VIENNA is one of those rare albums that defines an era. In their firstincarnation, with singer John Foxx, Ultravox merged post-punk and art-rock in a prescient, highly influential manner.

After Foxx's departure, the band's future seemed in question. Against all odds, they gained a new lease on life with former Rich Kids singer/guitarist/songwriter Midge Ure, who led them towards a more stylized, elegant sound full of both accessible melodicism and grand,sophisticated electronic textures. Consequently, VIENNA did much to jumpstart both the synth-pop scene and the New Romantic movement of the early 1980s.
Even the band's Bowie-influenced, modernist image on the front cover spawned a thousand imitators. Image aside, though, such durable singles as "Sleepwalk" and the title track show the band at its peak, turning out a uniquely European brand of futuristic pop-rock bearing both shiny surfaces and deeper satisfactions.