The Breathtaking Blue

Album production

Production of the album was difficult, singer Marian Gold would later say "the production saw Alphaville in the horrors of permanent crisis. There was an ongoing war between [the band]. ... The furious guitar shrieks during the intro [of lead-off single "Romeos"] being a true indication of the real spirit of the production."

Track listing

1. "Summer Rain" – 4:10
2. "Romeos" – 5:29
3. "She Fades Away" – 4:57
4. "The Mysteries of Love" – 4:55
5. "Ariana" – 3:42
6. "Heaven or Hell" – 3:27
7. "For a Million" – 6:09
8. "Middle of the Riddle" – 3:19
9. "Patricia's Park" – 4:12
10. "Anyway" – 2:48

Many of the album's tracks would find their way, in remixed, instrumental or demo form, to 1999's album Dreamscapes.

Album cover

The cover of the album is a composite of two works: the first being The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel; the second being the blue sun. The face in the blue sun is credited to Michelangelo, from a sibyl on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The halo of sunrays is of unknown origin. The year '1989' (the year the album was released) is displayed in Roman numerals across the bottom of the cover. The back cover has a drawing of Pharaoh Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti.

Reception

About 400,000 copies of the album have been sold.

Evan Cater, writing for AllMusic.com, called the album "somewhat disappointing" compared to their previous releases, and notes that "the production, by Klaus Schulze and Alphaville ... is met with mixed success." In particular the reviewer found that the songs suffered due to the band's "experiments with a somewhat richer instrumentation, adding strings, saxophone, trumpet, double bass, electric and even acoustic guitars." Cater did like some of the individual tracks on the album, calling "Heaven or Hell" "one of the album's more interesting efforts", and "For a Million" "as genuine as the band gets." Graeme Kay, writing for Q Magazine, was more positive, calling the album "a highly polished cluster of glimmering technopop" and saying that "the overall effect is accessible and often breathtaking."

Musicians and credits

Musicians Hansi Behrendt, Eff Jott Krueger and Ernst Deuker, who helped with some of the songs on this album, were themselves from the German band Ideal. Gabi Becker would record with Alphaville again, on 2003's CrazyShow