Electronic Pioneers The System Come Back on Wax

The System here is different than the nearly contemporary Mic Murphy & David Frank band that released a slew of albums & singles for Mirage in the 1980s. This The System released one album on French label Romantic Records which has become pretty much impossible to locate, appearing on eBay when geezers need a medical procedure or money for a fix. It can score three figures easy, sometimes on the higher end of that too.

This repress features only four tracks from the nine song original. What stands out the most is just how good the production is – it sounds crystal clear across the passage of time – as well as how moving a lot of these songs are. It’s trite to compare these to well-known New Wave songs that punctuated the movies of the 1980s, but it’s true – you can hear Spandau Ballet in these hooks, and quite a few bands in the post-punk era must have been strongly influenced by The System or their own precursors. “Vampirella” merely presages an entire era of music. It’s shocking: the wave FX are sort of distracting but it’s basically Techno, from when even the prototypical examples of Techno itself sounded nothing like this.