Alphaville – Eternally Yours (Vinyl 3LP)

Alphaville was formed after lead singer Marian Gold and Bernhard Lloyd met in Berlin in 1981. The pair were heavily influenced by UK indie acts like Tubeway Army, Gary Numan and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD).

“‘Eternally Yours’ actually sounds to my ears as if it were really the first Alphaville album – only that it wasn’t released forty years ago. We just didn’t have an orchestra at hand back then, but ‘only’ synthesizers and rhythm machines,” says Gold. Eternally Yours is about permanence and transience. The lyrics of the songs from four decades are for the most part written by Marian Gold himself. A central theme for Alphaville and Gold has always been dreaming. “We get around quite a lot, we’ve played almost everywhere, in and out of our heads,” Marian adds. “All this contributes to our music, to the idea of what Alphaville could be. It’s like a never-ending dream. Those who listen to our music hear fragments of that dream.”

The all- new and titular song reads like a farewell letter. In fact, except for the chorus, all the lines are taken from sonnets by Shakespeare. Gold and his two arrangers Max Knoth and Christian Lohr succeed on this album in providing the musical substance of the songs with the appropriate sound content. At the same time, the songs do not sound unusually bloated or overused – on the contrary: as a listener, one wonders about the natural, warm, even familiar sounds and asks oneself why there have not been more symphonic arrangements of Alphaville songs before.

LP1

1. Dream Machine
2. Summer in Berlin
3. Big in Japan
4. Dance with Me
5. Summer Rain
6. Apollo
7. Elegy
8. Lassie Come Home

LP2

1. MoonGirl
2. Welcome to the Sun
3. A Victory of Love
4. Sounds like a Melody
5. Around the Universe
6. Eternally Yours
7. Diamonds Are Forever
8. Flame
9. Forever Young

LP3

1. Big in Japan (BassRoque Version)
2. Sounds like a Melody (Chamber Version)
3. Forever Young (Petite Version)
4. Big in Japan (Single Edit)
5. Sounds like a Melody (Single Edit)
6. Forever Young (Single Edit)
7. Pandora’s Lullaby (Lunapark Version MCMXCI)
8. Elegy (Springtime Version MCMXC)
9. Dream Machine (Dreamscape Version MCMXCIX)