Ultravox - Rare (vol.1 1980-83) (1993)

Collecting B-sides from the Vienna to the Quartet era, Rare, Vol. 1 is a much better prospect than Vol 2. which comes from Ultravox's later, less interesting years. Here the band was still full of life and as many of the less formal tracks display, willing to experiment. The rickety "Keep Talking" is the strange sound of Ultravox jamming and if you've never been able to connect this cold band to member Midge Ure's earlier, more glam outfit the Rich Kids than you haven't heard their aggressive cover of Brian Eno's "King's Lead Hat" (and you really should). There's also the German language version of Vienna's "Mr. X" along with the fan favorite "Passionate Reply" plus a handful live cuts. While Rare, Vol. 1 was a godsend for fans when it was released in 1994, anyone who purchased the expanded reissues that later appeared have received many of these tracks as bonus cuts and should take duplication into consideration.
~ David Jeffries, All Music Guide



1 Waiting
2 Face To Face (Live)
3 Kings Lead Hat (Live)
4 Passionate Reply
5 Herr X
6 Alles Klar
7 Keep Talking
8 I Never Wanted To Begin
9 Paths & Angles
10 Private Lives (Live)
11 All Stood Still (Live)
12 Hosanna (In Excelsis Deo)
13 Monument
14 The Thin Wall (Live)
15 Break Your Back
16 Reap The Wild Wind (Live)
17 Overlook

The Sound - Propaganda (1999)

Album, na którym znalazł się materiał oryginalnie nagrany przed Jeopardy, czyli okres maj-lipiec 1979 roku i może być uznany za pierwszy oficjalny LP zespołu. W tym czasie grupę tworzyli Adrian Borland, Graham Greene, Michael Dudley oraz Bi Marshall i zdecydowali się zmienić nazwę z The Outsiders na The Sound. Trzy utwory z tej sesji trafiły później, w lekko zmienionych wersjach, na album Jeopardy (Words Fail Me, Missiles, Night Versus Day). Płyta ta to przykład surowego, nieoszlifowanego brzmienia oraz ciekawe historyczne spojrzenie na początki powstawania tego niedocenionego do dziś fenomenu, jakim z czasem okazał się The Sound.
Nigdy nie wydany wcześniej w tej formie materiał, teraz po latach możemy wrócić do poczatku lat 80tych, usłyszeć i docenić coś naprawdę wyjątkowego.

Released in 1999 by Renascent, Propaganda gathers 12 formative recordings that were laid down by the Sound in 1979, some of which would be re-tooled for official release later on. Technically speaking, it covers a period during which a band called the Outsiders -- who put out the first self-released punk LP in Britain in mid-1977 -- underwent some lineup changes and officially changed into a new band, with guitarist/singer Adrian Borland and bassist Graham Bailey carrying over from the initial band. The material found here was recorded in the Borland family home with Adrian's father, Bob, performing the engineering duties from a small room nearby. Borland and company's influences are apparent: the Stooges, MC5, and Roxy Music. Borland's vocal phrasing resembles Iggy Pop's streetwise cool in a more-than-apparent way, though his worlds-apart personality is introverted and restrained compared to Pop's unbridled exhibitionism. The presence of clarinet blurts is an obvious reference to early Roxy Music, and some of the careening, assaultive guitar licks from Borland himself resemble the unholy squall and torrential bomber FX channeling of MC5's Fred Smith and Wayne Kramer. Down the road, the Sound would become much better at incorporating their influences, blending and almost burying them. Regardless, this is just a rawer version of a Radio Birdman record with a little more stylistic range and more thoughtful lyrics (they are far from being an endless splatter of grunts and scratches), without the crazy pose; despite the fact that these people were just getting used to playing with each other, most everything sounds assured, tight, and nearly professional. What these songs suffer from in derivation is equaled in skill, quality, and enthusiasm. Any hardcore fan needs a copy. It's not for nothing that the bandmembers themselves regard this collection as their first true record.
~ Andy Kellman, All Music Guide

more info on The Sound



1 No Salvation
2 Deep Breath
3 Cost Of Living
4 Quarter Past Two
5 Night Versus Day
6 Physical World
7 Statik
8 Music Business
9 Propaganda
10 Words Fail Me
11 One More Escape
12 Missiles

The Sound - Thunder Up (1987)

I oto kolejna odsłona The Sound, powoli budujemy dyskografię zespołu, a wszystkich zainteresowanych odsyłam do wcześniejszych postów o tej grupie. 
W kolejce do prezentacji czeka jeszcze jedna płyta The Sound, w następnym tygodniu...

