RhoDeo 1109 Beats

Hello, i had to last minute change my post today as i had planned to post two live dance albums, unfortunately DVD audio extractor refused to work on Faithless's live at Alexandra Palace dvd, pity, simpler ripping tools just couldn't handle the 5 channels either. Oh well so i decided to keep it all Underworld today, i added 2 great EP's which i think shaped the way they and their live show developped. Party......

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When at first you don't succeed...Hyde and Smith began their musical partnership with the Kraftwerk and reggae-inspired sounds of while studying together at Cardiff Art College. In 1983 they recorded two albums for CBS Records with a proto-electroclash new romantic band whose name was a graphic squiggle, which (this being a relatively unknown band and many years before Prince became "Love Symbol") was soon given a pronunciation, Freur...doot doot .Freur disbanded in 1986. In 1987 members of Freur created the band Underworld and tried a more guitar-orientated funky electropop sound "Underneath the Radar"and Change the Weather.After a break (to concentrate on, among other things, art/design project Tomato), Hyde and Smith recruited Essex DJ Darren Emerson, and after several minor releases and remixes as Lemon Interupt and Steppin' Razor readopted the Underworld moniker.

The trio's first full-length, Dubnobasswithmyheadman, was released in 1993 to rave reviews and is still considered a landmark piece of work today. It spawned several hit singles ("Dark & Long", "Cowgirl", "Dirty Epic") and was followed a couple years later by the "Born Slippy" single and their second album, Second Toughest In The Infants (1996). The unusual name of the album as released derives from a comment made by Smith's six-year old nephew Simon Prosser when asked on his progress at school. Both the single and the album showed Underworld maturing as a trio, mixing elements of techno, house, drum and bass and pop music to spectacular effect.

Underworld's well-praised remixography also continued to grow, including artists such as Björk, Saint Etienne, Simply Red, Massive Attack and Leftfield. After licensing a remix of "Born Slippy" for the 1996 cult classic film Trainspotting, Underworld gained instant worldwide fame and found themselves touring furiously, presenting their renowned, high-energy live act worldwide. Their fame continued to run high through the release of Beaucoup Fish (1999) and Everything, Everything (2000), after which time Emerson left the group to concentrate on his DJ career.

The duo continued on, releasing the album A Hundred Days Off in 2002 and an anthology release, 1992–2002 in 2003. From 2004–2006, they took a break from the traditional album/tour cycle, and focused on soundtrack work and online digital EP releases as part of The RiverRun Project.In late 2005 they released two compilations of new songs with accompanying photographs on Underworld Live, Lovely Broken Thing and Pizza for Eggs. These were only released online, june 2006, they released their third instalment, I'm a Big Sister, and I'm a Girl, and I'm a Princess, and This Is My Horse. July 2006, they released a special retrospective mix, called The Misterons Mix, which is comprised of tracks from the three previous Riverrun releases.

Underworld added DJ Darren Price to their live lineup during this period. In 2006, Underworld and Gabriel Yared composed the music score to Anthony Minghella's film Breaking and Entering. Underworld 's latest album, Oblivion with Bells, was released on October 16th, 2007. Underworld have been experimenting and selling recordings of their live performance at the venue, 15 minutes after the show had finished, the first time they did this was a 3xCD set called Live in Tokyo in 2005. A full world tour has been announced to support the new studio album, illness prevented the planned kick off time but they've been catching up in 2008, with their tour dates in the United States, Europe, and Japan. This summer they'll be doing a number of festivals around the globe-see their mypage.

On May 13, 2010, the band released a track called "Scribble" for download on the band's site.The track shares elements with "You Do Scribble", an unreleased song which they featured many times since 2005 in their live performance shows. The group also released a video clip for "Scribble" on YouTube. It has been commercially released on June 28 as the lead single from their latest album. On June 7, 2010, Underworld announced the details of their eighth studio album, Barking, which was released on September 13, 2010 in the UK. The album features collaborations with German trance producer Paul van Dyk and British house artists Mark Knight and D. Ramirez, among others.

In December 2010 it was announced that Underworld will be reuniting with Trainspotting director Danny Boyle to write the musical score for his production of Frankenstein at the Royal National Theatre. Though there are no plans yet to make the soundtrack available for purchase, the production will be broadcast as a part of National Theatre Live on the 17 March 2011.

