Adventures in Modern Recording

On the day Adventures was to begin recording, Downes left to form the band Asia; although Island Records' publisher renegotiated with Downes, Downes' departure gave the publisher a false impression that Horn's career ended, resulting in Island dropping the Buggles.[3] This in turn led to Horn's other industry acquaintances having a similar viewpoint; recalled Horn, "I was astounded and - you know what? - I was fucking angry as well! I hadn’t even got started yet..."[3] Luckily, Horn's wife Jill Sinclair made a deal with French label Carrere Records, with DJ Claude Carrere helping fund the album.[3]

Horn described producing Adventures in Modern Recording as an training of his production craft, with a process of "just messing around with gear" and "having a silly idea."[3] While Adventures in Modern Recording was mostly a Trevor Horn solo project, Downes was still involved in the writing and production of "Vermillion Sands", "I Am a Camera" and "Lenny" (where he also handled the drum programming) and played keyboards on "Beatnik". Australian producer Julian Mendelsohn and Gary Langan, who also handled the mixing and recording for The Age of Plastic were engineers on the album. Langan, Horn, and Anne Dudley, who is credited as keyboardist on "Beatnik", would later form The Art of Noise. Other note-worthy contributors including Horn's long-time collaborator Luis Jardim (percussion on "Beatnik") and Yes bassist Chris Squire ("sound effects" for the title track).[3]

The Buggles line-up for Adventures in Modern Recording: Trevor Horn (third to the left) in a tuxedo surrounded by similarly-dressed, Auton-esque dummies.

A more left-field record than The Buggles' debut The Age of Plastic (1980) as Horn planned it to be,[3] Adventures in Modern Recording is a progressive electronic album[2][4][5] containing both dance cuts and "epic ballads."[4] It is stylistically and sonically diverse,[6][5][2] going from "pompous sampled dramatics to wonderfully impish mock-jazz sections," wrote Chris Roberts.[7] The variety is prevalent on some of the songs themselves, such as "Vermillion Sands" "which makes Bohemian Rhapsody resemble T.V. Eye," summarized Roberts.[7] Mojo's David Buckley analyzed the track being filled with "electro-pop, harmony vocals, key signature changes, incongruous blasts of synthetic trumpet and boogie woogie piano and swing."[5]

During the production of Adventures, Horn also produced for the pop act Dollar, which influenced how he produced his solo project and in turn his works for the duo. He envisioned Dollar as a "technopop orchestra" playing at the Vermillion Sands hotel (the subject of one of the album's tracks). This not only gave Horn the idea of songwriting and production concepts for Adventures, but also how the Buggles' visual aesthetic would change; the group went from, in Ian Peel's words, "two guys in silver suits, one with mullet, the other with funny glasses," to a four-piece led by Horn and backed by three male dummies a la the Autons and members of Kraftwerk, a take on the house band on "Vermillion Sands."[3]

Adventures in Modern Recording was one of the first commercially available albums to feature sounds from the Fairlight CMI, one of the first digital sampling synthesizers.[8] It also marks one of Horn's earliest times working with sampling, and Horn would later incorporate techniques he built from the experience for records like Slave To The Rhythm by Grace Jones, Art of Noise's The Seduction of Claude Debussy and Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Welcome to the Pleasuredome.[3] Horn admitted to being disinterested in the project near the end of production "because I didn’t think there was a single there..."[3]

Initially, Carerre only had three single releases planned for promotion of Adventures in Modern Recording: "I Am a Camera" with a B-side of "Fade Away" in October 1981, the title track with "Blue Nylon" as its B-side in January 1982, and "On TV" with a longer version of "Blue Nylon" later that year.[3] However, the album's success in continental Europe led to the label releasing "Lenny" and "Beatnik" as singles in 1982.[3]

The album was issued on CD in 1993 by Japanese label Jimco Records.[9] In 1997 it was reissued with three bonus tracks, this time on the Japanese Flavour of Sound label.[10] A new reissue was released by Salvo Records/ZTT on 15 February 2010, which included 10 bonus tracks.[11]

