“Dazzle Ships” by OMD

By Evan Ferstl

It’s rare that an artist loses 90% of its audience with one album, but that’s exactly what happened when OMD released “Dazzle Ships” in 1983. The groundbreaking synth-pop band lost their momentum from their previous release, “Architecture and Morality,” an album that rightfully gave them commercial and critical success. Viewed as the ultimate commercial suicide, “Dazzle Ships” experimented with Cold War themes by creating cold, robotic music that was more metronomic than melodic. Unsurprisingly, nobody wanted to listen to it. 

The album uses mechanical atmospherics and forays into dated technology to give the album a distinctly anachronistic, Communist-Bloc-feel. Even the two singles on the album, “Genetic Engineering” and “Telegraph,” deal obsessively with these themes despite almost sounding like normal songs. Others, like “International” and “Silent Running,” mask their quirks behind sweeping electronic soundwaves. Finally, songs like “Time Zones,” “ABC Auto Industry,” and the opener, “Radio Prague,” drop pretense entirely. These short, oddball songs have no lyrics apart from disjointed radio splicings and emotionless repetition. “Dazzle Ships” closes with “Of All the Things We Made,” which stands apart from the rest as the most mesmerizing, beautiful song of OMD’s career. 

Though not as good as its predecessor, “Dazzle Ships” marks the peak of OMD’s cerebral nerdiness and the dazzling power of electronic music. Though the commercial failure of the album scared the band into making straightforward electropop, and although they've successfully continued with that formula into the present day, this album is a fascinating artistic triumph that combines weird and wonderful.