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BAUHAUS

OMD

Bauhaus Staircase

    Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark (OMD) return with their 14th studio album Bauhaus Staircase, over six years after the triumph of their Top 4-charting record The Punishment of Luxury. The album was born from the impetus to kickstart new explorations during lockdown when as Andy McCluskey admits: “I rediscovered the creative power of total boredom.”

    The album’s first offering as a single is the title track which serves as a nod both to Andy McCluskey’s love of the Bauhaus era & the power of protest art. “I am a huge lover of visual arts especially mid 20th century movements” Andy comments. “The song is a metaphor for strength and artist passion in the face of criticism and adversity. When times are hard there is a tendency for Governments to look at cutting funding for creativity just at the moment when the arts are most needed to nourish our souls. It seems appropriate that the song and its eponymous album were created during Covid Lockdown.”

    Ranging further from the beautiful film noir ballad of ‘Veruschka’ and the dance stylings of ‘Anthropocene’ - a term for the current epoch in Earth’s evolution to the sinister ‘Evolution Of Species’ and the hectic ‘Kleptocracy’ - OMD’s greatest straight-up protest song - the new album is a broad electronic sonic masterpiece that lyrically tackles the topics of the future. The record closes on ‘Healing’ - a moment of reflective calm.

    By rights OMD should be in semi-retirement performing classics like Enola Gay and Maid Of Orleans on the nostalgia festival circuit like so many peers. Instead they’ve created a landmark album worthy of their finest work. Bauhaus Staircase remains unmistakably the work of a duo who are still perfectly in sync 45 years after their first gig at legendary Liverpool club Eric’s.

    “I’m very happy with what we’ve done on this record" McCluskey summarises. “I’m comfortable if this is OMD’s last statement.”

    TRACK LISTING

    TRACKLIST: CD / LP / LPC
    1. Bauhaus Staircase
    2. Anthropocene
    3. Look At You Now
    4. G.E.M.
    5. Where We Started
    6. Veruschka
    7. Slow Train
    8. Don't Go
    9. Kleptocracy
    10. Aphrodite's Favourite Child
    11. Evolution Of Species
    12. Healing

    2CD
    1. Bauhaus Staircase 2.7 Demo. Andy 30th Aug 2020
    2. Anthropocene Demo (A Haven For Lost Souls 1.1 Paul’s Track April 2020)
    3. Look At You Now Demo (Zimmer Frame For Andy) Paul 28th Feb 2021
    4. G.E.M. Demo (Culture War. Andy 6th March 2021)
    5. Where We Started Demo (Stadium 6.0) Andy 26th May 2020
    6. Veruschka 2 Demo 2nd December 2020
    7. Slow Train Demo 1.3 Dec 2020
    8. Don’t Go Demo 14th Nov 2018
    9. Kleptocracy Demo (When I Was Young) Andy 14th March 2021
    10. Aphrodite’s Favourite Child Demo (B Side Choir) Fotonovela 2011
    11. Evolution Of Species 2.5 Ruff
    12. Healing Demo (Water April 9th 2020)
    13. Bauhaus Staircase Demo. Andy 20th July 2020

    Bauhaus

    The Bela Session - 2022 Reissue

      The Bela Session is UK post-punk pioneers Bauhaus’ debut studio recording made in 1979. It includes the immensely influential “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”, which is the band’s first single and often considered the first gothic rock record, and has been covered by artists such as Nine Inch Nails, Massive Attack and Nouvelle Vague.

      Complete recording session with previously unreleased tracks mastered from the original tape by Mandy Parnell who has worked with artists such as Frightened Rabbit, Björk and more.

      20x28in archival poster from the band’s performance at Plan K, Brussels on April 5th, 1980.

      TRACK LISTING

      1. Bela Lugosi’s Dead
      2. Some Faces
      3. Bite My Hip
      4. Harry
      5. Boys

      Julia Bardo

      Bauhaus, L'Appartamento

        Debut album from Manchester-via-Italy singer, songwriter and guitarist Julia Bardo.

        Produced and mixed by Younghusband’s Euan Hinshelwood, the record firmly establishes Bardo’s musical adventurousness and prowess, and marks a cathartic and self-affirming moment for an artist who found her voice by realizing it's been there all along.

