In 2011 Prog argued that German synth-pop band Propaganda’s 1985 debut album A Secret Wish had much more of a progressive aspect than many realised at the time.
Despite ZTT’s reputation as the ultimate home of pop-pranksterism and radical post-punk, in many ways the label kept prog’s ideals alive in the mid-80s. Apart from the fact that its in-house producer, Trevor Horn, was a sometime member of Yes, there were the bands – Frankie Goes To Hollywood with their lavish gatefold sleeves, Steve Howe guitar solos and tracks alluding to Pink Floyd; and Art Of Noise with their Close To The Edge-referencing song titles and attention to studio sorcery.
Then there was Propaganda. They were ZTT’s token arty Germans, two of them male, two female, who the label’s publicist/provocateur, ex-NME scribe Paul Morley, took to describing as “ABBA from Hell.”
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One of the band, Ralf Dörper, had been a member of industrial outfit Die Krupps. But the inclusion of classically-trained musician and composer Michael Mertens pushed Propaganda’s 1985 nine-track debut album towards prog, with the assistance of Horn, his protegé Steve Lipson, and string arranger David Bedford (yes, the one who orchestrated Tubular Bells).
A Secret Wish had an eight-minute opening track, Dream Within A Dream – based on a poem by Edgar Allan Poe – complete with extended flute solo and the sort of keyboard flourishes normally heard on albums bearing Roger Dean paintings.
A triumph of melodic concision and proto-techno programming… a victory for instrumental finesse and studio excess
The track Dr Mabuse had been released as a single in February 1984, but the label had been too busy with Frankie to follow it up. No matter: inspired by noir filmmaker Fritz Lang, the Horn-produced Mabuse still sounded amazing 18 months. Pomp? Check. Circumstance? Check. Wagnerian bombast and epic grandeur? Check, mate.
An unsettled Morley had given Lipson a range of post-punk albums in the hope of cleaning his palette of its prog tendencies. Both of them won out in a sense; A Secret Wish is a triumph of melodic concision and proto-techno programming as much as a victory for instrumental finesse and studio excess, from the synth swells and Chris Squire-goes-cosmic-funky bass part on The Murder of Love to Frozen Faces and its pan-piped, Teutonic froideur.
ThebestGermanicart-prog-electro-popalbumintheworld...ever!
