The Police - Ghost In The Machine UHD (1981 - Rock) [Flac 24-192 SACD RIP]
This time the Police took us off guard. We would all have been willing to bet on another lovely collection of whitish and putipù trinkets, to be titled, perhaps, “Raccatta Panatta”. We were all ready to yawn in front of Sting's new sentimental education, and there were already those who swore and perjured that, after whores, shipwrecked spirits and schoolgirls, this was the turn of senile love (Lina Volonghi? Paola Borboni? Cause?). Not at all. Sting remembers being a "professor" and gives us an authoritative treatise on "How to make a record that has little to do with the previous ones by re-adapting a book of psychoanalytic theory and still doing it well". The book in question is, precisely, "Ghost In The Machine", an interesting contribution by Arthur Kostler, in which the experimenters of behavioral psychology are harshly attacked: those, to be clear, who having achieved success in their efforts to provoke certain predictable reactions in animal guinea pigs, they intend to transfer these experiments to humans, with all the risks that can be easily guessed. Man like Pavlov's dog, enslaved and ready to involuntarily respond to certain stimuli, etc.
Okay, this is a burning and widely debated issue, but ... what do the Police have in all this? Nothing, if the image you have in your head is that of "Roxanne", "Message In A Bottle", "Don’t Stand" and so on. "Ghost In The Machine" is something totally different, it is what with a whiplash allocution is defined as "the album of the turning point". The coordinates of the Police are now located anywhere between Modern Eon, Omd, Yes and James Brown. It is a difficult to define musical idea. We have already heard of Stewart Copeland's acrobatic percussive mastery and Sting's everlasting "yoo-yo-yoooh", while everywhere you can hear scents of keyboard electropop and more. Often, for example, a glacially rhythmic saxophone is heard, from which Sting produces two or three notes of convenience. But the best moments of "Ghost In The Machine" are those where the air becomes darker and darker, enveloping and imperceptibly hostile, as in the opening "Spirits In The Material World", in "Secret Journey" and in " Darkness ”that the clever Copeland signs leaving his drums completely in shadow.
As single the impenetrable and nocturnal "Invisible Sun" was chosen (bravely? Unconsciously?), The video of which was immediately censored by the BBC for some sequences concerning the Irish riots.
At times something more joyously canonical reappears, as in the erotic "Hungry For You" (which the bassist friend sings in French), or in a remnant of reggatta like "One World (Not Three)". "Rehumanise Yourself" stirs furiously, almost as if not to take itself too seriously, and clearly demonstrates what the new watchword is: hide private emotions as much as possible, hide individual disturbances as much as possible, adapt to a line of conduct " serious "and" dignified ", which allows the group to engage in a difficult and objective discourse.
There is only one ruinous tumble in this concept-album, and it is the disconcerting "original version" of that "Demolition Man" that Sting had seen worn with such elegance by Grace Jones.
"Ghost In The Machine" is however an initiative to be applauded, and if it sells a lot (as is certain), three witty considerations can be made: 1) that it is possible to bring an intelligent and poorly commercial record to the top of the charts; 2) that the poor fans of the Police now react involuntarily, confirming those theories of behavioral psychology that they wanted to attack here; 3) that a group like this, already graduated in Economics and Commerce, can brilliantly pass exams in humanities.
Tracklist:
1. The Police - Spirits In The Material World
2. The Police - Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
3. The Police - Invisible Sun
4. The Police - Hungry For You (J'aurais Toujours Faim De Toi)
5. The Police - Demolition Man
6. The Police - Too Much Information
7. The Police - Rehumanize Yourself
8. The Police - One World (Not Three)
9. The Police - Omegaman
10. The Police - Secret Journey
11. The Police - Darkness
Playing Time.........: 41:06
Total Size...........: 1380,85 MB
