OMD have been a bit quiet of late but that’s poised to end. It seems like only yesterday, but their last new single, “Don’t Go” from their 40th anniversary compilation came out in 2019…four years ago! The band had been teasing since last year their next album with the title of “Bauhaus Staircase,” and while we’ve been distracted by reality, the pre-release title single has dropped earlier today. Since I have a job, I am only now just getting to hear the song, which is on those newfangled streaming platforms as of today, but also [thankfully] good, olde fashioned DL stores, so I can put a copy on my device for the all important commute listening. Where 90% of all music heard happens. So I have just bought the single now for the low, low price of $0.99 on iTunes.
In the past they have issued their singles in physical formats, and so far there’s none of that, but the OMD home page proclaims that the store is “down for maintenance” so we’ll have to wait and see. I’ve bought every OMD physical single issued since their return…except for the annoyingly hard-to-buy-in-America RSD 10″ singles of “Julia’s Song” and “The Future Will Be Silent.” I’m guessing that there will be some manifestation – probably a record coming down the pike and soon. There’s still no official word on when the album will be released, but a certain UK online retailer lists the album as being released on October 20th of this year, so the campaign is underway and the payload drops in less than two months. I will now listen to the single and report back with my findings, but thanks to Soundcloud, we can all listen together.
Pulsating synths and a calmly relentless beat were electrified with wailing wave leads, drenched in portamento and sounding like warning claxons. Recalling all of the imminent peril of the late 70s. Textures of burbling liquid, degraded and mixed low in the track remind us that in those heady days in the 70s, it was avant garde to have a band member who was responsible for taped sound, ala Eno or Carlos Peron. Lessons that OMD have bothered to remember, even if they are using computers.
When Andy McCluskey finally began singing, he adopted a breathless phrasing; singing from the larnyx instead of the diaphragm. The first verse had him singing that he wanted to “kick down fascist art,” so it’s appreciated that he’s been paying attention all along. I’d swear that Mellotron samples followed that lyric but the third verse was even better with shoutouts to Pere Ubu’s utterly classic debut album getting particularly emphasized as a dubbed out hook! It was at this point that a wide smile spread across your normally reticent Monk’s puss.
I wanna kiss on a Bauhaus staircase,
Bauhaus Staircase
I want a love with an open heart
Gotta live in a clean and clear space
I wanna kick down fascist art
Cause everyone needs a Bauhaus staircase
Everyone gets a second chance
All the world needs art and passion
Pere Ubu and “The Modern Dance”
OMD: Bauhaus Staircase – UK – DL [2023]
- Bauhaus Staircase 3:58
As the song progressed, the only typical OMD moment was the bittersweet instrumental middle eight. Andy managed to combine art, culture and especially politics into the heady swirl of the lyric that was the type of effort that only OMD would have made. The coda and breakdown in the final half minute of the song had the hints of Mellotron called back for an encore as the synths dropped out to have the rhythm track putter out in a stately fashion.
They had me at kicking fascism but won my heart with the Pere Ubu reference. The overall sound was as warm as music made on a computer can possibly be. It was almost a perfect modern OMD single, with the exception of the mastering, which was overly compressed. The wave below tells the sad tale. We also couldn’t help but notice that “Don’t Go [Bauhaus Staircase version]” was also slated to be included on the upcoming album in a new recording. This tidbit of info thanks to assiduous searching on retail sites.
I would expect that within two or three weeks, that OMD will have the pre-order set up for their fourth modern album. And they usually have a DLX version with more bells and whistles on offer so we’ll see if we get just silver discs or a combo pack with mandatory vinyl. Hopefully, I will be done paying off all of the Ultravox and John Foxx recent purchases by the time I have to pull the pin for “Bauhaus Staircase. At which point we’ll have to update the OMD Rock G.P.A., won’t we?
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Post-Punk Monk 
It’s an absolute belter of a track, I love it.
Why everything still has to be on the peak of peak mastering-wise is anyone’s guess…maybe a ‘younger engineer’ was deployed to satisfy some corporate demand.
