all 1 comments

[–]JasonCarswell[S] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

There were a couple okay songs but there were no good or great songs on the album. However, all of the short little tracks between songs were fucking brilliant, and some of the songs had great intros and outros. The psychedelic creativiity and production value are A+++. But that's just not enough for an album or a hit song.

What this short summary video misses is that Billy Idol used to hate all things geekery. At some point (I forget the details) and he got turned on to technology. Unfortunately there was no soul in this masturbatory album, aside from the obvious fascination with the new digital tools and all the fun sounds they could produce.

In addition to being hyped by the record label, Wired Magazine and Mondo 2000 Magazine were new and hyping it, as in those days geekery was in short supply and they were trying to make Zippies the new techno-hippie, reviving other careers like Timothy Leary.

Ultimately Idol would have been wise to tap into the growing rave scene of the time and embraced what was simply know then as "dance music" or "house music" at best - before all the EDM genres branched off.

The full album is on https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Billy+Idol+Cyberpunk

I used some of the short little tracks in my Hysterical Virile Panda-Mix playlist last month. Especially appropriate while still in the cypberpunk vein was the "injection" one called Interlude 3.