The age of plastic - The album that started the 80's

Thursday, 13 September 2018

By Martin Lefebvre

The name Buggles probably does not say much to the majority of people, yet everyone knows the hit hit 'Video killed the radio star'. In reality, the Buggles are much more than a One hit wonder, their influence will be reflected throughout the decade.

The Buggles are a British group consisting of two members, Geoff Downes (keyboards, synthesizers, drums, percussion) and Trevor Horn (voice, bass, guitar). They produced two albums, this one released at the dawn of the 80's, January 10th, 1980, and Adventures in Modern Recording, released in 1981. Both musicians were also part of the mega band Yes the time of a album, Drama in 1980.

As you probably know, on August 1, 1981 at 0:01, the video of 'Video killed the radio star' was the first broadcast on the brand new MTV channel. This would influence the entire music industry, hard to imagine a world without the music video today. So the Buggles have the distinction of having one of the first albums of the decade, in addition to having the first video on MTV, but that's not all.

The album is considered as a turning point in the appearance of 'electropop' music, innovative recording, drums machines, sampling, vocoder, voice robots, with elements of new wave, disco, punk, progressive rock and pop. Besides Downes has already mentioned using 5 different synthesizers for the album, we are in the late 70s ...

After the Buggles, Trevor Horn became a producer, he is also nicknamed the creator of the 80's. He has produced the following hits and albums: The lexicon of love by ABC, 90125 by Yes (Owner of a lonely heart), Welcome to the pleasuredome by Frankie goes to Hollywood (Relax), Slave to the rhythm by Grace Jones, Cry by Godley & Creme, Who is afraid of the Art of Noise?

Performing Close to the edit by Art of Noise

So do not hesitate to discover or rediscover this unknown but important album that kicked off the decade we love so much.