The album had an immediate cross-generational impact and was associated with numerous touchstones of the era’s youth culture, such as fashion, drugs, mysticism,
and a sense of optimism and empowerment.
It topped nearly all album charts around the world.
Robert Smith: “It’s like an end to what we’ve been doing for the last 10 years.
This one is taking bits from everything we’ve done, all the bits that I’ve liked. But
there’s a single album’s worth of that and a single album’s worth of stuff we’ve
never really attempted before.”
No. 6 in the UK. No. 4 in Germany and Austria. No. 35 in the US.
I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes…
BLONDIE hit the top spot of the UK Singles Charts on 26 May 1979,
today 46 years ago with pop pearl Sunday Girl. It was part of their
splendid Parallel Lines LP.
The song was written by Chris Stein, inspired by Debbie Harry‘s cat, who was named Sunday Man. The cat had recently run away, inspiring the song’s “plaintive” nature.
It was named Turn Up The Volume‘s best album of 2024.
TUTV:“In the past 16 years Robert Smith lost his mother, father, and brother.
All the painful experiences surrounding these impactful, indelible passings led
to this brilliant, gloomy record. One long emotionally layered lament, one that
seems to work liberating in the end.
Sonically, it resonates as if you’re part of a funeral march that progresses in slow motion,
just the way the music evolves. The most drastically soul-stirring record I heard all year, accentuating how sorrow can overwhelm and hurt one’s heart and mind. It’s a universal experience that millions, and millions of people who lost loved ones – past, present and
future – can relate to.”
SONGS OF A LOST WORLD
Yesterday the band’s orchestrator Robert Smith celebrated his 66th birthday and announced a remixed edition of that masterpiece, named Mixes Of A Lost World.
A massive collection of remixes — two discs for the standard edition, three discs
for the deluxe — by artists including Four Tet, Paul Oakenfold, Chino Moreno, Mura
Masa, Mogwai, the Twilight Sad, Orbital, Daniel Avery, 65daysofstatic, and more. It
lands on June 13th.
The royalties from the album will benefit WAR CHILD UK, the charity organisation driven
by a single goal – ensuring a safe future for every child living through war. Lots of projects were/are now launched to collect funds for the young victims in the horrible Gaza war.
Robert Smith send this message to the world (yes in capitals): “JUST AFTER CHRISTMAS I WAS SENT A COUPLE OF UNSOLICITED REMIXES OF ‘SONGS OF A LOST WORLD’ TRACKS AND I REALLY LOVED THEM. THE CURE HAS A COLOURFUL HISTORY WITH ALL KINDS OF DANCE MUSIC, AND I WAS CURIOUS AS TO HOW THE WHOLE ALBUM WOULD SOUND ENTIRELY REINTERPRETED BY OTHERS.
THIS CURIOSITY RESULTED IN A FABULOUS TRIP THROUGH ALL 8 SONGS BY 24 WONDERFUL ARTISTS AND REMIXERS AND IS WAY BEYOND ANYTHING I COULD HAVE HOPED FOR. GIVING OUR RECORDING ROYALTIES FROM THE PROJECT TO WAR CHILD HELPS MAKE ‘MIXES OF A LOST WORLD’ AN EVEN MORE SPECIAL RELEASE.”
What the fuck. Why Smith wants to destroy a deeply personal and grieving record
with, mostly, ambient/dance/trip-hop remixes is beyond me. Why wreck heart-and-soul touching songs and turning them in a sort of sinister party soundtrack. The first taster by Four Tet (hear below) says it all.
I have no intention whatsoever to listen to the upcoming, insensible arty farty rubbish.
But that’s just me. It’s none of my business, of course, what Smith wants to do or not.
The one and only absolute great thing here is that all royalties will benefit War Child UK.
Now Smith told NME about one of the upcoming longplayers: “It has one song of grief on it which didn’t make it onto this album, which is a very, very old song which we’ve been playing for a long, long time called ‘It Can Never Be the Same’. And I think that this next album will have that song on because I think it’s about time. It used to be called ‘Christmas Without You’. “When I first wrote it, it was about my mum dying, but it’s mutated over the years and that’s actually turned into a really powerful live song. That would probably make it on.”
The song featured on 40 Live: Curætion-25 + Anniversary.
