Search - Information Society :: Peace And Love Incorporated

Underrated masterpiece

Laury B. | Canada | 03/10/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"It seems that after the hit "What's on your mind", one of their only singles to make it to the top ten, in 1988, everyone forgot about Information Society. Which is really sad, because Kurt Harland, Jim Cassidy and Paul Robb, far from sitting on their laurels, produced many other great songs, such as How long and Think, from the album Hack. And then, along came their third effort, Peace & Love inc. It did very poorly on the charts when released in 1992, and the video to the title song was never even shown on MTV. But saying that the album's lack of commercial success was due to its poor quality would be a great mistake. In fact, I believe that P&L inc. is by far InSoc's best effort. "Information Society" had nice, poppy, catchy, Top-40-friendly songs (as Kurt Harland said later), "Hack" contained good songs but it had too many different genres and was very uneven. On Peace & Love inc, it's as though InSoc finally knew where they were going. They could finally allow themselves to write electronic music and be their computer, keyboard-loving selves without being criticized for not using any "real" instruments. Peace & Love still has a strong pop feel (Crybaby is a beautiful midtempo ballad; Kurt had just broken up with his girlfriend when they recorded this song and you can really hear the sorrow in his voice) but the sound is generally more aggressive and electonic (the title song and Still Here are the best examples of that), and extremely fun to listen to (100 000 Watts of Love). And of course, InSoc wouldn't be InSoc without all those samples, right? Well, they can be found almost everywhere on the album, but if you pay enough attention, on Made to be Broken, you will hear two samples that originally were on Think (the radio-tuning sound and the voice saying "Oh Yeah", or something like that). All in all, P&L inc. is a great album and it's a shame that InSoc was forgotten so easily, when they deserved much more than that."

Track 12 is an EASTER EGG.....

C. Sullivan | 01/19/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I was all about IS back in the late 80's early 90's. I loved them and had their debut album (still my fav), HACK and Peace & Love, INC. I couldn't wait for them to release P&LI. When I got it home and played through all the tracks, track 12 pierced my ears. But looking at the name of the song, 300bps N, 8, 1 (Terminal Mode Or Ascii Download), I knew that was modem settings. I called my uncle, whom at the time worked for IBM, and told him the track sounded like modem tones. I met him at his house and played track 12 for him and he agreed and proceeded to connect it to his IBM AT PC and played it while connected to his printer. What happened next was totally ahead of it's time and 'til this day still unique. Pages flowed from the printer and I couldn't wait to read it. When it stopped, my uncle and I sat there and read through a story of how the band was in south america and the tour bus got stuck in the mud on a dirt road. It has been 15 or so years so that's all I can remember but it was a fun read. I printed it out tried to lug it with me over the years but no longer can find it. If anyone reading this has a soft copy, I'd love to see it again. Might have to dig up my CD and see if I am savy enough to do it on my own this time.



Also, their debut CD was a CD+G. The G stood for graphics and I always wanted to see what was on the CD. A couple of years go I found a CD-G player on the web (google it) and it allowed you to use your PC CD-Rom as a CD+G player. It was an evaluation copy so I only got to see a few seconds of each track. It was basically home made animated videos for each song, telling how each track was made, what equipment was used in making the songs. Again, very cool for 1988. I still don't think anyone else has done that.



Information Society was a very unique band, be it music, videos, dress or technology used.



I miss them."

Where would I be without IBM?

Kyle G. Brown | Apex, NC United States | 03/16/2002

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Of the three "full" Information Society albums (Information Society, Hack and Peace & Love Inc. -- prior to Paul Robb quitting and selling the name to co-founder Kurt Harland) this is the most mature of the three, but also the least danceable. The cool thing is that the lyrics did get a bit more tounge-in-cheek and even downright insightful at times. My favorite track off this album is the appropriately named "Where would I be without IBM" (and actually, I fell in love with the song before I took my current job). It's an interesting look at the way that technical people tend to cocoon themselves with technology to avoid dealing with stressful situations -- and it rocks!"