Musique (album)

Musique
Studio album by Theatre of Tragedy
Released	November 14, 2000
Recorded	Soundsuite, Lydlab
Genre	Industrial metal, electropop
Length	48:36
Label	Nuclear Blast
Producer	Erik Ljunggren
Theatre of Tragedy chronology
Virago EP (1999) Musique (2000) Closure: Live (2001)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Femme Metal	[2]
Metal Storm	[3]
Focusmag.net	(Favourable) [4]

Musique is the fourth music album by the Norwegian metal band Theatre of Tragedy, and the album that marked the change from gothic metal with Early Modern English lyrics to a more electronic style, using Modern English.

The title on the album's cover, "[ˈmjuːzɪk]", is the pronunciation of the English word "music" transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet.

The change in musical direction for Theatre of Tragedy was associated with a change from traditional gothic and supernatural themes to lyrics based on modern life, including technology ("Machine", "Radio"), nightlife ("Image", "The New Man") and streetfighting ("Crash/Concrete").

The album was re-released on July 27, 2009, in a limited edition of 2,000 copies.

Track listing

1. "Machine" – 4.14
2. "City of Light" – 4.09
3. "Fragment" – 4.00
4. "Musique" – 3.29
5. "Commute" – 5.25
6. "Radio" – 3.39
7. "Image" – 3.09
8. "Crash/Concrete" – 3.29
9. "Retrospect" – 4.03
10. "Reverie" – 5.26
11. "Space Age" – 4.16
12. "The New Man" (Bonus Track) – 3.21

On the back of the album's casing, "Space Age" is written in Russian: "Космическая эра"; moreover, the words "Гагарина, Терешковой, Леонова, Лайки, Белки и Стрелки" ("Of Gagarin, Tereshkova, Leonov, of Laika, Belka and Strelka") are recited throughout the song.

The song "Commute" has the line "It's more fun to commute" in its lyrics, possibly a reference to Kraftwerk's "It's more fun to compute" from their Computer World album, which in turn is a reference to "It's more fun to compete" found on old pinball machines.

Singles

Two tracks from Musique were released as singles.

1. "Image" was released in 2000. This single had the album version of "Machine" plus remixes of "Fragment" (by Element) and "Machine" (by VNV Nation).
2. "Machine" was released as an EP in 2001. The EP had the same remixes of "Fragment" and "Machine" which were on the "Image" single. The EP also had the French version of "Image", a remix of "Reverie" and "Radio". The multimedia content on the disc is the video for "Image".

2009 re-release

Metal Mind Productions reissued the album after it had been digitally remastered using a 24-bit process on a golden disc. It includes three bonus tracks, "Quirk" (Original Version) - also known as the original version of "Image" - , "Radio" (Unreleased Mix) and "Reverie" (Unreleased Mix). The album is limited to 2,000 copies and was released in Europe on July 27, 2009.^[5]

References