package comes with two additional CDs, one with original single versions, B-sides and remixes and the other with 16 original demos. The other disc is a DVD that includes a 60-minute documentary and promo videos. There is also a super deluxe edition that includes the new remaster on vinyl and comes with a 24-page vinyl-sized booklet, created by the art director of the original album in close collaboration with the band and contains a variety of rare and unpublished photos, sleeve notes and various other testimonies.^[7]

Track listing[edit]

All songs written by Alphaville, Lyrics by Marian Gold, Music by Bernhard Lloyd and Frank Mertens.

1. 'A Victory of Love' – 4:14
2. 'Summer in Berlin' – 4:42
3. 'Big in Japan' – 4:43
4. 'To Germany with Love' – 4:15
5. 'Fallen Angel' – 3:55
6. 'Forever Young' – 3:45
7. 'In the Mood' – 4:29
8. 'Sounds Like a Melody' – 4:42
9. 'Lies' – 3:32
10. 'The Jet Set' – 4:52

2019 remaster[edit]

On January 10, 2019, it was officially announced that the album reissue of Forever Young would be released on March 15, 2019.The Forever Young reissues were published in several editions:

• Super Deluxe Edition 3-CD/1-DVD/1-Vinyl; the original 10-track album on the first disc, also original singles, b-sides and 12″ versions remixes on a second disc, Only on super deluxe it includes 16-track original demos including German-language songs on a third disc, the fourth disc is the DVD that includes a brand new documentary and promo music videos, the package also includes a remastered vinyl of the original 10-track album.
• Deluxe Edition 2-CD; the original 10-track album on the first disc, including original singles, b-sides and 12″ versions remixes on a second disc.
• Separate Remastered Vinyl one-LP; the original 10-track album remastered by Bernhard Lloyd and Stefan Betke.

Personnel[edit]

Alphaville[edit]

• Marian Gold – lead and backing vocals
• Bernhard Lloyd – rhythm keyboards, programming, drum machine
• Frank Mertens – lead keyboards

Additional musicians[edit]

• Wolfgang Loos – additional keyboards, gong (3)
• Ken Taylor – bass
• Curt Cress – drums, percussion
• Wednesday, Gulfstream, The Rosie Singers, The Claudias – backing vocals
• German Opera – strings, string arrangements

Production[edit]

• Produced by Wolfgang Loos, Colin Pearson and Andreas 'Andy' Budde
• Recorded and engineered by Wolfgang Loos and Uli Rudolph
• Technical assistance by Boris Balin and Thomas Beck
• Mixed by Wolfgang Loos
• Artwork, Cover Design by Ulf Meyer Zu Kuingdorf
• Inner Sleeve Photography by Thomas Reutter
• Management by Heinz-Gerd Luetticke

Charts and certifications[edit]

References[edit]

1. ^Allmusic review
2. ^ ^abcdefForever Young (Deluxe Edition) (Media notes). Warner Music. 2018.
3. ^ ^abcso80s presents Alphaville (CD liner notes). Alphaville. Blank & Jones (So 80s). 2014. SC0344.CS1 maint: others (link)
4. ^''Summer in Berlin' (Alphaville Discography'.^{[permanent dead link]}
5. ^First Harvest 1984-92 (Media notes). Warner Music Group. 1992. p. 7.
6. ^'All Music Guide'. answers.com.
7. ^'Alphaville / Forever Young super deluxe'. January 10, 2019.
8. ^'Austrian albums chart'. austriancharts.at. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
9. ^'German charts'. offiziellecharts.de. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
10. ^'Norwegian albums chart'. norwegiancharts.com. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
11. ^'Swedish albums chart'. swedishcharts.com. Retrieved 2009-06-21.
12. ^'Swiss albums chart'. Die Offizielle Schweizer Hitparade. Retrieved 2018-10-10.
13. ^'Alphaville Chart History: Billboard 200'. Billboard. Retrieved 2019-02-24.
14. ^'French album certifications – Alphaville – Forever Young' (in French). InfoDisc.Select ALPHAVILLE and click OK.
15. ^'Gold-/Platin-Datenbank (Alphaville; 'Forever Young')' (in German). Bundesverband Musikindustrie.
16. ^ ^abcdAfternoons in Utopia music book (1986). 'The Alphaville Story'. Cosmic Meadows. Retrieved 2012-11-15.