Simple Minds “Empires and Dance” released on this date, September 1st, 1980. Arista Records. (Wiki has the date incorrect, listing its release as September 12th but Simple Minds’ website has the 1st and I’m guessing they know their own history fairly well.) I bought Simple Minds’ third studio album from Moby a couple of months back; it looks like Moby bought it used for about 4 bucks and it’s in slightly better shape than the Flipper 45 I also got from him. I wasn’t a huge Simple Minds fan back in the day – mostly I was aware of their big hits in the mid-80′s like “Alive and Kicking,” “Sanctify Yourself” and, of course, their number 1 smash “Don’t You Forget About Me” from The Breakfast Club, a song they didn’t write and didn’t even want to record (but oh that song brings back all the feels). So listening to their early stuff on Empires and Dance was a bit of a surprise – in a good way. It’s early new wave, hypnotically techno’d post-punk, very danceable in a Joy Divisiony/ Manchester/Factory kind of way.

Empires and Dance hit #41 in the UK with two released singles: the opening track “I Travel” which is a spectacular dance track and “Celebrate” which was released after the band left Arista Records for Virgin and, without much motivation for promotion, Arista did little to promote sales so it did very poorly. Both singles failed to chart. Allmusic says about Empires and Dance “Hardly content with fumbling around with the same sound, Simple Minds shifted gears once again for album number three, Empires and Dance. The “dance” aspect of the title needs to be emphasized, but it’s apparent that the group’s globetrotting and simmering political tensions in Britain affected their material in more ways than one. One gets the idea that Simple Minds did some clubbing and also experienced some disparate views of the world. The opening “I Travel” is the most assaultive song in the band’s catalog, sounding like a Giorgio Moroder production for Roxy Music. Think “I Feel Love” crossed with “Editions of You,” only faster; gurgling electronics, a hyperkinetic 4/4 beat, and careening guitars zip by as Jim Kerr delivers elliptical lyrics about unstable world affairs with his throaty yelping (this was still before he developed that predilection for foghorn bombast). The remainder of the album repeals the blitzkrieg frenetics of the beginning and hones in on skeletal arrangements that focus on thick basslines and the loping rhythms that they help frame. The hopping/skipping “Celebrate” isn’t much more than a series of handclaps, a light drum stomp, some intermittent bass notes, and some non-intrusive synth effects. It goes absolutely nowhere, yet it’s more effective and infectious than most verse-chorus-verse pop songs. The seven minutes of “This Fear of Gods,” which boast another dense rhythm abetted by trebly atmospheric elements (distant guitars, percolating electronics, sickly wind instruments), come off like an excellent 12″ dub, rather than an original mix. Just as bracing, the paranoiac disco of “Thirty Frames a Second” should have been played regularly at every club in 1980 and should live on as a post-punk dance classic. It’s a true shock that this record was released with reluctance. The band coerced an unimpressed Arista into pressing a minimal amount of copies for release (fans still had trouble locating copies), but thankfully Virgin reissued it in 1982.”