Dazzle Ships is the fourth studio album by the English electronic band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD), released on 4 March 1983 by Virgin Records (under the guise of the fictitious Telegraph label). Its title and cover art allude to a painting by Vorticist artist Edward Wadsworth based on dazzle camouflage, titled Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool.
The follow-up album to OMD's commercially successful Architecture & Morality (1981), Dazzle Ships marked a departure in sound for the group, who rebuffed record company pressure to duplicate their previous release. The album is noted for its experimental content, particularly musique concrète sound collages, and the use of shortwave radio recordings to explore Cold War and Eastern Bloc themes. It also concerns itself with the rise of technology in society. The record spawned two singles: "Genetic Engineering" and "Telegraph".
Dazzle Ships met with largely negative reviews and, despite reaching the top five of the UK Albums Chart, was regarded as a commercial flop. It nevertheless came to be recognised as a "cult classic", and an inspiration for many artists across electronic, rock and hip hop music. The music press gradually reversed its opinion of Dazzle Ships, praising the record as an underrated and misunderstood work, and an album ahead of its time.
Background
In the year following the release of commercially successful predecessor Architecture & Morality (1981), co-founder and keyboardist Paul Humphreys had married, and he and singer Andy McCluskey were growing apart.Waller, Johnny; Humphreys, Mike. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: Messages. Sidgwick & Jackson. 1987. . pp. 110–118. The pair had never expected the success they had achieved, and elected to retire OMD, having purchased their first cars and homes in Wirral. McCluskey said, "After two solid years of work... we had written our final epitaph – ["Maid of Orleans" B-side] "Of All the Things We've Made" – and didn't think we'd ever work together again. And all of a sudden, we were quite rich." However, Humphreys and McCluskey – who had delivered only three of their seven contracted albums for Dindisc – felt a debt to their fanbase, and began discussing new musical ideas.
Virgin Records, who had assumed OMD's contract following the collapse of independent subsidiary Dindisc, attempted to influence the sound of the album. Humphreys told how the label tried to sway the band towards duplicating Architecture & Morality, while assuring them they would become "the next Genesis"; this compelled the group to change musical direction. OMD were daunted by the pressure of matching the success of their previous release, and early sessions were not fruitful. Seeking refuge in their radio experiments of old, Humphreys and McCluskey came up with the sound collages "Dazzle Ships" and "Radio Prague". Paradoxically, in light of the eventual critical reaction to Dazzle Ships, the more experimental direction taken on the record was partly a response to muted reviews of Architecture & Morality, which "forced [OMD] into new areas".
At the band's Gramophone Suite studio in Liverpool, they reshuffled their inventory of instruments, introducing the E-mu Emulator. Pursuing musical inspiration, Humphreys and McCluskey moved to California for six weeks to live with the parents of Humphreys' wife. Upon returning to Liverpool, however, the pair had failed to produce any substantial ideas for the album. They elected to exhume "Of All the Things We've Made" for inclusion, feeling it had been squandered as a B-side, and resurrected "Radio Waves", a holdover from OMD precursor group the Id (this track was considered as a single). "The Romance of the Telescope (Unfinished)", which had appeared as a B-side to 1981's "Joan of Arc", was remixed and the "unfinished" caveat removed. Instrumentalists Martin Cooper and Malcolm Holmes grew dejected by the largely unproductive recording sessions, with Holmes stating, "This was the first time that OMD had reached a major stumbling block."
The band were encouraged by critics to become more political. As such, they used shortwave radio recordings to explore Cold War and Eastern Bloc themes, while oscillating between moody pop music and experimental, musique concrète soundscapes. "Radio Prague" features the interval signal of the Czechoslovak Radio foreign service, including the time signal and station identification spoken in Czech. "Time Zones" is a montage of various speaking clocks from around the world. Neither "Radio Prague" nor "Time Zones" carry a writing credit, with OMD being credited only for arranging the tracks. "This Is Helena", "ABC Auto-Industry" and "International" also include parts of broadcasts recorded off the air (a presenter introducing herself, an economic bulletin, and news, respectively). The record also explores the pros and cons of the rise of technology in society; "ABC Auto-Industry" attempts to recreate "the monotony of production line car manufacture".
For a time the group sought inspiration in a new studio, Phil Manzanera's White House (latter Gallery Studios) in Chertsey, and hired producer Rhett Davies. McCluskey said, "We intimidated [Davies] in the end. The songs were simply not up his street. They weren't conducive to being handled with slick touches and it ended up with arguments." This did little to help band morale, as Holmes explained, "Both myself and Martin seriously began to doubt Paul and Andy's judgement... More and more, it was becoming Andy's album." The sample-based approach to compiling the tracks further alienated Cooper and Holmes; the latter would ultimately play on only three songs, which had been recorded during the earlier Gramophone Suite sessions. Holmes spent his time at the White House "playing video games and trying to convince [him]self that Paul and Andy knew what they were doing." Part of the album was also recorded at Mayfair Studios in London. McCluskey has cited Kraftwerk's Radio-Activity (1975) as a key influence on the record.