A 2019 box set including 2 DVDs/2 Blu-rays) and 4 CDs, with
live recordings from their 40-year anniversatry shows in 2018.
The album’s title is taken from a quotation attributed to Winston Churchill: “Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.”
NME wrote: “A collection of free-ranging stuff to be sure. It’s never
sentimental, it’s rarely polite, and it’s certainly not ordinary.”
STREAM
. Linktree – All Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Artist: TOM WAITS Album: Rain Dogs
9th LP,
#188 in the US,
#29 in the UK.
The Village Voice wrote: “Waits worked out a unique and identifiable lounge-lizard
sound that suits his status as the poet of America’s non-nine-to-fivers.”
STREAM
. Instagram – All Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
AllMusic: “This collection is ample proof of the pure confidence the group had
at this time. The Fall sound mysterious, down-to-earth, and hilarious all at the
same time.”
STREAM
. Instagram – All Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
AllMusic: “Thursday Afternoon is an hour-long, uninterrupted ambient piece
created in Eno’s “holographic” compositional style, in which even the most brief
snippet of music is representative of the performance as a whole.”
STREAM
. Instagram – All Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
AllMusic: “An ambitious album, attempting to incorporate touches of soul,
psychedelia, and country into a loose concept about the modern South.”
STREAM
. Linktree – All Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Band: THE CULT Album: Love
Their second LP,
# in the UK.
AllMusic: “Considering the musical schizophrenia that would plague each
subsequent Cult release, Love just may be the band’s purest moment.”
STREAM
. Instagram – All Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
AllMusic:“Flip Your Wig would be a remarkable record on its own terms, but the fact that it followed New Day Rising by a matter of months and Zen Arcade by just over a year is simply astonishing.”
Orchestrator Robert Smith about
their supreme new opus.
TUTV: In the past 16 years Robert Smith lost his mother, father, and brother.
All these painful events led to this extraordinarily touching record. It’s one
long, emotionally layered lament that works liberating in the end.
Strong sentiments of heartache, grief, and sadness are omnipresent, but you
hear and feel frequently that Smith has accepted humankind’s inevitable destiny.
Live and die. Life and death.
Sonically, it feels like if you’re part of a funeral march that progresses in slow
motion. Almost every song starts with a long instrumental intro of waves of
mourning synths and weeping guitars, and every time when Smith‘s feverish
voice joins in, the sense of tristesse augments wondrously heavy-hearted.
5-star masterpiece!
SINGLE
ALBUM
. Instagram – All Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
TUTV: Musically, tattoo artist Carter and his accomplices have left their angry punk days behind them and moved closer to classic rock on this surprising and bold longplayer.
And it’s a truly staggering result with several melodramatic power ballads that generate goosebumps, and some stoner rock ebullitions to keep balance. Carter sings his heart out with monumental vivaciousness. A vocal tour de force throughout, dealing with up and down emotions.
Lias Saoudi (voice/face/wordsmith/poet/writer): ‘Forgiveness Is Yours,’ is about life as eternal contingency… about no longer suspecting, but knowing that this shit will never get any easier… in fact, it’s about to get a whole lot worse, your body’s going to go into decay and the people you love will slowly start dropping dead around you… but somehow, you’ve smashed enough
of your expectations thus far in life, you’re sort of fine with it… you accept it.The overarching aesthetic themes at work here are torpor and further torpor still.”
TUTV: Without a shadow of a doubt their most startling, and most creative/inventive accomplishment. Sounds like FWF have written/recorded the bone-chilling soundtrack
for an entertaining Doomsday party. Enigmatic reflections, dark deliberations, distressing vibes, a John Lennon tribute and Saoudi as the foreboding messenger and sinister poet in the middle of it all. It’s the end of the world, as we know it, and it feels like Fat White Family.
Cave: “There’s no fucking around with this record. When it hits, it hits. It lifts you. It moves
you. I love that about it. I hope the album has the effect on listeners that it’s had on me. It bursts out of the speaker, and I get swept up with it.”
TUTV: Cave is the God of cloak-and-dagger balladry. Now here’s a God I can believe in. Again he shows why he’s one of the best ever crooners in the universe. And lyrically it
feels as if, after so many devastating, heart-crushing years, with the loss of two sons,
he lets sparks of light back in his life. God bless Nick Cave.
