Rocktrospectiva: The Synth Pop Masterpiece "Bizarre Love Triangle" Turns 40

Released on 3 November 1986, "Bizarre Love Triangle" was a song by English rock band New Order, released as a single from their fourth studio album, Brotherhood (1986). The song reached No. 4 on the US Billboard Dance/Disco Club Play chart and No. 5 on the Australian Kent Music Report in March 1987. It failed to enter the top 40 of both the UK Singles Chart and the US Billboard Hot 100; however, a new mix included on The Best of New Order was released in 1994 and charted at No. 98 on the Hot 100. 

"Bizarre Love Triangle" explored themes of love, desire, and the complexity of relationships. The lyrics reflected the confusion and emotional conflict that can arise in a romantic relationship, especially when multiple feelings are involved. The repetition of certain phrases in the lyrics emphasized the narrator’s internal struggle between love and uncertainty. Overall, it can be interpreted as a reflection on the difficulties and contradictions of modern love.

The 12-inch version, remixed by Shep Pettibone, also appears on the compilation Substance and a second remix by Stephen Hague features on their Best Of album. The original album version appears on the 2005 compilation Singles, the 7-inch version appears on the 2016 reissue of this compilation. New Order's live versions since 1998 are based on the Shep Pettibone remix.

The single mix has more electronics than the album version, with the Fairlight CMI music workstation used to provide sounds such as the orchestral hits, and to sequence the song. All instruments except vocals and Peter Hook's melodic bass were sequenced (the song also prominently features synthesised bass and synth choir parts).

The song has been critically acclaimed since its release. In a 30th anniversary retrospective citing the song as one of the greatest of all time, Billboard described it as a "synth-pop masterpiece" and "an incandescent jewel of mid-'80s computer love." NME praised the song as New Order's "finest pop moment".

The music video, which was released in November 1986, was directed by American artists Robert Longo and Gretchen Bender. It mainly shows a man and a woman in business suits flying through the air as though propelled by trampolines; this is based directly on Longo's "Men in the Cities" series of lithographs. The video has a black and white cut-scene where Jodi Long and E. Max Frye are arguing about reincarnation, in which Long emphatically declares "I don't believe in reincarnation because I refuse to come back as a bug or as a rabbit!" Frye responds, "You know, you're a real 'up' person," before the song resumes.

Bizarre Love Triangle Track List: 

 

7-inch FAC 163 (UK)

 

1. Bizarre Love Trinagle (Shep Pettibone Remix UK 7-inch edit)

2. Bizarre Dub Triangle 

 

7-inch: Quest 7-28421 (US) and 7-inch FAC-26 (Canada)

 

1. Bizarre Love Triangle (Shep Pettibone Remix US 7-inch edit)

2. Every Little Counts

 

7-inch: FAC-163153 (Australia)

 

1. Bizarre Love Triangle (Shep Pettibone Remix US 7-inch edit)

2. State Of The Nation

 

12-inch: FAC 163 (UK)

 

1. Bizarre Love Triangle (Shep Pettibone extended remix)

2. Bizarre Dub Triangle

 

12-inch: Quest 0-20546 (US)

 

1. Bizarre Love Triangle (Shep Pettibone extended remix)

2. I Don't Care (Actually Bizarre Dub Triangle)

3. State Of The Nation

4. Bizarre Love Triangle (Shep Pettibone Remix UK 7-inch edit)

 

CD: Quest 9 20546-2 (US) released in 1994

 

1. Bizarre Love Triangle (album version)

2. Bizarre Love Triangle (extended dance mix)

3. I Don't Care (actually Bizarre Dub Triangle)

4. State Of The Nation

5. Bizarre Love Triangle (single remix) 

New Music: You Remind Me That I'm Dying (And That It's Good To Be Alive)

          

The Big Moon have shared the single "You Remind Me That I’m Dying (and that it's good to be alive)," taken from their fourth album Forever. It is a title that sits at the center of a record about what’s left once you’ve ticked off the big milestones and come to understand how fragile life is. Back in 2024 Jackson was diagnosed with a cholesteatoma, a benign but destructive cyst inside the eardrum that has to be removed with surgery. "I permanently lost most of the hearing on one side, which was pretty much existential, because writing songs is my job and my identity," she says. She kept writing anyway but struggled. "I couldn’t hear properly, everything sounded out of tune and I was just struggling to find a point at all, just writing these miserable songs I couldn’t really hear." The way out was to change her outlook completely and write towards “a happy ending that didn’t exist yet.” As Jackson puts it: “I just decided to write songs for this imaginary time, one or two years in the future, when I would be all healed and happy again. I didn’t know if I would ever get to that point but, by projecting and almost tricking myself into it, it actually became a really nice way of writing.” The video has been edited by James Hankins

