A Secret Wish [SACD]

What can I say about this album that hasn't already been said? If you only ever buy one album of 80's electro-pop, make it this one. Every track shines out like a beacon, and it hasn't dated at all. Not one little bit. I first heard of this band when 'Miami Vice' featured the track 'P-Machinery' as the soundtrack to a fast night driving scene in the episode 'The Fix' and I went straight out and bought the album on the strength of ten seconds or so of the intro to this track.
In the intervening years it has never been far from my CD player (This is actually the second copy I've owned, as I wore the first out!!) If you like this, buy 'Outside world' as well, for the remixes.
As Paul Lester (Uncut) wrote:
'Sheer brutal beauty'

Let me start by saying that Secret Wish is one of my favourite albums of all time. The production work of SJ Lipson and the mixing of Trevor Horn were just genious. Musically the album extends so far beyond other electronic albums...there's elements of classical, jazz, progressive, hard rock, industrial, etc...that it's like a whole new genre of music that other albums have never matched.

Now onto this latest re-release newly mixed into 5.1 by Trevor Horn. There's certainly new suprises. There are portions of the mix that are now audible that we previously buried. There's now an interesting new intro to P Machinery (that is sort of a hybrid of the different 12" mixes that have been released). In addition, the mix is opened up and fills the room nicely. On the down-side, Trevor appears to have made little effort to emulate the original sound of the original mix. There are different drum sounds on some tracks. There is no reverb on some keyboard parts that were previously coverred in shimmering reverb. There's now an edit to Murder of Love (where a few bars of the song have been cut out from what was the US version). There are entire keyboard parts in the bridge of 'Duel' that are now almost inaudible. The really great accoustic drum section of 'Dream Within a Dream' has now been mixed way down. Why all the changes???? One would have hoped that the great original mix that we have all cherished over the years would have been faithfully reproduced and expanded into high resolution surround. Instead what we get is, in many cases, a completely new sounding mix.

It's still great, and I suppose that if anyone has a right to change it, it's Trevor Horn. But it still feels a bit like tampering with a masterpiece.

Here's a much forgotten secret from the mid eighties, Propaganda's Secret Wish is one of the best albums from this period of golden pop. The album was produced by one of the UK's best known and most successful producer's Trevor Horn, who was also the driving force behind the trend setting debuts of ABC and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Horn's love of complex string arrangements are used to good effect giving Propaganda's well constructed songs an added dimension that starker electronic albums could sometimes lack. Propaganda proved they were on equal terms with fellow German innovators Kraftwerk by releasing an album where every track is a gem. Clever use of synth sequencing and analogue layers give many of the tracks a definite edge, and the album still sounds superb by today's techno standards some 15 years after it was released. This sort of music is always helped by a strong vocalist, and the enigmatic Claudia Brucken with her distinctive German voice is as important to the success of this album as Alison Moyet was to Yazoo. Brucken's vocals easily generate pure emotion against the harsh, industrial sequencing of some of the tracks. On Jewel she provides a manic performance that I really haven't heard from any female vocalist since. It's very difficult to pick highlight tracks as favourites, because they are all so good, but Duel remains as one of the best pop songs from this period. It's a perfect mix of classical interludes and melodic synths, something Horn was to revisit on the PSB classic Left To My Own Devices from 1988. Heaven 17's Glenn Gregory helps out on the vocals for the single P-Machinery, a song that has one of the catchiest synth leads I have ever heard. Japan's David Sylvian also provided the bleeps in the intro. Sorry For Laughing is a touching change of pace and something of a classic. Huge heaps of melancholy and another memorable pop tune. If I'm pushed, I'd say that Dr Mabuse is the highlight purely for it's complexity and change of pace halfway through into a pure killer of a bassline (I bet Adamski liked this one before recording his track Killer!). A dramatic song like most of the album and it was no surprise to hear tracks from this album used for endless UK TV theme tunes and car adverts. Secret Wish easily makes my own personal top ten along with the Human League's Dare and Depeche Mode's Black Celebration. Sadly, I own the original 1985 CD release of this album so I don't have the extra tracks, but I can recommend the remix album Wishful Thinking. Buy Secret Wish and you'll love it. Trust me.