''The Breathtaking Blue'' is the third album by German

synth-pop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a subgenre of new wave music that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s ...

band Alphaville, released in April 1989. A companion video, ''

Songlines A songline, also called dreaming track, is one of the paths across the land (or sometimes the sky) within the animist belief systems of the Aboriginal cultures of Australia which mark the route followed by localised "creator-beings" in the Dre ...

'', was released in September 1989. The CD release of this album was one of the first commercial

CD+G CD+G (also known as CD-G, CD+Graphics and TV-Graphics) is an extension of the compact disc standard that can present low-resolution graphics alongside the audio data on the disc when played on a compatible device. CD+G discs are often used for k ...

format discs. Alphaville released three singles from the album, "

Romeos "Romeos" is the first single from Alphaville (band), Alphaville's 1989 album ''The Breathtaking Blue''. It was released a month ahead of the album, and was the first single by Alphaville to be released as a Compact Disc single, CD single, previous ...

", "Summer Rain" and "Mysteries of Love", the first of which charted internationally. A remastered and re-released version of the album, on both CD and vinyl, was released on 7 May 2021.

Album production

Production of the album was difficult, singer Marian Gold would later say "the production saw Alphaville in the horrors of permanent crisis. There was an ongoing war between

he band He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...

... The furious guitar shrieks during the intro f lead-off single "Romeos"being a true indication of the real spirit of the production," and that "'The Breathtaking Blue' was our 'I don't give a shit' album, a self-indulgent arrogant blind shot over the shoulder into the future with our backs to the audience." The album was re-released on 7 May 2021, and included remastered b-sides, demos, and a DVD with the original CD+G graphics package as well as the video collection ''

'', which had not been available since its original release in 1989. The release was overseen by original band members Gold and

Bernhard Lloyd Bernhard Lloyd (born Bernhard Gössling on 2 June 1960) is a former member and co-founder of the German synth-pop band Alphaville. Before he joined the band, he did not play keyboards – instead, he was previously a club DJ. In 2001, Lloyd al ...

, and was remastered by Lloyd and

Stefan Betke Pole is the artistic name of Stefan Betke (born 18 February 1967), a German electronic music artist commonly associated with the glitch genre as well as dubtronica.Cooper, SeanPole Biography, Allmusic. Retrieved 15 November 2013 History Born in ...

Album cover

The cover of the album is a composite of two works: the first being

The Tower of Babel The Tower of Babel ( he, , ''Mīgdal Bāḇel'') narrative in Genesis 11:1–9 is an origin myth meant to explain why the world's peoples speak different languages. According to the story, a united human race speaking a single language and mi ...

by Pieter Bruegel; the second being the blue sun. The face in the blue sun is credited to

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (; 6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), known as Michelangelo (), was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was insp ...

, from a

sibyl The sibyls (, singular ) were prophetesses or oracles in Ancient Greece. The sibyls prophesied at holy sites. A sibyl at Delphi has been dated to as early as the eleventh century BC by PausaniasPausanias 10.12.1 when he described local traditi ...

on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The halo of sunrays is of unknown origin. The year '1989' (the year the album was released) is displayed in

Roman numerals Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, eac ...

across the bottom of the cover. The back cover has a drawing of Pharaoh

Akhenaten Akhenaten (pronounced ), also spelled Echnaton, Akhenaton, ( egy, ꜣḫ-n-jtn ''ʾŪḫə-nə-yātəy'', , meaning "Effective for the Aten"), was an ancient Egyptian pharaoh reigning or 1351–1334 BC, the tenth ruler of the Eighteenth Dy ...

and Queen

Nefertiti Neferneferuaten Nefertiti () ( – c. 1330 BC) was a queen of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the great royal wife of Pharaoh Akhenaten. Nefertiti and her husband were known for a radical change in national religious policy, in whic ...

Reception

Evan Cater, writing for

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...

, called the album "somewhat disappointing" compared to their previous releases, and notes that "the production, by Klaus Schulze and Alphaville ... is met with mixed success." In particular the reviewer found that the songs suffered due to the band's "experiments with a somewhat richer instrumentation, adding strings, saxophone, trumpet, double bass, electric and even acoustic guitars." Cater did like some of the individual tracks on the album, calling "Heaven or Hell" "one of the album's more interesting efforts", and "For a Million" "as genuine as the band gets." Graeme Kay, writing for Q Magazine, was more positive, calling the album "a highly polished cluster of glimmering technopop" and saying that "the overall effect is accessible and often breathtaking."

Track listing

Original 1989 release

Many of the album's tracks would find their way, in remixed, instrumental or demo form, to 1999's album ''

Dreamscapes ''Dreamscapes'' is a limited edition eight-CD set of rare Alphaville recordings, released in 1999. It features 124 tracks with a total playing time of around 9.5 hours. 43 of the songs had never been available before, and all of the remainder had ...

''.

2021 Remaster

Personnel

*Guitars: Blacky Schwarz Ruszczynski, Micael Ryan, Eff Jott Krueger,

Manuel Goettsching Manuel may refer to: People * Manuel (name) * Manuel (Fawlty Towers), a fictional character from the sitcom ''Fawlty Towers'' * Charlie Manuel, manager of the Philadelphia Phillies * Manuel I Komnenos, emperor of the Byzantine Empire * Manu ...

*Backing vocals:

Miriam Stockley Miriam Arlene Stockley (born 15 April 1962) is a British singer. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and her work is influenced by the African music of her home country. Her distinctive ''vocal warm up#Vocalise, vocalise'' style gained in ...

, Mae McKenna, Patti Calore, The Lunapark Office Choir, Gabi Becker *String arrangement: Rainer Bloss,

Klaus Schulze Klaus Schulze (4 August 1947 – 26 April 2022) was a German electronic music pioneer, composer and musician. He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried and was a member of the Krautrock bands Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, and The Cosmic Jokers ...

*Crescendo guitar: Kenneth Ward *Saxophones: Thomas Keller, Friedemann Graef *Drums, additional percussion: Hansi Behrendt *Double bass: Ernst Deuker *Vocoder voices: Julie Ocean *Trumpet: Michael Junker *String and brass arrangement: Rainer Bloss Musicians Hansi Behrendt, Eff Jott Krueger and Ernst Deuker, who helped with some of the songs on this album, were themselves from the German band

Ideal Ideal may refer to: Philosophy * Ideal (ethics), values that one actively pursues as goals * Platonic ideal, a philosophical idea of trueness of form, associated with Plato Mathematics * Ideal (ring theory), special subsets of a ring considere ...

. Gabi Becker recorded with Alphaville again on 2003's ''

CrazyShow ''CrazyShow'' is a limited-edition (2500 copies) four-CD album by Alphaville, composed of new material as well as rare and remixed tracks, and three cover versions ("Do the Strand" by Roxy Music, "Something" by George Harrison", and "Diamonds Are ...

''.

Charts

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Breathtaking Blue, The 1989 albums Alphaville (band) albums