Eurythmics 'Take Me To Your Heart' (RCA, 1981)

Having first encountered Eurythmics via their glacial synth-pop, this album came as something of a discontinuity. Firstly, it was a surprise that there was an album before 'Sweet Dreams'. Moreover, it was a shock that it sounded like this - an album obviously inspired and indebted to the masters of German progressive, Kosmische or 'Kraut' rock (call it what you will). Not that I knew what any of that was until long after I first heard this album.

'In The Garden' was produced by Conny Plank in Cologne and features a plethora of notable German guest musicians - Can's Jaki Liebzeit (drums) and Holger Czukay (french horn), DAF's Robert Gorl (drums) and Marcus Stockhausen (horn, brass). It's a rhythm-heavy album but still song-based, though a long way from the sleek pop that made them famous.

'Take Me To Your Heart' enters on a plodding, simplistic bass line with subtle, clipped drums finding and creating space, letting the bass dominate. Occasional ripples of synth strings, harpsichord and guitar frills the sound but nothing gets in the way of the steady but unrelenting motion of the rhythm.

The vocal comes in clear and quite passionless, creating a mood of zoned-out reflection. The locked-groove is Can-like in construction, rolling on through the song, slowly pulsing onwards, unchanging.

Beautifully hypnotic.

Download Eurythmics 'Take Me To Your Heart' (mp3) (Rapidshare)