To maintain the band's image of being signed to an indie label, Dazzle Ships purported to have been issued by the fictitious "Telegraph" label. It was released on LP, cassette tape and compact disc. The cover art was created by longtime OMD collaborator Peter Saville; Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, the painting which inspired the album's title and artwork, is in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
Commercial performance Dazzle Ships peaked at number five on the UK Albums Chart (remaining in the top 20 for six weeks),The Virgin Rock Yearbook: Volume 4. Edited by Al Clark. Virgin Books (1983). . and also reached the top-10 in New Zealand and Spain. The record achieved global sales of 300,000 copies; this figure represented a fraction of the sales of multi-million selling predecessor Architecture & Morality (1981). Dazzle Ships was therefore considered a failure. McCluskey recalled, "The painful joke at Virgin was that it shipped gold and returned platinum."
Critical reception
Initial reviews of Dazzle Ships were largely negative, with NME and other outlets making unfavourable comparisons to the work of OMD heroes Kraftwerk. A scathing Mark Moses in The Boston Phoenix rechristened the album "Guzzle Shit by Offensive Manure in the Park". Record Mirrors Jim Reid observed a "nightmarish" album "replete with the worst kind of futuristic nonsense", while John Gill of Time Out labelled it "redundant avant-garde trickery". Sun Times critic Michael Lawson dismissed the record's experimental content as filler, adding that "too much attention [is] given to soundtrack-like effects that only clutter what decent electropop baubles there are here." There were sporadic appeals for listener perseverance: Paul Colbert of Melody Maker portrayed the album as "a challenge and a reward", while Smash Hits reviewer Johnny Black argued that "the songs are waiting to be found and are as melodic, passionate and vital as ever."
Although a critical and commercial disappointment upon release, Dazzle Ships came to be seen as a noble failure. In The Rough Guide to Rock (1996), co-author Dave Castle said, "This austere evocation of modern alienation is the classic OMD album. Excellent use of samples and incredible synths on strong, melodic and above all highly intelligent pop music." During the 2000s it was endorsed by Mojo as a "buried treasure" and an "ignored masterwork", while Ned Raggett of AllMusic wrote that the "dazzling" record "beats Kraftwerk at their own game, science and the future turned into surprisingly warm, evocative songs." Westword labelled Dazzle Ships an "avant-pop opus". Trouser Press remained unconvinced, describing the album as "impressive but not satisfying". The magazine noted "some amazing sounds and a powerful atmosphere", but felt that "found-tape gimmickry" had taken precedence over songwriting.
Dazzle Ships met with critical praise upon its initial re-release in 2008. Tom Ewing of Pitchfork wrote, "Luckily, you don't need a contrarian streak to love it... history has done its own remix job on Dazzle Ships, and the result is a richer, more unified album than anyone in 1983 could have imagined." In a five-star review, Record Collectors Daryl Easlea referred to "consistently eccentric" and "dark and detailed" content, calling the album "a weirdly satisfying listen". Luke Turner of The Quietus said that it "stands the test of time as a heroic statement", and represents "a fine realisation of that desire to be both pop and important that OMD first hinted at with 'Enola Gay' and 'Electricity'." In a 2023 review, Martin Gray of Louder Than War observed "innovative synth pop that isn't afraid to break rules and invent new ones", adding that Dazzle Ships had "finally earned its belated and much-deserved due as a minor unsung masterpiece".
Legacy
Critics have acknowledged Dazzle Ships as an underrated and misunderstood work, and a record ahead of its time.Multiple sources: John Bergstrom of PopMatters argued that while positive reappraisals of flop albums had become "all-too-common", the "prescient" Dazzle Ships lived up to the retrospective acclaim. Quietus writer Stuart Huggett charted the record's journey "from 1983 release to 2016 Classic Album", stating that it features some of OMD's strongest material but is "likely to remain too off the wall ever to permanently join the general public's Classic Albums canon". Dazzle Ships has nevertheless appeared in lists of 1983's best albums; The A.V. Club named it one of the year's "Great but Underappreciated Records". It was included in that same publication's "Hall of Fame", as well as the Chicago Tribunes "10 Essential New Wave Albums", the 1980s edition of Uncuts "Ultimate Record Collection", and music journalist Paul Roland's "Ten Essential CDs" of the decade. The album maintained cult status in the years following its release, eventually coming to be regarded as a "cult classic".