Dazzle Ships by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Dazzle Ships, OMD's fourth album, sailed out on Virgin on 4 March 1983 under a made-up Telegraph label, with Rhett Davies producing. The title and cover nod to Edward Wadsworth's Vorticist painting Dazzle-ships in Drydock at Liverpool, and the record inside is just as camouflaged. Coming off the success of Architecture & Morality, Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys refused the label's push for a sequel and made something stranger instead.

Here are musique concrète collages, crackling shortwave radio, Cold War dread and Eastern Bloc voices, and a nagging unease about technology creeping into everyday life, with "Genetic Engineering" and "Telegraph" as the singles. The press gave it a rough ride, and even a top five placing in the UK couldn't stop it being called a flop, one that cost them support across Europe. Time turned that verdict around: it's now a cult favorite, an inspiration to artists in electronic music, rock and hip hop, and a record heard as ahead of its time.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.