Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
The great lost punk album, 15 Sep 2001
By A Customer
"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.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Laugh no more..., 20 May 2005
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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