In addition to their music, Hyde and Smith are also founding members of a graphic design company, Tomato, which has done high-profile work for clients around the world as well as providing art for all of Underworld's releases. Hyde, along with John Warwicker of Tomato, has published two typographic journals as Underworld Print: Mmm... Skyscraper, I Love You (1994) and In The Belly Of Saint Paul (2003). Underworld Print began publishing the monthly Book of Jam in October 2007, which focuses on a different theme in each issue.

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Recorded in Brussels 22/5/99 during the Beaucoup Fish World Tour

A companion DVD was released separately soon after the album's release. The DVD features live footage of the band mixed with videography and artistic effects by the design group Tomato, with Jono Griffith of Ernest Edits as 'Creative Editor'. The DVD also features several songs not on the album - "Moaner", "Puppies", "Kittens", and "Rowla".



Underworld - Everything, Everything (174mb)

1 Juanita / Kiteless 12:53
2 Cups 3:26
3 Push Upstairs 7:28
4 Pearls Girl 8:17
5 Jumbo 8:33
6 Shudder / King Of Snake 12:17
7 Born Slippy Nuxx 10:56
8 Rez / Cowgirl 11:47

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Amazing deep house going on here with ends what is basicly an ambient dub version 215 miles



Underworld - Dark & Long (92mb )

1 Dark & Long (Hall's Mix) 4:08
2 Dark & Long (Dark Train) 9:51
3 Dark & Long (Most 'Ospitable) 5:53
4 Dark & Long (215 Miles) 20:02

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Basicly a double EP released in the US only, plenty to njoy here



Underworld - Dirty Epic - Cowgirl (171mb)

1 Dirty Epic(Dirty Guitar Mix)10:00
2 Dirty Epic(Dirty Mix)11:14
3 Dirty Epic(Album Version)9:52
4 Cowgirl(Irish Pub In Kyoto Mix)11:45
5 Cowgirl(Winjer Mix)6:25
6 Cowgirl(Album Version)9:55
7 Rez 9:57
8 River Of Bass 6:26

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Chicago Staged Reading: Roussel's Dust of Suns

It's been a while since I've posted (including missing my 6th blogaversary--I'll finish that post soon), but when I haven't been traveling I've buried under paper this quarter, with no let up for the next few weeks.  Between my classes, all the great undergraduate and graduate students whose work I'm supervising, and a committee I served on (whose work is now done), I haven't had much time to breathe.

I did, however, happily agree to participate last winter in the wonderful event below, the Chicago Poetry Project's staged reading of French author Raymond Roussel's (1877-1933) strange and enchanting 1926 effort Dust of Suns (La Poussière de soleil), one of his several failed efforts at the art of the stage. I say failed, because like nearly all of Roussel's work, this play was a bust at its premiere, yet his strange methods of composition, involving homonymic play, have stood up well over the decades, and like his (failed) poetic and novelistic projects now show him to have been ahead or at least in the more interesting currents of his time.

Chicago-based poet, critic and sage John Beer is mounting and directing the production, which will take place at the eerily named Charnel House, on West Fullerton in the Logan Square neighborhood (it's 3-4 blocks from the Blue Line El stop nearby), over the next three days. It's free, so if you happen to find yourself with a few hours, a desire to laugh (the play is often quite funny), and even the slightest interest in seeing yours truly in an eyepatch and cape, please do come see it.

The Chicago Poetry Project presents
a staged reading of the play
  

Raymond Roussel's The Dust of Suns

Created By
John Beer

March 4-6; Fri, Sat 8pm; Sun 3pm. ALL PERFORMANCES ARE FREE.

Location
The Charnel House
3421 W. Fullerton St., 773.871.9046

About Roussel and the play:

French poet, novelist and playwright Raymond Roussel (1877-1933) faced almost universal incomprehension and derision during his lifetime, for works that neglected traditional character and plot development in favor of the construction of elaborate descriptions and anecdotes based on hidden wordplay. While the premieres of his self-financed plays caused near-riots, admirers included Surrealists Andre Breton and Robert Desnos, who called The Dust of Suns (1926) “another incursion into the unknown which you alone are exploring.” Roussel never enjoyed the posthumous fame of his hero Jules Verne, but he has exercised a powerful fascination upon later writers and artists including the French Oulipo group, Marcel Duchamp, John Ashbery, Michel Foucault, and Michael Palmer. New editions of his novels and poetry are forthcoming this year from Princeton and Dalkey Archive.

