Front 242 – Official Version

Mostly very good album. I think the stars were in line when they made Masterhit. Probably the best Front 242 song ever made (there are others that are certainly debatable for the top spot!), in my opinion. That bubbly synth bass is perfect and the modem sounds help complete it.

If someone have original sleeve of this vinyl in good condition to sell, pm me please

This spring marks the 30th anniversary of the third album from Front! Hooray! So, where's the deluxe box set with remastered vinyl and cd, outtakes, demos, live versions, mixes, posters, stickers, batches, lanyards, etc.? What, nothing? Okay, F242 are not U2 (actual 30th anni of an album) or other bands who are celebrating anniversaries with re-releases.

Back to the music ... I bought this album in spring 1988, one year after the official̶ v̶̶e̶̶r̶̶s̶̶i̶̶o̶̶n̶ release, just after I visited a Depeche Mode concert in february 1988. A german teen mag stated, F242 was ing DM, and the ing act really blew my mind! But what I saw was Nitzer Ebb! So the album I grabbed, was nothing like the ing act I saw ... but it was (and still is) so good and also blew my mind. Like nothing I heard before! It's hard to think oneself back 30 years, aged 17 then. music was everything, it is nearly today!

But what was I hearing back in the days? In 1985 I became a big Depeche Mode fan, also listened to Erasure, Yazoo, Yello, Human League and The Art Of Noise. And there we have the two edges where Front was, synth pop & noise. In fact, this album really is a good blend of Pop & Noise. I sure wasn't aware of the term EBM that days, who cares about drawers anyhow!

This album is for me timeless.

And in 1999 I had a webpage and dedicated one entry to this album. Here's the rough translation from those days:

12 years back, the term Techno is far away from the meaning it has today. Kraftwerk picked it up and merged it was Pop for their song Techno Pop. Also Front 242 was filed under Techno or Industrial or Electronic Body Music. On their third album, you hear dance tunes (clubsmasher Masterhit) more calm tunes (Television Station) and a song like Slaughter, with heavy use of orchestra samples. The drawer EBM really fits well. The artwork of the vinyl is also very pleasing, which is dominated by pictures developed on a computer screen. Sadly that artwork wasn't featured on the re-release from 1992. But there was a extra inlet where Front are pointing out, that they don't want to be mentioned with like fascim, nazism and neo-nazism. This wrong image of Front 242 must have been made by journalists who just made up their own mind looking only at the outfit of the band.

Amazing. I've always been a David Cronenberg fan and a Front 242 fan. I am just rewatching VIDEODROME and it is now for the first time that I consciously that the 'you know me...' sample from Masterhit is taken from the Cronenberg film. Moment of bliss ;-)

The first time I heard Front 242 (I this exactly!) was in a car probably in 1986 when a friend, who I thought was mostly into mainstream music, suddenly played this daring electronic music on his car stereo. Being into non-vocal music, Jean-Michael Jarre had been one of my best bets(!), but this was daring to a whole different extent. It blew me out the car! And took me from Jarre's classical inspiration to the wonders of EBM.

The track I heard may have been Masterhit from Official Version, which to this day is a classic EBM track. But the entire album is still one of my favourite electronica albums. The fact that this album is entereing its 3rd decade this year is incomprehendable. The album still shines. Some tracks may not have the same appeal, but opening track W.Y.H.I.W.Y.G and Masterhit are as amazing and mindblowing now as they were in 1986. The samples, the compositions, the energy. Back then this set the standard for all other EBM acts. And run-out track Angst still has not been topped. Hell, this run-out track alone justifies the purchase. The anxiety and angst of post-modernity was always the fuel in F2's work and never more so than on Official Version. Well, perhaps with their own Tragedy For You as a strong competitor.