Easlea, Daryl (20 May 2022). "xPropaganda – The Heart Is Strange: "a compelling listen" ". Louder . Retrieved 4 November 2023. The Morning Call, 29 Mar 1986". The Morning Call. 29 March 1986. p.59 . Retrieved 23 December 2020. a b c "Propaganda | full Official Chart History". Official Charts Company . Retrieved 15 January 2022. The vinyl pops again. I lift the tone arm and return it to the start once more. This is how I want to remember Propaganda. Identical to A Secret Wish, except this version has in matrix "NIMBUS ENGLAND", not "MASTERED BY NIMBUS".

a b c d e f g h i j k l Colin Larkin, ed. (1992). The Guinness Who's Who of Indie and New Wave Music (Firsted.). Guinness Publishing. pp.221/2. ISBN 0-85112-579-4. Similar to A Secret Wish, but this version does not include the 'European' cat# 610 540 and 610 540-222, has no barcode and displays the circular "Manufactured And Distributed By Island" logo. It was an epic goodbye: A Secret Wish was a triumph of pomp and bombast, producer Stephen Lipson – Trevor Horn’s keenest protege at Sarm Studios – using his Synclavier digital synthesiser and sampling system to full, overwhelming effect. If you want a definitive example of 80s techno wizardry used in the services of great songwriting, look no further. Then, apart from the tasteless songs almost everything else suffers from similar factors: the synthesizer usage is sometimes rudimentary, sometimes is taste-less. The cold and almost plain sonic timbres of the high-tech instruments are sometimes painful. (That's valid exactly to the 95% of the Synclavier productions. I think there's only a very few people in the world had the time to tweak-out anything valuable from those monsters and the rest was based upon the factory presets. It's halway understood due to the incredible studio-fees and only top-end studios could afford such synths). A typical example is the most of the basses. They were harsh and teasing and a bit emptied-sounding (for me, even THOSE times). The drummachine is bloody rudimentary. Boaaah... It was always the weakest point of the ZTT but on the FGTH albums it was still excuseable.Propaganda stars return with new album 'The Heart is Strange' ". Retropopmagazine.com. 17 February 2022. previously unreleased on CD. Originally released as cassette 'singlette' Do Well CTIS 108 (May 1985). A Secret Wish has been reissued a number of times– including as a deluxe 20th anniversary edition and as a multi-channel SACD. The most recent re-release is the 2010 double CD deluxe edition which marks the album's 25th anniversary.

Also appearing: Andrew Richards, John McGeoch, Steve Howe, David Sylvian, Glenn Gregory, Trevor Horn, Johnathan Sorrell, Ian Mosley Charts [ edit ] Chart (1985)The first week of July 1985 finally saw the release of the band's debut album, A Secret Wish. [2] which was written by Mertens and Dörper. After receiving considerable critical acclaim and some commercial success, it reached number 16 on the UK Albums Chart. The album was followed by another single, " p:Machinery", in August 1985, [2] which only reached number 50 in the UK, but becoming a bigger hit in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland and even being used in the hit US TV Show Miami Vice (1986 episode: The Fix). [5] The 12-inch version of this release caused controversy (even within the group) as Paul Morley thought it was a good idea to have the sleeve feature a quote by writer J. G. Ballard, praising the activities of the German extremist group Red Army Faction. Ariola, who distributed ZTT's releases in Germany, refused to carry the 12" as a result, so the quote was changed on the German release to another by Ballard, on the aesthetic perfection of German suburbs. [ citation needed] Do Well" is the cassette single version of " Duel". "Die tausend Augen des Mabuse" is an extended version of the 6'31" twelve-inch mix (aka "13th Life"), without the early fade out. "Thought" (parts one and two) appeared together on Wishful Thinking (part two is the " p:Machinery" reprise). The Goodnight 32 mix of "p:Machinery" was released in 1985 on a 7-inch single as "p:Machinery (reactivated)". BMG will continue with their ‘art of the album’ reissue campaign with new CD and vinyl editions of Propaganda‘s 1985 album A Secret Wish.

The intertextual reference on this and subsequent releases isn’t surprising given the people involved. Paul Morley took a great delight in embellishing the ZTT releases with quotations—the Frankie album was probably the first chart-topping release with a recommended reading list—while band member Ralph Dörper had been with the Neue Deutsche Welle group Die Krupps prior to Propaganda, and it was his influence which gave them the abrasive industrial edge that I found so attractive. While between groups he released an experimental EP in 1983 under his own name featuring versions of In Heaven from Eraserhead and John Carpenter’s theme from Assault on Precinct 13, and it was Dörper who chose Throbbing Gristle’s Discipline as the demo song which the group used to catch the attention of ZTT. That particular cover version never made it to A Secret Wish although they did perform it live on The Tube, and a later version appeared on the remix album, Wishful Thinking. This recording is happily included on the second disc of the new reissue. Employing about every Weimar Republic and Wagnerian reference in the book, ZTT created something as grand and illusory as anything they had put together. The concept was so high, the music they assembled could have been almost incidental were it not so inventive, and at times brilliant. The third and final single, p:Machinery, expanded the short mix from the album into another 9-minute epic whose vision of a population enslaved to industrial technology easily invokes Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, so much so that I used to play the single while running taped scenes from the film on TV. The enormous “Polish” mix of this song has always been scarce on CD, with a Japanese release in 1988, and a later reissue (with some shoddy and superfluous remixes) in 1995. Another benefit of the new edition of the album is that the extended mix provides the climax of the second disc and sounds even more enormous, its brass fanfares accurately described in a review at the time as conjuring images of cities rising from the sea. Propaganda is credited for remixing Holly Johnson's single "Dancing with No Fear" (released 2015), on which Michael Mertens and Ralf Dörper also played a synthesizer. In May 1985, with Frankie Goes to Hollywood becoming tax exiles in Ireland, the band effectively headlined "The Value of Entertainment", a series of showcase gigs of ZTT signings, held at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. The shows also featured Art of Noise, Anne Pigalle, Andrew Poppy and Instinct. Propaganda were joined on stage by former Simple Minds bassist Derek Forbes and ex- Japan drummer Steve Jansen. [4] 1985: A Secret Wish [ edit ]

Notes

A few years later the band also appeared exclusively on a German TV show celebrating the best songs of the 1980s. The first single from the album, "Heaven Give Me Words", was co-written with 1980s synth-pop star Howard Jones [6] and reached the UK Top 40. The album was not as successful as A Secret Wish, only peaking at number 46 in the UK. A second single, "Only One Word", stalled at number 71 in the UK.