Like much of Roussel’s writing, The Dust of Suns has a colonial setting. Against the backdrop of fin-de-siecle French Guiana, a convoluted treasure hunt unfolds. Along the way, Roussel fully indulges his penchant for bizarre invention and juxtaposition. The Frenchman Blache seeks his uncle’s inheritance: a cache of gems whose location lies at the end of a chain of clues that includes a sonnet engraved on a skull and the recollections of an albino shepherdess. Meanwhile, his daughter Solange is in love with Jacques—but all Jacques knows of his parentage is a mysterious tattoo on his shoulder...

This script-in-hand performance of Roussel’s play, directed by John Beer, with design by Caroline Picard, features an array of Chicago writers and artists.

Performers include: James Tadd Alcox, Joshua Corey, Joel Craig, Monica Fambrough, Sara Gothard, Judith Goldman, Samantha Irby, Lisa Janssen, Jennifer Karmin, Jamie Kazay, John Keene, Jacob Knabb, Francesco Levato, Brian Nemtusak, Travis Nichols, Jacob Saenz, Larry Sawyer, Suzanne Scanlon, Jennifer Steele and Nicole Wilson.

My iPad drawing of John Beer at rehearsal

So, Charlie Sheen is flipping out these days. If you haven't heard about it, all I can say is that I'm grateful that you came out from under your rock long enough to read this blog. You have priorities. I like that about you. And although he's still technically flipping out, he's calming down a bit from his peak of insanity. That was probably last week when he declared he was some sort of Vatican warlock who had something called tiger blood. He also said that dying was for losers and he wasn't going to be a part of it. OK, then.

But even before this past week, Sheen's life has been full of exciting antics. Let's see...I think it was about a year ago at Christmas time that he held a knife to his wife's throat on Christmas. Just this last October, he trashed a hotel room and scared his hooker du jour so much that she ended up naked in a closet. (In his defense, he did think that she had stolen his watch. So, that, of course, justifies everything.) Then in January he ended up in the hospital after a weekend of partying with hookers. He claims to have had a 'hernia'. If that's what they're calling partying too much when you're 45 years old, so be it. Oh, and he just admitted during some interview the other day that he used to smoke seven gram rocks of cocaine by himself when he was partying. I don't know if that's a lot, but since he seems really proud of himself, I'm going to assume that it's a lot.

He's quite the character, that Carlos Irwin Estevez. But in the past couple of weeks since the production of his ridiculously popular TV show, Two And A Half Men, has been shut down, his life is considerably tamer. Granted, he is living with two porn stars who he refers to as his 'goddesses'. But there doesn't seem to be any sort of drug use going on. That's because he asserts to have gone through his own 'home rehab' at his home (which, to my extreme delight, he has renamed "Sober Valley Lodge"). He's even passed a couple of whiz quizzes and he's clean as a whistle. So then why is it that just now, according to Pop Eater, "...major news organizations...have begun preparing obituaries for the unraveling-before-our-eyes star". What now?

Really? They're just getting around to that? The drug-fueled, hooker-in-the-closet incident wasn't enough to have them start penning his life story? According to the article, a CBS insider is quoted as saying, "No one is wishing the worst but as a news organization for us not to be prepared for one of the biggest stories in a long time would be unprofessional." Well, of course no one is wishing the worst! (Then again, it is sort of like a train wreck that is inevitable and you kind of wish that it would just crash and get it over with. Sometimes, suspense is a real bitch. And that includes when you're waiting for someone else's death.) But if you're going to talk about needing to be prepared, shouldn't you have started on this thing quite some time ago! He's clean right now, for cryin' out loud!

And look, while the news organizations may feel the need to be on a Charlie Sheen death watch, I don't see it happening anytime real soon. The guy parties like an animal. And for no real explainable reason, some people's bodies are just built to take that sort of abuse more than others. Look at Keith Richards. Why is that man still alive? How is that man still alive?! If there is ever a nuclear war, there will be two things that survive: Cockroaches and Keith Richards. (And quite frankly, the two are a little bit indiscernible right about now.) And that's just how it goes. But again, I feel the need to point out that he's not doing drugs right now! Where were your obituaries when he was smoking those seven gram rocks! Sure, it's great to be prepared, but you need to have something to be prepared for! And right now, that ship has sailed (and it probably has lots of porn stars aboard).

