With this chorally intoned invitation, the ever-changing journey through the colourful sound of this extraordinary pop album begins. Like an excited puzzle, Afternoons in Utopia contains many similarly intensive songs together. The atmosphere of the journey for a better future is richly tasted, if sombrely coloured (as in Jerusalem), romantic and with a cinemascope-like form (The Voyager and Lassie Come Home), or American styled (Fantastic Dream), or rock and rollish (Red Rose). Again and again, the three virtuosos understand how to work out a high-class system: catchy melodies, simple harmonies and brilliant arrangements.

Two superb dance numbers (Dance With Me and Universal Daddy) prove that Alphaville are in the record shops with the greatest of ease. Their songs inspire and fire, sound exciting and happy at the same time, a combination of light and loose pop music with demanding dramatics. With an unmistakable instinct and an enormous compositional accuracy, Marian, Bernhard and Ricky produce more hit-bound songs from Afternoons in Utopia that beat the international standard. How large the range of musical instruments has become is seen in the vibrant quick song Sensations, and the atmospheric, mysterious mass of 20th Century. As a high point of the new work, one must unquestionably point to the title song. Filled with a powerful insistent chorus, Afternoons in Utopia travels under the skin.

With his expressive voice and as a committed lyricist of subtle and associative manner, Marian has absorbed that pop music filled with intelligent and motivated comments can also be political. With a multitude of experienced American and English musicians, with wonderful funky background singers, with a wide scale of effects, with a driving percussion and full brass, the "Dolphins of Pop Music" have added to their keyboard sounds with lively and harmonic arrangements.

Afternoons in Utopia is primarily the second album from Alphaville, but the group demonstrates how, with intelligent music (as Marian emphasises), a better future can be shaped.