Customer Reviews
their 2nd, my 1st... - By: Chris Preddy, 17 Jun 2010 
This was the first OMD album I ever bought, backin december 1980... I bought it on the strength of the lead track, enola gay... this sticks out a little like the proverbial sore thumb against the mood of the rest of the album. This is explained a littlein that enola gay was meant to be on the first album, but had not been completed at time of recording, hence its inclusion here, & the only single from it. The prevailing mood of the album is brooding & dark.. spooky textures & soundcapes abound. The album is somewhat a homage to the the recentley departed Ian Curtis of Joy Division.. the track statues a direct reference to him... I have to say that I was hooked on my first listen & almost wore my copy out.. even though the album has a dark tinge, the emotional content is palpable, it never fails to move me, especially the epic Stanlow, a peign to an oil refinery that is both romantic & eligiacin quality.. the extra tracks are a nice touch too..
Their Best - By: Bruce Percy, 08 Dec 2008 This is to my mind, the best OMD album that came out. It's dark, serious & atmospheric. I'd buy it for Statues & Stanlow alone, tracks that I've lived with since I was 12in 1980 & they are still as atmospheric as ever.
Pure brilliance - By: Baz, 10 Nov 2008 Over the past 28 years, whenever I'm playing this albumin the presence of someone who's never heard it before, they always say how beautiful the music is; Stanlow,in particular, comesin for much praise - no surprise there. For me, I still get the same pleasure from listening to it now as I did when I first played it all those years ago.
I just feel sorry for all those people who've never heard this album. They're missing something very special.
They were getting better... - By: New Gold Dreamer, 24 Mar 2008 
Rating: 6/10
Best tracks: "Statues", "Enola Gay", "Stanlow", "2nd Thought"
Organisation, the second OMD album, kicks offin spectacular style with "Enola Gay", which may very well be the single most thrilling, enjoyable thing they'd ever created; of course, it's about Hiroshima, which belies the jaunty, energetic & musically wonderful buzz of it all. A terrific drum hook, spacious, lovely keyboards...yet Andy McCluskey's underrated, melancholic vocals are what gives it its sobriety. Phew, can the rest of the album match it? Well, for a start, nothing else on the album sounds like it; what we have here is a set of bittersweet, sedate & mostly downbeat mid-tempo ballads; sneakily, "Enola Gay" was the one & only single from this album, which made it a somewhat misleading & unrepresentative example of what else OMD were delivering at the time, but to be honest, there`s not much else here that would have made as much impact on the radio. That`s not to say nothing here is as good, far from it; it`s just everything else here isn`t anywhere as near immediate. In fact, my all-time favourite OMD is on this album, but more about that later. "2nd Thought" drifts by dreamily, a nice respite after the full-on opening track, "VCL XI" is pretty good as well, as is the surprisingly playful "Motion & Heart" though at this stage I was thinking, as fine as the album is so far, will there be something as good as "Enola Gay" again on here?
Luckily, there is with what follows next; "Statues" is my favourite OMD song, & absolute proof that this band have been most overlooked when it comes to writing peerless songs of melancholy. Some might think of it as a bit of a dirge, but for me it's utterly hypnotic, deeply moving & wrappedin stately, chilling, eerie & haunting atmospherics; the way it subtly blossoms into something even more affecting through the choruses & especiallyin its instrumental mid-section is something to quietly behold. After that, the album settles into a comfortable wave of dark electro-pop that, like the lesser tracks on the band's debut, are good & solid without being remarkable, although the closing "Stanlow", named after the oil refinery where McCluskey's father worked, wears its Kraftwerk influences with pride & is very good indeed, with industrial atmospherics & slow, softly powerful passages. Organisation, like its predecessor, is a case of an album with decent minor tracks occasionally punctuated with an outstanding achievement like "Enola Gay" or "Statues". It's good to listen to from start to finish, but it wasn't until the next two albums that OMD would really hit their stride.
Bonus tracks include the understated "Enola Gay" B-side "Annex", which is oddly better than a lot of Organisation itself, & the whole of the 7" that was originally included with early copies of the album, comprising of live tracks of McCluskey/Humphreys compositions which makes for a welcome addition to the original album; admittedly, these are slight works, but it's nice to have them on here. Finally, as a bonus there's another version of "Electricity", which appeared twice on the remastered edition of the first album; still, it was & still is a great song; this is the "Dindisc 1980 Version", & admittedly, it's the least of the three versions, but it's still good nonetheless.
The second LP from OMD... - By: Jason Parkes, 24 Jun 2007 The cover art - from Peter Saville's iconic front cover to the monochrome shots of Paul Humphreys & Andy McCluskey - give away the dark tone of this LP. Organisation was the second LP released by Orchestral Manoeuvresin the Dark, a rapid follow-up to their eponymous debut also releasedin 1980 & it's their darkest record (with the exception of their cover of 'The More I See You', which sticks out like a sore thumb & should be viewed alongside cover versions like the rock'n'roll standards the Silicon Teens recorded for Music for Parties (also 1980), Soft Cell's 'Hendrix Medley', & Devo's 'Satisfaction').
The LP opens with the other sore thumb, the hit single 'Enola Gay', which is a breezy, melodic slice of synthpop that would later be referenced on the great 'Let's Pretend We're Bunny Rabbits' by the Magnetic Fields. I guess the title & the lyrics are quite dark, nodding to the atom bomb & the plane that delivered Little Boy to Hiroshima? The remainder of Organisation, tracks 2 -6 & tracks 8 - 9 are much darker. There was obviously somethingin the air, that bleak zeitgeist (the Cold War, the after effect of Cambodia, the invasion of Afghanistan, the end of the dire Labour era/the rise of Thatcher etc), & OMD had also absorbed some influence from Joy Division (having played live with them & put out 'Electricity' as a single on Factory).
Organisation feels very much like an LPin one tone, more so with the addition of 'Enola Gay's b-side 'Annex', though the other bonus tracks feel different. These include the Dindisc 1980 re-recording of 'Electricity', which is fine, but slightly pointlessin that the original remains fantastic & four tracks recorded live (tracks 11 - 14), which are more akin to the sound of the debut LP. 'Introducing Radios' nods back to John Cage's 'Radio Music' & forwards to the directions pursued on their 1983 masterpiece Dazzle Ships.
The album proper takes some time to sink in, perhaps due to the fact it's a mood shift from the opening hit single - 'VCL XI' alludes to a symbol on the cover of Radioactivity by Kraftwerk & a pre-OMD outfit that Humphreys & McCluskey had (other precursors include Pegasus, The ID, & Dalek I Love You). '2nd Thought' is like a more electronic take on 'Insight' by Joy Division, while 'Motion & Heart' is a more minimal piece, not that far from Suicide's second LP. 'Statues' is a dark, desolate ballad that sounds like power stations fading out; even darker is the climax of the LP 'Stanlow', which samples the oil refineryin Ellesmere Port & is an epic ode to Stanlow itself. It opens like Kraftwerk being directed by Brian Enoin ambient mode, while setting the tone for the epic centrepiece of their next LP Architecture & Morality, the live favourite 'Sealand.'
Organisation is an LP that you have to bein the right mood to listen to, if you want more 'Enola Gay', you should possibly go for one of the two compilations of OMD, or the best-selling A&M. This was their first classic album, though I think A&M & Dazzle Ships are even better, one of those early, dark works like Empires & Dance, Systems of Romance, & Travelogue...and an electronic joy to boot!
