Three of the mixes of Velvet are tied to a specific location: Alabaster Mix, New York Mix, Stockholm Mix. I have no idea if the song was actually mixed by someone in these specific places, but that's what I always assumed. Here are the mixing credits from the CD single: 1. Radio Version by Niven Garland 2. De-Phazz Mix by Pit Baumgartner 3. Millenia Nova Mix by Millenia Nova 4. New York City Mix by John Angello 5. Alabaster Mix by Hakan Wollgaard 6. Stockholm Mix by Palaar Suna 7. Album Version by Niven Garland I mentioned this earlier in the thread, but the thing I like about these versions is that they all basically follow the structure and form of the album version. There are no extended dance floor workouts with the DJ messing up the song with a lot of extra stuff. Instead, these sound more like the mixers are simply applying different production techniques to the same basic song. It's an interesting experiment. Yes, it can get repetitive listening to the same song 7 times with only subtle changes in production and arrangement, but to my ears that's preferable to 7 variations of "Velvet-The Dance Mix."
It was this song that made me go woah! - a-ha is better than their 80s output suggested they would be. ie - a real maturity to their music.
Hear hear, wish the same could be said of the various mixes of Lifelines (sans the Boogieman mix, which nearly/arguably triumphs the album version)
If there are vinyl version of these later albums, I've never seen them. I would _love_ to have a copy of Analogue on vinyl. *sigh*
As far as I know none of the post comeback albums exists on vinyl. Hardly any of the singles either except for some picture discs and 12" for the Analogue related singles. A real shame.
Pity! There's a big vinyl resurgence in the past few years that the a-ha quartet would look very handsome as vinyl albums.
I know, was he responsible for the MEMS title track? Actually Ive been listening to MEMS these last days, and I must agree that it holds up pretty well. Albeit the german polish still tends to get a bit much at times. The production seems to drain some of the tracks of life.
Lifelines 2002 2002's Lifelines continues chapter 2 of A-ha's career in respectable fashion with very memorable pop melodies and pleasant ballads. As with Minor Earth, Major Sky, Lifelines has substituted much of their previous electronic sound with more acoustic instruments, this coupled with the fact that Mags and Morten were responsible for signing as many tunes as Paul give the album a much more nuanced feeling to it that gives the listener a better feel for some of the different influences the three members let filter down through their writing and arranging. Add to this the fact that there are several different producers, including Stephen Hague who is best known for his fantastic work with New Order and you have an album that gives the listener a kind of sampler of how each member creates their songs. Lifelines might be the band's most varied sounding album owing to the more democratic methods used with regard to writing and producing. Where Mags and Morten would serve as critics and collaborators after Paul had written and demoed the songs he had been working on, this time around all three members had a number of songs to offer, giving the listener a sense of the prevailing musical styles of the 3. Pal being more techno oriented with the same dark melodies, Mags offering some of the softer and pleasing ballads with Morten's being simpler tunes that seem to be lifted off an acoustic guitar. The album also contains a very nice duet between Morten and Anneli Drecker titled "Turn the Lights Down". Compared to their other works, Lifelines might fall in towards the average category as it offers enough tunes to make for a brilliant album, it also contains enough average tunes that might keep it from being one and it might be agreed that the record could have lived without a few tracks but, that is the possible downside of a democratically created album in that all 3 are angling to have their songs on the final product whether they really help or not. High points for me are the title track, "Did Anyone Approach You?", "Cannot Hide", "White Canvas" and "Solace", the final two being of the finest songs the band has recorded. Morten Harket- Vocals Magne Furluholmen- Keyboards and Programming Paul Waaktaar-Savoy- Guitars and Programming Produced by Stephen Hague, Martin Langer, Martin Landquist 1. Lifelines 2. You Wanted More 3. Forever Not Yours 4. There's a Reason for It 5. Time and Again 6. Did Anyone Approach You? 7. Afternoon High 8. Oranges on Appletrees 9. A Little Bit 10. Less Than Pure 11. Turn the Lights Down 12. Cannot Hide 13. White Canvas 13. Solace