I really love the old-school drum machine and that raw mellotron aesthetic.
Peeps are losing their minds on other forums over the vocal processing and I think Andy has never needed the cher-esque grotesquery’s of auto tune/melodyne, but it works.
The clip is also reminiscent of Devo’s ‘Don’t Shoot, I’m a Man’.
It’s certainly sonically and stylistically situated in the late 70’s, early 80’s, but with precision, bristle and sheen that you can only get digitally. McCluskey has stated he is all digital instruments now, and whilst being ‘in the box’ brings with it the risk of the temptation to just grabbing the presets everyone is accustomed to, here OMD demonstrates class and experience in the sound choice (curation?) and design that you only can have by not only being technically adroit but by deeply connected still with the very spirit of that time…
On that, I played it on Spotify and then the next track my algorithm threw up was Ultravox’s Thin Wall. It was a perfect segue.
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>Why everything still has to be on the peak of peak mastering-wise is anyone’s guess…
As a mastering engineer (among other things), I’ve been puzzling over this for a decade. The so-called “loudness war” was supposedly declared over as of several years ago, but we still hear this painful over-limiting on so many (or most) records. The reason why this is still done is quite obvious really (if a bit tragic).
A minuscule number of people are listening to music on home-stereo setups. I suspect that a lot of readers of this blog are among that vanishing minority, but make no mistake, there aren’t many of us left. The sad truth is that the overwhelming majority of listeners today are consuming music on earbuds via smartphones. The remainder are largely listening in cars or on laptops. These all tend to be situations in which dynamic music will have to be constantly adjusted in volume by the listener, and in which the music has to overcome significant and constantly changing background noise.
The over-limiting that we disdain is actually a boon in these listening scenarios, as it provides a consistent sound level that can be “set and forget” to compete with noisy surroundings.
So, the “loudness war” mandated by labels in the early years of the 21st century may have subsided for aesthetic reasons and the slow adaptation of the LUFS standards in music mastering (which has been used in film and broadcast audio for decades), but the over-limiting immediately began again, seamlessly, due to its newer utility in contemporary listening paradigms.
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>being ‘in the box’ brings with it the risk of the temptation to just grabbing the presets everyone is accustomed to
That was true in the pre-DAW era too. I can hear specific recognizable and unaltered Oberheim, Korg, Roland, Yamama, or Sequential Circuits presets on loads of records from the late 1970s forward through the 1990s.
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JT – True, but the FX and production/engineering gambits even presets are recorded with can utterly transform how a song sounds using them. Ever see the “Souvenir” documentary with Andy playing back the raw and excessively puny Korg Micropreset [the model name is a dead giveaway] synth from the multitrack? But it’s true; I often hear distinctive synth presets used time and time again in the 80s.
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theminordian – Welcome to the comments! The vocal processing isn’t as bad as some gaffes on earlier OMD moderne that I could call out. What I am getting into though is the ProTools vocal arrangement that is actually pretty astonishing once you start paying attention to it! Quite an impressive web being woven there! “The Thin Wall” following??! I need to try that!
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I listened to the debut and watched it. Andy chatted in the YouTube comments-one of the first comments was he was pouring himself a large scotch! Nerves, I’m sure. I am still thinking about the song – the sound. I would like to see the OMD range covered in this last album. I’ve been digging even more into the catalog listening to the other songs. I purchased some of the obscure discs (4 song ones that have mainly remixes and obscure B-sides). I find I’m really liking the moody songs they have which lyrically are golden. I’m also noticing that any song that has a sweeter sound is Paul. Andy has an edgier, discordant, anxious vibe. This song is that. Looking forward to the album and UK tour. Already have plans with UK friends to hit the tour. Goal is to see every show in UK.
Break-DEVO was great! Apollo Hammersmith is a beautiful venue. No encore, though. They rocked the place and for most of the songs the audience knew all the words and sang with them. Great experience and glad I went. T-shirt is meh. They went with gold color for 50th anniversary, not colorful. Your T-shirt is better:-).
