Vienna (album)

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Professional reviews
Vienna

Studio album by Ultravox
Released	11 July 1980
Recorded	1980
Genre	New Romantic
Label	Chrysalis Records
Producer(s)	Conny Plank, Ultravox
All Music Guide link
Ultravox chronology
Systems of Romance (1978)	Vienna (1980)	Rage in Eden (1981)

[edit] Interview excerpts

Warren Cann Interviewed by Jonas Warstad from the official Ultravox Website ULTRAVOX - THE STORY Pt 5.

"(For Vienna) the songs were all 'tight' from our touring and the newest songs were well prepared from our writing/rehearsals.

While we were now using more synthesizers, as on our earlier albums we were still using 'reasonably' straightforward bass/drums/guitar recording techniques. Recording FX were pretty much the usual tape & digital FX (though digital FX units were in their relative infancy then); flanging, reverb, delay, chorus, etc. We liked to use backwards reverbs (reverb applied normally but with the tape turned over and running backwards - when the tape is turned the right way round, the reverb appears 'before' the source sound) and were also fond of backwards guitars & vocals.

I'd always been captivated by technology, when it started to encroach upon the world of music I was totally into it. I started out a conventional player but found electronics insanely fascinating.

I used some guitar FX pedals to run my drum machines through (phase, flange, distortion, echo) from time to time (i.e., 'Mr. X'). Every once in awhile I would also run my acoustic drum kit through a distortion box to toughen up the sound. There wasn't much we wouldn't put through a guitar FX pedal just to see what it would sound like. We generally preferred to do this at source, rather than afterwards via the desk. No matter how simple the type of FX is ("Oh, that's an easy one... we can get that again, no problem."), you never do seem to get it exactly the same again and the ripples from that change affect everything else. Bill also ran his violin through a lot of effects pedals, mainly from Electro-Harmonix. He also had a Roland 'Space-Echo' tape delay unit. He later acquired an electric violin which had the capacity to level buildings with a single blast.

One of the aspects of the Mini-Moog that fascinated us was it's ability to pump out a stream of steady eighth-notes. By keying different notes, a bass line was produced with the unwavering perfect tempo of the machine. Like the drum machines, this rock solid tempo had a hypnotic element to it that mesmerised. It was the source of 'Sleepwalk', 'New Europeans', and 'All Stood Still'. For the time being, I had to play acoustic drums to it as there was no way of us syncing it to my drum machines.

Eventually, we found a way of connecting the drum machine to the Moog so that the pulsing bass line would be in sync with the drum machine; even when I was playing my drums and we'd muted the drum machine, we could start a song with the bass line at the right tempo, for example, "All Stood Still". There was only so many things you could do with a constant stream of eighth notes, even with Chris partially keying in notes, so I came up with a primitive 'sequencer' in order to introduce some syncopation into the bass lines. It had a series of toggle switches on it that I could trip in a pre-determined series; i.e., On/On/On/off/On/On/off/On, this gave us the bass line for things like 'Rage In Eden'. It was crude but it worked.

Prior to this I had gotten a hold of Dave Simmons' very first product, it was called the 'Clap Trap'; a little black box that would emulate the sound of hand-claps. I used a foot switch, mainly, (to trigger it) and was thus able to add another component to some of the rhythms played. It was also relatively easy to connect it to one of the drum machines to 'clock' it's tempo, this was done on 'Passionate Reply'. I also used Simmons' next development, the SDS-III. It was a unit which would allow you to connect up to four pads and make 'electronic' drum sounds. Still firmly analog, but if you set the controls just right, it made quite a strong noise. This is the sound heard at the intro of 'All Stood Still'.

We were pushing the very limits of technology at the time, albeit without a big budget (that came later). We were determined to play live what we had created, with the major drawback being, of course, that this stuff wasn't all that reliable within the secure confines of a studio and we were using it live onstage with all its attendant hazards. It didn't get much better later on, either. We just had more incredibly expensive items of evermore complicated equipment to screw up. Only at the very end of the band did all this start to come together in a more reliable way. Even so, I remember that when we played 'Live Aid' three of the four songs in our set required things being triggered and all we could think of was, "Pleeeease don't let anything break!"

The recording of the 'Vienna' album allowed us to put to use everything that we'd learned so far. The mixing sessions at Conny Plank's studio took us about two weeks, there was a good atmosphere and work went very smoothly."