THE SOUND's final official album from 1987. Thunder Up is a tightrope between Adrian Borland's vocals, the turbulence of alligator bass, the prettier guitars and drums with additional keyboards and brass bringing a touch of life down the wings. Welcome confusion, that works on two levels. Their blank image hides frosted weariness, defiant observation disturbing any placid pique. Their sound, conventional only in set-up, belies the depth and malevolence of their pitter-patter as Borland makes you ashamed of your pessimism. "Shut Up And Shut Down" tickles and crawls through hateful emptiness every bit as biting as the more obvious two-ply ballads "Hand Of Love" and "I Give You Pain". The implied threat of mindless, mawkish muck never materializes because the wounds always want to remain open, only apparently transparent, the kick really does occur inside. It never hurts to have the Pulomonary Art Ache, to find emotions and memories stirred by a cool blue fog of guitar, and the lean but incisive melodic devastation of "You've Got A Way" achieves a landmine of a victory here. They can be flawed, like the crump of "Kinetic" or the thwipp of "Barria Alta" but that claustrophobia also doubles as a rarified atmosphere Unlike the grand deceits of similarly inclined, fictitiously humble, rock bands. where you can always foresee the peaks and step lazily over dubious depressions, untroubled by grimaces or real anguish, The Sound, by refining their despair simply amplify their magnificence and magnify the intensity of expression. The Sound WERE the missing link between Joy Division and Echo & The Bunnymen; perhaps time will help acknowledge this.

Here it is folks, at long last the 6th LP by the Sound (plus the live one). Mostly, Thunder Up finds Adrian Borland and company going back to their starkly beautiful, minimal landscape pop and overloaded pop bullets that made their 3rd LP All Fall Down (recorded at the same studio, coincidentally) such an interesting work. Again they scrap the cohesive feel of the '85 masterplece Heads and Hearts, and back comes the scattered collection of strange turns, dark passages, open fields, and then back to a forbidding woods.

The best song is the opening 'Acceleration Group,' along with From the Lion's Mouth's 'Winning' the finest recording of their long career. As fast as a speed skate with the wind in your face, and suddenly shifting gears 2/3 of the way through to a leisurely campfire to warm your hands only to return to the speed skate. 'Acceleration Group' is a sensational track, perhaps the first one they've ever done that bowls over all listeners, right from the opening seconds! So much for the Sound as acquired taste! Phew! After that out-of-breath beginning, The Sound have your attention, and they're intent on taking you whatever direction they feel like. One or two tracks sound like a soundtrack for Kubrick's Dr.Strangelove or Marooned for their doomed-in-space and the horror of technology sound (especially the b-side of both singles, 'The Fall of Europe' which makes the purchase of either mandatory). 'Hand of Love' and 'Web of Wicked Ways' brings out Borland's Velvets' Influence; pretty, sighing pop with a strange, inexplicable depth. Kinetic is just that, an off-toned piece of fired dissonance with sexual innuendo pierced through the squeal, while the ending I Give You Pain' builds like a trash can fire becomes a towering inferno, from extreme quiet to a roar of distortion (Into the red).

Then, the piece-de-resistance (bad French, I know), the most emotional track is the ending one (2 straight they ended on such a pulling note. last time the heartbreaking 'Temperature Drop'), 'You've Got a Way.' with descending little piano and unbelievable strings as deep as the Black Sea (occasionally flanked by rapid lightning bolts of guitar which clap and vanish instantly), which dismantles your defences and makes you out and out swoon like a lovesick sheep. By the time you get off this non-stop rollercoaster of faith, expectation, disenchantment, gentle joy and crushing disappointment, you feel like you just became the wheel of fortune and you've been spinning so much you don't know if you're bankrupt or you struck the emotional jackpot. In 30 years, when the Sound are 60 times bigger than they are today, people will wonder how anyone could settle for anything less than such an stunning. moving juggernaut. And by now. The Sound (Borland especially) has proven their genius, their standard so far above all others.
Buy anything with their name on it!!!

http://www.renascent.co.uk/pagessound/sound.html
http://www.brittleheaven.com
http://www.myspace.com/thesounduk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sound
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Borland



01. Acceleration Group
02. Hand Of Love
03. Barria Alta
04. Kinetic
05. Iron Years
06. Prove Me Wrong
07. Shot Up And Shut Down
08. Web Of Wicked Ways
09. I Give You Pain
10. You've Got A Way