Short description
The release in 2005 of Analogue, A-Ha's eighth studio album, and a worldwide tour, arrives exactly 20 years since A-Ha topped the Billboard Hot 100 and conquered the pop globe with Take On Me, before setting out to show that was merely the top layer in a complex and sophisticated collective. As friends, musicians, stars and human beings, they've been to the moon and back since. Analogue is their new field report.
Long description
The release in 2005 of Analogue, A-Ha's eighth studio album, and a worldwide tour, arrives exactly 20 years since A-Ha topped the Billboard Hot 100 and conquered the pop globe with Take On Me, before setting out to show that was merely the top layer in a complex and sophisticated collective. As friends, musicians, stars and human beings, they've been to the moon and back since. Analogue is their new field report. You can tick off the timelines for yourself. Autumn 1980, Furuholmen and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy present their first record to the world as members of a band called Bridges. Autumn 1983, with Morten Harket
installed as frontman of the trio to be known forevermore as A-Ha, they land a worldwide record deal with Warner Brothers. Autumn '85, Take On Me becomes not only their anthem but practically a theme tune for '80s pop itself, underpinned by the debut album Hunting High and Low. Autumn '86, its famed and undying promo clip wins four titles at the MTV Video Music Awards, and a-ha begin to carve a life outside its clutches, releasing the predominantly self-produced sophomore album Scoundrel Days. By the fall of 1990, they rack up their 13th top 30 single in a row in the UK. In '94, an unannounced, five-year band hiatus is opening the safety valve to individual expression. Come '98, A-Ha are confirming a reunion that led to 2000's Minor Earth, Major Sky and on to 2002's Lifelines. Morten, Magne and Paul have focused their energies on the positive tensions of making a great new record, in a new label environment. From the first single, the simultaneously icy and embracing Celice, to instant, undeniable pieces like Analogue and Halfway Through The Tour, to the reflective, delicate Keeper of the Flame and one of their own favourites, the sophisticated Cozy Prison, it's an album that walks new ground but is, utterly and incontrovertibly, A-Ha. In the band's great tradition, Celice is also attracting plenty of attention for a very notable video. So notable, in fact, that its explicit detail is making some television schedulers nervous. It was filmed in part in a Berlin brothel, with the ingenious aid of a heat-seeking camera. The retro nature of the album title is part of a process of incorporating history into their future. Especially for a group that was suddenly swept up in a tornado of fan mania, glossy tabloid intrusion and, ultimately, misinterpretation of their musical identity.