Musique is the fourth studio album by the Norwegian metal band Theatre of Tragedy, released in 2000. The title on the album's cover, [ˈmjuːzɪk], is the pronunciation of the English word "music" transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet.
| Musique | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by Theatre of Tragedy | ||||
| Released | October 2, 2000[1] | |||
| Recorded | Soundsuite Studio, Marseille, France Lydlab Studio, Oslo, Norway | |||
| Genre | Industrial metal, electronic rock | |||
| Length | 45:21 | |||
| Label | Nuclear Blast | |||
| Producer | Erik Ljunggren | |||
| Theatre of Tragedy chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Musique | ||||
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| Review scores | |
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| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Femme Metal | |
Musique is the album that marked for the band the change from gothic metal with Early Modern English lyrics to a more electronic style, using Modern English. The change in musical direction for Theatre of Tragedy was associated with a change from traditional gothic and supernatural themes to lyrics based on modern life, including technology ("Machine", "Radio"), nightlife ("Image", "The New Man") and streetfighting ("Crash/Concrete"). The song "Commute" has the line "It's more fun to commute" in its lyrics, possibly a reference to Kraftwerk's "It's more fun to compute" from their Computer World album, which in turn is a reference to "It's more fun to compete" found on old pinball machines.
Metal Mind Productions reissued the album after it had been digitally remastered using a 24-bit process on a golden disc. It includes three bonus tracks, "Quirk" (Original Version) - also known as the original version of "Image" - , "Radio" (Unreleased Mix) and "Reverie" (Unreleased Mix). The reissue is limited to 2,000 copies and was released in Europe on 27 July 2009.[4]
All songs written and composed by Theatre of Tragedy.
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Machine" | 4:14 |
| 2. | "City of Light" | 4:19 |
| 3. | "Fragment" | 4:00 |
| 4. | "Musique" | 3:29 |
| 5. | "Commute" | 5:25 |
| 6. | "Radio" | 3:39 |
| 7. | "Image" | 3:09 |
| 8. | "Crash/Concrete" | 3:21 |
| 9. | "Retrospect" | 4:03 |
| 10. | "Reverie" | 5:26 |
| 11. | "Space Age" | 4:16 |
| 12. | "The New Man" (bonus track) | 3:21 |
| Total length: | 48:42 | |
On the back of the album's casing, "Space Age" is written in Russian: "Космическая эра"; moreover, the words "Гагарина, Терешковой, Леонова, Лайки, Белки и Стрелки" ("Of Gagarin, Tereshkova, Leonov, of Laika, Belka and Strelka") are recited throughout the song.
The song "Reverie" begins with loading of a ZX Spectrum program from an audio cassette.
Two tracks from Musique were released as singles.
| Chart (2000) | Peak position |
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| German Albums Chart[5] | 39 |
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