New Music: Much Love

           

The British indie band Editors have shared their new single "Much Love" alongside a music video. The song features on their new album "Surface, Echo & Sound" out yesterday,  Following on from 2022’s EBM, a collaboration with electronic producer Benjamin John Power, aka Blanck Mass, on Surface, Echo & Sound, Editors have found themselves somewhere new entirely.The band wanted to do something brand new and never afraid to musically explore different shades and colours, and this track is a vivid proof of that. The video was shot by the band’s guitarist Justin Lockey in the studio in Bogota, Colombia

Rocktrospectiva: Fastway's "Trick Or Treat Soundtrack" Turns 40

 

Released on 31 October 1986, a week after the released of the film "Trick Or Treat" it was the 4th., studio album by the Heavy Metal band Fastway and the soundtrack to the heavy metal horror film. The album spawned the single "After Midnight".

 

It was the final Fastway album to feature Dave King on vocals, and is considered to this date, one of the most influential and compelling heavy metal albums ever released to date. 

 

Trick Or Treat Soundtrack Track List: 

 

1. Trick Or Treat

2. After Midnight

3. Don't Stop The Fight

4. Stand Uo

5. Tear Down The Walls

6. Get Tough

7. Hold On To The Night

8. Heft (Originally released on the album Fastway)

9. If You Could See (Originallu released on the album All Fired Up)

New Music: Young And Dumb

           

Everything But The Girl have announced their eleventh studio album, "Blue Reservoir" and shares the album's first single, "Young and Dumb", is out now alongside an accompanying music video directed by Edward Bishop 

News: Everything But The Girl Announces New Album

Everything But The Girl, have announced their eleventh studio album, "Blue Reservoir". And is set for release on 19th February 2027 via Buzzin’ Fly/Virgin Music Group, the album's first single, "Young and Dumb", is out now alongside an accompanying music video directed by Edward Bishop.

The record follows 2023's "Fuse" and takes a more stripped-back, guitar-led approach, inspired by Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt’s return to live performance in 2025, including their sold-out residency at London’s MOTH Club.

"There was an intensity and simplicity to the MOTH shows that took us back to how we started out," shared Thorn. “Direct, rooted in guitar and voice, a few extra colours. We hadn’t been in that world for a long time and it just felt fresh and real.”

The experience also inspired Watt to buy a Spanish nylon-string guitar in January 2026, which became central to the album's writing process. Written in the following months, the 10-track release draws on Latin influences and British folk-blues, with lyrics exploring themes of memory and time.

‘Blue Reservoir’ was recorded largely live at London’s RAK Studios over 10 days in July 2026, with long-time collaborators Rex Horan on double bass and Evan Jenkins on drums, alongside Brazilian percussionist Fabio de Oliveira. The duo’s son, Blake Watt, also guests on two tracks.

The new album will be available on black and translucent blue vinyl, CD and Blu-ray featuring Dolby Atmos mixes, with the first 1,000 orders through the official store receiving a signed card. 

In Memoriam: Legendary Actor "Patrick Stewart" Dies Aged 86

 

 

The Yorkshire-born Shakespearean actor who became a global star as Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier died at his home in Los Angeles, his family said.

Patrick Stewart, the British actor who spent decades in classical theatre before becoming one of the best-known faces in science fiction as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek and Professor Charles Xavier in the X-Men films, has died at the age of 86, his family said on Thursday 

He died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after "a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia", his longtime spokesperson, Kelly Bush Novak, said. The statement said he had been surrounded by family and friends, music, prayer, tears and laughter, and spoke of an enduring reminder of his invincible grace. 

Stewart was born in 1940 in Mirfield, West Yorkshire. He spoke publicly about growing up with a father who was violent towards his mother, and later supported the domestic-violence charity Refuge. He trained as an actor and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, where he spent much of the next two decades on stage.

His career took a huge changed in 1987 when Robert Justman, a producer of Star Trek: The Next Generation, saw him reading Shakespeare at a lecture at UCLA and brought him in to audition, against the doubts of the franchise's creator, Gene Roddenberry. Stewart won the part of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, expecting the series to last a single season. It ran for seven seasons and was followed by four films. Picard, a captain who preferred diplomacy to force, made Stewart a star well beyond the theatre; he returned to the role in the series Star Trek: Picard from 2020 to 2023.

