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LLOYD COLE

Lloyd Cole And The Commotions

Mainstream - 2023 Reissue

    Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Cole, Blair Cowan, Lawrence Donegan, Neil Clark and Stephen Irvine – were formed in Glasgow in 1982, where Buxton-born singer-songwriter Cole was studying Philosophy and English at the University of Glasgow -Their sound swam against the tide of shiny 80s synthesisers, offering intense, melodic, guitar-based pop, topped with droll words packed with literary references.

    By the time of Mainstream in October 1987, the group had taken a break and had spent time trying to find the right producer for their new material. Working with Ian Stanley, then fresh from the success of Tears For Fears' Songs From The Big Chair, the album allegedly cost ten times the budget of Rattlesnakes. Despite its 80s opulence – for example, guest appearances from Jon Hassell on trumpet, Tracey Thorn on vocals – it sounds untouched by the decade's excess. Its singles, My Bag, Jennifer She Said and From The Hip were all well received.

    TRACK LISTING

    My Bag
    From The Hip
    29
    Mainstream
    Jennifer She Said
    Mister Malcontent
    Sean Penn Blues
    Big Snake
    Hey Rusty
    These Days

    Lloyd Cole And The Commotions

    Easy Pieces - 2023 Reissue

      Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Cole, Blair Cowan, Lawrence Donegan, Neil Clark and Stephen Irvine – were formed in Glasgow in 1982, where Buxton-born singer-songwriter Cole was studying Philosophy and English at the University of Glasgow -Their sound swam against the tide of shiny 80s synthesisers, offering intense, melodic, guitar-based pop, topped with droll words packed with literary references.

      Given just how loved debut album Rattlesnakes was, it would have been hard for whatever followed to be received as warmly – yet Easy Pieces made a good first of it. It was to sell twice as many copies in its first two weeks as Rattlesnakes had to date, giving the group a Top 5 chart placing on its release in November 1985. Recorded with 80s super- producers Clive Langer and Alan Winstanley, its first two singles, the brooding, gospel influenced Brand New Friend and the forever-jaunty Lost Weekend reached the UK Top 20.

      TRACK LISTING

      Rich
      Why I Love Country Music
      Pretty Gone
      Grace
      Cut Me Down
      Brand New Friend
      Lost Weekend
      James
      Minor Character
      Perfect Blue

      Lloyd Cole And The Commotions

      Rattlesnakes - 2023 Reissue

        Lloyd Cole & The Commotions – Cole, Blair Cowan, Lawrence Donegan, Neil Clark and Stephen Irvine – were formed in Glasgow in 1982, where Buxton-born singer-songwriter Cole was studying Philosophy and English at the University of Glasgow -Their sound swam against the tide of shiny 80s synthesisers, offering intense, melodic, guitar-based pop, topped with droll words packed with literary references.

        Signing to Polydor Records, the group's debut single, Perfect Skin, was released in early 1984 followed in October of that year by their debut album, Rattlesnakes. Produced by Paul Hardiman with strings arranged by Anne Dudley, it became one of the most cherished albums of the 80s. Including further singles Forest Fire and the title track, the group found themselves as the darlings of the music press, at a time when a university education was still a relative rarity. Cole wasted little time in cramming cultural allusions in his material – listeners were introduced to a world of Norman Mailer, Eva Marie Saint and Truman Capote, all wrapped in delightfully written pop music.

        TRACK LISTING

        Perfect Skin
        Speedboat
        Rattlesnakes
        Down On Mission Street
        Forest Fire
        Charlotte Street
        2CV
        Four Flights Up
        Patience
        Are You Ready To Be Heartbroken?

        Lloyd Cole

        Guesswork

          “Guesswork”, as the title suggests, is a record about the uncertainty of the world as one enters their third act. In terms of song count, it is Lloyd Cole's shortest, however, it is the longest in terms of minutes but the shortest in terms of word count. This is symbolistic for the authorial confidence that comes with the passing of time.

          Going beyond Cole's latest “songs” album, the critically acclaimed “Standards” in 2013, “Guesswork's” musical style is mostly comprised of electronic sounds. Once Lloyd Cole had formulated a sonic picture of the record he wanted to make, the arrival of each new song gradually brought that picture into focus. His distinguishable voice and sophisticated lyricism invite the listener into the mindset of someone who has reached old age and is coming to terms with this.

          As Cole puts it: “Because really what have we got to lose?”. At times, the experience of listening to Guesswork is akin to sitting in a sleek, state-of-the-art departure lounge, unsure of quite where you're waiting to go.

          Lloyd Cole

          1D Electronics 2012-2014

            Lloyd Cole is mostly know for his outstanding pop music, but he certainly has a taste for electronic music. In 2013 he released an highly acclaimed album together with electronic music legend Hans-Joachim Roedelius (BB124 "Selected Studies Vol. 1") for whom he also curated a compilation of his electronic music recordings (BB187 "Kollektion 2. Roedelius - Electronic Music. Compiled by Lloyd Cole"). Finally we are happy to announce the release of a solo album with lloyd's electronic music on September 4th: "1D Electronics 2012-2014". Some pieces were originally created with overdubs by another in mind. Some were simply experiments. One or two may have had loftier ambitions…. None of the pieces involves the use of a piano keyboard or a computer, except to record it. Some modulations were executed by hand. Most were generated by programmed sequencers and logic. Each piece is a self contained electronic circuit.