Then What WAS The Motivation?

If you're on a quest to find who is possibly the world's worst psychiatrist (or minimally, the least observant psychiatrist), stop right now. Have I got a lead for you.

Let's go to Waterloo, Iowa and learn from the fine, fine reporting of KCRG. That's how we learn about the misdoings of a one fifty-three year-old (and obviously old enough to know better) Larry Twigg. Mr. Twigg, who is a former teacher, was arrested in February 2010 after being accused "...of having a 17-year-old student shower in chocolate syrup and play strip video games". Let's just stop right there for a minute, shall we?

I don't even think that I know what the majority of that sentence even means. You can "shower" in chocolate syrup? Like...through a shower head? A squirt bottle? It's a rather thick substance. How do you shower in it? Is that just a metaphor and they really meant just "pouring"? I don't know, but I can't spend too much time on that because I'm really scratching my head over "strip video games". What the what? I fancy myself a video game enthusiast. A connoisseur if you will. But I am rather unfamiliar with the strip video game arena. And really, while I thoroughly enjoy video games and I thoroughly enjoy what can come from stripping, the two really don't go together. How can you concentrate on both of them at the same time? You can't! They both deserve your utmost attention and probably should not even be combined.

But back to the issue at hand. So, this guy gets arrested for, in short, being a weirdo. Now he's trying to have the case dismissed because in Iowa the "...law says the offense requires that the act is done to arouse or satisfy a sexual desire." No problem, right? Wrong. See, that's because "...the psychiatrist hired by the state will offer an opinion that Twigg's acts weren't sexually motivated." Wait. What now?

Correct. You have as much information as I do. Showering at 17-year old with chocolate syrup and playing strip video games is not motivated by the need to satisfy a sexual desire. To which I must ask the seemingly obvious question: How so? That seems to be the only thing that would be motivating this sort of activity. What else could it be? A love for chocolate syrup? A fondness for the suspense filled moments of who is going to have to remove an article of clothing following a loss after an exhilarating round of Mario Kart? Could it be either of those things? Technically? Yes. Was it either of those things? Hell no.

This psychiatrist hired by the state...is on glue? I'm dying to know what in the world he thinks was the motivation behind this very, very odd, odd behavior. I would expect this sort of lunacy from a psychiatrist hired by the defense, but this guy was hired by the state. I don't get it. I really don't. But I'm open to hearing an explanation. In fact, I look forward to it. In the meantime, I'm going to go play some video games with all of my clothes on and without a drop of chocolate syrup in sight. Boring, perhaps. But legal and totally explainable.

RhoDeo 1109 Goldy Rhox 16

Hello, today the 16th post of GoldyRhox, classic pop rock. Most of the albums i 'll post made many millions for the music industry and a lot of what i intend to post still gets repackaged and remastered decades later, squeezing the last drop of profit out of bands that for the most part have ceased to exist long ago, although sometimes they get lured out of the mothballs to do a big bucks gig or tour.

Now i'm not as naive to post this kinda music for all to see and have deleted, these will be a black box posts, i'm sorry for those on limited bandwidth but for most of you a gamble will get you a quality rip don't like it, deleting is just 2 clicks...That said i will try to accomodate somewhat and produce some cryptic info on the artist and or album.


Todays Goldy Rhox mystery album was released 40 years ago (note a day before last weeks post).The band is still is there, although well past the 65 retirement age. This was the band's first album of the 1970s and its first release on their own label, after having been contracted since 1963 with Decca Records in the UK and London Records in the US. It was their first after the death of founder member and guitarist Brian Jones. In 2003, the album was listed as number 63 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The artwork for the album was conceived by Andy Warhol, it featured a working zipper that opened to reveal cotton briefs. Should have been edible, anyway not included but remastered.


Goldy Rhox 16 106mb


***** ***** ***** ***** *****

The Internet Lies

I really don't understand a lot of stuff. That's kind of why I'm here. To figure stuff out. But I am convinced that there are some things that I will just never understand. Crimes where the victim needs to play an extremely crucial role in the wrongdoings are some of the things that I don't understand. And I'm not talking about scams where people are bilked out of their life savings. While I don't profess to say that I totally understand how those can happen (and I tend to subscribe to the "A fool and his money are soon parted" explanation for most of them), they sometimes (rarely) have a (microscopic) shred of plausibility to them. (I don't really think that. I'm just trying to be nice. Really, I don't get how they ever happen, but that's probably just me.) But when the crime involves having to coerce the mother to engage in sexual acts with her child, it really boggles the mind. Wait. When they...what now?