Ah, Lifelines. How I love thee. The common perception is that the album sounds scattered due to the plethora of different producers and the fact that tensions in the band were such that they never even appeared in the studio together. I get all that, but at the same time I think this album does have a rather unified sound. Considering all the behind-the-scenes drama, I'm actually pleasantly surprised by how cohesive it sounds. For me, the pleasures here are all about the deep tracks. I mentioned earlier that Memorial Beach had no blockbuster songs beyond the singles. Lifelines has the opposite problem. I think "Lifelines" and "Forever Not Yours" (and to a lesser extent, "Did Anyone Approach You?", although I love the disco vibe) are rather bland. The first two actually remind me a lot of Abba tunes. But there are some great album cuts here! "Time and Again" is gorgeous. As Havoc mentioned, "Turn the Lights Down" is a lovely, if a bit by-the-numbers, duet. I love, love, love "There's a Reason for It," although I can't explain why. The lyrics are actually pretty cool. "Afternoon High" reminds me of a John Denver tune, but in a good way. "Less Than Pure" has an uncharacteristically dirty "funk" vibe. And, once again thanks to the live versions on the yet-to-be-discussed How Can I Sleep with Your Voice in My Head, I really love "Oranges on Appletrees" as well. The live version really rocks, and it also has the good sense to eliminate the baffling line about "multigender wannabes." So yes, I actually kind of love this album, despite its obvious flaws. It's all about the deep cuts. I also like the fact that the CD singles contained alternate versions with different producers, as opposed to just DJ dance mixes. One of the singles, I can't remember which one, actually had "liner notes" with commentary from Magne about the different versions. Good stuff. Like MEMS, this might benefit from being trimmed to 10 or 11 songs. I actually have the Japanese version with three bonus tracks (a Magne demo of "Differences" plus two live tracks), so it's definitely a marathon to listen all in one sitting. Oh, and the album cover definitely got a big "WTF?" from a lot of people, but kudos to the band for once again not putting themselves on the cover.
I listened to this album a couple of days ago and wrote a draft for this thread on another computer so I will be back with that after the weekend. But you just reminded me of Differences. They performed this at the Nobel Peace Prize Concert, December 2001. The record company did not allow them to perform anything from the upcoming album so Magne wrote this little thing. I love it and I think a properly recorded studio version would beat a lot of the actual tracks on the album.
As Lars probably will tell, there was a scrapped photo session consisted of various closeups of Morten, Pål and Magne, showing the "lines of life" I guess. I also seem to remember that the band originally wanted a butterfly theme, but settled for something more abstract, the pillars of an Norwegian hockey stadion?
Even though my love for this album can't match morgan's, and we prefer different tracks, I agree with much in that post. The flaws and cracks are audible to everyone but when I go beyond my negative notes I find a fun and unexpected album full of vitality and a damn fine collection of good songs. Balladry and disco-ish a-ha on the same record!! This shows what an advantage it can be for band to have a versatile vocalist with a signature voice. a-ha might change approach from album to album and from song to song but with Morten as their sound it's still a-ha. This is the album where Magne for the first time really shows he is a great songwriter. "Lifelines" is a song for a lifetime. His other ballads, including "Difference", are beautiful and also meaningful lyrically, even though I find the metaphors in "White Canvas" to be cliché. Morten and Magne must have had a good time together writing "Oranges On Appletrees" and "You Wanted More". The two midtempo ballad kings suddenly turning disco and hippie is so fun and refreshing. But this is surpassed by "Cannot hide". Baring in mind his solo output it's almost surreal that Morten is behind the song. The bagatelle "Forever Not Yours" is radio friendly I guess but works best with the video for me. From Paul's batch of songs I like "Did Anyone Approach You" and "A Little Bit" and if I'm in the mood "Time and Again". Otherwise it's obvious to me that his heart, mind and working time were with his band Savoy. The songs are good enough album tracks but of a kind Pål can write in his sleep. It's a huge step down from his masterpices on MEMS. If the responsibility for songwriting had been left solely on Pål Lifelines would indeed have been a boring album. I prefer the darker, melancholy a-ha but I also love this side of the bands output. We have been out on a trip in the eastern Iceland, a landscape perhaps best suited for Sigur Ros or possibly Scoundrel Days. Even though its still very light up here and the wrong time the Northern lights were dancing last night and I brought out my disco steps to "Did Anyone Approach You" over the lava and it felt so goood!
