However, it may be telling that Pop’s lyrics are an equal to the album’s music. However, improvements in synthesis (often FM digital and hybrid varieties) by the early 1980s would allow this increasingly accessible technology to be treated as a quasi-realistic instrument replicator that could grab the attention of the radio listener more effectively than the old-fashioned guitar – the latter reeking of 70s uncool, with its associated images: bell-bottoms, long hair, and the avocado toned bathroom, to name but a few.īowie himself was on top form during this time, having reached a pitch of creative maturity while still riding high, thanks to the energy of his revelatory early 70s glam rock period. The synthesiser represented an emergent dystopian modernity, viewed as scientific and dehumanising. In fact the album resembled the glacial neo-modernism of experimental 70s electronica, where early analogue synthesisers were often treated as a wholly different form of instrumentation, which was limited and rather crude in some senses but radically freeing in others. The sound bore little resemblance to the dated pop cheese of 1980s synthesis. Synths and the David Bowie association made it seem as if The Idiot should be a pop album, but it wasn’t. Iggy Pop and Lou Reed were basically the godfathers of anything that was alternative, but here was a classic album of Pop’s canon, typically considered his best, that was drenched in synths and minimalistically dancey rhythms, with nary a guitar to be found on most of the tracks! Robert Harris explores this iconic record. Back in the grunge-heyday of the early 90s, ‘The Idiot’ was a puzzling prospect. It is 40 years this month since Iggy Pop’s debut album, ‘The Idiot’, was first released.
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