Island Sunrise
By Software
“Until a few years ago, if you googled “Software Digital-Dance,” you might have found only links about plug-ins for your favorite DAW to buy. If you do it today, you will discover a lost album, initially recorded in 1988, that ironically gained some new popularity because of an algorithm. It makes sense!”
Software was a German electronic duo active from 1984 to 1999, originally composed of Peter Mergener and Michael Weisser. Under the name Software, the duo released several tracks and albums under Innovative Communication label, which also released other electronic musicians, including its co-founder Klaus Schulze.
Innovative Communication (also known as IC, and from 1990 IC/DigItMusic, GmbH) was a German record label founded in 1978 by Schulze and music journalist Michael Haentjes (later CEO of Edel AG). If you follow our reviews here on Hip Hop Electronic you might remember our article about his track 1. Satz Ebene and our special about the history of Krautrock and Kosmiche Musik, in which Schulze played a pretty important role.
Software released the album Digital Dance after the previous Past-Present-Future I (1987) Past-Present-Future II (1987), and Syn-Code (1987). The use of synths heavily influenced the sounds they used. Listening to Digital Dance, it's impossible not to think about the post-Roger Waters era of Pink Floyd, especially with the band's first album without him, A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (1987). The combination of electronic, synths, keyboards, and the presence of saxophones and electric guitar solos sounds very similar.
What differentiates Software from a massive band like Pink Floyd, apart from an obvious incomparable success, was how they used similar sounds. While the English band used these sounds as part of their arrangements, Software built on top of them, creating a blend we might find cheesy today, but that opened new doors for Ambient music and future successful bands like the French electronic band Air.
Island Sunrise is the 4th and most important track of the album. The track begins with the sound of waves, and keyboard chords are soon joined by synth strings, melodies, and glitches. We are talking about this song today because of a funny coincidence that gave it a new meaning and placed it back into the map of electronic music after it remained hidden somewhere for quite a while. I don't know how many copies of the original release are around, but if we think about it, how many albums and tracks are that we don't know? Billions!
The song was rediscovered only because, as a great Pitchfork article by Kevin Lozano told, a video of Island Sunrise was uploaded on Youtube by the musician Ryan M Todd. The video was then completely randomly discovered by George Clanton, the co-founder of the label 100% Electronica, who, like we all do when we don't have time to choose or change videos, was simply listening to random music on YouTube. 100% Electronica ended up then re-releasing Digital-Dance. Sometimes algorithms aren't the evil thing they seem to be.