TUTV: White returns to his punk blues roots of the early days. Swipe after swipe,
blue stripe after blue stripe, kick after kick, clap after clap. A total of 13 thunder
strokes. High-wired electricity. Dope stuff.
TUTV: The charismatic Lia Metcalfe‘s singular voice, both anxious and bewitching,
is all over this new, awe-inspiring full-length. Overall the sound is even more gloomy
and spine-chilling than on their debut from 2022.
It fits Metcalfe‘s introspective reflections on her turbulent past terrifically well.
They’re embedded in arresting songs that send shivers down your spine.
But, eventually, there’s a light shining
at the end of the Mysterines tunnel.
One that illuminates their future
and your stereo.
TUTV: The star duo made an album with lots of bright pop tunes and some blues light
ones. The licks/riffs and hooks – about a thousand – haven’t that BK’s raw and rough edge as we are used to, but I don’t miss it whatsoever.
The overall sonority leans more towards power guitar pop (slow, mid-tempo and only
a couple of fast ones). I never thought that the tandem would come up after 23 (!) years with a pretty different sounding, coherent longplayer, without ignoring their blues roots that is. I played Ohio Players more than their whole catalog together. Say no more.
TUTV: The three main elements that make this album special are Jeen’s remarkable
voice, her high-quality songwriting expertise, and the heart-and-soul passion that streams throughout it. Whether Jeen rocks out, muses, or swings moods, she always holds your aural attention.
TUTV: With Interplay, their shoegaze past goes into the dustbin. Ride came up here
with a multi-layered pop LP stuffed with arousing tunes, alternated with pepped-up reveries.
All songs are sublimely orchestrated and bathe in a psychedelic jacuzzi,
while vocalist Mark Gardner‘s velvet vocals match the radiant atmosphere
exquisitely. It’s a new ride, and it’s a gratifying one.
TUTV: This first Mancunian collaboration sounds as if was made about 30 years ago.
Most tunes could be leftovers from The Stone Roses‘ 2nd and final 1994 LP Second Coming, the one on which Squire played his guitar exactly the way Jimmy Page did in Led Zeppelin for years. And Liam is Liam. Arms together on his back and letting his pipes do the talking. The two heroes just did what they wanted to do, making an album together and having fun doing it.
Before I was aware of it I had played the album about 10 times in 2 days.
Mind you this is not a masterwork whatsoever, but all 10 tunes are top-entertaining
and stick faster than I can say “I want the Stone Roses support Oasis on their reunion tour”?
SINGLE
ALBUM
. Liam Gallagher – John Squire
________________________________________________________________________________________________
TUTV: The Other Side is a concept record about a “mysterious couple” having
adventures in an otherworldly America. The by-now 76-year-old Burnett translates
their journey in lovey-dovey lullabies, heartfelt musings, and amourus ballads.
This is the perfect record for daydreaming and relaxation. Soft, mellow, and tender.
His slightly hoarse Americana voice enchants and entices all through this sepia-colored album. Pure romanticism. Pure songsmith.
Artist: JUJU (Italy)
Brainchild of Sicilian multi-instrumentalist
and producer Gioele Valenti. Album: Apocalypse Is God’s Spoiler
Photo by Turn Up The Volume
TUTV: Valenti is a jam champ and a groove master creating electrifying, trance-like vibrations that transfer you to the dark side of your mind where you can freely
fantasize and explore your own psyche.
Circling Krautrock-like psychedelia is all over the place. Choir chants and spacey percussion cause a tribal atmosphere à la The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols. Mind-bending and dream-triggering. As always.
TUTV: After the turmoil, chaos, and drugs addictions (especially Doherty) of the early
years, the side-projects, solo records, and getting clean and healthy the Libs are back, again. They’re not the boys in the band of yesteryear; they’re now grown-up men who
enjoy a stable life and are still obsessed by making music.
They became notable, experienced musicians who left their hedonistic lifestyle behind themselves for several years now. Not one dull moment, not one dull song on the eastern esplanade.
TUTV: The Irishmen have become first-class songwriters (which they already proved on previous LP Skinty Fia– – still my favourite one). Frontman Grian Chatten‘s lyrics show (again) his observative view on this modern-day, confused world and how it affects
his inner-self.
This is not their masterpiece yet to my ears, but it’s only a matter of
time that they will come up with a longplayer that will blow us all away.