Yeah, I'm still trying to noodle this one through. According to an AP story which appeared over yonder at the Huffington Post, the individual that we're describing here is a one Steven DeMink. The article starts off confusing me, as it reads "Online...he presented himself as Dalton St. Clair, an attractive single father and psychologist". Now, I don't know if he included a picture of himself online, but this is the perv we're talking about. Behold!

Yeah, not so much in the attractive category if you're asking me. It also doesn't seem like he would have much going on in the smarts category either, but his little ruse seemed to work. I'm going to tell you what he did and then you tell me if these mothers, who were unthinkably somehow unknowingly complicit in his little scheme, should really be parenting at all, OK? My answer is a massive NO. Maybe they could be good parents one day, but clearly right now is not that day. Perhaps give them something to practice taking care of first before moving up to actual humans. I'm thinking of a perhaps a houseplant. Not much can go wrong there...unless you're the plant.

This guy would go into chat rooms on the Internet and somehow convince "...single mothers...to sexually assault their children as a form of therapy." And he did this for (wait for it) more than a year! That he was able to do it even once is astonishing to me. What kind of mother would go along with this sort of advice? Well, in some cases, this perv "...promised the women a date if they followed through with his directions." A date? In exchange for sexually assaulting your own child? THAT was a relevant factor for some of these idiots? Are you dry shaving me?! How is that possible? Who ARE these people?! I guess they're people like this woman: Apparently, "In one case, Demink started online chats with an Oregon woman about the sexual development of her 8-year-old autistic son...He told her to engage in sexually explicit conduct with her son as a way to teach him about sex...and she did so while Demink watched on a web camera." Excuse me for a moment while I find a wall to bang my head against.

They were on the freaking Internet! Don't they know that the Internet lies?! He said he was a psychologist, so that was good enough for them?! Have they also recently lost a lot of money to a Nigerian prince? Are these women being allowed to continue caring for their children? I don't think that it's an overreaction to ask that question, nor do I think it's an overreaction for someone else to be in charge of these particular children. What kind of person are you who has some guy on the Internet tell you to engage in some form of sex with your autistic son and you think it's a good idea and you do it?! WITH a webcam running?!

Well, the answer to that is right there in the police report. See, "Demink intimated to these women that the result of the therapy would be healthier children." Oh. OK, then. I didn't know that he told them that it would help their children. That makes all of the difference. Totally understandable now. Of course. I should have known that there was a reasonable explanation for all of this insane lunacy. Sweet fancy Moses, what is going on here?!

Oh, look! Here's some information about one of the women! This might help us. OK, it says that this particular individual met this guy on "....an online dating site called singleparentmeet.com." All right. Nothing wrong with making friends online. But then, "She told police she performed sex acts on her young son as directed by her online male friend." All right. There's absolutely something wrong with that! As directed by?! The direction I can fully comprehend. It's the following through with it that still boggles me! Maybe her mother (who was inexplicably interviewed for this story) can help shed some insight on what her daughter was thinking. She said that "...her daughter was "depressed and lonesome" after her divorce." Uh-huh. I'm going to need more than that. "I don't know how he wrangled her in...She could have turned off the computer and gone the other way. He must have had a power over her." Oh, for cryin' out loud!

A power over her?! How about just admitting that your daughter is a complete dumbass?! Power? What kind of power? I've read this story several times (in hopes that I read it wrong at least once) and it makes no mention of him being overly tricky or magic or anything like that. He's just a big, perverted dope who managed to convince not one, not two, but at least seven women from all over the country to sexually assault their children because it would "help" them.

Seven. I have just lost all faith in humanity. I have nothing left. Seven. Indiana, Georgia, Illinois, Oregon New Hampshire, Idaho and Florida (of course). Those folks are spread all across the country. If it was contained to a particular region (like Florida, as I had expected), maybe I would have some faith left. But it's not. It's from one coast to another and everywhere in between. I don't really know what else to do with that other than to completely abandon any shred of hope that I may have ever had. For cryin' out loud, "Because the Internet told me to" is about the worst excuse I have ever heard in my life and it happened in this instance at least seven times. Yeah, I give up. Good Lord...

