Freur - Doot-Doot

This album is the debut by the group that wouldn't have great success until 9 years later - then known as Underworld (mk II). This is very hi-tech postpunk and can be seen as laying the groundwork for their later [more boring] techno success story. This music has more melody and hooks but conversely, seems more technologically perverse to me since they had to work -hard- to achieve these effects in 1983-84. John Hudson is credited for "electronic sound processing" and co-production and very few artists were digitally sculpting sound like they were at this time. Around 1983 electropop had begun to really bland out and get MOR. This could never be mistaken for tripe like Naked Eyes!

This is some of the most creative electronic rock music I've heard. It's full of traditional rock values passed through a perverse digital filter. The b-sides are if anything, more beserk and unrestrained. The 2 bonus tracks appended on the US version of this CD are from their more traditional sounding follow-up album. But this album, with Propaganda's "A Secret Wish" represents the peak of electronic rock to me until it all evaporated. Their later phase as the more conventional rock band Underworld [1988-1992] was much less interesting to me and the techno phase [93-current] even moreso. The longer they persevered the less stimulating [yet more successful] their output became.