Turn Up The Volume: Old skool punk ‘n’ roll? Absolutely. Any good? You betcha! Amyl and her loud buddies made another roasting riff-manic-monster of a hell fucking
hell yeah record. Pogo madness is back. Sturm un drang from start to finish. HOLY MOLY!
Band:THE SMILE
Sort of supergroup featuring 2 radioheads, Thom
Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and drummer Tom Skinner.
Album: Cutouts.
Their 3rd LP in just 2 years
(Radiohead 8 in 31 years).
TUTV: By far their best to my ears. On the previous 2 ones they tried too hard
to not sound like Radiohead (which they did frequently anyway) and did it with
too many redundant orchestrations, too many unnecessary layers and a bit of
arty farty structures here and there.
Mind you these are good LPs but on this one they keep it far more simple resulting
in 10 very compelling pieces of mesmerizing music. Trippy fast ones alternate with slow
musing ones and throughout the arrangements are subtle, direct and most entertaining with Thom Yorke sounding, yes, at ease, not forcing his compassionate voice/vocals. Bingo.
TUTV: Nostalgia is the keyword all over this fully devoted record. As we already know
for a long time Hawley is a romantic at heart who’s in love with his city Sheffield since
he was a child. It’s more than just his hometown.
It’s the place where he experienced all things good and bad, happy and sad. It leads
to yearning renumerations, fanciful daydreams and wistful meditations. With his soft-heartened voice and late-night stories, the late great Roy Orbison comes to mind on
several occasions.
SINGLE
ALBUM
. Instagram – All Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
– 18 –
Artists:DEAD ANYWAY British duo combining the dark lyricism of Kate Arnold
against the music and soundscapes of Marc Symonds. Album: Tough, Listen
TUYV: Slow/mid-tempo/fast trip-hop tunes are wrapped in layers of
distortion and feedback, creating an eerie and at times sinister ambiance.
Massive Attack, Tricky, Arab Strap and Mike Skinner’s The Streets
and Laurie Anderson‘s latest opus Amelia come to mind.
DA resonates as EBM for people who come alive when the darkness sets in, far away
from our 24/7 suffocating life and the world’s destructive nature as we experience now, again.
Kate Arnold‘s spoken word stories evolve on waves of chilling synth soundscapes that actually ease one’s confused mind (mine, for sure) and transfer you to your space of imaginativeness. Trance massage it is. You’ll feel alive anyway.
“The singular mixture of classic punk/hardcore and electronic styles result in 12 frantic tracks of postmodern pop for the genreless future. Painted with a broad pallet of only the most extreme hues of emotion, each track is marked by a distinctive danceable mania.”
TUTV: Let your head kicked in with schizophrenic disco sledgehammers for illegal raves in batcaves where dropouts, misfits, loners, eccentrics, bohos, and other related outsiders gather to move in mysterious ways, far away from the normal world.
TUTV: It’s vintage Shellac/Steve Albini with its wayward song structures, its
capricious and minimalistic approach, its broken riffs, edgy hooks, sinewy
drumming, Albini‘s firm vocals and the raw and rough post-punk dynamics.
Absolutely weird to listen to, knowing
that the noise wizard is here no more.
He passed away on May 7, following a heart attack.
Only 10 days before the album release. Sad loss.
Last month, THE CURE released their 1st longplayer in 16 years. Songs Of A Lost World. A magnificent magnum opus. One of their
very best ever and a big contender for best one of 2024.
Now, their Goth maestro ROBERT SMITH confirmed the rumors
of more new Cure music to come. Not one, but two albums.
Smith: “This ‘Songs Of A Lost World’ album is a really emotional piece of work
and the companion piece, it’s not quite as dark but it explores other subjects a
little bit more.”
“The third one is very odd, actually. I haven’t finished the words to that one because
my headspace has been much more focused on performing these ones. I don’t really
want it to end because it’s been so good. The reaction to the new music has been so,
so great. It’s been really lovely to feel people giving us all the love.”
Album: SONGS OF A LOST WORLD
Their 14th LP, their first in 16 years.
It went to the top spot in the UK and the US.
