Thanks to Anders for translating the following from Swedish!  He adds:
  [You know, I don't really feel like translating this stuff, as it's
  very prejudiced. Guess I'll have to anyway, now that I've promised
  to...]
(DAGENS NYHETER, 16 April 1982)
PER MORTENSEN
----
Chrome: Blood On The Moon (X/Metronome)
Rupert Hine: Waving Not Drowning (A&M)
Japan: Chosts [sic] (Virgin - maxi single)
Heaven 17: (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang (BEF/Virgin maxi
single)
Human Leguae [sic]: Dare (Virgin)
Visage: The Anvil (Polydor)
DAF: Gold Und Liebe (Virgin)
Bernard Lavilliers: Nuits D'Amour (Barclay)

[Caption: Rupert Hine - has explored the synthesizer and succeeded in
coloring and suggesting where normal instruments are insufficient.]


SYNTHS - MOSTLY SUPERFICIAL EFFECTS

 "Now this is rock'n'roll and no electronic shit!"
 That's roughly what Johnny Thunders said when he was to take to
Mandagsborsen's stage after Rupert Hine and Depeche Mode.

 "We heard Human League, and God, they couldn't even play! It was just
prerecorded tapes and vocals on top of that, and they couldn't even
make it fit together!"
 This is what Nico, singer and Velvet Underground veteran, said during
her tour of Sweden.
 She was bitter about electronics' invasion of rock. Herself, she was
happy with an old harmonium, the kind your teacher used in elementary
school.
 By the way, an ordinary harmonium can play as many notes as you have
fingers, unlike most synthesizers. On the other hand, they [synths]
offer virtually unlimited sound options which few use.
 Maybe that's why the synthesizer gets more and more practicers, and
more and more enemies.

* The form is dependent on the content; i.e. the expression becomes
what it is depending on what the artist wants to express.
 Within the "new" pop, things often seem to be the other way around.
Without being able to play, you choose an instrument you're easily
duped by, like the synth, to carry out your ideas on. Your musical
limitations don't show, a banal tune can grow into a rainbow of sound,
or it can "reflect" the cold and spiritual bankruptcy of modern
society.
 Strangely, the new electronic possibilites haven't added a lot of new
expressions to rock.

* Sure, the Californian duo Chrome make the electronics sizzle and
fuses blow with their frenzy. The Gothenburg band Cosmic Overdose have
used their synths as a kind of springboard to ecstacy, through their
lack of respect.
 Rupert Hine, despite Thunders' attack, has explored the synthesizer
in order to try to colour and suggest where ordinary instruments are
not enough. The same goes for the British band Japan, who, instead of
Hine's saturated sounds, have created sparse and fascinating oriental
forests of sound.
* Most British groups' attempts at funk are frozen copies of the real,
warm thing. Heaven 17 are one of the few groups who attack the keys the
way an ordinary punk guitar player would yank the strings.
 But on the whole, synths feel like a kind of easy-played replacement
for ordinary instruments. Instead of hammering, searching and
experimenting, musicians use them for superficial effects that are
raised to the status of well thought-out expression.
 But the synth isn't just an advanced toy piano you can play with one
finger.

* If you listen through a bunch of new records with synth music, you
soon grow tired of it. Human League make ABBA pop, but even stiffer.
The Danish band Scatterbrain have clever tunes, but sound as if they
have a complex for not being able to perform the music on normal
instruments.
 Visage, with fashion prodigy Steve Strange, or leather-dressed DAF,
also make ordinary, old-fashioned pop, where the synth is meaningless,
but has been a marketing argument along with the prominent, monotonous
rhythms. Hardly "new" music, but incredibly anaemic.
Frenchman Bernard Lavilliers uses synthesizers to create moods as a
backdrop to his lyrics, whose romanticism is taken straight out of
cheap detective novels. He has traded the ordinary film score
orchestra for an, in every sense of the word, cheap effect.

* It seems the use of electronics is hiding a creativity crisis in rock
music. Either the synth is used instead of instruments that are harder
to play, or as an effect by quasi-classic "modernists".
 When will the synthesizer get a Jimi Hendrix who exposes the nobodies
and finds the new possibilites?
 All too often, rock is reactionary. [The same goes for rock critics...
 - Anders]
---