I will update this as I go.
I don't know what the point of this website is still, so I can't promise that it will be a frequent amount of updates.
I'll also probably forget about this maybe lol.
That is an excellent question that I don't really have an answer to.
I picked up Rage in Eden on a whim at a second hand record store because it had The Thin Wall on it and the graphic design on it was gorgeous. As soon as I got it home I played it, and was immediately infatuated with that opening synth of The Voice. After that I grew deeper and deeper in love with it, and I hadn't even gotten to the B side yet, where The Thin Wall was. I think it was the title track Rage in Eden itself that really resonated with me. Prior to getting the record, the three Ultravox songs I knew was first, Dancing With Tears in My Eyes, then The Thin Wall and strangely it wasn't until a few years later when I heard Vienna. Of course Vienna is quite atmospheric, but it wasn't a sound that I was going to expect largely from Ultravox. I was expecting more of the former two songs. But the radio static that kind of tunes in and out with the interference at the end of Rage in Eden hit something within me. It struck up an image of one of those cathedral radios sitting atop a mantelpiece in a smoking parlour, with seemingly noone around, yet a disembodied hand to turn it off.
Before Ultravox, I was a very very, and I cannot stress this enough, very avid consumer of Joy Division. With all the odd sound effects that they put in their songs, this radio static kind of fell in line with that, even though Ultravox's soundscapes are far more lush with synths than Joy Division's barren wasteland.
Deeply in love with Rage in Eden, I found myself in a small town up near the coast that's known for its quaint shops that sell incense and packets of agate slices and handmade turkish delight wrapped up in brown paper and the like. I was looking around a second hand book store, and was delighted to find that they had a record selection (also second hand). I was extremely pleased when I saw Quartet there.
I see colours and shapes and pictures when I listen to music. Joy Division is mostly achromatic, occasionally with desaturated browns, beiges, and dark reds. Their music exists in a city inhabited with no people.
Rage in Eden had been the colour scheme and textures that you would expect to see in an old english mansion; flocked wallpaper, mahogany tables, brassy doorknobs and draw handles, velvet curtains, most fabric in a deep red. Occasionally a pot plant with a dark green cycad in it. But there was also an ethereal darkness to it. There were stars, and there was fog. Songs like Accent on Youth felt scared. But Quartet was so incredibly filled with colour that it was actually quite startling after all that Joy Division.