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Hip Pop Stop Today's hip tunes. New music that isn't Classic Rock or Jazz! |
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Hip Pop Stop Today's hip tunes. New music that isn't Classic Rock or Jazz! |
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Can you believe that, on the strength of "Take On Me," a-ha burst onto the pop music scene a little over 30 years ago? During late summer 1985, I was still in Honolulu, preparing to come back home to San Francisco. MTV started playing the iconic rotoscoping music video. When I did get back to San Francisco, the upbeat synthpop was well-received. By October, "Take On Me" topped the U.S. charts.
A couple years later, Hunting High And Low on CD was one which urged my high school classmates to get a CD player.
Since the late-80s, a-ha have, for the most part, phased out their synthpop sound in favor of a more laidback, mature, adult, and sometimes melancholy perspective. That trend continues, on their new album, Cast In Steel. No song is faster than mid-tempo. If you are expecting the upbeat synthpop of "Take On Me" and "The Sun Always Shines On TV," you will be disappointed. But if you are older, slower, and wiser, you'll probably only need about half a dozen listens, to watch Cast In Steel unfold, and appreciate its moods and message(s). If you like a-ha's East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon and Analogue, you will understand where Cast In Steel comes from, and be predisposed to like it.
Uh oh. Track 4 is called "Forest Fire," and has some gorgeous keyboard runs in the background. No doubt, the staff at Totem Acoustic is going to use this track, to show off their Forest loudspeaker, especially with the Fire Design finish [disclaimer: I own the Totem Element Fire monitors].
If you get the deluxe version shown above, it comes with a second CD, which has some material from a-ha's previous album, Foot Of The Mountain.
Cast In Steel is aimed at us middle-aged generations, those who were there in the beginning, those who act our own age; those who look back and say, "Good-bye" to the past, without closing it off completely; those who (though it may have taken a while) have learned from the past; those who are okay with passing the baton to younger generations.
The Audiophiles' DJ,
-Lummy The Loch Monster
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Topic - A-ha: Cast In Steel - Luminator 13:31:32 09/27/15 (0)
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