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Home | Theme Song: "The Touchables"

Apr 30, 2009

The Human League's 1980 album Travelogue contains a singable little track called "The Touchables." It was never released as a single, but it might be the best Human League track from that period. (Also on this album is the re-release of an earlier track, "Being Boiled," which had earlier become the band's first U.K number one single.)

Click on the forward-arrow icon below to listen to "Another Day" by The Cure.

The Human League was a great 80s pop band, but they were also a great pioneering 70s electronic music band. "The Touchables" always seemed to me like a bridge between two different incarnations of the band.

A funny thing about this song is that, instead of a drum machine, it uses a sequenced synthesizer playing a low resonant thud for the bass drum and a resonating filter passing over white noise for the snare. (There were drum machines out there -- for example, the Roland CR-78 -- but the first real commmercial recording drum machine did not come to market until after this record was made.)

The drum line briefly goes out of sync with the rest of the arrangement after about :57, always making me think, "Wha--?" Hard to believe that would ever happen on any studio release these days.

-- Aaron | Link