            Lloyd Cole

            Standards

              Lloyd Cole's new album 'Standards' on Tapete Records was recorded in late 2012 /early 2013 in Los Angeles, New York and at his home in Easthampton, Massachusetts, 'Standards' is produced by Lloyd and mixed by maverick German producer Olaf Opal. All songs are by Lloyd Cole apart from 'California Earthquake', which was written by American folk artist John Hartford.

              Inspired in part by the vitality he found in septuagenarian Dylan's acclaimed 2012 album 'Tempest' - says Cole, 52: "I took it as a kick up the backside" - 'Standards' is a gloriously electric rock'n'roll record and arguably the best thing he has made since his groundbreaking debut with the Commotions, 1984's 'Rattlesnakes'.

              The band Lloyd assembled for 'Standards' comprises Fred Maher (Material, Scritti Politti, Lou Reed) on drums and Matthew Sweet on bass reforming the rhythm section from Lloyd's debut solo album 1990's 'Lloyd Cole' and its follow up '91's 'Don't Get Weird On Me Babe'. With Joan (As Police Woman) Wasser on piano/backing vocals, and Lloyd not only singing but playing synths amidst some of the crispest, stormiest, most stinging electric guitar, it's a tight ship with a tight sound which tautens and relaxes according to the temper of the song. Augmenting the basic band are Mark Schwaber, Matt Cullen and Lloyd's son Will on guitars, Commotions keyboardist Blair Cowan, percussionist Michael Wyzik and backing vocalist and Negative Dave Derby.

              Says Lloyd: "I wanted to make an album with a small fixed palette of sounds, like a Van Gogh, like 'Highway 61'. The format is supposedly dead, but I still want to make albums. Not bunches of songs - albums. For the last 10 years I've been primarily an acoustic musician but this is an album for electric guitars, electric bass and loud drums, with piano and a synthesizer for measure. Not quite monochrome, then, but not ever-changing either: it has a sound."

              Lloyd Cole / Hans-Joachim Roedelius

              Selected Studies Volume 1

                How curious it is that this collaboration should come about so late in the day and how marvellous that it transpired at all. Lloyd Cole, this most ingenious of British singer-songwriters, and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, a patriarch of German electronic music, did not actually meet in the studio, choosing instead a mode of material exchange more in keeping with the age, sending files across the ether for the other to complement.

                How did they come to work together? Lloyd Cole released "Plastic Wood" in 2001, an instrumental, electronic album, most unusual by his standards. Listening to "Plastic Wood", one can clearly hear that Cluster's "Sowieso" album (1976) is one of Cole's all-time favourites. A friend of Cole's who also knew Roedelius, sent the latter a copy of the Englishman's album. Roedelius liked it so much that he immediately set about remixing the whole LP, or rather he added overdubs to the existing tracks - without asking and without having been asked! On receiving the results, Cole was not only flattered, he was also very impressed with the Roedelius remixes.
                "Plastic Wood" had already been released and Cole felt that the project had run its course, so the Roedelius reworks were consigned to the archives. Nevertheless, the idea of collaborating appealed to the pair of them, and they did write to one another from time to time.

                A good ten years later, the two finally met in person, when Lloyd-Cole passed through Vienna on tour. Now things could begin in earnest. The first results of their endeavours, now released, are modestly entitled "Selected Studies Vol. 1". Studies, strictly speaking, represent incomplete explorations of compositional and tonal possibilities. And yet this album reveals mature, carefully composed music, as if Cole and Roedelius had been working together for years already. Both artists focus on electronic sounds in a selection of succinct, direct pieces, free of musical garrulousness. Cole neither sings nor plays guitar and Roedelius rarely touches the keys of his grand piano. Instead, both musicians have developed a subtle soundscape which only drifts towards pure noise on one track, "Wandelbar". All of the other "studies" on the album move within a vast spectrum of harmonic wonder and rhythmic stepping stones.

                However paradoxical it may sound, "Selected Studies Vol. 1" is reminiscent of the music of Claude Debussy, if electronic instrumentation had been available to him 120 years earlier. Highly impressionistic images flicker around the listener, airy, transparent, lost in time, each its own window on a bright, yet mysterious world. Far removed from kitsch, ambient and feel-good music, "Selected Studies Vol. 1" demands to be listened to attentively if the serious artistic expression of these two musicians / composers is to be appreciated fully. This opens up the album's beauty and depth. Cole and Roedelius seek to present fantastic, aural topographies in opposition to the dullness of the real world, inviting us to enter a friendly labyrinth of constant surprise, a place one can still leave at any time, without fear of getting hopelessly lost.

                Lloyd Cole

                Etc

                  A collection of 14 songs recorded between 1996 and 2000. Includes a cover of Bob Dylan's "You're A Big Girl Now".


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