RhoDeo 1109 Aetix

Hello, todays post showcases a band that i really cared about at the time, and not just because i met them twice but because their music had something to say aswell. I go asfar as to saying that it was this poetic inkling that blocked their path to succes, UK lads have no patience for deep emotions, they have the pub to wash those away, thats why you will find the UK youths staggering thru the city center on weekend nights. I've seen it upclose, they can't handle emotions so they need to binge themselves into stupor (curse of the druids perhaps).
Anyway less intense and more pretentious acts like U2, Simple Minds and Echo and The Bunnymen sold shitloads of albums in the UK, whilst the true post-punk art from The Sound fell by the wayside. Only across the channel in Germany, Belgium and specially the Netherlands were they reckognised for their great music. I've told Adrian the 2nd time we met, prophets are rarely reckonized in their own country. He didnt agree obviously, he didnt feel like a prophet he just wrote from his heart and gave it a voice. Hmm tough', but history has seen many an artist understood after his death, a death that came 12 years ago whilst on anti depressants that unhinged him completely and saw him jump infront of a train. So very unlike the man i knew, he would have taken a more creative poetic way out not a messy jump.

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The Sound might be the most unfairly ignored post-punk band, both in their time and currently. Doubly strange are the impressive punk credentials of bandleader Adrian Borland, who died in 1999. His earlier band The Outsiders was the first punk band to release a record (Calling On Youth) on their own label in May 1977. By 1979, the band had evolved into The Sound, the most powerful live band at the time, with a voice that recalled the Bunnymen's Ian McCullough, a heavy melodic bass style like Joy Division's Peter Hook, and a fiery guitar style unmatched by anyone.

They received their first break of sorts from Stephen Budd, an early supporter since the Outsiders days, who had recorded and released some material by Bailey and Borland's electronically inclined side project, Second Layer. Budd's label, Tortch-R, made a small profit from a Second Layer release, so he opted to put it right back into the Sound's first release. Budd also became the band's manager, booking studio time for them with Nick Robbins in Elephant Studios and finding places for the band to gig. The WEA-affiliated Korova label (home of Echo & the Bunnymen) came knocking when they found out the band was going back into the studio to make a full album. Korova heard the rough mixes of the album and a deal was made. Jeopardy was recorded cheaply, and upon its release was reviewed extremely favorably by all the important outlets. Reviews in the NME, Sounds, and Melody Maker gave it five stars. Rightfully likened to the Bunnymen, the Teardrop Explodes, and Joy Division in those reviews, one only needs to hear the weakest song from the record to realize that the Sound -- from the very beginning -- belonged in that high class.

Bi Marshall left the band and was replaced by Max Mayers (aka Colvin Mayers) before the Sound went in to work with master producer Hugh Jones, who had previously worked with the Teardrops and the Bunnymen, for the follow-up. From the Lion's Mouth took full advantage of the band's atmospheric, mind-bending capabilities by coating their songs -- accessible and economical as ever -- with richly layered productions that didn't hide the rock-solid foundation the songs were built on. Another round of positive reviews and another round of general indifference from the public ensued, though a cult following was festering. Korova became a little anxious with the band and wanted some hits. Surely, the next one would break them.

Working again with Nick Robbins, the band was pressured by the label to compromise and play the pop game, and shifted to WEA proper. The heat from the label and the climate it spawned resulted in All Fall Down, their least penetrable record by a couple brick walls. And WEA responded to the response with no promotion. A period of dormancy followed it involved a collective realization that the enthusiasm for making music and playing it, despite being a little drained from their experiences with WEA, had never really waned. Several major labels expressed interest in signing them, but in the end Statik won out; the band decided it would be better to go with the small independent (an understandible mistake).

Shock of Daylight, a six-song EP, was released in 1984. The time off served them well, resulting in some of the band's most fiery and uplifting material. This carried through to the following year's glassy/classy Heads and Hearts, the band's fourth studio album. Two dates at the Marquee during August were recorded for the double live album In the Hothouse, which was released in 1986. For their final album, 1987's Thunder Up, the band allowed the darkness from All Fall Down and the shivering, plaintive desolation of Shock of Daylight's "Winter" to creep back in. Few were still paying attention, but the Sound released a swan song that most of the members considered to be their finest work, with plenty of variety that hangs together. Nearly a decade of empty wallets and minor personality clashes had eroded the band's resilience, so the band decided to stop shortly after its release....


