Three essential '80s albums

Three albums fans of 1980s synth pop should own:

1. Penthouse and Pavement, Heaven 17 (1981)
Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh split with fellow Human Leaguer Philip Oakey following albums Reproduction (1979) and Travelogue (1980) and formed Heaven 17 - named after a band in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange - with friend Glenn Gregory. The trio's first album was pitched as a corporate takeover (see cover), the music a high-tempo, soul-funk synth mix, headed up by opener (We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang ('Reagan's president elect... we don't need no fascist groove thing'); other highlights include Geisha Boys and Temple Girls, Let's All Make a Bomb and The Height of the Fighting. Heaven 17's biggest hit, Temptation, came from follow-up album The Luxury Gap (1983), though things declined after How Men Are (1984).

Bonus curio: check out Being Boiled (the Human League, 1978)

2. Upstairs at Eric's, Yazoo (1982)

Pop Mozart Vince Clark had already concocted some of Depeche Mode's finest moments, including Just Can't Get Enough, when he teamed up with Alison Moyet for Yazoo, forging singles Don't Go, Situation and Only You. The album's quieter, bluesy numbers - Midnight, In My Room, Tuesday, Winter Kills - are haunting declarations of defiance. The duo's unique collaboration ended after a second album, You and Me Both (1983), with Clarke going onto, first, The Assembly and then Erasure, and Moyet ploughing a solo furrow, unfortunately largely ditching the memorable contrast between her gutsy vocals and synth sounds, much as The Blue Nile did for their third album, Peace at Last (1996).

Bonus curio: I Before E Except After C (In Your Room boxset, 2008)

3. Cupid & Psyche 85, Scritti Politti (1985)

Emerging from the punk scene, Green Gartside was the possessor of Britain's best male white soul voice after The Associates' Billy Mackenzie, who I'll no doubt write about at some point. Over a series of albums, Gartside imbued his lyrics with an unprecedented level of sophistication, notably of a philosophical bent, from Jacques Derrida (on debut album Songs to Remember, 1982: 'I'm in love with Jacques Derrida/ Read a page and know what I need to/ Take apart my baby's heart'), through The Word Girl (Cupid & Psyche 85: 'I got a reason girl, was Immanuel Kant's') to Philosophy Now (Provision, 1988: 'I don't want apothecary girl'). Gartside's high-pitched vocals mixed with a reggae beat and those big drums sounds favoured in the 1980s; by 1999 he was collaborating with hip-hop stars for Anomie & Bonhomie and then he went all folky for homebrewed White Bread Black Beer (2006). Greatest hits compilation Absolute is due out Monday.

Bonus curio: She's a Woman, with Shabba Ranks (produced by Heaven 17's side project BEF, 1991)

Related: Five great electropop albums

Going for the slow burn

One of the cinema highlights we can look forward to next year is Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, which stars Brad Pitt and Sean Penn. The director notoriously leaves a long hiatus beween films - 20 years in the case of Days of Heaven (1978) and The Thin Red Line (1998). Compared with that, the five-year gap to his last film, The New World, is nothing.

Another director I love who we haven't heard much of in a while is Vincent Ward. The New Zealander made his name in 1988 with The Navigator and followed it up five years later with the epic Map of the Human Heart but then lost his way with mythical What Dreams May Come (1998), starring Robin Williams and Annabella Sciorra; I trust we'll hear from Ward again. Basque director Julio Medem is another major talent who's recently reemerged, with the small-scale Room in Rome, which has gone straight to video in the UK.

In difficult times for film funding, it won't come as a surprise if we see more of these lapses in the future, however. (I've written before about Hal Hartley and Whit Stillman.) Some authors are famous for it in the book world: Thomas Pynchon made his debut in 1963 with V. but, perhaps understandably, hit a 17-year silence following Gravity's Rainbow prior to Vineland (1990). Recently he's been downright prolific and the psychedelic prose of his latest, Inherent Vice (coming three years after Against the Day, 2006), makes a damn fine read.

The biggest novel of 2010 - Freedom - came nine years after its predecessor, The Corrections. The same gap followed author Jonathan Franzen's previous work, Strong Motion (1992).

Some of my favourite musicians are famous for having long breaks between albums; take The Blue Nile, who left a five-year gap between beautiful debut A Walk Across the Rooftops (1984) and the equally lush Hats, before waiting a further seven years for the disappointing Peace at Last (1996). Their fourth album, High, was released in 2004, so it's about time for a follow-up.

Even less in a hurry to get back in the studio is the formidable Scritti Politti (Green Gartside). Here are the years of release of his last three albums: 1988, 1999 and 2006. Importantly, every time he does deliver, it's worth the wait. Don't rush back.