Then from 2000 he also played Charles Xavier, the telepathic founder of the X-Men, in Bryan Singer’s X-Men and its sequels, up to James Mangold’s Logan in 2017. Stewart said he admired both Picard and Xavier for their morality, kindness and compassion, 

Stewart never left the theatre. He played Macbeth, toured his one-man version of A Christmas Carol, and appeared with his close friend Ian McKellen in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in London and on Broadway. He was knighted in 2010 and published his memoir, Making It So, in 2023. 

He is survived by his wife, the singer Sunny Ozell, and his two children, Daniel and Sophie.

In Memoriam: The Berlin-Born Actress "Elke Sommers" Dies Aged 85

 

 

The Berlin-born actress who became one of the few German stars of 1960s Hollywood died in Los Angeles, three months after her husband. Sommer who became one of the few German stars of 1960s Hollywood, has died aged 85. She died of heart failure at her home in Los Angeles, the German newspaper Bild reported, citing close friends. She was days away from her 86th birthday 

Her death came three months after that of her husband, the German hotelier Wolf Walther, who died of cancer in the summer. 

Born as Elke Schletz in Berlin in 1940, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, and was evacuated with her family to Bavaria during the war. She grew up in Erlangen and trained as an interpreter, but in 1958, on holiday in Italy, she was crowned Miss Viareggio and spotted by the director Vittorio De Sica, then a string of Italian comedies followed.

Her gift for languages took her into English-language films. Her Hollywood breakthrough came in 1963 as Paul Newman's lover in The Prize, for which she shared the Golden Globe for most promising newcomer. A year later she played a maid suspected of a string of murders opposite Peter Sellers in A Shot in the Dark, the sequel to The Pink Panther

She went on to star alongside giants actors at the time such as James Garner and Dick Van Dyke in "The Art of Love" and Bob Hope in "Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!," made two cult horror films with the Italian director Mario Bava, and appeared in the 1974 Agatha Christie adaptation And Then There Were None and the British comedy Carry On Behind. In all she made about 100 film and television appearances, and also worked as a singer, stage actor and painter, she used to signing her paintings E. Schwartz.

In the mid-1980s she became embroiled in a long-running feud with Zsa Zsa Gabor after they appeared together on the TV show Circus of the Stars; Sommer was eventually awarded $3.3m in damages for defamation. 

Her first marriage, to the US writer Joe Hyams, ended in divorce. She and Wolf Walther, together since 1989, married in Franconia in 1993; she had no children. The couple divided their time for years between the village of Marloffstein near Erlangen and Los Angeles. Her parents are buried in Marloffstein, where she is also wanted and is going to be laid to rest

New Music: Wings Of Love

            

Erasure have released the official video for ‘Wings of Love’, the first single from their upcoming twentieth studio album, “Radio!! Radio!!”, due out on March 12, 2027, via Mute. On ‘Wings of Love’, the duo revisit the synthpop language that shaped their early work, giving it a more reflective perspective. The production stays lean, with the melody carrying much of the song's weight as Bell sings about love, time and the lasting significance of the people who remain close to us. Concept on the video has been created by Victoria Topping Artist and Wobblylobster Studio, who turns the album artwork into a three-minute animated science-fiction story. Its narrative follows a familiar storytelling tradition while exploring an idea that has long captured the imagination of science fiction: the possibility that machines and robots might have dreams of their own. The result gives the visual identity of “Radio!! Radio!!” a life beyond the album cover.

New Music: The Place We Call Mars

           

Squeeze has shared a music video for 'the single "The Place We Call Mars", the latest track to be taken from their critically acclaimed album "Trixies." Considered one of the rare tracks of Trixies, 'The Place We Call Mars' is a vivid crime-scene vignette, another example of the extraordinary storytelling instincts that Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook were already developing when they first wrote the songs for the album as teenagers. It is a song whose journey stretches back more than half a century. Trixies was conceived in 1974, when Difford was 19 and Tilbrook just 16, at the very beginning of one of British music's most enduring songwriting partnerships. Set in and around a fictional nightclub, its cast of characters and interlocking stories were imagined years before Squeeze would make their first record. The black and white video has been Directed by Oska Zaky and Connie Virdie.