NME says: “The album deals in darkness and death, but with
flowers on the grave… Being arguably the most personal album
of Smith’s career. “
TUTV: Sonically, it resonates as if you’re part of a funeral march that progresses in slow
motion. Every song starts with a long instrumental intro of waves of melancholic synths and weeping guitars, and every time when Smith‘s feverish voice joins in, the intensity augments wondrously captivating.
The most drastically soul-stirring record I heard all year, accentuating how sorrow
can overwhelm and hurt one’s heart and mind. It’s a universal experience that millions, and millions of people who lost loved ones – past, present and future – can relate to.
Pure masterpiece.
KEY SINGLE
ALBUM
. Instagram – All Cure Albums
________________________________________________________________________________________________
– 2 –
New album artwork
Artist: KIM DEAL
Best known as the utterly cool bass player of indie icons Pixies and from her own band The Breeders, featuring
her twin sister Kelley.
MOJO (British music monthly) says: “Nobody Loves You More is a singularly uplifting,
life-affirming listen, where joy and despair, love and loss, are irrevocably entwined, and
kept afloat by Deal’s unfailing lightness of touch.”
TUTV: Kim Deal on her own, expresses mixed emotions about past and present
personal experiences. Mostly with moony and subtly orchestrated reveries such
as the title track, Coast, Are You Mine?, Wish I Was, and Summerland. All charming
and melancholic songs for a quiet winter night in.
Deal‘s slightly hoarse voice is instrumental. Its tender-hearted aura creates a relaxing ambiance, interrupted now and then by more uptempo, upbeat tracks like stand-out
vibe Crystal Breath, the vigorous guitar-frisky Disobediece and the buzzing Big Ben Beat
jam. A formidable debut record.
Band: MAYFLOWER MADAME Who: A band from Oslo, Norway who specialize in a dark and distinctive blend
of post-punk, shoegaze, and psych-noir. Their history, so far, includes two album
releases, Observed In A Dream (2016) and Prepared For A Nightmare (2020).
MM: “Insight’ is the album we’ve always wanted to create, but at the same time it’s
the most personal and emotionally hardest we’ve made so far. Lyrically, it delves into
a wide range of emotions, from somber reflections about loss and sorrow to feverish
depictions of love, escapism and catharsis.”
TUTV: As they showed/proved us so many times before MM know mesmerically well
how to embed infectious, poppy melodies into trance-like orchestrations infused with waves of sparkling guitar lines and transfixing vocals, creating a magnetic appeal.
Best examples are the 4 top-tier singles Crippled Crow, Never Sever, Paint It All In Blue
and A Foretold Ecstasy. References? Depeche Mode, New Order, Interpol. Impressive, right? You betcha.
The Guardian (British newspaper): “Its two predecessors
were surprisingly good, this is genuinely great.”
TUTV: Lots of critical praise for PP’s new opus, deservedly so. At 72, he still excels
in writing high-quality pop/rock songs and he’s still a romantic at heart. His unique
voice and luminous guitar play combine for a splendiferously aural delight. With
20 tracks a bit too long, although there’s not one bad one on this gratifying record.
Band: THE CHRONICLES OF MANIMAL AND SAMARA Who: London-based DIY duo – Daphne Ang (Singapore) and Andrea Papi (Italy)
that fills a gap in music by bringing literature, art, and history together into a
space where rock and metal meet electronica. They released two fascinating
albums so far.
TUTV: TCOMAS have broadened their musical and lyrical boundaries again.
Mind you, their psycho-delic, metallic trademark sound, their quiet/Loud/quiet rollercoaster compositions and their intriguing sagas are still in place here, but
there’s more room for meditative moments, annex Samara‘s chill-out voice/vocals,
like on Waves, Mysterium Tremendum, with beautiful classical piano play, and Per Astra.
Their mercurial and emotional odysseys are inventively fragmented, swinging
forth and back. And then there’s the unexpected, but superb collaboration with Italian hip-hop rapper Mr Meuri on standout piece Bite The Bullet. Another rad
longplayer achievement.
IT IS ENORMOUSLY UPLIFTING, GENUINELY HEARTWARMING TO EXPERIENCE SUCH A WONDERFUL REACTION TO THE RELEASE OF ‘SONGS OF A LOST WORLD’ – TO EVERYONE WHO HAS BOUGHT IT, LISTENED TO IT, LOVED IT, BELIEVED IN US OVER THE YEARS – THANK YOU – X
