Various Artists: Fantastic Voyage - New Sounds For The European Canon 1977-1981 (Vinyl 2xLP)

By the turn of the 80s, the impact of David Bowie’s ground-breaking Berlin recordings – the synths, the alienation, the drily futuristic production – was being felt on music across Europe. What’s more, the records being made were reflecting back and influencing Bowie’s own work – 1979’s Lodger and 1980’s Scary Monsters owed a debt to strands of German kosmische (Holger Czukay), new electronica (Patrick Cowley, Harald Grosskopf), and the latest works from old friends and rivals like Robert Fripp, Peter Gabriel and Scott Walker, all of whom had been re-energised by the fizz of 1977.

Compiled by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley and the BFI’s Jason Wood, Fantastic Voyage is the companion album to their hugely successful Café Exil collection, which imagined the soundtrack to David Bowie and Iggy Pop’s trans-European train journeys in the mid-to-late seventies. Fantastic Voyage is what happened next.

Bowie’s influences and Bowie’s own influence were rebounding off each other as the 70s ended and the 80s began, notably in the emergent synthpop and new romantic scenes as well as through the music of enigmatic acts like the Associates and post-punk pioneers such as Cabaret Voltaire.

Like Low and Heroes, some of the tracks on Fantastic Voyage are spiked with tension (Grauzone’s ‘Eisbär’) while some share those albums’ sense of travel (Simple Minds’ ‘Theme for Great Cities’, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s ‘Riot in Lagos’) and others find common ground with Lodger’s dark, subtle humour (Thomas Leer’s ‘Tight as a Drum’, Fripp’s ‘Exposure’).

This is the thrilling, adventurous sound of European music before the watershed moment when Bowie would abandon art- pop for America and the emerging world of MTV with Let’s Dance in 1983. Fantastic Voyage soundtracks the few brief years when the echo chamber of Bowie, his inspirations, and his followers created an exciting, borderless music that was ready to challenge Anglo American influences.

1. Theme For Great Cities - Simple Minds
   
2. Silent Command - Cabaret Voltaire
   
3. Riot In Lagos - Ryuichi Sakamoto
   
4. Eisbar - Grauzone
   
5. White Car In Germany - The Associates
   
6. Nightcrawler - Patrick Cowley
   
7. On A Trouvé - Isabelle Mayereau
   
8. 3,000,000 Synths - Chas Jankel
   
9. No Self Control - Peter Gabriel
   
10. Nite Flights - The Walker Brothers
    
11. Tight As A Drum - Thomas Leer
    
12. The Farther Away I Am - Daryl Hall
    
13. So Weit, So Gut - Harald Grosskopf
    
14. Exposure - Robert Fripp
    
15. Patriarcat – Areski Belkacem & Brigitte Fontaine
    
16. Silicon Chip - Basil Kirchin
    
17. Ode To Perfume - Holger Czukay