        The album is best summed up by the woman who wrote it all: “Bauhaus, L’Appartamento is about loneliness, solitude, separation...but also unconditional love,” Bardo reveals of the record’s overarching themes. “Family, emotional dependency, mental health issues, feelings of emptiness and numbness, feelings of not being enough, inability to be in control of my own emotions, self-doubt, self-reflection, past traumas and dealing with them.”

        Named after the apartment complex she lived in when demoing the album’s recordings, but with an Italian twist.

        Follows the release of two EPs, Phase and The Raw EP, which saw her experiment further with her wistful and mysterious sound to become the alternative pop artist she is today.

        Her musical journey began in Brescia in Northern Italy, where she sang and wrote lyrics for a local band between shifts at her father’s bar. A free spirit craving new inspiration, she relocated to Manchester and it was here she developed her striking style as a solo musician before also meeting and joining post-punk band Working Men’s Club. Never losing her strong desire to have full creative control over her music, she returned to become a solo artist again.

        STAFF COMMENTS

        Emily says: Julia Bardo: Local talent alert!! Gorgeous, off kilter pop songs which have more bite to them than you might expect. Sonorous vocals and deft melodic interplay met with moments of jangling dissonance. FFO Cate Le Bon and Aldous Harding!

        Bauhaus

        Burning From The Inside

          Late 2018 will mark the 40th anniversary of Bauhaus. To celebrate, Beggars Arkive is reissuing six records from the band’s catalogue on limited edition coloured vinyl.

          Formed in 1978, The legendary and hugely influential quartet hailed from Northampton, England and is comprised of Peter Murphy, Daniel Ash, David J and Kevin Haskins. The dark, dramatic music that they made, possessed far more force, variety and playfulness than the "founding fathers of goth" tag that is always attached to them.

          Bauhaus' landmark debut album, In the Flat Field, came out towards the end of 4AD's first eventful year. Following the plan at the time, the band then "moved upstairs" to Beggars Banquet, for whom they cut three further albums before dissolving in 1983. They charted with their cover of David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust”, they’ve been and namechecked by everyone from Nine Inch Nails, Sepultura, Janes Addiction, MGMT, Interpol, Bjork, Nirvana and more.

          Burning From The Inside was Bauhaus’ fourth album and was the last of their studio albums of this era, released just after the band’s breakup in 1983. This was mastered from HD audio files transferred from the original tapes

          TRACK LISTING

          She's In Parties
          Antonin Artaud
          Wasp
          King Volcano
          Who Killed Mr. Moonlight?
          Slice Of Life
          Honeymoon Croon
          Kingdom's Coming
          Burning From The Inside
          Hope

          Bauhaus

          Mask

            ‘Mask’: Managing the sometimes hard-to-negotiate trick of expanding their sound while retaining all the qualities which got them attention to begin with, ‘Mask’ sees the members of Bauhaus consciously stretch themselves into newer areas of music and performance, resulting in an album that was arguably even better than the band’s almost flawless debut.

            More familiar sides of the band were apparent from the get-go; opening number ‘Hair Of The Dog’, one of the band’s best songs, starts with a double-tracked squalling guitar solo before turning into a stomping, surging flow, carefully paced by sudden silences and equally sudden returns to the music, while Murphy details cases of mental addictions in pithy phrases.

            The energy wasn’t all just explosive angst and despair, though; the one-two punches of ‘Kick In The Eye’ and ‘In Fear Of Fear’ have as much hip-shaking groove and upbeat swing to them as portentous gloom (Ash’s sax skronk on the latter, as well as on the similarly sharp ‘Dancing’, is a particularly nice touch). Elsewhere, numerous flashes of the band’s quirky sense of humour - something often missed by both fanatical followers and negative critics both - make an appearance; perhaps most amusing is the dry spoken-word lyric beginning ‘Of Lillies And Remains’, as David J details a goofily grotesque situation as much Edward Gorey as Edgar Allen Poe. Add to that three of the most dramatic things the band ever recorded - the charging, keyboard-accompanied ‘The Passion Of Lovers’, the slow, dark fairy-tale-gone-wrong ‘Hollow Hills’, and the wracked, trudging title track, where the sudden appearance of an acoustic guitar turns a great song into a near perfect blend of ugliness and sheer beauty - and the end result was a perfect trouncing of the sophomore-slump myth.

            ‘Mask’ is packaged in a lavish gatefold cover.

            STAFF COMMENTS

            Sara says: I'm currently slightly obsessed with the darker side of 80's pop and Bauhaus are one of my favourite recent discoveries.


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