Human League - Babies, Crows and Empire State Human

My music stories: Human League – Reproduction

Today we come to another important milestone in my musical universe, the debut album “Reproduction” by the British band Human League. Knows today almost only the “older guys”. The band is assigned to completely different genres: starting with synthie-pop, over electropop up to post-punk. An impressive variety, I personally would also describe them as one of the great-grandfathers of electronic dance music. At least that is what it was for me.

I discovered the record in 1979 in what was then the largest record shop in Munich (a branch of the WOM World of Music; was closed a long time ago). I was on a school trip and after the usual cultural programme we were allowed to go shopping in the city centre as usual. I was basically drawn to the above mentioned record shop, because the offer in my hometown Füssen was limited. If you wanted to order something, it took at least 3-4 weeks and on top of that the records cost a lot of money.

Maybe that’s why I remember the class trip and the purchase of this album so well, because this LP was one of the most important musical milestones for me. And the milestones had to be tracked down laboriously, not in Füssen, but in the biiiiiiig Munich. Today I visit iTunes or Amazon Music, put a whole album or just single tracks into the shopping basket, pay the whole thing and a few seconds later it’s on my computer. This is not a special experience, unlike back then.

On the LP you can find the danceable hits “Blind Youth” and “Empire State Human” next to more experimental tracks. In the first two of them there are already two important elements of modern dance music: sparse synthesizer sequences, a monotonous rhythm. Simply ingenious.

Up to this point, synthesizer-based music was not really connected with danceable music for me. Rather something like Klaus Schulze and Pink Floyd. Danceable back then was actually only the disco music. And that was nothing for the cool guys. Now I stand by it, but that is another story.

I linked to “Empire State Human”, especially because of the nice presentation. Have fun listening to it.