One of my favorite instrumentals from my vinyl-collection days, “Astradyne” is dominated by synthesizers but never feels cold or mechanical. It gradually expands into something sweeping and majestic.
It was a fantastic opening to the original European edition of Ultravox’s Vienna. Unfortunately, the North American edition rearranged the first side and moved it to track five.
To my knowledge, nobody has ever covered “Astradyne.” That’s a shame. It sounds as though it could become a classic for an accordion band—or provide an opportunity for a couple of guitarists to stretch out those synthesizer riffs.
Fun fact: a typeface called Astradyne was later created from the lettering on the Vienna album cover and named after this song.