WONDERS FROM THE GENETIC FACTORY

Third opus by YOU, "Wonders From The Genetic Factory" was released in 1984. The music is more joyful than in the former albums and rather unequal. Yet, the overall is still good.

So let's begin with the bad apples: the opener, "Axis", sounds really dated and seems to have no point, whereas "Sampling Dance" is an useless pre-house exercise. This said, the other tunes are rather good. "Isotopic Moments" has some nice floating guitar and "Europe Transfer" some reminiscences of TD's "Tangram". One of the most efficient track here is the robotic "Future Generation"; the duo is truly in his territory here. But the highlight of the disc is of course the 24 minutes long "Yourovision". The song contains many changing themes and rhythms, slow moments and dreamy sequencer passages. "Koyaanisqatsi Xmas" is a lengthy bonus live track in which the band plays its favorite themes, mostly sequencer driven. A welcomed addition.

With "Wonders From The Genetic Factory", YOU searches new ideas in the evolving landscape of the 80's, but with no significant novelties. Anyway, an enjoyable album for Berlin electronic school fans.

Let me tell you that YOU's debut Electric Day was amazing, to see that great electronic music can be made in 1979. Wonders from the Genetic Factory is their third album, from 1984, and it's clearly an uneven album. I am not surprised that this would have an '80s sound, it's 1984 after all, but I'm glad they didn't go overboard on drum machines or fell in love with the DX-7, but drum machines are used. "Axis" is a bit off-putting due to the 1980s upbeat nature, and the liberal use of that "orchestra hit" sound (that really got overused to death by the late '80s, I was so glad that use was pretty much over with after 1990). But there are some nice moments as well. "Isotopic Moments" is luckily better. "Europe Transfer" is without a doubt one of the better cuts on the album. What really surprises me is the presence of Mellotron, done really nicely (it was a Novatron, and the band removed the "Novatron" badge and found the Mellotron logo under it, which meant the Novatron was nothing more than a rebranded Mellotron, due to legal difficulties stemming back to 1976). "Sampling Dance" was clearly a big mistake. They were trying to be so trendy for the times with a bit of hip-hop influence (luckily without rapping). I could almost imagine seeing kids breakdancing to this (I grew up in the 1980s, and I remembered very well the breakdancing craze of the mid 1980s). What were they thinking? Luckily the lengthy "Yourovision" more than makes up for it, outdoing anything Tangerine Dream was doing by this point. It even features a little bit of Mellotron which really pleases me. This album has a couple of questionable moments, and is clearly not as consistent as Electric Day, it's still has a lot of worthwhile material, and for the most part, better than most other stuff I've heard from this time period.