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An assured, relatively loose follow-up to the fraught and frayed Jeopardy, From the Lion's Mouth entrenched the Sound's stature as no mere flash in the pan. It should have shot them directly between spots occupied by the like-minded Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen as post-punk legends, but the Fates had something else in mind, and so the quartet took their place right next to touring mates the Comsat Angels in the section marked "Deserved Better.
From The Lions Mouth is a peak sophomore achievement. The Sound's blend of angular guitars, throbbing bass and mimimalist keyboard fills, combined with the late Adrian Borland's intense, emotive vocals created a "sound" that was quite unorthodox yet exciting and intoxicating, particularly for the year 1981. A great album to point to whenever some misguided fool tries to dismiss all 80's music as slick, commercial trash. From the stunning opener "Winning" to the closing, anti-Thatcher-era rant "New Dark Age", this album is simply incredible for its time. That said, sales were dismal. Possibly because the album was too unique. It didn't fit neatly into any of the synth pop/new wave/new romantic stuff that was popular in '81. Nor did it have the bombast that would make Echo & the Bunnymen, U2 and Simple Minds so popular. The Brits were just too stuck up for this emo that came decades early, subsequently there was no push into the States all that remained was being highly esteemed and successful in the low countries and Germany.



The Sound - From The Lions Mouth (81 97mb)

01 Winning 4:16
02 Sense Of Purpose 3:50
03 Contact The Fact 4:21
04 Skeletons 3:26
05 Judgement 5:26
06 Fatal Flaw 4:34
07 Possession 3:25
08 The Fire 2:49
09 Silent Air 4:10
10 New Dark Age 5:54

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On Sessions the Sound blasts through a couple of studioperformances that showcase tracks from stand-out albums Jeopardy and From the Lions Mouth. Everything sounds wonderfully raw, forever hinting at being dangerously close to spilling over without ever actually doing so - even when shards of guitar fiercely explode across a track, dragging (and I could almost choose anything here) “Heartland” and “Jeopardy” into stratospheres of greatness. Where I believe they are still orbiting. The closer, “New Dark Age”, is a brooding epic of a track; towering drumming, pseudo-apocalyptic vocals and a jagged guitar line that suggests the end times may be greeting us sooner than we think.




The Sound - Sessions (The BBC Recordings) (81 75mb)

1. Heartland (3:17)
2. Unwritten Law (3:40)
3. Jeopardy (3:51)
4. I Can't Escape Myself (3:50)
5. Fatal Flaw (4:30)
6. Skeletons (3:27)
7. Hothouse (3:56)
8. New Dark Age (5:24)

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There’s a certain degree of repetition here as the first show covers similar ground to the ‘sessions’ disc. However, this matters less than it might due to the suitably different live setting and the continued excellence of performance from all concerned. The lively “Winning” appears as a handy reminder that The Sound were by no means perpetually bleak; a declaration that brightness can always be reached beyond the shadows. Frontman Adrian Borland is in outstanding vocal form; expressing restraint where necessary, but equally inclined to let fly with a passionate, tormented ire that acts as the perfect mirror for his expressive guitar work. This disquiet becomes increasingly noticeable on the concluding segment of live tracks, taken from a much later performance in 1985. As Sound drummer Mike Dudley states in the sleeve notes ‘It’s not a comfortable listen’. When “Burning Part of Me” is introduced as ‘.. a song about the only real way out,’ it delivers a chill.especially in view of Borland’s tragic suicide.



The Sound - In Concert (The BBC Recordings) (81,85 152mb)

01. Pete Drummond Intro (0:34)
02. Unwritten Law (3:37)
03. Skeletons (3:47)
04. Fatal Flaw (4:21)
05. Winning (4:10)
06. Sense of Purpose (3:30)
07. Heartland (3:24)
08. New Dark Age (5:56)
09. Pete Drummond Intro (3:55)
10. Golden Soldiers (3:36)
11. Under You (4:47)
12. Total Recall (4:41)
13. Burning Part of Me (3:31)
14. Whirlpool (4:00)
15. Missiles (7:52)

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