The song Vienna might have been held off the No.1 spot by a novelty song about a rebellious Italian boy, but its huge success gave Ultravox carte blanche to experiment for as long as it took with a bearlike German. Conny Plank, the éminence grise of krautrock, was rehired to oversee Ultravox’s fifth studio album, and this time it would take more than three months to come to fruition at his converted pig farm in Wolperath, near Cologne. The band went into the studio with nothing, and opened themselves up to the whims of inspiration. The result of that gamble was 1981’s Rage In Eden and, for Ultravox fans (of the new testament variety), it’s the pinnacle of the band’s creativity. Furthermore, it’s a cornerstone of progressive pop, and became the inspiration for some of the more thoughtful art-pop made during the early to mid-80s.
“Weirdly, you’ve just done the impossible,” says Midge Ure, calling from his Portuguese bolthole. “You’ve had me listening to one of my old albums.” And how does it bear up 41 years later? “You tend to analyse anything.”
