The almighty Alphaville are back with a new single and album! Next month sees the German SynthPop pioneers releasing their first studio work for 7 years. Now down to just frontman and foundering member Marian Gold, Alphaville have been a staple of the SynthPop scene since ‘84’s chart monsters ‘Big In Japan’ and ‘Forever Young’.

The problem, really, with the comeback material is Gold’s choice of collaborators. The lead single ‘I’d Die For You Today’ is actually an excellent song but the production, by Sebastian Komor (formerly of EBM/FuturePop outfit Icon Of Coil and several small projects since IoC’s demise), sounds so dated and stagnant. At the height of FuturePop’s success, in the late 90’s/early 2000’s this would have gone down a treat, but here in 2010 it just sounds almost musically naive, which is a shame as it hampers an otherwise excellent song. You have to wonder with Alphaville being so influential, and acclaimed, there must be countless contemporary and relevant acts who would kill to work with Marian Gold, why they went in this direction?

Anyhoo, the reMix package is also an odd crop of rather samey sounding old trance artists, this reMix by euphoric stalwarts Blank & Jones shows off song best, it’s a tiny bit cheesy trance, but mostly a nice 80’s leaning ElectroPop track with an epic feel that really supports the song, on multiple listens its really quite good, worth picking up the single for!

♫ Alphaville – I Die For You Today (Blank & Jones So 80’s Extended Mix)

‘I Die For You Today’ and Alphaville’s forthcoming new album are due out in October, until then you could do a hell of a lot worse than checking out their awesome back catalogue.

Alphaville @ 7Digital

Alphaville @ Amazon

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