I came to Lifelines late as I mentioned in my post about MEMS. There was a gap in my A-ha buying career between MEMS and Foot of the Mountain. I only picked up the two intervening albums when I bought tickets for the tour supporting the latter album and I wanted to hear what I had missed in case they played any of it live. Before that I had bought How Can I Sleep...whilst on holiday in Germany, mostly because of the gorgeous cover. So I have not really lived with these albums for long and they have had to fight for attention. Consequently they have had less impact on me than the band's previous albums. There are many tracks here that I cannot call to mind so I really need to play these records again to re-familiarise myself with the content. But How Can I Sleep...introduced me to a song, the original of which appears here. Forever Not Yours is a stunning piece of work and the third of the bunch that form my personal top 3 a-ha songs. It may be my favourite of all, perhaps more surprising because it comes from the pen of Morten rather than the other two guys. I will listen to the album again and give a fuller view but it deserves its place in the canon for that song alone. Incidentally, I know nothing about the tensions and circumstances surrounding the making of this album that have been mentioned by others. I would be interested to learn more.
Brilliant, brilliant that you enjoy this album the way you do. It really is a good record that just suffered a little from a few too many tracks that might have been better suited as B-sides. I got to spend a few days in Iceland after doing low level approaches in an FB-111 to test the air defense zone radar sites there, we had a fuel gauge malfunction and diverted there instead of heading back to Lakenheath. "East" had been released and there was a department store that had a cardboard standup of the cover in its window and a little boom box playing the album. We got to know route 41 very well between the base and Rekjavik in those few days. I loved it there, the ocean air mixed with the wide open landscapes were amazing. I bought a cassette of East and my WSO and I listened to nothing but that in the little blue Air Force van we used while we were there. He was into country music but warmed up to A-ha by the time we left. I had him fooled into thinking they were from Iceland. I can easily visualize the music on Lifelines serving as a nice backdrop to the sites there. Sometimes I wish we could live somewhere like Iceland where things are just less hectic than California. Life seemed very simple there, we got to know a few fishermen there who just seemed to be at peace with everything and I remember for some reason I was contrasting that with all the reports I was going to have to complete when we got back to England. Lucky Morgan, you get to listen to A-ha surrounded by lava.
I also need to Lifelines again, can't recall much of it except the singles. There were very good cd singles for this album, I have the numbered limited edition of Did Anyone Approach You?, Lifelines <the enhanced one with 2 live tracks from Oslo>, and Forever Not Yours with Differences and the same 2 live tracks from Oslo that were on the Lifelines cd! I didn't pick up any of the remix cd singles this time around, was going for non-lp tracks, live tracks and th enhanced cds since at this time the videos were unavailable anywhere else in the US. Speaking of videos, hands down my favorite video from a-ha of all time is Lifelines. LOVE that video, have watched it many, many times and turned many friends on to it as well. I bought the very rare Spanish promo dvd "The Videos" that had it and many newer a-ha promo clips on it and watched it like crazy. I guess we'll get to that dvd later, though. Edit : The Japanese cd of Lifelines includes as bonus tracks the Differences demo and the 2 live Oslo tracks. If I'd have known that then, I'd have picked this up and skipped the 3 cd singles. By the way, as I said earlier in this thread, I can't play any of the cd singles from Lifelines or the Lifelines cd itself on my PC. iTunes just won't recognize them at all. Very frustrating, I guess they have copy protection on them.
Not much I can add to the discussion that's already been said but I agree with the overall sentiments posted here. I have good memories of being on a business trip to Florida and listening to this album while crossing one of the dramatic bridges between Ft. Lauderdale and Miami. I love all the singles from this album.
Lifelines is my second favourite from their nordic late period quartet. Apart from the thought provoking title track, if this was a vinyl album' I'd prefer side two. All their millennium albums have great singles on them.