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[12]
BBC Music	(favourable)[7]
The Bolton News	(favourable)[13]
Mojo	(favourable)[5]
Music Week	(favourable)[14]
pennyblackmusic.co.uk	(mixed to positive)[6]
Musician, Player and Listener	(mixed)[15]
The Quietus	(favourable)[16]
The Scotsman	(favourable)[17]
Smash Hits	5.5/10[18]

Reviews upon release were mixed.[15] It was one of Billboard's "recommended LPs" on 20 February 1982.[4] A mixed review from Smash Hits praised Horn's production and the first five tracks for having "enough strong tunes, witty ideas and funky noises," "but the whole is much less than the sum of the parts, and Side Two deteriorates into tedious Yes-style pomposity."[18] Opined Mike Gardner in Record Mirror, "Instead of an invigorating glimpse into their world of hi-sci techno wizardry, we get a weedy piece of whimsy."[19]

AllMusic's Jeri Montesano, who gave the album 4 out of 5 stars, considered the album's quality to equal The Age of Plastic, and compared the two to pop music in the 1990s that he found "unimaginative".[12] An Amazon.com editorial review described Adventures in Modern Recording as "something of a lost classic, with great vocals by Trevor Horn and a sparkling electronic sound that is completely in-step with the prevailing electro mood of the pop charts in 2010."[20] BBC Music highlighted Trevor Horn's production abilities of the album, and he also garnered interest in the bonus tracks of the 2010 reissue.[7] The Bolton News writer Martin Hutchinson called it "a true glimpse at the history of the band that kicked off MTV."[13]

Original LP release[1]

Side one

1. "Adventures in Modern Recording" (Simon Darlow, Trevor Horn, Bruce Woolley) – 3:46
2. "Beatnik" (Horn) – 3:38
3. "Vermillion Sands" (Geoff Downes, Horn) – 6:48
4. "I Am a Camera" (Downes, Horn) – 4:56

Side two

1. "On TV" (Horn, Wooley, Rodney Thompson) – 2:48
2. "Inner City" (Darlow, Horn) – 3:22
3. "Lenny" (Downes, Horn) – 3:12
4. "Rainbow Warrior" (Darlow, Horn, John Sinclair) – 5:22
5. "Adventures in Modern Recording (reprise)" (Darlow, Horn, Woolley) – 0:51

Bonus tracks on 1997 CD re-release[21]

10. "Fade Away" – 2:36

    Original B-side of the "I Am a Camera" and "On TV" 7-inch singles

11. "Blue Nylon" – 2:25

    Original B-side of the "Adventures in Modern Recording" 7-inch single

12. "I Am a Camera" – 4:13

    Original 12-inch single mix

Bonus tracks on 2010 CD re-release[22]

10. "Fade Away"
11. "Blue Nylon"
12. "I Am a Camera" (12-inch mix)
13. "We Can Fly from Here – Part 1"
14. "Dion"
15. "Videotheque"
16. "On TV"
17. "Walking on Glass" (Original version of "Lenny")
18. "Riding a Tide"
19. "We Can Fly from Here – Part 2"

The Buggles

• Geoff Downes – keyboards (2–4, 7), drum programming (7), production (3–4, 7, 12)
• Trevor Horn – vocals, bass (1, 6, 9–11), guitar (2–4, 7), drum programming (4), production

Additional personnel

• John Sinclair – drum programming (1, 5–6, 8–11), cymbals (1, 8–9), guitar (2), vocals (5), production (1–2, 5–6, 8–9, 16)
• Simon Darlow – keyboards and guitar (1, 5–6, 8–11)
• Chris Squire – sound effects (1, 9)
• Anne Dudley – keyboards (2)
• Luís Jardim – percussion (2)
• Bruce Woolley – vocals (5)
• Danny Schogger, Rod Thompson – keyboards (7)
• Gary Langan, Julian Mendelsohn – engineering
• Stuart Bruce – assistant engineering
• Rory Kee – illustrator
• Glenn Travis Associates – design