Musique

1. Machine
2. City of Light
3. Fragment
4. Musique
5. Commute
6. Radio
7. Image
8. Crash/Concrete
9. Retrospect
10. Reverie
11. Космическая эра

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 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 July 27, 2009.

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.