All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985 is a new compilation that charts the underbelly of the epoch-defining sound of the synthesizer in 80s popular music. Compiled by Philip King, the music here connects the dots between DIY synth enthusiasts grappling with new, cheap synthesizers at the tail-end of punk and wannabe, jobbing songwriters enthralled by the new music pioneered by Gary Numan, Depeche Mode, and Daniel Miller's Mute Records.

Featuring rare tracks of auto-didactic progressive pop music, proto-techno punk, shoot-for-the-stars-land-in-the-gutter chart flops, and heralded underground synth classics, School Daze paints a picture of beautiful failure. Complete with extensive sleeve notes written by King and never-before-seen imagery, all 24 tracks were remastered by RPM in-house engineer Simon Murphy, many from vinyl copies due to lost master tapes.

The story told on All The Young Droids is one of the dawning opportunity presented by both the emergence to the market of cheaper analog synthesizers and the distribution networks plus indie labels that exploded with the advent of punk music in 1976. While the music that sprouted out all over the globe in the wake of these factors was decried as fake, plastic, a refutation of punk's guitar-led revolution, it's telling that much of the music on All The Young Droids was created in bedrooms, ramshackle studios, and home-made setups with often borrowed equipment.

In the era of record labels jumping to capitalize on the success of The Sex Pistols, The Clash (both on major labels, of course) these artists struggled to stand out from a new gold rush with next to no budget or PR team. With radio and labels desperate for the new Yazoo, what resulted was a testament to necessity being the mother of invention.

At the time, the synthesizer was the music of the future, a shiny new machine that could paint like an orchestra with a single finger and a 4-track. In the hands of Manchester avant-pranksters Gerry & The Holograms, it's a pulsing, sardonic weapon.. the only instrument on the Messthetics classic lampooning of New Wave fashion. In Hamburg, a 16-year-old Andreas Dorau used it to write and record (with his female classmates on vocals) a global smash in Fred Vom Jupiter (later licensed to Mute Records). The hard-to-find English version (Fred From Jupiter, natch) is included here.

Many artists with already-storied careers caught the bug and recorded synthesizer-fueled peons to space, computers, the future and, of course, love interests. Harry Kakoulli, late of Squeeze, recorded a solo album in 1979 that included the incredible power-synth-pop smash-that-never-smashed I'm On A Rocket.

1. Design - Premonition 03:43 2. Vision - Lucifer's Friend 04:04 3. Richard Bone - Alien Girl 03:04 4. John Howard - I Tune Into You 03:28 5. Ian North - We're Not Lonely 02:13 6. Selwin Image - The Unknown 03:01 7. Harry Kakouli - I'm On A Rocket 03:26 8. Rich Wilde - The Lady Wants To Be Alone 03:38 9. Billy London - Woman 03:23 10. Alan Burnham - Science Fiction 03:50 11. The Microbes - Computer 02:40 12. The Goo-Q - I'm A Computer 03:21 13. Gerry & The Holograms - Gerry & The Holograms 04:12 14. The Warlord - The Ultimate Warlord 03:29 15. Die Marinas - Fred From Jupiter 02:44 16. Dee Jay Bert and Eagle - I Am Your Master 02:41 17. Peta Lily & Michael Process - I Am A Timebomb 03:19 18. Sole Sister - It's Not Who You Are But How You Are 03:34 19. Alastair Riddell - Do You Read Me 03:41 20. Karel Fialka - Armband 03:02 21. John Springate - My Life 04:27 22. Incandescent Luminaire - Famous Names 03:22 23. Disco Volante - No Motion 04:02 24. Dream Unit - A Drop In The Ocean 04:10