- Audio CD (28 July 1992)
- Number of Discs: 1
- Label: Island
- ASIN: B000025XHU
- Other Editions: Audio CD | Vinyl | MP3 Download
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 305,669 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
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Product Description
Album Description
The band's second album from 1977 has now been digitally remastered and enhanced with 6 Bonus Tracks. Produced by Steve Lillywhite and Ultravox ! The 16-page bookelt now contains sleevenotes and all of the lyrics printed for the very first time. Contains 6 Bonus Tracks including the non-album track "Quirks" and a rare alternate version of "Hiroshima Mon Amour".
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
The previous reviewer stated his favourite albums as Kraftwerk's TEE, Reproduction and Thomas Leer/Robert Rental's The Bridge. What a star! I thought I was alone. Ha Ha Ha is not as polished as Systems of Romance but it has its moments. You will find parts of it extremely harsh on the ears and maybe the production could have been a little smoother. However there are some fantastic futurist minutes here, listen to the intro to Artificial Life, it sums up the mood in three repeated notes, a little like Interferon with guitars. Lyrically, Dennis Leigh aka John Foxx is a genius. Futurism came no better, and good as Replicas was, Foxx added romance to the decay, alienation and fear that was the subject of much brilliant music from 1977-1980. This period in music could never be repeated and Ha Ha Ha! is very much part of it. Buy it!
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
"Ha Ha Ha" was unheralded upon its release in 1977; a quarter of a century later, it sounds like the great lost punk album - noisy, feedback-drenched, pissed off, John Foxx's every line a snarl. Song structures are pretty rudimentary - start slow and portentious, get loud and fast, freak out at the end - but hey, if the formula works, don't mess with it. They do provide some chill finally, in the form of closer "Hiroshima Mon Amour," a zombied-out beatbox ballad. A beautiful, chaotic, messy album, and light-years away from the mannered, mannequin eleganza of later Ultravox.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
In the words of Foxx himself, punk's velocity was "beginning to sag" (it's from Artificial Life) in 1977. Recorded again in London in the late silver jubilee summer, the band could see the writing was on the wall and were already looking towards the next step forward.
It was the summer that Moroder's awesome I Feel Love went to number one - still one of Foxx's favourite records - and Ultravox! were already picking up on the commercial European electronic music of Can and Kraftwerk, the latter wowing a good deal of the world with their stunning Trans-Europe Express album the same year.
The young Steve Lilleywhite (former husband of the late Kirsty McColl fact fans!) was in the producer's chair for this album and he did a great job. From the explosive ebullience of Rockwrok to the manic energy of The Frozen Ones and the sleaze of Lonely Hunter, the creativity and intensity doesn't let up.
Closing the album is the exquisite Hiroshima Mon Amour. The only Ultravox track ever to feature a saxophone - courtesy of CC, a friend from another band, Gloria Mundi, two members of which, Eddie & Sunshine, later supported Ultravox live - the song has an atmosphere you can almost touch. The band kept it in the live set for ages after Foxx left (spring 1979) and they frequently did eight-minute almost industrial versions of it.
I like to believe the song is a pointer to what they knew was coming next, the new electronic music. It's strange to think that they recorded three albums in just three years but bands did just that then.
After the debut album, this was the next step but the masterpiece was to come shortly...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
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a masterpiece released in a topnotch edition
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Published on 18 Aug 2006 by as
AT LONG LAST!!!
I'm not one to usually inflict my views on others but I couldn't help it this time. It's not every day that my favourite album gets dusted down and reissued. Read more
Published on 23 May 2006 by N. Taylor
The second in the Foxx-trilogy...
'Ha Ha Ha' is now in an expanded/remastered form and like its relatives either side ('Ultravox!', 'Systems of Romance')forms a trilogy Ultravox(! Read more
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