Of the eight records Live Skull released throughout the 1980s, Cloud One is probably the one most often cited as the definitive LS album. This was the record that fine tuned the band's sound, transforming the polarizing power of the original No Wave into music that got under your skin and stayed there. A tightly-knit collection of songs and anti-songs years ahead of its time, Cloud One's chaos-scrambled hooks were a direct influence on the later breakthrough projects of Sonic Youth and Swans, Live Skull's co-conspirators in the so-called "noise scene" that emerged out of New York City in those years.
Cloud One captures Live Skull at a creative peak, with the band generating a profusion of arresting sounds and ideas via the most basic rock and roll vocabulary: bass, drums and two traditionally tuned guitars. The resulting record, an inexplicably seductive song cycle that filters art through the nasty mood swings of rock, was something radically new for 1986. Nearly thirty years on, Cloud One remains a transcendent musical hybrid as mysterious as it is memorable.
Reviewing Cloud One upon its 1986 release, Forced Exposure called the album "Live Skull's densest and most orgasmic disc yet," while Melody Maker UK declared, "Live Skull willfully derange and disengage conventional pop structures, harmonies and rhythms, preferring instead to exert a vice-like grip of droning guitars around the heart of the beast. It's an awesome racket."
Acclaim for the album has continued through the years, with online source shockofDAYLIGHT describing Live Skull's magnum opus as “Primo scary artnoise from the epicenter. The band's album happens to be their best and most focused. Right as you're trying to make sense of the bafflingly hot n' pre-apocalyptic cover art, you get walloped by one of the best opening tracks in rock history. I have a hunch that bands like Fugazi, Unwound, & Halcion got their entire careers from this album.”
Finally reissued after nearly three decades out of print, Cloud One is now available on limited edition vinyl and (for the first time ever) on CD, complete with a lavish booklet including extensive liner notes by founding members Tom Paine and Mark C, and eight extremely rare bonus tracks. This is the third release in Desire Records' Live Skull project, an ambitious eight-title series of reissues of the entire Live Skull catalogue, personally overseen by Mark C and Tom Paine.
LP: limited edition of 300 copies - white vinyl - 24 pages booklet with rare and unseen pics and extensive liner notes by band members Tom Paine & MarK C. Download coupon including the 8 CD bonus tracks.
CD: 8 bonus tracks. 24 pages booklet with rare and unseen pics and extensive liner notes by band members Tom Paine & MarK C.
Blood Red Shoes is the band’s fourth album, but the first one they’ve self-produced, having previously worked extensively with Arctic Monkeys producer Mike Crossey.“Everything was so perfect on our third album (‘In Time To Voices’), but we realised that the imperfections are what makes our band – that’s what people like about us,” says singer/guitarist Laura Mary Carter.
A new sense of positivity has also permeated the lyrics on their forthcoming album. “Our default setting as a band is to write from a negative perspective,” says Ansell. “… this time it’s about being hedonistic and free and not worrying so much.” One song in particular, ‘Everything All At Once’, comes from “the idea that you might not even wake up tomorrow, so you might as well experience everything right fucking now.”
It’s perhaps a viewpoint they’ve arrived at with the confidence of having achieved something relatively few bands of their generation have achieved – making it to their fourth album. “I think there’s an element of luck involved, but mostly it’s because we work our arses off,” says Carter, who also came up with the concept for the album’s sleeve. “We never switch off. We never let anything just happen; we steer everything. A bit control freaky, really.”
A fiercely ambitious band, Blood Red Shoes have clear aims for the album: they want it to power them on another massive tour around the world. Their long-running tours have won them huge audiences from Indonesia to Russia, Australia and beyond. Issuing the teaser for their new single, the first message received back was from a fan saying he hoped there was one in Ethiopia.
The most important thing, for Carter and Ansell, is that they’ve rediscovered the passion at their core. “You know like what it felt like when you’re a kid in art class and the teacher goes out and you just throw the paint around?” asks Ansell. “That’s the feeling of freedom that I can hear in the record. It’s really sloppy, and I love that about it.”
Beauty In The Suffering have released the much anticipated Official Video for "The Crazies (The Zombie Song)" - the ultimate zombie apocalypse party/rally as told from the perspective of the zombies.
The video, premiered on Bloody-Disgusting, is directed by Jonathan Shahan and Mike Walsh of Rev Hi-Fi Productions, the mixing performance footage with a horde of zombies descending on the band.
You can watch the result here on Peek-A-Boo!
Good news for those who like comedies like The Hangover or Superbad, as Warner is presenting its newest offering: We're The Millers. Those who already have seen the movie will never remember Jennifer Aniston as that star out of Friends, but just as stripper Rose!
Along with Jason Sudeikis (Horrible Bosses, Saturday Night Live), Ed Helms (The Hangover) and youngsters Emma Roberts & Will Poulter, Aniston is heading to Mexico for a holiday as an ordinary family, but in reality they are drug smugglers.
We're The Millers was one of the most unexpected hilarious hits of 2013, and it's an absolute tip if you like so-called "wrong humor". The movie is available from 22nd January on DVD , Blu-ray™ en Video on Demand on Warner.
Surlendemains Acides is the second full length from Xavier Paradis’ project Automelodi, and his first on new label Electric Voice Records.
As with Automelodi’s past efforts, this sophomore LP does offer a nod to obscure ‘80/’90s European electronic music—artists such as Trisomie 21 and Grauzone among others—but the main focus of the arrangements, melodies and production on Surlendemains Acides is to frame and carry the album's very dense and personal lyrical universe: a bittersweet, angular path, haunted by shades of anxiety and disenchantment.
These themes translate especially well through Paradis’ cold, yet shimmering French vocals, to create a listening experience with both unusual depth and levity. As Paradis clearly moves towards straightforward songcraft on this latest effort, the Automelodi project is elevated beyond a brilliant work of post modern electronic music to become a true stand-out within the broader context of popular music.
