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By 1986 members of the original punk explosion had moved onto the broad category of "postpunk." Members of the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks had embraced their Krautrock and Dub influences, while others were experimenting with funky dance music. Billy Idol, for one brought punk the middle America by selling out a little while his former cohort Tony James sold out so much that Middle America could never hope to handle it. That is, except for one Chicago teen by the name of Ferris Beuller.

"Love Missle F1-11" was featured in that character's day off, but that is just a warm up for this masterpiece of Musique-Concrète and 1980s hedonistic debauchery that could only be produced by Giorgio Moroder. The videos Sigue Sigue Sputnik left behind show what this album plays - the ultimate 80s experience: Consumerism, glam, video games, cable TV, Transformers, Terminator, and Tokyo. The band's use of samples predates the DJs of the 90s all without moving into dance category, just high art for fun's sake. As I mentioned months ago on the topic of Hanoi Rocks, do not expect anything metal from this despite the band's image - this is something totally unique, hip, absolutely hilarious and often called the first (and probably only) truly "cyberpunk" album. By simply listening to this album you can almost say you lived through the 80s. The album is really one to play through as it flows together really well with long samples in intros (the kind that produce negative numbers on CD players making is hard to track on the PC.) However there are some tracks that do stand out on their own like the aforementioned one, along with "Atari Baby," "Rockit Miss U.S.A.," and "21st Century Boy." With the heavy presence of classical samples, Sigue Sigue Sputnik made an album for the future that was in tough with the past, and could only come from the present in 1986.


Sigue Sigue Sputnik - Flaunt It (1986)

I beleive I was lucky enough to have found this CD at Vintage Vinyl in Fords, NJ.