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Deserat – Completing your OMD CD single collection? That’s great! I got medieval on that thread around 20 years ago when I got all the “Andy OMD” releases that I never saw in stores at the time. I’ve bought all the singles since the reformation apart from the two I cited. Vintage OMD B-sidea are THE BEST! I hope you have the “Navigation” B-side compilation! It’s possibly the best OMD disc you could own!
This song was Andy, but the middle eight had to have been down to Paul. Both are credited as writers. If I were a smaller person, I’d be seethingly jealous of your DEVO show! As it sands, I’m glad you got to see them while it’s still possible. A pity about the merch.
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I love the single, it’s lyrical name checks for Weimar, Albers (Josef and Anni) and Pere Ubu’s debut and the striking video, not least the delightful gallery of album cover artwork towards the end. Andy’s frequently said in recent albums that Bauhaus Staircase will likely be O.M.D.’s last album of original material, but what a way to ‘bau’ out! I suspect that the dilemma for future tours will be figuring out which songs to leave out to squeeze in some of 2023’s newest ‘greatest hits’, this one included…
Great write up as always, PPM!
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Khayem – It’s great to hear Andy writing songs like these instead of tired “love songs” that they were smart to avoid early on. If they step down I would be very impressed. I suspect that given a few years of recharge, they could be back with another. We’ll see. Their refusal to submit to the commercial treadmill has made this second run of theirs possible as well as worthwhile. Though a few songs on “History Of Modern” should have been trimmed!
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I like the lyrics,but I have to say I am really disappointed by the music.
As a lifelong fan who has stuck by them through the wilderness years and beyond,I have a great interest in what they produce,but this left me cold.
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Gavin – Surprising that it passed you by. I finally figured out what it was reminding me of… Gary Numan’s “Random!” Kind of an interesting influence given their history with Numan. I also stuck with them through the wilderness years. I’ve switched on which of the last two sequential albums from phase one I like better, but they were never played around here much. Nor were the Andy-solo phase two albums. Those are terrible [apart from parts of the last one]! I played the HELL out of “History Of Modern” even though I can’t stand three of the tracks. It’s possibly the album of this century that I’ve listened to the most as I was obsessed with it for months and eventually took to programming out the three offenders which made it near perfect for me. I’m not the sort to indulge in such revisionist hi-jinx, normally. Though I thought that “English Electric” and “Punishment Of Luxury” were stronger albums than HOM. Am hoping for the best on “Bauhaus Staircase.”
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It’s pretty decent, good video too. News about the album and it’s multiple bundled formats now online via the official OMD store. There’s also at least three other coloured vinyl variants not on the store – exclusive Rough Trade white vinyl, exclusive silver vinyl from The Sound Of Vinyl, and a red vinyl ‘indies only’ edition.
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versioncrazy – Collect them all, kids! I am super picky in my old age. In the middle of severely downsizing my collection, so I am back to being a pragmatic collector, like how I started out.
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Has to be that way nowadays – just too many variations given the cost to even think about such a desire.
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I went the conservative route this time, but went all out for the Dazzle Ships pack – I’m wearing the tee-shirt a bit too much! The only band I’m all in on is Devo, and that is getting progressively more expensive as they up the ante on variations, books, mining the untapped back catalogue, shipping gewgaws and bits of artwork as well.
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Overall I like the single, the lyrical references are great and the performance is pretty good albeit processed. I feel like they leaned on the title phrase a little too hard in the lyrics, and of course JT’s comments about the listening environment were spot on … most music is listened to on AirPods or AirPod knock-offs these days, and indeed I was listening on my AirPods Pro when I was reading his comments!
Somebody needs to put out an album called “Music for Noise Cancelling!” There, I said it!
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I really like this new single! Looking forward to the new album!
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There was a nice little interview with Andy McCluskey on the 28th October Radcliffe And Maconie show on BBC 6 Music; he talked about the new tour, and some of his favourite music. Available until 27th November at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001rr72 Interview starts at 1 hour 36, though start at 1.33 and you’ll get to hear Bauhaus Staircase first.
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